The Fancy (39 page)

Dinner had as many courses as ever : soup, cauliflower cheese, meat, summer pudding and dessert. The interval between each course was even longer than usual, because the loggia was farther from the kitchen. Mrs. Geek silently disapproved of dining in the loggia for this reason. In any case, she could not understand people wanting to be out of doors when they had plenty of rooms to sit in. She herself hardly left the house all the year round except to go to the dustbins or the vegetable garden. Sheila had given up offering to help her fetch the dinner or hand it round. Mrs. Geek seemed to think it a slight on her efficiency, and when she had gone out, Mrs. Blake would say: “It’s the wrong principle, dear. After all, we pay her to do it, and they have a very easy job here.”

There was liver and bacon on this Saturday night, with waxy masked potatoes and not enough gravy. “Liver, Mummy?” said Sheila as Mrs. Geek handed her the silver entrée dish, “Where on earth d’you get it? You never see any in London. How d’you manage it—Black Market?” She was only trying to make pleasant conversation, but her father said quite stiffly : “It’s natural that the shop people should treat one well when one has a certain standing in the town. I dare say everyone can’t get liver. We can. A little more gravy, if you please, Mrs. Geek. No more? Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” Sheila saw him looking at her plate and felt that she had taken too much.

“Are you getting enough to eat, Shee?” asked her mother for the tenth time since she had come home. “I do wish you weren’t living alone. I can’t think why you don’t live with the subjectan alongKathleen.”

“She doesn’t want me,” lied Sheila.

“Well, that’s not what she says in her letters. She says how disappointed she is that you shouldn’t be together, after the great friends you used to be down here. I had a letter from her only yesterday saying that you looked tired, which I must say you do. She writes to me quite a lot, you know. More than you do.”

Oh yes, they were very thick. No chance of Kathleen not telling dear Auntie Lena anything that she heard about her daughter. As she scratched her legs and slapped midges on her arms all through the dawdling meal, so exactly like all the other meals of her life at Swinley, Sheila realised more and more how impossible it would be to let the night porter present Kathleen with a bombshell to drop on this stagnant milieu. She had got to get the money that he wanted for keeping his mouth shut about David.

That was what she had come down for this week-end. She did not tackle her father until they were sitting over coffee in the waning light. Sheila got up to switch on the light but he looked at his watch. “No leave it,” he said. “Only ten minutes to black-out.”

“But it’s not dark yet and they never bother about you being dead on time, especially in the country.”

“Better to be ten minutes on the right side than ten minutes on the wrong side of a fine,” he said sententiously. “As an A.R.P. officer, one must set a certain example. People are lax enough as it is. You might just get my pipe for me dear, if you will, and the Swan Vestas from my jacket pocket in the hall.”

“And my pills, Shee, while you’re about it,” said her mother as she went through the French windows. When she returned from the errand that she had discharged every night of her life at one time, Sheila went and sat on the steps leading into the garden, with her back against a pillar and her profile towards her father.

“Daddy,” she said. “I wonder if you could possibly let me have a little money. I’m rather short this month. The bonus hasn’t been good at the factory, and—I’ve got one or two bills I really ought to pay off.”

“How much do you want?” he asked, giving no indication of whether he would or would not.

“Well—about ten pounds would cover it.” The night porter’s ideas of blackmail were not large, but they were more than she could meet at the moment.

“Oh darling, I knew this would happen,” said Mrs. Blake. “This comes of your being so silly and taking a place of your own. You can’t possibly afford it. You’d far better go back to Kathleen where you’ll only have your board to pay.”

“Your mother’s right,” said her father. “Independence is one thing, but debts are another. This settles it. You’ll go back and live with Kathleen.”

“But it’s got nothing to do with living alone,” said Sheila. “I’ve paid the rent. It’s for clothes mostly. I had to have a coat this summer and I suppose I did spend too much. Will you let me have it? I could pay you back next month.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of taking money from my own daughter, I’ll put you straight this time but——”

“Oh thanks, Daddy.” she interrupted, getting up to go to him. “I
knew you would.” She went behind his chair and sliding her arms down the back on to his shoulders, kissed the narrow bald top of his head.

“But you ought to be able to manage on what you earn at your work. However, I know what girls are when they get among the shops,” he said indulgently, as if he had never heard of clothing coupons. “My proposition is this : I’ll give you five pounds—and you must go back to Kathleen.”

“Oh but Daddy, I need ten.” She took her hands from his shoulders and put them on the back of the chair.

“You’ll soon save the other five when you haven’t any rent to pay.”

“But they want the money now!” The night porter had only given her a week and already three days had gone by.

He shook his head knowingly. “Shops are used to waiting, though as you know, it’s against my principles not to pay all bills on the mail. Give them something in advance, go back to Kathleen and you’ll soon be able to pay the rest.”

“But I can’t go back to Kathleen,” said Sheila, getting angry. “Dammit, I’ve told you she doesn’t want me——”

“I do wish you wouldn’t swear so much, Shee,” said her mother. “You never used to before you went to the factory.”

“Do give me the ten pounds,” said Sheila, hating to have to plead with him. “It’d be much better to owe it to you than the shop.”

“I’ve told you what I’m prepared to do,” he said with surprise that she should question his decision. “The remedy is in your hands. Go back to Kathleen and you’ll be able to get straight. Of course if you choose to go on living alone and get into debt again—as you probably will—I can’t promise to help you. I think that’s fair, Lena?” He looked to where his wife sat in the twilight at the other end of the table.

Mrs. Blake, who was longing to give Sheila the ten pounds and more, had to say: “Oh yes, I think so. She really must be sensible and go back to Kathleen.” Sheila left the chair and went to the edge of the loggia to stand looking out at the garden, still and silent in the gathering darkness.

“I shan’t go back,” she said. “Thanks for the five pounds,” she added ungraciously. She knew it was no good hoping for any more. She would have to fob the porter off with half what he wanted and collect the rest somehow.

“Well, that’s settled then.” Her father laid his napkin on the table and got up. “Let’s go indoors, shall we? I can’t see myself think.” His little joke indicated that he bore her no resentment.

“Coming, Shee?” asked Mrs. Blake, getting up clumsily and groping under her chair for her bag. “You’ll be getting your holidays soon, won’t you?” she said, glad to change the subject. “I’m so looking forward to it. You shall have a really good rest, breakfast in bed every day if you like and plenty of lying in the garden in the sun like you used to do. We’ll get the court rolled and round up some people for tennis. When exactly is your holiday?”

Sheila turned round. “Two weeks’ time,” she said. “But don’t count on me coming home. I promised ages ago to go and stay with some people. I don’t see how I can get out of it.” She would not dream of coming , that’s what it is.”. bhome now.

“But, Shee!” said her mother, and her father said : “Well, I must say, that’s a bit of a disappointment. You never told us you wouldn’t be coming here.” She could not see their faces across the loggia, but she knew that she had hurt them. Well, she couldn’t help it. They should have given her the ten pounds. Damn, damn, damn. What was she going to do?

“Come along then, Lena,” said Mr. Blake, holding open one of the French windows. His wife lingered. “Coming, Shee?” she said uncertainly.

“I think I’ll stay out here for a little,” said Sheila. She heard them go indoors, and the glass door shut behind them and heard the dry scraping of Mrs. Geek’s long feet on the stone floor as she came out to collect the last things on the table. She stood chewing on her fingers, while night crept towards her over the lawn. What was to stop the porter going on and on wanting money? David would have known what to do, but she could never tell him now, even if she did see him again. She had got to cope with it alone. How was it going to end? What was she going to do?

They were in the milk bar, she and Dinah, sitting up at the counter as they had been nearly nine months ago on the day when Sheila told Paddy and Dinah how she had met David in the train.

Their lunch was the same : sausage rolls, coffee and a jam tart, for the milk bar’s repertoire was not inspired. The same girls from the rope factory in turbans and blue jeans were chattering over pies and chips at the corner table, the same sheepish young bloods were lounging round the automatic gramophone, whose repertoire was as unchanged since that November day as the menu.

Only Sheila was different. That day she had hardly been able to sit still on her stool. She had thrilled inside herself each time she remembered something he had said and had kept throwing smiles at herself into the mirror behind the counter, fascinated with her own bright looks and the perfect way her hair was behaving. She had hardly heard a word of what Dinah and Paddy were saying.

She still did not hear much of what Dinah was saying, but her preoccupation was with worry instead of inward glee. She sat slumped on her stool with her elbows on the counter and her cup in both hands and no longer looked up at her other self in the mirror. She had not even powdered her nose before coming out to lunch. It was no pleasure to look at yourself these days, when your hair was lank and needed a perm which you had not the energy to undertake, when you had a spot on your chin and your skin refused to hold make-up,
when your eyes looked tired and the lashes were no longer curly because you could not be bothered to use the little gadget on them. The natural murkiness of her bedroom mirror at Thatcher Street was not improved by the fact that she rarely dusted it, but she hardly looked in it now that she woke so heavy and lingered in bed, dreading the thought of the day ahead, and only being forced out at last by the one unchanging thing in her perplexed existence, the necessity of being at Canning Kyles by half-past seven.

Dinah chatter idly, more from habit than anything else, undiscouraged by Sheila’s monosyllabic answers. She had known for some time that something was wrong with the little Blake bit, but she was not going to interfere before she was invited. She had something on her mind, too : what to give Bill for supper tonight. He always came home starving after his long shift at the works ; it would have been the greatest thrill in the world suddenly to slap down a great plate of steak and onions and chips before him as if it were nothing unusual. Tonight she had either got to slap down macaroni cheese, have to find somewhere else.pa which he would pretend to enjoy, or open the last tin of salmon and have nothing nice for his dinner on Sunday. She sighed and caught Lou as she darted past with a tottering stack of dirty cups.

“Give us another cup of coffee, Lou,” she said. “How about you, Sheila?”

“What? Oh—I don’t mind.”

“Might as well. We’ve got time. Two then, Louie, with sugar, if you can wangle it.” When the coffee came, Sheila forgot to notice whether it were sweet or not. She had been greedy once ; now she simply poured things into herself from habit. She had got to go and see the porter tonight ; nothing else mattered today but that. Again, even after a week of pinching and scraping, she had got to fob him off with half of what he asked and again he would say that he was not a charity organisation and how much longer did she think this could go on? How much longer indeed? What end could there ever be to it until she abandoned the unequal struggle and allowed him to tell Kathleen? From his point of view there was no reason why he should ever stop blackmailing her, and from hers, no reason why she could ever stop paying him. Before her stretched years of poverty and humiliation, with herself moving pathetically through them, a girl who would never be happy again, a figure to bring tears to the eyes.

The youths from the electric light bulb factory had tired at last of “The Lady in Red” . The music box was dark and mercifully silent for a moment until one of them put in a penny and pressed another button. It leapt into glaring, blaring life with a scooping wail that made Sheila look quickly across at it and then down at the counter to hide the tears that it had shocked to the front of her eyes.

It was the last straw. This was the tune that they had been playing over and over again that day when she had told Dinah and Paddy about David.

“My momma done told me,

When I was in knee pants …”

It had been identified in her mind ever since with that feeling of apprehensive exhilaration that was the beginning of love.

“A woman’s a thing, that leaves you to sing

The bloo-ooes … in the night.”

The merciless drone beat on her ears and brought all her misery throbbing into her head. Not only the porter and her present trouble, but all her memories of David—the tune ground them out with an insistence that seemed bent on reminding her of what she had lost.

“A woman’s a
two … time … thing
”

He used to sing it. She could have got up and left, but instead she had to sit on, while the machine plugged misery into her.

“Anything the matter?” asked Dinah, when she could no longer ignore the gulpings and sniffs and gropings for a handkerchief that were going on on her left. “Tell a girl—unless you’d rather not, of course.”

“Oh, Di——” It didn’t need much now to make Sheila release the whole story. Once started, she began to wonder why she had never told Dinah before. She was an easy person to unburden your soul to. She didn’t interrupt, and when she did say anything, it was always the right thing. She understood.