The Fancy

by Dickens, Monica

  Sheila took three days out from the factory and returned, having achieved nothing, to a rating from Mr. Gurley for having stayed away without a doctor’s certificate. She didn’t dare take any more time off. She had been to nearly all the estate agents in Bloomsbury and was now putting advertisements in papers at great expense, spending her lunch hour scouring the newspapers in the Public Library and the rest of the day writing letters under cover of her report card. How could anyone take an interest in reduction gears under the circumstances? Kathleen was coming home in a week and she was as far off as ever from finding somewhere to live. David was still hopeful. He could not understand why she was making such heavy weather of it. He didn’t seem to realise that there was not one hole or corner in all London, much less in Bloomsbury. She had even tried hotels, but they were all much too expensive or had people sleeping in the bathrooms. Everyone in England was living in London and Sheila was getting desperate.

  On the night before Kathleen’s homecoming, they packed glumly at the flat. What Sheila had been terrified of all along was going to happen. They were going to be separated. David was going to put up at some bachelor apartments with a man who worked on his paper and Sheila was going to stop on with Kathleen, as Kathleen had suggested.

  “I still don’t see why I can’t stop on here too,” said David for the hundredth time, banging drawers about and kicking at cupboard doors. “I wouldn’t mind the sofa a bit—or Kathleen could have it and we could have the bedroom. She’d be tickled to death to have a man in the house.” Sheila was tired of explaining to him that it was as impossible to tell Kathleen they were living together as to tell her parents.

  “To start with, she’d tell Mummy, at once,” she said. “She’s frightfully thick with them—more than with me really. She used to live down at Swinley, you know, and they were always shoving her down my neck as a friend. Look, David, you must take this old pair of shoes, even if you don’t want them. She mustn’t ever know.”

  “She’d understand. Your unfortunate upbringing, my darling, makes you think everyone has the same outlook as you had before I took you in hand. She’ll probably be thrilled to think you’ve grown up at last. I dare say I shall tell her myself if the water at Toddy’s place isn’t hot. I’ll be coming round for baths.”

  “David, if you dare! You don’t know what she’s like. She just simply isn’t the sort of person that could ever understand. I mean, she wears lisle stockings and glasses and awfully good-style coats and skirts. I don’t think she’s ever had a boy-friend, she’s probably never even been kissed——”

  “Well, I might put that right for her then, mightn’t I?” He was impossible. He simply refused to understand. He made it doubly difficult have to find somewhere else.pa for her by being particularly gay and sweet and loving when all she wanted was for him to remove all traces of himself as quickly as possible. She held out against going out to dinner with him. She had to stay behind and clean the flat. At last he was ready and she helped him to carry his things down to the taxi.

  The night porter was on duty. “Leaving us?” he said. He never called anyone “sir.”

  “Turned out into the snow,” grinned David and added something which Sheila couldn’t hear, but which made them both laugh. She had a sudden glimpse of David telling his friend Toddy about her and then laughing. Did men talk about their women as women did about their men? Surely David wouldn’t—but men were impossible when they got together. She couldn’t bear him to be going back to that masculine world which he had left to come to her. She kissed him on the pavement, dragging him well out of the porter’s view and watched the tail light of his taxi disappear with something like panic in her heart. It was absurd to mind saying good-bye when she was going to see him for dinner tomorrow.

  Tomorrow was Saturday. She had the afternoon off and she was going once more to do the weary round of the agents.

  Kathleen had arrived when she got back at lunch-time and her presence was already all over the flat. It smelled of her toothpaste—she always cleaned her teeth at least three times a day—and of her clothes, which always smelied as though they had just come back from the cleaner’s, which they usually had. A Revelation suitcase was open on the bed, unpacked down to the layer of shoes, each pair wrapped in tissue paper, and every crevice filled with neatly rolled gloves and stockings. There was a patent case for dresses too. with Kathleen’s dull clothes folded over a rail in the lid. The things she had unpacked were hung out all over the room to rid them of non-existent creases. Kathleen’s ivory brush and comb set were on the dressing-table beside Sheila’s scrap lot, where David’s moulting brushes had been. Kathleen’s green pyjamas were even laid out on David’s pillow.

  “But Shee darling, you look awful!” were Kathleen words as she came in from the kitchen with the china hairpin tray which she had hunted out from the dresser where Sheila had put it. “So tired, and so thin. My dear, you’re a stick!” Kathleen always spoke with exclamation marks. Her conversation was very tiring.

  “You haven’t been looking after yourself properly. I can see that,” she went on, kissing her with her cheek. “Hardly a scrap of food in the place, no milk or butter, and no fruit, with the shops simply stacked with it! I spent a night at Swinley on the way here and saw your people. Auntie Lena told me you were working like a nigger, and had got much too thin, but I never expected to find you looking so utterly worn out. What on earth have you been doing to yourself?”

  “Oh, I’m a bit tired,” said Sheila, looking for her shoes, which Kathleen had moved.

  “Tired? I should think you are! Now you just sit down. I’ve got some coffee making. Have you had any lunch?”

  “No—yes,” said Sheila. “I won’t have any coffee, thanks all the same, Kath. I’ve got to rush out as soon as I’ve changed.”

  “Rush out, where to? You ought to take it easy when you do get time off. I always do. They work us terribly hard, you know, at the Min., but I find I can take it in my stride by eating the right things and relaxing with a good book whenever I c have to find somewhere else.paan. My dear Shee, how can you exist in those ridiculous underclothes?” she cried, as Sheila stepped out of her trousers. “I’d die of cold.”

  “Not in summer, you wouldn’t.”

  “Yes I should.” Kathleen picked up the dungarees from the floor where Sheila had left them and began to fold them, running her thumbnail down the crease. “My goodness, don’t they smell of oil! I’ll pop round to the cleaners with them this afternoon. They’ll get them done quickly for me. They know me.”

  “So they do me,” said Sheila, “but I still shouldn’t have anything to wear on Monday. You leave those dungarees alone, Kathleen.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Kathleen, “aren’t we getting snappy in our old age? You’ve been living alone too long. It’s high time I did come home, I can see that.”

  “Look Kath,” She had got to know sometime, and it might as well be now. “It’s awfully sweet of you to suggest me staying on here with you, but I know you’d much rather be here alone. I mean, there’s not really room here for two,” she lied, thinking of how perfectly it had suited her and David. “If I could just stay here for a few days until I find something, then I’ll push off and leave you to it. It’ll be much better if I have a place of my own. I’d have gone already only it’s rather hard to find anywhere in a hurry these days.

  Kathleen was staring at her. “My dear Shee, what on earth are you talking about? You must be mad! Of course we’ll stay here together. It’ll be grand fun, and I’m going to look after you, see that you eat properly and go to bed early. I don’t know how you could think I wouldn’t want you. We shall get on famously !”

  “No honestly, Kath, I don’t think I will, thanks awfully all the same. It would never work. I get up terribly early. I should wake you.”

  The thought of sharing the bed with Kathleen, even for a few nights, was repugnant. “Then I go out quite a lot in the evening, you know, and I’d disturb you coming in
. I should be an awful nuisance to you.”

  Kathleen had very large, prominent teeth which she brought close to your face when she talked to you, buttonholing you with her eyes, staring, and watching your mouth when you spoke. “I never heard of such a silly idea!” she said. “Whatever would Auntie Lena say? She was so pleased that we were going to be together. She didn’t like your living alone at all, you know.”

  “I can’t help that,” said Sheila stubbornly, moving away from her to the dressing-table. “I’ve made up my mind. I really shall go as soon as I can find somewhere.” Kathleen followed her, watching closely while she did her face, still arguing, outraged. In a minute, she’ll make me say it, thought Sheila. I shall say : “I don’t want to live with you,” and then there’ll be trouble.

  “Well, I must say, you are queer,” went on Kathleen. “You’ve certainly changed, and I don’t know that it’s for the better. You were never independent like this a year ago, and we used to have such fine times together. I hated going away and leaving you, you know, when you first came here. You seemed to want me so much to stay. I can’t think what’s happened to you. Still, I expect it’s just because you’re tired. I shan’t worry you. I shall just leave you alone and then presently you’ll d the subjectan alongrop this silly attitude and we shall both live here happily ever after. What do you say?” Things that Kathleen said always demanded an answer.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” said Sheila getting up and putting on her jacket.

  “Oh well, we’ll wait and see.” Kathleen smiled indulgently, “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” said Sheila, and went.

  Some of the agents had shut at one o’clock and at others it was the same old story. What Sheila wanted and the price she could pay made them smile pityingly. Having no experience of flats and rents she had no idea whether it was because it was war-time or because she was asking the impossible. There must be something, somewhere. She had come down to considering anything in London. If it couldn’t be Bloomsbury, David would have to put up with it. He had lived at Earl’s Court for ages before he knew her, and if he felt as she did he wouldn’t mind where it was so long as they were together.

  Towards five o’clock, she was beginning to despair. She was very tired and the extra high-heeled shoes she had put on to annoy Kathleen were making her feet ache. She would try one more agent on her list and then give up, and have to admit failure when she saw David tonight.

  Bell, Watson and Lampeter were on the first floor above a stationer’s shop in Kingsway. She had been there twice and thought the clerk looked at her sickenedly as she toiled up the stairs and entered the outer office. It was quite a prosperous-looking place, with a green leather sofa and chairs and a table with old magazines on it.

  “If you’d care to wait just a minute or two,” said the clerk, “Mr. Bell will be free.”

  Sheila sat down on the sofa and waited without hope. Presently the inner door opened and a woman in furs came out, accompanied with hand-washings by E. Dexter Bell.

  “Ah, Miss—er,” said Mr. Bell. “Not found anything yet then? I’m afraid I’ve got nothing more to offer you, but if you’d just like to step into my office, we’ll have another look.” His manner with young clients was ponderously patronising, with older ones, if they were well off, it was unctuous, and if they were not it was belittling.

  Sheila followed his broad back down the passage between the glass partitions which gave forth sounds of clicking typewriters and sat down in the chair before his desk which she had occupied, the first time optimistically, the second with faint hope and now with no hope at all. At a smaller desk in the corner, a woman in a pink blouse with her hair in little sausage curls, sat going through letters with a wetted finger.

  On Mr. Bell’s desk was a revolving stand such as you find outside newsagents. The sections were headed : “FURN : HOUS : UNF : MAIS : etc.,” and held overlapping index cards instead of postcards,

  “Let’s see,” said Mr. Bell, spinning it round, “it’s a flat you’re after, isn’t it? Unfurnished, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Furnished,” said Sheila.

  “Of course.” He turned the stand again and ran his finger down the file. “Blah, blah, blah, this one might do.” He flipped out a card. “H’m, h’m, h’m, and this. I’m afraid we’ve still not very much to offer you, my dear young lady. You’re asking something when you ask for a furnished flat these days. They the subjectan along’re as rare as a shilling tip in Aberdeen.”

  “I know,” said Sheila. He had said this every time. The two he showed her were hopeless, one three times too expensive and the other a basement, which David would never stand.

  “Ah!” Mr. Bell clapped a hand to his forehead. “Now didn’t we have a flat turned in today? I believe—I’m not promising you, mind you, but I believe it might be the very thing you’re looking for.’ Hope leaped in Sheila’s eyes. She gazed at him as if he were a god, which he enjoyed.

  “Oh, I’m sure it would be,” she said, prepared to take it without even hearing about it, before it vanished into thin air as all the other possibles had done.

  “Let’s see.” He turned in his chair. “Did you make out the card for that flat that came in a little while ago, Mrs. Ledward?” The name struck Sheila as familiar, but she was too excited to wonder why.

  “Yes, Mr. Bell,” said Connie in her office voice, “I have it here.” She rose and laid it on his desk and then sat down again and went on going through her letters with pursed lips. Edward at home was just hunting vainly in the kitchen for something appetising for his tea, but she had not given him a thought all day. Her new life as a businesswoman was far more engrossing than anything that could ever happen at Church Avenue. She left the housekeeping now almost entirely to Dorothy, who was no more proficient at it than her sister.

  The flat sounded quite possible. It was a miracle. Sheila had already decided to take it before Mr. Bell had finished reading out the card. She could see herself telling David about it at dinner. They might even move in there tonight.

  “Oh yes,” she said, interrupting him breathlessly before he had finished with kitch, and usual off., “I’m sure it would do. I’ll take it.” She leaned forward, nodding eagerly.

  “Well, well, you are an impetuous young lady to be sure,” said Mr. Bell. He looked through the card again with maddening slowness. “I’m not sure, though… . We’ve another enquiry about it already, haven’t we, Mrs. Ledward?”

  Connie looked through a file on her desk. “Yes, Mr. Bell,” she said. “The client was not sure whether it would suit. She said she’d let us know.”

  “Did we give her any promise to keep it open?”

  Connie had lost the place in the file and went through it again from A, although the client’s name was Widdicombe. Sheila could have screamed. Why couldn’t they put her out of her suspense?

  “No, Mr. Bell, we gave her no option,” said Connie at last, and Sheila let out her breath and leaned back in the chair beaming.

  “Well, then I could——” she began, but Mr. Bell interrupted in a businesslike voice : “When would it be convenient for you to see the flat in question?”

  “Oh, any time. Now if you like. I mean, I don’t mind taking it straight away without seeing it. I’m sure it would do ; is sounds just right.”

  “Oh, but Miss Blake,” said Mr. Bell, with raised eyebrows, “we couldn’t let it to you without a viewing. That would hardly be fair to you, or to us. Still, as you seem in such a hurry, I see no reason why you shouldn’t see it this evening. We have the key was impressedan alongs and it’s only just round the corner from here. Let’s see, who could we send, Mrs. Ledward? Would you be good enough to go and enquire?”

  Sheila didn’t like the way he looked at her when Connie had gone. His manner became quite intimate, but she couldn’t be too putting-off in case he might suddenly withdraw the flat, so she smiled and played up to him, answering back when he made a personal remark about her hat. He was delighte
d with her, and feeling that he held her in the hollow of his hand, allowed himself more familiarity of tone than was ethical, dropping it with a clearing of his throat when Connie returned.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bell,” she said, “but there’s no one. Phillips and Mr. Schilling have gone, and the rest of the staff is up to their eyes in work.”

  Sheila hated her. “Well, couldn’t I go on my own if you gave me the keys?” she asked. “I wouldn’t steal anything.”

  Mr. Bell laughed and Connie folded her lips and sat down again, uninterested in whether Sheila saw the flat or not.

  “Wouldn’t steal anything, eh?” said Mr. Bell. “I’m not so sure. It’s just these innocent-looking ones who turn out to be the most dangerous criminals. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Ledward?” Connie pretended not to hear.

  “Oh, but I must decide tonight,” said Sheila. She knew that the flat would escape her if she didn’t grab it.

  “I tell you what,” Mr. Bell looked at his gold wrist watch, which had such a stout cage over the face that it was a wonder he could see the time at all, “I’ve got ten minutes to spare. I don’t mind just popping round with you if you come straightaway. We shan’t need very long. I dare say the viewing will be only a formality with you as you seem to have set your heart on the place.”

  “Oh, would you really?” said Sheila, looking up at him under her curly lashes as he stood up. “It’s awfully good of you.”

  “Not at all.” Mr. Bell reached for his hat on the stand behind him. “Just a part of our service, eh, Mrs. Ledward?” Connie smiled briefly. “What about that letter to Lauder’s?” she said. “You wanted to get that off tonight, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ll be back in plenty of time for that,” he said airily. “If anyone wants me, tell ’em to try again in a quarter of an hour.” He held open the door for Sheila. “Shall we go then, Miss Blake?”