Goodbye Piccadilly Read online

  Goodbye Piccadilly

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part I

  Southsea 1911

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  Part II

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  1914

  1914

  Part III

  1914

  1914

  1914

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  1914

  1915

  1915

  1915

  1916

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  Part IV

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  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Goodbye Piccadilly

  Betty Burton

  For Patricia Parkin

  Part I

  Southsea 1911

  VIEW OF ‘LADIES’ MILE’ SOUTHSEA

  Uncle Max, Ma says it is not done to address a recipient of a picture p.c., but it does seem so ill-mannered not to give a person a name – esp. a nice Unc. None of the hotels in this pict. is The Grand, from whose terr. I now write. I expect it is much too grand to be sold in a mix’d pkt. S’sea seems to be a v. agreeable town. From this terr. we see many naval vessels pass up & dn the Solent. You wd like it. Wish you were with us, it wd be more fun. Yrs affct

  Otis Hewetson

  ‘Otis, if you wish your cards to arrive by first post, then I think it wise to give them to the porter at once – this is not London, and they may not be too swift at handling the mail in a seaside town. You remember your father’s experience last year?’

  ‘No, Ma.’

  ‘An important letter to his office did not arrive until third post next day, yet it had been posted in Brighton main post office before eight P.M. of the previous day.’

  ‘They are ready, Ma.’

  ‘Then run along, and take mine with you. And ask the porter if the local paper has arrived.’

  Inwardly Emily Hewetson sighed at the prospect of a month of hotel life – the very best hotel, it was true, but Southsea was not the Cote d’Azur, not even Harrogate. But then parenthood has always meant sacrifice. And there was always Vienna to look forward to.

  Otis whisked up her mother’s neatly piled letters. ‘Oh the papers, Ma, of course. I forgot, the Lists will be out. I do love to see us in the Lists.’

  ‘Otis.’ Mrs Hewetson’s voice was low and restrained, as befitted a hotel with marble columns in its halls. ‘“Run along” is not intended literally. Do try to behave in a more feminine way.’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’ Otis walked demurely from the terrace, but could not restrain herself when it came to descending the long, wide staircase, which she took like a youth.

  Otis Hewetson was eleven months over sixteen, and an only child. Child is perhaps misleading, for although Otis was not, like her mother, tall and willowy, she was most certainly womanly beneath her girlish dresses. Emily Hewetson was something of a beauty, and perhaps it was for that reason that she kept her round-hipped, neat-waisted and pert-breasted daughter dressed in clothes more suited to a twelve-year-old, for it was quite apparent that, when the time came, it would be the daughter, with her masses of dark hair, wide-set eyes beneath straight brows, and oval face, upon whom eyes would alight.

  In some ways, this extended childhood suited Otis, for she had discovered quite enough restrictions because of her femininity as it was.

  Perhaps Emily Hewetson was wiser than she appeared, and thought it better to keep her daughter in prints and aprons than constantly have to remind her that young ladies did not do such-and-such – as now when Otis, with the newspaper secured, raced back up the hotel’s main staircase. On the other hand, perhaps she was not at all wise, but was instead a rather vain woman who did not want to be seen to have a grown daughter.

  Feeling pleased with herself for having resisted the temptation to scan the Visitors’ List in the foyer, Otis asked eagerly, ‘May I look, Ma?’

  ‘If only you will not scrunch the paper – you know how your father hates a scrunched newspaper.’

  Kneeling at a low table, Otis respectfully turned over the pages until she found the page with the columns of recently arrived hotel guests and boarding-house visitors. In order of peck, their own hotel, The Grand, with its prime position facing the Common and the sea, came first. She read aloud. ‘“Miss Lashbrook. Mrs Preston-Jones. Miss Eunita Truscott. Miss José Dubois.” (Oh, Ma, do you think she’s French?)’

  ‘Otis, do lower your voice. Even if Miss Dubois did not object to having her name shouted all over the hotel, there are others present on this terrace… not everyone is interested in the Visitors’ Lists.’

  Otis gave her mother a look which Emily Hewetson recognized as very like that of her husband’s brother, Max. A knowing, teasing look. ‘Of course they are interested, Mother. They pretend that they are looking at the Lists merely to see who else is here, when what they are looking for is to see their own name in the newspaper.’

  Emily Hewetson’s only consolation in having an enthusiastic and lively daughter was that Otis might have been born a boy, who might well have been even more embarrassingly noisy.

  Otis read on. ‘“Lieut. Bindon Blood.” Ugh!’

  ‘Otis!’

  ‘“Captain Bockett-Pugh. Sir Douglas and Lady Brownrigg”, and… look, look, here it is, Ma, “Martin Hewetson Esq., Mrs Hewetson” and look, Ma “…and Miss Otis Hewetson.”’

  Otis smiled at the fame of Miss Otis Hewetson, who had in previous years been ‘and daughter’.

  ‘“Miss Otis Hewetson”. Well, Ma, I am now a real person – there is a compensation for being almost seventeen.’

  ‘You may well be right, Otis, but I have yet to discover any evidence of it. There are times when you run away with yourself and behave as though you were eight years old.’

  Otis’s feelings about her age fluctuated. There were times when she wished to be calm and elegant, to not speak loudly and to remember her manners, but mostly she loved to leap and dash and run and to show her enthusiasm for things. Fortunately, the girls’ school she attended was run by a woman who appreciated a girl of Otis’s enthusiasm and love of learning, and she had gathered about her teachers of her own kind. Otis had no experience of other schools, so took this coterie of unusually broad-minded teachers for granted. The choice of this school for his daughter was that of Martin Hewetson, her liberal-thinking father.

  To blot out the rest of her mother’s lecture, Otis ran her eye down the other lists of summer visitors to the lesser hotels and boarding houses. Her heart leapt but she managed to take control of her voice before she uttered, ‘Look, Ma!’ and jabbed her finger at a column which listed visitors who had taken a private residence for the season. ‘It’s them! Oh, Ma, how wonderful! Who would ever have expected such a coincidence. May I call on them… well, will you call on them? Could you do it today?’

  The urgency in her daughter’s voice did not strike Emily Hewetson as anything out of the ordinary. Otis wanted every request or scheme of hers to be put into practice then and there, at once! Today! Emily Hewetson con
sidered herself to be a most understanding and patient parent, modern in her outlook and allowing a freedom that would not have been permitted in her own day. Putting her theory into practice, she inclined her head in order to see where the rudely jabbing finger pointed and saw, ‘At Garden Cottage, Sussex Road, Southsea. Inspector and Mrs George Moth, Mr John Moth, Miss Esther Moth.’

  Otis scanned her mother’s face for a sign that she had mellowed or forgotten the Moth episode at Bognor.

  She had not.

  ‘I know what you are thinking, Ma, and you may be right that the Moths are not really our sort but…’

  ‘I think no such thing. Mrs Moth was a Clermont. And even if she were not, I should like to meet the person who could say that I am not the free-est and easiest of social person. I have no time for snobbery. All I ask of any person old or young is that they have mannerliness.’

  ‘Well, you really can’t blame Jack and Esther for not having had the chance of a good upbringing, as I have. Mrs Moth is very easy with them, and their father is away from home so much.’ Otis was pleased with this argument: it had the merit of praising her mother as well as putting her in a position where she could not fairly refuse a meeting with the young Moths.

  ‘If you are trying to butter me up, miss, so that I will allow you to rush to… to this Garden Cottage, then it will not work. Your father must be consulted. He was not pleased at having to witness his wayward daughter and her companions being pulled from the sea…’

  She had not forgotten – not a single detail.

  Otis’s mind’s eye saw Garden Cottage, saw Esther, saw Jack…

  ‘…to say nothing of an absolute promise from you.’

  …saw little Mrs Moth and large Inspector Moth…

  ‘And you have not heard a word I’ve said.’

  …saw Otis and Esther and Jack playing cricket on the beach, taking threepenny trips round the harbour. Oh, this would be the most divine holiday.

  Otis snapped back from Garden Cottage. ‘I did hear you, Mother.’ Saved from having to prove the truth by the entrance of Martin Hewetson, smiling and gay in holiday dress and a straw boater. ‘Here’s Pa.’

  ‘You are not to…’

  Too late. Otis had leapt up from her kneeling position and was flinging herself at her father in what appeared to be one movement.

  ‘Oh, Pa.’ She kissed him warmly. ‘What do you think, the Moths are here, in a cottage. And I will promise anything you like if you will let me meet Esther. We are both older this year. Honestly, there would never be another—’

  ‘Hold hard. Hold hard.’ Good-humouredly, Martin Hewetson unhooked his daughter’s arms from around his neck. ‘Tea. First, foremost and before anything – tea!’

  And Otis knew that she was forgiven the disgrace of Bognor.

  Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum – R. R. DOLLING, 1896.

  ‘…the children ought to have been boarded out. I doubt if any institutions for children are right, but I have no doubt at all that our present barrack-system is altogether inhuman and scandalous.’

  Nancy Dickenson, cook-general for the summer season to the Moth family, was snatching a read from her library book. She stopped and turned back to page ninety-four: on the facing page was a photograph of her dead brother. It was not the first time she had turned to that page, nor yet the first time that Father Dolling’s book had been issued to her from the public library. The photograph facing page ninety-four was not only of her brother, Doug, but also of Father Dolling and twenty men and boys. Nancy read, ‘Christmas Party, 1893’, and rubbed her finger across Dougie’s frowning face, in which she could recognize the likeness to her own, straight-browed features.

  Nancy’s Mum had said that she must be imagining it, that no four-year-old would be able to take in enough to remember somebody dying. But Nancy knew that her Mum was wrong. She remembered. He had died of ‘The Dip’. She remembered Dougie being wrapped in a piece of sailcloth. She remembered her Mum crying and saying, ‘A pauper’s grave. I never thought any of mine would see a pauper’s grave.’

  Her Mum thought different now: Dad and three others of Nancy’s siblings had gone on a cart wrapped in sailcloth.

  Since Nancy had begun reading seriously and sorting things out for herself, she had come to the conclusion that poor people could stand having their noses rubbed in their poverty a lot of the time, but not when it came to burying their own. A funeral with a glass-sided hearse and black horses was the only dignity a dead body had. Sailcloth and a hand-cart was disgrace poured on sorrow.

  Nancy was a brisk and practical young woman of twenty-four, not normally given to mooning over photographs of the dead, but Doug was the only member of the Dickenson family ever to have his picture taken. In some way this seemed to make him still alive, and still a boy of ten. They had switched places, and now Nancy sometimes spoke comfortingly to Doug as he used to speak to her at times when their Dad had had a few too many and there was a row going on. And not only that, Doug’s picture had been put in Father Dolling’s book, which had become so famous that for two years they had had to print more and more of them.

  There was also the matter of Nancy’s reading.

  Nancy’s great regret was that she had not paid more attention at school: Well, I never saw the use of it at the time. I could read and write enough as I needed to be a chambermaid. I learned to figure up money all right in my head because when I was only little me and my brothers used to go and help my Uncle Alby on the market – you got to be smart there. ‘Penny ha’penny a pound, half a stone for eightpence. Save yourself twopence ha’penny.’ Figuring has to come into your mind like a flash. But it’s not figuring that gets you anywhere. It’s reading – you can find out anything from books.

  And so, when she was twenty-one, Nancy Dickenson began determinedly slogging at the rock-face of books from the public library. Three years on she had made footholds, and now read anything and everything that came her way, particularly newspapers: I used to think that they was full of dry old things, but that’s not true. You can find out things that are going on all over the world, and about new, restorative drinks and special ointments and things for sale.

  Whenever she had the time she went to trawl the shelves of the public library, never coming away without having made a discovery.

  ‘You’ll be sorry for that later in life, our Nance, wearing your eyes out like that. I knew an old woman that got cataracts from reading.’

  ‘Lord, Mum, half the old women round here got cataracts, but they never read a word in their lives.’

  ‘Well, they must have done something else to wear out their eyes.’

  ‘More likely from turning out shirt collars by candlelight.’

  ‘Don’t start on that again, Nance. We don’t need nobody to tell us about conditions in the work-sheds. You won’t do yourself nor nobody else no good by keep on about it.’

  Nancy shut up for her Mum’s sake, but she didn’t stop thinking about it.

  In the corner of her room now were several copies of The Times, unread by Master Jack. These she was gradually going through during the odd five or ten minutes here and there.

  Her mistress’s silver bell sounded, so she put away Father Dolling and Dougie and went downstairs. She went quickly and willingly because she had been lucky to get this job: it was easy and the family was nice and there was only the mistress, Master Jack and Miss Esther. The master would be down for odd days, but that would not be often. The mistress was easy-going and so nice.

  Too easy-going with the master by the look of her – she’s over seven months gone and she must be forty if she’s a day, but it don’t seem to trouble her much. Like a cat that got the cream when she sits in the garden.

  The money was only average, but the time off was the best Nancy had ever known. Miss Esther didn’t play up as only daughters sometimes did, and Master Jack kept his hands to himself, standing aside for her to pass as though she wasn’t a servant – very polite. Jolly Jack was the name she gave h
im in her mind.

  SOUTHSEA PLEASURE PIER

  Poor Father. There are no p.cards depicting G’den Cott. I’ll do a watercolour and send it so that you may imagine us. I think it horrid that you have to be detecting m’derers instead of riding the merry-go-rounds with me and J. Do arrest him soon and come here. It is a sweet cott. with a well. Esther

  Esther Moth rushed through the cottage with a page torn from the same local paper as Otis Hewetson had kept smooth for her father. ‘Mother, look! You’ll never guess.’

  ‘And I’m sure that I will not get the chance to guess, because you will have to tell me or burst.’

  ‘The Hewetsons are here!’

  ‘Here, as calling at the house? Or here, as in the town?’

  ‘They’re listed in the new arrivals at The Grand.’

  ‘And if I know them, that is precisely what it will be.’

  ‘Mo-ther! If you knew them better you would soon change your mind. They are not at all grand. Otis is the best company one could wish.’

  ‘You may be right, dear, but I have no desire to go out of my way to renew the acquaintanceship.’ She smoothed her protruding abdomen. ‘Or anyone else who may be holidaying in the town. We have taken this place so that I may rest.’

  Esther Moth pressed her cheek against the equally blooming one of her mother. ‘And I shall see to it that you do. I promised Father and I mean to do it.’ She had every intention of seeking out Otis Hewetson and renewing their friendship, which had been cut short four years ago. In order to placate her conscience, she went into the tiny scullery and made her mother some fresh lemon with chilly water drawn from the well.

  ‘Mother, would you mind if I went to the pillar-box and took a walk across the Common? I might meet Jack.’

  ‘Just so long as Nancy knows and is within hearing.’ Esther climbed the steep, narrow stairs to Nancy’s little room where the servant was on her bed reading.

  ‘I have to go out, Nancy. I know it’s your off-time, but would you just keep an ear open for Mother?’

  ‘I was about to go down to start the supper.’

  ‘It’s just that a friend I know is staying at The Grand, and I would stroll by on the chance that she’s looking out.’