Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (6 page)

“I’ve told you and told you,” sighed her husband. “The girl is good at her job. The Westermans certainly seem to have forgiven her. It would cause an unnecessary fuss.”

“And that’s your last word?”

“The last word on this subject, I hope,” said Mr. Baines meekly.

“Then, Bertie Baines, let me tell you this. I am going home to mother. And I am not returning until
that girl
is no longer employed in your office.” She rang the bell. A trim parlormaid appeared. “Maisie, see that my things are packed,” said Mrs. Baines. Maisie bustled off with a crackle of starch and Mrs. Baines looked hopefully at her husband. He hadn’t moved. She went slowly from the room and upstairs to supervise the packing.

When she descended some time later, he was still sitting as she had left him. Mrs. Baines tried again. “I’m going, Bertie,” she said.

“Go if you must,” said Mr. Baines, getting to his feet, “but I am not going to do anything that will jeopardize my position with Westerman’s after all these years.”

His wife’s answer was a monumental sniff of disdain. She swept out in a flurry of taffeta and, some minutes later, Mr. Baines heard the clop-clop of the carriage horses as they bore their infuriated burden off down the street.

Mr. Baines crouched back down in his chair. He felt immeasurably alone without his wife’s domineering presence. The shadows were lengthening. He had been an utter fool. What was a chap supposed to do on his own? The heavy furniture seemed to be massing for the attack. “You catch him on the left flank,” the table seemed to be saying to a hard, high-backed chair.

But the little imp who looks after henpecked husbands seemed to whisper in Mr. Baines’s ear, “A chap could take a nice promenade across the Heath on this beautiful evening. A chap could have a pint of mild and sit out over the pond at the Vale of Health pub and watch the ducks. A chap could…”

With a tremulous feeling of excitement, Mr. Baines hurriedly collected his tall silk hat and his best malacca cane. He pushed open the heavy, gloomy, stained-glass door, walked through the pocket-sized garden and stood for a moment on the pavement outside.

The gas lamps had been lit along the walk across the Heath and a faint mist had descended turning the lamps into great hazy, magic globes of light.

He walked across the road and ambled hesitantly along the walk. Above him, somewhere in the trees, a blackbird began to sing. “Past your bedtime,” muttered Mr. Baines to cover the sudden rush of emotion he had felt at the bird’s song. The greenish-blue misty light was turning to black and the lights of the pub were dimly reflected in the pond.

Above the pub door was a sign to tell all and sundry that the establishment had been licensed by George the Third for singing and dancing.

Slowly, Mr. Baines raised his cane and tilted his silk hat to a slightly rakish angle. He pushed open the glass doors and went in.

Miss Thistlethwaite’s hostel for businesswomen could hardly be said to be a home away from home. As you pushed open the black, glossy door under the dingy Georgian fanlight, the mingled odors of strong tea, disinfectant, and dry rot rose around you.

The rooms were very small and barely furnished. An iron bedstead stood against the window that overlooked a sooty garden where no birds sang. There was a marble washstand against one wall and a curtained closet on the other. A minuscule round cane table ornamented the scuffed green linoleum and a hooked rug lay beside the bed.

In the entrance hall two brass Benaras bowls of pampas grass formed a sort of dusty triumphal arch to a chilly sitting room, where a circle of hard-backed chairs held a perpetual conference.

All rules and regulations had been stitched in the form of samplers by an elderly relative of Miss Thistlethwaite’s, who had tried to lighten their grim message by embellishing them with neatly stitched herbaceous borders.
NO VISITORS IN THE ROOMS AT ALL TIMES. BATHS—TWO PENNIES. NO MALE VISITORS IN THE SITTING ROOM AFTER FIVE P.M
…. and so on.

It was doubtful whether Polly would have been allowed a room had it not been for the departure of Lord Peter’s friend, Maisie Carruthers, who confided to Polly, breathlessly, that she had been left a small legacy by an aunt and was going back to the country.

“You may have Miss Carruthers’s room,” said Miss Thistlethwaite with a gracious creaking of stays and rustling of dusty black silk. “You may move in your belongings as soon as Miss Carruthers moves hers out.”

Polly privately wondered
how
Miss Carruthers was going to manage to move out. For an indigent gentlewoman she seemed to have a remarkable wardrobe of dresses. The tiny room was foaming with laces and silks and chiffons.

Maisie Carruthers was a thin, energetic girl of Polly’s age with a large horselike face and bony red hands. “Oh, bother!” she said, unstuffing a trunk for the hundredth time and looking wildly around. “All this junk! Most of it’s hand-me-downs from old jelly bag—Lady Jellings, I mean. She never wears a frock more than once.” She turned one dark eye on Polly. “See here, if I leave you some money for the carter, could you be an angel and see that this stuff is shipped to the work-house? I really don’t want any of it. I
hate
clothes that are not my own, but Lady Jellings said I had to dress up because I was her social secretary.”

“I’ll do it for you gladly,” said Polly, trying to keep the excitement from her voice and hoping Maisie would not guess that not one of these delicious confections would find its way to the work-house.

“Oh, goody,” said Maisie. “Then I can leave.”

She bent over to slam down the lid of her now nearly empty trunk and Polly held out her hands and hastily, with an imaginary measuring tape, took Maisie’s measurements. The dresses would only have to be taken in a very little.

“Ta-ta,” said Maisie cheerfully. “Oh, you’ll find a gas ring in that whatsit by the fire. It pulls out. There’s a law about no cooking in the rooms but we would all half starve if we obeyed it. I’ve got a frying pan and a plate and knife and fork hidden under the bed in a box. You’re welcome to them.”

And, with a cheerful wave of her hand, and bumping her tin trunk enthusiastically against the bannister, Maisie Carruthers left.

Polly clasped her hands and took a deep breath as she looked at the sea of beautiful clothes. There were outfits for every social occasion. Nothing should stop her ascent up the social ladder now.

She began methodically to hang away the dresses. They would not all go into the closet but Maisie had hammered a line of nails into the wall and that sufficed to hold the rest of the hangers.

Polly cast her mind back to the days of the bewildering week before this Saturday morning when she had left home.

Contrary to her expectations and everyone else’s expectations, Mr. Baines had not given her a row. Instead, he had smiled at her and said that he hoped she had enjoyed her outing!

She had sailed through the Monday morning, typing letters energetically and waiting for the moment when Lord Peter would pop his head around the door. No one at all had appeared except that Amy Feathers, who had stood there silently, twisting her handkerchief between her fingers. When Polly had asked her what she wanted, Amy had burst into tears and rushed from the room.

Polly had been very chilly and aloof with Bob Friend, preferring to battle for her lunch herself every day. Then all too soon it was Thursday and there had been no sign of Lord Peter. In keeping with Polly’s mood the weather turned nasty and chilly, and her fingers seemed to crawl across the gold and black keys of the typewriter. By lunch-time, she gave up hope. She had been eating penny mutton pies and saveloys for lunch all week, bought from the street vendor, to try to save her wages for her first week’s rent at the business-woman’s hostel. Polly slammed down the wooden cover on her typewriter and determined to seek out Bob Friend to join her for a one-shilling-and-sixpenny businessman’s lunch. But it turned out that Bob had taken Amy Feathers, of all people, to lunch. Polly was just beginning to work up courage to pursue them to the chophouse when the door of her little office opened and there stood Lord Peter, shaking the raindrops from his black curls. It had all been arranged he said. Maisie would move out on Saturday, Polly would move in, and he, Peter, would take Polly for a drive in the park at three in the afternoon.

There was the sound of voices in the corridor outside and Lord Peter looked guilty and fled. But Polly’s heart sang with happiness. A young man did not take a young lady driving in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour unless his intentions were honorable.

The morning then passed quickly and Polly decided to forgo lunch since Lord Peter had promised to buy her tea.

The Duchess of Westerman had had a busy morning as well. Directly after breakfast Sir Edward had called her and had informed her with awful coyness that Lord Peter had been at Westerman’s on Thursday. Did that mean Lord Peter was going to join the company or had he… harrumph… just been calling on that gel, Miss Marsh? Informing him acidly that she neither knew nor cared, the duchess had hung up the receiver and sent for her eldest son.

Edward, Marquis of Wollerton was not at all surprised to hear what was troubling his mama. He had felt sure that Polly’s name was bound to crop up sooner or later.

He found his mother in the morning room inexpertly trying to produce a flower arrangement out of several dried thistles and a piece of wood. “Oh, drat the things,” she said as the marquis entered the room. “It all looked
so
easy when that Jap did it at Nellie’s party.”

The marquis surveyed it with interest. “I suggest you glue it together,” he remarked languidly.

“Glue! Of course!” said the duchess, her brow momentarily clearing. “Now, why didn’t I think of that. Edward, you must help. Peter has been calling on that Marsh girl. He tells me that her parents were quite respectable people… died in the Indian Ocean or something and only very respectable people do that. So he must be thinking of
marriage
. Quite out of the question. So you must go and buy her off.”

“Don’t be such an utter chump, Mama,” said the marquis, raising his thin eyebrows. “She doesn’t belong to the demi monde. Not yet, anyway.”

“I wish to God she did,” said the duchess savagely. “Look, Edward, I never ask you to do anything, do I? Please do this one little thing for me and stop Peter from getting entangled with that brazen hussy.” Her massive jaw trembled and her eyes began to fill with tears.

“Oh, very well,” said the marquis. “I’ll do it as much for the girl’s good as for Peter’s. Where shall I find her?”

“Here!” The duchess thrust a piece of paper at him. “I found this in Peter’s room. She’s living in a hostel in Euston, but who knows how long
that
will last.”

“I’m going up to Town today,” said the marquis, “I’ll drop in on her. But there’s not much I can do if Peter’s really in love with her.”

“Balderdash!” said his mother. “That sort of girl always has a price.”

Lord Peter strolled into the sitting room of the hostel and sat down on one of the hard upright chairs to wait for Polly. The sun slanted through the net curtains and shone on the row of aspidistras at the window. Outside, a small child was bowling his metal hoop to and fro on the sidewalk with monotonous regularity while a barrel organ wheezed out last century’s music-hall tunes at the corner.

Lord Peter picked up a back number of
Country Life
and flicked through the pages until he found an article on polo. Just then the door of the small sitting room opened and he threw down his magazine and got to his feet. But it wasn’t Polly. It was a small, fat woman with frizzy hair and twinkling blue eyes who was carrying two immense and bulging canvas shopping bags.
Must be the housekeeper or the cook
, thought Lord Peter, preparing to pick up his magazine again.

To his surprise, the newcomer plumped herself down next to him and breezily plunged into conversation with a cheery “Ow are yer, ducks?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Peter, surveying the lady.

“Me dogs are barking,” said the good lady, easing off her shoes with a wince. “It’s them pavements, they gets harder the older ye get.”

Peter smiled noncommittally and picked up his magazine again, but the lady was still talking. “Still, it’ll be worff it to know my Pol ’as a decent bit o’ food tucked away.”

Lord Peter raised his eyebrows. “Pol?” he queried. “Do you mean Miss Polly Marsh?”

“Yerse,” said the lady. “Know my Pol?”

“I’ve come to take her for a drive,” said Peter. He introduced himself.

“Oh, so your Pol’s lordship,” said Mrs. Marsh. “Wot’s this place like then?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter faintly. “Are you Polly’s foster-mother?”

“Foster-mother! Naow! I’m Polly’s ma. Wouldn’t think it to see me now, would yer? ’Ere’s me when I was Pol’s age.”

She snapped open a capacious pinchbeck locket the size of a turnip. The hairstyle and dress were Victorian but the face was very like Polly’s. Lord Peter grinned to himself. Parents drowned at sea, were they? What a rotten little snob Polly Marsh turned out to be. But all to the good. If she came from a cockney background, he had a better chance of seducing her, he thought naively, unaware that the whole of Stone Lane was quite as likely to march him to the altar as any dowager.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Marsh went on, “I’ve brought ’er some decent food. See these…” She opened one of her bulging bags and brought out a string of sausages. “’Ere… take a sniff of those,” she said, holding them out to Lord Peter. “Them’s pure beef, them is. Not like some o’ the muck they sells ahrand the West End where the toffs go.”

The door opened and Polly walked in and stood frozen to the spot.

Lit by the afternoon sunlight, Lord Peter’s black curls were bent over a string of sausages held out by Mrs. Marsh that he dutifully sniffed. Polly was just about to turn and run when both looked up and saw her.

Lord Peter jumped to his feet. Polly opened and shut her mouth as she tried to think of what to say.