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VIEW FROM GUN CLIFF SEA WALL, LYME REGIS

Father,

A p.c. from Baby and me to say that we are enjoying the sea air of Lyme. Mere is looking most beautiful. Do bring Kitt and Effee to visit us quite soon, Esther

‘Walk nicely, Baby.’ Esther pulled on the safety-reins, halting the little girl who used the jingling breast strap to swing against, forcing Esther to lift her free of the cobbles of Lyme Regis’s Broad Street.

‘Swing-swing.’ Baby twisted and swung in mid-air.

‘Oh, Nancy, she should have been a boy, just look at the toes of her boots. Naughty Baby, if you don’t walk like a little lady then we shall not have our treat.’ Esther lowered the child gingerly so that her neat little white calf boots should not scrape the cobbles. Bribed by the reward of a cup of fruit juice and a biscuit taken in the open on the Marine Parade, little Stephanie walked sedately ahead of her mother and Nancy, who was guiding Baby’s wicker baby-carriage – for which she was really rather too old, but which Esther did not like to leave at home on its own when they went on these outings.

‘Perhaps you should let her run a bit, Mrs Blood, she can come to no harm once we are away from the roadways. I could take her down on to the sand.’

‘I don’t think so, Nancy. She’s only three years of age, and yet such a wild little thing already, don’t you think?’

‘No, not wild, just full of curiosity and energy.’

‘I should hate it if she became a hobbledehoy. The major loved femininity and daintiness.’

They turned the corner on to the Marine Parade. The tide was almost out, revealing the bay with its tawny sand and shingle sculpted into a scalloped edge by worn wooden groynes. To their left a green rolling horizon, to their right the long bare shoreline into which The Cobb hooked like a loving stone arm protecting bobbing fishing boats and dinghies anchored in its lee. Although it was well into September, the air was warm, and a balmy breeze carrying seashore smells rustled the skirts and hat-ribbons of the two women.

‘Indian summer, Mrs Blood.’ .

‘It seems to me that it has always been summer here.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that, miss.’

Nancy, who had been trying to find the right moment, saw that it was now. ‘I thought that I’d stop out the rest of the summer, see you settled in…’

‘Nancy, you’re never going so soon.’

‘It’s not really “soon”, I’ve been with you a fair time. And you’re better, I can tell now that you’ve come home here.’

‘It isn’t my home, though. I’m really only my brother’s tenant.’

‘I can’t see Master Jack down here away from things.’

‘No, so he might not want to keep it on, in which case he’d want to sell up.’

‘It’s a lovely place. I quite fell for it.’

‘Then stay with me, Nancy.’

‘Oh miss, I’m no more the type for quiet coastal places than Master Jack.’

‘But Southsea…’

‘I belong in London, miss. Portsmouth and Southsea was only where I was born and where I worked my first years. Since I went to London it seems to be my true home.’

‘But what have you got to keep you there now…?’ They had reached the little cafe which they had taken to visiting in the afternoons, and seated themselves on some folding chairs at an ironwork table. Stephanie, afraid that this wonderful treat might be taken from her, sat stiff-legged, diverted only by the bells of her harness, like the perfect little girl her mother wished her to be.

The relationship between the two women was no longer clear-cut. Walking together their demeanour and dress indicated that Nancy was in the pay of Esther, but their shared experience, of a loving man suddenly taken from them, had given them a kind of bond that often overstepped their social positions.

‘Now that Wally’s gone? I suppose you might say the same as brought you down here – London is where what’s left of Wally is.’

‘Wally’s best boots?’

Nancy smiled. ‘Those are his mother’s. I don’t really need them to remember Wally, but I do want to live where he lived, and go back to work where we worked together.’

‘You would go back to working on the trams?’

‘The war has given women a chance to get a foot in the door of better jobs. I dare say they’ll try to oust us out, so we have to do what we can while we can. I joined the Independent Labour Party, and they’re all for getting women into the unions, so if I get back into the depot I’ll see if I can help out with the sort of work Wally was doing.’

‘Isn’t all that kind of thing men’s business? I’m not saying that women should not have the vote, but there are so many more suitable things that are more natural to women than what you propose. The way you have helped me has been wonderful – it is that kind of thing that women should do.’

‘I did that for you, Mrs Blood, because I knew you when you was a girl and I knew your ma, and I saw how you was with young Kitt when he was a baby. But what I really want to do is to go back to working for the unions and helping with the Family Planning campaign. We’re not far off the day when there will be proper clinics; all that’s needed is some funds.’

Esther wrapped a large napkin around Stephanie’s twill silk smock and helped her to hold a cup daintily and be careful of biscuit crumbs. ‘Goodness, Nancy, how shall I ever manage to produce a graceful daughter from this little bundle of fidgets.’

‘Same way you got there yourself, miss: a bit of you, a bit of her, and a bit of give and take.’

‘I wish that you would stay here.’

‘Perhaps I could come down to see you from time to time.’

‘And talk common sense to me? Yes, that is if we are still here.’

‘Miss, can I suggest something?’

‘What then, have you got the answer to it all?’

‘I wish I had. I don’t know if it would even be feasible for you, but I just wondered if Master Jack ever thought of selling Mere Meldrum, that you should buy it from him.’

Esther looked at Nancy with mild astonishment. ‘I could, couldn’t I? Why did that never occur to me? I could, couldn’t I? My mother’s legacy was not large, but I might come to some arrangement…’ She patted Nancy’s arm. ‘You are so clever, Nancy. Oh, I feel so excited, just think what an asset a place like Mere would be when Baby is a young woman, what a setting for weekends in the country for her friends.’

Nancy unwrapped and wiped the face of the embryonic debutante of her mother’s imagination. ‘Ups-a-daisy, Miss Stephy. Now hold your mama’s hand nicely or you’ll find yourself in knickerbockers and black boots and your curls cut off.’

The child did as she was bid by Nancy, knowing that when she came along here in the morning with Nancy and no Mama, Nancy would reward her with a race along the sand and a search for crawlies, perhaps even with her toes bare.

‘Baby will miss you, Nancy.’

‘Yes, ma’am, but she’s going to be fine, you see if I’m not right. Just let her have her head sometimes, let her be a little girl for as long as she can. Being a grown woman an’t no great shakes, is it?’