“He can’t say anything, if I pay for it,” he muttered, his face jerking, and he marched off into the kitchen with the soaking cloth.
“Il pleure de colère,” said Madame delightedly, patting her hair with her plump hands.
The café slowly filled. It grew very warm. Blue smoke mounted from the tables and hung about the haymaker’s hat in misty wreaths. There was a suffocating smell of onion soup and boots and damp cloth. In the din the door sounded again. It opened to let in a weed of a fellow, who stood with his back against it, one hand shading his eyes.
“Hullo! you’ve got the bandage off?”
“How does it feel, mon vieux?”
“Let’s have a look at them.”
But he made no reply. He shrugged and walked unsteadily to a table, sat down and leant against the wall. Slowly his hand fell. In his white face his eyes showed, pink as a rabbit’s. They brimmed and spilled, brimmed and spilled. He dragged a white cloth out of his pocket and wiped them.
“It’s the smoke,” said someone. “It’s the smoke tickles them up for you.”
His comrades watched him a bit, watched his eyes fill again, again brim over. The water ran down his face, off his chin on to the table. He rubbed the place with his coat-sleeve, and then, as though forgetful, went on rubbing, rubbing with his hand across the table, staring in front of him. And then he started shaking his head to the movement of his hand. He gave a loud strange groan and dragged out the cloth again.
“Huit, neuf, dix,” said the card-players.
“P’tit, some more bread.”
“Two coffees.”
“Un Picon!”
The waiting-boy, quite recovered, but with scarlet cheeks, ran to and fro. A tremendous quarrel flared up among the card-players, raged for two minutes, and died in flickering laughter. “Ooof!” groaned the man with the eyes, rocking and mopping. But nobody paid any attention to him except Madame. She made a little grimace at her two soldiers.
“Mais vous savez, c’est un peu dégoûtant, ça,” she said severely.
“Ah, oui, Madame,” answered the soldiers, watching her bent head and pretty hands, as she arranged for the hundredth time a frill of lace on her lifted bosom.
“V’là, Monsieur!” cawed the waiting-boy over his shoulder to me. For some silly reason I pretended not to hear, and I leaned over the table smelling the violets, until the little corporal’s hand closed over mine.
“Shall we have un peu de charcuterie to begin with?” he asked tenderly.
—
“In England,” said the blue-eyed soldier, “you drink whisky with your meals. N’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle? A little glass of whisky neat before eating. Whisky and soda with your bifteks, and after, more whisky with hot water and lemon.”
“Is it true that?” asked his great friend who sat opposite, a big red-faced chap with a black beard and large moist eyes and hair that looked as though it had been cut with a sewing machine.
“Well, not quite true,” said I.
“Si, si,” cried the blue-eyed soldier. “I ought to know. I’m in business. English travellers come to my place, and it’s always the same thing.”
“Bah, I can’t stand whisky,” said the little corporal. “It’s too disgusting the morning after. Do you remember, ma fille, the whisky in that little bar at Montmartre?”
“Souvenir tendre,” sighed Blackbeard, putting two fingers in the breast of his coat and letting his head fall. He was very drunk.
“But I know something that you’ve never tasted,” said the blue-eyed soldier, pointing a finger at me; “something really good.” Cluck he went with his tongue. “É-patant! And the curious thing is that you’d hardly know it from whisky except that it’s” — he felt with his hand for the word — “finer, sweeter perhaps, not so sharp, and it leaves you feeling gay as a rabbit next morning.”
“What is it called?”
“Mirabelle!” He rolled the word round his mouth, under his tongue. “Ah-ha, that’s the stuff.”
“I could eat another mushroom,” said Blackbeard. “I would like another mushroom very much. I am sure I could eat another mushroom if Mademoiselle gave it to me out of her hand.”
“You ought to try it,” said the blue-eyed soldier, leaning both hands on the table and speaking so seriously that I began to wonder how much more sober he was than Blackbeard. “You ought to try it, and to-night. I would like you to tell me if you don’t think it’s like whisky.”
“Perhaps they’ve got it here,” said the little corporal, and he called the waiting-boy. “P’tit!”
“Non, Monsieur,” said the boy, who never stopped smiling. He served us with dessert plates painted with blue parrots and horned beetles.
“What is the name for this in English?” said Blackbeard, pointing. I told him “Parrot.”
“Ah, mon Dieu! … Pair-rot….” He put his arms round his plate. “I love you, ma petite pair-rot. You are sweet, you are blonde, you are English. You do not know the difference between whisky and mirabelle.”
The little corporal and I looked at each other, laughing. He squeezed up his eyes when he laughed, so that you saw nothing but the long curly lashes.
“Well, I know a place where they do keep it,” said the blue-eyed soldier. “Café des Amis. We’ll go there — I’ll pay — I’ll pay for the whole lot of us.” His gesture embraced thousands of pounds.
But with a loud whirring noise the clock on the wall struck half-past eight; and no soldier is allowed in a café after eight o’clock at night.
“It is fast,” said the blue-eyed soldier. The little corporal’s watch said the same. So did the immense turnip that Blackbeard produced and carefully deposited on the head of one of the horned beetles.
“Ah, well, we’ll take the risk,” said the blue-eyed soldier, and he thrust his arms into his immense cardboard coat. “It’s worth it,” he said. “It’s worth it. You just wait.”
Outside, stars shone between wispy clouds and the moon fluttered like a candle flame over a pointed spire. The shadows of the dark plume-like trees waved on the white houses. Not a soul to be seen. No sound to be heard but the Hsh! Hsh! of a far-away train, like a big beast shuffling in its sleep.
“You are cold,” whispered the little corporal. “You are cold, ma fille.”
“No, really not.”
“But you are trembling.”
“Yes, but I’m not cold.”
“What are the women like in England?” asked Blackbeard. “After the war is over I shall go to England. I shall find a little English woman and marry her — and her pair-rot.” He gave a loud choking laugh.
“Fool!” said the blue-eyed soldier, shaking him; and he leant over to me. “It is only after the second glass that you really taste it,” he whispered. “The second little glass and then — ah! — then you know.”
Café des Amis gleamed in the moonlight. We glanced quickly up and down the road. We ran up the four wooden steps, and opened the ringing glass door into a low room lighted with a hanging lamp, where about ten people were dining. They were seated on two benches at a narrow table.
“Soldiers!” screamed a woman, leaping up from behind a white soup-tureen — a scrag of a woman in a black shawl. “Soldiers! At this hour! Look at that clock, look at it.” And she pointed to the clock with the dripping ladle.
“It’s fast,” said the blue-eyed soldier. “It’s fast, Madame. And don’t make so much noise, I beg of you. We will drink and we will go.”
“Will you?” she cried, running round the table and planting herself in front of us. “That’s just what you won’t do. Coming into an honest woman’s house this hour of the night — making a scene — getting the police after you. Ah, no! Ah, no! It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is.”
“Sh!” said the little corporal, holding up his hand. Dead silence. In the silence we heard steps passing.
“The police,” whispered Blackbeard, winking at a pretty girl with rings in her ears, who smiled back at him, saucy
. “Sh!”
The faces lifted, listening. “How beautiful they are!” I thought. “They are like a family party having supper in the New Testament….” The steps died away.
“Serve you very well right if you had been caught,” scolded the angry woman. “I’m sorry on your account that the police didn’t come. You deserve it — you deserve it.”
“A little glass of mirabelle and we will go,” persisted the blue-eyed soldier.
Still scolding and muttering she took four glasses from the cupboard and a big bottle. “But you’re not going to drink in here. Don’t you believe it.” The little corporal ran into the kitchen. “Not there! Not there! Idiot!” she cried. “Can’t you see there’s a window there, and a wall opposite where the police come every evening to …”
“Sh!” Another scare.
“You are mad and you will end in prison — all four of you,” said the woman. She flounced out of the room. We tiptoed after her into a dark smelling scullery, full of pans of greasy water, of salad leaves and meat-bones.
“There now,” she said, putting down the glasses. “Drink and go!”
“Ah, at last!” The blue-eyed soldier’s happy voice trickled through the dark. “What do you think? Isn’t it just as I said? Hasn’t it got a taste of excellent — ex-cellent whisky?”
Pictures
—1919—
Eight o’clock in the morning. Miss Ada Moss lay in a black iron bedstead, staring at the ceiling. Her room, a Bloomsbury top-floor back, smelled of soot and face powder and the paper of fried potatoes she brought in for supper the night before.
“Oh, dear,” thought Miss Moss, “I am cold. I wonder why it is that I always wake up so cold in the mornings now. My knees and feet and my back — especially my back; it’s like a sheet of ice. And I always was such a one for being warm in the old days. It’s not as if I was skinny — I’m just the same full figure that I used to be. No, it’s because I don’t have a good hot dinner in the evenings.”
A pageant of Good Hot Dinners passed across the ceiling, each of them accompanied by a bottle of Nourishing Stout ….
“Even if I were to get up now,” she thought, “and have a sensible substantial breakfast….” A pageant of Sensible Substantial Breakfasts followed the dinners across the ceiling, shepherded by an enormous, white, uncut ham. Miss Moss shuddered and disappeared under the bedclothes. Suddenly, in bounced the landlady.
“There’s a letter for you, Miss Moss.”
“Oh,” said Miss Moss, far too friendly, “thank you very much, Mrs Pine. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to take the trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” said the landlady. “I thought perhaps it was the letter you’d been expecting.”
“Why,” said Miss Moss brightly, “yes, perhaps it is.” She put her head on one side and smiled vaguely at the letter. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
The landlady’s eyes popped. “Well, I should, Miss Moss,” said she, “and that’s how it is. And I’ll trouble you to open it, if you please. Many is the lady in my place as would have done it for you and have been within her rights. For things can’t go on like this, Miss Moss, no indeed they can’t. What with week in week out and first you’ve got it and then you haven’t, and then it’s another letter lost in the post or another manager down at Brighton but will be back on Tuesday for certain — I’m fair sick and tired and I won’t stand it no more. Why should I, Miss Moss, I ask you, at a time like this, with prices flying up in the air and my poor dear lad in France? My sister Eliza was only saying to me yesterday — ‘Minnie,’ she says, ‘you’re too soft-hearted. You could have let that room time and time again,’ says she, ‘and if people won’t look after themselves in times like these, nobody else will,’ she says. ‘She may have had a College eddication and sung in West End concerts,’ says she, ‘but if your Lizzie says what’s true,’ she says, ‘and she’s washing her own wovens and drying them on the towel rail, it’s easy to see where the finger’s pointing. And it’s high time you had done with it,’ says she.”
Miss Moss gave no sign of having heard this. She sat up in bed, tore open her letter and read:
Dear Madam
Yours to hand. Am not producing at present, but have filed photo for future ref. Yours truly, Backwash Film Co.
This letter seemed to afford her peculiar satisfaction; she read it through twice before replying to the landlady.
“Well, Mrs Pine, I think you’ll be sorry for what you said. This is from a manager, asking me to be there with evening dress at ten o’clock next Saturday morning.”
But the landlady was too quick for her. She pounced, secured the letter.
“Oh, is it! Is it indeed!” she cried.
“Give me back that letter. Give it back to me at once, you bad, wicked woman,” cried Miss Moss, who could not get out of bed because her nightdress was slit down the back. “Give me back my private letter.” The landlady began slowly backing out of the room, holding the letter to her buttoned bodice.
“So it’s come to this, has it?” said she. “Well, Miss Moss, if I don’t get my rent at eight o’clock to-night, we’ll see who’s a bad, wicked woman — that’s all.” Here she nodded mysteriously. “And I’ll keep this letter.” Here her voice rose. “It will be a pretty little bit of evidence!” And here it fell, sepulchral, “My lady.”
The door banged and Miss Moss was alone. She flung off the bed clothes, and sitting by the side of the bed, furious and shivering, she stared at her fat white legs with their great knots of greeny-blue veins.
“Cockroach! That’s what she is. She’s a cockroach!” said Miss Moss. “I could have her up for snatching my letter — I’m sure I could.” Still keeping on her nightdress she began to drag on her clothes.
“Oh, if I could only pay that woman, I’d give her a piece of my mind that she wouldn’t forget. I’d tell her off proper.” She went over to the chest of drawers for a safety-pin, and seeing herself in the glass she gave a vague smile and shook her head. “Well, old girl,” she murmured, “you’re up against it this time, and no mistake.” But the person in the glass made an ugly face at her.
“You silly thing,” scolded Miss Moss. “Now what’s the good of crying; you’ll only make your nose red. No, you get dressed and go out and try your luck — that’s what you’ve got to do.”
She unhooked her vanity bag from the bedpost, rooted in it, shook it, turned it inside out.
“I’ll have a nice cup of tea at an A B C to settle me before I go anywhere,” she decided. “I’ve got one and thrippence — yes, just one and three.”
Ten minutes later, a stout lady in blue serge, with a bunch of artificial “parmas” at her bosom, a black hat covered with purple pansies, white gloves, boots with white uppers, and a vanity bag containing one and three, sang in a low contralto voice:
“Sweet-heart, remember when days are forlorn
It al-ways is dar-kest before the dawn.”
But the person in the glass made a face at her, and Miss Moss went out. There were grey crabs all the way down the street slopping water over grey stone steps. With his strange, hawking cry and the jangle of the cans the milky boy went his rounds. Outside Brittweiler’s Swiss House he made a splash, and an old brown cat without a tail appeared from nowhere, and began greedily and silently drinking up the spill. It gave Miss Moss a queer feeling to watch — a sinking, as you might say.
But when she came to the A B C she found the door propped open; a man went in and out carrying trays of rolls, and there was nobody inside except a waitress doing her hair and the cashier unlocking the cash-boxes. She stood in the middle of the floor but neither of them saw her.
“My boy came home last night,” sang the waitress.
“Oh, I say — how topping for you!” gurgled the cashier.
“Yes, wasn’t it,” sang the waitress. “He brought me a sweet little brooch. Look, it’s got ‘Dieppe’ written on it.”
The cashier ran across to look and put her arm roun
d the waitress’s neck. “Oh, I say — how topping for you.” “Yes, isn’t it,” said the waitress. “O-oh, he is brahn. ‘Hullo,’ I said, ‘hullo, old mahogany.’”
“Oh, I say,” gurgled the cashier, running back into her cage and nearly bumping into Miss Moss on the way. “You are a treat!” Then the man with the rolls came in again, swerving past her.
“Can I have a cup of tea, Miss?” she asked.
But the waitress went on doing her hair. “Oh,” she sang, “we’re not open yet.” She turned round and waved her comb at the cashier.
“Are we, dear?”
“Oh no,” said the cashier. Miss Moss went out.
“I’ll go to Charing Cross. Yes, that’s what I’ll do,” she decided. “But I won’t have a cup of tea. No, I’ll have a coffee. There’s more of a tonic in coffee…. Cheeky, those girls are! Her boy came home last night; he brought her a brooch with ‘Dieppe’ written on it.” She began to cross the road….
“Look out, Fattie; don’t go to sleep!” yelled a taxi driver. She pretended not to hear.
“No, I won’t go to Charing Cross,” she decided. “I’ll go straight to Kig and Kadgit. They’re open at nine. If I get there early Mr Kadgit may have something by the morning’s post…. I’m very glad you turned up so early, Miss Moss. I’ve just heard from a manager who wants a lady to play … I think you’ll just suit him. I’ll give you a card to go and see him. It’s three pounds a week and all found. If I were you I’d hop round as fast as I could. Lucky you turned up so early.”
But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit’s except the charwoman wiping over the “lino” in the passage.
“Nobody here yet, Miss,” said the char.
Women Alone Page 6