Yet he hadn't tried anything. And here he was this morning, just as he had promised, to take her to that nobby dress shop.
She shouted after Rose, 'Make him some tea.' Then she took off the shirt and considered what to wear.
When she got down, he was sitting in father's chair. He was quite good-looking, with wide blue eyes and slicked-down, honey-coloured hair. She didn't mind him taking stock of her. She had put on a crepe-marocain dress supposed to have been worn in the Savoy. She had bought it secondhand in the market and made some adjustments. She was clever with a needle and thread. The blues had faded rather, but it fitted better now.
'What are you wearing under that?'
He was strange after all. She gave him one of her withering looks and poured herself some tea.
'I only mention it,' he explained, 'because you'll have to take off the dress to be measured.'
She hadn't considered that. She went back to her room and found some underclothes.
As they left the house, Poppy was disappointed to find no taxi waiting. It was round the corner, in the next street. She laughed, and he asked her what was funny. She chanted a rhyme she had learned in the streets about "that demmed elusive Pimpernel".
He didn't seem amused. He said, 'My name is Jack.'
The taxi took them only a short way and stopped. Poppy looked out. At the same moment, Jack put something into her hand. It was a bar of lavender soap. They were outside the public baths in Aldgate High Street. 'Blooming cheek!' she said. But she thought of that elegant dress shop and said she wouldn't be long.
When they finally got to Bond Street, she was grateful for Jack's forethought. After the gratification of having bolts of fine materials unrolled before her while she sat in a beautiful gilt chair to make the selection, she was taken to be measured. Without Jack looking on, she expected the assistants to treat her differently, but they still called her madam and helped her out of her dress and put it on a padded hanger as if it were the latest thing from Paris. It took three of them to measure her. One was there to provide conversation in the form of compliments on Poppy's looks and figure; another used the tape measure; and the third wrote down the measurements. Poppy said little. She had chosen a gold crepe de chine that made her throat ache with anticipation. The dressmaker asked her to come for a fitting on Wednesday afternoon.
On Friday it was finished. For once the assistants spoke the truth: madam looked exquisite.
'Now,' said Jack when they had left the shop with the dress wrapped in white tissue in a black and silver box, 'we will choose some shoes and stockings. Then I will take you to my flat.'
Poppy was young, but she was not simple. She knew what a man meant if he invited you home. She had suspected all along that this was behind Jack's generosity. Still, she thought as she walked at his side along Regent Street with the box under her arm, it was a gratifying way to go. No-one could say she was cheap.
And he was quite a handsome fellow.
He took her to a Georgian terrace with a view across Hyde Park. The walls were papered white and silver. There were Chinese lacquer cabinets and oriental rugs. There was a woman standing by the fireplace with a King Charles spaniel in her arms. She was in a dress of pleated silk with a posy of parma violets on her left shoulder. She was elegant.
'Poppy, this is Kate,' Jack said, and he was grinning as he added, 'My adoring wife.'
'So you're the fingersmith,' said Kate in a voice that fell short of her appearance. 'You don't look a bit like one.'
'That's why she's the best,' said Jack. He had a decanter in his hand. 'What do you like with your gin, Poppy?'
'I take it neat, thank you.'
'You can't do that, my dear,' said Kate firmly. 'Let her try it with tonic, Jack.'
Poppy took the glass and it made her sneeze. 'I'll never pass as upper class, if that's what you are hoping,' she told them.
'You'll be perfect as you are,' said Jack, and to Kate he added, 'She looks divine in the dress.'
Kate asked to see it, so they unwrapped it and Poppy held it against herself.
'It's very bold,' Kate commented. 'Did you choose it yourself, dear?'
Poppy decided to ignore the question. She felt waves of jealousy from Kate, but she could understand the reason for them. She put the dress back in its box and said, 'Aren't you going to tell me what you want me for?'
'I'll show you,' answered Jack. 'Choose one.' Apparently from nowhere, a pack of playing cards opened into a perfect fan shape in his right hand.
Poppy took a card. 'Do I tell you what it is?'
He nodded.
'Seven of hearts.'
He squared the pack and cut it. 'Put it back now.'
She watched him cover the card with part of the pack. He cut it several times. 'Now can you find your card?'
'Is it the top one?'
He shook his head.
'He's taken you in,' said Kate, it isn't there.'
Poppy took the pack and searched for the seven of hearts. She went slowly through the cards. It was not among them.
'That's a marvellous trick! So you're a conjurer.'
'No.' He picked up the cards and fanned them again. 'Choose any one you like.'
She found that she had picked the seven of hearts. 'Blimey!'
'You should have watched his left hand,' said Kate in a bored voice. 'He palmed it.'
Jack said, 'Watch.' He dealt two hands of five onto a glass-topped table. 'Look at yours.'
She had the eight, nine, ten, jack and queen of clubs.
'I just dealt you a straight flush,' he said. 'What would you stake on that, Poppy? Your new dress? Better not. Mine's a royal.' He turned over the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of diamonds. 'No, I'm not a conjurer. I know a few tricks, yes, but I don't do them to amuse. I make my living playing cards, and so does Kate. It's money for jam when you can work the pack.'
'Oh, no,' said Poppy in embarrassment.
'What's the matter?'
'You bought me that dress because you want some help?'
'Well, yes.'
'Jack, you picked the wrong girl. I can't play cards to save my blooming life.'
9
In the morning there was a violent incident in the florist's next to Richmond Station. A woman in a jade green velvet hat and a black coat with beaver trimming entered the shop a few minutes after it had opened. Alma was selecting blooms for the window. She recognized Lydia Baranov from her photographs. The face had lost the girlish softness of Trilby at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, and the fragility of Dora Vane in The Harbour Lights, but it still had an elegance of shape, a confidence of expression, emphatically theatrical.
In bed the night before, Alma had slowly turned the pages of the scrapbook. If she had hoped to find some portrait of Walter as a younger man, on his wedding day, or in a soldier's uniform, she was disappointed. It was exclusively a record of Lydia's life in the theatre, most of it pre-war. She had brought it back this morning in a canvas shopping-bag, covered with a knitted scarf in case of rain. It was hanging on the trellis behind her.
Alma was used to being treated as a menial by customers, particularly women. To them she was a shopgirl. She expected them to sniff the flowers and ask how much they cost without a glance in her direction. She expected them to tap their gloved fingers on the counter when another customer was being served. She expected them to pick over the bunches they had chosen and insist that certain blooms were replaced with fresher ones. But she was unprepared for Lydia Baranov.