The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  Off came long gloves (real suede, Wilfred noticed, and she wore a big red stone set in a gold ring). ‘Where do you think I’ve been?’ she swept on, slicing bread carelessly, while her large bright eyes danced over the three faces.

  ‘In a pub, I should think,’ Mr Taverner said. ‘There was a little boy outside, waiting for his brother who had popped in for a quick one, and you simply had to go in and buy him a packet of ham-flavoured crisps––’

  ‘Absolutely right!’ cried Mrs Cornforth. ‘He was a poppet – tiny, and looked frozen. But you’re wrong about the crisps; they were cheese and onion. A sailor wanted to buy me a drink.’

  ‘Look out, you’re burning the toast. How did you know he was a sailor?’

  ‘He smelt of the sea, of course . . . but I said no, thank you, and flew outside again . . . and what do you think the poppet said?’

  She sat down at the table and bit into her toast, while Miss Dollette refilled the teapot.

  ‘“That’s about the best thing you ever done, Miss.” Miss! Do I look like a “miss”?’ turning suddenly to Wilfred.

  It was as if a warm searchlight had focused on him, and his impulse was to shrink and mutter. But she called to his manhood; and he compelled himself to overcome the shyness and slowly utter a sentence which was at least what he wanted to say, though he could not prevent it from sounding clumsy.

  ‘No one could think you had been allowed to remain unmarried, Mrs . . .’ here the sentence died off into an embarrassed mutter, because he had the English habit of never attending to people’s names. ‘But he probably meant it as if he were speaking to his teacher at school – respect, you know.’

  ‘I love to be respected,’ she said instantly, looking at him over her cup. ‘I suppose it’s because hardly anyone ever has.’

  ‘Katherine dear. You will give Mr Davis the right impression!’

  Mr Taverner had lifted up the cat, and was looking at her over its gleaming black head, and his demure tone was almost a purr. All three broke into affectionate laughter, and Wilfred, laughing too, thought: Oh, if only Mary were here.

  ‘Mr Davis was talking about selling his house,’ said Miss Dollette, taking up some embroidery.

  ‘Well . . . hardly that, really,’ Wilfred said. ‘Selling a house, it isn’t a thing you can make up your mind about in five minutes.’

  ‘Oh but that’s just what it is!’ Mrs Cornforth exclaimed. ‘If you’ve ever even thought about wanting to leave it, if you can bear the thought at all, five minutes is just the right time. I’ve moved twenty-five times in my time.’

  ‘Yes, for some no doubt –’ Wilfred was rather carried away by the recklessness of these remarks, but moved to argument. ‘But I mean, selling a house – it isn’t like getting rid of an old lawnmower. There’s how much you paid for it in the first place, and the time of the year – people like to buy a house in early summer, when the garden’s looking nice – and local prices at the moment, not to speak of the state the place is in . . . decorations, I mean . . .’

  Mrs Cornforth smiled at him; brilliantly, but she did not attempt to continue the argument, and this disconcerted him.

  Though his appearance suggested a certain meekness, in fact Wilfred had his opinions about most subjects, and was prepared to proclaim and defend them when necessary. This ability had been strengthened, rather than weakened, by years of living with a woman of strongly held views, in a circle of equally opinionated acquaintances.

  But the apparent passivity, the smiling silences, of these people, ‘threw’ him. They also listened when he spoke, giving him time to prepare his thoughts, and he was not used to that, either. After one glance at Mrs Cornforth’s face, he was silent. Then he glanced at the clock, and exclaimed:

  ‘I must be getting along. I’d no idea it was so late.’

  ‘I’ll run you home,’ Mr Taverner said, getting up, and in reply to Wilfred’s polite protest added, ‘Of course it’s a trouble. Going out into the cold, starting the car, steering it through that lemming-flight of unfortunate souls, and then getting it home again and putting the blasted thing away. Trouble! When aren’t cars a trouble . . .? But my enjoyment of your company will make up for it.’

  They can talk when they want to, mused Wilfred, picking up muffler and coat from a chair. ‘I’ve heard other people say cars are more trouble than they’re worth,’ he ventured, and was startled by a rich chuckle from Mrs Cornforth.

  ‘There are easier ways of getting there,’ she said, but the words were masked by the scrape of Miss Dollette’s chair as she quickly pushed it back, and stood up and smiled at Wilfred.

  ‘You will come again, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Please promise.’

  ‘Of course I will. I’ve enjoyed myself no end,’ he muttered, using in his embarrassment slang from his young manhood. ‘Thank you all very much.’

  Mrs Cornforth gave him a hand noticeably white and pretty. He felt the faintest breath touch his face; once, then again. Like a pat, patting a child’s cheek, he thought confusedly, following Mr Taverner out of the kitchen. Warm in there, very warm. But not too warm. I feel perfectly all right.

  ‘Katherine,’ said Miss Dollette, looking at her across the table when they heard the front door shut.

  ‘I know, darling. I am sorry. I truly am. But I couldn’t resist it.’

  She got up and wandered round the room, the light playing on her red-brown hair. ‘I love them so. I could –’ she lifted her arms in a wide movement – ‘eat them,’ she ended.

  ‘Frightened,’ said Miss Dollette in a low voice, shaking her head and looking down. ‘Even now.’

  ‘Poor love. Look . . . let’s wash up, shall we . . . I wish Laf would get down to doing my room. That bed of yours, darling! I’m sure William Morris is approving it. I’d like something puffy and stuffy. Couldn’t I have a round one? That’s the newest thing . . . and for God’s sake, some pink. Your blues and greens give me the shivers.’

  Miss Dollette’s laughter came out. A sound different from Katherine’s, but equally pretty.

  ‘I am sorry, I just can’t . . . you’d have liked my first attempt even less, all dingy browns and greys. And just at the moment I’m busy on the dining room, and you know how it takes it out of you . . . . no, you don’t, of course, I did try hard with your room . . .’

  ‘“Hard” is the word . . . do you think we’ll get our little man?’

  ‘He’s attracted, I feel, and he does need us. But Katherine, we must not frighten him. You and your kisses. – And Laf with his “taking time and trouble”. I’ll warn him again. Vanity,’ she ended more softly – though her voice had not been loud – ‘Pride’s little sister. When will that pair truly not trouble us again, for ever?’

  ‘Too soon for me.’ Katherine shrugged. ‘Now – washing-up’.

  6

  Sylvie

  Autumn passed into winter, and Mary did not notice.

  One morning she glanced out of the window while dressing and saw bronze leaves flying across the grey roofs and felt a certain current of air, which haunted her attic, blowing colder. She put on the warm underclothing that she had asked her father to send (c/o 6 Hadham Street, N5 but that’s not where I’m living); her mother had drilled her into assuming it at this time of the year, and it was thick and creamy and unfashionable, like Mary’s own body.

  There came another morning when her boots went along sturdily through snow.

  Everything was of such interest to her in London that she thought of her father as little as she did about the change in the season; though the postcard, always with its brief piece of good news or sensible comment, went off regularly every Friday afternoon – Dad’s weekend treat, as she thought of it.

  Mr Grant and Mrs Cadman continued the unvarying path of their existence, and never asked her any questions beyond an occasional ‘Well, how’s business going, eh?’ should they happen to encounter her in the hall or on the stairs.

  She had made no friends. London was endlessly interesti
ng, and the people exciting to look at and to wonder about; but it cost money, most of fifty pence, to get to Oxford Street; and if she walked, which she did before the weather broke, she became inconveniently hungry. Also, walking wore out one’s boots.

  She took to staying at home on Sundays. There were clothes to wash, and hair. A burst of correspondence with Sandra had been short-lived. Sandra had suddenly decided on passing her A levels, as a result of what she described as a ‘truly grisly’ talk with her parents, and could spare time to write only an occasional groaning and envious postcard. For who would want to work for A levels, or even pass them, when it was possible to live in a bed-sitter in London and work in a tourists’ souvenir shop?

  Number 20 Rowena Road housed, in addition to Mary and Mr Grant and Mrs Cadman, Mr Bailey who had been there for seventeen years and was aged seventy-three; Miss Wayne, who recently had retired from forty years at Benson & Broadbent’s Ladies Outfitters (which had turned almost overnight into one of those boutiques, thereby supplying Miss Wayne with conversational material for the rest of her life); and, in the basement, Sylvie Carano.

  ‘You mustn’t take notice of what Sylvie says. She’s a liar,’ was what Mrs Cadman had said, with uncharacteristic strength of statement, when Mary had said, on the landing one morning: ‘I saw a girl go downstairs.’

  Mary was lonely for a girlfriend without knowing it; the loneliness for a boyfriend was something different, to be approached, even in thought, with deep and conscious care.

  ‘She’ll be on to you before you can turn round,’ Mrs Cadman went on, ‘suggesting you go on the town. (Up West, it was, in my day.) You’ll pay for everything and she won’t pay you back. Now I’ve told you – you’re on your own, as they say. And she’s no more Carano than I am. She comes from Queen’s Crescent, I’ll be bound – there’s an Italian café up there called Carano’s. Higgins. I saw it on a label on her case, half-torn off. Sylvia Higgins, that’s who she is. Sylvie Carano! Yes I don’t think, to put it vulgarly. Unless I get her rent on the dot next Friday, out she goes.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ nodded Mary, thinking: Keep your cool, she can’t have had time to be all that bad, she doesn’t look more than thirteen.

  But she also thought that Sylvie might be worth encountering.

  Hair was what the beholder was first, and most, conscious of, on encountering Sylvie. Hers was cut in the newest mode: thinned away into elf-locks at the base of the neck, clubbed over her forehead into a ferocious fringe, and given body by some kind of goo. It was then dyed a whitish green. Under the fringe, a pair of frightened greenish eyes looked out, and a long nose. Her skirt suggested two purple wool handkerchiefs sewn together, and the top of her was covered by a purple sweater and a long sleeveless black crochet jacket. She wore white lace stockings with holes in.

  ‘Hi,’ said Sylvie to Mary, when they met a few evenings later on number 20’s doorstep.

  ‘Hi,’ Mary responded.

  ‘Quite a change to see a face under ninety round here,’ Sylvie gabbled on, while both girls felt for their latchkeys. ‘You living here?’

  Her voice was as thin as her legs. Mary looked ten years older, in her dark green coat (but it needed cleaning now) and the nylon-fur Esquimau hood bought from Mrs Levy at 10 per cent discount, and the boots (but they needed mending).

  Mary nodded.

  ‘Like one of these here horror films, isn’t it?’ Sylvie confided. ‘I bin here a month, but it feels like it was six.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s too bad.’ They were in the hall now, with its fitted carpet and gay contrasting wallpapers. Mary carefully shut the front door.

  ‘And quiet! If there’s anythink I cannot stand, it’s quiet. Gets me down. You working?’

  ‘Yes. In a dress and souvenir shop.’

  Mary wanted to get up to her attic and cook a chop and eat a third of a lettuce and some grated carrot and two potatoes and a third of a bar of milk fruit and nut chocolate, but she made no move. The attraction of a young face, even one half concealed in pale green fringe, was stronger than that of supper.

  ‘Thought you might a still been at some posh school. Your gear isn’t half square. Haven’t been in London long, have yer?’

  ‘No. How did you know?’

  ‘Oh, yer can tell. Least, I always can. Kind of a look,’ Sylvie said airily, while her eyes roved restlessly about. ‘I got a smashing record-player. One of me boyfriends knocked it off.’

  She paused, looking mysterious; at least, Mary decided that this was the impression intended by lowering the head and glancing around under the fringe and dilating the nostrils.

  ‘I reckon my record-player’d set me back thirty pounds if I’d bought it. But one of me boyfriends whipped it for me,’ Sylvie said again.

  Mary did not quite believe this. She already suspected Sylvie of a wish to make herself interesting. Sticking it on, thought Mary.

  ‘Wasn’t he afraid of being caught?’ she asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘He didn’t exactly walk out of the shop with it under his arm, love,’ snapped Sylvie with a shrill giggle. ‘You trying to be funny?’

  ‘I got to get my supper – I’m starving. See you –’ and Mary moved decidedly towards the stairs.

  ‘Well I shan’t stay here,’ Sylvie suddenly called after her, standing still and staring at her from under the fringe. ‘Getting me down, it is.’

  Mary made a vague gesture and disappeared.

  However, about ten o’clock, when she was sitting by the gas fire in her dressing-gown, alternately struggling with Sinister Street (which she had found with some other books on top of the chest of drawers) and wishing that she were at a dance, there came a scrabbling on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Mary stood up, and in her thick dressing-gown (which needed cleaning) with her thick hair (which had been washed on Sunday) tied back, she looked capable of dealing with anyone. But she did not unlock the door.

  ‘It’s me. Sylvie. You know. Downstairs.’

  Oh Lord, thought Mary, recalling the warnings of Mrs Cadman, and then dismissing the notion that Sylvie might have called to suggest their going ‘on the town’. Not that Mary would have minded. It wasn’t that late – but she had no spare money.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ she demanded.

  There was a pause, and something about ‘a bit of a natter’, and ‘enough to give you the willies’. Annoyed yet welcoming the visit, Mary unlocked the door.

  ‘Locked in, were yer? Well, I don’t blame yer. That old Grant – he’s awful.’

  Sylvie’s whining voice began at once, as she came in, wearing a pink nylon housecoat burgeoning with black frills. Mary’s eyes fixed instantly upon it. But, since the incident of the micro-mini skirt, she had told herself, implacably, that such clothes were not for her.

  ‘Thought I’d just see’f you was in,’ half-whispered Sylvie, who had gone up to the gas fire and was now crouched over it.

  ‘Well, you can see I am.’ Mary’s tone had something of Torford’s east wind about it. But Sylvie was not the kind that notices tones.

  ‘You got a telly?’ she asked, peering up from under the fringe.

  ‘No.’ Mary did not smile. She supposed tea must be offered; even biscuits.

  ‘She’s got one. Won’t let you get near it, though, not even for Top o’ the Pops.’

  ‘How about some tea?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Sylvie wriggled like a shy five-year-old.

  Mary, who was accustomed to hearing ‘I’d love it’ or ‘Thanks, that would be fine,’ when tea was offered, marched across to the cupboard and carefully measured out a single scoop of tea. She was not following the one for each person and one for the pot rule for Sylvie Carano-Higgins.

  The room was quiet, except for the roaring of the gas fire, converted some three weeks ago to North Sea Gas, and suggesting, to an imaginative hearer, the sound of the waves from beneath which its power was drawn. The floor was warmly covered
with a shabby brown carpet matching the thick, faded brown curtains. The walls were a dingy cream. In a glass vase with a gilt rim glowed one large, amber chrysanthemum.

  ‘Mr Grant gave me that,’ Mary remarked, seeing Sylvie’s eyes wandering (so far as their activities behind the fringe were ascertainable) in its direction.

  ‘Kind of him, I’m sure, seeing he’s got a congservatory full. He arter yer? He looks at me legs,’ and Sylvie giggled.

  It occurred to Mary that, if Mr Grant did, he must be hard up indeed for legs to look at.

  ‘Of course he isn’t. He was showing me the greenhouse and I said he had some lovely flowers and he gave me that. It’s lasted a week already.’

  ‘I bet he is after yer. I bet yer. Old men, they always are,’ Sylvie said drearily. ‘Pinching yer bum, peeking at yer legs. All they think of, once they’re old.’

  ‘You must have met some funny ones, that’s all I can say – here, have a biscuit.’ Mary held out, on a plate, the remains of a twopenny packet.

  ‘Sooner ’ave a slice o’ bread – or a bacon sandwich – if you got it.’

  Mary felt that the last words were a distinct concession. There was the faintest hint in them of consideration for someone else – no more than a grudging shade, but it was there.

  ‘I’ve got two slices of bread. They were for my breakfast. But you can have one if you want it.’ She got up resignedly and began getting things out of the cupboard. Mrs Cadman’s warning had lost no time in coming true: Sylvie was on to her. But Mrs Cadman had not warned her that the skeletal, green-haired Sylvie would inspire pity. She must come from an Awful Home, thought Mary, remembering various verdicts of her mother’s.

  She silently handed a sandwich to Sylvie on the plate which had held the biscuits. She expected the girl to attack it like a wolf, as people did when half starved in the thrillers Mary occasionally read; but Sylvie dinted the soft crust with her chalk-white, pointed teeth and then, after a few minutes’ silent nibbling, put the spoiled food back on the plate.

  ‘Don’t you want it?’

  Sylvie shook her head. She had brought out a packet of cigarettes, and was lighting one.