—

Victoria Ormorod stood in the bookshop and felt no usual lift of her spirits at the thought of what they had achieved in so short a time. Since Otis Hewetson had joined them, Victoria had had no need to give the running of the place a second thought. Nancy’s work with local mothers had been taken over by Annie, who never used a euphemism to them where a four-letter word would do better. Danny Turner had got the underground escape route well-organized. What was there left that Victoria could legitimately say required her presence? The public speaking? Recently she had felt that she had said her piece so many times that the fire was going out of it. It was not that she had lost any of her conviction – rather, the need for a negotiated peace was confirmed daily in the long lists of Dead and Missing columns.

Recently too she had found herself thinking about Jack Moth, thinking and worrying about him. She had been right to reject his idea of marriage, yet her liking and the physical attraction that he held for her had deepened in his absence. She told herself that it was only just that. The old adage: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. She decided that she would write to him, but first she had to obtain his latest address.

Finding herself one morning in the vicinity of Scotland Yard, on the spur of the moment she went to enquire whether she could see Superintendent Moth. Local intelligence sources had informed her that there was now a large department devoting its energies to the suppression and confusion of the anti-war lobby, a situation that intrigued her no end.

Superintendent Moth himself opened the door to her. ‘Miss Ormorod. To what do I owe…?’

‘Thank you for seeing me, I shall not take two minutes of your time, Superintendent.’

He had noticed it at Mere: she did not come into a room, she made an entrance, a foible that both irritated and intrigued him. It had never occurred to him that he too was given to making entrances and keeping centre stage. His height and broadness as well as his fine hair and good looks usually guaranteed this; but any man could be outshone by a woman with feminine beauty, erect carriage and presence. This time he did not mind, for there was something in her that he found stimulating. It was that same challenging thing that he found in Otis Hewetson.

Independent women. Strong. Arrogant. They had the presumption to try to change the established order to suit their own sex. Like Anne, they had set their faces against convention.

‘I have more than two minutes.’ He indicated a comfortable chair. ‘Please sit down. It is my time of day to take a cup of tea. I have a man who makes a very good brew.’ She accepted, sitting very erect yet seemingly at ease.

‘I came to ask after Jack.’

‘Mercifully, he is still whole.’

‘And to ask you for his present address.’

‘Ah. You haven’t got it?’

I ‘No. Jack and I had decided against continuing our…’ She baulked at any definition of what their relationship had been – she scarcely knew herself.

‘Sons seldom confide in their fathers.’

A young constable brought in a tray with a teapot and two cups, poured and offered one to Victoria, which she accepted.

George Moth wrote down the address and brought it round to where Victoria was sitting. There he hooked his buttocks on to the edge of his desk and propped himself up on his long legs.

She now saw herself disadvantaged because she either had to look up at him or to keep her eyes level and allow her gaze to fall upon the trousered part of his torso, or to look down. She had wondered, before today, whether men who took this stance were showing thoughtlessness, aggression, subjection of the other party, or plain exhibitionism. She had to admit that if the latter, then Jack’s father had a good figure to exhibit. Victoria Ormorod never let herself be bested when it came to the male showing who is master of the situation.

She arose so that, when standing, she was now in the dominant position: her closeness to him would have meant that he must extricate himself rather than simply move away. She handed him her cup and saucer so that he now had two. ‘Thank you. You are right, the constable does know how to make a good brew of tea.’ She stretched the fingers of the gloves she was holding and began to ease one on to her long-fingered hands. ‘I wondered how Nancy is getting along. I know that she has given up her work to help in your household.’

‘She is getting along very well indeed, she has done my daughter a world of good.’

‘Your gain is our loss.’

‘It will not be for ever.’

Because he showed no surprise that she should know Nancy, Victoria was now assured that he was au fait with the lives of the members of their group. But did he know that Otis was corresponding with Jack?

He swivelled round to place the two cups on his desk, but still did not attempt to move his position where his feet almost touched the hem of Victoria’s skirt and where his eyes were almost level with hers.

There was a brief moment of solid silence, during which she observed at close range his healthy, ruddy complexion. In his forties Jack would look like this. His long legs would grow more solid and lose their litheness, the girth of his thighs would increase slightly at the same time as his flat abdomen would become rounded and his breasts pappy and flecked with white hairs. Momentarily she visualized the comfort there might be from having such a man in one’s life in middle age. But Jack had wanted marriage. His profession was such that it would brook no scandal of an irregular liaison.

In that same pause, George Moth noticed that hidden here and there in that great, provocative bundle of dark, coppery hair were one or two creamy-white hairs. At the outer edges of her eyes were fine lines, and in the skin beneath her lower, heavily-lashed lids there was a suggestion of crêpiness. In his view nothing made a woman appear so vulnerable as the work of age upon her eyes. His gaze travelled down from her fine, straight nose, over her lips made fuller by the small exaggeration of her upper teeth, to her beautiful neck and to where her bosom swelled out beneath the white blouse and cream-coloured jacket. Feeling her eyes upon him he raised his own and encountered her direct gaze.

It was here in those brief moments of locked gaze that the two personalities clashed. Hers daring him to make one false move, his trying to force her to retreat.

Old adversaries.

On the female side, every wife who dared to stand up to her husband; every priestess who tried to steal back power; every bright girl who struck out against the tyranny of domesticity; every woman who, when religion became infiltrated by a harsh maleness, turned her back on it and returned to gentle witchery and older deities; every bride who secreted within her body a certain physick-soaked moss or sponge.

And opposing – every male who would prevent it happening; every priest and father and groom who was assured that he had a God-given right to supremacy.

Such women need strong men to dominate them.

It was the damned woman herself, with her assuredness and composure, who drew those thoughts from the dark part of his mind. He had a momentary vision of her, tousle-haired and heavy-lidded.

These men who have an air of assurance about them: Jack, George Moth… Tankredi.

The gaze unlocked and allowed their eyes to move to safety. Victoria, feeling that she had been holding her breath under water, drew in air. George Moth went to speak but found his voice-box momentarily cracked. He cleared his throat.

She moved away, freeing him to cross to the window where he appeared to be casually looking down. ‘May I ask you something, Superintendent?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is it true that you are the head of the special department which deals with people like myself – members of the International League?’

She noticed his ears move and wanted to ask him whether he knew that this was a primitive ability that few people now had. Tell him that she too had that ability and that it denoted wariness. The ears relaxed.

‘I don’t know about people like yourself, Miss Ormorod, but I do have men under me whose work is to uphold the Defence of the Realm Act.’

‘Oh dear, how disappointing.’ She behaved as though fishing for a compliment. ‘I had always considered myself to be some kind of disturbance.’

He turned, looked at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Victoria, I may tell you that you are certainly considered to be that.’

‘Thank you, Superintendent Moth. I should go. I have 320 signatures that must be collected for the Prime Minister.’ She smiled provocatively. ‘As I am sure you are aware.’

On her way to catch the tram she replayed the ending of the scene. If Victoria Ormorod knew anything, she knew the strengths and weakness of her adversaries, she had observed them at meetings and played them on long lines. As far as the set-up in North London was concerned, George Moth’s strength was his power and authority; his weakness, she was convinced, was that he liked George Moth better than any other human being, and he liked to indulge him.

In regard to his sexual desires, he was probably like other dominating men she had known: he would always go after what was rare or taboo in his society, such as a woman of a much higher or much lower class, a black girl, a girl young enough to be his daughter or a woman old enough to be his mother, or a woman who was diametrically opposed to his views. He savoured a challenge.

She scrunched up the paper on which Jack Moth’s address was written. It was a long time since a man had provoked her. For a good many months now she had been attracted only to strong women of her own kind… And to Jack Moth. But having seen beyond the police chief, beyond the father, and into George Moth the sensuous man, Victoria Ormorod realized the son was only the shadow whereas the man with forty years of experience of life was the substance.

From his window, George Moth watched her make her way into the street. He felt stimulated and pleased. He smiled. She didn’t come for Jack’s address, she came to challenge me. She’s a woman who is not alive if she doesn’t have a challenge. He had liked Otis Hewetson’s brand of independent woman, but this woman… Otis faded beside her. But not Effee Tessalow. Recently he had spent more and more time at Effee’s. She too was a woman who was not afraid of him, who challenged his authority by refusing to be dependent upon him and, although she said that he came first, she would not give up the other men who came discreetly into her rooms.