None of this did Georgie any good. The more Messrs Entiknapp and Burngullow were reinstated, the more incomprehensible was it that young Bagshawe had failed to take his place in the realm designed for him, and needed to be brought back by the police. Anyway, Mr Entiknapp felt under an uncomfortable obligation to get him off the premises—where, incidentally, he had no longer any title to stay—and into a job of unimpeachable respectability.
He made many enquiries this time, so stringent that they gave offence and all but foiled his purpose. But he was satisfied at last; and Georgie, launched a second time into the wicked world, entered a dim local firm of corn merchants as clerk at a pound a week.
The only feature Georgie welcomed was that the firm was in the same town. He need not be parted from Aunt Butters and Uncle Eddie. The corn merchants offered no facilities for living in, and Georgie announced this fact, with as much emphasis as he dared, first to his aunt, and then to Eddie.
Neither responded in the way he hoped. Aunt Butters, blinking very fast, murmured something about asking certain friends of hers if they could recommend suitable lodgings. Eddie, taking the point at once, flushed and stammered. His place was not in order, there was damp in his spare room, the so-and-so landlord paid no heed to justified complaints—and Eddie was off on one of his tirades against authority and the wrongs of the working class.
With a sigh Georgie desisted. Lodgings it would have to be.
Lodgings it was. For two and a half years Georgie resided in an attic belonging to one Mrs Partridge, a thin aggrieved woman whose husband had deserted her and who managed somehow to make her way and rear three lachrymose children by letting lodgings. She resented the necessity for doing this, with most of the other things that had happened to her, and visited them all on the outward symbol of her sufferings, the lodgers. The rooms were comfortless, the meals ill prepared and skimpy; and while she was never actively rude, she made it so clear by every tone and gesture that her lodgers were an infliction which the world’s ill-usage constrained her to endure, that almost all of them left the house as soon as they could find anything better. Georgie stayed. No more leaps into the unknown for Georgie.
The great thing about this new life, as he had foreseen, was that he was able to be much more with Aunt Butters and Uncle Eddie. Uncle Eddie kept him away from his house as much as possible, making a number of ingenious but unconvincing excuses, but he let Georgie help in the little greenhouse where he now prepared his herbal mixtures. The original room in the house he declared for some reason unsuitable. It took the unsuspicious Georgie a long time to realize that the reason for all this was that Uncle Eddie did not always live alone. Even when one afternoon a slatternly woman came out into the little garden and shouted some enquiry he could not catch, making Uncle Eddie leap out of the place and slam the door behind him with the speed of a startled weasel, Georgie accepted without thought his explanation, when he came back, that the woman who came and cleaned up for him had run out of floor polish.
The next time he caught sight of her, Georgie innocently commented on her presence.
“You’re lucky, Uncle Eddie, to be able to get her so often. I heard a lady say in the bus that daily women are hard to find nowadays.”
Uncle Eddie did not at once reply, and Georgie, glancing up, found the pale eyes fixed on him with an expression he could not read. He looked quickly down again, embarrassed, though he could not have said why. After a few seconds Uncle Eddie gave what might have been an affirmative grunt. Georgie thankfully dropped the question, and never referred to Mrs Exworthy again.
There were however no restrictions at all, except his hours of work, upon his visits to his Aunt. He went every weekend to tea, instead of once a month, and was presently allowed to help at the counter. Aunt Butters had aged, and a hard winter left her weak and uncertain. She clung on obstinately to the shop, and, in spite of vehement remonstrances from Uncle Eddie, refused to employ an assistant. She would however allow Georgie to relieve her at odd times, and retire thankfully to the little parlour at the back to lie on the sofa and take the weight off her feet. It was a queer sofa, and it didn’t look at all comfortable, but she insisted that she preferred it to either of the deep armchairs, and Georgie soon gave up trying to persuade her to rest anywhere else.
“Always a stubborn woman, your aunt,” Eddie complained one Sunday evening, when they had both been there for tea. “I’ve been at her to take you into the business. Make you a partner and get you out of that bloody cave where you work. It’s no place for a young chap. ‘Look how thin the boy’s growing,’ I said to her, ‘proper pitched away to nothing.’ ‘Oh, he’s run up tall,’ she said. ‘They often do. He’ll fill out presently,’ she said. ‘Fill him out now,’ I said to her. ‘’Tisn’t healthy, the life he leads. You can see it for yourself,’ I said, ‘if you aren’t blind.’ ‘I’ve got my eyesight, thank you, Eddie Penberthy,’ she says, all up on end like a goose in a basket. ‘None so blind as them that won’t see,’ I said. ‘I’ll thank you to mind your own business,’ she said, ‘and leave me manage mine.’” Eddie threw out his right arm in a wild gesture, and snapped his bony fingers. “So what can you do?”
A few months later Eddie was proved right. Georgie fell ill. His job was unhealthy, and he got no real exercise. His hours were long, he was growing fast, and by the time he got home in the evenings there was little kick left in him. He had no company, either. It was before the days of youth clubs, and, with his free time mortgaged elsewhere, he made no young friends. The lodgers were mostly middle aged, and, even if they had been companionable, did not stay long enough to be of any use to him.
To add to his handicaps, he did not get enough to eat. He had been inclined to be weedy at the Orphanage, where the conditions, even if rough, were sufficient to keep him in bodily health: but two years and more spent in an ill-ventilated, underground office where he worked all day by artificial light, even in midsummer, wore down what strength the Orphanage had managed to build up. One cold windy March, Georgie developed an unspecified illness which in a week or two completely knocked him out.
His landlady knew little about him and cared less, so long as the thirteen and six was paid every Friday; but she didn’t want a corpse in her house, so she sent for the dispensary doctor.
The doctor gave Georgie a run-over, then went downstairs.
“There’s nothing organically wrong. Just malnutrition.”
“Wat, doctor?”
The doctor looked at her, and re-phrased his diagnosis in a way that left no doubt.
“The poor young devil’s half starved. That’s all.”
The landlady muttered, as she followed him down the passage. He caught fragments like “can’t understand it” and “always the best of everythin’” and “like a mother to ‘im.” He turned in the doorway.
“Get some good nourishing food down him, and he’ll be all right. Otherwise—well—good day.”
Mrs Partridge muttered a good deal after that, but she got busy in her so-called kitchen, and presently, whether from some dim twinge of conscience or from her original fear of having a funeral from the house, she took her lodger up a bowl of soup.
As he eagerly gobbled it down, Georgie discovered a bit of meat floating on the surface. He wondered very much at this, as his landlady usually favoured the cheaper sorts of vegetables as material.
That evening, the landlady came in with a plate of fish and chips. It was not ideal diet for an invalid, and it was accompanied by a lugubrious monologue testifying to her virtues as a caterer, her good nature, which she declared to be the wonder of the neighbourhood, and the immense esteem in which she was held by former lodgers: but Georgie was grateful, and his supper did him a lot of good.
How long this would have gone on, and how long the firm would have given him sick leave, no one can say. On the third day after the doctor’s visit the landlady brought with his breakfast a letter in a typewritten envelope. Such a thing had not come Georgie’s way since a final c
ommunication from the Orphanage, two years ago. He could not imagine what it was. His heart began to beat cruelly.
The landlady was afraid of it too. To her mind it could suggest only a writ or some such official document.
“I don’t want nothin’ unpleasant,” she told Georgie. “This is a respectable house, and always have been.”
“Oh,” Georgie said weakly. “I don’t think it can be anything like that.”
He had no clear idea of what he meant, or what she meant. With shaking thumb he tore the envelope open, and spread out the sheet it contained. He looked up at her open-mouthed.
“It’s from a solicitor.”
The landlady backed towards the door, her worst suspicions confirmed.
“Look ‘ere!” she began. “I don’t want nothin’——”
But Georgie was staring again at his letter. His lips moved silently. Her tirade died away.
“It’s all right.” He looked up at her. “Nothing to be afraid of. I’ve—I’ve been left a small legacy.”
The landlady stepped in again. She hoped he would not forget how well she had looked after him. Maybe he would wish to move into one of the larger rooms downstairs. Perhaps he would fancy a nice chop for his dinner.
Georgie got rid of her at last; even when ill, he was always polite and kind, loth to hurt anyone’s feelings; and settled down to re-read his letter. It informed him in terse and definite phrases that his aunt, Miss Susan Butters, had died of a heart attack the week before, and had left her house and shop, to wit No. 3 Summer Hill, Endsleigh Lane, to her only sister’s only child. It furthermore suggested speedy possession, as the shop had been shut for several days, customers were clamouring for their various necessities, and, if not soon satisfied, would go elsewhere. An immediate call at the solicitor’s office was recommended.
If anyone had told Georgie an hour before that he was strong enough to get up, dress himself, go to the corner, and take a bus to the centre of the town, he would have groaned and collapsed. The effect of the letter was illogical and unforeseen. It gave him a shock: it brought him what was technically bad news: yet the result was tonic. Georgie had known that his Aunt was failing, but nothing had led him to expect her death. He sat up in bed for a while, gazing at the letter, reading it over and over again, to be reassured that he had not dreamed the words. He was fond of his aunt, who had always been kind to him in her conscientious, strait-laced, embarrassed way; and he felt a pang of grief which would, he knew, grow stronger when he had time to think about it. Yet the news must have touched off some spring in him of which he had hardly been aware. He must in his depths have longed for the management of the shop.
If his landlady had been there, she would have been astonished at the change a quarter of an hour had made in him. His pale thin cheeks were flushed with excitement as he tremblingly put on his clothes, and he caught himself trying to whistle, breathless as he was, on the way to the bus stop.
The weather was not severe, but he had had the forethought to put on his woollen scarf and button his raincoat up as high as it would go. He had eightpence in his pocket, all the cash he possessed at the moment.
Georgie managed to maintain a sober demeanour at the solicitor’s office. This was all the easier, as he now felt exceedingly weak again, and wobbly at the knees. The proceedings were brief, and the solicitor commendably brisk and efficient. Inside of twenty-five minutes the signing of three documents, witnessed by a bored clerk, made Georgie Bagshawe a shopkeeper and the possessor of nine pounds fourteen shillings and fourpence, a silver watch, two little bundles of yellowish faded letters, and a gilt locket which, when opened, showed a military gentleman with a red face, golden moustache and whiskers, and small blue eyes gazing into the void. These objects, with a cardboard box of electroplated cutlery, represented those portions of the late Miss Butters’ estate which the solicitors had seen fit, for reasons not clear to Georgie, to remove from No. 3 Summer Hill, Endsleigh Lane.
Georgie stared in dismay at this small but unwieldy collection. The solicitor’s clerk, who had suddenly become human, volunteered to make them into a parcel and call a cab. Georgie was about to stop this second suggestion, when he reflected that he was in no fit state to carry parcels, and that he could pay the fare out of his aunt’s loose change.
On the way back to his lodgings he stopped the cab at a stationer’s, and bought two postcards. One had a picture of St Paul’s Cathedral, the other of Buckland Abbey. He also bought two stamps. As soon as he got home, he wrote on the St Paul’s postcard his resignation from his job. On the other he informed Uncle Eddie what had happened, and begged him to visit the shop at the earliest convenient moment. He then made a second expedition, this time only as far as the pillar box.
Eager though he was to move at once and take possession of his inheritance, Georgie felt so done up when he got back from this second outing that he decided to put off the move till the next day. Reaction had come upon him. He lay on his bed, his hands clasped behind his head, and tried to feel the grief that was surely appropriate and obligatory: yet, despite his bodily weakness, and the conviction that he must be both ungrateful and unworthy, great bubbles of jubilation kept coming up and bursting on the surface of his mind. His thoughts ran ahead, planning just what he would do with this and that, and how he would arrange the goods on the shelves. Every now and then he would recollect himself, and call them back with a shocked reproof; but, before he realized it, they would be off again. In the end he gave up trying to control them, but stared at the ceiling, smiled, and dreamed.
He ate all of the ample supper which the now fawning Mrs Partridge brought up to him: slept deep and long: made a good breakfast: then went out. He felt ever so much stronger already: his legs would almost do what he wanted. He ordered a cab to take him and his belongings to Summer Hill, and was secretly glad when the man said he had to go to a wedding, and wouldn’t be free till four or thereabouts. That gave Georgie time to pack and get another good meal inside him.
The cab was late, and the driver a little less than sober, but by a quarter to five Georgie had paid his landlady, got his goods, and was deposited outside the well-known door.
Someone had tied a piece of crape to the knocker. Georgie looked at the door with critical, proprietary eyes. Its brown paint was afflicted with a variety of blisters, bubbles, and swellings, some of them already burst. He knew most of them, but, now that they were his, he no longer felt indulgent towards them, but made a mental note to do something. Then he pulled out the fat, shining key which the solicitor had given him, turned it in the lock, and went in.
All of a sudden his calm deserted him. He stood in a fever of impatience while the cabman, stumbling and belching, carried his things into the little hall. The man wanted to stop and talk after he had been paid. Georgie replied courteously, but moved towards the door with a purpose so unmistakable that even in his state of fuddled garrulity the man took the hint and shuffled off. Georgie shut the street door, and stood in the remembered brown darkness, alone, the owner.
Instinctively, and before doing anything else, he opened the side door into the shop. An overpowering smell of mice, cheese, and paraffin greeted him.
“Whew!” Georgie gasped to himself. “This won’t do. This won’t do at all.”
As if the smell had the perverse effect of infusing energy into him, he groped his way to the window and took down the shutters. The window wouldn’t open, but for two little panels at the top. They were stiff, but he made them work. Fresh air and light gambolled into the little shop, the musty smells retreated, and Georgie, breathless but happy, leaned against the counter and surveyed his domain.
He was not left to survey it for long. Interested eyes had observed his arrival. Within two minutes three robust, somewhat bedraggled ladies came in, one of them obviously, he noted, someone’s wife. This lady, acting as spokesman, asked for a pennorth of camphorated oil. Georgie, to his own surprise, lighted without trouble on a card of penny bottles, and, receiving
the penny in exchange, made his momentous transition to the ranks of the capitalists.
The other ladies were almost as easily satisfied, and soon a trickle of customers arrived. Georgie found no difficulty in serving them, as all appeared to be regulars, and when his own memory failed, they knew where things were kept. A notice in the window, to the effect that business was temporarily suspended, he had to remove fragment by fragment, not only because customers kept interrupting him, but because it had been relentlessly glued to the glass with an adhesive which he finally diagnosed as tapioca. He didn’t get it all off till after closing time, when the last stubborn shreds yielded to a chisel.
But closing time was a long way off. For an indeterminate time, kept on his feet by the new, exhilarating thrill of taking his own money, Georgie dealt with customers of almost every age. Even as he worked, the job became easier. After an hour or two, he knew where all the usual lines were kept, and had made a mental inventory of the things in the window; the few cheap toys, the jars of violently coloured sweets, the marbles, wooden hoops, the bundles of paper-covered books for boys and girls, the pots of jam, the religious emblems, the birthday cards, and, dangling from hooks, garments which he took to be pinafores.
The end of school time brought a batch of small boys, making inroads into the sweets and marbles. One spectacled youth required a Deadwood Dick, in adenoidal tones that recalled Harry at Burngullow’s, and struck a pang through Georgie’s breast.
When, warned by the fact that he was beginning to give at the knees, he closed the door, the exhausted proprietor had satisfied every class of customer save one. In reply to nine applications for paraffin, five for matches, and seven for quarter pounds of cheese, all on credit, Georgie had excused himself on the plea that he had had no chance as yet to go over Miss Butters’ Credit Ledger, having only just arrived to take charge.
Alone at last, Georgie sustained himself with cocoa and a piece of cake—and counted his takings. One pound three and eightpence—all in one afternoon. Better than his first morning at Burngullow’s. Honest money, too. Looking around, and trying to estimate his stock, he saw that he would take much more when the word went fully round that the shop was open, and custom started for the more expensive lines. To-day’s custom had, he guessed, been in the nature of a reconnaissance.
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