The plain-clothes detective leaned his elbow against the railings close to a street tea-bar, supped his tea and read his folded newspaper. He was good: looking like any street-lounger studying form for a sixpenny bet on the Ascot meeting, he waited for his man to emerge from the building opposite. It was dirty work even though it was in clean clothes. But he was a professional and so did not question his orders.
George Moth with his jacket, boots and collar off, leaned back against the brass bedhead, smoking a cigar and watched Effee’s hair-brushing ritual. It had been her fair curling hair that had first caught his eye from his seat at the Alhambra, that and the fact that her height was not much more than five foot and her body so dainty that it looked as though it might break under the weight of the men to whom she sold her favours.
Through half-closed eyes and the smoke unwinding from the tip of his cigar, he saw her pointed elbows and slender neck, her narrow back and shoulders as they moved rhythmically beneath a silky oriental wrap which was peach-coloured embroidered with peach-blossom. He took his gaze to the long gilded mirror which reflected her pretty, serious face, lower to the curve of her throat, lower to where her wrap fell open revealing snatched glimpses of heavy breasts that would have been more likely on a much larger rib-cage.
There was a time when he had a husband’s right to such daintiness, such full breasts, such hair. Effee knew how to handle sensitively the exchange of money for her services, but she left him in no doubt that she did not belong to him. To an extent, by making her more financially secure since Anne died, George Moth had gradually persuaded her away from having a constant stream of men. Nowadays she took only a few ‘regulars’, mature men like himself, men she liked and chose to have.
The window to the room was small, and although it was midday, the sky was dark. Effee’s reflection was softened and misted by the yellow light of an oil-lamp. Her room was not cluttered with frou-frou, scent bottles, cream jars and knick-knacks, as young women’s rooms often are; her powder-bowl was porcelain and her few bottles cut-glass – not of the best but by no means tawdry or cheap. She owned a good wardrobe and dressing-table and some nicely upholstered chairs. In a curtained-off recess was a beautifully decorated set of large china basin, water-jug and chamber-pot.
The room had not always been so tastefully appointed, but had been changed slowly over the four or five years that George Moth had been coming here. He liked the room. He liked Effee. When he was here with her he could have an hour without any demands upon his mind, and here with Effee he could discard his responsibilities – to the Force, to the public, to his superiors, to his children and to his servants. In this nice little room he was responsible only to Effee who, until he had bought her furniture and paid her rent, had been anything from a soubrette in a comic act to an occasional singer, but mostly had been one of the Alhambra’s many promenading women. He could have afforded to keep her entirely but she would never agree.
In this room he became a George Moth that his colleagues and family would scarcely have recognized. Kitt knew him, and Jack had seen him once, on that occasion when they played with the clockwork toy in Kitt’s bath.
Outside, the storm that had been threatening broke with a bright flash of lightning and simultaneous clap of thunder. Effee jumped, but did not stop her rhythmic brushing.
The same… the same. Same fragility, same stalwart attitude. Anne had been afraid of thunderstorms, but would never reveal such a weakness except by those same little automatic reactions to a thunderclap. There had been a time when Effee had been afraid of him: no, not afraid, in awe.
George Moth was under no delusion, he had chosen Effee and paid her well because she looked like Anne. The similarity ended with the looks, which was why he seldom entered into a conversation with her until after she had earned her money – which she did very well.
Having completed the brushing, she arranged her hair so that it fell around her like a curtain of golden voile, and went to her lover.
‘George. I don’t like you to smoke in here.’ Although her voice was soft, she mewed her vowels like a hungry cat. ‘I wish you’d realize, it’s where I live after you’ve gone home. I don’t much like the smell and it hangs about my clothes and the furnishings and that.’
George Moth was taken aback. Effee had never been anything but complaisant, she would do anything to please him – like wearing the particular wrap he liked, and brushing her hair for ten minutes. He paid her to do these things, but even so she liked to please him. ‘What if I say “No”?’
She caught the skin of her inner lip between her teeth, looked through the window, then returned her gaze to look him directly in the eyes. But she did not reply.
‘I like my cigar.’
‘I know you do.’
‘Well then?’
She looked steadily at him, not aggressively, not defiantly. ‘I wasn’t asking you not to smoke cigars, I was asking you to respect my home.’
Suddenly he felt like a boy who has transgressed the rules of his mother’s sitting-room: George! If you wish to behave like a hobbledehoy take yourself off to the yard.
And for twenty-five years it had been his job to search out the hobbledehoys who transgressed the rules of the City of London.
He removed the cigar from between his teeth and, holding it between finger and thumb, inspected its fine overlapping of leaf, its satisfying shape, its grey smouldering tip and dark moist end. He smiled wryly at her. ‘All right, ma’am, you’re mistress here.’
‘I surely am, George.’
‘Here you are then, take it and throw it away if it pleases you.’
‘I will not! You’re the one to do that.’
Genially, smiling at this new, confident development in Effee’s manner, he rose from the bed and went to raise the window.
‘Not out there, you wouldn’t throw something from a window in your own house, would you?’
‘That’s true, Effee.’
Having disposed of the offending cigar in a covered dish, he sat on her dressing chair and encircled her in his arms. The rain was now loud and rattling against the window-panes, and the moist smell of the quenched heat and laid dust came in at the opening. The air that had earlier been charged was becoming refreshed. ‘You’ve changed since the early days, Effee.’
‘I know. It’s been partly you but mostly me that’s done it. I never liked being poor, and I wouldn’t never have gone on the game if I hadn’t of been.’
‘Then I wouldn’t have seen you at the Alhambra, and you wouldn’t have brought me here.’
She pursed her bps. ‘That’s true.’
‘And we wouldn’t have had those good hours together.’
‘That’s true and all.’
Standing between his knees, her head was above his, so that he had to look up to catch her expression. Normally, the closeness of her wren-thin bones and satin-skinned breasts would have hastened and heightened his need for her, but this turn in her usual deference to him was somehow more deeply erotic than urgently lustful.
‘You’re very serious today.’
‘I’ve decided to get out of the game, George.’
It was every prostitute’s dream – to get out, or to become a madam. Very few of them achieved it, the pimps saw to that. He did not know what to say. He could not imagine what he would do if Effee were not here. He had been with her even whilst Anne was still alive. In the early days it had been as a result of sudden desire without preamble at times when Anne had been indisposed, when she was pregnant, or when he had been searching for days for some cut-throat or madman.
In more recent times, he had occasionally come to Effee when Otis Hewetson had aroused him like an urgent youth, and again when Victoria Ormorod had challenged him with her feminism and her sexuality; but often he came here to sit with his feet up, getting things off his chest.
In a queer sort of way, she was the most stable woman in his life. Effee was always here, nice-natured, good fun, a bit sentimental but not more so than Anne had been. If she came off the game it would mean back to the Alhambra again, the thought of which made him feel weary, spoilt as he was by Effee.
He never made believe that Effee was Anne, but she had Anne’s same fragility as well as the other-worldliness that he had loved. Anne had come from a super-class and Effee from a sub-class. They were both equally mysterious and intriguing to George Moth. The women of his own kind were respectable, open and predictable; they accepted the established order; they had never rebelled against their place in the order of things. At least, they had not done so until the Victoria Ormorods and Sylvia Pankhursts had gone out on to the streets and the Otis Hewetsons had eschewed their places in high society and done as they pleased.
‘You aren’t on the game, Effee. You can’t say this is being on the game.’ He hugged her playfully. ‘I should say that you were a courtesan.’
She combed his hair with her fingers, drawing his head towards the cleft of her bosom. ‘I do it for money, George.’
‘Girls on the game have pimps and madams. They pick up their men and take anybody.’ He allowed his head to sink against the silken wrap.
‘I do it for money, George. You come when you want to buy something from me. If you want it over in five minutes then that’s what you do, if you want two hours then you have them, if you want to make a fight of it, with me, then I fight you, don’t I?’
‘Stop it! That sounds sordid. You know it has never been like that.’
‘Face it, George. Girls on the game let men use their bodies and get paid for it. I make my living letting men use my body. And I don’t want to do it any longer. I’ve got money put aside and I’ve already been to see a little hat shop with rooms above. It’s in Chiswick, and I reckon I shall be very comfortable there.’
‘A hat shop!’
‘Nothing wrong with hats. Everybody wears them. Women changes their hats with the seasons and the fashions. It’s a good business to be in.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather have a husband and a few babies than be selling hats?’
‘In time I might. I’ve got to meet somebody first. There’s a nice class of person lives in Chiswick.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’ll find another girl, Lord knows, there’s plenty of us to choose from.’
‘I didn’t mean for this.’ He kissed the nearest silky skin that presented itself.
He looked up at her and realized what he would lose. ‘I meant what about me to marry? I’m a better class of person than your Chiswick men.’
She tensed and pulled back from him, covering herself with the peach-blossom wrap. ‘There’s times when your sense of humour isn’t very funny.’
‘I mean it, Effee. I think it’s time I married again. I can’t do without a woman about the place.’
‘Well thank you very much! You want to get married, you can’t do without somebody.’
‘Dammit, Effee, I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t get so uppity.’
‘I’m not uppity, but I do get a bit fed up at times with what you always want. And you coming and going as you please. You telling me about other women who winded you up. Did you ever think of anything I might want?’
‘I thought you had what you wanted. This nice place, a bit of money to spend, come and go as you please.’
‘Oh yes, and getting older. And wanting to get off the game…’
‘And running a hat shop in Chiswick…’
‘Don’t laugh at me, George.’
‘I’m not laughing. But you in a hat shop, steaming and re-blocking? Effee Tessalow ordering hatpins? I’m not laughing at you.’
And suddenly he was not. He saw how insubstantial his life would be without her. Even when he had flirted with the day-dream of Otis Hewetson, the dream had included a continuation of Effee Tessalow. Now that he looked at it, he had always taken it for granted that somewhere in the roots of his life would be Effee Tessalow for all time.
‘When I say, it’s time I married again, I mean it. I like the complete feeling of being part of something as basic and important as a marriage. Perhaps that is why I’ve always felt content in the Force, it is a bit the same. And I really don’t like not having a woman about the house. It’s true. A woman has a civilizing effect on a man like me. When Anne first died, I couldn’t bear being there – you know that, wasn’t I always here? And when Esther took Kitt off to Mere, the place wasn’t fit to be called a home.’
‘Well George, and what do you think it was like here when you left? I’m not bitching, there’s plenty that’d like to be in my drawers. But I used to envy you going back to a place where everybody had a place of their own like pieces in a canteen of cutlery. Husband, wife, son, daughter, cook, housemaid, tweeny, scullery-maid, all in their proper slots. And I was what? A pie slice in a separate box of her own?’
‘I thought you were happy.’
‘I was, when you were here. Most of the time I was making do with my life between your visits. But I’ve had enough, George. I know you can’t help it, but I fell for you years ago. So when you say, “Marry me” like that, out of the blue, you got to know who it is you’re asking and why you’re asking it.’
‘Don’t ask me to analyse it now, Effee. If I’ve hurt you, then I’ll do what I can to make up for it.’
She sat down on his large lap, her face now almost level with his own. The hail had stopped and only soft droplet rain now fell. The sky lightened, wheels swished through puddles and rainwater rushed along gutters and down-pipes. ‘It’s a nice thought, but we couldn’t even if we wanted. You’re a rozzer, you’ve got children to think of; and you can give it any name you like, the fact is I’ve never earned a sou except on my back.’
‘There’s only Kitt now. Esther and Jack have done what they want to do with their lives. You’d be all right with Esther, and as soon as Jack comes out of the army, he is going to take a place of his own. I’ve been thinking for ages that I’d give up the Force. I don’t like this new work I’m on. I’ve always been a detective, not a government spy.’
‘Oh George, I never knew you was unhappy enough to pack your hand in.’
‘People spying on people who are spying on people. That’s no job for a proper copper.’
‘George… when I get to Chiswick, you’ll come and see me?’
The man with the racing paper was still waiting. He had got dampened by the hailstorm and had drunk too much of the stewed tea from the street-stall. There was something going on but he didn’t quite know what. He provided pieces for the jigsaw that his superiors were making: only they ever saw the completed picture. He knew all about the superintendent and the little piece of stuff he visited, but he could only hazard a guess as to why he had been instructed to report on his superior officer’s movements. It was bad when one department was observing another. Nobody knew what was what and who was who any longer.