The Fancy (3 page)

“It’s your turn to play, Pop,” screamed Connie and Dorothy, “do attend to the game!”

At ten to nine, Mrs. Munroe began to say : “Mustn’t miss the News.” At five to, she said it again, and : “Nearly News time, hadn’t we better turn it on in case your clock’s slow? She suspected all clocks, even Big Ben.

Connie looked sharply at the green glass clock whose works were reflected in the oval mirror that hung forward over the mantelpiece. “That clock never loses.”

“What about the News?” said her father looking up from his cards, with the air of one making an original suggestion.

“Might hear something about a big Bomber raid one of these days,” said Don confidentially.

“Let’s finish the game then, for Heaven’s sake, if we’ve got to hear it,” said Connie. “It’s your turn, Mum.”

“Well, turn it on, Ted. It always takes such a time to warm up. Oh Dorothy, you’re never going Rummy already? I might definitely blyh have known it; the only time I get a decent hand, someone else gets a better. I said to myself when I saw the cards Connie dealt me, there’s a snag somewhere, I said.”

Mrs. Munroe had been disappointed so often in life that she never expected anything else. Ill luck had dogged her. She had married a pleasant spoken man who looked like one day becoming manager of the Soft Furnishings at Hennessy’s. He had turned out to be an
unpleasing bore, who watched upstart after upstart climb through Soft Furnishings above him until he retired with a limited pension and the conviction that he had earned his right to be about the house all day. Mrs. Munroe had wanted sons, and both her children had been daughters, and straight-haired at that. Connie, too, had inherited her grandmother’s legs. Small wonder that Mrs. Munroe, who had set her heart on marrying her to Fred Emery had been landed with a son-in-law like Edward. She had cried all through the wedding, even through the Breakfast, which was at the Crown, with wine and little sandwiches stuck with flags. A streak of pump water, she had thought when she first met Edward, and she still thought so.

She knew by now that no story that she ever read would live up to the promise of its opening, and that if she ever went to the theatre, there would be a slip in the programme to say that an understudy was replacing the star she had come to see. Everything she ordered in restaurants was “off,” shops sold out at her approach and she had only to step on to a bus for it to be going to its garage——” Next stop only.” As for her digestion, well it was no good hoping that what she sent down wouldn’t turn to bile ; she knew it would as soon as she saw it on her plate.

Big Ben boomed through the booming of Mr. Munroe on Bayliss. Connie shut him up. “We might as well listen if we are going to hear it. There might be something about rations.” Don shuffled the cards like a conjuror and flicked them round the table, while they listened to the Summary. A bombing raid on Germany was announced, so colossal that even Mrs. Munroe was impressed.

“There you are,” said Don, with an air of showmanship, “what did I tell you?”

“However did you know?” asked Dorothy, pop-eyed.

“… and other operations, fifty-three of our aircraft are missing,” concluded the wireless respectfully.

“Ah, I thought so.” Mrs. Munroe’s face would have lifted if the flexor muscles hadn’t permanently atrophied. “We shan’t have any planes left if they go on like this.”

“How many d’you think we’ve got?” said Don. “Funny thing about that raid, though. It seems that—but no, I’d better not tell you as they haven’t announced it.”

“Oh Don, do,” said Dorothy, and her mother said : “They ought to tell us everything. It’s not right.” Her voice had a moaning monotony. “Hear about the National Day of Prayer, Connie? We might go to church. Dorothy and I went last year. They had two collections.”

“They make me sick,” said Connie getting up to go to the kitchen. “First they make the War and then they try and make us pray for it.”

“What was the News?” asked Mr. Munroe, who had been out of the room washing his hands.

“Oh nothing, Pop ; you wouldn’t be interested.”

“I remember when wireless was first invented,” he began wondered whether p along telling Edward.

“Oh get up, Pop, do,” said Dorothy, “I’m trying to lay the table.” He stood in front of the sideboard to tell Edward about crystal sets, but Dorothy wanted to get at the silver drawer.

Edward sat with the paper, watching them eat an enormous meal with the distaste of one who has already eaten. Mrs. Munroe brought food for Connie, but it was always understood that Edward had his own tea beforehand. He sometimes wondered if that was why she chose to eat so late, so that there should be no danger of having to provide for him. They ate a lot and took a long time over it Connie ate slowly, picking and pushing at the food on her plate, while she chewed with her front teeth, because her back ones were unreliable. Mrs. Munroe ate absorbedly, with her eyes on what she was going to eat next. Don ate with his mouth open, and Dorothy ate greedily, snatching at the food with sharp bites, her eyes bright. Mr. Munroe slopped his tea into the saucer, crumbled his bread and shed tomato skins off the side of his plate on to the table. At intervals, he would put down his knife and fork, wipe his mouth, clear his throat and begin to talk, until someone jogged him and told him to Get on with it, everybody else was on cheese.

Edward folded the paper, flung it on the floor and said suddenly : “I’ve got a new job.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Connie stared at him, her jaws working automatically. “You’ve never left Canning Kyle’s?”

“No, but I’ve been switched from the Fitting Shop into the Inspection Shop—means a bit more pay.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Munroe, helping herself to pickles and inspecting the label balefully as if she knew what they were going to do to her, “but you can never trust ’em once they start to switch you. First it’s from one shop into another. All right. Then they switch you again and once they get you on the move, they’ll switch you right out before you know it. I’m not going to buy this grade two salmon again, Connie. It’s not worth the points.”

“No, but this is a step up,” said Edward patiently. “I’m to be charge hand, with a bench of ten girls under me.”

“Ten girls under you,” said Don forgetting himself. “Boy, oh boy, what a bedful.” Connie drew herself up with thin lips and Mrs. Munroe rapped the table with the handle of a laden fork, so that a bit of beetroot fell on to the tablecloth. Connie dipped her napkin in water to rub at the stain.

*

Sheila rolled over with her eyes shut and slapped down the alarm clock. It fell on to the floor and started to ring again. She was half out of bed by the time she had quelled it, so she let herself fall the rest of the way, and sat on the white wooem;
text-align: pa by nowlly rug rubbing her eyes. The vaseline on her eyelids had made them sticky. She was very pretty, in a surprised retroussée way. Her mouth was always slightly open, and when she smiled, her lower lip caught under her top teeth and a dimple appeared. She smiled now, and prodded the dimple ; it was one of her exercises.

If anyone had told me three years ago, she thought, that I’d be getting up at six every morning, I’d have knocked them down. And not only getting up at six, but not really minding it. To think of all the mornings I used to breakfast in bed at eleven o’clock after a party, feeling so glamorous, but really such a mess. Much too fat and my powder too white and my hair too tightly permed.

She got up, and pulling off her hair-net, lifted her hair away from her head and shook it out. On the way to the bathroom, she looked in the mirror, earnestly, with parted lips. A bit puffy. If one was married, one would have to wake first and do one’s face.

Beyond the bathroom window, dawn was just investigating the well of the flats ; tradesmen’s lifts, zig-zagging iron staircases, frosted windows, tall chromium taps and a tin of Vim or a milk bottle on kitchen window sills, bedroom windows with the curtains drawn. She closed the window, shivering in her nightdress. Oh God, the winter! The gardener down at Swinley had said it would be a hard one because the berries were so thick. A morning like this made you think of the inevitable weeks ahead when a gearwheel was an aching block of ice, when you couldn’t think about inspecting, or about anything except how cold you were, and when you
knew
that whatever they said, no one else was as cold as you.

Going barefoot into the compact little kitchen, she put her coffee to heat on the electric stove and padded back into the bedroom. All her life she had wanted a flat with a fitted carpet. All the years at Swinley, in the draughty, polished house where even breakfast was announced by a gong, she had wanted a place where you could walk in and out of rooms naked if you wanted to, where you could have a bath at mid-day or midnight and eat when you were hungry instead of when the servants expected you to be.

And now she had got it, thanks to Kathleen being evacuated with
her office and letting Sheila have the flat at a rent which was more than covered by her wages at Canning Kyle’s. Thanks to the war, really. It was agony of course, but without it, she would never have got away from home, unless she had married Timothy, and Sheila had always thought she was destined for higher things than that.

The worst thing about getting up early was that you never knew what to wear. Clothes that seemed suitable at six in the morning were all wrong by six at night She put on a jersey and a pair of linen dungarees. They were old, but they had faded to a blue that was attractive with her red jacket She had her coffee and cereal while she was doing her face. Her hair took longer now that she was doing it this new way. She had meant to make her bed properly this morning, turning the mattress and everything, but there was no time now. She whipped the clothes on to the floor and threw the pillows into a corner. Sordid when you got in, but it was good for them to air. She was going to do some housework tonight too ; she might even scrub the kitchen floor.

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.