For the space between one breath and another, Georgie stared at it without sensation. Then his legs gave under him. He saved himself with a sudden tension, and sat heavily on the nearest chair. For, as he looked blankly at the cover, the years flipped back like a spring tape measure, and he was a little boy in the house by the seaside, fearfully turning the pages of a book which seemed as large as he was.
It was the one book in the queer, plant-dotted, bleak parlour. It sat in solemn state on what was known as an occasional table, devoted to no other function than to support it. On a wet day, before he was put to bed, Georgie was allowed as a great treat to look at it; a treat he had not the courage to decline.
Its contents he found anything but reassuring. The Cid, as portrayed in the text and in many sombre engravings, seemed to have been some kind of knight errant, exercised almost incessantly in rescuing distraught damsels from castles and holding incomprehensible interviews with witches. Georgie could not get at any reason for these activities, and the book combined with the terrors of the lonely great four-poster bed to give him nightmares, the cause of which Aunt Butters did not suspect, and which he was quite unable to tell her. Not until she came to see him at the Orphanage, when he was in bed with a feverish chill, did he somehow let out the gloomy but lurid fantasy in which the knight capered round a plain shaped like a bed, with a ceiling that came down… and down… and DOWN… till one awoke screaming in a sweat of fear. Not till then did Aunt Butters realize that the book had not been the treat it was meant to be.
“Not now.” Staring down at the label, Georgie saw exactly what had happened. In the belief that he enjoyed the book, Aunt Butters had bought it from her friend, probably to give him at Christmas. Then, learning the truth, she had put it away in the drawer with this sad laconic note, and it had stayed there ever since.
Dear, dear Aunt Butters. As Georgie raised his head to bless her, tears of weakness wetted his cheeks. More than anything else, the small incident moved him, with its undertone of frustrated love.
When he opened the second parcel, and found all his letters, from the first huge pencil scrawl, he had no more emotion left, but sat turning them over in a wondering dream.
It was twenty minutes or more before he roused himself and staggered off to bed, to fall into a sleep far beneath all dreams, good or bad, until the milkman woke him and the sparrows cheeped and the sunlight danced on the wall.
Chapter 4
Aunt Butters had been anything but systematic in her records. Her practice resembled that of those methodically untidy people whose possessions are scattered about in a haphazard and illogical manner but who nevertheless can immediately put their hand on anything they want.
Georgie was not entirely a stranger to her ways, although, with a sort of stubborn proprietorship, she had kept her secrets from him on those Saturday afternoons and allowed him only to serve at the counter. So, within a week, he had a working idea of the way things were done; he had learned most of her sources of supply, and travellers had resumed their calls.
The work fascinated him. An intelligence he did not know that he possessed was called into play; he saw a dozen ways of improving and extending his trade. As for his breakdown, his bodily weakness, it was a thing of the past. The new interest, plus the fact that he could now eat what he fancied, not only put him on his feet but was developing him. Already he looked a different boy from the weedy, depressed, undernourished lodger who had been transported with wonder to find a morsel of meat in his soup.
A part of the trade which fascinated him was the sweets. For this and for its patrons he had a special tenderness. More than once, during the first few days, an adult customer sniffed and muttered at the time that Georgie was giving some child to decide on the exact composition of a penn’orth or hap’orth of mixed sweets.
“I’m sorry, madam,” he would say, coming at last to the impatient lady. “But it means such a lot to them.”
He was extra generous, too, always adding one or two over the weight. Word of this got round very quickly on the small customers” grapevine, and, to judge by its increased volume, trade was weaned away from other establishments. Georgie, with a minimum of overheads, could please himself over the margin of profit he made; and if the few other sellers in the neighbourhood resented being told that you got more at Butters’, they were too busy or too lazy to complain.
Georgie’s first purchase for the shop was a dozen new jars for sweets. Most of the wholesalers supplied jars free: Georgie bought bigger, fatter ones from a bankrupt chemist’s effects, and stood them at intervals on his counter, where they looked like so many radiant gasometers. He would have to make some more shelves. The space in the shop could be better used. It had room for much more stock, which by rearranging things could be displayed to greater advantage.
Then there was the cottage itself, now Georgie’s home. The living-room next the shop had always been kept neat and trim, even in Aunt Butters’ last months, and Georgie, respecting its old-maidish order, dusted it religiously and left it as it was. Its accoutrements, he realized for the first time, were odd. A few drowsy looking steel engravings decorated the walls; they depicted allegorical figures with next to nothing on, but were so dim and unexciting that Georgie did no more than glance at them. Four stolid leather upholstered chairs took up most of the floor space—heaven only knows why Miss Butters had required so many—and, besides the little table at which they used to have tea, there was a round rickety table in the centre, covered with a red plush cloth. In the middle of this table stood a castor oil plant in a green pot. Georgie had never cared for this, and was inclined to let it die, but piety towards his aunt overcame him. He watered it each morning, and it contrived to flourish in its graveyard fashion.
The chief feature of the room, the only remarkable, even valuable feature, was the old carved mantelpiece. Though it would have made an antique dealer rejoice, and took on grace in the firelight, it was not immediately prepossessing, as it had at one time been painted and most of the paint had been chipped off or worn away, giving it a shabby appearance in broad day. Georgie had neither the taste nor schooling to appreciate its grace of line—how could he?—but he accepted it without comment as part of Auntie’s room. No notion of change or redecoration for aesthetic reasons would ever have entered his head. The only changes he was capable of imagining would be for reasons of utility.
There was little else in the sitting-room, except, under the window, the shapeless sofa covered in flaring chintz which had looked so uncomfortable for Aunt Butters when she rested on it. Georgie was so busy at first, and had such a lot to see to, that there was no occasion for him to examine this object. Then, one evening, just after closing time, when he had been in occupation about ten days, he threw himself wearily down on the sofa, and at once gotup again. Rubbing his behind ruefully, he lifted the chintz. Under it was a strip of carpet; and under that two thin boards. These in turn rested on four wooden chests with metal corners. Georgie stooped and hauled at one of them. It was amazingly heavy: he could not move it an inch. The rest were the same. They looked like tea-chests.
All his weariness forgotten, Georgie hurried into the shop, got a large gimlet, carefully removed the importer’s label from one of the chests, and drilled a neat hole. The gimlet in its withdrawal fetched out a few grains of tea and fragments of the lead foil in which it was wrapped. A sniff and a touch of his tongue told even the inexperienced Georgie that the tea was of far better quality than any the shop sold.
Here was a riddle. How did Aunt Butters get the tea? What did she want it for? And why conceal it in this inefficient, bound-to-be-discovered fashion?
The answer to the last question was easy. Normally there would have been no one to discover it. Georgie plugged the hole, stuck the label back in its place, and spent the next half-hour looking up Auntie’s books. He could find no record of the tea. Oh well: it was a useful nest egg. Goodness knows when it might come in handy.
This conclusion, with its
acceptance of a mystery and its touch of oppprtunism, was a fresh development for Georgie. Things were happening not only to him but in him.
Inside three weeks he was well established in the shop. The old customers liked him, new ones were coming in, and by branching out, modestly and tentatively, he began to develop his trade and increase his turnover. Miss Butters, steady good soul, had not been a tiger for enterprise. Small though the shop was, Georgie was astonished to find how much more could be got into it, and without crowding, by an intelligent use of the space. Working at week-ends, with a little help from a jobbing carpenter, he put up some new shelves, and by various adjustments so redistributed his space that customers stopped in the doorway, gaped, and exclaimed. Georgie beamed at them. The access of independence had brought him on wonderfully. He might still be diffident in the street, but in his own domain he behaved with a modest decision that won respect. In the matter of giving credit, too, while he was kind, on the easy side, in fact, he was no pushover for cadgers and professional bad payers. It hurt him to refuse, but he did it, when he had to, with a gentleness and candour which took away most of the sting.
“I can’t afford it, Mrs Jones. I have my own account with the wholesaler to meet on Monday. I must get cash for my stock. You can see that, can’t you?”
And Mrs Jones, who could see only her own wants, went away muttering but without rancour, disarmed by Georgie’s smile and the anxious look in his eyes.
Eddie dropped in from time to time, militant at first with all manner of suggestions for shifting this and upending that, for clearing out one line of stock and embarking on another. Georgie, listening with care and deference, made the surprising discovery that nine-tenths of Eddie’s advice was bad, and then perceived, even more surprisingly, that this was no surprise at all. His anxiety lest Eddie be offended to find this or that piece of advice had not been taken faded when it became apparent that Eddie himself did not remember his last set of suggestions, and as likely as not offered a contrary set. Respectful listening, followed by grateful thanks, was all that was required: and, as always, with the uncovering of a new weakness Georgie’s love and protective feelings were increased.
So well did Georgie thrive in these months, growing taller and filling out, that when one Sunday in the town he met Sergeant Meadows from the Orphanage, and after a moment’s hesitation greeted him, the Sergeant stared and did not recognize him.
“Who do you say?”
“Bagshawe, Sergeant. Don’t you remember? You taught me carpentry.”
“Bagshawe! Well! So it is. You have shot up. And filled out. What are you doing now?”
And it gave Georgie a thrill of pride to say that he owned and managed a shop. The Sergeant congratulated him, and said he must drop in some day. Georgie did not expect him to do it, but he did, ten days later, and took to making a regular visit, about once a fortnight, to purchase a modest laxative which was, he declared fiercely, the only medicine he held with.
Things were going very well with Georgie, and his prospects seemed well assured, when the outside world brought him its next challenge.
Late one afternoon, when Georgie had been installed in the shop for some eight months, a new customer walked in. She had her back to the light, so that Georgie did not at first get a good view of her. He had an impression of dark, neat clothes, a tallish figure, and pale, fair hair. She was young, he could see that much, and she was carrying a music satchel and a violin case.
“Good evening, madam. What can I do for you?”
“Evening. Tuppeny block of resin, please.”
“Resin? I’m not sure…”
“There was plenty in Miss Butters’ time. She kept it in one of those drawers. On the left there. One from the bottom.”
Sure enough, the resin was there. Georgie straightened up, and smiled.
“Silly of me. One of the few things I hadn’t cleaned out. I ought to know my own stock by now, oughtn’t I?”
The girl smiled mechanically. She did not seem interested.
“Will one block be enough?” Georgie asked her.
“Yes, thanks.”
While he was changing her florin, and she was slipping the resin into her violin case, and fastening the lid, Georgie got a good look at her. She had very little colour, but was passably nice looking. Her nose was straight, if a little too long and pinched over the nostrils; she showed good, even teeth when she smiled; and though a bit flat chested she had a neat, slim figure. She seemed to hesitate when she got her change, as if reluctant to go. Her air of disinterest left her. She smiled, this time more naturally; and before Georgie realized what was happening they were chatting together about Miss Butters, and his taking over the shop.
While they talked, Georgie kept his eyes on her, and wondered to himself why with such good features she was not better looking. Something was wrong. Something about her was starved, or at any rate undernourished. Suddenly he felt a stirring of his heart. It was not love. It was not even sex attraction. Since the first faint stirrings of admiration for Miss Etherington, whom he had known for that one evening at Burngullow’s, Georgie had felt nothing of the kind. All such ideas had popped back like scared rabbits into their burrow after the shock of that adventure.
What Georgie felt now was a stir of sympathy. He divined somehow that the girl was just such another as himself. Her face was spoiled by an underlying expression of bitterness, a plaintive, petulant droop of one side of the mouth, a hardness, difficult to pin down. Yes, he thought, here is a lonely one, like me, only she doesn’t seem to have been so lucky. She is finding it harder to get on. Maybe she’s an orphan, too?
It did him credit, but it was dangerous; especially for a boy like Georgie, who had so little to do with girls of any sort. It was also a revolution in his way of thinking. Georgie was to suffer a good deal throughout his life from these jumps of intuition which went far beyond anything he could show in his behaviour. Something in him was shooting far ahead of the standpoint from which he had hitherto looked at life and people.
The girl was four or five years older than he was, he decided. If, after she had gone, anyone had been there to ask him whether he was particularly interested in her, he would have denied it. Yet the fact remained that he speculated quite a bit about her that evening, and in the days that followed the thought of her came often into his mind. He found himself wondering how long two penn’orth of resin lasted, and even hoping that it would not last too long.
As things turned out, the rate of consumption of resin was not tested, for less than a week after her first visit the girl came in again, this time for a pencil. Soon her visits grew more frequent, and lasted longer. A look in her eye which Georgie had at first romantically ascribed to unhappiness he discovered arose from very short sight; such vanity as she possessed kept her from wearing glasses out of doors. But she was, undoubtedly, lonely, she lived by herself, in lodgings a little less dismal than Georgie’s former place, and she had a hard enough time of it giving music lessons and occasionally playing second violin in a dim little restaurant orchestra at the other end of the town.
Her name Georgie ascertained through a coincidence. The adenoidal small boy who was a regular purchaser of Dead-wood Dicks, Claude Duvals, Dick Turpins and other stimulating fiction happened to go to a school which she visited. The small boy did not himself have violin lessons, but Georgie bribed him with a bonus batch of his favourite reading to enquire of those who did.
“Her nabe’s Chiddigfold,” the boy informed him. “Biss Chiddigfold.”
This unlikely name at once raised the temperature of Georgie’s interest. Chiddingfold? He went to the public library, during one of the few spells of freedom which he allowed himself, and searched for it without avail. In the end, feeling absurdly nervous, and cross with himself for being so, he asked one of the library assistants if the name conveyed anything to her.
The girl pondered, tapping her projecting front teeth with a pencil.
“Chiddingfold,” she repeat
ed. “I b’lieve it’s a place.” She went away, and was back after only a minute or two, nodding energetically.
“Yes,” she told him. “It’s a village in Surrey.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Want to know how to go there?”
“No, thanks. No. Just to be sure.”
“Is it in a competition, or anything?”
“No.” Georgie felt his smile growing stiff. He longed to get away. “No. I just wanted to find out. Thank you so much.”
He hurried off, aware that the girl was looking hurt and disappointed. She was only taking a friendly interest, he said to himself reproachfully, on the way home. Just like that workman in the tram, years and years ago. But he had not much thought to spare for library assistants. This information about his customer’s name had very much strengthened one of his first ideas about her. Georgie knew that a surprisingly high percentage of children in orphanages had surnames that were the names of towns and villages, and he suspected that such children were named after their birthplaces rather than after the mothers who had not wanted them, or had not been able to keep them.
At all events, it was a real satisfaction to be able to greet her properly.
“Good evening, Miss Chiddingfold. What can I do for you to-day?”
If he expected surprise or gratification, he was disappointed. Miss Chiddingfold seemed to find it entirely natural that he should know her name. Although, as he later learned, she had more than her share of curiosity, it ran on narrow and specific lines. Of intellectual curiosity, that is to say curiosity about anything of no immediate or probable advantage to herself, she had none at all.
She was however friendly and agreeable in manner. Her visits became still more frequent and lasted even longer. Soon she was dropping in every evening. Georgie could never quite make out how or when it was that she first stayed on after closing time. He did not remember whether he asked her, whether the suggestion came from her, or whether it just happened.
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