All The Nice Girls (6 page)

Dagwood read the later entries carefully. He himself needed digs. He could stand no more of the Northern Steam Hotel. He noted down a few addresses and decided to look at some during the lunch hour.

First there was the question of what to wear when calling on landladies. It was a nice point. If Dagwood wore his best dark grey drinking suit, submariner’s tie, and polished black shoes he ran the risk of having a guinea a week added to the rent before he had a chance to see the room. If he went to the other extreme and wore the clothes he normally wore at sea in the submarine, he was likely to be dismissed as a dangerous layabout before he had set foot over the threshold. Dagwood decided on a Harris Tweed coat, cavalry twill trousers, a woollen tie, and brown Italian leather shoes. That ensemble, Dagwood hoped, would strike the neatest balance between affluence and poverty.

‘I want to look like an up-and-coming bank clerk on his way to change his library book,’ he told Ollie.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ said Ollie realistically. ‘They can tell who you are with half an eye open.’

‘Anyway, here goes.’ Dagwood looked at the list. ‘Mrs Gladstone, 41 Forsyth Street.’ The Landlady Book did not commit itself to any further information on Mrs Gladstone.

Forsyth Street was less than a mile from the shipyard and had once been the centre of the fashionable district of Oozemouth, where the doctor drove his brougham, where the policeman came only to call on Cook and where the piano legs were fitted with frills. The houses in Forsyth Street had once been family mansions, built of brick or Portland stone by prosperous Victorians and intended to last for a dynasty.

But when Dagwood walked along Forsyth Street to call upon Mrs Gladstone times had changed. The social pendulum had swung away and left Forsyth Street behind. Most of the houses had been converted into makeshift and inconvenient flats, with kitchens in what had once been maid’s rooms and lavatories in the airing cupboards. One house was wholly occupied by insurance companies who advertised their names in black and gold lettering along the front of the house. Two of the basements contained Chinese restaurants and a third a barber’s shop. The largest house in the street had been converted into a school for deaf children and across the road, in the house to which old Lady Drummond had come as a bride, the Harvey McNichol & Drummond Social & Billiards Club had its headquarters.

The lace curtains at No. 41 waved as Dagwood walked up to the front door. Dagwood noted Mrs Gladstone’s curtains quivering: first at the top floor, then at the second floor, the first floor, and finally the ground floor, marking Mrs Gladstone’s progress towards the front door. By the time she reached the front door, Mrs Gladstone had scrutinised Dagwood from four different angles and would now be able, Dagwood could wager, to describe him to the police.

‘Yes?’

Mrs Gladstone was a professional landlady. Even Dagwood, novice at the game though he was, could see that. She had iron-grey hair, iron-grey eyes set in an iron-grey complexion, and she wore an iron-grey dress. When her iron-grey lips split in a mechanical smile of welcome Dagwood saw that she had iron-grey teeth. Mrs Gladstone was a terrible, an implacable figure, an apparition from a child’s nightmare, a distillation of all the repressive governesses, nannies and arithmetic teachers who ever lived. Mrs Gladstone was the sort of woman who inspired men to revolutions, if only to create a new world where there could be no more Mrs Gladstones; and yet, paradoxically, Dagwood could quite well have imagined Mrs Gladstone herself knitting at the foot of the guillotine. Dagwood realised that he might have made a mistake and attempted to withdraw, but Mrs Gladstone had already summed him up.

‘You’ve come about the room,’ she stated.

‘That’s right but. . .’

‘It’s three guineas a week. Four if you stay the weekend. You’ll want to see it.’

‘Er, well...’

‘Come in.’

Silent-footed as an Apache in her iron-grey felt slippers, Mrs Gladstone led the way into the hall. Dagwood’s own footsteps rang echoingly on a floor of black and white tiled squares. He looked around him. On every side lay evidence that Mrs Gladstone’s guests lived in what amounted to a police state. ‘Close This Door QUIETLY’ said a notice on the front door. A long mirror hung by the front door in such a position that anyone entering or leaving the house automatically looked in it. Dagwood was chilled to the heart by the words ‘Rent Day is FRIDAY’ pasted along the top of the mirror. Remember you must die, the words reminded Dagwood, all flesh is mortal but death and rent endure. Opposite the mirror were an angular mahogany hall-stand (‘Guests Are Responsible For Their Own Clothing At ALL Times’); a telephone with a coin-box (‘Do NOT Ask For Change’); and a brass gong with a padded drumstick in a stand (‘Guests Are Expected To Be Punctual For ALL Meals’). Dagwood could no more imagine anyone ignoring Mrs Gladstone’s summons, beaten out on that brass gong, than he could have imagined them missing the Last Trump.

‘This way, please.’

Mrs Gladstone proceeded towards the stairs (‘Keep Right At ALL Times In Case Of Fire’). Dagwood followed. Halfway up the stairs Dagwood came upon a poignant sign that someone, at some time in the past, had tried to gain asylum from the Gladstone regime by one superb, cathartic act of rage and desperation. ‘Do NOT Throw Geometrical Instruments Over These Bannisters’ said the notice.

‘Laundry goes on Mondays,’ Mrs Gladstone was saying, conversationally. ‘Exact money to be put in an envelope to go with the soiled clothing.’

‘I see,’ said Dagwood. ‘But I really . . .’

‘Hot running water is provided in all rooms. Baths are sixpence extra. Each bath.’

‘I see.’

They had reached the first floor landing. Here the walls were a dull mustard yellow (in contrast to the glacial blue of the hall). A life-size gun-metal bust of Napoleon stood on a pedestal and near it hung a print of ‘The Monarch of the Glen.’ On the other side was a picture so dark and obscure that Dagwood had to step close to it before he could see that it was an engraving of an emaciated Elijah standing at the mouth of a cave and staring, with understandable anxiety, at the flight of some ravens in the distance.

Mrs Gladstone began to mount the stairs again to the second floor landing, her legs rhythmically pumping.

‘All guests eat the same meals. Special dishes are charged for.’

The last sentence was said in a tone of such menace that Dagwood had a vivid mental picture of a polyglot community of Moslems, vegetarians and head-hunters, all eagerly eating Mrs Gladstone’s regimented dishes rather than cause Mrs Gladstone inconvenience.

The first floor carpet was replaced by linoleum on the second floor which itself gave way to bare boards on the third floor. The only fittings on the second floor landing were a titanic wicker laundry basket and a framed picture of an etiolated hollyhock. On the third floor there was nothing to be seen at all except two doors, both varnished a sombre vault-like brown.

‘All new guests are on the third floor,’ Mrs Gladstone said.

‘Oh?’

‘Mr Benjamin has been with me ten years and he’s still only on the second floor,’ Mrs Gladstone added, with some satisfaction.

It had not occurred to Dagwood that there might be protocol in a boarding house. Plainly all Mrs Gladstone’s guests had to accumulate many years’ seniority of faultless lodging before they were promoted from the limbo of the third floor to the carpeted elysium of the first floor.

Mrs Gladstone took a key from her apron. ‘There’s five shillings deposit on the key,’ she said, pushing the door open.

The room was as functional as a lavatory and as welcoming as a monastic cell. The furniture was of the most utilitarian kind - an iron bed with brass knobs on the posts, a wardrobe, a small table and a chair, a wash-basin, a gas-fire, and a gas-meter with the inevitable exhortation ‘Do NOT Use Foreign Coins In This Meter.’ The floor was bare except for a strip of felt by the bed. The window admitted a view of No. 42 Forsyth Street, opposite.

Dagwood was not surprised by the room. After the preliminaries leading up to it, he had expected nothing else.

‘Such a friendly room,’ said Mrs Gladstone.

‘Yes,’ said Dagwood.

There was a pause. Dagwood knew that the next move in the comedy was up to him. He had been carried thus far by Mrs Gladstone’s deadly precision. If he hesitated now, he would be bound in Mrs Gladstone’s steel web for as long as he remained in Oozemouth. This was a crisis. Dagwood rose bravely to meet it.

‘I won’t take it,’ he blurted out breathlessly, and waited apprehensively, half-expecting Mrs Gladstone to disappear in a puff of many-coloured smoke and reappear as a malignant witch at last uncovered in her true form.

But Mrs Gladstone merely nodded. There
were
people who refused her rooms, just as there
were
people who refused the last rites. Both categories were equally damned.

Mrs Gladstone led the way down again, down to the linoleum level, past Napoleon, Elijah and the Monarch of the Glen to the carpet line, down past the hall-stand and the mirror to the front door. The door swung open. Daylight streamed in. Dagwood walked out, only then conscious that sweat had been running between his shoulder-blades and down the backs of his legs. Mrs Gladstone had not asked Dagwood’s name nor what he did for a living. He had been admitted, assayed, found wanting and, like a bent coin, rejected.

‘Great Zot!’ said Dagwood, aloud. ‘You’re well out of that, young Dagwood.’

Dagwood took out his notebook, crossed out the dread name of Gladstone, and then, feeling completely unnerved, went to ‘The Smokers’ for a drink.

‘I don’t know why you bother with digs, love,’ said Daphne, when she heard about Mrs Gladstone. ‘A young ram like you would be far better off on his own.’

‘You mean get a flat or something?’

‘Of course, love.’

Dagwood considered the idea. Never in his life had he looked after himself. Home, Cambridge and the Navy had always provided him with food and lodging and all the comforts of life. Like the lilies of the field, like almost every bachelor officer in the Navy, Dagwood had never cooked for himself.

‘Oh I don’t think I could.’

‘Yer a big softie, love.’

Dagwood did not question the statement. ‘D’you really think I could get a flat?’

Seeing that Dagwood was slowly catching on to the idea, Daphne called to Guv: ‘Wasn’t there someone in last night talking about Bill Watson’s barn, Guv? Didn’t they say he’d converted it into a flat?’

‘That’s right. Just looking for a tenant. Just finished it. Hasn’t even put it in the evening paper yet.’

‘There you are, love,’ said Daphne triumphantly. ‘Now you go and have a lewk at it and don’t come back here and say ye haven’t taken it because ye don’t know how to lewk out for yourself.’

‘Oh very well,’ said Dagwood resignedly. ‘How do I get there?’

Mr Watson’s farm lay on the outskirts of Oozemouth, eight miles from the shipyard and almost on the border of the neighbouring county of Beaufortshire. The farm was in a district which could still be classified as countryside but the processes were already at work which one day would swallow the farm and the nearby village and include it in the town. Oozemouth was already shooting out long suckers which in a few years’ time would encircle the farm and engulf it. On the way out there in the bus Dagwood noticed places where this process had already been completed, where grey stone country houses, each with a surviving strip of vegetable garden and a small orchard, were surrounded by lines of new red brick villas whose gardens were still no more than churned-up plots of raw earth.

Dagwood could get no answer from the front door of the farmhouse. He made his way round to the back and, glancing through a window, caught sight of a girl, stripped to the waist, washing herself in the kitchen sink. The girl looked up at that moment. She and Dagwood stared at each other.

‘Be with you in a minute! ‘

The girl snatched up a towel while Dagwood retreated to the back door. She was wearing a heavy oiled-wool sweater when she opened the door. Repressing the tiny urge of sexuality at the knowledge that she was almost certainly wearing nothing underneath the sweater, Dagwood raised his hat.

‘Is Mr Watson at home?’

‘He isn’t at the moment,’ the girl said. ‘But can I help you? I’m Mrs Watson.’

The girl blushed. Dagwood blushed in sympathy.

‘I’ve come about the barn you’re converting into a flat,’ Dagwood said, his blush deepening into a ripe peony colour.

‘Gosh, how did you come to hear about it so soon? We’ve only just finished it.’

‘Somebody in ‘The Smokers’ told me about it.’

‘Gosh, how the word gets around! It’s not quite finished yet, but would you like to see it?’

‘Yes, please, Mrs Watson.’

‘My name’s Molly, actually.’

‘Molly.’

Molly took a key from behind the kitchen door and led the way across the yard, past a line of sheds and a well.

‘That looks a very old well,’ Dagwood said.

‘Oh yes, they say it’s about a thousand years old. The pump doesn’t work now. Nobody’s been able to get any water from it for years.’

They were joined by a sheepdog puppy, which began to bark and jump at Dagwood’s heels.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Shep. Don’t mind him, he doesn’t mean any harm. It’s just his nature to do that.’

Molly walked up a cinder path to the barn.

‘Here we are.’

The Tithe Barn was constructed like a Roman granary, and was probably almost as old, with solid stone walls and thick buttresses. A slate roof had been added and windows cut in the walls. Inside, the barn was split into two compartments, the first a large, high-roofed living-room and the second a much smaller section containing the kitchen and the bathroom. The bedroom was above the kitchen and bathroom and was approached by a set of wooden steps from the living- room. The living-room was lighted by four windows, two looking north towards the yard and the farmhouse and two looking south over the orchard and a field. There was also a long skylight in the roof. Molly showed Dagwood the electric cooker, the kitchen sink and the bath, the immersion heater in a cupboard, and the coal shed outside the back door. There was a brown stove in one corner of the living-room, two old armchairs and a sofa, a dining table set against the wall, and four chairs. The inside walls had just been whitewashed and there were several faded carpets covering most of the stone floor. It was crude, and probably very cold in winter time, but for one person looking after himself it appeared to be almost ideal.