The Fancy (6 page)

Edward went quickly through the hall to the kitchen and out into the garden. Connie must be upstairs. His rabbits connected him with food and scrabbled at their netting, but he went straight to Queenie’s hutch and squatted down a few feet away so as not to disturb her. She was lying in a corner, with her ears crushed along her shoulders, staring into space. In the other corner, the hay of her bed was mounded. Edward peered at the mound. Was it his imagination or—yes, the mound was moving! Straining his eyes, he thought he saw a little rat-like body but it was impossible to see how many babies there were ; there was just that stirring, living pile of hay.

“Good old Queenie,” he whispered exultantly and got up quietly to get her some food.

Connie was in the kitchen, cutting yesterday’s cold potatoes into a pan of fat on the stove. “Some people,” she said, “might take offence at their husband saying good evening to the rabbits before his wife. Don’t think I mind, though. I’m used to it, I’m sure.”

“Connie,” Edward’s deep-set eyes were shining, “Queenie’s had her litter—you know, the ones I told you about, by that champion at Ashford.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t looked.”

“What’ll you do with them,” asked Connie, going past him to the cupboard, “sell them?”

“I’m going to keep the best for breeding. I might sell one or two for fur when they’re mature. I shan’t sell any of this lot for flesh, though. I’m hoping they’re all too good for that.”

“Why don’t you find out how many there are? Some of them might be dead.”

“I mustn’t disturb her yet. They don’t like you touching the babies at first. They eat them sometimes if you do.”

“Well, would you believe it?” said Connie, taking the salt and pepper to the stove and seasoning the potatoes. “How disgusting. That just shows you how awful animals are.”

Edward was washing at the sink. He felt very happy. “Funny,” he laughed, gasping through the cool water as he splashed his face, “Funny, if humans did that. Suppose Dorothy went and ate her baby because your mother went to see her at the hospital.”

“Don’t talk like that, Ted. It’s horrible,” said Connie, shaking the pan affrontedly. “And it isn’t funny,” she said as he came towards her laughing.

“Well, kiss me good evening then, Con. I didn’t want to kiss you till I’d washed off the factory smell.” When he kissed her, her mouth was neither resistant nor tomorrow night.” aaf yielding, just disinterested. He sighed and
dropped his arms, letting her turn back to the stove. “What are we eating?”

“Meat pie and chips.”

“Bought meat pie or home-made?”

“Bought, of course. What would I make meat pies out of? Take your coat off the table, Ted. I want to use it. Why don’t you wash in the bathroom, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know ; more matey down here.” He had felt companionable and communicative, wanting to talk about the rabbits.

“Yes, but it would look so funny if anyone came. They’d think we hadn’t got a bathroom.”

Edward laughed and went out to feed his rabbits.

She was dishing up when he came back and he carried the tray through into the living room.

“And so I suppose,” she said, as they sat down, “you were so anxious to get back to your rabbits that you forgot to get your pay?”

“Good Lord,” he said, “I’d quite forgotten in the excitement of Queenie and all that. Here,” he fished in his trouser pocket and threw a little buff envelope on the table. “Take your housekeeping money then, old girl, and give us some tea.”

Connie slit the envelope with a knife, counted the money, and put two notes into her bag, shutting it with a snap.

“Quite a good bonus then last week,” she said, pouring out the tea.

“Ah, you wait till next Friday when I get the first week’s pay of my new job. You’ll see a bit of difference. Any sugar? No, I’ll get it. It was my fault really ; I brought the tray in.” Connie was cutting carefully into her pie when he came back, nibbling at it suspiciously and then dousing it with O.K. sauce.

“Well, come on, Ted,” she said. “I never knew anyone so cagey. Aren’t you going to tell me about the new job? How d’you like it?”

“Well, you know, Con, it’s hard to say at first ; it’s all so strange.” He stirred his tea thoughtfully, recalling the day, trying to untangle his confused impressions.

“Yes, but what’s it like? Interesting. dull, important—?” Surely he must know. Edward was so maddeningly slow at putting things into words sometimes. She didn’t pretend to be clever or read books like he did, but she could always put a name to anything or anyone immediately. She could label a film sloppy, or dry, or absurd right at the beginning, whereas Edward always had to see it right through and then think about it before he would give an opinion. She had known at once that that new couple who had started coming to the Marquis of Granby were ignorant and flashy, but Edward would not admit it until he had met them two or three times and had a talk to the man.

“Well, I’ll be able to tell you more about it when I get into it.” He
began on his pie. “It’s a bit worrying at the moment. There’s such a lot to know. I only hope I’ll be able to cope with it.”

“Oh, so you don’t like it then? I thought you’d be sorry you left the Fitting Shop though I didn’t say anything yesterday.”

“Oh no, you can’t say I don’t like it. It’s just that——” He went on eating meditatively, searching for the right words to convey the responsibility with the flat of his hand. p along of the job and his own inadequacy without giving her the opportunity to damp it.

Oh well, thought Connie, cutting the pastry very small so that her front teeth could deal with it, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, I’m sure I don’t care. Goodness knows he’s always saying I don’t take any interest in his work. Might as well have some music. She got up to turn on the wireless.

“Of course it makes it all the more strange them all being girls,” Edward was saying. Ah, now they were coming to what she wanted to know.

“What are they like?” she asked casually, turning the wireless off again and coming back to the table.

“Well, that girl Dinah Davies is one of them. You know her.”

“I ought to.” Everyone in Collis Park knew Bill and Dinah Davies, but Connie’s aunt had a flat in the same house. For her sins, she said. They made enough noise for six, till all hours of the night sometimes, even when they hadn’t got friends there. What they got up to, Connie’s aunt couldn’t think, although she sometimes imagined. The names they called each other made your ears burn, and once Dinah had come running downstairs to get their letters in a brassiere and knickers.

Connie folded her lips. Oh yes, she knew all about Dinah. Mrs. Davies, as she called herself. It would surprise no one to hear they were not married.

“Who else?”

“Well, there are ten of them altogether—mostly young—smart girls some of them. It’s surprising how they take to engineering work. There’s an older woman too ; I must say I take my hat off to her. It must be very tiring.”

“How old?” Connie poured herself more tea and Edward passed his cup across. “Oh, she must be nearly fifty.”

“Fancy a woman that age taking a job like that,” said Connie. “I don’t think it’s right.”

“I think it’s very sporting. That’s the spirit that’s going to win this War. She’s very good at her job too, and she seems to like it. You know, honestly, Connie, I wonder you don’t come along. Or, if not at Kyle’s, there are lots of places near here that would take you. They need all the women they can get.”

“And who do you suppose would run your house? You wouldn’t
fancy coming home to unmade beds and dirty crockery and nothing for your tea, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t mind. Other people do it. Look at Dinah and Bi Davies——”

“I wouldn’t like to look at her flat, that’s all.”

“Well, you could do part time then. Go in the afternoons when you’d finished the housework. I’ve never said anything, Connie because I always thought you’d probably suggest it of your own accord when you saw everybody else doing War work, but honestly, old girl. I do think everyone ought to help. We’ll never win this War else.”

“I didn’t ask for a War, did I? Let the people who made it get on and win it. After all, we pay income tax, don’t we, and put up with the rationing, and I’ve registered for firewatching. I should have thought that was enough. I’d have a cigarette, Ted, when you’ve finished lighting your pipe.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you wanted one.” He held out a packet and then lit up for her with the flat of his hand. p along. She smoked in the middle of he: mouth, in short, furious puffs, sitting up very straight.

“What’ll you do then,” asked Edward, “if they call you up? They are conscripting married women, you know. They might put you in any old job. It would be better to volunteer now and make sure on getting decent work in the neighbourhood.”

“No thank you. If they want me, they can come and get me. I’m not going to lay myself open to the sauce of those young madams at the Labour Exchange. I’ve heard about them. They won’t believe you’re married without you show your lines.” She began to pile the tea things on the tray. Edward jumped up to carry it for her, but she had already picked it up and she marched out, kicking open the door before he could get to it. He could hear her in the kitchen making a lot of noise with the crockery. He sat down with the evening paper, but couldn’t settle to it. He went out to the kitchen.

“Can I help, Con?”

“I’ve finished.” She was whirling round the kitchen, putting things away, screwing up one eye against the smoke of the cigarette, still held between her lips.

“How about going down to the Marquis, then, as it’s Friday? I could do with a drink.”

“No thank you. I don’t fancy anything. Don’t let me keep you though, if you want to go.”

“You come too. You know we always go on Fridays.”

“I’ve told you once, I don’t care to. Go on, you go. I’ve got plenty to do. You don’t seem to realise what a lot there is to do in a house.”

Dinah didn’t feel like going to the Trade Union meeting either. As usual, when Bill, who made scale models for a tractor firm, had to go
up to the Coventry branch, she felt lost and restless. She generally stayed in her flat, beginning, in a fever of energy, household jobs that had been overdue for weeks, sickened of them half-way through, listened inattentively to the wireless and finished up in bed with a jug of tea and a vast cheese sandwich, reading a library book or a magazine until two in the morning.

Tonight, however, she went back to spend the night with Sheila at her flat, taking with her the pair of kippers that her uncle’s friend in the fish shop had palmed from under the counter at lunch-time. Sheila had been fascinated by Dinah ever since she first saw her, enormous eyes in full play, talking her way out of a telling-off from a hypnotised foreman. Sheila, who always studied attractive women for tips, could never decide what it was about Dinah. She would be screamingly out of place at Swinley, yet she was exactly right in herself. She was not really pretty, yet her face, her movements and her mouth when she was talking held your eyes so that you didn’t always listen to what she said. What she did say was often unrepeatable. Sheila had never heard anyone swear like a man in such a feminine way.

Sheila had been aggressively shy when she started work at the factory. In her mind, she had visualised “factory girls” as something very different from what she found. She was startled to find that they mostly looked the same as she and her friends—only a bit smarter. Dinah had taught her the reduction gear job in a slapdash, confident way, jostling Sheila’s first diffidence into an unquestioning intimacy. Eventually she ceased to wonder all the time what the other girls were thinking of her. They became an integral part of her life. After working beside Dinah for weeks, day after day, nine hours a day, life seemed never to have held anything else announcement.pa. Sheila thrived on liking and Dinah seemed to like her. They were friends. She was the first girl friend Sheila had had whom she had not secretly rather disliked.

“Lovely to live up West,” said Dinah as they walked from Russell Square station, “but my God, what a trek. Some flats ; you’re lucky,” she said without envy. She would much rather climb two flights of worn carpet and one of linoleum with Bill than rise in a gilt lift without him. She poked round the flat while Sheila went into the kitchen to get their supper.

“Who’s this?” She came in without her shoes, holding a photograph.

“Let’s see. Oh, that’s Mummy and Daddy in the garden at home. That’s our house behind.”

“Not bad. What do they think of you working in a factory?”

“They hate it. It’s awful when I go home, because they keep on at me about it and explain me away to people as a curiosity. They hardly know there’s a War on down there, you know. Thank goodness I’m over twenty-one, or I’d have had to stay on and work down
there. Daddy was going to pull strings to get me into the local food office as a seccy ; so much kinder on the hands, you know.” She laughed and spread her fingers on the edge of the stove, looking at the chipped scarlet varnish which failed to conceal the line of dirt under each nail. “What do you do about your nails, Di? Mine are agony ; I can’t keep the polish on.”

“I never try. I think they look better without if you can’t keep them nice.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t not varnish them.” Sheila looked at her in round-eyed horror. “I’d feel naked.”

“You ought to have stayed at home and been a ‘seccy’,” said Dinah. “I think you’re soft. Tell me more about your home. It intrigues me. Is it all kind of like Mrs. Miniver and people cutting roses and having china tea, and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts off?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t be silly. Look, how much coffee d’you think I ought to put in?” Frowning at the saucepan she was stirring, she said : “Where did you live before you were married, Di?”

“In bloody Paddington Green, darling. But I want to know about your place—Swinley, or whatever you call it.” Sheila didn’t want to talk about her home. She suddenly wished she had been brought up in Paddington Green.

Dinah, who had been out to get a cigarette, wandered back into the kitchen with a yell : “Here, what the hell are you doing with those kippers? They’re shrivelled enough already without you go and grill them. Got a frying pan? You want to poach them, see, and then they swell up all juicy.”