Hats Off To Augusta

Mrs Beauregard was content to stay safely at home, so why did her new neighbour insist on popping in?

BOTHER,” a small, neat woman muttered under her breath. Sitting in lamplight at her breakfast table, spoon idle in her bowl of porridge, she whispered a pleading incantation.

“Please, leave me alone.” Mrs Augusta Beauregard had moved to Marringdean Avenue nearly 10 years ago.

Second only to her well-established millinery business, Augusta was very proud of her splendid house.

The avenue had trees set at intervals on either side of a spotless pavement.

Even the most reluctant branches shyly showed the tips of green buds.

This morning, however, grey clouds spread across the London horizon.

Within her breakfastroom, tension was obvious in Augusta’s shoulders.

A very unpleasant thing had happened to her back in March.

She had nearly been run over by a motor car. Not far from her front doorstep.

The driver had lost control of his vehicle. Before she knew it, she had tripped and fallen on to the wet pavement.

Thankfully, the driver had managed to stop the motor car before it was too late.

Augusta wasn’t seriously hurt, but something more important had affected her ever since – her shaken self-confidence.

At first she hadn’t wanted to go outside.

The weeks passed and her clients grew accustomed to home visits.

Her sprained ankle had healed well, but Augusta found that she didn’t dare pass through the front door.

Thank heavens her Beauregard shop was only a short bus ride away.

Augusta’s chief assistant, Suzie Catlin, affectionately known as “Catkins”, could make regular trips to Marringdean Avenue.

They could keep the business very happily ticking over, but that didn’t solve the problem.

The mental block had grown into a phobia that now kept Augusta indoors.

Augusta pushed away her bowl, appetite gone.

The demons from last night’s nightmare were almost overwhelming.

She had to face it. The horrible memory had taken over her life.

Augusta had no idea how to banish the spectres, to overcome the agoraphobia that now bedevilled her.

A car went by, and the rush of tyres on wet road brought her back to the present.

Augusta blinked and looked at her watch.

“Gosh, it’s almost eight o’clock already! Mrs P will be here in ten minutes.”

Ida Peggs had been Augusta’s daily visitor for more than five years.

Not daily, exactly, more every other weekend, as well as mornings on Mondays, midweek and Fridays.

She was one of a handful of people in Augusta’s confidence about her present circumstances.

“I must add peppermints to the shopping list,” the milliner reminded herself. “And make sure Peggs junior can come around soon. He’ll need to attack the garden again.”

Augusta herself would tend to the plants in the conservatory that ran along

the side of the house.

The greenhouse she’d inherited had been overhauled three springs before, extending the sadly rundown little construction and transforming it into a 12-foot-wide corridor of sunshine and glass.

The craftsmen had started with something that threatened collapse and created a marvel.

Augusta had been very particular in her specifications. Everything was to be done properly, and she would spare no expense.

A skilled blacksmith had forged and shaped the individual diamond lattice, and best-quality glass panes were obtained.

“And wall lights and discreet heaters so that I can sit there in the evenings,” she’d instructed.

It had been an allconsuming plan, and the first real luxury Augusta had ever indulged in.

But her millinery business had enjoyed a hard but very profitable season, allowing Mrs Beauregard to indulge in a special treat.

“And what a good decision it was,” Augusta now congratulated herself. “A fine investment now that I’m stuck indoors.”

Surrounded by glass panes supported by arched ribs of wrought iron, glass and light, Augusta could almost believe that she was outside in the sunshine, breathing fresh air.

Whatever would she do without a refuge where she could sit with a late afternoon gimlet?

Even now, 10 years after his death, there were moments when the merest scent of lime brought back her late husband’s face.

Arthur’s voice, his smell – they came back with a clarity that stole her breath.

Sometimes the old joy was so intense that Augusta closed her eyes to savour the comfort of his arms.

But these days he mostly came to her more quietly.

Calmly, and with a sense of grace.

And it was in the quiet of her glasshouse, as close as Augusta could manage to feeling the sunlight warm on her cheek, that she often felt Arthur’s presence.

Just as her eyelids were drooping in peace at the thought, the clock on the mantelpiece suddenly chimed a spritely eight.

Augusta sprang to her feet.

She pushed back her shoulders and stood tall, smoothing down her skirts.

First she reached up high and bent down low, reached and bent. Fingertips stretching to the ceiling, then down to the carpet.

A bad night’s sleep was no excuse to let things slip if a lady was to look her best for the day ahead.

In a top-floor garret in the house opposite, Prudence Dunlin had just realised that her skirt button had snapped beneath her fingers.

She sighed as half fell on to the threadbare carpet.

“Almost brand new, too,” she muttered.

“I’d take it back to the seamstress if she wasn’t halfway across London!”

There was no option but to repair it.

“Well,” Prudence consoled herself, “at least there’s no tearing rush this morning.”

Her ink-stained fingers reached for the button box, though she knew full well the risk of lifting the lid.

It had been fine wooden marquetry in its day, though it had already worn the odd scratch when Grandma had first shown it to her as a little girl.

These days, these marks seemed to Prudence the war wounds of several generations.

It was one of the few things a sixteen-year-old Prudence had taken with her when she’d run away from home 35 years ago.

She pulled back her arm. Touching it always brought back too many memories.

Prudence could still see her mother, clear as day, or one of her sisters, perhaps, searching through the contents.

She could even imagine her own childish fingers dipping into the rainbow discs, searching for the tiny mother-of-pearl shimmer or a tantalising glint of brass.

A private’s brass button...

She couldn’t help herself and now the memories crept up faster, swallowing Prudence whole, sweeping her into the faraway past, and to her own dear James.

Her son had looked so smart, desperate to join his unit and take on the world.

Private Dunlin. How hard it had been to watch him go.

Many a mother like her had turned a blind eye while her underaged boy exploited the broad chest and height that his parents had given him to cheat the medical examination.

Prudence’s eyes stung to remember.

So hard to let him go. Harder still when the telegram came . . .

A private’s brass. “Best not to live in the past,” Prudence reminded herself sternly.

What was gone was gone. Whispering her usual short prayer of remembrance, she regretfully let the discs skitter back into their case, each a story, a token into what had gone before.

She quietly chose a button and closed the lid, before inspecting the broken fastening.

“Maybe I can wear something else?” Prudence tilted her head in thought.

Whatever you do today will not be waiting for you tomorrow.

As if in response to her prevarication, Mother Dunlin’s voice rang so clearly in Prudence’s ear that she almost turned in shock to hear the familiar injunction after all these years.

In their box, the buttons trembled with ghosts, awoken from the past.

Prudence agreed. Some things shouldn’t be shirked!

She struggled out of her skirt and settled down with a needle and thread.

Because the dining table would double as her work desk, Prudence had set it under a sash window to maximise the light available.

She would write reports to clients or journalistic pieces submitted to “The Times” or “The Lady” magazine, under noms de plume.

All publication fees were gratefully received.

Prudence was glad of her foresight as she threaded her needle, but tooting below distracted her to look down admiringly on to Marringdean Avenue.

“What very gracious houses they are,” she remarked aloud, and turned to look back and inspect her solitary long room.

“Not usually for the likes of me!” she added. “But then, before this was split into flats, this attic must have been servants’ quarters. So maybe I am where I belong.”

Two fireplaces looked as though they would give ample warmth when the cold nights came.

Prudence’s armchair found itself marooned in no man’s land halfway between, unsure how to make the best use of itself.

Prudence felt a shudder run through her.

A slight draught haunted the room, whistling through the sash windows and past the arthritic water pipes whose every passing thought was conveyed by a gurgle or a screech.

She smiled grimly.

She would have to give them a wallop if that

She couldn’t help herself and now the memories crept up faster

carried on!

It was a shame she’d had to move on from her old place when it was condemned without notice.

It just didn’t feel very homely here.

Even the cut flowers she’d put on the mantelpiece didn’t look as though they felt welcome.

And no-one she’d met was very friendly.

Her neighbours didn’t look like Prudence’s sort of people – all married couples, and pretty la-di-da at that.

The housekeeper next door looked a better bet.

They had exchanged friendly greetings on Saturday as Prudence had walked past, pushing her bicycle.

Prudence had spotted the same figure outside last evening, laughing as she had wrestled with the washing in the worsening weather.

Well, Prudence thought, perhaps I will think of it as a stop-gap for a few months.

After all, the rent was pretty affordable.

It had been nice of the agent, Mr Bulmer, to do her such good terms.

Prudence supposed that was what came of doing someone a good turn.

Him and the soon-to-beformer Mrs Bulmer!

Mr Bulmer’s initial approach to Prudence had been tentative but, as a private investigator, she was used to that.

Like many clients, the land agent paid Prudence for her discretion as well as her no-questions-asked expertise.

The business of staging “adultery” for couples who wanted grounds for a divorce was necessarily cloak-and-dagger.

It was, by its very nature, unlawful.

“But we only need to do it,” Prudence had explained more than once, “because of their cruel laws.

“If people were allowed to divorce when husband and wife agreed, there would be no need for my pantomimes!”

Yes, the 1923 Matrimonial Causes Act was the source of a good slice of Prudence’s work.

Mr Bulmer had been so pleased to receive his decree nisi from the court that he had called on Prudence especially to thank her.

“If there’s ever anything I can do, Mrs Dunlin,” he’d said.

As Prudence had just received unexpected notice to quit her rooms, it would have been churlish not to take up the offer from someone who could find her a new home and negotiate a fair rate so that she could put away a bit extra each month.

Mr Bulmer had met his own invoice with satisfactory promptness, so she’d been able to indulge herself on small treats, like the flowers and new skirt.

Prudence wasn’t often flush. Her business could be an uncertain one.

Not everyone was as speedy as Mr B. Assuming she was paid at all!

The odd client did skip without meeting her charges, but what was she to do?

Give an anonymous tip off to the proctor, undoing all of her work in choreographing grounds for divorce?

Risk ruining her reputation and being linked to the unlawful act?

No, it wasn’t worth it. Prudence recognised an occupational hazard when she saw one!

Fortune favours the brave. That was Prudence’s motto.

“When I go out,” she vowed out loud, “the next neighbour I see, I’ll introduce myself.”

She bit the thread from the reattached button and slid on her new skirt, looking from her window.

“And if they need any work, all the better.”

A small woman of about her own age could just about be seen in the property opposite.

She was moving around pots in a greenhouse.

Moreover, she seemed to be talking to herself, a habit of which Prudence thoroughly approved.

“There you are, neighbour.” Prudence smiled.

Augusta had pottered in the greenhouse, watering her roses and tidying up.

She smiled to hear Ida Peggs finishing the dusting with a rousing chorus of her suffragist anthem.

Mrs P had arrived this morning, resplendent in the purple, white and green Votes For All Women bonnet that Catkins had designed.

“Good morning! I do so like your hat. Fingers crossed for later, eh?”

Augusta referred to that day’s vote in parliament to give all women over the age of twenty-one the vote.

“Did you have a good weekend?” she asked.

“Our Johnny won five bob at the dogs on Saturday afternoon! Treated us to a slap-up fish supper.”

“He can certainly spot a winner, that boy!” Augusta replied. “I should ask for tips. How is Mr P?”

“On the mend, ta very much. Back to work today.”

“That’s good. Well, I’ll be in the conservatory and then my studio all morning. I just hope the sun comes out.”

“Drizzle comin’, I reckon. I’ll leave you to it, madam,” Mrs Peggs returned.

Augusta settled back and stretched out her fingers.

A crisp, white drawing pad lay in front of her.

Time for inspiration! Long-established client Hazel Chappell was booked to visit Marringdean Avenue tomorrow for a consultation.

“I need some ideas by then,” Augusta told herself. “Given what Catkins reported about Hazel seeming a bit downcast when she visited the shop . . .”

She felt it her duty to ensure that some new Beauregard creations would buoy their client’s spirits.

The pencil formed an easy shape for Mrs Chappell’s plump face, and she started idly to play with some ideas.

Augusta let the tip dance and a promising form appeared before her eyes.

Jolly good. She’d try another while designs seemed to be flowing. It was too easy to let them slip away.

From her vantage point across Marringdean Avenue, Augusta had seen from the corner of her eye a figure crossing the road in a determined fashion. “Don’t come here.” When Augusta looked closer, she recognised the new neighbour she’d observed yesterday. Augusta stiffened.

Yet again, the woman’s brown head bore a dotted scarf.

She couldn’t trust a woman who didn’t wear a hat when she went out, and most assuredly did not hold with scarves as headwear.

Bicycles she was less certain about, but she was prepared to reserve judgement.

A woman who got about under her own steam was to be applauded, surely.

This morning, however, the stranger did not have her bicycle.

Instead, before Augusta knew it, she was walking up the front path.

Did she not know how busy Madame Beauregard was, and that uninvited interruptions were most unwelcome?

One could only hope she’d deliver something through the letter-box and be on her way.

Augusta’s pencil had only just begun to glide when the rapping began.

She tried to block out the noise.

Perhaps Mrs P will hear it, she thought hopefully.

The knocking came again, and now the design that Augusta’s imagination had conjured was gone.