HM MINISTRY OF WAR, WHITEHALL, LONDON.
THE MINISTER REGRETS TO INFORM (NEXT OF KIN) ………………………………
OF ………………………………
THAT ………………………………
WAS ………………………………
ON ………………………………
THE REMAINS ARE/WILL BE/HAVE BEEN ………………………………
Not wishing to be subjected to Lou Barker’s quizzical gaze, George Moth went to the side entrance and quickly up the stairs that led to Otis Hewetson’s door, but found her locking up. She was smartly dressed and carried an overnight bag.
‘Oh! Superintendent Moth. I am sorry, I was just about to leave.’ Her voice was thick and the rims of her eyes pink from crying.
‘Oh.’
Otis saw that he was not merely a disappointed casual caller. Of all people to arrive at her doorstep and of all moments to arrive.
‘I am on my way home. We have had bad news…’ The lump in her throat stopped her and tears began flowing again.
‘Here.’ He took her key from her and reopened the door. ‘You can’t go like that. Come. Sit down. I shall make you some strong, sweet tea and then I shall find you a cab.’ Picking up her case, he guided her inside. He deposited his hat and cane, and she sat on the edge of the bed and dabbed her eyes. Efficiently, he got out two cups and put the kettle on a gas-ring.
For the first time in years, Otis Hewetson felt glad to have someone to tell her what to do. Her first thoughts might have been: Of all people… But, of all people, he was one of the very few in front of whom she did not feel obliged to hide her feelings – Pa was one and Uncle Hewey was the other. She drew a letter from her bag and handed it to him.
‘A note from my pa, you can read it – it’s my Uncle Hewey…’
He did so, it was brief. Whilst he could not cope with Esther’s distracted grief, he found it easy to gather Otis into his arms and tell her to cry it out, and that it was all right, and he would take care of her.
At the feel of his firm breast within the woollen cloth of his jacket, at the feel of his bodily warmth, his bristling side-whiskers against her cheek, at the smell of his cigar-smoke-permeated lapel, his lavender hair-oil and coal-tar soap, at the gentle touch of his lips against her neck as he rocked her comfortingly, she felt the flood-gates of her grief break and she sobbed into the starched white cotton of his shirt-front as he held her close.
‘Poor Otis. What a damned thing. You were very close, weren’t you?’
Recovering now, she blew her nose and mopped her tears. ‘He was more than my uncle, he was my brother, my friend, and he was a second father. He loved me, he spoilt me, he could make me do things that my ma never could. Oh, George, I did love him, he was such fun. I just cannot imagine him as a corpse. He didn’t want to go back, he thought it was so awful and unnecessary, but he had such loyalty to his men.’
George Moth smoothed away trails of her hair, and for a, moment he was back again, smoothing back tendrils of Anne’s fine blonde hair. He pressed Otis gently to him, she was warm and soft and vulnerable. For all her career, her independence, her conversion to radicalism, she was as feminine and womanly as Anne had been.
If only one could go back.
He would go back to that evening in 1910, when he and Anne had been getting ready to go out to see a play. How Anne had loved a play. She had lost a little weight and had asked him to retie the laces at the back of her corset. Looking over her shoulder whilst facing the mirror, he had glimpsed her small breasts, and she, having caught the look in his eye, had drawn him down to the llama-skin rug where she had given herself to him, he still wearing full evening dress. When he had got up again, they discovered that llama hairs were scattered over his black suit from shoulder to ankle. They had been late for the play because of the time it had taken them to pick off the hairs. All evening, each time they had caught one another’s eye, they had exchanged smiles, felt smug and separate, they had been a couple. That was the time she had conceived Kitt. That was the time when the trigger of his heart-eating loneliness was depressed. That was the time Anne’s doom was sealed ready for the bullet to be released in Southsea nine months later. How he missed her.
The kettle boiled furiously. He drew a few inches away. ‘I will make your tea.’ His voice came out unexpectedly thick. He coughed.
She shook her head. ‘Not for a minute.’
He reached over and turned down the gas jet.
He was such a large, broad man that, as he bent over to lower her head to rest on the pillow, her entire field of vision encompassed only him. It was as though she was observing another person, seeing that the woman was in an emotional state, noticing that she was vulnerable to the strong man who was being caring and gentle with her. She observed too that the woman had wanted him, and had waited a long time for her full-blooded desire to be satisfied.
His face was close: she noticed that individual hairs in his whiskers were white, and there were small broken veins in his cheeks, but until now she had never noticed that his eyes were almost green. In herself she observed that uncontrollable glands were working overtime so that she had to swallow, she was aware of the raising of her breasts, the tightening of her thighs and the shortening of her breath.
She observed that Otis Hewetson wanted most desperately to be made love to and that, at that moment, it would not have mattered very much who the man was. That it was George Moth seemed somehow inevitable. If she was to make the journey from virginity to womanhood, then why not with him?
She pulled him to her and kissed him on the mouth. She felt his hands on her body, drawing off her clothes, felt the bed sag as he braced his weight on his arms, heard the soft, dull sound of him unbuttoning, felt a most luscious warmth of his flesh approaching her own.
With a sudden movement like an unsprung coil, she flicked herself away from him and rolled on to the floor. For a second she thought that he was about to descend upon her and take her anyway.
‘No!’
For long moments neither of them moved, then she rose and pulled her clothes to rights. Slowly, in heavy silence, he turned away from her and did likewise. The room was humid with steam and the kettle rattled emptily. She turned off the gas-ring and automatically poured what water there was into the pot.
Facing him she said, ‘I am sorry, George. I…’
‘There are names for girls like you.’
The silence was heavy with suppressed emotions. He breathed heavily.
‘I had no intention of playing the coquette.’
‘Coquette! Have you any idea…?’
He indicated that he would like to use her comb.
She fingered the teacups, not knowing what to do or say. She really had wanted him. No… she had really wanted the ultimate comfort of what she felt was a missing part of herself. To be joined with a man at that moment would have been to fit the last piece of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. The satisfaction, the relief would be great. As great, perhaps, would be the regret after it was over, when the only remaining great experience would be death.
‘Are you angry with me?’
He heaved a breath and slapped his knees. ‘Angry? I don’t know. I can’t think. Yes. I’m angry.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘I wanted you. Most men would not have let you off so easily. They’d have finished what you started.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t keep saying so. You saved your honour,’ he frowned. ‘Isn’t that it? Saved your honour from a lecherous old man?’
For long seconds she was silent. ‘I did want you.’
He looked sharply at her, but she was not mocking him. Suddenly the anger seemed to disappear from his voice. ‘Old enough to be your father.’
‘I don’t see you like that.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘I feel a little awkward – you understand? I must go home.’
‘I suppose that it is I who should be saying “sorry”.’ He picked up his hat and cane. ‘I intended… I really only wanted to comfort you.’ He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true, at first I wanted that… then I desired you. Very much. I make no apologies for desiring you, only for taking advantage of the situation. You have everything, everything any man could wish to find in a woman. And I have wanted you for a long time.’
Absently, she poured tea into one of the cups. A kind of normality began returning. ‘You have comforted me. I feel able to go home now and comfort my pa. He will be devastated, quite devastated. Hewey was years younger – like a son. I believe that I was crying for Pa’s loss as much as for my own.’ She sipped the tea: it tasted bitter but good. At last she let her eyes reach his and was surprised to see that he was unchanged. ‘Why did you come?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. You have your own troubles. But I should be glad if you would come and visit Esther.’ Somehow they had agreed on this strange formality to cope with the situation: no matter that it might be ludicrous, it did work so long as they avoided looking at one another.
‘Of course. I should have gone to see her before this, but I have so many commitments. I am trying to teach French to a few children – out of school hours. It is not the kind of thing that is popular around here, but I keep trying.’
He smiled to himself. French to little North London terrors? She really was so naïve, believing that she could change the world, change people by giving them what they didn’t even know they wanted.
She said, ‘If you want to have some of this tea… I have missed the buses that connect now, there is not another for forty-five minutes. Tell me about Esther, is she still badly grieving?’
When he had finished telling her how bereft she was, Otis saw how serious Esther’s condition might become, but half an hour had passed and she had to leave. ‘I shall come directly after this weekend. We must do something to get her out of this. I think for a start you should get a companion to live in. The nurse is not enough, Esther needs a capable older person. Someone who can stand in for her mother.’
‘She would never agree.’
‘I have an idea. I don’t know if it would work out or whether she would…’
‘Anything.’
‘Ask Esther if she would like Nancy Dickenson to come and stay for a while. I think that she will agree, and I believe that I may be able to persuade Nancy to come.’
She refused his offer of a cab, so he carried her bag to the omnibus depot. When she boarded she kissed him lightly on the cheek and said, ‘Forgive me. It would have been good. I hope that I shall not always fly away like that at the last moment. But – well, my career is vital to me. I will make sacrifices to protect it.’