Here Be Dragons

by Stella Gibbons

  “No, it was not. The coffee—! It’s so easy to make good coffee, Nell.”

  “Not cheaply. Coffee’s nearly ten shillings a pound.” Nell was partisan about what they served at The Primula.

  “But if you make it very strong to begin with it goes much farther. The stuff you sell here is hogwash.”

  “So Miss Berringer says.”

  “Was that your boss? The shingled one who peeped round the curtain? She looks a typical nice spinster. Why do they invariably take to keeping tea-shops?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nell, looking wooden, and thinking about the boy-friend’s car parked every night outside The Everyman, the long telephone conversations, the nighties and undies and nylons which arrived in boxes from Knightsbridge shops.

  Her aunt, looking at her, wondered if Nell would keep a tea-shop one day. There were the materials for spinsterhood in those fine bones and straight hair and steady expression. On the other hand, she might become unexpectedly elegant; even attractive to men. Certainly she did not lack character, and one could never tell.

  “I’ve left you sixpence to show you I don’t disapprove,” Lady Fairfax said. “You aren’t a bit like me to look at, Nell, except that you’ve inherited my nose, but I do think you’ve got some of my grit. I came up the hard way, you know.” She sighed. “That’s why I understand your doing this. Of course, you’re an ungrateful baggage, but I do understand. You don’t think your father would like to come and be my social secretary when Gardis goes back in July, do you? Yes, you can laugh—I know it’s funny to think of, but he ought to be earning something, you know. It would be good for his self-respect. And he wouldn’t mind then so much about you.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’d like it at all, Aunt Peggy. And I’m sure he wouldn’t be any good at it, either. You know he isn’t much use at talking to new people. Besides, I don’t think he does mind about me as much as he did. I always give the cash to Mother, so that the idea of tips shan’t upset him, and I think he rather likes hearing about all the dotty things,” Nell casually sank her voice, “that go on here.”

  “You think he’s better, then, since you came to Hampstead?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is.”

  “Dear old Marty. Bless him. (Oh, there’s Barker. What a fool the man is.) Well …”

  “You’ve got a new chauffeur.” Nell halted on the threshold, ready to dart back at the summons of the unearthly bell, “What happened to Robert Nathaniel?”

  She made no attempt to disentangle a coherent story from the sentences—“too big for his boots … hordes of black relations … couldn’t really cope …” which followed, but nodded brightly when Lady Fairfax, turning back as she got into the car, called in ringing tones: “Then you’re really all right and I needn’t worry about you?” and gave the order to drive away.

  Nell turned back into the tea-room. Yes, she was really all right—so far as money and an amusing job went, and as for the future, she would have her tea-shop. She already possessed ten pounds saved towards it, lodged comfortably in the Post Office, and if she were not earning anything like the majestic sum named by Benedict, she was making an average of eight pounds a week, with no deductions for food or fares because the former was supplied by The Primula, and she walked of course to her work. And she loved the job.

  She desired to please. She had the one necessary characteristic for someone who must daily encounter, and satisfy, dozens of people, and Miss Berringer was congratulating herself upon Betty’s replacement, for while Betty’s roving eye had occasionally led to misunderstandings, Nell’s eye did not rove at all, and this was only one of the new girl’s desirable qualities.

  “Yes, we’re a happy ship,” Miss Berringer would sing out when someone got temperamental, or something fused or stuck in the kitchen, and although the announcement sometimes had a queer note of recklessness sounding under its obvious irony, on the whole it was true: the staff of The Primula did get on well together.

  Nell soon learned to beware Mary’s talent for mixing malice inextricably with good-nature and to value the kindness which Tansy (whose real name was Mrs. Tanswood) concealed under a sharp manner. Mrs. Cooper, dressed in the newest fashion adopted by the Common Woman, was the gentlest, most modest creature that ever drooped cigarette from lower lip, while the evening cook was an amiable bun named Miss Cody, whom failing health had forced to give up her work as a district nurse and to take up light cooking in the evening of her days.

  They all said that they liked Nell, although Mary always added, ah, what was there to dislike in the girl?—that question which invariably succeeds in lowering the temperature of approval. In fact, there were a temper with a low flash-point, much obstinacy and secrecy, and a strong will, but fortunately for herself Nell not only had all these traits well in hand, but found temper and obstinacy easier and easier to manage as the weeks went on, and an uncharacteristically fine summer filled The Primula, day after day, to overflowing.

  To fly out of the house every morning, waving impatiently to a parent who might be looming vacantly at an upper window and perhaps be rewarded with a glimpse of John; to scramble into apron and flatties while exchanging gossip with Mary about yesterday’s cream that hadn’t turned after all, and what was to be done with the two snacks that were left over, and Miss B.’s new hat; to avoid, from some double delicacy of class-feeling and fellow-feeling, too jocose or intimate a reference to Miss B.’s outing last night with the boy-friend whom Nell had never seen; to sail through the morning coffees; to lay up for lunches; bolt elevenses while hearing the latest school triumph of the rock-solid little boy, Tansy’s Julian; to thrust her way with laden trays expertly from table to table between the hours of twelve and two; bolt lunch; lay up for teas; do her face and her hair, listen to Miss Berringer cursing with well-bred indifference to kitchen comment, the customers streaming in from the sun-drenched Heath; to fling tips into the begging-bowl without pausing to count them while juggling during the hours from three to six with pots of tea, plates of bread and butter, pastries, scones and cakes, and jugs of hot water whose handles burnt her fingers, and little dishes of glistening watered jam; to see out of the corner of her eye the patient thirsty people wandering in through the door and resignedly or hopefully surveying the crowded room; to escort French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and English children to what most of them called the toilet and once to receive a strangling hug and a “What’s your name? I love you”, from a polite small American with whom it was a case at first sight; to feel the heat of the day beginning to decline outside and to hear Mary’s evening hymn to her stomach and legs begin; to see the stream of hopeful faces begin to slacken; and the pile of dirty dishes and saucepans whisked away under Tansy’s expert hand; to wonder whether, this evening, Mrs. Cooper’s cigarette ash would fall at last into the bowl of trifle set ready for the suppers and, finally, to shut the door on the last pair of lingering lovers and put up the ‘Closed until 7’ notice; then to sweep through, wipe down, lay up for suppers and at last, in the orderly quiet of the redded room, to count her tips. This was Nell’s day.

  Then back through the steep streets where the evening light lay with leafy shadows on the brown brick cottages, and the red and blue roofs looked out across the rolling green masses and meadows of the Heath. Throughout the day, whenever she happened to glance up for a second from the crowds and the hurry and the rush, a glimpse of those roofs and trees reminded her of the summer streets round about; the laburnam saplings and the ancient may-bushes looking over low little fences and rosy walls, the old cobbled yards, set with the tubs and pots and boxes of a district scamped for garden-space, spilling over with rich flowers. And always, between roofs and through arches and at the end of long narrow alleys, the blue dip to London, lying far below.

  “You seemed very matey with that glamorous type; was she a buddy?” enquired Miss Berringer, when Nell re-entered the kitchen’s cluttered calm after the departure of Lady Fairfax, but was too busy making meringues to pay any at
tention to Nell’s answering mutter. Nell was congratulating herself that neither Tansy nor Mary, both of whom naturally owned a telly, had taken it into her head to peep into the tea-room five minutes ago; Miss Berringer, who despised television, and did not own a set, had not recognized Lady Fairfax. Nell was not anxious to become an object of envious curiosity to The Primula’s staff.

  As for her aunt, although she was relieved that her own action had not been disapproved, it was a mild kind of relief, for aunts, so far as Nell was now concerned, took their place with parents in the back seats.

  She never thought about Akkro Products nowadays, but she had not quite finished with them yet.

  On the late afternoon of Easter Saturday, when rain had sent the crowds flocking off the Heath into every café and tea-shop in Hampstead, and Tansy’s threatened queue for the toilet had become a reality, and Nell was pushing her way with trays held high above the heads of the customers between the crowded tables, trying to avoid catching any one particular eye and to remember half-a-dozen orders, a pert voice called above the buzz of conversation, comment and gossip—“Tea and pastries, please, ducks. And we’re not paying for them, neither.”

  She looked round, with some difficulty amidst the press, and saw the self-consciously smiling faces and fuzzy heads of The Islanders.

  She was surprisingly glad. Her heart felt really warm towards them.

  “Hullo! Hullo, Maureen—Pat—Sylvia—how nice to see you. Isn’t this ghastly? Wait a minute …”

  She managed to get close enough, while setting tea and scones in front of an old lady who grasped at them greedily, to whisper—“Those people over there, in the corner, have nearly finished … I’ll just get their bills … you work your way over there and wait by the table, and the minute they get up, sit down. And don’t let those two fat women by the door see what you’re doing.”

  When they were successfully seated, and Nell had soothed the fat ladies and steered them off to wait for another table, she made her way across to The Islanders with what she could scrape together of cakes and pastries, and put it down in front of them with a pot of tea.

  “There. ’Fraid that’s all I can manage. It’s been a terrific day … you must come again when we’re not so rushed … it’s awfully nice to see you all … how are you?” (“Miss …” a resigned moo from a distant table. “Coming …” fluted Nell in a serious tone, without turning her head.)

  “Oh … we was just up this way. So we thought …” mumbled Maureen, ducking her head almost into the teapot as she stirred its contents.

  “Not a very large caff, is it?” said Pat, looking stonily about her. It was plain that Pat had not changed in five weeks.

  “Syl’s engaged!” cried Maureen, popping out of the teapot and dragging from behind its owner’s back a red hand adorned with a large diamond, “Get a load of her ring.”

  “Do shut up, Maur. You are mean …”

  “Smashing,” Nell said admiringly. “I’ll be back in a minute …”

  “Haven’t you got any creamies?” Pat was looking at the cakes with icy discontent.

  “No creamies … sorry. They’re always the first to run out on a rush-day. Is Maureen still crazy about Dicky Valentine?” Nell paused, with laden tray, and a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on her hopefully.

  “She’s still crackers, if that’s what you mean.” Sylvia regarded her friend indulgently, while Maureen crimsoned under her unhealthy skin.

  Exchanging snatches of gossip as she attended to the tables in their corner of the room, she learned that The Islanders had recently deserted Akkro Products in a body and gone to a firm with premises nearby.

  They were not sure what it did. Sylvia thought it was something to do with these here little machines. Except for the ring, her engagement did not seem to have progressed beyond what Nell had heard of it in the cloakroom at Lecouver Street: I went to the pictures with ’im, ’e gave me this handbag, we was in the pictures, we was going to the pictures, ’e wanted me to go to the pictures but course I washed me hair Friday same’s usual.

  Darting between tea-room and kitchen, carefully setting down the teapots with their burning-hot handles, conveying the triangular slices of bread scraped over with margarine to her patient or impatient customers, Nell found time to think that she could enjoy an engagement like that; drifting from one small pleasure to another with someone, giving affection and companionship, and receiving admiration and companionship in return.

  She was beginning to have a dim, vague dread of violent love. The bed with the thin mattress and blackened brass frame in Benedict’s room had impressed her. Did he lie awake on it through the long nights, when the faint lamplight was reflected in the olive-coloured canal and the little houses were black and silent, with that look of helpless love on his face? Soberly, Nell thought that it was a pity when someone got into that state. She hoped that she never would; sooner than be like that, she would prefer not to love or marry at all.

  There were a good many jokes about the three twopences which The Islanders left under their plates, but in fact joking covered some confusion on their part.

  Nell’s own temperament, with its roots in the liberal tradition upheld at Vernon Lodge and The General’s House, had combined with the shortage of labour and the decay of the class-system in England to produce a situation too complex for the privileged children of the new proletariat to grasp, and they felt only an uncomfortable mingling of embarrassment, superiority and mockery. This did not, however, prevent them from still liking Nell.

  Idling tube-wards through the narrow streets under the sycamore shadows, their light thin voices dismissed her:

  “You’d think she’d smarten herself up, wouldn’t you? Have a Toni.”

  “She’s got a black dress. But they have to in posh caffs.”

  “I like her, though.”

  “She ought to have a perm. I think it looks sawful.”

  “I couldn’t stand that life, honest. I should have a nervous breakdown …” quavered Maureen, whose temperament was very ready to indulge in this latest refinement available to the Common Man.

  “I like her, though,” repeated Pat, who was the least a female, and the most a person, of the three. “She’s got some guts. I bet you she does get her own caff. May take her a hundred years and we’ll all look like Rip Van Winkle when she does, but I bet you she gets it.”

  “I should have a nervous breakdown, honest …”

  “You!” Pat threw her a sidelong glance out of the eyes that had summed up most of the young men south of Waterloo Bridge and north of the Oval. “One day you’ll stay in the sun too long and melt.”

  Nell was hurrying on with her work, kindly feelings towards the three lingering in her heart. She was never to see two of them again, but the star-gazers would have said triumphantly, some six months later, that undoubtedly her Destiny was Linked with that of Pat.

  She hoped The Islanders had not been inspired to leave Akkro Products by her example; if they had, Mr. Riddle’s comments upon her sojourn there must be black indeed, but on this point she was re-assured by a visit from Mr. Hughes himself; he dropped in to The Primula for a coffee (no biscuits) on his way by car to the north, and, although seeming rather surprised that Nell did not already own the shop, was most amiable to her and said nothing about anyone else’s having left.

  She had other visitors, too; sometimes, on the afternoon that he was not working in the restaurant, Benedict would bring Gardis in to drink many cups of tea thirstily, without ever glancing at food, after one of those wanderings over the Heath during which, Nell gathered, they argued about his future.

  As she moved between the tables, she could not help overhearing sentences.

  “… as a barman in Fez,” he might be saying.

  He had a worn shirt, not quite clean, and threadbare trousers that seemed slipping off his meagre hips, but the afternoon’s sun had caught his freckled skin and given to his face a healthy colour that seemed to contradict his desolate clothe
s.

  “You won’t go to Fez as a barman. You’ll go as a lecturer or something,” from Gardis. “You’re getting tied up to your old B.B.C. You’re becoming a bourgeois. It’s death to Art; death.”

  “Not necessarily, Gardis. It is possible to write poetry almost anywhere, if only you don’t have to … grind it out in a hurry … and even then it has been done … I can imagine living in Camden Town all my life and never seeing Venice again, and still writing good poetry. Hardly anyone knows anything about writing poetry, you see. The truest things that have been said about writing it were thrown-off, almost, by poets themselves … but the more you think about them, the truer they are … I don’t want to go to Fez to get fresh material for poetry, I want to go there because … I want to feel.”

  Nell put down a plate of mild little cakes in front of two schoolmistresses out for an afternoon’s tramp. She was thinking that his face looked as if he had been feeling rather too much.

  “Stay here and feel,” Gardis said in a low tone, leaning across the table, and she smiled at him.

  “Sometimes I can’t feel, I don’t know why …”

  Nell was not exactly eavesdropping, but she was not shutting her ears to a conversation which she knew that she should not hear. But it was difficult to ignore Benedict’s unhappiness, because she liked him.

  “I shall go when I’ve finished this play for the Third Programme,” he said. “And I want to write it. I want fame, you see. I want it very much. Poet’s food is love and fame …”

  “You get plenty of love,” she said, with her grin.

  “Do I?”

  “I seem to think so—unless I’m imagining things. I can’t make you out. I think you’re a psycho—but then all poets are psychos, of course. …”

  “Of course …” he said dejectedly, accepting the verdict of the age.

  The joy which sometimes came to him while he was dreaming over the roofs and clouds visible from his window, or when the first line of a poem sprang up within him like a fountain, these, no doubt, were part of the ‘psycho’s’ temperament; the reverse of the neurotic gloom.