Grass in Piccadilly

by Noel Streatfeild

  Hannah was brushing the front stairs. Charlotte wished she need not have run into Hannah. Hannah never had wanted to come to London. Hannah made beds, did bathrooms, washed china and opened doors wearing starched aprons. Charlotte’s inefficiency in finding a laundry came hardest on Hannah.

  Hannah got up from her knees to make way for Charlotte. Her stays creaked like a rusty inn sign blowing in the wind. Charlotte tried to think of something nice to say. She had already, when Hannah had called them, discussed the weather with forced pleasantness to forestall any suggestion of giving notice. She could not admire Hannah’s work as Hannah would think that an impertinence from a newcomer to Nettel ways, such as herself.

  “When I was dressing to go out I was thinking how much nicer a wet day is in the country than in London.”

  It was an idiotic remark. Charlotte knew that the moment she had spoken. Hannah let Charlotte by and then creaked back to her knees. Her voice was pregnant with unuttered giving of notice.

  “I never was one for London, m’Lady.”

  Charlotte hurried on. She pretended to be busy with her bag. She opened it and counted the four ration books to be sure she had them. In the hall she remembered the window boxes. Again the thought of them cheered her. She went to the basement stairs and called down to Mrs. Parks.

  Gladys came to the foot of the stairs.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “It’s me. Lady Nettel. Might I come down? I wanted you to give a message to your husband.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure. I would come up, but I’ve got little Jane here from five.”

  It looked cosy in the basement kitchen. Gladys liked Charlotte and showed it. Charlotte explained about the window-boxes. Gladys approved.

  “Nothing like a few plants. I’ve been saying to Mr. Parks it’s a sin to waste all that spare out there.” She jerked her thumb to indicate the area. “We ought to have a nice showing of tomatoes, and so we will next year.”

  Charlotte turned to go.

  “Perhaps Mr. Parks would come up and see me to-night. We’ve still got wood from the Belgian refugee shelves.” She paused, hearing a child laugh in the big kitchen. “Do you often have the little Duke child down here?”

  “It’s her cat. We keep him, her mother says a cat’s inconvenient at the top.” They were in the passage. Gladys opened the door into the big kitchen. Jane Duke ran across the room pulling a piece of paper tied to string; behind it, crouching and pouncing, came the cat.

  “What an odd-looking cat.”

  The cat was now part of the Parks’ family and so not to be criticised by outsiders.

  “Foreign. Siamese he is.”

  Charlotte sensed she should not have used the word odd. Now she came to look at the cat she realised he was partly Siamese. It had been his colouring which had misled her. She had never known a reddish-tabby Siamese cat. She looked at the child. Jane had stopped playing and was staring self-consciously at Charlotte. Charlotte held out a hand.

  “How do you do? You’re Jane, aren’t you?”

  Jane came slowly forward, dragging one foot behind the other. Gladys knelt and put an arm round her.

  “Say how d’you do to Lady Nettel.” She ran a hand over Jane’s hair. “I know somebody who’s got a lovely head of hair.”

  They left Jane to play with the cat. Charlotte had been touched by a frightened look in the child’s eyes.

  “Poor little scrap! It’s a shame she can’t keep her cat.”

  “That’s right. Mr. Duke he thought maybe he could fetch him up to sleep with Jane without Mrs. Duke knowing, but I said, ‘Don’t start it, sir. Childlike she’ll count on it, then it’ll be found out and stopped, and we shan’t half know it.’”

  Charlotte was thinking how good Gladys probably was with a child. Her Ivy, who lived in the village at home, was obviously the result of a sensible upbringing. She said:

  “Very lucky for that child that you let her play in your kitchen. It’s very congested for her shut away on the top floor. Of course it was always the nursery floor, but when it was a nursery the children, within limits, had the run of the house.”

  “She’s often down on four. Whenever Mrs. Bettelheim makes anything special she asks Jane down, that’s to say, if he’s out she does.”

  Charlotte was half-way up the stairs to the front hall. She stopped, struck by Gladys’s exceptional knowledge of the tenants.

  “How is little Mrs. Willis on the third floor? She’s having a baby, you know.”

  “That’s right.” Gladys was not sure what to answer. She was certainly not going to tell Lady Nettel how much Mrs. Willis reminded her of Alfred’s sister Ella. Mr. Willis was ever so nice; it might do him harm if Lady Nettel heard that she thought Mrs. Willis was soft. People were funny that way. “It’s terrible weather for one in her condition. She ought to get out, but where’s the pleasure when it’s always raining.”

  They had not quite shut the kitchen door. Jane pushed it open. She came to Gladys. She had a clear little voice.

  “Can I go an’ see if Aunt Penny’s in? Daddy said she’s got sump’tin for me.”

  Gladys thought, “Drat the child, she would bring out a thing like that.” She might be a gossip, but she was not a trouble maker, and detested those who were.

  “She’s out, love. I’ll call you when she comes in.” She smiled up at Charlotte. “Mrs. Dill is that good-hearted, give away the skin off her back. It’s her sweet ration this time, shouldn’t wonder.”

  Charlotte stood on the doorstep, opening her umbrella. The rain beat on the silk with soft, relentless pats. It was steady, slanting rain guaranteed to soak any exposed portion of the body. Charlotte knew her inward shoulders not only to be sagging, but drooping. Oh, dear, was that what Penny was up to? She had been wondering. Whatever Penny might say she clearly could not like that really terrible Mrs. Duke. The answer obviously must be Mr. Duke. She did hope Penny was being discreet; already John was wondering why the Dukes should live practically rent free. It was not an answer that Mr. Duke was . . . even mentally Charlotte boggled at the word . . . whatever he was to Penny. Mrs. Parks clearly thought there was something.

  In the way of flat dwellers, the tenants of the various floors seldom ran into each other. When they wanted to see their landlords only too often they called and, if necessary, Charlotte sent notes. The unheeded notes which had gone to Mrs. Duke on the subject of front stairs was one of the weights which made the inward sag to her shoulders. Of all callers Charlotte dreaded Mr. Bettelheim. Mr. Bettelheim thought women good for breeding and housework, and incapable of discussing business. When he came, and it was always he who called and never Mrs. Bettelheim, he would see John, which led John to the old question as to why Charlotte had insisted on letting a flat to “that fellow, Bettelheim.” To-day, peering ahead from under her umbrella, Charlotte saw Mrs. Bettelheim with a loaded shopping bag coming towards her. “This is the end,” thought Charlotte. “Streaming rain, and I was a bit depressed, anyway, and now I have to meet her.” She smiled and greeted Paula, then forestalled anything she might say by saying it first.

  “We can’t get the men to come back and look at your bathroom ceiling, your kitchen sink or the back banisters, but Mr. Parks, in the basement, thinks he knows a man who will come one evening.”

  Paula had a scarlet waterproof scarf tied over her head and under her chin. The rain hung in drops on her black hair. She looked, Charlotte thought, very much as she had looked when she had first seen her, as a refugee. Even more than usual she was moved by Paula’s sad, scared eyes.

  “My husband has men he could get.”

  “So he told my husband, but they’re such expensive men.”

  Paula nodded. Heinrich thought it only business to make his profit on a transaction, even profit off Sir John, who had been good to him; he thought any other course stupidity. Paula knew that all the Brit
ish, more especially Sir John, considered making a profit under such circumstances dishonourable. She had wished to tell Heinrich so, but she knew it would only make him wonder loudly why he had married a fool. If only the British understood bargaining. Because it was raining, and discomfort draws people together, and because Charlotte, the poised and aloof, in her mackintosh, carrying a shopping bag looked more approachable than usual, Paula said:

  “If that good Mr. Parks were to look at what was required and tell you what it would cost, that should be the offer made to my husband.”

  Charlotte was astounded. It was as if a shadow gave advice.

  “Really! Would he accept it?”

  Paula could see Heinrich receiving a note with the offer. She could see his pencil making notes. She could hear the grunt. Any money Mr. Parks thought it would cost to get the work done Heinrich could halve. Heinrich was clever at such things; moreover, one who had house property knew how to work the workman’s charges one bill in with another.

  “I think Sir John should send a note. If you could arrange . . .”

  Charlotte smiled and Paula smiled. Between them, unmentioned, were Heinrich and John. They would arrange. Charlotte turned to go.

  “I’m off shopping. I see you’ve done yours.”

  “Yes. I take Irma to an audition at Sadler’s Wells’ school for ballet. She is so excited, my süsses Mädel . . .” She broke off. What had she said? What must Charlotte think?

  Charlotte thought nothing. After all, Mrs. Bettelheim was German, why should she not speak her own language? She was, in fact, not thinking of Paula. She was thinking of laundries. If Bettelheims could get plumbers and carpenters without trouble, could they also get laundries? That little moment when they had smiled had made it possible to ask.

  “I can’t get a laundry to do our things. I’m almost distracted about it. It keeps accumulating. It’s hard on the maids . . .”

  Paula felt a lump in her throat. This was a beautiful day. Irma so happy to have her audition, and now Lady Nettel asking for a little help. So often Paula had planned and imagined occasions when she would be in a position to give where so much had been given to her, but the chance never came. Always Lady Nettel was the giver and always she was the receiver.

  “But, yes. I can arrange. Mr. Bettelheim takes ours iu the car to some place. But in future it will call. I will arrange.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Charlotte laid a wet, gloved hand on Paula’s wet, gloved hand. “Oh, I would be grateful! How soon?”

  Not one sign of all the difficulties ahead crossed Paula’s face. She had given herself a task of almost superhuman effort, as was any task that required persuasion of Heinrich as its goal. But she would see it through. A grateful heart could accomplish miracles.

  “I do not know the day. This week. I will send you a note.”

  Charlotte found it quite hard not to dance. How ridiculous to be so pleased about a laundry. But it was not only the laundry; there was Hannah; if Hannah went, might not Mabel? She scarcely saw the way she was going. She was down the steps into Curzon Street and had turned into Shepherd Market before she knew it.

  “What madly revolting weather.”

  Penny was leaving the market. She had on a loose tweed coat and a beret; round her neck was a Jacqmar scarf. She looked cheerful. She even seemed a shade less drawn. Charlotte hoped it was not that Mr. Duke, but even if, most regrettably, it was, it was nice to see the girl looking better.

  “Yes. But I’ve had such good news that I’ve hardly noticed it. Mrs. Bettelheim is going to find me a laundry.”

  “Matter of fact, she’s not bad actually.”

  Charlotte looked amused.

  “My dear Penny! You’re very charitable this morning. I thought you were like your father, never a good word for them.”

  Penny looked vague.

  “Hardly knew her before. She’s been quite nice.” Charlotte wondered in what way Mrs. Bettelheim could have been nice to Penny. Not about laundries. Penny had a laundry, but not one she could beguile into washing for any one extra. Penny said, “I’ve been buying some revolting bits and pieces. I’ve got a little drink, so I’m having a celebration party to-night.”

  “Celebrating the new flat?”

  “No. I’ve got a job.”

  Charlotte was amazed. It showed on her face.

  “I’d no idea you wanted a job. I thought you were a driver in that hospital scheme.”

  “That was unpaid. Must earn some money. Life’s revoltingly expensive.”

  Charlotte nodded, accepting the statement outwardly though not inwardly. When Penny had lived in another flat and paid a rent she had only done voluntary work. Now she was living rent free. She had quite a good income from her mother. It was true, as she said, that life was expensive, but it should be reasonably easy for her. Charlotte wondered if the girl needed money; she had queer friends who might sponge off her. She glanced round. It was not often she was alone with Penny; a pity to let the chance slip.

  “Is there somewhere here we could have a cup of coffee, it’s chilly?”

  They were at that moment standing under where had once been the arch through from Curzon Street to the Market. Beside them lay ruins of what had been shops. Penny pointed to a sodden hole in the ground.

  “That was a sherry bar. Thank goodness it’s started again. Come and have some sherry; it will warm you better than coffee.” She saw the doubtful look in Charlotte’s eyes. “It’s all right, it’s not a pub, it couldn’t be more respectable.”

  In the sherry bar Charlotte looked round delighted.

  “This is nice, but it’s not doing my shopping. Mabel says I ought to order from a stores, but I like shopping for myself.”

  “I wouldn’t bother about Mabel. She started as kitchen maid with us, you know, and worked up to being cook. There was Dad and me and my governess, Miss Erridge. None of us knew a thing about kitchens. She bullied the life out of the lot of us. Actually she’s a born bully.”

  Charlotte sipped her sherry.

  “What sort of a job are you taking?”

  “My dressmakers. They’ve been working in somebody else’s place since they were bombed out of Bruton Street. Now they’re starting again. They want me to show their clothes for them, to export buyers; they’re not allowed much quota for England.”

  “A mannequin! Have you told your father?”

  “No. He wouldn’t know what a mannequin is.”

  “Does it pay well?”

  “Not bad, and every little helps.”

  Helps towards what? Charlotte puzzled. Penny had always had a car. Always clothes. Always paid income tax. Always lived rather extravagantly and up till now paid a rent. Oh, well, if Penny did not want to tell her it was not her business.

  Penny was trying to say something. She lit a cigarette slowly, looking for the neat, casual words she wanted.

  “Mr. Parks says he can find the wood to build you a door. Probably be a lousy sort of door, but it can be locked.”

  Charlotte turned her eyes away from Penny. She had seen a faint flush on the girl’s cheek bones as she spoke. What had made Penny say that? For over a month the war had been going on over the front stairs and Mrs. Duke. Fortunately Mr. Duke always used the back stairs, and so did the child. Mrs. Duke apparently never read Charlotte’s notes. It had been so awkward as Penny took her side. Fortunately John had only seen Mrs. Duke on the stairs that once, but he had been sure to sooner or later, and then there was bound to be unpleasantness. She replied calmly, as if the front stairs had not been a major anxiety.

  “Can he? How splendid! Mr. Bettelheim won’t like it. He’ll think it’s a personal insult but it can’t be helped. I’m seeing Mr. Parks to-night, anyway, about the window-boxes. I’ll speak to him at the same time about the door.”

  They swallowed their sherries and got up. Both had said all t
hey had to say.

  They stood on the doorstep of the sherry bar. Charlotte took out her shopping list.

  “The butcher. Then I want some fish from Webb’s. I may as well start with Hayward’s for the groceries as they are opposite. I do think this is a convenient place. All the shops close together. You’d never think we were almost in Piccadilly Circus. It might be the village at home.”

  * * * * *

  The taxi driver was prevented from leaving the square by a traffic block. A woman selling white heather took advantage of the delay. She might have grown out of the pavement for the taxi driver had not seen her until she was at his side. A face yellow-grey like a London fog, streaks of yellow-grey hair, a shapeless yellow-grey hat and a yellow-grey coat of a bygone length and a bygone fashion.

  “Buy some white ’eather, bring you luck.”

  “Luck! Blimey, I can do with that. Come back after five years to get married and ’ave to live at ’er mother’s because we ’aven’t a ’ouse. Top of that it rains every bloomin’ day. Chronic, that’s what it is.”

  “Sell it cheap. I ’aven’t the price of a cupper tea.”

  The taxi driver produced a shilling. He did not believe the woman but he was a cockney and share and share alike was in his blood. Must be lousy, he thought, selling things on a wet pavement.

  “’Ere you are, ma.”

  “Gawd bless you. It’s ‘ard round ’ere, not like it used to be in the old days.”

  The driver glanced at the square. He took in the need for paint, the peeling frontages, the air of decay.

  “You’ve said it, ma.” The traffic began to move. “Cheer up, we’ve got the peace to win yet.”

  The newsagent was delivering papers. He had heard the conversation. He paused to stare thoughtfully at the back of the taxi. Must be hard to return after five years and not get a house. Perhaps to the returning service men and women this square, and dozens like it, did look a bit off. Everybody made that joke about not having won the peace, but then, of course, they hadn’t been here, half of them; they didn’t remember. It was chaps like himself who had been wardens, firemen, ambulance drivers and the like, and the women, too, who had worked along with them. They had fought inch by inch to save the town. It must be harder to see what you had saved when you had done it by dropping bombs on Germany, sinking ships or fighting in a desert or a jungle. The war had been won, of course, by the services; civilians couldn’t do anything to win a war; they just saved their towns and villages from being burnt and that. Gave you a feeling, though. He had especially feelings about Mayfair, where there was so much he had taken a hand in saving. That time they dropped a bomb on Regent Street and he had helped to evacuate the people in the Piccadilly Hotel to a shelter in Golden Square. Made him laugh still to remember it; proper set of comics they’d looked. He had never been inside the Piccadilly Hotel, but every time he passed it he remembered that night. Then there was the day they first got Gieves. The stuff, good stuff, too, hanging all over the lampposts in Bond Street. Shocking time they’d had in Bruton Street, got a lorry load of their own chaps at the end of Bruton Mews. That was a night when they got the Savile Row Police Station. Got the electric light same time, all the work to be done in the dark. If everybody had their rights he ought to own part of Bolton Street. He wasn’t even on duty there, but he had run out to help. Two fires at once, one on the Bath House stables and one on number twelve opposite. Fires everywhere that night; could see to read by the blaze in Arlington Street. Bolton Street was not the only street he’d helped to save, not by a long chalk. He could eye a dozen or more ruins with a proprietary air. This was where they had found that man or that woman; that was the very spot where they stood the stretcher. This square had been his to patrol; he could find his way round it blindfold. To the taxi driver it might look terrible, but he could see improvements. Of course he was taking an especially cheerful view to-day for he had been doing his accounts. When their little place had got it, flat as a pancake, too, with everything in it, he had said to Cissie: “We must keep a sharp lookout for a place with a future.” It had never crossed his mind that he could live anywhere else but in London; where else should a cockney live? But it had been difficult to start again. There were restrictions; newsagents were rationed, so many per area. Bit of a gamble starting where they had, right in the middle of empty squares, but he had been right; offices popping up everywhere, and where there were offices there were afternoon papers and, when you could get them, trade papers. Of course a few houses were lived in as homes, not as they had been in the old days, with one family and a staff and all that, but partly occupied or turned into flats. There was that house in this very square just turned into flats. The papers they took! Bit of trouble keeping the floors right, but Cissie did the bills and she was clever at that, even when there were difficulties like all those magazines that went to Duke on floor five and were paid for by Dill on the ground floor. Sir John Nettel was a good customer on his own with his Country Life, Sphere, and Illustrated London News, let alone all the daily and Sunday papers, and the picture papers for the kitchen. The Willises had a trade paper and Woman. Cissie was glad Mrs. Willis took Woman; she liked to run through it herself and copy some of the patterns. The only people in that house he had actually seen were Mrs. Parks and Mr. Bettelheim. Mrs. Parks took in the papers for all the floors, which included the Daily Herald week days and the News of the World on Sundays for themselves. Mr. Bettelheim was a queer one. Nothing he didn’t read and nothing pleased him. Always storming into the shop cancelling one paper and ordering another. Foreign!