by A. J. Cronin
The issue was not magnificent, but, oh, how vital it was to her! Let this wage she sought be paltry, it was at least sufficient for her present purpose. Let her be successful and she would abandon all thought of that repugnant single room. Plotting ahead, she saw herself taking a small, unobtrusive place. Her few things she could have removed to the city at small expense. She would have at least a roof over her head for Peter when he returned. And in Glasgow. She had that deeper motive, that more powerful thrust of her endeavour in the thought of establishing herself there. Violently she willed that she might maintain her independence, that she might get this post. She would get it; she must get it; it was vital, urgent, imperative for her good and for Peter’s good.
Suddenly, with a leaping of her heart, she looked up to find Miss Tinto descending the stairs. With a trembling of her limbs she rose and faced the other woman, whose face betrayed nothing of that immense decision which she must now convey.
‘Well,’ said Miss Tinto slowly. ‘I have seen Mr Rattray.’
‘Yes?’ said Lucy in a low voice, and to herself she thought, ‘If I fail here, what in God’s name is to become of me?’ Never in all her efforts had she advanced so far towards the threshold of success.
‘He’s the head of the firm,’ went on Miss Tinto: she seemed in no hurry to disclose the palpitating issue of her interview; and now she explained: ‘Henderson & Shaw is simply the name. Really it is Mr Rattray’s business.’
‘Yes?’ whispered Lucy again. And again she felt the trembling of her limbs.
‘Of course, he really leaves the managing of things to me,’ said Miss Tinto, bridling a little. ‘ I’ve been here for thirty years. He’s got every confidence in me.’
‘Yes?’ Once more Lucy gasped out the word. Was she never to know?
There was a short silence.
‘And so I’ve decided to take up your references,’ said Miss Tinto finally, smiling almost benignantly over her glasses. ‘If they’re satisfactory, you can start next week.’
Something swept over Lucy. She wanted to weep, to laugh, to cry aloud. They had taken her. Again she had her start: again the future lay ready – ready to be moulded by her own, capable hands. With one flashing stroke, the recollection of the past month’s misfortune vanished like a spectre dispelled. Gazing up at Miss Tinto’s ample form, she had a wild, hysterical, almost irresistible impulse to fall on that maternal bosom. But she restrained herself.
‘Thank you,’ she stammered in a low voice. ‘ I’m – I’m glad –’ Then she could say no more.
Chapter Fourteen
A month later she sat breakfasting in her new house – eating a slice of bread and butter to her cup of tea – by the light of a tongue of gas which whistled upwards noisily from its burner. Not yet eight o’clock, a blanket of fog lay over the city, excluding the faint light of the breaking dawn and pressing darkly against the window of the room wherein she sat.
It was not a prepossessing room, nor from her present look did she so regard it, yet it had at least some features of utility. In front of her, beneath the window, was a chipped sink fed by a tap which, though it dripped incessantly, was none the less a most convenient source of water; to the right was the kitchen range, bearing on its blackleaded surface a small gas-ring linked by a swooping pipe to the bracket above the mantelpiece; on her left, fixed against the wall, stood a battered wooden box, half bunker, half settle, combining the storage of fuel with the advantage of an occasional seat. These were the simple fixtures of the room, and the furniture – the small square table at which she sat, two cane-bottomed chairs, her own fluted rocker, and a small iron bed standing behind her in an alcove – was equally severe. Through the open door of this kitchen-bedroom the remainder of the house was visible – a dark and well-like hall joining on to another bedroom, empty except for a wardrobe and another iron bedstead – and a small cubicle of a bathroom containing a bath encased in its mouldering wooden frame and coated with cracked and blistered yellowish enamel. The walls of these rooms, like the walls of the kitchen, were papered throughout by a brownish varnished paper of undecipherable pattern; and in the foggy light they had an aspect almost melancholy.
This, then, was her new house – that ‘ quiet place’ which she had so eagerly anticipated. Yet she had done her best. For two days she had searched – ‘searched high and low’, as she put it to Miss Tinto – and, even with the discerning assistance of Henderson & Shaw, this ‘one room and kitchen’house, with its so-called bathroom, situated on the top storey in a large block given over to such dwellings, had been the only habitation to fulfil the requirements of her respectability and her purse. And how narrowly it missed evading both! The rent was seven shillings a week, which was as much as she could afford, and the house – indeed, the entire block of houses, which ran the length of the street, euphoniously and inappropriately named Flowers Street – breathed of a drab and seedy indigence.
The building, with its narrow ‘dose’ entrances and dark, ill-lit stone stairways, was not quite a tenement. The street itself was not quite out at elbows, but its elbows had worn suspiciously thin. Something – perhaps a clinging vestige of a more glorious past – saved the building and the street, preserved them from an utter meanness. Here, then, to 53 Flowers Street had she come, here of necessity had she settled for the present.
Her immediate desire had been to brighten up the rooms and to furnish them with some degree of comfort. Reluctantly, however, she had been constrained once more to defer inclination to necessity, for, with Peter’s last term’s fees to be paid from her small reserve of money, she had been able to afford only the barest necessities: these two beds, some second-hand chairs, and the cheapest cooking utensils. How bitterly, now, did she regret her parting with her own original furniture so lightly, and for so paltry a sum. But that was done, and done irrevocably.
No, this new house was not quite what she had anticipated; it was not yet a home, though shortly she would make it so – or, if she improved her position and her fortune turned for the better, shortly abandon it for a more suitable abode.
By this time she had finished her breakfast and, with a glance at the cheap nickel alarm clock – this another of her purchases on the mantelpiece, she rose. Turning out the gas, she entered the hall. Here, in the well-like obscurity, she removed her hat and coat from unseen pegs, slipped into them, and, as her key lay already in her pocket, opened the door and went out.
The fog, lying in wraiths upon the street, enveloped her hurrying figure as she emerged from the close mouth. Hereabouts – perhaps from the nearness of the river – these fogs lay with a thicker and more persistent intensity, yet now the brumous haze was lifting, pierced by a red orb of sun which disclosed more clearly the features of the district which, stretching back through Kelvinbank to the Docks, ran a hard-pressed race against the approach of those adjacent dockland slums.
Even now, as she hurriedly traversed it, she felt unconsciously the meanness of its air. The streets were narrow, cobbled, profusely littered in some mysterious fashion by torn, dirty papers, defiled always by orange-peel, a stray tin can, and the scattered yet persistent evidence of dray-horses passing to the docks. The shops were undistinguished. The fronts of those shops, even the pavements chalk-marked by playing children, had an untidy look. Then, at the corner; where Flowers Street reached its tortuous end, stood a large hall, with a board which said, in rich gilt letters: ‘ Garner’s Assembly Rooms. Balls Wed. & Sat. Gents 1s. Ladies 6d.’ And beneath, in smaller type: ‘Gloves optional. Slippers essential.’
That hall, with its blatant board, typified for Lucy the essence of this locality. It was common; it was ordinary; it offended against good taste in general and her own sense of refinement in particular. As she boarded the red tramcar which took her to her work she could not forbear to think on the rude turn in her affairs which had thrust her so unexpectedly into this indifferent background.
And her work. How she regretted the comparative sinecure of her last emp
loyment, with its easy train journeys and a remuneration which in retrospect appeared munificent.
Henderson & Shaw factored slum property. That summarised everything, epitomised the hardships of her present occupation. She saw now that young Frame had been right when he submitted that ‘the post was not much’; she admitted frankly that she detested it. Still, she accepted her position in the same spirit as she accepted 53 Flowers Street, saying outwardly, as it were, with an ironic smile: ‘You’ve come down a step, my woman!’ yet thinking inwardly, without irony, with indeed a resolute intensity, that it would not be long before she stepped up again.
At the corner of Davis Street she got off her tramcar and with a brisk step made her way to the office. Glad to be out of the raw air, she entered quickly.
Already the large and lofty room had ceased to be impressive; with quite familiar ease she slipped past the counter, answered Miss Tinto’s agreeable nod, and went at once to her own small table. At the opposite table sat a man with his hat and overcoat on, and at her entry, without looking up, he rasped out the single word: ‘Morning.’
‘Good morning,’ answered Lucy, smiling slightly. Dandie’s continual aggression towards the universe had not yet ceased to amuse her. He was the other rent-collector – Adam Dandie – a stocky, burly, thick set man with long arms and a weathered, craggy look. His bearing, too, was bluff and downright. Even his dress – the seedy square hat clapped firmly above his bluish bitten ears, the shiny pilot-coat taut to his sturdy figure – betrayed the same uncompromising bluntness. His face had a hard ruddy colour – a fine network of reddish vessels in which his eyes, beneath the greyish tufts of his brows, were small and scrutinising. Stout he was in figure, short in wind, and shorter still in temper: when irritated, he had a testy belligerence, delivering his words with an impact which struck like the kick of a mule. Such was Adam Dandie in all but one essential – his legs. The dreadful fact remains that Dandie was bandy, incomparably bandy: his lower extremities when he stood still described a perfect letter O, and the transverse diameter of that O was wide. This explained his grudge against a universe containing fleas, fog, women, insufficient whisky, and tardy tramcars. This much could be said for Dandie: his grudge was not malicious, and he himself enjoyed it thoroughly.
‘Damn these pencils,’ he now said, looking at one he was sharpening and had again broken. ‘They can’t make them nowadays. Can’t make anything.’
‘I’ll sharpen it for you,’ said Lucy helpfully.
‘Humph,’ he growled. ‘Think you can do it better than me, do you? I don’t think. Probably cut yourself and sue me for damages.’
‘So long as it’s not for breach of promise, Dandie,’ shot out Miss Tinto from her high desk. She did not speak much, but when she did, it was pertinent.
‘Capable of that, too,’ said Dandie, grinding away at the lead. ‘I know women.’
Bandy-legged or no, he implied an intimate acquaintance with the tender sex which had left him scornful yet scatheless, and, as though to make sure, he added, ‘Don’t I just?’
Miss Tinto lifed her eyelids towards Lucy in companionable understanding: despite her superior position, she had now definitely accepted Lucy – for all her formidable figure and slightly bearded face Miss Tinto had a generous heart – and a growing friendship was the result.
‘For some men,’ said she grimly, addressing the air, ‘ hanging is too good.’
The conversation was not continued, for at that moment Rattray entered the office, or more correctly, walked through it to his room. He was an unobtrusive man, tall, angular, rarely seen; now he nodded generally in his passage and was gone.
‘Well,’ said Lucy, rising, ‘fog or no fog, I’d better get begun. White Street for me today. Worse luck!’
‘Don’t get lost, now,’ said Dandie, with a sort of saturnine solicitude.
Lucy smiled and shook her head. Then she took her book and her bag, those insignia of her position – the black leather book and the well-polished leather bag – and went out of the office.
For the moment the sun had gone out, and the fog again worked down in yellow twisting coils. It caught her throat with a stinging rawness and made her cough. Her coat, she decided, was not heavy enough for this weather. Around her, swirling like the fog, was the life of the city; but no longer did she feel that quick answering thrill which once had stirred her. She was used to it now, and she was older (yes, she reflected, she was getting older); she didn’t care about her work, and she didn’t like the fog: she coughed again from its fume as she entered White Street. No, she didn’t like the fog; nor, most emphatically, did she like White Street.
White Street was narrow – a narrow canyon enclosed between two rows of tall tenements, dark and dismal, untroubled by sun on the sunniest days of summer, and now merely a narrow gutter, a chasm, a sewer choked by fog.
It was half-past ten in the morning as she entered the first close to begin her work. The close held a glutinous blackness beside which that outer darkness was as snow to pitch, and it held, also, that odour, indescribable, polluted – the smell of the slums which she already knew, and which already she detested.
Arrived at the first door, she knocked sharply upon the thin panel, using the butt of her pencil – a professional touch acquired through bitter experience after that first week, when she had worn the skin off her knuckles by much misguided rapping.
After she knocked, she waited. In the beginning she had been inclined to scorn the length of time allocated to her for each tenement – with some she was allowed an entire day to complete the collection of the weekly rents – but now she did not scorn that length of time. She knew instead that it was too short. There were, for example, in this one entry, four landings – each corresponding to a storey of the building – and upon each landing were eight one-apartment houses, making a total of thirty-two ‘houses’, accessible through this one narrow close. Twenty such closes in the tenement gave in all the incredible yet actual figure of six hundred and forty dwellings in one small building. Six hundred and forty homes – packed and teeming with a wretched humanity, crammed up together on an acre of mud. And in the short length of White Street there were three such tenements. In this narrow span of street there dwelt, under the civilised conditions of the twentieth century, a total of four thousand human beings. ‘Ticketed houses’, there were, each bearing upon the door a ticket by right of which a night inspector of the Corporation might enter to ensure that no ‘overcrowding’ should occur.
Salutary precautions of a benign authority. Yet, despite that precaution, twelve persons – and three generations – had been known to sleep in harmony and comfort in one of those rooms ten feet wide by fifteen long. At least the harmony and comfort may be assumed; for the landlord heard no complaints.
Abruptly Lucy knocked again. The door opened to the width of an inch and a voice said, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Henderson & Shaw,’ said Lucy briskly; upon her visitations she assumed now this dual personality: Henderson always the aggressor, Shaw the sympathiser. Besides, the term was more impressive than a mere demand for rent.
‘Oh!’ returned the voice, not enquiring, now merely resigned. There was a pause, more expressive than the exclamation; then the door swung back slowly and a woman appeared within the dimly lighted frame. Dark and tangle-haired, her face darkly sallow from its dirt, she turned one gleaming eye towards Lucy. The other eye would never gleam again, for it was gone, and in its place the socket pouted with a blank and rather sinister evasion.
But the woman was not sinister. ‘Come in,’ said she, in a tone mild with the habitual acceptance of the inevitable.
Lucy went in. The room was bare – destitute of furniture save for two wooden boxes and a straw mattress lying on the floor along one side of the room. Upon one of the boxes sat a labouring man; before him upon the other was his breakfast of sausage and bread and tea.
Eating noisily, gulping his saucered tea, he gave no attention to Lucy’s entry, but co
ntinued his hearty breakfast. Nor did the baby, lying upon the mattress, apparently give heed to her, but, flat upon its back, with lack-lustre eyes carrying some wistful vision of the limbo whence it had recently emerged, it mumbled comfortably its rubber teat whilst a stream of lice strolled sluggishly across its puny face. Two rickety children, their twisted legs curled under them upon the floor, did, however, look at her, ceasing their playing with a battered mug to stare at her with interest. Beside the mug, stretched like a streak of Godforsaken lightning, was a yellow whippet bitch, answering to the name of ‘Nellie’. Indeed, as Lucy had already learned, in the slums nine female dogs out of every ten responded to the call of ‘Nellie’.
Meanwhile, the woman, hurrying to the mantelpiece, had swept her hand along its dusty surface, retrieving an object which lay thereon. And now, with a covert twisting of her head, she slipped her fingers across the socket. Then, lo! there was no longer a socket, but a beautiful glass eye, shining, out-glistening its neighbour.
‘You’ll excuse me,’ said she; ‘I wasn’t expecting you so early.’
Honour satisfied, she produced her rent-book and, after much fumbling at her person, the sum of two and six.
‘Here you are,’ she said, proffering the money and the book; then, as Lucy took the one and marked the other, she added almost jealously: ‘It’s still clear, you see.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucy. ‘You’re up to date.’ She looked round the indescribable apartment, and, moved, perhaps, by Mr Shaw and the thought of her own position, she added: ‘You’ve got a struggle, I suppose – I see you haven’t much –’
‘No,’ agreed the woman, with a nod towards the burly deglutinating navvy. ‘No. Him – he’ll never let me buy furniture. We aye get behind with the rent – sooner or later, you see – then the landlord steps in and takes all we’ve got. “What’s the use of it?” says he. “ When there’s nothing to take we just move on and that’s the end of it.”’