There was a knock on the kitchen door. It was Mr. Duke. Poor young man! It had upset him, the quarrelling she had heard. He looked, she thought, white and exhausted.
“Is Jane here? I’m going out, I . . .”
Paula had a great longing to pat and soothe. She did not say anything about the rain. She did not remark on the fact that he was going out into a deluge with neither his hat nor his mackintosh. She did not mention that Jane had no coat or hat, and was wearing inadequate little red shoes. Young men, upset by quarrels with their wives, were likely to forget such things. Instead she smiled and beckoned.
“Come and see.”
They stood at the end of the passage. Hans’s exercises were over; he was thumping out a tune loud enough for the two little girls to hear. Irma was dancing charmingly and at the same time exhorting Jane over her shoulder.
“So, Jane. Lift the feet. Jump high.”
Jane had as yet no ear but she was happy. Her eyes shining she pranced after Irma. Paula laid a hand on Jeremy’s sleeve and drew him back towards her kitchen.
“There is something special for lunch. Presently I will send up a little note to ask Mrs. Duke if it be permitted that Jane may stay.”
Jeremy blundered on down the stairs. He was so deep in thoughts, which wound in and out of his quarrel with Freda, that he nearly fell over Jenny.
Jenny was sitting on the stairs leading up to the Bettelheims’ flat. Jeremy had seen her before so he knew who she was.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Willis. Did I hurt you?”
Jenny got up, flustered and stammering.
“It’s my fault—I was lonely—I like hearing people move about.” He looked at her. She was going to have a baby. Women were supposed to get fancies at such times. Sitting on other people’s stairs because she felt lonely must be one of them. Jenny stammered on. “I was in the A.T.S.—I wasn’t any good, but there were always the others—I got used to people—then I was home—there was my mother and the dogs—people always.” She stared at Jeremy, her pupils oddly distended. “It’s awful being alone—you feel you’re being pushed . . .”
Jeremy looked at Jenny in dismay. As a novelist he ought to be interested, but as a man he knew he was out of his depth. He was not sure how big a woman looked when her baby was being born. He should know, but Jane having been born before he got back he did not. Mrs. Willis sounded poopsy enough to be having a dozen babies. Awful if she had it on the stairs. He made a friendly and inarticulate exclamation and rushed down. He must find Mrs. Parks. Mrs. Willis ought to have a woman with her.
Gladys was talking to Hannah. It was an occasion. The two women had met almost daily, Hannah brushing the bottom of the front stairs and Gladys scrubbing the front hall. It was a tail-to-tail meeting and so far had passed with a brief “good-morning.” Gladys longed to say more; it offended every instinct in her cockney soul that people should live in the same house and not be neighbourly, but there was something about Hannah’s behind, so correctly covered in good starched print, topped off with a rather aggressive apron bow, which kept Gladys at arm’s, or rather tail’s, length. Often, as she scrubbed, she cast a look at that behind coming slowly towards her down the front stairs, and dashing thoughts slipped through her mind, “Wouldn’t half like to give it a slap,” but she had never spoken. This morning a bristle flew out of Hannah’s brush. Bristles flying out of brushes were on Gladys’s mind. She burst into speech.
“Aren’t they cruel, these stair brushes? Breaks my heart every mornin’ on my back stairs.”
Hannah abhorred bad tools. She was a beautiful housemaid and proud of her work. She could not allow Mrs. Parks to think that she would use a bad brush except under great provocation.
“It’s the best her Ladyship could buy. It’s the sort that was used in the stables at home. I always ordered my stair brushes by the half-dozen; I used the last one till there was no bristle left.”
Gladys sat back on her haunches.
“You need a good brush this weather, and that nice stair carpet shows every mark.”
Hannah did not turn round. That was going too far, but she did relax, not visibly, it was impossible for her to relax visibly inside her corsets, but she relaxed in spirit. It was a beautiful stair carpet, worn now but still good, and it was a mark to Mrs. Parks that a woman of her sort knew a good carpet when she saw it.
“Sir John’s very careful about wiping his feet, but a great deal of mud does come in on his boots now that he digs in the garden.”
“Mr. Parks says it’s wonderful what he’s done in that garden. He never thought to see a gentleman like him digging”
Neither had Hannah and very unsuitable, she thought it, that he should. It made things better, however, if people like Mr. and Mrs. Parks admired him for it.
“A gentleman that can turn his hand to anything.”
“I’ve not spoken to him meself except to say ‘good mornin’ or ‘good afternoon,’ but Mr. Parks says he’s ever so nice.” Gladys’s voice changed. It was as if she had put a pickle or a relish into it. “He’s seen him while he’s been making that door.”
Hannah stopped brushing the carpet and turned to look at Gladys. It was as if a bridge of understanding had been thrown between them. Hannah knew, from the way Gladys said “that door” that Gladys not only approved the door but had the same thoughts about Mrs. Duke that Hannah had herself. Not such surprised thoughts, for Mrs. Parks would not know that Mrs. Duke had come to the house because she was Mrs. Dill’s friend. Hannah could not criticise her family. What Sir John and Penny did she accepted, but that Penny should be a friend of Mrs. Duke’s hurt almost like a burn. It was particularly gratifying to hear somebody use that tone about the door, because Mabel was being at her most contrary about it. She said that all feet were alike in the sight of God, and other things meant to annoy which she did not mean, but then she lived in the kitchen; she had not had to watch the impertinence of that red-headed woman as Hannah had.
Gladys too, was conscious of the bridge between herself and Hannah. Almost too conscious because she nearly risked mentioning that her kettle was on for a cup of tea, which would have been rushing things and smashed the bridge in an instant. An innate tact stopped her.
“This house looks a sight better with the window-boxes; always did like red geraniums meself.”
Gladys could not have found a more fortunate topic. Hannah watered the window-boxes; Hannah patiently nipped off each flower as it began to fade. The window-boxes were as the first snowdrop to her in the winter of life in London. Charlotte had managed to have them built for every window on her own two floors, and for the front windows of Penny’s flat. She had filled them with red geraniums on the advice of the florist. It was late in the year, he said, for anything else; geraniums would go on flowering well into the autumn. Charlotte was not really fond of red geraniums, she would have liked cinerarias, but she accepted the florist’s advice; a splash of colour to brighten the gloomy square was what she wanted. To Hannah the red geraniums, flaring against the grey walls, were living poetry. Each time she came into the square the flowers caught at her heart. When Sir John said, “You’re a wonder with the window-boxes, Hannah,” or Lady Nettel, “How lovely the boxes look,” or Mrs. Dill, “You always were a dab with flowers,” it was to Hannah as though she had children to be praised. She creaked to an upright position and smiled.
“Flowers make a wonderful difference to the look.”
Gladys had four pots of geraniums on her window ledge in the area. They did not thrive like Hannah’s and she was about to ask for advice when, through the door leading to the back stairs, for all the world, as she later told Alfred, like dust coming down a chute, came Mr. Duke. Jeremy rushed across to Gladys.
“I say, I’m not sure, but I think Mrs. Willis is having a baby.”
Gladys, even as she sprang to her feet, did a bit of reckoning. This was August and the b
aby was not expected until December.
“A miscarriage.”
“I’m not sure, she seems all right, but she’s saying very odd things and she’s sitting on the stairs.”
Gladys was poised to run. She had been prepared for an exciting half-hour. She felt as though someone had offered her a drink and taken it away again. Poor Mr. Duke, so good looking and with such a terrible piece for a wife! She always liked him, but she found him particularly endearing at this moment when he stood before her, a helpless, ignorant male. Miscarriage indeed! She wished she had him in her kitchen where she could have told him about Alfred’s sister Ella and her likeness to Mrs. Willis, but she could not go into all that with Hannah listening. Hannah did not look one to gossip, but she did look one with a terrible sense of duty which might lead her to repeat to her employers things she heard. Gladys liked young Mr. Willis with his one leg and all, and she would hate to make trouble for him. She gave a superior, know-all, female smile, in which she included Hannah, which she thought generous seeing that Hannah was a spinster.
“She’ll be all right. In her condition you get fancies. I’ll go up presently and have a word with her.”
Jenny had put Jeremy’s own troubles temporarily out of his mind; now, as Gladys dismissed his fears and took the responsibility of Jenny from him, his wretchedness swept back. He muttered something which could have been thanks, or could have been good-morning, and rushed out into the street slamming the front door behind him.
Hannah and Gladys exchanged another look. The bridge between them was securely built. It was not one for walking on clumsily nor to be used indiscriminately, but it was a bridge.
* * * * *
The police sergeant stood squarely on both feet and stared at John’s bent back.
“I’ve got a wonderful allotment; don’t know what the missus and I would have done without it during the war. Do you remember those years when there was no onions?”
John took his foot off his spade and straightened his back.
“I was in the country all the war.”
“Ah!” The exclamation expressed all townspeople had felt and were still feeling about the better eating that went on in the country. It also expressed the sergeant’s view that unless Sir John had been in London he did not really know what war was. There could, of course, be the possibility of his having lived on the coast or in some vulnerable area, but he thought it unlikely. He put his question in the form of a statement. “Safe area.”
“Northamptonshire.”
John went back to his digging. It was no good arguing with a Londoner or even attempting to explain. They could not see what it had been like with your house and cottages filled with other people’s children, their parents and, worst of all, their teachers. They could not see what it had been like to do your best, and, in so many cases, get nothing but rudeness and ingratitude. They could not imagine, they who were in the thick of the battle, what the rumours had meant flying up and down a village. “Hear it was terrible in London last night.” The landmarks that rumour demolished; the death roll with rumour’s cruel, incorrect arithmetic. It had been a shocking business when any town had it, but when it was London it was a personal thing; everybody felt it, even those who had never put a foot in the place. London was where the King lived. London was England.
The sergeant was eyeing the bed John was digging with a professional look.
“You ought to grow potatoes. What I say is, a garden isn’t a garden without a nice crop of potatoes.”
“The Committee decides that kind of thing. We fixed on flowers; bulbs for the spring and later on some nice bedding out for colour. There’s a fellow on the Committee says he knows a wonderful place where you can buy boxes of plants in very good condition at the right time of year.”
The sergeant hated to see a good garden go to waste. No one was fonder of a few flowers than he was. He had a nice border of pinks and London pride all round his allotment, and he had a little row of flowers for cutting. On Sunday, when he had finished gardening, he liked, in the summer, to cut a nice bunch of flowers, all much of a height. He liked to see them dangling upside down hung by a bit of string from the handlebars of his bicycle. Still, flowers were the fripperies of a garden. If you had a garden or an allotment you needed vegetables. Splendid rows of potatoes and great swelling onions to be admired almost in silence by other gardeners. His onions were so well thought of by fellow members of the force who had allotments on the same plot as he had that they were taken for granted. Long before they swelled properly someone was sure to say, “Going in for footballs again instead of onions this year, Bert?” The square was not on the sergeant’s beat. He crossed it to get to Piccadilly and catch his bus home. He moved off with the slow, well-paced, heavy steps which years of training had made natural to him.
A barrel-organ was pushed into the square. The woman pushed for the man had only one arm. Across the back of the barrel-organ was written, “Disabled ex-serviceman,” and then, in brackets, “Old Contemptible.”
Towards them, approaching from the other side of the square, came the dust cart. The dustmen greeted the barrel-organ jovially, grinning at its owners from under their swept-up black hats.
“That’s right, cock, give us a bit of music.”
“Music while you work, that’s what we’re going to ’ave, mate.”
The woman set down the barrel-organ and the man turned the handle. There was a rusty creak before, unsteadily, “Love’s old sweet song” trembled out of it.
One of the dustmen went down to the Nettels’ area; he came up carrying on his back a dustbin. As he reached the top of the area steps Gladys looked out of her door.
“What’s happening? You brought an orchestra with you?”
The dustman grinned.
“My mate was sayin’, music while you work, that’s what it is.”
Gladys had her purse in her hand.
“I’m glad to hear an organ. Aren’t so many of them as there used to be. I hope it comes regular. Down where we used to live there was something nearly every night. We even had a harp.”
The dustman grinned at her.
“Preparin’ you for what you’ll be doin’ later on.”
Gladys was delighted with him.
“Get on, sauce box. Lucky if you ever see a harp. Shovelling coal, you’ll be.”
The other dustman caught this exchange.
“If we can get it. Chance is a good thing. Won’t surprise me when ’e gets below if the first thing ’e ’ears is there’s a fuel shortage.”
The woman came to the area railings. She had a tin can. She held it through the bars to Gladys, who put in a sixpence. A window overhead opened and Mabel looked out and threw some coppers on to the pavement. Jenny, thankful for the distraction, leant down and threw a shilling. Hans and Irma had each a threepenny piece. They fell clinking into the road, followed by anxious instructions from Irma.
“Have you seen it? It went by your foot. She has it!”
The dustman looked at his mate.
“We’re in the wrong job. Next time we come we’ll bring a gramophone. I’ll dress you up and say you’re a monkey. We’ll be millionaires before we knows where we are.”
In the buildings still held by the government and those converted into offices, girl typists left their teacups and their typewriters, and hung out of the windows. The music had changed. The barrel-organ was now playing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” The woman walked down the square. As she reached each inhabited house there was a little hailstorm of pennies.
The dustman moved on. The woman pushed the barrel-organ into the next street. The faces withdrew from the windows. The square slid back into the sleepy silence of an August afternoon.
* * * * *
Mabel stood at the end of Penny’s bed.
“It’s no good you lying there and closing your eyes. You’
ve got to get up so you may as well make a start, and the first thing you’re going to do is to eat this breakfast.”
Penny’s hair was scattered over the pillow. Her face against it looked faintly green; she spoke with her eyes closed.
“Get out, you devil, and leave me alone.”
“That’s no way to speak, I’ve got the coffee on and there’s a cereal waiting with the top off the milk, and I can cook your bacon in no time.”
Penny opened one eye.
“Don’t be so revolting. If you had been as tight as I was last night you wouldn’t even mention bacon.”
“What you want to rot your stomach away with drink for I can’t imagine. Disgusting, that’s what it is. Do you know what the time is? It’s half-past eight.” Penny sat up. Mabel clicked her tongue against her palate. “Sleeping naked! What would your father say!”
“Actually Father’s about the only man I wouldn’t discuss the subject with.”
“There’s nice utility nighties in the shops. Haven’t you got any coupons?”
“I wouldn’t be seen dead in a utility nightdress. I’ve got some, made of old evening dresses, actually, but I only wear them when there’s company.”
Grass in Piccadilly Page 8