The Fancy (37 page)

They were clean anyway, and they were miles better than some of the places she had seen. She had stayed up until one o’clock this morning working on them, re-arranging the furniture, strewing them with her own belongings, disguising the more unattractive features with cushions and rugs, removing the old-fashioned photographs and ornaments and hiding them on top of the cupboard, even cleaning the windows. Would he mind about the flowered carpet? Would he notice that cistern? It was only because she was excited that it had kept her awake last night. Anyway, it was done now ; she had taken them, and paid the first month’s rent in advance. He would be pleased that it was so small.

The revolving door went round slowly all the time. Every time it quickened, she looked eagerly for the first sight of his good leg stepping out of it. Each time she was sure it was going to be David, but each time it was hateful people, walking confidently through to the restaurant with talk and laughter, or someone alone, glancing round for a moment and then greeting a friend, shyly or casually or with obvious pleasure. None of the people sitting in the hall with her were kept waiting for long ; even that woman in the mackintosh and strap shoes had a husband, who came anxiously through the door with parcels, abasing himself for being five minutes late.

Sheila sat on. Jews came, foreigners came, sailors and airmen and American soldiers came, but not David. She would wait ten more minutes and then go away. She waited a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, she went and washed her hands again, but he was still not there when she returned. Even if he did come now there would be no tables and probably no food. She was watching a family party assemble in the hall with an unnecessary lot of kissing and laughter, still keeping half an eye on the revolving door, when David, who had come in by the side door, spoke in her ear and made her jump.

“Awfully sorry, darling,” he said. “That’s what you get for going with a journalist. Let’s eat, shall we? I’m starving.”

She waited until they had got a table and had ordered, and when their drinks had come, and David, who was looking tired, bad put down his glass and said : “Ah, that’s better. Now let me look at you,” she said : “Darling, guess what.”

“What?” he said. “I like that hat.”

“I’ve found somewhere for us to live.” She described it to him, making it sound cosy.

“Thatcher Street?” he said. “Pretty low neighbourhood. It’s probably buggy.”

“Oh no, it’s marvellously clean. It’s nothing like the flat, of course, but, honestly, it isn’t bad. There’s a bathroom.” She did not mention that it was shared by the occupants of the first floor rooms. “There isn’t a kitchen, I’m afraid, but we’ve got a gas ring and the man who
owns the restaurant says I can use the kitchen whenever I like. Anyway, it’s somewhere to be together. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said, but when he saw the rooms he was not so sure.

In the middle of the night, when she thought he was alseep, she heard him turn over and thump the pillow and turn over again and groan.

“Aren’t you asleep?” she said softly, putting out a hand.

“This is a damned uncomfortable bed,” he grumbled, turning over again.

“I don’t think it’s so bad. I expect it’s because you’re tired.”

“I am tired, and it’s still damned uncomfortable.” The cistern chose that moment to explode and David swore. When at last he did get to sleep some men came down Thatcher Street singing, and when he dozed off again, the Greek’s daughter Ellen came home and stood talking on the pavement for a long time before letting herself in and banging the door. Sheila lay awake for what seemed hours, willing the cistern to be quiet, and when the alarm clock buzzed under her ear, it seemed she had only just gone to sleep.

David woke as she was dressing and stared about him, rubbing his eyes. “Where am I?” he said. “Oh God, I remember,” and closed them again. All the furniture in the bedroom was dark and looming. Either the floor, or the legs of the wardrobe or both were uneven. It leaned forward so that its door would not stay shut. The head of the bed was carved in scrolls and hung menacingly over David’s restless head. He opened his eyes again as she was doing her hair at the mirror that overswung itself unless you wedged paper into the frame.

“What’ll I do about my breakfast?” he asked.

“Well you can make coffee on the gas-ring in the sitting-room. There’s bread and butter and milk a the subjectan alongnd things in the sideboard, and you can make toast at the gas-fire ; I bought a toasting fork. Or, you can go down and have breakfast in the restaurant. Mr. Petrocochino said he’d give it you if you wanted it.”

“What, that place we came through last night?”

“Yes. The cooking’s very good, I believe,” said Sheila brightly.

The cistern exploded and David groaned and pulled the sheets over his head.

The following night, David had his American article to do in the early hours of the morning, which meant he stayed at the office all night. He was working all the next day and when Sheila rang him in the evening from Collis Park Station, hesitantly, because she knew he didn’t like being called at the office, he told her he was not coming back to sleep at Thatcher Street.

“I’ll sleep at Toddy’s place,” he said. “My room’s still free. I’ll get some food at the canteen here and then go straight to bed. I’m dead to the world.”

“But, David, I’ve got some fish. I was going to do you a lovely dinner. You could have it in bed and go straight to sleep. I’d be ever
so quiet. Do come home, David.” She called it home, hopefully.

“Not tonight, honey. I must get some sleep.”

“It won’t be so noisy tonight. I spoke to Mr. Petrocochino about that cistern, and he said——”

“No, not tonight. Yes, what is it, Sammy?” His voice went away, talking to someone in the office and then came back to her. “Look, I must go now, I’m fearfully busy. See you soon, h’m?”

Sheila went back to Thatcher Street, to the rooms which seemed blowsier than ever with the bed unmade, and brooded over tea and toast in the sitting-room with its tasselled tablecloth and tarnished gilt clock that didn’t go. Mr. Petrocochino had promised to keep her fish in his refrigerator, but when she wanted it on the following night, it had disappeared and with it, conveniently, his memory of putting it there.

“But I gave it him,” stormed Sheila to Mrs. Urry in the little scullery. “How can he have the face to pretend I didn’t? He’s used it in the restaurant, I know.”

“Eaten it ’imself, more like,” said Mrs. Urry, who was scraping carrots. “You don’t catch a nice bit of fish like that finding its way into the dining-room. Dog-fish is all the customers ever see, and Gawd knows what when it’s fish cakes.”

“Oh, he’s hateful. When you accuse him of anything, he pretends not to understand. It was just the same over the bathwater. He’s vile, he’s mean——”

“Mean?” said Mrs. Urry. “’E wouldn’t give you the drippings from ‘is nose.”

“Mrs. Hurry!” called his voice from the kitchen, “how long I am waiting for those carrots?”

“’Ow long, oh Lord, ’ow long,” muttered Mrs. Urry, plunging her hands about in the earthy water in the sink.

“You are getting too old for your job, my woman,” he said, appearing in the doorway in a collarless shirt and pot-bellied apron. She swung round from the sink, the bunch of her apron at the back quivering.

“If anyone’s getting too old for their job round here, it’s you,” she retort at the other end of the table.ke bed. “Talk about the ruins of Greece! And don’t you call me your woman.”

“Carrots, carrots, carrots!” he hissed, beckoning them imperiously with a hand that had been mixing sausage-meat.

“What’s all the excitement?” asked David’s voice from the kitchen, where he had strolled down to see why Sheila was being so long.

Sheila, trapped in the scullery by the Greek’s bulk in the doorway, hated him to see her in the middle of this sordid scene. As soon as she could, she squirmed out and found him picking bits of crust off a loaf and talking to Ellen, who was dressed to go out in a black skirt and white satin blouse with nothing underneath.

“Come on upstairs, David,” she said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to go out to dinner as our fish seems to have disappeared into thin air.”
She stood waiting his leisure, while he finished talking to Ellen, who leaned voluptuously against the dresser twiddling her dark curls with one fleshy white arm raised to display her figure.

“So your boy-friend’s a newspaperman?” David was saying. “Like me. You want to look out for those guys.”

“Oh, I
like
newspapermen,” said Ellen, travelling up and down him with half-closed eyes. Sheila snorted and went upstairs.

… .

David always seemed to have some excuse for not sleeping at Thatcher Street. He was tired, he was working late, he had promised Toddy to go back and meet some chaps in his room. On the nights when he was not there, the cistern was mute and the street outside as quiet as a country lane, but when he was there, all the devils in hell seemed to be let loose in the plumbing, cats mated at the tops of their voices and local revellers behaved as if it were New Year’s Eve. Sheila would lie awake, listening to him tossing and cursing, willing him to sleep, and dreading to hear him, when she got up in the morning, wide awake, as he had never been at the flat, say : “Don’t expect me tonight, darling. I’ve got a late job on. I’ll sleep at home.” Home, he called Toddy’s, when this was supposed to be his home. She was beginning to hate these rooms as much as he did. At the flat, she had managed to feel married, but here she felt like a prostitute, waiting night after night, going to bed without cream on her face in case he should change his mind and come back.

“What about dinner, then?” she would say.

“Better not fix anything. I may not be able to get off and I don’t want to keep you hanging around. You go out and enjoy yourself.” Enjoy yourself! Who with?

One night, when she was happy, when everything had gone right and he had come back to dinner and they had had fun, just as they used to, she came down to the kitchen at about eleven o’clock to make coffee. Ellen and her young man, who had been to the cinema, had come in with the same idea. She was standing over the stove, her behind prominent in a flowered silk dress, cut on the cross, and her young man, who was rude and untidy, was sitting at the kitchen table picking his teeth with one of his fingernails, which were never clean.

“Oh hullo, Ellen,” said Sheila. “I just came down to make some coffee, d’you mind?”

“Of course not, dear,” said Ellen, who, given the chance, would have been bosom friends with Sheila. “You can have some of this if you like ; I’ve made pints. How many’s it for—the two of you? Got your husband up by the time he got home p along there?” She jerked her head towards the ceiling. David was always called Sheila’s husband, although she thought they all knew that he wasn’t.

“Yes, two of us,” she said, putting down her tray on the table. “Good evening, Mr. Birkett.”

He made a vague salute. “Just call me Dan,” he said without getting up. Ellen took a long time over the coffee, insisting on letting it brew before she would strain it. Sheila wished she would hurry ; she wanted to get back to David. When she was with him up there she felt that she could make him forget how beastly these rooms were. She didn’t like to leave him in them too long alone, knowing from experience what powers of depression they held. It didn’t matter what you did—whether you moved the furniture about, or stood vases of flowers everywhere or stuck up magazine pictures or silly dolls—the rooms lowered at you. The black marble mantelpiece in the sitting-room was a scowling brow, the half-open, convex drawer of the sideboard a sullen underlip.

David did not like being up there alone any more than she liked leaving him. Presently she heard his whistling and his feet clattering down the stairs.

“Darling,” he called from the first floor landing. “What on earth are you doing down there? Get a move on.” Dan Birkett raised his head in surprise and as David limped down the last flight and appeared in the kitchen doorway, he said with his dirty sideways smile : “He
llo
, fancy meeting you!” Sheila was watching David’s face, which was taken aback and trying to register unconcern.

“Oh, do you boys know each other?” said Ellen comfortably. “That’s nice.”

“Sure,” said Dan. “We work on the same paper. That is, if you can talk about a common reporter and a feature writer in the same breath.” He did not seem to like David. “I didn’t know you hung out here though, Fielding. I thought your wife lived up north.”

“Well, she does—I mean, she did, you see, we—Oh, hell, what business is it of yours, anyway?” David, who could so easily have explained the situation away had chosen instead to turn and stamp angrily away upstairs.

“My, my,” said Dan, and he and Ellen looked at each other. “What about your coffee?” said Ellen as Sheila picked up her tray and started off after David.

“Oh never mind,” she said. “Leave it. I—I’ll come down for it later.”

She found David in the sitting-room, leaning on the mantelpiece and kicking the fender with his good foot.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he said. “This’ll be all over the office by tomorrow.”

“But, darling, it’s all right. He doesn’t know we’re not married. If only you hadn’t dashed off like that—I mean, there’s nothing funny about two people living over the Acropolis Dining Rooms.”

“The Acropolis Dining Rooms!” His laugh was a snort. “I was a fool not to think of it. I knew his girl’s father was a Greek who kept some low café—he was the one who used to get us those tongues and things, remember?”

“Yes, but I don’t see that it matters. Even if he doesn’t think we’re married—and I’m sure he does—why should you mind? You’ve laughed at me often enough for being conventional; by the time he got home p along it seems to me you’re a damn sight more conventional yourself.” She sat down at the round table and twisted the fringe of the green woollen tablecloth, wanting to cry. “I don’t mind what your beastly friends think, so why should you?”

“Oh you fool, it’s not that. I don’t give a damn for that. It’s just the—oh, I don’t know—being caught in this awful sordid hole. It’s all so shabby, and sort of degrading. I shall be laughed to death over this.”