Goodbye Piccadilly

by Goodbye Piccadilly (retail) (epub)

  ‘Then they’ll put you in prison, won’t they?’

  ‘Not without a fight.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Ma will be all right. If I was to join the army, she’d kill me before I even got there.’

  Nancy smiled behind the scarf tied about her face. May Archer was a thin, brown-speckled, fierce little lady who would do anything for anybody so long as they didn’t try to make a fuss about it. It was she, rather than his lighterman father, who had lit the fire of dissent in her only son. Yes, thought Nancy, May will be all right.

  Wally knew that his activities as a union man and a leader in the bitter strike last May would not help him; he had even been on the front page of the Herald. A known follower of Marx, it was a chance for Them to get back at him.

  The walk to Nancy’s flat that usually took twenty minutes after any other late shift, had tonight taken them almost two hours. Usually Wally would go up with her for a cup of cocoa, and perhaps a pie or a plate of stew and a talk about his great passion, The Union, and then do the walk to where he lived with May.

  Nancy let them in, and with exaggerated carefulness they mounted the stairs to her room.

  There were people who would have wondered how on earth Nancy managed to live in such cramped space, but it was in a room not much bigger than this that most of the Dickenson family had slept. Being used to small quarters, Nancy knew exactly how to keep on top of things, so that it appeared always neat and clean. Most of the space was taken up by a single bed, a small table, and a cupboard which served also as a larder. A minute gas-fire beside a coin-in-the-slot meter and a primus stove were the only facilities.

  An outside lavatory shared with other tenants was two flights down, and water needed to be carried from the ground floor. Routinely, Nancy carried her bits of rubbish down when she was leaving, and her water up when she returned.

  Nancy pumped up the primus and put on the tin kettle, whilst Wally fed the meter, lit the gas-fire and laid their wrapped suppers on top to keep warm.

  ‘It’s this I shall miss as much as anything, Nance.’

  ‘The good life never lasts. It comes and goes, but it never lasts.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You don’t have to let them bleeders get us down. If they puts me in choky, it won’t be for ever.’ He put his arms round her waist and pulled her to him: she well-formed, he fleshless and wiry like May. They were almost the same height. ‘We shall have good times like this again.’

  She kissed him fondly. ‘I love you, Wally Archer, you’re the best man ever stepped foot in a pair of boots.’

  ‘Now then, Nancy, you’re only saying that because it’s true.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if they were to put you in prison.’

  ‘You’d bear it all right. And you must. I won’t be the only one. There’ll be other blokes like me and they’re going to need help.’

  ‘I don’t know what I could do.’

  ‘Plenty. You showed what you can do with your birth control.’

  ‘Wally! You should call it Family Planning. You always have to call a spade a spade.’

  He grinned at her. ‘And a johnny a johnny.’

  ‘Wally! I still don’t find it too easy to say things out aloud.’

  ‘I heard that you’re damned good. Talks plain and don’t make women feel embarrassed about it, is what I heard.’

  ‘It’s easier with the women. And I’m getting better at it. The main thing is getting through to people so’s they can help theirselves.’

  She made a strong brew of tea and he laid out their pie, peas and mash, which they sat to eat on the one chair and a chintz-covered apple-box at the small table.

  He pulled aside the net curtain that covered the window. On the other side of the glass, fog like dirty yellow plush pressed against it. ‘I’d best make tracks. It’s going to take me a time to get home.’

  ‘Wally? It’s a bad night. You don’t have to go.’

  He looked up at her from beneath his arched eyebrows and long curling lashes. ‘You propositioning me, Nance?’

  To hide her shyness, she collected the plates, put them in a bowl with a bar of soap and poured in water from the kettle. ‘It seems awful you having to go out in this. You could have kipped down at the depot, if it hadn’t been that you insisted on seeing me home.’

  He took the kettle from her and kissed her long and firmly on the mouth. ‘Lord help us, Nancy Dickenson, I thought you’d never ask.’

  They stood face to face, enveloped in one another’s arms. ‘You haven’t got room to talk, Wally Archer. I was beginning to think I should stop a virgin for ever.’

  ‘You’re a virgin, Nance? You ain’t never had nothing?’

  ‘Never.’

  He hugged her hard. ‘Lord, there’s a turn up for the book.’

  ‘I always thought I’d wait till the right man came along.’ And if she was entirely truthful, she had always been afraid of finding herself with a baby and going down the slippery slope. But now she had the knowledge and the means to prevent that happening.

  ‘And who is he then? This right man?’

  ‘I don’t know that I should tell you, might make you vain.’

  He rasped her cheek with his day’s growth of whiskers.

  ‘Why not? It’s something to be vain about when a gel tells you you’re the Mister Right she waited twenty years to find.’

  ‘Oh Wally, you are a nice, good man. Not only the right man, the best one as well.’

  * * *

  Before February was out, Wally’s case had been heard by a tribunal consisting of men who were out of sympathy even with appellants whose pacifism sprang from religious conviction. It had no compassion at all for a man who, as the inquisitors told one another, was fighter enough when it came to leading a rabble of strikers, but had no belly to fight like a man for his King and Country.

  He requested an appeal, but was turned down.

  Walter Archer, known striker and agitator, had been a thorn in the flesh for too long so, with thirty other objectors, Wally was locked up in Reading gaol and later shipped to France.

  —

  Just a line. We have been warned today that we are now within the war zone. The military authorities have absolute power, and disobedience may be followed by very severe penalties, and possibly the death penalty, so I have dropped you a line in case they do not allow me to write after tomorrow. Do not be downhearted; if the worst comes to the worst many have died cheerfully for a worse cause.

  (Letter from Steward Beavis of Lower Edmonton to his parents the day before he was sentenced to death – later commuted to ten years’ imprisonment. Wally Archer felt that he was in good company, being one of 16,000 men to ‘object’ to taking part in the war.)

  —

  On the Saturday following her return from Lyme Regis, Otis Hewetson, as she had promised Victoria, walked the short distance from her lodgings to the bookshop premises.

  If Otis had visions of a shelved and neatly-rowed library, they were at once disabused. The bookshop consisted of a large room with a store-room-cum-office-cum-kitchen at the rear, and a dank but whitewashed and Lysolled closet in a dank and green yard. At some time a butcher’s shop had existed on these premises, still evidenced by a steel track with hooks from which joints had once been displayed, and nicely-tiled but chilly walls decorated here and there with laughing pigs.

  ‘Ah you’ve come, you’ve come.’ Open-handed, Victoria Ormorod greeted her.

  ‘Did you think that I would not?’

  ‘Well, people do make promises… and intend keeping them at the time.’

  ‘I am not like that.’

  ‘Then you are a gem. Meet Annie.’

  Annie was a pleasant-faced woman of about Victoria’s age. She had brown hair that sprung free of its bun in frizzy curls. Her face appeared ordinary except for her brown, intelligent eyes. She kissed Otis on both cheeks, which caused her to start slightly at such familiarity from a complete stranger.


  ‘We are pleased of your help.’ She spoke with a northern accent and her voice, like Victoria’s, had the forceful huskiness, when not in public use, of a seasoned speaker. ‘We lot are allus kissin. It means nowt except that we are sisters.’

  ‘I’m sorry, – I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Aw, don’t apologize. Took me a bit of gettin’ used to, now I’m one of t’wost offenders.’

  Otis took to Annie at once. ‘I don’t take offence at being welcomed like that.’

  ‘Well, m’duck, that’s enough about that. We’ve got trouble on our hands and you’ve come at t’right time. We’ve got a hop to organize.’

  ‘Hop?’

  ‘Aye, a dance to raise funds for the wives and kids of the COs.’

  ‘They’ve started to call them Conchies in the playground. Those poor children, I wonder whether their fathers know how their action affects their children?’

  ‘Aye, they know all right,’ Annie said. ‘And, make no mistake, it breaks their hearts.’

  ‘The men are doing something perfectly legal in refusing to prolong this war,’ Victoria said primly. ‘The blame for the ill-treatment of their families should be laid at the door from whence it comes.’

  ‘Perhaps so, but it is still the children in the playground who suffer.’

  ‘Have you had trouble at your school?’ Victoria asked.

  ‘There have been a few incidents, not in the infants where I teach. But I know of a girl who has won a scholarship and the Headmistress is trying to have the award taken from the girl.’

  ‘Ah, we know,’ said Annie. ‘The girl’s dad was arrested and the Gazette plastered it all over newsagents’ placards. Neighbours take it out on t’family. Easier than tekkin’ it out on War Office if you’ve lost one of your own. But we have to stand up for what we believe. If we don’t, then we’re finished. It’s hard for a man to stand up and be counted – harder if it’s tekken out on his kids.’

  Otis protested, ‘But what about the child, she’s the one to suffer?’

  ‘But not at the hands of her dad,’ Annie said. ‘If Gazette hadn’t done a smear on him, and the Headmistress weren’t so vindictive, Minnie wouldn’t have had a minute’s suffering. Put blame where it belongs, Otis. You have to learn to think straight.’

  ‘Come on, Annie,’ Victoria said. ‘If you don’t stop being fierce, you’ll frighten away the best volunteer we’ve had for months. And anyway, the girl’s got a place in another grammar school.’

  Annie held her head to one side apologetically as she gave Otis a brief hug. ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, lass, but I get that mad sometimes.’

  Whilst this exchange had been going on, Annie and Victoria had been opening packages and sorting out leaflets and handbills.

  Otis said, ‘There is obviously more to the matter than one thinks, and it’s not much good me standing around here spare. Tell me what to do.’

  Victoria and Annie gave one another a satisfied glance, and Otis felt that she had passed some sort of test. What it was she did not know, but felt that the result must be that she was acceptable.

  Victoria said, ‘We thought if you would see to the bookshop this morning, it would leave Annie and me free to run around getting people together for tonight.’

  Having explained briefly about the sales records and which were free leaflets and which not, Victoria and Annie left the shop in Otis’s charge. ‘You’ll not be alone for long, Nancy will be coming in soon. And, by the way, if you can remember, here I am known as Ruby.’

  ‘Is it all right if I read this stuff?’

  ‘Lord!’ Annie said with an infectious grin. ‘The girl’s a marvel, we’ll have her on a soap-box in Finsbury Park afore long. And one thing more whilst I think of it. Nancy. Her chap’s one of those who was imprisoned, she’s heard that he’s being sent to France, but nobody knows for sure. God knows what’s happening to him, the rumour is that COs are being used to go out under fire to bring back dead and injured.’

  They went, leaving Otis alone with the smiling pigs and piles of literature.

  During her first fifteen minutes in charge of the shop, all of the callers were men and most of them appeared to be interested only in browsing and buying the Herald. Then a neat woman came in.

  * * *

  When Nancy had been told that a teacher named Otis Hewetson would be her helper this Saturday, she felt sure that there were not likely to be two with that name. As soon as she entered, she saw that she was not wrong: this woman was the girl who used to call at Garden Cottage a few years back.

  ‘I’m Nancy.’ Nancy had never been a one for all that kissing business between these women, so she shook hands firmly. ‘I’ll just put these out.’ She knew from experience that some of the browsers of the political leaflets had been sent there by their women to get one of the ‘Family Advice’ leaflets. She knew also that in the first instance it was the men who came because the illustrations contained in the leaflets were reckoned to be a bit rude and could land her, and them, in court for obscene publications. The women would come in when the men had gone off to football.

  She pinned up a notice saying ‘Free Family Advice in private’, and went back to where Otis was taking twopence for two broadsheets. ‘What brings you here then?’

  ‘I met Vic… Ruby, and she asked me. I live not far away.’

  ‘Where do you live then?’

  ‘In Market Street. It’s close to the school. I’m a teacher.’

  Market Street wasn’t no Lavender Hill. And a teacher? In her twenties and not married? Not what usually happened to quality like her, especially with her face and figure. Nancy’s experience as a domestic worker led her to the conclusion that everything always came out in the end if you just waited. She’d get to know why Otis was living in Market Street. ‘That must be a lovely job, teaching. No shift-work like in mine, out all hours, men with wandering hands who think the conductress is in the price of the tram ticket. Not that I’m complaining, it’s a good job and the pay’s better than domestic.’

  ‘You’re on the tramcars – a conductress?’

  ‘Soon be a driver I hope, I’ve done the basics.’

  ‘They are going to let you drive! That’s really exciting.’

  ‘That’s if we can get the bosses to keep their promise. They’re going to have to in the end. Soon there’s going to be only old men and boys left, they’re going to have to take on us women.’

  With a pang, the danger that Wally was in leapt on her again as it did time and time again, and with that pang came another of anger. Wally was a straight-up-and-down man with true beliefs. The Tribunal had said that it was all a tale and he was nothing but a coward. If there was one thing Wally was not, it was cowardly. Any of his mates would tell you how he put himself in danger to save a copper from being trampled by a horse when the police had charged into the tram-men. And the time he had stopped a runaway horse still between the shafts and he was written up in the paper as a hero.

  Wally had told the panel it wasn’t their job to make any comments like that, and they had said they could say anything they liked to anarchist rabble-rousers. Nancy had only seen him once in prison, and then he had been shipped across the Channel.

  There were times when she couldn’t stand thinking about it. But getting angry didn’t do anything. Like Victoria said, you should hold on to your anger and guide your energy into productive channels. They hoped to get a decent bit of money tonight; not only that, they were trying to set up another secret dormitory for men on the run, and to organize a second ‘underground railway’ to get men on the run away to America and Ireland.

  It was a busy little shop, not only for its books and leaflets, but for the exchange of information and gossip. At two o’clock when the men were off to their pubs and football, things were quiet enough for Otis and Nancy to put up the ‘Back in Fifteen Minutes’ board. Otis made tea for them both and Nancy went out with a mug to her ‘tame’ copper and came back with two doughnuts from the baker
. Otis Hewetson had looked a bit surprised at Nancy’s friendliness to a policeman, but Nancy had said, ‘He’s one of ours.’

  Otis’s thoughts had at once gone to George Moth. Recently he had seemed to have reasons to be in Islington, and always somehow close enough to Lou Barker’s shop for him to be ‘just passing’, usually when she was coming from school. Once or twice she had come in to find him sitting in Lou’s drinking tea.

  ‘Do you mean that he turns a blind eye?’ She had not realized how hungry she had become; the tea and doughnut were blissful.

  ‘He’s a local bobby, the eldest child in a family of ten. He knows what poverty and too many children means. Thanks his lucky stars he’s got out, and don’t mean to have ten of his own. And he’s been corrupted – took home a leaflet to his wife. Sometimes I ask him, How’s the wife? And he says, Going along nicely on the Cream Sponge. That’s what they call the Method.’ She laughed for the first time and into Otis’s mind came a vision of icy lemonade and the secret garden at the Moths’ holiday cottage in Southsea.

  ‘I know you, I’m sure. You are that Nancy, aren’t you? You made us lemonade with cold well-water… in Southsea? Aren’t you the same Nancy? Of course you are, I can see. Why didn’t I see it before? You don’t remember me, do you? I was the girl who was always making a nuisance of myself at Garden Cottage. I haunted the place. It was so lovely there compared to The Grand. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember. I expect I look different without a cap and apron, I’ve been told how different domestics look out of uniform. I recognized you the minute I laid eyes on you. Even before I got here, I knew there couldn’t be two Otis Hewetsons in London.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  Wryly. ‘People like me know not to ask questions when they find people in changed circumstances.’