Nobody noticed her waiting there, except for a little girl in a mud-spattered pinafore who watched her hungrily. Mrs. King flicked her a sixpence.
“That’s for good observation,” she said. The girl leaped for it, scrabbling on the cobblestones, and hurtled away.
Mrs. King didn’t need to check her pocket watch. She knew exactly what time it was. She crunched apple pips with her back teeth, counting seconds in her head.
It was another five minutes before her quarry appeared. Winnie Smith came lurching around the corner with her gigantic perambulator, heading for Mr. Champion’s shop. That pram carried hatboxes, not babies, stacked in teetering, dangerous piles. Mrs. King felt a familiar stirring of affection. Winnie: trussed up in a violently mended purple dress, hat pinned at a hopeless angle, steering the perambulator as if it were a tank. Something snapped, the suspension or a spoke, and she staggered. Oh Lord, thought Mrs. King, and closed her eyes.
She finished the last of her apple, licked her fingers, and sauntered across the road.
Winnie was wrestling the pram over the curb when she spotted Mrs. King. “Today?” she said, disbelieving.
“No time like it,” said Mrs. King with a wry smile.
Winnie sucked in all her breath, straightened her hat. “I’ve an appointment to keep,” she said, frowning.
Mrs. King remembered the first time they’d met, twenty years before, in the kitchen at Park Lane. She’d sensed then that Winnie, five years her senior, would make the perfect elder sister. Someone fierce, someone reliable, someone you could trust right down to the bones—even at her most harried, as she was today. Mrs. King nudged her.
“Hang your appointment, Win. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Winnie hauled the perambulator up onto the curb. She shook her head, stubborn. “Ten minutes. Then I’m all yours.”
Winnie was raised very nicely, very properly. She had such enormous scruples. It made Mrs. King click her tongue in impatience. She peered into Winnie’s perambulator, flipped open one of the hatboxes. A squashed, queasy-looking article gazed back at her. It had taken on the shape and color of a blancmange, festooned with ghastly brown ribbons.
“Lovely,” she said.
“Don’t touch it! I’m calling it the Savoy.” Winnie stroked it. “Champagne satin, chocolate velvet. And silk-finished braid, do you see? It goes right under the brim.”
“Is that hair?”
“It’s braid.”
“Whose hair is it?”
Winnie batted Mrs. King away, rammed the lid back on the box. “It’s what they’re showing in New York.”
Mrs. King put her hands behind her back. “How much are you charging for it?”
Winnie hesitated.
Mrs. King smiled. “I’ll help you negotiate.” Winnie was stolid, steady, the most industrious person Mrs. King knew. But certain things needed to move with a clip.
Winnie looked annoyed. “Dinah…”
“Don’t worry. It’ll speed things up.”
“I don’t need you to speed things up.”
Mrs. King simply raised her eyebrow at that. She kicked the shop door open, the bell pealing in alarm, and Winnie sighed, battling with the pram. “Dinah, go easy…”
The light inside the shop was clean, the shelves stacked with eggshell ribbons and bolts of satin. Mrs. King disliked dainty things. Muslin made her teeth ache. “I’m on my break,” said a voice from the back of the shop. “Come back later.”
“But it’s your lucky day,” said Mrs. King.
“It’s just Winnie Smith, Mr. Champion,” called Winnie, colliding into everything. “We have an appointment!” She gave Mrs. King a warning glance: Not another word.
Mr. Champion sat in his office like a ham stuffed into a picnic basket, pink-cheeked and glistening, surrounded by wicker and wires. The air smelled of dried fruit and vinegar. He started, spectacles quivering on the end of his nose. “No, no, no,” he said. “Not you. I’ve told you already. I ain’t buying any more tat.”
Winnie grabbed one of the hatboxes, knocked the lid to the floor. “Just a moment of your time, Mr. Champion,” she said, planting her feet firmly apart. “Have a look at this one. I’m calling it the Navy. Blue rosettes, do you see? I’ve dressed it with heliotrope flowers, and of course I could do white ones, too…”
Mr. Champion pointed at the perambulator, neck reddening. “Get that great heaving article out of here!” He addressed Mrs. King. “And who are you?”
Mrs. King smiled, cracked her knuckles. “Her agent.”
“A trial offer, Mr. Champion,” Winnie said quickly. “How about that? Your customers might like to try something new.”
“My customers,” said Mr. Champion, “buy quality.” He looked Winnie up and down—and Mrs. King knew what he saw. A faded dress, skin gray and saggy under the chin. Nothing to respect, nothing to worry about. “Now, clear off.”
“Did you take her last delivery, Mr. Champion?” said Mrs. King.
His eyes swiveled to meet hers. A sneer. “I doubt it.”
Winnie appeared troubled. “That’s not correct, Mr. Champion. I gave you my very best stock.”
“I daresay you might have off-loaded some old handkerchiefs on me. I really can’t recall.”
“I’m sure you have the receipts,” said Mrs. King.
“I’m sure I don’t.”
He looked like suet, a sick-making color. “Might I check?” she said.
“Might you…” He paused, taking a breath, reddening further. “No, you may not. You can show yourself out.” His eyes rattled back and forth between them. “Here, what is this? Some job you’ve worked up between you? I said to clear off!”
Winnie lifted her hands, alarmed. “Mr. Champion…”
“Five guineas, Mr. Champion,” said Mrs. King.
He stared at her. “What?”
“Five guineas for the Navy. Or I want to see your order book.”
Mr. Champion let out a scornful laugh. “Don’t make me send for the constable.”
“Be my guest,” Mrs. King said in a congenial tone. “I’ll report exactly what I can see occurring here. You’re cheating ladies out of their dues.”
“Say that again,” he said, voice dropping, “and you won’t be able to sell a stitch to any living body in town.”
“Order book, please,” said Mrs. King, pressing her palms to the table.
There was a long silence. Winnie was holding her breath.
“Three guineas,” Mr. Champion said.
Mrs. King sometimes wondered, How do I do it? How did she get people to capitulate, to bow? She didn’t exactly like it. It made her feel chilly and contemptuous of the world. But of course it was necessary. Somebody had to put things right in life.
“Done,” she said, keeping her distance from Mr. Champion.
He made a lot of noise, a lot of fuss, counting out the change. “You’re nothing more than a thief. You won’t be coming around here again. They’ll lock the doors on you two, that I can tell you for sure and certain—”
But they got their three guineas.