—

THE HILLS OF UAM VAR, TROSSACHS.

Dear Ma & Pa. This is no artist’s fancy, it is a truly heavenly place. As much as I shall enjoy returning to Stockwell and my studies, I long for this holiday never to end. I am glad that I did not go to Berlin with the other girls, for springtime here is truly beautiful. I believe that I have found my spiritual home. Shall be returning to London on the noon train Sat. Father dear, if you would meet me with the trap and take my things round to the college, I shall be for ever grateful. Lovingly, Otis

The Otis Hewetson who sat in purple shadow, resting her back against a tree overlooking a valley flooded with spring sunlight, was a serene and more ladylike Otis than the one who had flung herself in gratitude at her father when he had agreed that she might attend Stockwell Teacher Training College. She had done so well in the entrance exam that she had been accepted into the college months before the usual age, and had proved to be an exceptional student.

Martin was proud at the way his daughter was turning out. But not so Emily. What mother wished to confess to a clever daughter? Particularly a daughter who professed ambition. ‘It is not as though she is a plain girl, I am sure that there is not a bachelor in London who would not be eager to secure a wife with Otis’s looks. But she appears not particularly interested in young men.’

Which showed how little mothers can know their daughters. What Otis was not particularly interested in was the type of eligible bachelor in front of whom Emily was inclined to dangle Otis as bait.

The sun rammed a rod of gold down through the tree where Otis sat, and lit a gleam in her hair. Lively hair which attested to good health and frequent washing in natural herbs: natural herbs and Bach flower remedies being essential to the well-being of young women of her set. Although during term-time her fine complexion lost some of its colour, now that she had been a few days on this bicycling tour, she was blooming and slim-waisted. Ever since that time three years ago when she had copied Victoria Ormorod’s cream and white style, Otis had seldom worn any colour. Today she had on a divided skirt and a full-sleeved blouse suitable for bicycling.

She was not alone on this hillside.

Esther Moth too was enjoying what was for her the first break away from home in three years. She gazed blankly at the far distant range.

Otis laid a hand on Esther’s hard clenched one.

Esther breathed out heavily. ‘It is the anniversary that is always so hard to deal with, I dread its coming. It will be three years this year… People keep saying that time heals, but how much time? It goes away sometimes, I can go for days and not think of her; or if I do it is not miserably; but then comes a day when I wake up in the morning and it is as though she died only yesterday, and I hear her say, “Oh, George” – you remember how she did? It is my clearest memory of her… looking down at her shoes, it obscures all my nicer memories of her. “Oh George,” she said and there was all that blood in her shoes.’

‘I wish that I could say “I understand”, but I don’t… I have no idea what it must be like for you. Nobody that I have known, with your mother’s exception, has died. Isn’t that extraordinary?’

‘There are times when I wonder whether I grieve for her or for myself. And there are other times when I feel so angry that I could smash anything to hand. The waste! How could anyone think that there is love in a God who wastes a gentle, kind person?’

‘Perhaps, when Kitt grows up, and you can see the whole picture, there will be some kind of answer to that.’

‘Otis! What balderdash.’

Otis nodded resignedly, and put her arm about Esther’s small shoulders. ‘Of course it is. It was a cruel and heartless death. But it is just that I wish to say something that will make you feel better.’

Esther leaned into the circle of her friend’s arm. ‘You are like her. Pacific, kind, and will do and say anything to make things better. Not like me. Alas, poor Esther, who cannot ever have a birthday without remembering how her mother died having a child wrenched from her. I’m vinegar-sharp and angry. I prod people who have sores so that they will be as miserable as I.’

‘Nonsense! You are unhappy today because for a moment when you awoke you had forgotten that your mother was dead. Anyone would be unhappy with such memories as you have. You are entitled to be vinegary on occasions. If you may not, then who may be? I can be sharp enough when the mood takes me, yet I have been given a life of love and pleasure.’

‘I had looked forward so much to this holiday with you, and what do I do but spoil it.’

‘One crotchety outburst won’t spoil a fortnight in this lovely scenery.’

‘I wish that we could spend more time together.’

Otis did not respond. Although she had not shown it to Esther, she had been angry when she had heard that Esther had given up her place at college to bring up her baby brother.

Emily Hewetson had said that she was shocked at Otis’s reaction.

‘Otis, it is the girl’s duty. Who else is there to care for the child?’

‘Why any more Esther’s duty than the baby’s own father, or Jack’s for that matter? Jack has already had his chance, he has been to university.’

‘There are times when I think you say foolish and outrageous things to shock and provoke. How could a man care for a tiny baby?’

‘In the same way as Esther – by learning how.’

Emily, perceiving the seriousness with which Otis took her argument, felt afraid and had grown shrill. ‘Well then, I suppose that in your world we should see young men pushing perambulators in Kensington Gardens, whilst young women, no doubt in top hats and morning dress, go to the City.’

‘I do not see why we should not go to the City, but oh, Ma, what woman would be seen dead in such a silly form of dress?’

Emily had felt like crying. ‘Because of nature, Otis. That is why they should not. Because Esther Moth’s place in the world is to marry, bear babies and rear them; not Jack Moth’s, not Inspector Moth’s… but Esther’s!’

‘Kitt is not Esther’s baby.’

‘The child is her brother!’

‘He is Inspector Moth’s son.’

‘She is a woman and so has a natural duty to the child.’

‘If she had impregnated Mrs Moth then I might have agreed with you.’

Emily had been so shocked that she had pointed to the door and told Otis to go to her room and wait for her father to deal with her. But Otis had made a joke of it saying, ‘Oh, Ma, there’s nobody like you.’ And having hugged her, rushed away to a lecture.

Now Otis said, ‘I would love it if you would be included in more of our evenings… you know that we do have a rare old time of it on occasion. And you have other friendships. You must get out more than you do. Kitt doesn’t need you one hundred per cent of the time. Why don’t you ask your father to spend more time at home?’

‘What friendships?’

‘Well, Bindon Blood for one, isn’t he a constant visitor?’ Esther flushed and frowned but did not reply.

Otis drew a few lines in her journal and handed it to Esther. The sketch depicted a glowering cartoon likeness of Esther Moth, and the quote, ‘Oh what’s the matter with ’Melia Jane, She’s perfectly well and she hasn’t a pain, And it’s lovely rice pudding for dinner again.’

For seconds Esther stared at Otis’s cartoon drawing, then her mouth twitched and she smiled, almost against her will. ‘Otis Hewetson! Why will you never allow anyone to have a serious wallow in self-pity?’

‘A wallow’s all right, but I don’t think that I should stand by and watch you drown in it.’

Esther took Otis’s hand and rubbed it gently against her own cheek and, using the silly language they used as girls, said, ‘Yer a bit of orl right, gel.’

‘Gerron ya soff fing.’ The affection in which Otis held Esther showed in her eyes. As always she tried to mask the anger, pity and guilt she also felt. She pitied Esther as she would have pitied any young woman who had set her heart on serious education and had been thwarted. The guilt was almost second-nature, for Otis had developed a keen awareness of the many privileges she enjoyed because she had been born to them. She now mixed with a group of bright young women who regularly inspected their consciences and took a very different view of society from that of their mamas.

They had discussed the iniquity of Esther’s situation and come to the conclusion that Esther had capitulated too easily. Inspector Moth, who never let his personal life interfere with his duty, was able to uphold that code only because he had a young and vulnerable unmarried daughter, whose duty it was, he considered, to step into her mother’s shoes. What was more important than to keep the wheels of the Moth domestic life oiled and running? – certainly not two or three years of study in a female college.

He had blackmailed her with her love for him and her mother and her duty to the helpless Kitt. As Esther had related it, he had obviously packaged it very well, but as Otis saw him he was unfair and selfish.

‘I hardly like to ask you to give it up, Esther,’ he had said. ‘I know how much you had set your heart on this studying business, my dear, but I could never give my full attention to my own serious duties knowing that some employed woman was running my household. Lord, it is difficult enough coping with the loss of Anne without the worry of wondering what I should find when I return home each day.’ His eyes had been wet. Esther could scarcely bear her own tears, but his were terrible to her.

How much more heavy to bear was his loss of a wife than Esther’s loss of a mother.

Jack had made an honest attempt on Esther’s behalf. ‘Father, it seems to me that the codicil drawn up by Mr Hewetson at Southsea was Mother’s way of saying that whatever happened she wanted Esther to be free to follow her chosen career.’

‘That, Jack, is something we shall never know. I must say that I find the entire business extraordinary. That your mother, who had a perfectly sensible will drawn up years ago, should suddenly, whilst on holiday and without consulting her husband, call in a solicitor of brief acquaintance and have him make those somewhat hole-in-the-corner arrangements… Well, it beats me. And if Esther feels strongly that her own ambitions must come before the welfare of the family, well then, come first they must.’

‘Hole-in-the-corner, Father? How can you say that!’

‘I do not mean that it was an underhand act in that sense, but I cannot see why she went to Martin Hewetson rather than wait to see her own solicitor.’

‘I don’t like to say it, Father, but wouldn’t that have been rather too late?’

Esther, panicking at the prospect of yet further rents in the fabric of their family life, said, ‘It’s all right, Jack. I appreciate what Mother did in securing a little independence for me, but I would prefer to forget all about college and be at home to look after Father and Kitt.’

‘And the income from the property can be invested so that when Esther finds herself a husband, she will have a tidy nest-egg of her own.’

When Otis heard that Esther was giving up her place at Stockwell, she rushed to see her own father and exploded, ‘She can’t, Pa! She absolutely cannot. You must go and see Inspector Moth and tell him that Mrs Moth wanted Esther to go to college. Why else should she call you in like that? She must have thought she might die, mustn’t she? And she wanted to make Esther secure because she knew what would happen to Esther if she had to rely on her father for support.’

‘Otis, Otis. You do fly off in all directions. I have seen Inspector Moth and told him everything that went on between myself and his wife, and if Inspector Moth is satisfied that he is carrying out his wife’s wishes, then who are we strangers to say otherwise?’

She had tried to get Max Hewetson to do something for Esther. ‘Oh, be blowed about stuffy old ethics, Uncle Hewey. Esther needs somebody to defend her, she’s in no fit state to decide anything, she needs support. She longs to go to college, Mrs Moth knew that and wanted to ensure that nothing would stop it. Why can’t somebody speak up for Mrs Moth? After all, it was her property and she wanted Esther to have it so that she could be independent. And now she is not.’

‘Otis, my dear. There are times, when you are in full voice, that I believe that women might make very good advocates – never mind the truth of it, show us the passion. For all we know, this gift to her daughter might well have been made in a moment of sentiment. Had she lived, it might well have been revoked upon her return to London.’

‘Uncle Hewey! You know that’s not true. But if you will not tell him, then I shall.’

Having known his niece and her flouncing little tantrums from the day she was born, Max Hewetson said, ‘That’s right, Otis, you tell him what’s what.’ Never, of course, dreaming that she would.

The overwhelming atmosphere and smell of the Police Court where, upon enquiring for Inspector Moth at his office, Otis had been directed, had not deterred her. When after many enquiries she had at last seen his imposing figure striding towards her, she had momentarily been put out at her own audacity, but remembering how Jack, when they were all at Bognor Regis, had confessed that he had ceased being afraid of his father once he had seen him in his combinations, Otis soon reduced the revered detective to human proportions.

She had forgotten how large and overbearing he was. And how handsome. He had taken her hand and paid her a compliment on her appearance as though they were meeting in the foyer of The Grand Hotel, and suggested that, as she said the matter was private, they go to his office in Scotland Yard, which was close by.

Determined not to have her resolve weakened by his manner, she began her speech as soon as they were in his office. ‘I know that it is impertinent for me to have come to you, and I know that my father would be furious with me if he knew that I had, but I know that I am right to do so.’

‘In that case, perhaps you should not be hasty. Wait.’ And he had gone from the room and reappeared with a bottle and two glasses.

‘Finest port in the country.’ Without enquiring as to her tastes, he handed her a glass.

She looked at it suspiciously. ‘This is not port wine – it’s not red.’

‘I assure you that it is. Taste.’

She did. ‘It is port.’ And sipped again appreciatively.

‘Now that is what I like to see, a young lady who can recognize a fine white port when she tastes one.’ And he had refilled her glass.

But she saw what he was attempting to do, and put her glass down firmly.

‘Inspector Moth. You will not perhaps like a woman who speaks her mind, but that is what I am going to do. I do so because Mrs Moth was always a kind and understanding lady, and Esther is very dear to me.’

He smiled encouragingly, leaned back, raised his feet on an open drawer and listened.

‘Ever since I have known Esther we have talked of going to college. We even dreamed of the possibility of in the future starting a small school of our own. I know that Esther had told her mother of her plans, and she said that Mrs Moth had said that it was a splendid idea and that we should never let anything stand in the way of our youthful ambitions.’

His eyes not leaving her for a second, Inspector Moth rocked himself in his captain’s chair and nodded as though in agreement. Feeling that she was attaining her object by reasoned and civilized presentation, she accepted a little more of the white port wine.

‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that you think that Esther should not be at home attending to womanly duties, but should be joining you at your establishment for “young ladies with a purpose in life” – isn’t that the phrase?’

‘“Women”. Not “Ladies”, we do not wish “Ladies” upon ourselves. “Women of purpose”.’

‘And you believe that what my daughter has chosen to do has no purpose?’

‘I did not say that, I believe that care of children and teaching them is the foundation of a better society. I know that Esther wants very much to go to training college, and I believe that Mrs Moth wished her to. And I believe further that if you do not let Esther have the education she really wants, then you will not be carrying out Mrs Moth’s wishes.’

‘I see.’ He had nodded as though he had never before considered the point. ‘And how have you come to these conclusions?’

‘I can see no other reason why Mrs Moth would have consulted my father and have him make provision for Esther. And from talking with Esther I know that she has always longed to continue her education.’

‘This was before she decided against becoming a purposeful woman.’ His eyes crinkled slightly and his lips were raised at the corners.

‘Mr Moth, if you think that you can intimidate me with ridicule, then you do not know me very well.’

‘Miss Hewetson, you are an extraordinarily attractive young woman and I would never dream of either intimidating or ridiculing any attractive young woman, particularly one with such nerve.’

‘Nerve?’

‘Yes, miss. George Moth is a man to be reckoned with, didn’t you know? Hardened criminals and murderers think twice when they have to face Inspector Moth, prostitutes quail and police sergeants jump.’

‘Perhaps their jumpiness has more to do with their consciences than with yourself. If you believe that your rank in the police force intimidates me, then you are wrong. As far as I am concerned, you are my best friend’s father.’

He raised his eyebrows and made a gesture that suggested that he gave her that point.

‘Miss Hewetson, you had me fooled, and there’s not many who have done that. On the few occasions when I have come across you I took you for an inconsequential, scatter-brained, over-indulged bit of a girl. But I look at you now…’ He had paused whilst his eyes took in her face and figure. ‘And I see a young woman to be reckoned with.’ Otis had felt both strong and weak. The weakness she put down to the unexpected potency of the port; the strength she acknowledged was pride in having done the right thing in confronting a man as important as Inspector Moth in the defence of her friend.

‘Thank you. But you don’t get round me with flattery. Are you going to let Esther go to college?’

‘Esther is free to do whatever she chooses.’

‘You know that she is not. A misguided sense of duty to you and to her baby brother prevents her from doing what she wants for herself and to which she has a right.’

‘Would such sense of duty prevent you, Otis?’

The use of her first name was natural, but sounded unexpectedly intimate.

As he had done a minute ago to her, it was she who now paused and looked at him as if for the first time. Although he was over forty and as old as her father, he was extraordinarily attractive. The same straight, wide brows as Jack, but with the bushier eyebrows of a mature man, the same mouth whose line was deceptively shaped in a smile, the same strong, straight nose and firm jaw, but where Jack’s physiognomy was fine, the father’s was fleshier and more solid. It was, Otis thought, the face of an intelligent man who had seen and heard everything good and bad in human nature, and she saw in that moment how it had been that Anne Moth had found herself so self-satisfied in a pregnancy at the age of almost forty.

What must it be like to be physically loved by such a man? Or by any man for that matter.

‘No, it would not prevent me – any more than it would yourself, or Jack, or my Uncle Hew or my own father. You would not dream of expecting Jack to forgo his education, you should not expect it of Esther.’

Having said what she had come to say, she rose and held out her hand. ‘Thank you for seeing me, Inspector Moth. I should be grateful if you would not complain of me to my father – it would upset my mother if she thought I was tramping round London on such errands.’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

He nodded. ‘Provided that you too are discreet.’

Suddenly, with one hand low on her back and the other about her shoulders, he quickly drew her into a close position where he was bending over her. His mouth was firm upon hers. She could smell the Police Court upon his clothes, his own warm, masculine sweat, the lavender shaving soap upon his skin. Firmly he pushed open her lips and made contact with her tongue.

She had never seriously kissed or been kissed before, yet she knew instinctively how to respond. His mouth was moist and warm, and the sandpaper roughness of his chin rasped her own. Briefly his large hands moved over her body and she did not want to move from them. It was a long and passionate kiss, an adult kiss, a kiss that set the wheels and pistons of Otis’s womanhood into motion. She could not tell whether it lasted seconds or minutes, but she did not draw away, instead, after the first puzzling moment, she allowed herself the full experience so that, at last, it was he who drew slowly away with a look of surprise in his eyes.

‘Well, well? Goodbye, Miss Hewetson, and thank you.’

Oh, the anger later. By that kiss, which she had been giddy enough to return, he had effectively spiked her guns. He had kissed with such…? On her way back she had no words to describe it… such contact. She guessed that he knew well enough that she would never go running to her father. To tell her mother was out of the question. Ma would expect such a violator to be thrown out of the police force. She would forbid Otis to see Esther and Jack, and declare that she was not safe to be allowed out alone – particularly unsafe to allow her to keep her place at Stockwell College. Certainly she could not tell Esther, who in any case would hardly believe that her father was a man to embrace young girls only months after his wife’s death. Otis knew what her own reaction would be if someone accused Pa of such an action. She could perhaps tell Jack, but for what reason? It had not been a violation, had she not responded?

She could imagine how smug he would look. What has she complained of, Jack? That I did not go further? That she did not lean more heavily against me? Ask why she did not cry out, why she did not run from the office when there was help only feet away. Ask her how her mouth came to mould itself to mine and how her tongue came to curl around mine.

And now, three years on, when she imagined how Esther’s mind was shrivelling as her own expanded, she felt that her own participation on that day was partly to blame for Esther’s situation. Had she behaved like any normal young girl, and been shocked and complained at once, she might even have used the incident as a form of blackmail; then Esther might have gone from her father’s house and taken her place at Stockwell with Otis. As it was, she concluded from images sent to her in dreams that she had in a moment of aberration confused the inspector with Jack.

Now as the two young women shared fruit and mineral water and sank into an hour of quiet enjoyment of the splendid views, Otis reflected how, in the course of these last three years, they had both changed. Esther had grown quite sober and accountable, Otis, if anything, more assertive and hungry for experience than on the day she entered Stockwell.

That first day. It had been so thrilling.

‘Esther? Do you know the first thing that I did when I arrived at Stockwell?’

Esther, absorbed in making a water-colour sketch, shook her head absently.

‘I wrote you a postcard.’

‘Mmm. Oh yes, I still have it. Chichester cathedral, I believe. You wanted it for your collection. Remind me sometime and I will give it to you.’

‘Gloucester cathedral.’

‘Mmm.’

They drifted into the mood of the unusually warm spring day. Esther’s water-colour was drying too quickly; Otis’s pencil fell from her hand.

VIEW OF GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL

Esther, Briefly. New Address: Stockwell College, Stockwell Road, London SW. I hope you will not think v. badly of me for not writing before. I did think it was awfully kind of you to tk all that trble in measuring things in my rm. Curtains lvly. Many thanks. Write sn. O.H. (Hppnd to hv. card by me frm last hol – how dull but plse save for colln.)

Although it had been September, Otis remembered that it had been a day much like this, unseasonably as warm as July. She had said to herself that this was perhaps the most significant day of her life. Certainly the most significant so far. She remembered having been glad that she had decided on her dull red and rust woven skirt and white blouse rather than her favourite white and cream. In the midst of sensible colours and peasant-like weaves like her own, that would have appeared too outrageous for a newcomer. Freshlings were easy to pick out, being the girls who did not call out or fling themselves into one another’s arms, or fall into a delighted hug of reunion.

On arrival she had deposited her belongings in her college lodgings, met no one, and was panicked into thinking she had got something wrong, only to find that living so close she had arrived eagerly early. In the main assembly rooms of the college proper, having read every notice in sight, she sat on an outside wall in the sunshine and watched her future colleagues arrive.

A three-year course. Three years of reading, listening to lectures, discussing and acquiring knowledge. The shiver that went through her was almost erotic. The first stage in making reality of her dream was here.

This is Stockwell. The college that has been almost on her doorstep since she was born. It could have been built here with Otis Hewetson in mind. A college in which women were acceptable. Had she set her heart on reading for a law degree, then she would have been in for a battle with the establishment that would never have been won. As it was, she had determined that she would be a teacher. Not just a teacher. She had closed her eyes at the late summer sun and drifted on, to a day when she received a sealed scroll, to a day when she took rooms in some poor area of London where there was a need of good teachers, to a day when she stood in her first classroom, to when her first pupil passed the entrance exam to a new Oxford or Cambridge women’s college that would be created for daughters of the poor, to the day when she was Miss Otis Hewetson MA, to a day when she stood before an assembly of uniformed girls and addressed them as their new Head.

‘I say.’ The voice that aroused her day-dreams was soft and timid. ‘I’m awfully sorry to bother you.’

Otis opened her eyes to see a young woman of her own age, eyebrows raised and eyes wide as a startled rabbit’s.

‘I’m new. I’ve just arrived. I’m awfully sorry but I don’t know where to go. Could you…?’

‘I’m new too.’

‘I say, are you really? You looked so confident dozing there in the sun that I was sure that you must be in your final year…’

‘Thank heaven,’ Otis said. ‘I thought that I must look such a rank beginner that everyone would notice me quivering. I believe that we are masses too early. Come and sit with me.’

‘Are we allowed?’

‘I don’t know, but I doubt if we shall be sent to the Head for it.’

The girl laughed. ‘No, I suppose we shan’t. It is going to take some getting used to… you know, being responsible.’

‘I’m Otis Hewetson. How d’you do?’

‘Catherine Campbell… I’m pleased to meet you. I saw your name – Otis… easily remembered – we are in the same place of residence. You are next to my friend who can’t get here until tomorrow.’

‘You have a friend starting at the same time?’

‘Oh yes, we always planned to keep together.’

Otis thought of Esther, caught in the web of duty that had been spun for her and from which she would not attempt to escape.

It had been in an attempt to try to revive something of the old Esther that Otis had arranged this Easter bicycling holiday in the Trossachs. This time, though, she did not attempt interviewing Inspector Moth, but wrote him a polite letter asking that he persuade Esther to accompany her on this tour. Equally politely, he had replied that he was pleased for his daughter to spend a few weeks in such healthful pursuits. Not only had he engaged a temporary housekeeper, he had also ordered a new bicycle for Esther, and hoped that the two friends would enjoy themselves and return to London invigorated.

As they pedalled their way back towards their lodgings at the end of that day, Esther Moth felt more at ease than she had done in ages.

No one at home ever wanted to talk of her mother. Her father immersed himself in his work and went from the house, often for days at a time. No one could say that he neglected the physical needs of his family: he had engaged a nursemaid for Kitt and was never mean with the money with which Esther kept house. But he disliked talk of Anne, telling Esther when she put flowers before her mother’s portrait on her birthday that she must not be sentimental, or, as when she told little Kitt stories about her own childhood, that she must not dwell upon the past.

Jack was seriously studying law and, whilst he would occasionally mention their mother, he rarely had time to listen to Esther who did not wish her memory of her mother to become dry and shrivelled. So that these Trossach days with Otis, who didn’t think her morbid or maudlin if she talked about her mother, were like water to her parched memory.

As on several occasions over the last week, talk of the past turned to talk of the future, when Otis yet again tried to get Esther to talk about her forthcoming marriage to Bindon Blood, the lieutenant – now captain – who had fallen in love with Esther that fateful night in Southsea.

Everyone had agreed that the young officer had been wonderful on that occasion in the way he had taken command of the situation.

He had given orders to hotel staff to clear the room and close it off to the public, and had himself run to fetch a doctor he knew of who lived in the vicinity. All through the night he had sat with Esther and Jack in an ante-room in the nursing home whilst their father had waited to see whether the flickering flame of Anne Moth’s life would burn. It was the handsome young lieutenant too who had had a carriage standing at the ready to carry the forlorn family back to Garden Cottage and had helped Nancy Dickenson see to their physical needs.

Anne Moth’s frail baby had had to be cared for in the nursing home for six weeks, during which time Esther and Jack continued to stay on in Garden Cottage with Nancy in attendance.

Lieutenant Blood, being in barracks at Southsea, continued to be of great comfort and assistance to them. Inspector Moth showed his gratitude by welcoming the officer to his home whenever he was in London which, once Esther had returned home with baby Kitt, was as often as Captain Blood could manage.

Having once saved George Moth’s life, as well as being a tower of strength in time of crisis, the obliging and kindly officer, having no immediate family of his own, found a place in that of the Moths. If Esther Moth did not love the dark-haired, olive-complexioned, serious young officer quite as much as he loved her, she certainly loved him, and was endlessly grateful for the concern he showed for them all in their time of crisis. How could she have done otherwise than accept him when he had produced a diamond and opal ring?

Now, in a few months’ time, in the summer of 1914, she would be married to him.

But to Otis Hewetson it all seemed to be such a waste of a girl who would have made such a good professional woman. Heaven knew, the world was short enough of them. Even so, she took a great interest in her friend’s forthcoming career as a wife.

‘But won’t you ever have a home of your own?’

‘Windsor Villa is my own home.’

‘You know what I mean, you and Bindon, together, alone.’

‘Perhaps one day, when Kitt is a schoolboy. But with a house the size of Windsor Villa, we shall virtually have our own apartment within it. If we took a place of our own, it would have to be close to the barracks or there would be little point, and if I were to take Kitt, then he would miss Father and Jack. As it is, Bindon can be in London in a couple of hours, Jack and Father need not be put about by having some strange woman house-keep for them, and Kitt can grow up in Windsor Villa as Jack and I did. Mother loved living close to the Heath, she would have wanted Kitt to grow up there. And Bindon prefers a London house anyway.’

And what about Esther? Otis longed to say. Does Esther want to continue as mistress of Windsor Villa, as housekeeper to Inspector Moth, as foster-mother to Kitt and Jack? Doesn’t she want to be a bride in a home of her own choice, unencumbered by ready-made domestic responsibilities? But Otis did not say any such thing, suspecting that it would be heartless to force her own boat-rocking philosophies about independence upon Esther. Esther seemed able to cope better with the status quo. And in any case, Esther’s selflessness often made Otis feel self-centred, and guilty because of it.

‘So long as you don’t forget that you were once Esther Moth,’ was all that Otis allowed herself to say.

‘But I shall not be. I shall be Mrs Major Blood.’

‘Esther! A major?’

Esther flushed and smiled as though it was she who was to be promoted. ‘We believe so, and in time for the wedding.’

The road became steep so they dismounted and pushed their heavy iron bicyles along. It was late in the afternoon, but the sun was quite hot for the time of year, and dust rose at every footstep; a bank on the north side was green and gave off the fresh smell of moss. Had one of her Stockwell College friends been with her, then Otis would have said something about the air being flavoured with pepper and salt, and they would have contradicted, and each given their own interpretation of the smell of the air in which pollen, dust and moss mingled. But, because Esther had joined the domestic ranks, such a comment would have seemed too self-consciously outré.

Of all the friends, and she had gained many during her time at Stockwell, she still retained her greatest affection for Esther. There were times when they did not see one another for weeks, yet as soon as Otis was in Esther’s company she could relax. This holiday in particular had done much to forge their already strong bonds.

‘Stop, Esther.’ Spontaneously, Otis dropped her bicycle, put her arms about her friend’s slim shoulders, and kissed her fiercely on both cheeks. ‘Why have I never told you that you are my very favourite person. I think that if I were Bindon Blood then I should want to marry you.’

Colour suffused Esther’s neck and she held herself a little away from her friend’s embrace. ‘Otis! What on earth do you mean? You are not… I mean, you are not an… unnatural woman?’

Now, holding her friend at arm’s length, Otis smiled. ‘Would it change things between us if I were? Several of my Stockwell friends are.’

‘Of course it would, but I am sure that you are not. You are not, are you? Otis, don’t play the fool with me. You did not mean that, did you?’

‘No, dearest Miss Moth, for my sins I am fixed on the male of the species, although when I see my women friends in the company of their women partners, I am a little envious of the ease of their lives. But as for you and me… what I mean is that you are sweet and kind and self-sacrificing and you never think of yourself and I am afraid that when you are set up with Bindon, then I shall never see Esther Moth again. What I mean is that you are such a very nice person and that I feel that I must tell you. Why are we all so afraid of owning up to our feelings about those we love best. I wonder if any man at all deserves you – and yet you plan to give yourself to four of the brutes.’

‘That is no hardship – for I love them all. And shame on you, Otis. How can you say that little Kitt is a brute?’

Retrieving her machine, Otis smiled fondly at the thought of the featherweight, stick-armed little boy, whose serious application to puzzles and games delighted her on the occasions when Esther had brought him to visit in Otis’s room.

‘True, for the present Kitt is only an honorary brute – a kitty-brute.’

Not, she thought, a rogue like his father. And, as always when the image of George Moth flashed into her mind, her thighs became taut and a tremor ran over her breast. The times she had wished that it had been Jack Moth who had stooped over her, enveloped her in his long arms, Jack who had felt the outline of her figure, breathed heavily and forced her lips apart.

In these modern times she might have, as had some of her faster friends, taken a lover. Taken Jack Moth briefly until she had worked him out of her system. The recurring problem of the father had no solution unless and until something equally erotic obliterated the memory of that brief moment of mutual passion. As for Jack Moth, he was friendly on the few occasions when they met, but he still treated her in the brotherly way that he had always done.

Of course the one person with whom Otis wanted to talk of her entangled feelings was Esther, but of course she was one person with whom this was impossible.

Once Esther’s normal good spirits had returned, the two friends talked and laughed their way through the rest of their holiday, and returned to London refreshed and as brown-skinned as hop-pickers – Esther to her wedding arrangements, and Otis to her final term and the world of professional women.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF DEATH

CLERMONT – MAJOR GENERAL SIR NORBERT CLERMONT, LATE OF THE HUSSARS (THE RED BRUNSWICKERS). SUDDENLY IN LONDON. PRIVATE BURIAL SERVICE IN FAMILY CHAPEL.

REQUEST NO FLORAL TRIBUTES

Although Jack Moth – as did Otis and her women friends, and as did many modern young men in universities and colleges – earnestly discussed politics and world affairs, he did not, in that same spring of 1914, foresee his own future, except in wig and gown, swishing dramatically through the Inns of Court in London.

Although in 1911, whilst menaced by no power, Germany had greatly increased her army by the adoption of an Army Act, followed by further acts in 1912 and 1913, Jack Moth had no idea that these measures meant anything more personal to him than did Sinn Fein and the Irish problem. In 1914, Jack Moth was not alone in assuming that such machinations of certain rogue governments were a matter for other governments rather than for individuals.

Although Russia worked at the construction of military railways and armament factories; although Belgium secretly adopted compulsory measures, and France lengthened the period of its own military service and deployed its navy in the Mediterranean, and although British naval strength was now concentrated in the North Sea where Germany’s navy was massed, it did not occur to Jack Moth that the ominously drawn forces of the Great Powers of Europe were to have any effect upon his personal life. There was talk of war, but war was fought by professional soldiers. His future brother-in-law, Bindon Blood, would probably see active service, but Jack Moth’s destiny was as a great advocate. Not yet, of course, he was still only in his early twenties, but that was his plan and ambition.

Somewhere entwined in his plan for the future was Victoria Ormorod. When he envisaged the distinguished Mr Justice Moth, he saw him accompanied by the noble profile of the judge’s copper-headed lady.

During the last three years, during which time he had seldom seen her, and then only by attending her meetings and taking her somewhere for supper or tea, his youthful head-over-heels love had been changed to a kind of warm devotion. Had he been asked to put into words what his feelings were for Victoria, he would probably have found it impossible. Only that they were always present: not disturbing, nor intrusive to his studies, but he was alive to her, aware of her presence on this planet at this time. Above all, he had the notion that she was, like himself, marking time till the appropriate moment when their lives should merge. He was in no position to ask anything of her yet.

Back in 1911, on the evening following Anne Moth’s death, having read an announcement of it in a Portsmouth paper, Victoria had written Jack a letter of condolence, which she went out to deliver personally a short while before she was due to catch a train to leave the town. As she approached the cottage, Jack Moth had come through the gate. He had looked so haggard and distraught that she would have had the earth swallow her up rather than intrude upon his grief. Suddenly, her note as she held it out to him had felt pathetic and formal.

‘I am so sorry,’ she said.

‘Thank you. I’m not yet really aware that it has happened.’

‘I read of it in the paper, I thought… I just wanted…’ She relinquished the note, ‘I wanted you to know what my thoughts are… I hope that you will not think it trite.’

‘Thank you, that is very kind.’ He looked directly into her eyes, and tears that had already been close to the surface brimmed and spilled over. Touchingly, the tall and broad, handsome young man made no attempt to dash away his tears, but stood looking at her in the orange glow of the setting sun.

‘I wish that there was something that I could do. One always feels so helpless in the face of someone else’s misery.’

‘You could walk with me. You do not have to talk, but I should be so glad of your company.’

So she walked with him. From Garden Cottage where they had been standing, all around the perimeter of the Common and then across it, past the fountain where she had loaned him her towel, along the darkening promenade and back again, past the brightly-lit glass dome of the Leisure Pier where he had bought the comic postcards for his friends, then along the walled waterfront to the ancient Round Tower and to a little pebbled bay beneath the walls. Here, with their backs to the stone of the old fortifications, and by the light of street lanterns and an unclouded moon, they sat whilst the train on which Victoria Ormorod should have been travelling steamed out of Southsea Station.

Whilst they had walked they had scarcely spoken. Once or twice he had looked at her and when necessary had politely handed her through gates or around rough patches of the pathway. On the sheltered curve of beach where waves and wash from vessels going in and out of harbour rushed back and forth, he began to toss small stones at the white crest of each approaching wave, becoming more and more violent with each throw until, almost mechanically, he was hurling pebbles, as large as his own hand, with great ferocity. Suddenly he ceased, and stood with his arms hanging loose, breathing harshly.

Only then had she gone to him and taken his cold hand, sticky with salt from the pebbles, and drawn him back to sit on her shawl against the wall still warm from the day. There he had wept, and she had held his head against her breast until his racking sobs subsided. There, with her confident hand caressing his temple, he had felt his shock begin to ebb away. There he had at last raised his head and found that she had been willing to comfort him with kisses.

She had stayed with him, holding him close until the tide had turned and they had no option but to escape via the archway through which they had reached the little hidden bay.

Then she had walked with him until they were almost back to Garden Cottage, when she had kissed him briefly and said, ‘I will go. I know that you can now be strong for your family’, and had hurried off. He had never known that her luggage had awaited her at the station and that she had had some difficulty in regaining a room for the night at the Beach Hotel.

When he returned to his studies, he began to take life more seriously. On the first occasion when he had sought her out, she had been formally polite to the point of remoteness. But to Jack the memory of that evening was a kind of icon stored in his memory. Whenever his mother came to mind, he touched the icon and was comforted.

Whilst he was still at Cambridge, he went to parties and functions with young women, visited some foreign bordels and had brief and unserious love-affairs with equally unserious young women whom he met from time to time whilst visiting one or other of the Clermonts. But their caresses and kisses were as watered milk to Cornish cream when compared to Victoria Ormorod.

The only other woman to come near to being Cornish cream was Otis Hewetson. He liked Otis: she had something of the forthrightness, and gave off the same air of confidence as Victoria, but she was as yet immature. Perhaps one day she would be cream, but so far it had not risen to the surface. It had been the confident maturity of Victoria Ormorod that had first attracted him and had gone on doing so to the extent that, with the exception of Otis, he scarcely found a flicker of interest in any woman who was not ten years older than himself.

As he dressed to go out, Jack Moth thought how strange the house felt without Esther. She was as small and fair and light as their mother had been, yet somehow her presence, like his ma’s, appeared to fill the house. He listened to the water noises as the nurserymaid filled Kitt’s bath, he heard Kitt’s high shrieking laugh as she played chase to get him undressed. He wondered whether Father was in and concluded that he was not for, though he was heavier-handed, like Esther, one knew when he was in the house.

With Esther away, Bindon Blood was not likely to call. Come to think of it, he had not been up from Southsea for some time. Jack assumed that most military types would have their free time curtailed now that there was not only an Irish problem for the army to sort out, but a European one too.

He hummed as he knotted his tie, at the same time reading again the handbill announcing that the guest speaker at the next meeting of the Hampstead Fabians would be Blanche Ruby Bice. ‘Non-members welcome.’

He heard the front door open and a heavy tread in the hallway that announced his father’s return. Unusually early, for his father was seldom in the house at this time of day.

‘Anybody there?’

Jack had never fathomed why his father should call out when he came in, for certainly Esther or one of the maids would hurry to greet him and take his hat and cane and hang up his overcoat. The temporary housekeeper could be heard dutifully enquiring about the requirements of the master’s mealtime, then his springy step taking the stairs, as always, two at a time, as though he was not over forty years of age and not above fifteen stone in weight. Then the squeal of Kitt’s excitement as he was surprised in his bath by his father.

Jack decided to go along to the nursery too, for he found great pleasure in playing with his pixie-like brother as he splashed with his boats and ducks.

‘Look, Jack, look!’ Kitt pointed to a tin seal which George Moth was winding up for him. The inspector, kneeling and with his shirtsleeves rolled up, placed the toy in the water where it whirred and paddled its way towards Kitt. Although he smiled at Kitt and again at his elder son, Jack thought that his father looked tired.

‘A live seal? Lord save you, Kitt, just you watch he don’t nip your bott,’ Jack said, kneeling also – and in his newly-pressed trousers.

‘’Tisn’t real, Jack. Look at him, isn’t he splendid? Dada got him from Hamley’s.’

‘Splendid’ was, at the moment, Kitt’s latest and most loved word.

The nurserymaid sat on a stool, moving only to add more warm water from time to time, and watched the two men – each well above six feet in height, and brown-haired, long-legged and broad-shouldered – as they joined in the watery games with her slight, blond-headed charge. When she read the lurid reports of the many murder investigations in which her employer was involved, she could hardly believe that the awesome Inspector Moth and little Kitt’s Dada were the same man. Almost as strange was the knowledge that Kitt’s Mama, whom she knew only from daguerreotypes and portraits of her, should be the mother of Master Jack. On the occasions when Miss Esther and Master Jack took Kitt out on to the Heath, anyone could believe that they were in fact the parents, for Kitt was very like his sister.

When there was no more hot water, the two men rose reluctantly from their knees and left the nurserymaid to put Kitt into his nightshirt. As they descended the stairs together, Jack looked down at his wet and crumpled trousers. ‘Damn. I was going to wear these.’

For a second the father looked momentarily crestfallen. ‘Out this evening then?’

‘Yes, later.’

‘Ah. Pity. For once I’ve got an evening at home.’

‘I’m sorry, Father, but I’m expected.’

‘Oh it’s all right, all right. It is only that it is a long time since we talked, and I thought…’

Jack nodded, surprised, because they had seldom ‘talked’ in the way his father now inferred. The last time, as Jack recalled, was when he was about to come down from Cambridge and his father had asked him about his plans. Compared to some fellows’ fathers, his own had been exceptionally non-interfering: he would give advice if asked, but rarely offered it gratuitously.

When Jack said that he proposed going in for law, his father had said, ‘But not in my sort of game, I imagine.’ Surprised, because he had never thought of his father as being involved in ‘The Law’, Jack had replied that he meant the law proper, not police work. At which his father had merely raised a wry eyebrow and said, ‘At least we shall be on the same side of it.’ To which Jack had made the right reply by saying, ‘I shouldn’t like to be on the wrong side if I came up against you, Father.’

And when Jack had asked whether they could afford for him to continue his studies without any prospect of return for years, George Moth had said, ‘What I have is mostly from your mother, Clermont money, and there’s a deal more Clermont in you than there is in me, so why shouldn’t you have some of it?’

They reached the landing of Jack’s room. Jack stood back to allow his father to pass, but he did not do so. Sensing that his father did not want to go, he felt guilty at his own insistence. ‘Well, excuse me then, Father, I must change.’

‘Is it all right if I come in?’

‘Heavens, yes… of course it’s all right.’

While Jack changed, his father sat and watched him, sized him up, whilst Jack watched too, noticing small signs of some agitation, a thing his father rarely showed. ‘If there is some Clermont in you, m’boy, I can’t say that it shows. Pure-bred Moth those limbs and shoulders.’

Jack smiled at the note of pride in his father’s tone. ‘The only one of the three of us who is. Esther and Kitt take after Mother.’

‘A pity the Force didn’t win you, a young man with brains and education can go to the top these days.’

‘Not whilst the best appointments are made by civil servants from men outside.’

George Moth did not reply, knowing that Jack was only quoting his own words. It was unlikely that George Moth’s own rank would ever be much higher than superintendent.

‘Never fear on that score, Jack, the Clermonts always look after their own.’

‘Then why is it you never expect to hold high rank in the police force?’

‘An intruder, Jack. Something that the society of hunt-ball families finds it hard to forgive. I persuaded your mother to marry outside her own circle – beneath it in their eyes – which was entirely unforgivable. This country is in the hands of a few families, which is why I shall never hold high rank in my career.’

‘Then it’s a wonder the Clermonts haven’t cold-shouldered Esther and me.’

‘You are a fact of their lives, lad. No matter what, you, Kitt and your sister are an entry in the Clermont family archives, you appear as branches on their family tree, you are of the blood. No matter what, your future is in bond with theirs.’

Many times since his mother had died, Jack had wanted to talk with his father about her family, but he would never open up. This evening, Jack felt, it was as though he had come home purposely to unburden himself of the Clermont family. Why else had he asked to come into Jack’s room?

‘I’m a Moth, Father. One has only to look at Grandfather Moth and Uncle Dick and Uncle Fred and Cousin Joe and then see me to know I’m no Clermont.’

‘If your blood were to be spilled, lad, the Clermonts would expect it to run out blue. And they might well be right. I see your mother in you every day.’

Jack smiled inwardly and concentrated on re-arranging his hair. Every day? They could go for a week and not see one another. But his father had always had this sentimental streak in him. Jack had suspected long ago that this sentiment was part of the reason why his father could keep on and on searching doggedly for some man who had killed a girl with his fists. In his father’s heart, Jack suspected, a young dead prostitute was a girl not very different from Esther, except for the circumstances that put the one girl on the streets and kept the other within the bosom of her family. Jack was almost right, except that it was sensibility rather than sentimentality that he observed in his father.

Having made himself ready to go out, Jack turned and leaned against the wardrobe. ‘I must go soon, Father, but I shan’t be late back.’

George Moth nodded his understanding, but continued as though he had not heard. ‘The Clermonts have always been a military family, Jack.’

Jack smiled. ‘With all those portraits of red coats and gold braid at Mere, one can scarcely avoid that conclusion.’

‘Do you like Mere?’

‘It’s fine for a holiday. I shouldn’t like to live there. I’m a Londoner, Father. I should die of boredom if I had to spend longer than a month in Lyme Regis.’

‘But what if you had no choice?’

‘But I would have a choice. There is no law that can compel anyone to live where they don’t wish to.’

‘What if you were to inherit Mere?’

‘Inherit it? How could I, when there are all the Clermont cousins?’

‘But you are a Clermont cousin.’ He paused and then plunged on, ‘And I happen to know that you will inherit from Sir Norbert. Your mother has always known and so, naturally, have I known from her. I believe that is why she willed her own property to Esther.’

Father and son looked at one another for long seconds, George seeing genuine astonishment, his son seeing veracity. And something else – concern.

‘Did your mother never hint?’

‘No.’

‘No need to snap off my head.’

‘I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t intend…’

‘I dare say I should have chosen a better time, but we so seldom…’

‘I know. It wouldn’t have made much difference, it would have come as a shock to me whenever I discovered it. Are you sure?’

‘I am sure. You don’t seem delighted at the prospect.’

‘I am not.’

‘Most young men would be overjoyed to inherit a prosperous estate like Mere.’

‘I am not most young men. How did you feel about inheriting from Ma?’ Jack knew that he was entering what might well be a minefield, for his father had a very masculine pride and, as far as he knew, his father had never used a penny except to continue to pay the necessary fees to put himself into Law.

George Moth stood up and, with his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, walked to the window and stared down into the street below. Without turning he said, ‘Belittled!’ He pressed his forehead against the glass. ‘I loved your mother, and she loved me. Had she not, then I should never have taken her away from those people – her people. They thought that I must be a fortune hunter – they don’t seem able to comprehend a poor man who can love a rich woman and not want her wealth. But I never did, and still do not. If she had been a factory girl or a dairy-maid I should have wanted her. Wanted her. That was what they could not understand.’

Jack understood. He knew scarcely anything about Victoria Ormorod except that she was involved in protest and politics and that her world was as alien and distant from Jack Moth’s as Anne Clermont’s had been from George Moth’s. And quite suddenly he knew that if he did not secure Victoria for himself now, then he might lose her. He took his topcoat from the wardrobe.

‘You’re going?’ George Moth asked, as though he had not seen his son’s earlier preparations.

‘Yes.’

George Moth took a brush from the dressing-table and brushed his son’s shoulders. ‘Norbert Clermont is dead.’

For a brief moment they both seemed to stop breathing.

‘Sir Norbert? Uncle Norbert?’

The father took a broad sweep of the brush from shoulder to hem of his son’s coat. ‘Discovered in St James’s Park with a young guardsman. Both drunk. Arrested. Damn fool of a station sergeant – should have known better than to leave a sodomite unattended in a cell with anything he could tie about his neck – especially one with a title.’ At last George Moth looked directly at his son.

The son removed from his father’s hand the clothes-brush that had been working as though powered by a machine. ‘Sir Norbert? A pervert?’

George Moth heaved a sigh and sank down on the bed, his large hands hanging loose between his heavy thighs. ‘Yes, lad. Sir Norbert high-and-mighty Major-General Clermont when he’s at home. Buggered a lower rank in a public place and couldn’t face the music. Topped himself with his own braces.’

‘Sir Norbert has committed suicide?’

‘Yes, Jack, yes, the damned fool. St James’s Park of all places. The man must have been an idiot! Half the London force knows already, the rest will know by tomorrow. It will be hushed up, of course. I dare say the word will go out that he was found dead of a heart attack in St James’s Park. Your Clermont inheritance will be pure as the driven snow.’

‘Clermont inheritance be damned! I want nothing to do with it.’

‘I understand your feelings, m’boy, but if you’ll take my advice then you will do nothing in haste. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in twenty years, it is never to jump in with both feet. Give yourself pause and think about the consequences.’

And, at that moment, he believed it.

‘Get off then, lad. If I’ve made you late, I’m sorry. But you realize that I had no option but to say what I have said.’

‘Of course, Father. I should have been mortified to have heard it from anyone but yourself. I dare say rumours will be flying. I don’t believe that many of my colleagues know about my Clermont connection, but this is just the kind of thing that would bring it into the open.’

George Moth stood at the door and, with a diffidence that was rare in him, said, ‘All those red coats, lad. When this war comes you will be expected to join the regiment.’

For a moment Jack looked as though he did not know what his father was talking about. ‘An officer and a gentleman, eh?’

His father nodded.

‘Thanks, but I’ll leave all that kind of thing to Esther’s beau. I’ll stick to learning to cut and thrust with words and leave the sword stuff to them that likes it.’

Inspector Moth looked his son – who was now groomed and ready to go out – up and down. ‘You’ve got a fine figure for a uniform, son.’

Jack laughed and gave his father a genial palm on his shoulder. ‘And a fine head for that fur cap with the toggles, Father? I’ve also got a few more brains than to waste them fighting old battles over regimental dinners as my future brother-in-law does. If I was ever fool enough to go for a soldier, then it would be as a decent, common, footslogger.’

‘Ha! Romantic nonsense. That’s no Moth speaking. We’ve been the common foot-sloggers for too many generations to think there’s much decent about life at the bottom.’