On the Saturday following her return from Lyme Regis, Otis Hewetson, as she had promised Victoria, walked the short distance from her lodgings to the bookshop premises.
If Otis had visions of a shelved and neatly-rowed library, they were at once disabused. The bookshop consisted of a large room with a store-room-cum-office-cum-kitchen at the rear, and a dank but whitewashed and Lysolled closet in a dank and green yard. At some time a butcher’s shop had existed on these premises, still evidenced by a steel track with hooks from which joints had once been displayed, and nicely-tiled but chilly walls decorated here and there with laughing pigs.
‘Ah you’ve come, you’ve come.’ Open-handed, Victoria Ormorod greeted her.
‘Did you think that I would not?’
‘Well, people do make promises… and intend keeping them at the time.’
‘I am not like that.’
‘Then you are a gem. Meet Annie.’
Annie was a pleasant-faced woman of about Victoria’s age. She had brown hair that sprung free of its bun in frizzy curls. Her face appeared ordinary except for her brown, intelligent eyes. She kissed Otis on both cheeks, which caused her to start slightly at such familiarity from a complete stranger.
‘We are pleased of your help.’ She spoke with a northern accent and her voice, like Victoria’s, had the forceful huskiness, when not in public use, of a seasoned speaker. ‘We lot are allus kissin. It means nowt except that we are sisters.’
‘I’m sorry, – I didn’t mean…’
‘Aw, don’t apologize. Took me a bit of gettin’ used to, now I’m one of t’wost offenders.’
Otis took to Annie at once. ‘I don’t take offence at being welcomed like that.’
‘Well, m’duck, that’s enough about that. We’ve got trouble on our hands and you’ve come at t’right time. We’ve got a hop to organize.’
‘Hop?’
‘Aye, a dance to raise funds for the wives and kids of the COs.’
‘They’ve started to call them Conchies in the playground. Those poor children, I wonder whether their fathers know how their action affects their children?’
‘Aye, they know all right,’ Annie said. ‘And, make no mistake, it breaks their hearts.’
‘The men are doing something perfectly legal in refusing to prolong this war,’ Victoria said primly. ‘The blame for the ill-treatment of their families should be laid at the door from whence it comes.’
‘Perhaps so, but it is still the children in the playground who suffer.’
‘Have you had trouble at your school?’ Victoria asked.
‘There have been a few incidents, not in the infants where I teach. But I know of a girl who has won a scholarship and the Headmistress is trying to have the award taken from the girl.’
‘Ah, we know,’ said Annie. ‘The girl’s dad was arrested and the Gazette plastered it all over newsagents’ placards. Neighbours take it out on t’family. Easier than tekkin’ it out on War Office if you’ve lost one of your own. But we have to stand up for what we believe. If we don’t, then we’re finished. It’s hard for a man to stand up and be counted – harder if it’s tekken out on his kids.’
Otis protested, ‘But what about the child, she’s the one to suffer?’
‘But not at the hands of her dad,’ Annie said. ‘If Gazette hadn’t done a smear on him, and the Headmistress weren’t so vindictive, Minnie wouldn’t have had a minute’s suffering. Put blame where it belongs, Otis. You have to learn to think straight.’
‘Come on, Annie,’ Victoria said. ‘If you don’t stop being fierce, you’ll frighten away the best volunteer we’ve had for months. And anyway, the girl’s got a place in another grammar school.’
Annie held her head to one side apologetically as she gave Otis a brief hug. ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, lass, but I get that mad sometimes.’
Whilst this exchange had been going on, Annie and Victoria had been opening packages and sorting out leaflets and handbills.
Otis said, ‘There is obviously more to the matter than one thinks, and it’s not much good me standing around here spare. Tell me what to do.’
Victoria and Annie gave one another a satisfied glance, and Otis felt that she had passed some sort of test. What it was she did not know, but felt that the result must be that she was acceptable.
Victoria said, ‘We thought if you would see to the bookshop this morning, it would leave Annie and me free to run around getting people together for tonight.’
Having explained briefly about the sales records and which were free leaflets and which not, Victoria and Annie left the shop in Otis’s charge. ‘You’ll not be alone for long, Nancy will be coming in soon. And, by the way, if you can remember, here I am known as Ruby.’
‘Is it all right if I read this stuff?’
‘Lord!’ Annie said with an infectious grin. ‘The girl’s a marvel, we’ll have her on a soap-box in Finsbury Park afore long. And one thing more whilst I think of it. Nancy. Her chap’s one of those who was imprisoned, she’s heard that he’s being sent to France, but nobody knows for sure. God knows what’s happening to him, the rumour is that COs are being used to go out under fire to bring back dead and injured.’
They went, leaving Otis alone with the smiling pigs and piles of literature.
During her first fifteen minutes in charge of the shop, all of the callers were men and most of them appeared to be interested only in browsing and buying the Herald. Then a neat woman came in.
When Nancy had been told that a teacher named Otis Hewetson would be her helper this Saturday, she felt sure that there were not likely to be two with that name. As soon as she entered, she saw that she was not wrong: this woman was the girl who used to call at Garden Cottage a few years back.
‘I’m Nancy.’ Nancy had never been a one for all that kissing business between these women, so she shook hands firmly. ‘I’ll just put these out.’ She knew from experience that some of the browsers of the political leaflets had been sent there by their women to get one of the ‘Family Advice’ leaflets. She knew also that in the first instance it was the men who came because the illustrations contained in the leaflets were reckoned to be a bit rude and could land her, and them, in court for obscene publications. The women would come in when the men had gone off to football.
She pinned up a notice saying ‘Free Family Advice in private’, and went back to where Otis was taking twopence for two broadsheets. ‘What brings you here then?’
‘I met Vic… Ruby, and she asked me. I live not far away.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘In Market Street. It’s close to the school. I’m a teacher.’
Market Street wasn’t no Lavender Hill. And a teacher? In her twenties and not married? Not what usually happened to quality like her, especially with her face and figure. Nancy’s experience as a domestic worker led her to the conclusion that everything always came out in the end if you just waited. She’d get to know why Otis was living in Market Street. ‘That must be a lovely job, teaching. No shift-work like in mine, out all hours, men with wandering hands who think the conductress is in the price of the tram ticket. Not that I’m complaining, it’s a good job and the pay’s better than domestic.’
‘You’re on the tramcars – a conductress?’
‘Soon be a driver I hope, I’ve done the basics.’
‘They are going to let you drive! That’s really exciting.’
‘That’s if we can get the bosses to keep their promise. They’re going to have to in the end. Soon there’s going to be only old men and boys left, they’re going to have to take on us women.’
With a pang, the danger that Wally was in leapt on her again as it did time and time again, and with that pang came another of anger. Wally was a straight-up-and-down man with true beliefs. The Tribunal had said that it was all a tale and he was nothing but a coward. If there was one thing Wally was not, it was cowardly. Any of his mates would tell you how he put himself in danger to save a copper from being trampled by a horse when the police had charged into the tram-men. And the time he had stopped a runaway horse still between the shafts and he was written up in the paper as a hero.
Wally had told the panel it wasn’t their job to make any comments like that, and they had said they could say anything they liked to anarchist rabble-rousers. Nancy had only seen him once in prison, and then he had been shipped across the Channel.
There were times when she couldn’t stand thinking about it. But getting angry didn’t do anything. Like Victoria said, you should hold on to your anger and guide your energy into productive channels. They hoped to get a decent bit of money tonight; not only that, they were trying to set up another secret dormitory for men on the run, and to organize a second ‘underground railway’ to get men on the run away to America and Ireland.
It was a busy little shop, not only for its books and leaflets, but for the exchange of information and gossip. At two o’clock when the men were off to their pubs and football, things were quiet enough for Otis and Nancy to put up the ‘Back in Fifteen Minutes’ board. Otis made tea for them both and Nancy went out with a mug to her ‘tame’ copper and came back with two doughnuts from the baker. Otis Hewetson had looked a bit surprised at Nancy’s friendliness to a policeman, but Nancy had said, ‘He’s one of ours.’
Otis’s thoughts had at once gone to George Moth. Recently he had seemed to have reasons to be in Islington, and always somehow close enough to Lou Barker’s shop for him to be ‘just passing’, usually when she was coming from school. Once or twice she had come in to find him sitting in Lou’s drinking tea.
‘Do you mean that he turns a blind eye?’ She had not realized how hungry she had become; the tea and doughnut were blissful.
‘He’s a local bobby, the eldest child in a family of ten. He knows what poverty and too many children means. Thanks his lucky stars he’s got out, and don’t mean to have ten of his own. And he’s been corrupted – took home a leaflet to his wife. Sometimes I ask him, How’s the wife? And he says, Going along nicely on the Cream Sponge. That’s what they call the Method.’ She laughed for the first time and into Otis’s mind came a vision of icy lemonade and the secret garden at the Moths’ holiday cottage in Southsea.
‘I know you, I’m sure. You are that Nancy, aren’t you? You made us lemonade with cold well-water… in Southsea? Aren’t you the same Nancy? Of course you are, I can see. Why didn’t I see it before? You don’t remember me, do you? I was the girl who was always making a nuisance of myself at Garden Cottage. I haunted the place. It was so lovely there compared to The Grand. Don’t you remember?’
‘Of course I remember. I expect I look different without a cap and apron, I’ve been told how different domestics look out of uniform. I recognized you the minute I laid eyes on you. Even before I got here, I knew there couldn’t be two Otis Hewetsons in London.’
‘You didn’t say.’
Wryly. ‘People like me know not to ask questions when they find people in changed circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
‘I would have expected you to be married to some Honourable and living in one of the smart squares. I didn’t know but what you was in some trouble, or maybe didn’t want people round here to know you was from a posh family.’
‘You’re right, I don’t want them to know that. I have found what I want to do, and I think that one day I may be very good at it. Don’t laugh, but my ambition is to get a Master’s degree and become Head of a school.’
‘That’s a fine ambition.’
‘I have hardly told it to a soul.’
‘But your mother…? And your father, wasn’t he a solicitor? What I remember of Mrs Hewetson is that she was the sort to go doolally if her daughter didn’t find somebody pretty posh in the way of a husband. Whatever does she think of Market Street?’
‘She has never seen it, and I hope never will. I feel safe there. I have a dear of a landlady who leaves me alone, never asks where I’m going, but she watches over me and would go for anyone who might harm me. I have wondered what Lou would do if my ma turned up on the doorstep and demanded to be let into my rooms.’
‘You sound happy enough.’
‘I am very satisfied with my life in Islington. If I go home for a weekend, I can hardly wait for it to be over. I have been here a while and now that Ma has seen that I have not been raped or sold to white slave traffickers, I believe that she has given up the battle.’
‘Don’t you believe it. A lady like her won’t ever give up. Is she still as beautiful?’
‘I suppose she is. Everyone says that she is one of London society’s beauties, but it is hard for me to see anybody but Ma.’
‘What about men friends? You’re a very lovely girl, I should have thought…’
She was interrupted by a rattling door-handle. Their fifteen minutes’ break was up.
‘…that summer, I thought you was head over heels in love with Master Jack. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.’
‘He has recently enlisted in the army.’
Her hand stalled on the bolt. ‘Never! Not another lovely man going to get flung into the bloodbath. God alive, we have got to do anything we can to try to get an end to it. My Wally and Jolly Jack gone together. It’s like lights going out one by one, thousands and thousands of them lit for a moment and then snuffed just as they start to make a flame.’