Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (15 page)

Alf looked at him in amazement. “All right, yer ludship. Potatoes is abaht all I’ve got—this bleedin’ weather.”

Alf scurried off to pile the potatoes on the scale.
Wot’s ’e want?
he thought to himself.
Gent like ’im talking abaht potatoes and bein’ a friend o’ Pol’s. Maybe ’e wants ’em free!

But he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Anyfink else?” he asked brightly.

“Yes,” said the marquis desperately. “I would like… deem it a great honor… oh, five pounds of turnips, please.”

“Turnips it is,” said Alf faintly. He wished his wife were here. She would know what to do. Then he remembered that this was the marquis who had taken his wife to tea at the Ritz. Should he mention it?

“Look, dash it all,” said the marquis. “What I really want to ask you is—”

“Didn’t you entertain my missus to tea?”

“Yes,” said the marquis abruptly, and then repeated “yes” in a milder voice. “I enjoyed her company immensely.”

“Beg pardon, yer ludship,” said Alf, “but these ’ere turnips is big. Get abaht two weighing five pounds.”

“That’s all right,” said the marquis. He paused and looked down into Alf’s innocent, sparkling eyes. Alf rubbed his grimy mittened hands. He envisaged presenting Alf to his mother. He shuddered.

“Anyfink else?” asked Alf helpfully.

The marquis looked wildly around the small, dark shop. “Give me everything you’ve got,” he said.

“Naow then, naow then,” said the amazed Alf.

“Seeing as how yer ludship is in the way of being a friend of the family, like, I feels I ’
as
to tell yer that all that there stuff ain’t as fresh as it could be, wot with there being nothing ahrand the Market these days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Marquis, suddenly desperate to get away and noticing that Alf Marsh was showing every sign of meticulously weighing every vegetable in the shop. “Just wrap it up.”

“Wot? The ’ole shop full?”

“Yes. I’ll call the servants. Load it in the carriage and—here.” He pulled out his purse. “Here is twenty guineas. That should cover it.”

Alf stared at the gold as if he could not believe his eyes. Times had been hard recently for the Marsh family because of the lack of sales. But Alf Marsh could not cheat.

“Look, yer ludship,” he said in a kindly voice—as if talking to one of the wild young traders down at the pub when one of them tipsily tried to buy drinks for everyone—“put yer money away. There ain’t one guinea’s wurrf in the ’ole lot.”

“Take it, man! Take it!” said the marquis, putting the money down on the scale. His puzzled servants were already loading the fruit and vegetables into the carriage.

“I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, Mister Marsh,” said the marquis as correct as ever. “Please convey my best regards to Mrs. Marsh and to Polly.”

He bowed and left. Alf Marsh turned slowly and stared at the small pile of gold bobbing on the scales.

“Cor lumme,” he said. “Stone the bleedin’ crows.”

A turnip rolled across the carriage and nudged the marquis on the foot. It looked like a great blind head.

“Damn Polly Marsh,” said the marquis. “I must be mad.”

• • •

Polly paused at the foot of the stairs and sniffed. Delicious, exotic smells were floating down from the Marsh’s flat—smells of goose and roasting chestnuts and plum sauce and crackling-hot roast potatoes and sage-and-onion stuffing.

Polly’s chilblained feet flew up the stairs. She crashed open the kitchen door.

The small kitchen was crammed not only with her family but with what seemed like every single old-age pensioner in Stone Lane. Amid a reverent silence Alf was mixing a rum punch, his wrinkled apple of a face gleaming with pleasure. Mrs. Marsh had her sleeves rolled up and was basting a huge goose in the oven.

A large glazed ham glittered on the table, cheek by jowl with an enormous game pie with raised pastry. A small barrel of oysters was being prized open by Gran, and Joyce was removing a giant fruit cake from its tin box, on top of which Queen Victoria was portrayed holding out her chubby little hands in benediction over the feathered head of a Zulu chief and, from the look on her face, not enjoying the occasion one bit.

Polly wanted to scream, “Where? What? How?” but the silence was almost religious as the old people, who could not remember their last decent meal, gazed with wide eyes on the glory and splendor of the feast.

She silently took a tray of glasses of punch from her father and passed them around. There was a universal sigh of satisfaction as rum and sugar and lemon and boiling hot water seeped into old bones and frozen feet.

Then it seemed as if everyone began to talk at once.

Polly stood bewildered, listening to the incoherent babble. Some lord had thrown a handful of diamonds at her father. He had come in a gold carriage bedecked with rubies, and black servants had cleared a path through the snow for him with silver shovels. He had been wearing knee breeches and the Order of the Garter. (“Wot! In this weather? Garn!”) He had been dressed in scarlet and ermine. He had been wearing a crown. It wasn’t a lord but King Edward himself!

The arrival of the goose silenced the company again and nothing was heard for half an hour but the chomping of worn teeth and gums. Overcome by all the excitement and having been accidentally handed a glass of punch, little Alf put his small head in his plate and went to sleep.

Polly at last managed to ask her mother what it was all about as they began to clear away the empty and polished plates. She listened wideeyed as she heard of the marquis’s visit and of the gold.

“’E’s either balmy or ’e’s in love with yer, Pol,” said Mrs. Marsh. “An’ I think it’s love. Yerse.”

Polly blushed as the memory of the goldfish pond rushed into her mind. She felt obscurely threatened. She was frightened over the intensity of her feelings. Better never to see or hear of the marquis again.

“Anyways,” Mrs. Marsh continued, “your father, saint that ’e is, says to me, ’e says, ‘Let’s give all them old folks a treat.’

“Gawd ’elp us, Pol. We’ve got our ’ealth and strength to last this winter but not them.”

After the last of the guests had gone, clutching their food parcels made up from the remainder of the feast and a little purse of money each, Polly climbed the stairs to her room and stood for a long time looking out at the frozen snow.

To think of the marquis was wrong. All it ever brought was trouble.

Oh, why couldn’t he have stayed away!

The evenings grew longer but still the trees held their leafless branches up to the sky and still the iron grip of winter kept its grim hold on the land.

The marquis was just indulging in a dream in which he had completely managed to forget both Polly Marsh’s face and figure. He was promenading along Jermyn Street on his way to his club in St. James’s when he almost collided with a trim figure emerging from the back door of Fortnum & Mason. “Sally Saint John,” he cried with surprise.

A pair of roguish blue eyes twinkled up into his, reminding him of his salad days when he used to squire Sally to balls and go rowing at weekends with her brother, Jerry.

“I’m not Saint John anymore,” she laughed. “You
are
out of touch. I’m married to Freddie Box.”

The marquis dimly remembered Lord Freddie Box as being a slightly pimply youth in his form at Eton. He must have blossomed indeed to have snared the fair Sally.

“And Jerry’s getting married too,” Sally bubbled on. “And to a little actress from the Gaiety!”

“Good God!” said the marquis. “What has your mama to say about that?”

“Oh, nothing
now
,” said Sally cheerfully. “But how she ranted and raved when Jerry first told her. So at last she had to meet the girl; Alice James is her name. Well, the fair Alice turned out to be a very proper young lady, with the manners and voice of a duchess, and Mama was so relieved she gave them her immediate blessing.”

“It sounds almost too good to be true,” said the marquis gloomily.

Sally observed him with interest. “My dear Edward,” she exclaimed at last. “You are not by any chance contemplating a
mésalliance
yourself! Not the fastidious Edward! Not the breaker of hundreds of hearts!”

The marquis looked at her with some embarrassment. “The lady I am ‘contemplating’ is merely a young friend of quite low birth. She is however a very refined young lady. I do not intend to marry the girl or anyone else for that matter, but it does seem a shame that she should wilt away in the East End of London instead of enjoying some West End society.”

“Like my salon, of course,” said Sally brightly.

“Like your salon,” said the marquis smoothly.

“I shall probably regret this,” said Sally gloomily. “Give me her address, Edward, and I’ll send her a card. You will be present of course?”

“Of course,” said the marquis with a grin.

But as it turned out, Lady Sally Box’s pretty salon was not fated to be graced by the plebeian beauty of Miss Polly Marsh.

Sally handed the marquis a letter that he studied in silence. It said: “Miss Polly Marsh thanks Lady Sally Box for her kind invitation to tea but regrets that she is unable to attend.”

The marquis swore under his breath. He would never see her again unless he hung around Westerman’s or visited her home.

Hell and damnation! It looked as if he would have to marry her after all!

Fortunately for the marquis, it was not Alf Marsh who was presiding over the dark, chilly shop but Mary Marsh.

Mrs. Marsh wasted no time on social pleasantries. “Before you feels obliged to buy up the ’ole shop agin,” she said, her small eyes twinkling, “just gits to the point. Yer wants to marry Pol, doncher?”

The marquis gave a stately nod of his head.

“Well, yer can’t,” said Mrs. Marsh brusquely and then her voice softened. “Sit down ’ere, me lord, and I’ll tell you why.”

A savage winter gale was whipping along Stone Lane and moaning around the gables of the old houses. Its mad, dreamy symphony of summer gone and love lost underlined Mrs. Marsh’s explanation. Polly should not marry out of her class, she explained. That sort of thing led to disaster. In vain did the marquis recite lists of his aristocratic friends who had married members of the lower orders; Mrs. Marsh remained adamant. His own mother could not have been more against it. Polly should eventually marry a nice boy in her own station of life. The marquis thought of Polly’s gentle beauty under the rough, red, beefy hands of some market trader and felt his temper rising.

Never once had he dreamt of rejection. His fortune was large; his line stretched back into the mists of history. He was accounted handsome. And now he was sitting in some poky little shop in the East End of London being told, in effect, that his proposal of marriage was unwelcome. This is what came of not keeping one’s distance! This is what came of fraternizing with the lower orders. Damn this smelly shop, this smelly lane, this dingy environment where the very cobblestones screamed poverty and depression. And damn Polly Marsh! He gave Mrs. Marsh a bow as cold and chilly as the day outside and walked languidly to his motorcar—he had not wanted the carriage servants to realize the depths of his infatuation—with his head held very high and his aristocratic profile presented to the lower orders. He felt like a fool.

• • •

March came in like a lion and went out like a monster. The trees on Hampstead Heath threw down a quantity of branches in defeat. Winter had come to stay. Icy blasts all the way from the Arctic circle set the bare branches of the trees moaning and rattling like so many skeletons of the damned.

Winter himself seemed to have taken over Bertie Baines’s heart. Somewhere outside the kingdom of his frozen and numbed depression he could hear his wife’s strident voice. Gladys had unfortunately recovered from the shock of her husband’s affair with Lady Blenkinsop and her voice rose and fell and moaned like the wind on the Heath outside. She had sacrificed the best years of her life to Bertie Baines and look where it had got her. He never took her anywhere. She had had more fun at her mother’s. Why? They had played bridge every evening. Would Bertie Baines play bridge? No! He would not!

On and on it went as Bertie crouched in his armchair, cracking his knuckles and remembering every look and gesture of Lady Blenkinsop’s and wondering sometimes if a chap could die from sheer misery.

• • •

Amy Feathers went out of her way to wait outside the office at closing time so that she could cut Bob Friend dead as he scuttled past.

Sir Edward Blenkinsop was seen promenading with the cosy armful from the King’s Road on more than one occasion, and everyone vowed to tell Lady Blenkinsop so, but nobody did.

A large tear fell on a photograph of the Marquis of Wollerton escorting the beautiful and dashing young Lady Alice Hammersfield to the opera. Polly closed the magazine with a sigh and stared unseeingly out of her window at the black and tumbling clouds. She had not been told of the marquis’s proposal. She had refused the mysterious invitation from Lady Sally because her mother had told her to, but she often wondered what would have happened if she had gone.

April brought showers of sleet and hail to the frozen City and people shook their heads and said that the new Ice Age had arrived.

Polly Marsh opened her eyes on May the first and was dimly aware that something strange had happened to the world.

Sunlight was flooding the room. She opened the window and leaned out.

Sunshine! Blazing-hot sunshine! Blue sky stretched for miles and miles. Lazy wisps of smoke climbed from chimneys up high into the azure bowl.

A group of jugglers and acrobats were setting out to entertain the streets of the more prosperous West End. The leading acrobat in his tawdry tinsel and faded pink tights suddenly stretched his arms wide and executed several handsprings down the street. Mrs. Benjamin, who lived directly across the lane, opened her window and put her pet linnet, Sammy, out in his wicker cage on the sill. The bird shuffled around ruffling his feathers and then began to pour out a whole song of gladness for the return of spring.