She put on the red jacket and changed her make-up and her factory pass from yesterday’s handbag to the satchel bag that went with trousers.
Downstairs, the night porter was leaning in the doorway of the flats watching the light seep into the street
“Hullo,” said Sheila, “have a cigarette?”
“Thanks,” he said, still leaning as she stood by him in the doorway. “Parky out. I hope you’ve got your winter woollies on.” She could feel him admiring her slimness in the blue dungarees. He was dark, with big eyes and a peevish mouth. His uniform was open at the neck and rather crumpled as if he’d been sleeping in it in his little hutch, but he was not unattractive. He was rather fun. She had asked him up for a cup of coffee once when she got back restless from a party. She oughtn’t to have, because he rather fancied her, but he had behaved perfectly. Ho had told her things about the other occupants of the flats which she would never have believed. He had been very amusing.
“How’s the boy-friend?” He asked this every morning.
“There isn’t one.” She said this every morning, hoping he didn’t believe her.
“Lucky swine,” he said. “You know what I’d do, if I were your boy-friend?”
“No, what?” She laughed up at him, daring him. She knew she ought not to encourage him, but it was nice to have a friend in this huge, impersonal building, and he was harmless. She imagined herself confiding in him if she ever did fall in love.
“What would I do?” he regarded her darkly, with his chin on his chest and his hands in his pockets. “Get along to your work before I tell you. You’re too young. ’Op it.”
She could feel him watching her backview all down the street, but when she turned round at the corner, he had gone inside.
Mrs. Urry woke that morning with a hangover. That came of being paid Thursday instead of Friday like respectable folk. But that Greek did everything lop-sided. She’d washed up for many queer customers, but the proprietor of the Acropolis Dining Rooms was the fishiest yet. Fifth column, Mrs. Urry knew. The things she could tell if she chose !
It wasn’t right to go straight to the pub with your pay packet on Friday night ; you saw shiftless men doing that, and pitied their wives, but a Thursday—that was different somehow. Her mouth felt like a dustbin. The gin these days was a scandal, but there wasn’t much else to do with the money now that she and Urry were living rent free. Funny how little you needed to eat as you got older. She yawned, pushed her hair out of her eyes and stretched up a skinny arm to scratch on the wire above her. He was awake ; she had heard him coughing through her doze for the last hour.
“Urry!” she called. “Wake up. The first train’ll be along in a minute.”
The wire above her tautened and sprang as her husband turned over to look down at her over the side of his bunk. He looked like a dirty apostle. It was years since he had shaved, months since he had had a haircut.
“Don’t feel like going today,” he said, and coughed abandonedly, whooping like a child.
“What, and have someone pinch your beat? You turn your back on Holborn Circus for a minute and half-a-dozen smarts’ll dig themselves in. There’s money in matches.”
“Shut up, Ada,” he said, heaving back into the middle of the bunk. “I’m going to have another wink.” He fumbled among his clothes for his father’s steel watch and held it in front of his eyes. “We got another five minutes yet, you lying hag.”
She lay still, like an old witch in a coffin, her black button eyes considering the slight bulge of her husband’s behind, announcement.pa which was embossed in little lozenge shapes where it pressed on the wire. At the far end of the platform, a woman cleaner was swabbing with a mop, and behind her head Mrs. Urry could hear someone telephoning behind the glass door in the curved wall. Otherwise it was quiet. Quiet and warm. A bit different to the days when every bunk had been full and people had to step over bodies to reach the trains. But they’d had some fun in the Blitz. Singing or a mouth organ as often as not, and the canteen with scalding tea at all hours of the night and that First Aid post so hospitally smelling you hardly dared go inside for fear of catching something. They had all gone gradually, the Daltons and the Berrys and the one they called “Spikey”, who could whistle like a flute, and those jolly girls who used to sit up and paint their faces before they went off to their office, and that funny old card who howled in his sleep, and the kind old fool with the cake tray. They had all gone away, until only the Urrys were left. There were no air raids now, but it made no difference to the Urrys in their sound-proof burrow. The only difference was that when you went out in the morning you didn’t find half the houses that ought to be standing up lying all over the road, and have to go miles round to get to work and that old Greek look at you sideways as if he didn’t believe the excuse.
The Urrys had stayed on because they had nowhere else to go. Their two rooms over the tobacconist’s in Red Lion Square had been found lying in the road one morning along with the tobacconist’s shop, The kind old fool with the cake tray had kept trying to pull strings to get them compensation and a new home, but they were perfectly happy where they were, and no rent to pay. They had never been so warm in their lives as last winter.
The first feet came clattering down the stairs on to the platform. “Urry!” called his wife in a high, hoarse voice, “Time to get up! Drat that footman, he ain’t cleaned my shoes again.” She put her turned-over shoes out neatly every night, and every morning shuffled her feet into them with the same remark. Her toilet consisted in taking off the grey cardigan which she wore inside out at night and putting it on again the right way. She banged on the wire above. “Time to get up, sir. Shall I run your bath?”
Mr. Urry’s legs appeared over the side, with a stretch of yellow skin between his hitched-up trousers and wrinkled socks. “First train coming,” he said coughing, and pulling out the steel watch. “Spit on time,” he said with surprise, although it was never a second late. The train came and went, taking a few sleepy people with it. The platform began to fill up for the next one, but before it came, the Urrys were up and dressed.
“Christ, my mouth’s like a lavatory.” Mrs. Urry rubbed her hand over it. “Come on and let’s get our tea before the Cosy fills up.
“’Ullo, duck.” Strewth! That red jacket was a bit too much to see first thing on the morning after.
“Hullo,” said Sheila. “Sleep well?”
“As a top. ‘Urry up, Urry, I’m waiting to make your bed.”
Mr. Urry, who was very short, hung by his hands from the top bunk, kicked feebly once or twice and then launched himself on to the platform, landing stiff-kneed and staggering a few steps with a hand in the small of his back and exaggerated groans.
“’E’ll be on to the lines one of these days,” said his wife, “then we shall’ave a fry. Talk about bacon for breakfast!”
She pull tomorrow night.” aafed down his two old blankets, and rolling them up with her own staggered with them towards the exit after his pottering figure. Sheila watched her back view in the drooping skirt and the green beret, worn well forward, with wild strands of hair escaping at the back. She might have offered to carry the bundle if she had not been afraid of catching something. She was sorry for the old girl ; one couldn’t conceive of a more ghastly existence. Someone ought to do something about people like that.
Mrs. Urry had been there ever since Sheila had been catching the six forty-five. She was part of her mornings, but Sheila was haunted unreasonably by the fear that one day she would come down and find her dead in her bunk. Ever since that morning when her watch had been wrong and she had come down too early and seen Mrs. Urry still asleep, with her waxy yellow nose sticking straight up and her horrible hair inert, the idea had haunted her like something she had actually seen. She had never seen anybody dead and she hoped she never would.
Her train came in and she got into the third carriage from the end, deliberately not looking at the boy with the curly hair and the limp who
was there as usual and was staring at her, as usual.
“Mum,” said Kitty, “I don’t want any more to eat. No, don’t cut any more bread and butter. I’m late anyway.”
“Just one more round,” said Mrs. Ferguson. “You’ve eaten nothing, childie. Look, you can have the last of the raspberry jam.”
“I don’t want it.” Kitty got up from the kitchen table and put on her jacket. “I must fly. Where’s my bag?”
“I’ll give it you. I put it away in a safe place. You left it lying about when you came in last night, and I knew you’d never find it. Oh, Kitty! I don’t call that a clean plate. What’s the matter—don’t you like tomatoes and fried bread? You always used to.”
“Yes, but you always give me so much. Honestly, Mum, at this time in the morning—look, do give me my bag. It’s nearly a quarter past.”
Kitty went out to the shed where the bicycles lived among the abandoned impedimenta of her father’s changing hobbies. Congealed paintpots, garden tools with the earth crusted on them, a stone slab covered with hardened concrete—relic of the time he had started to build an air-raid shelter. A yellow-brown, miniature chest of drawers, with a painting on each drawer of what it was supposed to contain : buttons, looping tape, a lover’s knot of ribbon, an enormous, predatory black hook and eye. The button drawer, stuck half open, showed nails and a lump of putty and a tangle of bass and hairy string. There was a chipped grindstone, and on the lowest shelf a vice still held a piece of metal, one edge filed to a perfect bevel and the others raw. The handle of the file, with G.F. burnt into it, lay on the shelf. The blade may have been on the pile of scrap metal in the corner that had been waiting since the beginning of the War to be taken to the Council dump.
Her father was on fretwork at the moment. Kitty had to manœuvre her bicycle past his treadle machine, standing clean and oiled by the door with the beginnings of an intricate book-end impaled on the saw. Her mother came out with her hand-bag as she went past the back door. Mrs. Ferguson wore an overall over her nightdress, long black slippers with pom-poms, a net over the top of her abundant brown hair and the rest hanging down her back in a thick pigtail secured with tape.
Kitty wore trousers and a yellow with the flat of his hand. p along polo-necked sweater that her mother had knitted last winter. Her hair was short and curly and stuck out at the sides where she had lain on it.
“That front tyre’s flat, childie. Better let me pump it up.”
“No, I can do it. It doesn’t matter though ; it’s not down much. Anyway, I’ve left my pump at the factory.”
“I’ll get your father’s. You’ll ruin those good tyres, riding them on the rims like that.”
“It’s nowhere near the rim.” Kitty pouted her soft underlip, grabbed her bag and put it in the basket. “Goodbye then, I’m off.”
“Oh wait—your sandwiches.”
“Oh, Mum, I don’t—Do be quick then ; I’ll get in an awful row. I was late back after lunch yesterday through you making me go to the dressmakers.”
She began to wheel her bicycle down the passage at the side of the house and Mrs. Ferguson trotted after her with a paper bag, holding up her nightdress. “Here you are ; cheese, darling, and a piece of my cake. Leonard coming tonight?”
“I expect so.”
“Oh good. We’re going to have fish pie. I know he likes that.”
“Well, actually, Mum, we were going to the pictures and have some food out afterwards.” Wheeling her bicycle through the front gate, Kitty would not look at her mother’s falling face.
“Oh, must you go tonight, Kitty? I though we’d have a cosy evening here. We might start a fire and there’s a lovely play on the B.B.C. I know Len likes plays.”
“He likes the pictures too,” muttered Kitty, with one foot on the pedal, and then suddenly turned her chubby face round with a quick, sweet smile. “Thanks for the breakfast, Mum. It was lovely. Goodbye, see you at lunchtime!”
“Don’t be late!” Mrs. Ferguson came out into the road to call after her as she rode away. “I’ve got a nice bit of liver! Don’t ride too fast,” she added automatically, although Kitty was well out of earshot. She watched the plump little behind disappear round the corner and went back into the house to put the kettle on for Mr. Ferguson’s tea. Quite a dew, there was. It struck damp through her slippers. Good thing Kitty had her feet off the ground ; you could say that for bicycling. Such a baby to be going off to work. How she’d manage when she was married. Mrs. Ferguson didn’t dare think. Thank goodness they were only going to live just round the corner. How could a child like that know how to look after a man, and Len so fanciful about his food?
“Charlie!” she called up the stairs. “I’m going to put your egg on, so if you don’t hurry up, it’ll spoil.” She sang at the stove, cushiony and uncorseted, a forecast of Kitty’s middle age.
It was twenty-five past seven when Dinah and Bill banged the door of their flat, fell down three flights of narrow stairs, bumped into Mrs. Carley’s pram, and down the front steps into the street. The tall grey house, built as a penance for Victorian servants, didn’t look as if anyone could be wildly, ecstatically happy in it. Its exterior belied the existence of Dinah and Bill in the top storey, like a blank face concealing riotous thoughts.
They ran. “Christ, we’re late,” said Dinah as they turned into the main road. “Here, don’t come announcement.pa to the Estate with me, darling. You’ll miss your train.”
“Don’t be a fool.” He slowed down his long legs so that she could keep up, her coat flapping, one of her piled up curls tumbling into her eye. She caught the comb as it fell out. “Don’t be late tonight,” she said, “Alf’s promised to keep me some kippers.” They were crossing the road and he pulled her back from under a car. “I told you, Di, I’ve got to go up to Coventry tonight with those drawings.”
“Oh Hell, is it tonight? I’d forgotten.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Oh, I don’t know—eat a pair of kippers, I suppose. I could. Or I might go on the booze as it’s payday. Perhaps I’ll go to the flicks with George.” She looked up at him sideways out of enormous eyes. They had slowed down in the crowd converging on the entrance of the Estate road.
“Yes, do,” he said confidently. He grabbed her, and kissed her, knocking hard against her as someone jostled him. “Cheerio, darling. I’m flying.”
They were parted in an instant by the hurrying, preoccupied crowd. Dinah felt depressed as she ran on, her high heels clacking. “Hi Joe!” She caught up with a man in overalls. “Baby come yet?”
“No duck.” His loose face hung in folds of worry. “They sent ’er back from the ’ospital again. Another two days, they said, and not to keep coming along for false alarms.”
“My God, can you beat it? Get a move on, Mr. Cripps ; you’re going to lose a quarter if you don’t look out.” The storekeeper, in tight trousers and pince-nez looked at her with loathing as she ran by him. He, loathed most people, especially first thing in the morning, so most people left him alone, but Dinah didn’t seem to notice. “Hullo, Wendy!” She swept a little mouse of a girl along with her as they turned off the road into the clock-house. She was at the clock about twenty people ahead of Wendy, who was always pushed out of any queue. As they came out on to the track between the sheds, the sun came out behind them and their shadows stalked ahead in a blaze of glory. At the end of the track, they turned through the double doors into the Inspection Shop and met the machinery smell ; dry and acrid, the smell that permeated your clothes and skin and hair, that steamed out of you when you got home in winter and stood in front of the fire.
Madeleine Tennant hung her coat on the peg and put on her grey overall with the red collar, rolling up her sleeves.
“Morning, Mrs. Tennant.” The foreman went past in a similar overall with a blue collar, blowing his nose. Why couldn’t he call her by her Christian name as he did the other girls? Everyone else, even girls less than half her age called her Madeleine, but Dob Condor t
hought Mrs. Tennant would be more correct. He was very keen on correctness. In the factory where she had worked in the last War, she had been Mad, or Maddy. Between Wars she had been Miss Madeleine, coming into the fitting rooms of an Oxford Street store with a tape measure round her neck and her bosom full of pins. She went out to the bench and sat on her stool next to Paddy King, who was sheer and groomed with dark red hair that swung in a fan on her shoulders. Madeleine was short and square with thin grey hair which had been irretrievably bobbed in nineteen-thirty, an anxious, modest face and legs that swelled when she was tired. But she felt that she and Paddy were friends because they both had a man in the Middle East—Paddy a husband and n Fridays and Tuesdays, . bMadeleine an only son.
She raised enquiring eyebrows, a diffident, hopeful smile hovering round her mouth that was puckered from years of holding pins. She always greeted Paddy with this expression. It meant : “Have you had a letter?”
Oh, Lord, thought Paddy, why doesn’t she ask right out, and then I’d say : “No,” instead of this circus every morning, with me supposed to shake my head and look sad and then raise my eyebrows at her so that she can shake her head and glisten at the eyes.
Feeling irritable this morning, she vented it on Madeleine by pretending not to see her questioning face. She picked up the gearwheel she had been inspecting when the bell rang last night and frowned at it closely under the light.
“Good morning, Paddy,” said Madeleine humbly and cleared her throat.
Now she’s making the Face, thought Paddy. I won’t look. I can’t. If she puts her hand on my arm I shall scream. Why am I so foul tempered? No wonder Dicky doesn’t write to me. If Madeleine only knew what our beautiful love dream was she wouldn’t talk about him in such a hushed voice.
The Fancy Page 3