The Fancy (34 page)

When one day she did make a mistake, it was a sensation. It was not only a mistake, it was a glaring, hideous
faux pas
, a great gaping crack right across the scavenge pump casing, which the dumbest, blindest novice could not have passed. But Madeleine—Madeleine, who had been on the job for two years, who knew the oil pump like her own soul, who drove the fitters mad with her minute, hypercritical reports ; Madeleine, who had discovered things with her naked eye that an expert with a magnifying glass could hardly see—no one could believe it.

The A.I.D. woman who was checking the engine, hardly liked to bring the pump back to her, although her signature was on the report. She took it to Bob Condor.

“There must be some mistake,” she said. “One of the girls has passed an appalling crack on the scav. casing. Mrs. Tennant’s name is on the report, but it must be the girl on the other bench. I mean, Mrs. Tennant
couldn’t
——”

“Crack?” said Bob, taking the casing, which almost fell to pieces in his hands. He went “Whe-ee-ee-ew!” and “Tt-tt-tt-tt-tt. Whoever passed this ought be be kicked out. She’s not fit to be an inspector. But you’re right. It couldn’t be Mrs. Tennant.” He hurried up to Edward with his tiptoe run and Madeleine, looking up from the next job, saw them talking together with scandalised faces and looking towards her. They went up to the girl who did the pumps on the other bench and she shook her head and looked righteous. They looked at the pump again and then back at Madeleine doubtfully, hardly liking to tax her with it. Like a hypnotised mouse watching a stalking cat, Madeleine sat paralysed on her stool and watched their hesitant approach.

Edward cleared his throat. “Er—Madeleine,” he said, “there’s just a little thing here to clear up. It seems this scavenge pump went through.” He held it out to her. “It’s got your name on it, but—I mean, well, I can’t believe that you——”

“Ish this your report?” Bob Condor laid the card on the bench and she read it through without seeing it, not daring to look up again at the pump, after the first quick glance which had sent her heart into a panic.

“Well, ish it yours?”

She nodded, still not looking up, twisting her hands between her knees.

“But Madeleine, how
could
you pass it?” burst out Edward, “You of all people! But nobody could—if they were deaf, blind, paralytic, drunk, they couldn’t pass a thing like that.”

Madeleine said nothing. “It’s terribly dishappointing,” said Bob despondently, “when your record’s so good. The A.I.D.’ll be furious about this. I don’t know how you could let us down so, I’m sure I don’t.”

Dinah, looking across the bench to see what was going on saw Madeleine making an extraordinary, crumpled face, as if she were going to cry. Ivy stared, and nudged Reenie, who stared too with her mouth open and her pencil laid on her tongue, arrested in the act of sucking the lead.

All that day, people kept coming up to Madeleine and telling her they couldn’t understand it, until she thought she would go mad. She had to go into Mr. Gurley’s office about the black mark, and he kept saying : “But what the blazes happened to you? Aren’t you well, is that it? Would you like time of at the other end of the table. startlyhf to go and see your doctor?” She saw some of the girls surreptitiously looking at the scavenge casing, drawing in their breaths and looking at her as if she were a freak. “Bad luck, Mad,” some of them said, “sort of thing that might happen to anyone,” meaning that
nobody
could have—much less old Mad.

Madeleine did not usually long for the six o’clock bell. She never wanted to go home, because being at work was far better than being alone, but tonight she prayed for it to ring so that people should rush off and forget about her. Tomorrow was Sunday and perhaps by Monday they would have forgotten.

She pinned on the beige hat, put on her gloves and followed the crowd slowly out into the golden evening. Soemone came up behind her and took her arm, squeezing it.

“Cheer up, Maddy,” said Dinah. “It’s not the end of the world to get a black mark, you know. Blimey, if I got worked up about all the mistakes I make I’d be in my grave by now.”

“If only they hadn’t kept on about it,” said Madge miserably. Her face looked shrunken and yellow, like a badly-stored apple.

“I know,” said Dinah, “that’s the fault of being the Prize Girl. It’s a compliment really ; they couldn’t believe it of you, you see.”

Madeleine began to cry. She had a handbag in one hand and a shopping bag in the other, so that she couldn’t wipe her eyes.

“Oy,” said Dinah, “you can’t do that. What’s the matter? Here —I had a hankey somewhere.” They were nearly at the clockhouse and Madeleine was crying so that she could hardly see : painful, unpractised, middle-aged tears. At the door, she suddenly turned and bolted across the track, between two sheds and down the three stone steps to the Toilet.

Dinah found her sitting on the cleaner’s chair, her arms on one of the filthy basins, her feet in the litter of paper towels and cigarette ends that the girls had left behind.

“Look here, Mad, old girl,” she said sternly. “You must pull yourself together. If you’re going to work in a factory, you must be tough. You ought to know that by now, after the last War and everything. I mean, it’s hopeless. Come on, I’ll take you round to the pub and give you a drink. You can’t sit there all evening like some broken down old lavatory attendant.”

Madeleine fumbled in her bag and showed her the telegram that wrote off Martin with a finality that seemed to laugh at all her months of hoping and believing. It had come the night before and been in her bag all day, but she hadn’t meant to tell anybody.

Edward made up his mind to go and see what was wrong with Wendy several times before he actually brought himself to go. Even when he was at last walking down Queensdale Road, smelly after the spell of rainless weather, he almost turned back half-way. Would she think it awful cheek? Would her father kick him out and would she hate Edward for exposing her to the embarrassment of what that dreadful old man might do? He had not even the excuse of coming to enquire after her health, because she had sent word to Canning Kyles that it was not illness, but “family trouble” that kept her out.

As he knocked at the door, Edward marvelled at himself for daring to intrude. Whatever the “family trouble” was, they could not possibly want him. Someone might be dead ; he ought not to have come. Footsteps were approaching the door from the inside, shuffling footsteps that sounded at the other end of the table. startlyh like Mr. Holt’s. Before Edward could turn and run, the bolt shot back and the door was opened by Wendy in bedroom slippers.

She gave a little gasp, hesitated, and then instead of asking him in or shutting the door in his face, stepped out quickly and joined him on the pavement, closing the door without latching it.

“Ted,” she said, “you shouldn’t have come all this way. Why did you?” She looked thinner than ever. Her shoulders showed sharp through the top of her blouse and her wrists and ankles looked as though you could snap them with your hand. She had no make-up on and her ash-blonde hair was dull and drawn tightly back with a crumpled bit of ribbon. Edward suddenly realised how much he had missed her.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she repeated, glancing back at the door. He had planned to say that he had come down about some tools of hers which could not be found, but instead he said : “I was worried about you. I wanted to know what was the matter.”

“That was nice of you. I wish I could ask you in, but—No, perhaps it would be all right. Come in and have some tea.”

“No, I won’t really,” said Edward quickly. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I only just wanted to see how you were. Walk down the road
a little with me and tell me what you’ve been up to, that is, unless you’d rather not.”

She glanced down at her bare legs and slippers and touched the apron she wore. “Oh, I can’t,” she said. “Look at me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, “you look fine. Come on.” He took hold of her arm, eager to get away from the house. After hesitating, she came with him, and when she was walking at his side, he suddenly realised he was holding her bare arm, and dropped it. She padded softly in her slippers up the messy pavement, and they were half-way up the road before she began to talk.

“It was awful,” she began. “It really was awful, Ted.” She nodded her head thoughtfully. Then suddenly, it all came out in a rush, as if she had been bottling it up for a long time for want of someone to tell it to. She talked on, in her quiet, unemphatic voice without looking at him, and when they came to the end of the road, he steered her round the corner into the long crescent and they walked under the speckled plane trees.

It had all happened the night when the solitary raider had set the sirens wailing after months of silence. Wendy and her father and mother had been in the sitting-room, Wendy and Mrs. Holt were sewing, and Mr. Holt was reading the evening paper with his usual ejaculations of disgust. In five more minutes he would let Lassie out and they would all go to bed.

At first, Wendy thought it was a bus climbing the hill, but as soon as she realised what it was, she looked quickly at her father, who had raised his head with its grey cockatoo’s crest and was listening with wild eyes. Mrs. Holt, who was rather deaf, looked at him too and realised that something was wrong before she heard the siren.

“There!” said Wendy brightly, “quite like old times to hear old Moaning Minnie, isn’t it?”

“Was it the——” Mrs. Holt’s lips shaped the word siren and she looked at Wendy and then they both looked back at Mr. Holt.

He didn’t say anything. He just sat there with his Adam’s apple going up and down his long throat, slowly crushing the paper on the table in front of him. Lassie leaped off his knee and bigger than any of the others. p alongran under a chair, with her rat’s tail touching her stomach.

“No planes, anyway,” said Wendy. “I expect somebody’s leaned on the button by mistake. D’you remember that first Sunday of the War, when they sounded it just after Mr. Chamberlain’s speech and everyone got so excited and then it was one of our own all the time? I wonder what happened to the man whose fault it was. I expect he——” She chattered on, trying to cover the noise that was still scarcely more than a throbbing in your own head, felt rather than heard. But now as the siren died, even Mrs. Holt could hear it, that familiar throbbing drone that grew imperceptibly until it filled the whole sky and seemed never to have been out of your ears.

It was no good pretending it wasn’t there, or that it was one of ours, for a gun barked and then another. Every time they went off, Mr. Holt jumped, but he still said nothing, even when Lassie whined. Wendy and her mother looked at each other and both knew what the other was thinking. They were remembering all the nights when the terrifying noise outside had been nothing compared to the noise within the house, how he had ranted and raved and shouted to heaven and cursed, and each night they had thought he was going mad until the miracle of daylight and the All Clear had put him into a stupefied sleep. He used to sleep all day ; that was what had saved himou are at last

*

Sheila had never considered the possibility of Kathleen coming back to London and wanting her flat. Her office was evacuated for the duration, and beyond that Sheila did not look. She never thought about what was going to happen to her and David after the War. When she tried to think about her future with David at all, it was just an empty
space. She couldn’t visualise it, and she didn’t let herself try. The way to live was like David, wholly in the present, and never make plans for the future. David hated making plans.

Once he had said to her : “You know, you and I really ought to get married,” and she had caught her breath, and then said, like a fool : “Oh, I don’t know, darling. We really might be married as we are.” She was afraid that he had said it because he thought she was dissatisfied with the way they were living. Afterwards, she could have kicked took a step nearer to her mother,Iing onn herself for having lost the opportunity, because he didn’t speak of it again. She couldn’t mention it, in case he thought she were trying to tie him down. Still, he had the idea in his mind, that was something. Perhaps he was waiting until after the War.

Because she could not look farther than the end of the War, Sheila did not mind how long it went on. Nobody near to her was in the Services, David said there were not going to be any more blitzes, and really, once you got used to the rationing and no cars and having to work at the factory, it made very little difference to life. She even caught herself being half disappointed when the Russians advanced, and almost welcoming any setback that might postpone the end of the War. The end of the War would bring Kathleen home and then life would begin to be difficult.

When she got Kathleen’s letter to say that her office was returning to London and that she was coming back to the flat, Sheila said : “Oh!” and stood stock still in the middle of the six square feet that was called the hall.

David was in the bath. “What’s the matter, honey?” he called. Sheila read the letter through again, unbelievingly, and then opened the bathroom door with a face of tragedy. “Kathleen’s coming home,” she said slowly, dropping the words at him as he lay smiling and unconcerned in the bath.

“Well, what of it?” He began to plunge his face about in the water, splashing the floor and her feet.

“She’ll want the flat!” wailed Sheila. “Her office is coming back and she’s coming back for good. Oh, I could kill her.”

“What?” He came up out of the water blinking and shaking his hair.

“She’ll want the flat. We’ll have to turn out. Oh, David, isn’t it
awful
?”

She got u>“No, we’ll have to find somewhere else, that’s all.”

“But it’s so nice here, and it’s terribly difficult to get a flat in town. We’ll never find anything.”

“Oh, you’ll find something all right. Go to an agent’s tomorrow.”

“But they’re all shut by the time I get back from work.”

“Well, take a day off for a change.”