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.’
—
Miss Nancy Dickenson, 25 Spencer Road, Southsea.
Nancy, My grandmother has died, and there are the usual arrangements to be attended to. If you will take the Hampstead meeting, I shall be for ever grateful. Victoria
In the three years since Nancy Dickenson had been active in the suffragist movement, she had, as she would have put it ‘come out of my old shell’. Although she was still a domestic worker, she was no longer the peripatetic cook-general she had been when she worked for the Moth family. By chance a bit of good luck had come her way in that when applying for another position she had been taken on by two sisters who lived in one of the newly-built villas on Southsea front, and these two sisters were deeply involved in what they called The Women’s Cause.
The O’Reilly sisters were ginger-haired, independent and rebellious. They were the scourge of the city fathers, who could hardly dismiss them because they were not only of Southsea’s social cream but were well-informed, articulate and, above all, wealthy ratepayers. Once the Misses O’Reilly had discovered that they had engaged a servant who was an adherent to their cause, they began a course of political grooming to which Nancy took as a duck to water.
They had been the organizers of the series of meetings at which Victoria Ormorod had, in her Blanche Ruby Bice persona, spoken three years ago at Southsea. The O’Reilly sisters were proud of their association with Victoria. She had been their ‘find’. It was they who, having some years before heard her intelligently heckling a speaker against universal suffrage, had taken her in hand much in the way they later took Nancy Dickenson in hand. But with one difference, which was that, whilst Victoria insisted that she should have separate private and public faces – hence her alias – Nancy Dickenson traded on her own name which was already known in the docklands of Portsmouth where she did a great deal of speaking at factory gates and trade union meetings.
Nancy would never have the kind of aura that surrounded Blanche Ruby Bice, but she was a good plain speaker against the sweated stay-making factory-owners and uniform workshop conditions, and could always turn out a good local following in any protest or procession.
This was the first time that she had ever substituted as a speaker outside her home area.
When she saw that it was a Fabian meeting, Nancy had assumed she would be speaking to the converted and that this would be a small, earnest gathering of quiet socialists. But when she came out of the station, her eye was caught by the announcement of the meeting on a large, professionally-produced placard. Reading it was a young man whose profile was familiar. She inclined her head to see him better. ‘Why, if it isn’t Master Jack. An’t I right?’
He looked at the smartly-dressed woman wearing a beautifully tailored fawn suit, georgette blouse with flowing scarf and a wide-brimmed hat, and frowned slightly as his memory flicked through faces. ‘Nancy?’
She laughed. ‘Of course it’s Nancy. I haven’t changed that much in three years, have I?’
She knew of course that she had changed, and felt a rush of pleasure at the knowledge that she looked every bit the handsome woman that her employers had made her. A lifetime of making something of herself with any bit of a thing that had come her way was good training, and now the scarcely outdated models pressed upon her by the Misses O’Reilly had given her a small wardrobe of elegant clothes.
She had a good, full-bosomed, wide-hipped, fashionable figure, which was firm from work and plain food. Although she was not beautiful, she had the same wide eyes and good teeth of her mother, and her father’s poker-straight back. Not so outstanding and striking as Victoria Ormorod, but very presentable now that she had given up trying to efface herself.
Jack Moth, with a look of pleasant amusement, pumped her hand as he would have an old college chum’s. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Nancy. Hampstead Station, of all the places to meet Nancy Dickenson.’
‘You even remembered my name, Master Jack.’
‘Of course I remember your name, you were extraordinarily kind to Ess and me in Southsea.’
‘And how is Miss Esther and the master?’
‘He is still the same. Esther is about to be married.’
‘Married? I thought that she was going off to college. Dear Lord, how I envied her that. Fancy choosing to get married instead.’
He held her gaze earnestly and was still holding on to her hand as though he did not want to lose the link between them. She felt his hand tighten slightly.
‘She is as good as married already, keeping house for me and Pa and looking after young Kitt. She might as well have the pleasure of a dashing soldier husband.’
‘Baby Ninian?’
‘Young Kitt… he’s almost three. We started calling him Kitten for obvious reasons, and I don’t believe anybody remembers that he’s got a proper name.’
‘That baby lived, I didn’t hardly like to ask? He was so weak and frail when you took him home. Well there, that just shows you. I should never have thought it, him being so little and so early coming.’
‘Do you ever come to London? Do you? You should come and see him. He’s a splendid little chap. Life and soul of the house.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you something nobody knows as yet. I’ve been going with a bloke off and on for some time – from Bethnal Green – he wants us to get married… but I don’t know.’
‘He’s a lucky man, Nancy. Do you still make those special bread-and-butter puddings?’
‘Of course I do. And what about yourself?’
‘Me? Oh I’m still waiting to become somebody. I did get my degree.’ He mocked himself as he said, ‘First Class Hons.’
‘First Class, eh? Your ma would have been proud of you.’
‘Yes, she would, wouldn’t she? Now I’m studying for the Bar.’
‘The Bar. That’s quite high up in the law isn’t it?’
She became slightly embarrassed when he did not answer immediately but stood looking intently at her. She could not have guessed from his expression that his pause was for the sudden thought: Oh Nancy, why aren’t there more people in the world like you? No airs and graces. No pretence. As straight and honest as they come.
‘Yes, I hope to be a barrister one day.’
‘Well now, if that isn’t a blooming good thing to be these days… I shall keep you in mind if I ever find myself in choky.’
She was torn between bei
ng on time for her meeting and not wanting to let him go without doing something – what, she did not know; he had said come and see Kitt. She saw him glance at the station clock.
She said, ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but I’ve got an appointment in half an hour and I don’t yet know where to go.’
‘So have I, Nancy, but I did want to ask you about yourself – what you are doing now.’
‘Well, Master Jack, I’m still a domestic, but what I am doing tonight is this.’ She pointed to the notice of the Fabian meeting. Part of her wanted to hurry to it and the rest wanted to stand and ask him about his family and how they had fared without Mrs Moth.
‘Why, that is exactly where I am headed, Nancy. I know that hall, it’s only a short walk, we can go together.’ She felt him touch her elbow as though they had never been master and servant. There had always been something about that family. Of all the people she had worked for, they had been the only ones – until the O’Reilly sisters – who had ever treated her as though she was a person and not a bit of machinery they had hired for the season. He had even remembered her name – usually they didn’t even remember your face.
She fell in alongside him, feeling strange – for it was seldom that she walked with a man alone, except when her own and Wally’s free weekends coincided. These days, her life was filled with women. As well as Wally, she had quite a few men admirers, but these were the likes of widowed grocers, young butchers, postmen and deliverymen, most of whom would have been perfectly happy to have got her into their kitchen or bed, but did not want the company of a woman who read more of the daily paper than the sport and crime pages. And men who did read world affairs were often so earnest that they seemed to want to talk of nothing else except their own philosophy. Wally was just right, he could enjoy a union meeting or an evening at the music-hall equally.
‘You are still doing your bit to get the vote, then? But all the way to Hampstead from Southsea? I assume you are still there.’
‘Oh yes. I have a very good permanent position.’
‘I thought you liked us holiday casuals.’
She smiled up at him from under her large brim. ‘Fancy you remembered that. I thought it was time I settled down into something a bit more secure, only to find myself doing more and more of this sort of thing – speaking up for women. I’ve never been this far before. To tell you the truth, I feel real-ly nervous about it. I mean… I dare say you come along thinking you was – were going to hear Red Ruby.’
The swing of his step halted perceptibly, and she felt that when they heard of the change of speaker a good many people would feel a bit cheated. But there… she could only do her best.
‘Isn’t she…?’
‘Death in her family.’ Nancy remembered the evening when she had first done something practical for the NUWSS and had acted as steward at the meeting. He had gone there looking for Victoria, and hadn’t known that she was the platform speaker. She had suspected that he was mooning around after Victoria. She remembered too being herself half in love with him – Jolly Jack… That’s just what he had been, jolly – until that terrible night when they had gone out to The Grand. All of them dressed to kill and so happy: dainty Miss Esther with a silver band on her pretty hair, the mistress, dainty too in spite of her condition, suddenly lively as a girl, the inspector down from London; the two big men in dress suits walking about that little cottage stooped because of the low beams, both of them hitting their heads on doorways until she had pinned hanging paper fans as warnings.
‘And are you…? Do you mean to say that you are taking Victoria’s place?’
Nancy nodded, noting that he knew her as Victoria and not Ruby Bice.
‘You have become a public speaker? You talk to people like these hot-head socialists.’
‘The Fabians?’ She looked amusedly up at him. ‘At least you can rely on them not to throw tomatoes at you. They come as a very polite set, proper ladies and gentlemen to anybody who’s been shouted down by a crowd of Pompey “dockies”.’
He stopped and turned to her. ‘Nancy, you give me hope yet. I, the future great barrister, still tremble at the thought of opening my mouth before half a dozen law men and court officials, and yet you will face a crowd of dockyard workers. Miss Dickenson, I salute you.’
She felt his firm, warm lips upon her bare hand and could have fallen for him. A future barrister. She wondered whether she would be able to speak at all knowing that he was to be in the audience.
* * *
As Nancy suspected it would be, the hall was full. Red Ruby Bice was always a crowd-puller.
Victoria had apparently been very excited about this invitation. Miss Nora had said that the Hampstead intellectuals were the power behind the socialists’ throne and that the audience might contain anybody from Nancy’s own favourite, Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells the writer, whom she knew from when he worked in Southsea, to any of the Labour MPs. They were all likely to be found visiting Hampstead.
From her place behind a plush, cloth-covered table, on which was an artistic bowl of flowers, Nancy Dickenson scanned the audience. Nobody looked at all as though he might be Mr Shaw, which was a blessing at least. Jack had said that he would sit at the back because of his height. Nancy hoped it was not because he would find it easier to slip away.
Then suddenly she saw the Chairman bow slightly in her direction and announce her name to polite applause. If she had learned anything from watching Victoria Ormorod at work on the speaker’s rostrum, it was not to rush.
She did not use such drama as slowly removing her gloves; instead she stood and smiled and said, ‘I’m Nancy Dickenson and I am a servant. A cook-general. I was up at 5.30 this morning and I wouldn’t mind if you’d agree to me sitting down to talk to you this evening. I promise you’ll not get any less from me. In fact, with the weight off my feet, you’re likely to get more.’
The answer was a hum of amusement which clattered into applause.
‘Thanks. I’ll take that as a vote in favour of the resolution.’
Jack Moth, seated on the very back row, saw, from the incline of people’s heads as they smiled at those seated next to them, that Nancy was not an amateur at this game. His heart had sunk at the news of Victoria’s absence, but Nancy had raised his spirits. I’ve waited this long to tell Victoria my feelings for her, I suppose I can wait a bit longer.
‘You know now that I’m a cook-general, and you can see that I’m a woman. I’m twenty-seven years of age and have been working one way and another since I was four. My father was a dockyard worker – that’s a job so dodgy that a man never knows whether he’ll get a day’s work or no until the ganger’s chosen his men for the day.
‘My mother? Well, my mother wasn’t anything – just my father’s wife. If the docks system is a bad one, where a man gets his day’s pay by a ganger choosing “You and you and you”,’ she pointed at random to men in the audience, ‘then the system that got my mother her job for life is worse. A man says “You”’ – she now addressed the woman seated next to her on the platform – ‘and that’s it! You’ve got a job for life.’ In the slight pause and on another level of thought, Nancy listened – not a sound. You’ve got them, Nancy. You’ve got them hooked and they want to hear the rest of the story.
And they did. These artistic and literary people were almost voyeuristic in their desire for insight into the lives of those on the dark side of humanity. Hard Times come to life for them.
‘And that job is one that we tend to speak of in hallowed tones. “Wife”. “Wife”. You ladies who have already got that title – when you are next alone, try it out. Say it over to yourself fifty times. Not now, not now, you’ve got to listen to the rest of the Dickenson story. Well, that job that my mother was picked for – being Alf Dickenson’s wife – didn’t have a great deal going for it. For a start there was no pay… I mean, even the poor little stay-makers I see every week get paid. Not a lot, but at least the factory-owner acknowledges that they’re due somethi
ng for their labour.’
Jack felt himself falling under the spell of this plain-spoken working-class woman who had cooked him meals and cleaned his room. First Victoria, then Otis and now Nancy. What extraordinary women their movement produced. Was it the cause that made the women, or the women the cause? Whichever way it was, the three of his acquaintances had developed a certain power that could not be ignored. And he suddenly saw that their cause was right.
One could perhaps account for Otis, even for Victoria with ancestors who were, according to her, self-confident women, but if a servant-girl, daughter of a poverty-stricken dock-worker, could rise from near illiteracy to where Nancy was now, what else were women capable of?
Watching Nancy spellbinding her audience, Jack Moth thought that he had discovered a profound truth. There were women who were not only the equal of men, but perhaps their superior. It was a sobering truth.
‘As well as no pay, my mam – in her job of being Alf Dickenson’s wife – got no time off… not a single hour in any week that she could claim as her own. And as for her working conditions… Well, when I was growing up we had a one-up and one-down with an outside tap shared by six houses and sanitary facilities that were cleaned by the tides twice a day. Her keep was pretty negligible and when things were bad, she was the one who went short.’
More than any other person in that audience, Jack Moth was riveted by Nancy’s description of her family. She had lived with his own family, cooked for them, slept under the same roof and breathed the same air as them, and yet the only real fact that he knew was that she had been born in a poor part of the town.
Suddenly she laughed and wagged her head. ‘Oh dear, I can almost hear some of you thinking, “What’s this to do with Votes for Women?” “What has a day in the life of a dock-worker’s wife to do with The Cause?” “Has she come to the wrong hall?” “Is she a mad woman?” Well, for sure I’m not mad, and if you’ll bear with me we will get round to the business of votes.
Goodbye Piccadilly Page 12
