If he, John, had a daughter of his own he would never allow her to associate with a man like him, but by the time George had got some measure of his son-in-law’s serious shortcomings the old man was becoming disorientated and unable to convince Lydia of her true predicament.
John sighed. The year was rushing past him. It was already May – outside, a more than frisky wind rushed through the newly green trees – and his life was still precarious. He wanted something to change, but he didn’t know how. He wanted to be a good husband and father, but in his line of business it was difficult. Falling for sweet little Dolly had made it worse, of course. He should have had more sense. A soft groan escaped him. No right-minded thief could expect to enjoy a settled life, and he was no exception.
Listening to the gusts outside their window, he tried to go back to sleep but, as usual, his mind was too active, and he knew he would lie sleepless for hours, racked by regrets and full of doubts for the future.
Lydia sighed deeply and suddenly woke up and turned over. ‘Are you awake, John?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad you’re back. I always fear for you when you’re away. Father insists that you are sometimes in danger.’
‘I’m not. But if I were, I can take care of myself.’
‘Where were you this time?’
‘You’re not supposed to ask. I’ve explained.’
‘But if you give me a clue and I
guess
, then you haven’t really told me anything.’ She turned back towards him and tried to study his face in the light from the window.
‘It starts with E,’ he said wearily, knowing how persistent she could be.
‘England!’
‘No.’
‘Estonia.’
He shook his head. ‘Much nearer home.’
A long pause. ‘Ethiopia!’
‘Ethiopia? That’s not nearer home. Anyway, it’s not a country, it’s a town.’
‘Ethiopia is a
town
?’ she queried.
‘No! Where I’ve been to is a town!’ He tried to keep the exasperation from his voice.
‘I give up, then,’ she told him.
‘Aberdeen.’
Raising herself on one elbow she stared into his face, trying to make out his expression in the dim light. ‘Aberdeen? You said it started with E!’
‘Did I say Aberdeen?’ He cursed silently. He was getting careless. ‘Sorry, dearest. My mistake. I meant Edinburgh.’ He hugged her. ‘So you see I was never far away. You worry too much.’
‘Anyway, I
said
England!’
‘Edinburgh is in Scotland.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
They lay silent for a while.
Lydia said, ‘I’m glad you agreed to let Mr Phipps stay here. I think it will be good for Father as well as Adam. Especially as he’s a policeman. He must be a very upright sort of man. Trustworthy, don’t you think? Maybe a trifle dull.’
‘I would hope so.’ He rolled his eyes, unseen. A policeman was the last person he would have chosen as a lodger, but when confronted with a
fait accompli
he had been unable to think fast enough. ‘And don’t you get any ideas about him, Lydia, or let him get ideas about you. I wouldn’t like to have to fight a duel over you – I might lose!’ He laughed, but there was a hollow ring to the words. He had fought before, in his youth, and had never lost.
‘Get ideas about Mr Phipps? Good heavens, no!’ Lydia kissed him. ‘I like my men exciting and mysterious, like you. Anyway, he’s probably promised to a young lady back home in Bedfordshire.’
Best place for a young lady, John thought wryly. Keep the women at arm’s-length. That’s what he himself should have done. He should have sent Dolly packing before things went too far, but the baby had complicated matters and she had threatened to throw herself off Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames if he deserted her. Now the best he could hope for was to keep the two women apart. So far he’d been rather good at that, but there was ‘many a slip between cup and lip’, as they said, and he worried about his brother. Sidney was hardly the brightest card in the pack, and expecting him to keep a secret –
any
secret – was fraught with risk. One day their luck would run out.
‘At least,’ she said sleepily, ‘we’ll be safe with a policeman in the house – if we were to be burgled or anything.’
‘That’s a comforting thought,’ he murmured. ‘Now go back to sleep, Lydia. It will be time to get up before we know it.’
‘Can you stay until Sunday? We could go to church together. I’d like that.’
And I could confess my sins, he thought, his amusement tinged with bitterness. ‘Sorry, dearest, but no. You know how much I hate all that singing and chanting. If I’m still here we’ll go to the Saturday Market instead, and I’ll buy you a new hat and a toy for Adam. Maybe a cigar for me.’
As she settled happily against him he drew in a deep breath. And never a thought for tomorrow, he reminded himself. In his view, tomorrows could not be trusted. He had always preferred to live for the moment and take his chances.
Next day Dolly’s sister Mavis arrived at number sixteen just as Dolly had finished her efforts in the kitchen and was admiring the results. The sink was empty of dirty plates, and the once grimy saucepan had been hung on a convenient hook on the wall. The kitchen table had been swept free of stale crumbs, and a variety of clothes, casually draped over the few chairs, had been banished to a row of hooks on the back of the door that led out on to the small yard in which a newly washed tea towel was drying in the wind.
When Dolly found her sister waiting on the doorstep she threw her arms around her and then, remembering her elevated status as a married woman, invited her in, apologizing as she led the way back to the kitchen for the fact that the wedding had been private.
Mavis, two years older than Dolly, was not easily mollified. With a dismissive shrug, she said, ‘Sounds as if I didn’t miss much. Ma says it was a miserable affair with no hymns and stuff.’
Mavis, shorter and with a well-rounded body, was less attractive than her sister, but had once had an admirer who subsequently abandoned her for someone younger. This unkind treatment had left its mark on her face by way of a disagreeable expression, though this was occasionally relieved by a smile which surprised people.
Dolly was trying to hide her hurt feelings. ‘It wasn’t miserable! It was sort of elegant. A very simple ceremony, but . . . touching.’ She led the way into the newly cleaned kitchen where Mavis remained standing, glancing round without comment. Dolly ploughed on with her defence of the wedding. ‘I sometimes think too many people spoil things.’
‘No, they don’t. I shall invite lots of people to
my
wedding.’
Dolly, recognizing a hint of ‘sour grapes’, bit back an obvious rejoinder.
Mavis was now frowning. Dolly rushed to defend her kitchen. ‘Just big enough,’ she said. ‘Like ours back home. Those big kitchens people have – you’d get worn out rushing round in them. This is convenient.’ She swallowed. ‘So is Ma still mad at me?’
‘You know Ma! She likes to bear a grudge, but she’ll be all right when the baby comes. She’s always wanted to be a grandmother.’ Mavis stood in front of the shelves, which held a motley assortment of crockery, and came across the letter which the postman had insisted on delivering. Taking it down, she stared at the address. ‘PSD Third Floor. What’s that then?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You should. You live here.’
‘Only since yesterday. The third floor must be some sort of attic. A sort of office, I suppose.’
‘Who’s Mr John Daye?’ She held the envelope up to the light, squinting, trying to glimpse a shape of the contents.
‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’ Dolly was becoming irritated. She wanted her sister to be impressed, to envy her her married state – not to ask stupid questions. To change the subject she said, ‘Don’s brother is decent enough. It’s fun having a brother-in-law.’
‘Sidney? Ma says he’s a layabout.’
‘He’s got time on his hands because he’s got private money so he doesn’t have to have a job.’ Seeing that the information had caught her sister’s interest, she added, ‘Maybe you could marry him and be my sister-in-law.’
Mavis thought about it. ‘How could I? I’m already your sister. Anyway, his eyes are too close together.’
‘He can’t help that. He’s got a nice voice.’
Mavis laughed. ‘Can you imagine what Ma would say? It’s bad enough
you
marrying a Wickham! If we both did it she’d be tearing her hair out!’ Before Dolly could decide to take offence at this slur on her husband, Mavis quickly changed the subject. ‘We could steam it open. The letter, I mean.’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Why? You’re a married woman now, Doll – you can do what you like.’
‘It belongs to someone upstairs.’
Mavis gave a fiendish grin. ‘Let’s take it up to them, whoever they are. If there’s nobody there and it’s not locked we can have a look round the office, and if it’s locked we can push the letter under the door. Really, Dolly, I can’t believe you’ve never been up there.’
‘I didn’t live here then, did I? Don said they had nothing to do with the “upstairs lot” . . . and I’m not the nosy type.’
‘You always were!’
Dolly ignored the remark. It was true that she
was
a married woman, so presumably she could do more or less what she liked. Without a word she led the way up the stairs, along the landing and up a few steps at the end of the passage where they were met by a flimsy-looking door with peeling paint.
Mavis leaned past Dolly and rapped on the door.
Nothing.
Dolly said, ‘I’ve never heard footsteps overhead. Perhaps they only open the office on certain days – like Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.’ She turned the handle. To their surprise the door creaked open, and after a moment’s hesitation they pushed inside the room, squashed together as they went through the narrow opening.
It was a surprisingly bleak and disappointing sight – a large empty room, smelling musty and damp, and lit at the far end by a small, very dirty window. The low angled ceiling was hung with cobwebs and twisted strips of what Dolly assumed had once been ceiling paper.
‘Ugh!’ said Dolly and took a small step backwards.
There was a somewhat ramshackle table in one corner on which a small chest stood in solitary splendour among old faded newspapers and a sprinkling of sawdust. Two stools completed the furniture. Dolly shivered with distaste, but Mavis hurried forward and tried to open the chest.
‘It’s locked.’ Her dismay was evident.
‘Don’t touch it!’ cried Dolly. ‘It’s nothing to do with us.’
‘It’s nothing to do with anyone, if you ask me. This isn’t an office, it’s an empty attic.’ Mavis shook the box close to her ear. ‘I think it’s buried treasure!’ she grinned. ‘It rattles.’
‘It’s hardly
buried
!’ Looking around her, Dolly frowned. ‘You’re right, for once. You couldn’t call this an office, could you, unless it was once an office but it’s closed down and people don’t know and still keep sending letters and getting no answer.’
‘So we could go downstairs and open the letter . . . maybe answer it.’
‘Mavis! That’s a terrible idea . . . but I suppose we could.’ She sighed. ‘Better not, though. Don might be angry.’
‘Not if I did it. Anyway, how would he know? We could stick the flap down again.’
‘I said no!’
‘Hoity toity!’
Dolly had crossed the room and now peered out of the window on to the street below. ‘Strange to see my old home from somewhere else – from my married home.’ Sighing, she turned. ‘Does Ma know you’re here?’
‘It was her idea. She said, “Get over there and see if she’s all right” – meaning you.’
So her mother still cared about her. Dolly hid her relief.
An hour later, when her sister had gone and neither of the brothers had returned, Dolly put her reservations aside, put on the kettle and steamed open the envelope.
Five
When the postman called three days later in Parmettor Street he delivered a letter for Lydia which she could not understand and which came from someone she had never heard of. After reading it through several times she wondered whether to share it with her father, but decided against it. There was no reason he should understand it, and it might prey on his mind. John was away again on business so she could not discuss it with him, either. That evening, however, when Leonard Phipps came down for his evening meal, she thought she would seek a reaction from him.
‘It’s come from a Mrs Wickham,’ she told him as she carried a bowl of mashed potatoes to the table and followed it with a dish of beef stew with onions.
George drew up a chair, and Leonard helped Adam on to his chair, which boasted a cushion to give him extra height at the table.
The boy eyed the beef nervously. ‘Is there gristle, Mama?’ he asked.
George said, ‘Gristle? You must not fuss over a piece of gristle, Adam. It won’t hurt you. When I was your age I used to just shut my eyes and swallow it down. You do that, Adam, and you won’t worry about gristle ever again.’
Leonard Phipps said, ‘A letter from a stranger? How very odd. I’ll read it when I’ve finished my dinner. It smells delicious.’ He turned to George. ‘My mother says you can’t beat the smell of nicely cooked beef.’
‘Beef is good, Mr Phipps, I grant you, but for me it’s a mutton stew. Plenty of carrots and onions . . . or a pie.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, maybe that was it. A nice mutton pie.’
Lydia leaned down to her son and said softly, ‘I won’t give you any gristle, Adam. Don’t worry.’ As they helped themselves to the beef and vegetables she said, ‘The strangest part is that this woman – a Mrs Donald Wickham – also enclosed one of my letters to my husband saying that the office of PSD has closed down. I’m sure if it had done John would have told me.’
Leonard said, ‘So presumably he hasn’t read your letter. He’ll be disappointed, no doubt.’
Adam took a mouthful of meat, closed his eyes and swallowed.