The Fancy (27 page)

As the evening wore on, he found he was minding less and less that he had lost his battle about the show. After all—Allan Colley. And if the humbler members of the Club were eclipsed, well—do ‘em good, perhaps—give ‘em a bit more ambition.

The evening was a success. The roast chicken was perfect, Mr. Bell said that the potatoes excelled even his sister’s, and the gravy was rich and brown. Mr. Bell kept mopping his up with bread, “à la Continental”, he said and smacked his lips. Connie told him about Wenduyne and Edward was surprised that she remembered it so well. They had not talked about it for a long time. He kept looking at her and thinking how young she looked and how pretty in that pink blouse thing. Dick, of course, had to go and make her frown by asking : “Heard any more about the Call-up, Mrs. L.?” It had been mentioned when he was last there.

“Oh,” said Mr. Bell, passing his plate for more treacle tart. “They won’t take you. Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m sure I don’t mind if they do,” she said. “I should be only too pleased, if I thought that they would really make good use of me.”

“Aha he blew a kiss into the airI s.,” he said, “there, with a woman’s perfect intuition, you’ve hit the nail on the head. If they’d make good use of you—but the point is, would they? The wastage of labour that’s going on is a scandal. I tell you what you ought to do, if you really want a job, though it seems to me, you’ve got a full time job being a housewife —and a darned good one too.” He held up the last piece of tart on his fork, nodded at it and engulfed it. Connie bridled.

“What ought she to do?” asked Edward.

“That
was
a treacle tart,” said Mr. Bell, putting down his fork and pushing back his chair to stretch out his legs. “What ought she to do? Why, pick her own job, something that won’t waste her capabilities. If you really think they’re going to call you up, though I can
assure you they won’t yet——”—he had his finger on the pulse of every Ministry—“you want to cheat them by getting yourself fixed up first. I tell you what, you know, you ought to come and work for me. I’d give you a job in the office any day. We’re rushed off our feet with work—could do with any amount of help.” Connie got up to go and make the tea, giving no indication of whether she liked the idea or not.

“But surely that wouldn’t exempt her?” said Edward. “An Estate Office—that’s not reserved?”

“Not reserved? My dear old boy,” Mr. Bell laughed tolerantly. “Of course it’s reserved. One of the most important things in the War, housing people.” He really made you believe it too, sitting back with his spectacles in his hand, his tongue excavating the remains of Connie’s excellent meal from inside his flat, wide mouth.

While he was undressing that night in their room, Edward said : “Would you like to have a job, Connie? Would you like to work in Bell’s office? I think he meant it, you know.”

She was doing her hair at the dressing table, fixing each little sausage in a loop of wire. She laughed with a curler in her mouth. “Oh, it was only a joke. I wouldn’t care to particularly, anyway. I’m all right.”

“I’ve sometimes wondered, you know, dear,” Edward stood looking at her with his braces hanging down while he took out his cuff-links, “whether you wouldn’t be happier with a job. I mean, it’s lonely for you. alone all day——”

“I’m all right,” she repeated. “I’m sure I’ve plenty to do.”

“Yes, I know, but—I tell you what, Con,” he said quickly, “I wish we’d had a child. You’d like it, wouldn’t you?”

“We couldn’t afford it,” she said without looking at him.

“Oh, I know we said that at first, and then that business of your illness came, and what the doctor said. But we could afford it now, you know.” He was scrutinising himself in his little mirror on the chest of drawers with the same studied detachment as she was in hers. “I mean, do you think you ought to go and see the doctor again?”

She dealt very carefully with a curl at the back of her head, turning it up so that the bristles showed where the underneath hair had been cut.

“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with
me
” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.” He sighed. He couldn’t get her to say“Don’t be silly, Don. He daren’t speak to one girl, let alone ten.”. b one way or the other whether she wanted a child.

She put on her hair net, stood up and took off her dressing-gown, was revealed for a moment in the V-necked Celanese nightgown that gave her a bit of a tummy, and then kicking off her slippers was into bed.

“Hurry up, Ted,” she said, hunching the clothes over to her side, “I never knew a man take so long to get to bed.”

“And how many have you known, pray?” he asked, but she was not in a mood for joking. The cheerfulness in which she had spent the evening seemed to be passing off.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “And do hurry up. I want to get some sleep.”

“Just got my teeth to do.” While he was in the bathroom, sedulously doing his forty strokes on each side, up and down, not across, he turned things over in his mind. He had put out of his head so many years ago the dream of having a child, that he hardly dared to bring it back. He had always known that she never wanted one, although she had made the excuse, first of money, then of the doctor. But just recently, since she had been being “Nice to him,” as he put it to himself, he often wondered : did she consider the possibility and not mind it, or had the doctor perhaps told her she was safe?

When he came back the room was in darkness. He went to the window, drew the blackout, opened the window at the bottom and stood for a minute or two doing his exercises and breathing deeply through his nose. The exercises ought really to be done in the morning, but there was never time. This was better than nothing. When he had done his twenty arms bend, arms stretch and had touched his toes with difficulty five times, he shut the bottom window, opened it a foot and a half at the top, felt his way round the end of the bed and slid under what was left of the clothes. He didn’t think she was asleep ; she was not clicking.

“Connie,” he said into the darkness, “suppose we did have a baby, would you mind? I know you were never keen on it, but now that you—now that we—
you
know—I wondered perhaps if it meant that you wanted one after all.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in a strangely defensive tone. “What are you driving at?”

“Nothing,” he said surprised. “I only wondered. Nothing to get huffy about.”

“I’m not huffy,” she said crossly, “but it’s enough to drive a person mad the way you keep on question, question and cross-examine.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and put out a hand. “Con——”

“Oh, don’t keep
on
,” she said, kicking him with her feet as she turned farther away from him.

When she had no shopping to do, Wendy Holt usually lunched in the canteen. Although the shilling dinner cost more than her usual cheese roll and tea at the milk bar or one of the local cafés, it was more economical in the end. Having had a good hot lunch, she and her mother could manage on bread and cheese and cocoa in the evening. Her father could always have soup, or a little bit of fish or an egg perhaps. Wendy and Mrs. Holt usually gave up their egg ration to him ; they didn’t much care for eggs anyway.

In the torrent of people that was released from the Shops by the twelve o’clock whistle, those who were going to the canteen ran as fast as anybody. There were usually two meat courses : a joint and some
made-up dish, so unless you had a passion for rissoles or savoury pie, it was as well to get there early. The canteen was at the far end of the track, but the men from the Machine Shop who had the shortest distance to run, managed to be queueing up at the counter almost before the whistle had died away.

There was hardly ever any joint left when Wendy arrived. The canteen was already full when she came in, breathless, to join the queue for tickets at the cash desk. Conversation that had been pent-up all morning, rabid knives and forks and a roystering lunch hour programme from the loudspeaker vied with each other in the thick savoury air. The counter was arranged like a Totalisator. Files of people approached it empty-handed and countermarched back on the other side of little railings with a heaped plate in one hand and a knife and fork in the other.

“Any fish?” asked Wendy hopefully. There was fish and chips sometimes.

“Only rissoles now, dear,” said the steamy woman who was pushing plates steadily through the hatch as if she were feeding a machine. Wendy took her plate and a knife and fork from the box and walked down between the tables looking for a place. It was a mystery to her how people managed to get there so early. Some were halfway through their plateful and some even, with eyes bolting out of their heads as the last mouthful bolted in, were half on their feet to make a dash for the pudding hatches. Wendy found a place at one of the farther tables, opposite a man who was eating absent-mindedly with a fork, absorbed in a folded paper propped against the vinegar bottle in front of him. She had sat down before she saw that it was Edward. He looked up and smiled, offered her the cruet and went on reading.

Wendy hoped he didn’t think she had followed him here on purpose. She had been painfully shy of him since that awful night when her father had turned him out of the house. They had neither of them alluded to it, but although he had been as polite and considerate to her as usual, and even brought his stool alongside hers sometimes at tea-time, their conversation had never recaptured that spontaneous intimacy of the tea party in the little kitchen.

After what had happened, it was nice of him to talk to her at all. He couldn’t possibly like her, especially if he thought she was trailing him in his lunch hour. She would have liked to move to another table, but that might look funny, so she stayed and ate in unobtrusive silence, hoping she was not disturbing his reading.

It was Thursday and Edward was combing the show announcements of
Backyard Breeding
to see whether the proposed date for their show clashed with another in a neighbouring district. “Egliston Open Sweepstake Show. May 9th.” … “Briar Park and Hadleigh Open Table Show. At the Crown Hotel, May 14th. Calling all the Rabbit Fancy. Show Secs. DO NOT CLASH.” … “Wilford and Dis.
Rabbit Club will hold a Members’ Show for the Red Cross on April 30th.” … “Morley Ann. Show aff. B.R.C. Spec. : Chinchilla Classes. Chin. fanciers keep yr. chins up!” No, it seemed to be all right. Good. He smiled, refolded the paper and put his knife and fork together on his empty plate. He was properly aware now of Wendy opposite him, picking her way among the surplus potatoes. Nice of her to come and sit at his table, and nice of her to sit there quietly while he was reading. Most girls would have started to chatter, stung to conversation by the sight of someone absorbed.

“Hope you didn’t think me rude,” he said. “I was just finishing something.”

“Don’t let me disturb you.” hundred yards an along

“Oh no, I’ve finished.” He put the paper in his overall pocket. “I’ll fetch you your sweet, shall I? What are you going to have? There’s——” he looked over his shoulder at the menu on the blackboard. “There’s hot jam roll or prunes and rice.”

“I’d like jam roll, but please don’t bother. I’ll get it.” She wiped her mouth with her handkerchief and started to get up.

“No, sit down, I’ll get it. Give me your ticket.”

He came back presently with two plates of prunes and rice. “Sorry, jam roll’s off as per usual.”

“It doesn’t matter. I like prunes.”

“Do you? So do I as a matter of fact. Not many people do though, do they?” Having agreed that this was so, they passed on to a discussion of other food and found they had quite a lot of tastes in common.

“Cigarette?” said Edward. “Oh no, you don’t smoke, do you?”

“Not often, but occasionally I do. I would rather like one now if I may.” She smoked it cautiously, in short puffs, and he thought a cigarette made her look more old-fashioned than ever, instead of more modern.

“How are your rabbits?” she asked, tapping non-existent ash into the ashtray. “Have you still got—Masterman, was it?”

Edward was delighted. “Fancy you remembering!” He told her about Masterman’s latest fitter and went on to tell her about the show. The canteen was beginning to empty now ; there was no one else at their table. She was far easier to talk to here than at the bench, where she seemed so reserved and the other girls were always listening or chipping in.

“You and your mother were going to come and see the rabbits, weren’t you?” he said, forgetting for a moment what had shattered that project. “I do wish you would. Perhaps you’d like to come to the Show? It might be rather interesting. We’ve got a very famous rabbit man coming to judge for us.”

“I’d love to,” said Wendy, “but I’m afraid I might not be able to get away. My father’s not well, you know——”

“Yes, of course,” he said quickly. He didn’t want to talk about that horrible old man with the prawn’s eyebrows and the working face. He didn’t want Wendy even to have to admit that he was her father. “Still, if you ever could get away, do come and see them. I’m sure you’d like them.” He saw the clock. “Gosh, I’d no idea it was so late. Come on, we’ll have to run for it if we want to clock in on time.” He hung back for her as they ran along the track, but in the crowd round the clocks, he lost her, and after looking for a moment, clocked himself in just on time.

By the time Wendy struggled to her clock against the stream of people coming in from outside, it was a minute past one and she had lost a quarter of an hour.

Before going back to the bench, Edward slipped up to the Final Assembly Shop to show Dick his draft for an advertisement. He read it over to him while Dick, who always started work dead on time, was assembling a control shaft.

The little collars and split pins which fixed the control levers to the rods were impossible for Dick’s hands, so Joseph, who was fiddling happily with the sump, had to keep popping up to do them. Every time Di he blew a kiss into the airI s.ck grunted : “Pin, Joe,” Joseph’s little head of a pould appear enquiringly round the supercharger, he would straighten his knees, jump on a wooden box and fix the pin with a twist of his delicate wrist.