Jack shook his hand warmly and indicated the dog. ‘I just almost was.’
Ignoring the woman holding the dog, Jack turned to Otis. ‘I’m so sorry the dog spoilt your entrance. You look superb. Let me introduce you…’
‘Who could forget Miss Hewetson?’ The officer shook her hand warmly. ‘We met at Lys when she visited you.’
The proprietress of the Cavendish stepped forward and held out her hand to Jack. ‘Kippy’s ever so sorry and so am I. The young lady is right, he is indiscriminate and he must be taught better manners. Will you let the old Cavendish try to make it up? Best table, some bubbly, the latest music…?’
Jack turned to Otis. ‘I dare say you would prefer to go elsewhere, now that your evening is spoilt.’
‘Of course I should not, Jack. I was particularly pleased when you suggested the Cavendish.’
‘Right then,’ said the woman, depositing the dog in the arms of a porter. ‘I’ll take you through meself.’
Having bidden farewell to the doctor, Otis and Jack followed the proprietress to a beautifully laid-up table not too close to the loud jazz band.
‘Order anything that takes your fancy. Again, please accept my ’umble apologies, my dear boy, and you, miss.’ She squeezed Jack’s fingers, then, signalling to the head waiter and a wine waiter, she left them, ruffling the hair of the young men she passed, and giving them fond kisses.
Having ordered aperitifs, they were left alone. Jack laid a friendly hand upon Otis’s.
‘Lord, Jack,’ she said grinning, ‘we can’t take us anywhere, can we?’
He met and held her eyes, enjoying the intimacy of their joint memories that went back to that first fiasco when they were children. ‘You look wonderful. There’s not a woman here can hold a candle to you. And your hair!’
Otis knew that she was dressed to turn heads. Although the dress that she had worn to Esther’s wedding had then been very advanced with its glimpses of calf, nowadays many women wore mid-calf-length gowns like this one. A beautiful georgette creation with a wide-collared boat neck, huge gathered sleeves and panniers gathered from hip to knee, it was both modest in style yet daring in fabric. And her head was most outrageously cropped.
‘Thank you, Jack. I really looked forward to putting on some glad-rags again. It’s so much more fun when you spend most of your life in sensible clothes. I was in hot water with Pa about the hair – unfeminine – but at last I’ve done something to please my ma.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I don’t believe you have ever noticed my appearance before.’
‘The day your uncle came to Southsea, you wore a striped skirt and carried a matching parasol. At Esther’s wedding you wore a strange pink dress that showed too much yet not enough of your calves. Beside the lake at Mere…’ Ticking off on his fingers.
‘All right, all right, you are more observant than I gave you credit for.’
‘Let’s dance.’
‘Let’s.’
It was said that the Cavendish jazz band could be heard outside even during an air-raid, but the noise didn’t stop the urgent revellers from trying to talk above it.
After a couple of dances, Otis noticed that Jack’s breathing was a bit laboured and perspiration showed around his top lip. ‘Enough,’ she said, making her own breathlessness the reason for returning to their table.
When they were seated he leaned across and said, ‘I also remember what you wore when the dinghy capsized at Bognor.’
‘Jack Moth, spare my blushes; but then none of us were exactly…’
He grinned, for a moment the old Jack. ‘Dressed appropriate to the occasion, if you ask me.’ He wagged his head. ‘Oh Lord, how ashamed of you your mother was.’
Here at the Cavendish, no one would have suspected that the country was involved in one of the most terrible wars in history, or that there were shortages, rationing, hardship. The aroma of good food and fine wines pervaded the room. Linen and napery were stiff and immaculate, silver and crystal gleamed and glistened, flowers were everywhere, waiters, if somewhat greyer haired than in peacetime, were discreet and perfect in the practice of service. Above all, the officers and their companions were dressed to the kind of perfection that only maids, manservants and batmen could achieve.
This is the life. What say you, Otis?’
‘Not ’arf.’ In a Cockney accent.
‘You still do that very well.’
‘I hope now without adolescent condescension. I now know the people who speak it. I’d be ashamed for them to see me here.’
‘I understand. The war has taught me a few lessons in that direction. I have two really good friends: one is from the Welsh mining area, and the other is a Norfolk farm-hand.’
The look in her eyes went serious. ‘What would they say to their corporal dining here?’
‘They’d get a laugh out of him being attacked by a feather duster with teeth.’
‘Didn’t you know about Rosa Lewis?’
‘I used to come here occasionally before the war. Her dubious past with royal lovers – goings-on in high places – made it a daring place to come to until one saw how very stodgy it all is.’
‘You didn’t know about her “war effort”?’
‘No, it’s ages since I came here.’
‘She fairly rattles with jingoism, and your episode with the “renowned Kippy” isn’t her first gaffe by far. She has white feathers with her wherever she goes, and she hands them out quite indiscriminately. If she makes a mistake then she tries to put it right by offering all the delights of the Cavendish, including the use of a nice clean tart for the night.’
He raised his eyebrows at her use of such a frank euphemism. ‘Just as well I’m not partial to that particular course.’
Otis grinned. He was so easy to be with. How evil it was that some powerful war lord should see such young men as he as simply one of the parts of their killing devices. She guessed that he must have seen the cloud that was in her eyes when he looked up and met her gaze. She had noticed the same in his.
‘Good Lord, Otis, what must you have thought when I suggested dining here?’
‘I thought it your wry sense of humour.’
The waiter presented the dinner menu. ‘Mrs Lewis insists that I point out to you the very best items. She is serving her famous quail pudding for special guests.’
‘Otis, you shall choose if you care to.’
‘I warn you, I love to eat well. You will probably have to wheel me home.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’ll probably be ashamed to be seen eating with a woman who doesn’t toy prettily with her food.’
‘If you toyed, it wouldn’t be mere prettiness.’
* * *
They were served with little pots of chicken-liver mousse and a chilled white Moselle. Rosa Lewis paused briefly at their table to see that their wine was a good one and that they had been offered her pudding. ‘If you knew about the woman’s jingoism, why did you not choose the Dorchester?’
‘You know me, Jack, I seldom opt for the obvious choice.’
‘Like this Moselle with the chicken? It is delightful. You shall choose again.’
After its jerky start, the evening began to slide along smoothly. The waiter said in a low voice that Mrs Lewis had suggested Saint-Jacques et belons aux truffes on a bed of julienne vegetables. ‘Only for yourselves and the Ambassador, madame.’
‘And,’ suggested Otis archly when he had gone, ‘his nice, clean tart for the night.’
She scarcely knew how to take the fond and indulgent look he gave her.
‘You appear a lot improved since I last saw you. Are you better, Jack?’
His face clouded. ‘Almost. I would have been entirely fit, except that I had a bit of infection. I’ve been before the medical board. They don’t like men who make a slow recovery, it worries them that they may have to agree to a discharge. Let’s not talk of that tonight.’
He looked thinner than the old Jack Moth, but more muscular and exceptionally handsome, his face sun-browned
above his stiff white shirt-front. Certainly considerably less carefree now than five years ago, but better than when she had visited him last. His gaze was no longer open but, as Max Hewetson’s had been, holding back, secret. Otis had seen that same look in the eyes of other soldiers she had met, both British and German captives, and each time she had done so it reaffirmed her conviction that this war was evil for the things men were being forced or encouraged to do to one another.
Recently Annie had contrived, through her network of friends in the right places, to get a few members of the League who spoke German, and of whom Otis had been one, into a prisoner-of-war encampment where they had talked informally to a number of Germans.
Although they had detected no real antipathy, they had been told by many of the German soldiers that their greatest fear had been capture, particularly by the British, who had the reputation of being perpetrators of the most appalling atrocities. Undoubtedly, as were British soldiers, they had been fed chilling tales by their superiors in order to produce fierce and fanatical fighters, but they said it had been impossible for them to fathom what was truth and what was propaganda. Certainly, they said, they had no cause for such fears now that they were in England.
Comparing notes later, the League members agreed that what was obviously true was that both sides believed the other capable of sadism. And perhaps there was some truth in it.
On both sides in this war, young men such as these here in the Cavendish who were dancing wildly and drinking heavily had, until it had been whipped up in them, no desire for militarism, yet had found themselves catapulted unprepared into the extreme barbarity of war – of shelling, bayoneting, bombing and gas attacks. And it had left them with that same look in their eyes as Max and Jack, where they constantly struggled against something unspeakable that was hiding behind a thin curtain ready to pounce.
In the midst of the urgent celebration, the eating, talking, singing and jazz-band music, Otis caught a vignette of Rosa Lewis seated at a table across the room. It was said that Mrs Lewis’s favourites were officers of the Irish Guards. It was said that she always kept rooms available for the wives of any who were married. It was for this guards’ regiment that several times every evening the band thumped out, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. Now she was at a table pouring champagne for three young Irish Guards who looked barely twenty. One of them was unsteadily standing, singing along in a fine tenor voice, waving his cap to the beat of the song.
Goodbye, Piccadilly,
Farewell, Leicester Square,
It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart’s right there.
Otis thought, She is doing the only thing she knows. Offering to feed them, then providing an hour of sexual satisfaction and a night of alcoholic black-out.
Was that what Jack wanted before he went back to France?
She forced her attention away from the young singer. ‘Oh Jack, you have some grey hairs.’ She fastened her mouth with her forefinger – an action that was like that of Victoria. ‘You see, I have lost the art of civility.’
The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. Wasn’t Otis Hewetson always so?
He watched her eating the potted chicken, then scallops and oysters, with obvious enjoyment, closing her eyes as she swallowed and humming small sounds of approval. ‘I do so adore truffles.’
The elderly waiter allowed a small expression of approval to move his face when she selected Truite en papillote rather than the crayfish that was Jack’s choice.
‘I know a porter from Billingsgate and he brings me the most delectable crayfish every Friday,’ Otis said.
‘Except when there’s an “R” in the month?’
She smiled at him, liking it that he approved of her, enjoying with him being drawn into the atmosphere of frivolity that prevailed in the place. ‘Of course. My man is a specialist.’
When she chose duck with limes, he teased her. ‘Is the Cavendish in competition with Smithfield too?’
‘Lord, no. My man brings me only fish that I don’t have to cook. I am not domesticated in the slightest, I’d have no idea how to cook a duck. If it were not for my good fortune to be living above Lou Barker’s, then I should be reduced to living off bread and cheese.’
‘And crayfish.’
‘And cockles too. Have you eaten cockles? You should… and eel in jelly, we have that in the bookshop on Saturdays. Fish in batter. Wonderful food. I have tried to convert my mother to the cuisine of humbler Londoners, but she claps her hands over her ears at my delicacies whilst devouring escargots or frogs’ legs.’
‘The army’s best delicacy is bully-beef and hard tack. There’s a legend, and it may well be fact, that at least one soldier was saved from certain death, shielded from a bullet by a pack of hard-tack biscuits.’
Her face straightened and she reached out and rested her hand upon his clenched hand. ‘Poor Jack.’
Before she could remove it, he took hold of her fingers and held them gently, moving his own in what seemed to be an absent-minded caress.
‘No, not poor Jack, look where he is and who he is with. Poor Taff, poor Farmer Giles…’
His hand tightened on her fingers, gripping them strongly for a moment as though in spasm, then he brightened again.
When they had eaten perfect crème caramel and fresh figs, and their coffee had been brought, Jack asked if she minded if he smoked.
‘If I were not to shame you absolutely, then I should ask for one myself.’
‘There is something very satisfying to a man to see a woman relish good food. My mother enjoyed herself no end at a good dinner-table.’
‘Such primitive acts, aren’t they, providing and being provided with nourishment? I get something of the same pleasure seeing a man smoking, though I cannot believe that it is a wholesome habit.’
She watched him as he disbanded, pierced and lighted the green cigar. She supposed that his replication of George Moth’s movements came from Jack watching his father perform them since he was a child. She had noticed on the occasions when she met parents of her children that it was not so much the features that made for family resemblance, but movements – perhaps a walk or the way of holding the head, something unconsciously copied – that gave the likeness of parent and child.
It being the most extraordinary event, she had expected him to mention his father’s sudden marriage almost at once, but as the evening progressed he had said nothing. Now, watching his lips around the cigar, his mouth opening as he blew the smoke ceilingward, she felt that if he was not going to mention it, then she must.
‘I had a letter from Esther… saying about your father.’
‘I think she feels that she owes people an explanation for his behaviour. Which is how I feel also, I suppose, but there is none. My father is my father, he does as he pleases. I’m glad Ess has decided to stay in Lyme Regis for a while. The gossip will have died down after a month or so.’
‘Is it so difficult that you can’t talk to me?’
‘Not difficult. A little wounding perhaps. And just a bit more proof that my father doesn’t really see me and Ess as very important to him.’
‘I’m sure you are wrong.’
‘Why? We never have been very important to him. Always his work. He could spend weeks and move heaven and earth to bring a villain to justice, but not a single hour for a child being bullied at school.’
She felt a moment of anguish for the hurt child. ‘It must have been a shock to you both. And what about Kitt, has he taken to a stepmother?’
‘She’s Kitt’s favourite – and she is very good with him.’
‘That’s good. It would have been miserable for him otherwise. Esther was very non-committal.’
‘You know Ess, not one to make dramatic statements.’
‘Not like Otis. I think I should not be very controlled had it been my father who announced a stepmother out of the blue.’
‘Your father is not a man who must always perform centr
e stage.’
Over recent months, George Moth’s influence upon her desires and dreams had waned, but from time to time a memory of his overpowering largeness, his overt masculinity and her response to them could still cause her to feel disturbed. Upon learning from Esther’s letter that he had married, she had felt a pang, but did not question whether it was of pique or regret. Not that she would have wanted to be George Moth’s wife – or anyone’s wife. She did not wish to be the guide and light to a family of children, but she longed to open the minds and broaden the horizons of classroomsful of them. She loved her work for those moments when she saw the excitement of understanding upon a child’s face. Yet she had felt something when she read of his new wife; perhaps it was that Otis would have liked to know that she had been his first choice.
When they were ready to leave, Jack signalled to the waiter for his bill. The head waiter attended, saying that Mrs Lewis had had to go out, but she had left instructions to say that their bill had been settled by Kippy.
Otis felt reluctant to have the evening end. ‘I have enjoyed myself enormously, Jack, and not only for the truffes. I shouldn’t mind walking for a while.’
Eagerly, ‘Oh let’s. It is ages since I walked on a summer night, would you care to do that? I’d like to say goodbye to Piccadilly.’
The full anguish of his leaving hit her in the same way as when she and Max had sat together that last Christmas. He would go and she was as helpless as Rosa Lewis to do anything except administer superficial comfort. ‘There are no lights after dark these days.’
‘Of course. Everything seemed so normal in there that I forget the air-raids.’
He crooked his arm, and they walked. A surprising number of other young couples were out too. ‘Walking appears to be the fashion.’
‘I walk all the time, every day. I sometimes wonder how it was that women such as my mother ever learned how to work their feet.’
By the time they had reached St James’s Square, they had slowed to a dawdle. He stopped, gently halting her. ‘Otis?’
Goodbye Piccadilly Page 34
