Goodbye Piccadilly

by Goodbye Piccadilly (retail) (epub)

  She can go. From this village. From this country. The Hague Congress, the petition for peace with its thousands of signatures has made no impression on governments, on the war, on the slaughter of young men. The senseless killing of an entire generation of men goes on and on. The bookshop, the birth-control network, the ‘Underground’ are all functioning. Red Ruby has said everything she can say. Women have still not got the vote, but it will come soon, she is convinced of it.

  Now she feels as free as Tankredi once said that people with revolutionary ideas must be. Tankredi. Recently he had turned up in London and had once again set her alight – this time not only her body but her mind.

  Russia! he had said.

  And had enthused about his colleague Trotsky, and the remarkable Lenin. Once power was seized a whole new system would be created. The people would take over all factories and all privately owned capital. The peasants would take possession of their holdings and the old, rotten and infected regime would fall.

  And Victoria Ormorod, Blanche Ruby Bice, Red Ruby, was afire to be part of it.

  —

  Greywell, Stormont Road, London.

  Mr and Mrs Martin Hewetson request the pleasure of …………………………………………………………………………………………………… to join them at their home for a musical evening followed by supper to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage. Dress informal.

  The evening had been a success, thank the Lord. Otis, knowing what she needed to do to please her mother, had willingly agreed to every one of her whims both as to her dress and the available men on whom she should dance a little attention. Being Otis, that dancing was a perfunctory jig just to show willing.

  ‘I’ll be nice to them, Ma. I really don’t mind.’

  ‘Otis, when you are co-operative, I always suspect the worst.’

  ‘I want your celebration to be so splendid that none of your acquaintances will ever have done better.’

  ‘Well, at least be pleasant to Mr Cordwallis.’

  ‘I will, Ma. He will go away believing that I am his greatest admirer, and that if his Party would only give women the vote, then I should give him mine at the next election.’

  ‘Otis, you must absolutely not bring votes into the conversation.’

  And Otis had not done so. She had been a model daughter.

  Now that it was finished, the debris of the celebration supper cleared and the hired staff gone, Otis sat, as she liked to do, drinking a nightcap with her father. He rose from his seat and went to ponder over the array of silver-wear displayed on a chiffonier.

  ‘Very nice items, Otis, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, very. But whatever shall you do with a silver sealing-wax box concealed in a coach and horses, and Ma with a scissors and thimble set – I never saw Ma use a thimble in her life.’

  Martin Hewetson grinned at his daughter. She was a delight to him. Not only had she turned out to be intelligent and beautiful, but she had a wicked sense of humour to match his own. To think that there had been a time when he had wished that she had been a boy. Boys might join one in one’s profession but, as he had seen in other families, once they left home, they returned only as a duty, whereas Otis, although she had caused such upheaval at the time by going to live under another roof, still had Greywell as her home.

  Quite obviously men were attracted by her looks and intrigued by her self-assured manner – certainly Cordwallis had been impressed. Equally obviously Otis liked the company of men. It was difficult for a father to judge these things, but he felt that she had inherited a certain tendency to strong emotion from Em, and perhaps a liberal attitude from himself. An explosive combination but, when the right man came along, they were traits that ought to bring happiness in one with such a generous nature as Otis. What was she now, twenty-three? Only a matter of time before some young man would strike a spark to her fuse and she would be off like a shilling rocket. How happy Em would be in ruffled silk with roses in her hat, weeping gracefully. How she longed to sacrifice her only daughter at the altar of marriage, as she would put it.

  Martin wished fervently that it had been possible for him to tell Otis what was going through his mind.

  ‘Your ma will lay out the scissors and thimble whenever the giver of that particular gift is about to visit. It is not so much the small gifts that concern me but…’ He gave her a purse-lipped smile.

  ‘The windmill!’ In unison. And in unison they laughed explosively and on the edge of hysteria or intoxication, at the monstrous gift that had no purpose except to be its incomprehensible and hideous self

  ‘Oh Pa, it’s no wonder I find it difficult to be serious about some of the things that matter so much to some people.’ She put her arms about him and pressed her cheek to his. ‘And you, my dear pa… you are such a nice sort of person.’

  ‘Nonsense, child.’ He gently patted her back as he had done many times over the years.

  Because he was such a nice sort of person, and because she loved him so much, beneath the display of gaiety she had so consummately portrayed all evening, Otis was in torment. She could think of nothing worse that she could do than to betray his trust. She was going away but she could not tell him. After tonight…

  ‘Pa. I hope you won’t mind, but I am going back to Islington tonight.’

  ‘But it is so late.’

  ‘There are quite a few things I have to do.’

  ‘Always work, Otis. Leave time for other things.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Pa. It will make things easier for me if I go back tonight.’

  ‘But I have given Dawkins the evening off and you cannot possibly go in a hired cab at this hour. If you must go then I shall come with you.’

  Otis knew that it was no use arguing. He would come and she would have to keep going cheerfully.

  He came back from telling Em, putting on an overcoat and carrying a travel-rug and one of Otis’s tweeds. ‘Never mind what you look like, this is warm.’

  In the chilly cab they sat close.

  ‘Your mother wasn’t pleased.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told her.’

  ‘How could I go out without doing so?’

  ‘Oh dear Pa, I’m such a nuisance to you both. I really do wish that I could be what you and Ma want.’

  ‘What I want is what I have. Two beautiful, healthy women.’ He squeezed her hand and kept hold of it. ‘Both of whom can twist me around their little fingers.’

  Otis fell silent, staring out of the cab window at the quiet roads of night-time Lavender Hill, and listening to the steady clop of the horse’s hooves.

  ‘Do you want to tell me, Otis?’

  ‘Tell what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She should have known that she could not hide behind gaiety. When she was a child she had believed that he possessed the ability to know what she was thinking, until she realized that he was so attuned to her moods that he could detect any change.

  When he held her hand between his two, she realized that hers was cold and stiff with tension.

  She longed to tell him. About Jack, about Danny Turner, about what they had arranged – but she knew the rules. Only the couriers and the escapee must know. She thought that she knew her pa, but he might easily do something uncharacteristic in his worry over her involvement in such a scheme.

  ‘You know that you can trust me with any secret, Otis.’

  She still did not respond.

  ‘I can’t bear knowing that you have something on your mind that I cannot help put right for you.’

  ‘You have to let me go, Pa.’

  ‘Dear child, I let you go three years back. It is your mother…’

  ‘No, Pa. You have given me the means to be free – the chance to study at college, your support when I wanted to teach and your marvellous lack of criticism – but you haven’t let me go as you would if I were your son.’

  Now it was his turn to fall silent. Then he said, ‘I
s it to do with Jack Moth?’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘He has been in touch with me, in a professional way.’

  ‘I know that he was settling some of his affairs. He’s ready to be certified fit for active service again.’

  ‘You see him then?’

  ‘He took me out to dinner – you remember?’

  ‘You realize what a difficult position I am in, of course, knowing his beneficiaries.’

  ‘I heard from Esther that they have come to some arrangement about Mere.’

  Gradually and without difficulty she eased herself out of the quicksand of her guilt. They were not now far from Islington where she could be alone, drop her mask and weep for herself and for him.

  For the last half-mile they did not speak, her hand, still lying between her father’s, thawed. The cab drew up before Lou’s unlit shop.

  ‘You are still happy here?’

  ‘Very happy indeed, Pa. I like my new school and I am hoping that it will not be long before I am able to work for my Master’s.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think of what you will miss if you don’t have children of your own?’

  ‘Yes, Pa. I do. But I put it out of my mind and hope that when women have a say in affairs, then we shall have the same privileges as men. There is no reason why women with children of school age could not be teachers – at least for part of the day.’

  ‘Who would see to the domestic side of things in Utopia?’

  ‘I dare say it would be worked out as it has always been in primitive and peasant communities – we should see to it ourselves.’

  ‘Is that disillusionment, my dear?’

  ‘I don’t believe that I ever had illusions to start with. It is already a fact of life for some of the women of Islington. They have work inside and out of the home.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I want the opportunity to choose. Goodness, aren’t we getting serious?’

  She kissed him, trying to make it her usual affectionate peck and hug.

  ‘Goodnight, Pa. Thank you for coming with me.’

  He tucked the collar of her tweed coat across her bare throat.

  ‘You wouldn’t think of eloping or any such thing, would you, child?’

  ‘Eloping? Me, Miss Otis Hewetson BA, twentieth-century career woman, with her own front door.’ Her voice was light with jolly derision. She jangled her keys at him. ‘Can you ever imagine such a thing?’

  Martin Hewetson got back into the cab and waited until he saw her door close behind her.

  Can you ever imagine such a thing?

  Yes. Since he had drawn up the arrangements regarding Mere Meldrum and a brief will which made Otis a beneficiary beyond anything that their youthful friendship warranted – he could imagine just such a thing.

  —

  Jack, head bowed, gaze inward, sat in an exhausted attitude, one hand dangling between his knees and the other holding the nagging wound in his breast. His interrogator, Danny Turner, had left, and Otis had gone downstairs to fetch some food, whilst Jack was left nursing the exposed nerves of his mental wound which was a hundred times more painful than the physical one.

  The man was hard, damned hard. Danny, the diminutive name, was, Jack suspected, preferred as sounding more disarming than Daniel. Wasn’t he himself Jack to his friends but John Clermont Moth when he wanted the edge on somebody? Had it been necessary for Turner to prise out every detail of Cully’s death?

  Otis had protested on his behalf. ‘Danny, surely you can take my word that we can trust Jack?’

  ‘Nothing personal, Jack, you know that; but we have to know everything, we have to check.’

  ‘It’s all right, Otis,’ Jack said. ‘The man needs to know and it is time that I told somebody.’

  ‘Is it because he is related to George Moth, Danny?’ Meaning: Or is it because of Jack’s familiarity with me and you have a streak of jealousy? And because you were sceptical so that I almost needed to beg for him to be got away.

  ‘Anybody who has anything to do with the special police branch is bound to be suspect. You understand, Jack? Your father is no fool, he has not penetrated the organization, and it is my job to see that he never does. Look at it from my point of view. You are friendly with Victoria and Otis, your father offers Nancy Dickenson work, then Otis comes to me and says that Superintendent Moth’s son wants help…’

  ‘All right!’ Irritably because she had discovered that at one time or another she, and Victoria herself, had not been above suspicion. It was only when Otis and Victoria had shown themselves loyal by becoming conspirators in the ‘Underground’ movement that they were trusted.

  There were others involved but they worked in separate cells where the only link was Danny Turner who had organized the escape routes to America and Dublin. America, having become involved in the war, was now cut off as a safe haven. The only route now was to Southern Ireland.

  ‘All right! But I feel cheapened that you cannot take my word for a close friend.’

  ‘Why don’t you go out for a while? Go downstairs and sit in Lou’s.’

  She refused. ‘For God’s sake, Danny! Aren’t I part of this?’

  Jack had looked sharply at her oath. She was severe and forceful. Like Victoria Ormorod – who in one character had cleaned the sleeve of his coat and smiled at him across the table on Southsea Pier, then metamorphosed into the fierce Red Ruby – so now it was with her protégée, Otis. The only similarity between this Otis and the silk-clad woman at the Cavendish – she who had devoured oysters with truffles, and soft fresh figs with such sensuousness – was the beauty of her face and figure.

  He hated to think of the years that she had lived in this cramped little flat with its gas meter and its stairway directly on to the street, with its below-stairs smell of pastry and meat and apple; he hated to think of her donning the grey skirt and dark-blue blouse to go out every morning. And he hated to think that perhaps the good-looking Danny Turner, with his deceptive devil-may-care air, might have ruffled the white counterpane of the bed that was visible from where he was now seated.

  Objectively, Jack, who had experience of questioning and cross-questioning, had been able to admire the man’s technique whereby one minute he was asking seemingly casual questions and the next shooting a question that stuck like a barbed arrow into Jack’s agonizing memory of Cully’s death, until in the end Jack had said, Why don’t you let me tell it in my own way. And he had done so, telling not the astute Danny Turner, but relating the whole dreadful episode to Otis.

  ‘You remember you sent me some socks and those Floris chocolates?’

  Danny Turner’s sharp eyes flicked to Otis as she nodded.

  ‘I gave Cully the chocolates and he sat and ate them one after another with his back towards the rest of our little group, like a child. That’s what he was. He did things like that all the time. Although he was large he had a mental age of a young boy. Certain parts of him had never developed beyond that age, so that he had no beard and his hair and skin were almost babyish.’

  ‘Why did you call him Cully?’

  ‘His name was Cullington.’

  ‘I thought you said that you had been to see his parents who were called… Pearce, wasn’t it?’

  ‘They weren’t his true parents, though they brought him up.’

  ‘I see.’ Danny Turner smiled disarmingly. ‘Sorry, Jack, tell it your way.’

  ‘Some of the men tricked him into doing foolish things – a bit of amusement for them. It was something that riled me, and as I’m bigger than most men, I’ve always been able to use that to intimidate if I wished.’

  Danny Turner smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Normally I don’t wish.’

  That part of his story took ten minutes, building up for Otis his picture of Cully, of his childlike pleasure at possessing a weapon, and the danger to his own platoon when it was loaded.

  ‘Nobody who ever saw him could possibly have said that it w
as feasible for him to be in the army.’

  ‘So, by the time you went into this battle, you were the boy’s… what? Friend? Guardian?’

  ‘There were five or six of us, all trying to keep him out of trouble.’

  ‘But you didn’t succeed.’

  ‘No, no. We did not succeed. We failed most horribly – I failed.’

  ‘You shouldn’t take the blame of it on yourself, Jack. The blame lies at the door of whoever took the thirty pieces of silver to certify that Cully was fit and able.’ Danny Turner’s voice was gentle and sympathetic.

  ‘I’m not necessarily taking the blame – I am saying that we failed to protect a child from himself.’

  ‘In the heat of battle, Jack? Nobody could have done more.’ Otis’s voice was as sympathetic as Danny’s. He had already told her part of the story; even so she found his anguish hard to be with.

  ‘What happened was, quite suddenly, we came upon a dug-out with about six or seven of the enemy. It was as though for the first time he realized what was happening around him. He began to cry. We had recently been attached to a new unit composed of the remnants of several others. The officer was a brute. He had a reputation for harshness that he seemed to cherish. After an earlier battle he was reputed to have had men flogged for want of bravery. He was called Roper, which I had thought was because of the floggings – but that was his name. He was probably the most stupid and most vicious officer I ever had the misfortune to serve under. Any man who had served under his command would understand how it was that the Cullys of this world can be certified fit for active service, and how it is that there are men who will justify the sacrifice of 30,000 men to recover a couple of miles of territory.’

  There was a small clunk and the gas-fire stopped hissing and the row of yellow flames disappeared. At once the room seemed to drop ten degrees in temperature. Familiarly, Danny opened a small tin on Otis’s mantelpiece and took out some penny coins which he dropped into the slot meter beside him. For a moment Jack’s attention was diverted by that small act indicating as it did that Danny Turner was no stranger to Otis’s rooms.