Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (3 page)

There came, however, the welcome and dispelling sound of light women’s footsteps on the bare wooden stairs: and a humming, buoyant body swept past his door, and slammed itself into the room adjoining his.

That was Ella – his pert companion in toil – the barmaid of ‘The Midnight Bell.’

She always hummed when she passed his door. In some respects, he reflected, she was a very self-conscious girl. He believed also that the brusque bumpings, the lively jug-and-basin sounds, which now came through the wall, were similarly subtly challenging and alluding to himself. A rather mystifying creature, of whom he knew, really, nothing – for all their chaff and friendliness. Her afternoon had been spent in goodness. She had been over to see her sick ‘Auntie’ (as she so naïvely and characteristically called her) at Clapham.

By and by she called out to him, through the wall, chanting his name in two distinct syllables.

‘Bo – ob!’

‘Ullo!’

‘What’s the time, Bob?’

‘Five To!’

Ella’s retort was a mumble and a bump.

‘
What?
’

‘
Nuth
– thing!’

Silence.

They had five more minutes. They did not speak again. The hush in the house beneath them once more asserted itself. It was the hush of behind-scenes just before the show. These two, high up here, quietly preparing and making themselves decent, were aware of the part they played, and of their shared distinction from the besieging many.

He was now all but ready. He put on his white coat, and fixed his white apron. He then went over to his mirror, in front of which he crouched eagerly to brush his hair – a soothing and reviving operation in itself.

His own reflection gave little dissatisfaction. The clear,
clean skin; the clear, clean teeth; the firm clean-shaven features; the nous, efficiency, and yet frankness of his face; the dark, well-kept hair; the dark brown eyes, set rather far back – all these collectively were as bracing to a remorseful spirit as you could wish. He was, however, not an Englishman. His American and Irish parentage gleamed from him – most particularly his American. His father had been (and it was his proudest boast) an American ‘Cop.’ But he had never seen his father, and his mother had died in London when he was sixteen and at sea. He had spent all his early life at sea, and England was the country of his adoption. He spoke with a Cockney accent. He was now twenty-five, but looked any age between twenty and thirty. He was an acquisition to ‘The Midnight Bell,’ and a favourite everywhere.

As he brushed his hair, Ella came out and knocked at his door. Without leaving the mirror he cried ‘Come in,’ and she entered. She was a dark, plain girl, with shingled hair and a trim figure. She was clean, practical, virtuous, and not without admirers. The slightly mocking and non-committal demeanour which she employed as her professional manner towards those who leered and laughed at her across the bar was carried into ordinary life, and was never so emphasized as when she was in the presence of Bob, whom she loved. She had loved him ever since meeting him, five months ago, when he had first come to ‘The Midnight Bell.’ He had twice taken her out to tea, and once to the pictures. She had nerved herself for a not inconceivable romance. There, however, the thing had ended. She was, she found, incapable of inspiring his tenderness. Where another might have pined and sickened at this, she, in the efficiency and resource of her healthy character, had automatically mastered and diverted her emotions, and now, without languor or jealousy, bore him nothing but good will. She was about twenty-seven. She stood looking at him, in the doorway.

‘Well, “
Bob
,”’ she said, disparagingly.

She always put her ‘Bob’ in inverted commas, as though he were not really Bob at all, and his assumption of being so, along with all his other pretensions, were pure impostures
which
she
had tumbled to a long while ago. This was the convention of their flirtation, and he replied in the same spirit.

‘Well, “Ella,”’ he said, and did not look up from the mirror.

‘Brushing his precious “
hair
,”’ said Ella. . . . His having hair was impudence, in itself.

‘How’s Clapham?’ he asked.

‘Oh. All right. What
you
been doing all the afternoon?’

‘Me? . . . Stayed in.’

‘Sleeping –
I
bet.’

‘Oh well. . . .’

‘And I should think so too,’ said Ella, ‘after all them drinks.’

‘What drinks?’ asked Bob.

But Ella ignored this.

‘If this was my place,’ she said, ‘I’d’ve sent you out of the bar.’

‘I wasn’t drunk.’

‘Well, you weren’t far. I thought you said you was giving up drink, Bob?’

‘Well,
I
can’t help it, if they give ’em to me.’

‘Oh
yes
,’ said Ella, with profound sarcasm. ‘The Penalties of Popularity, I suppose.’

He had left his hair and was rubbing his shoes with a rag.

‘If they gave me tips instead,’ he said. ‘It’d be talking. . . .’

There was a pause. She looked at him ironically, and around the room.

‘You and your old John O’ London’s Weekly,’ she said. . . .

This was referring to a bundle of eleven or twelve numbers of this periodical, which lay on the little wicker table by his bed.

‘What’s wrong with my John O’ London’s Weekly?’

‘Nothing, Bob. Glad to know you’ve got such littery tastes.’

He said nothing. The secret, jealously guarded inner craving, which was responsible for those papers lying there, was not a thing he could elucidate to Ella.

She, on the other hand, was intrigued by, and a little glad of, his reticence in this connection – giving him full credit for experience in realms she secretly revered. She became more serious.

‘You’re a great Reader, ain’t you, Bob?’ she said, and picked up a little green volume that also lay on the table.

‘My word!’ she said. ‘
The History of the Decline an
’
Fall of the Roman Empire
–
by Edward Gibbon
. Do you wade all through this, Bob?’

Bob became a little nervous.

‘That’s only Volume One. They’re seven in all. I’m getting ’em one by one.’

‘My word!’ said Ella, scanning the pages. ‘What did he want to write all that for, Bob?’

This was a stupid query, and almost impossible to answer at random. His reply, however, revealed his innate courtesy.

‘I couldn’t tell you, Ella,’ he said, and rubbed his shoes.

‘Well, I’ll Decline and Fall downstairs,’ said Ella, with sudden decision. ‘So long, Bob.’

‘So long, Ella.’

She went out, and he heard her footsteps receding down the hollow wooden stairs. He looked at himself once more in the glass, turned off the gas, and followed her.

T
HOSE ENTERING THE
Saloon Bar of ‘The Midnight Bell’ from the street came through a large door with a fancifully frosted glass pane, a handle like a dumb-bell, a brass inscription ‘
Saloon Bar and Lounge
,’ and a brass adjuration to Push. Anyone temperamentally so wilful, careless, or incredulous as to ignore this friendly admonition was instantly snubbed, for this door actually would only succumb to Pushing. Nevertheless hundreds of temperamental people nightly argued with this door and got the worst of it.

Given proper treatment, however, it swung back in the most accomplished way, and announced you to the Saloon Bar with a welcoming creak. The Saloon Bar was narrow and about thirty feet in length. On your right was the bar itself, in
all its bottly glitter, and on your left was a row of tables set against a comfortable and continuous leather seat which went the whole length of the bar. At the far end the Saloon Bar opened out into the Saloon Lounge. This was a large, square room, filled with a dozen or so small, round, copper-covered tables. Around each table were three or four white wicker armchairs, and on each table there lay a large stone ash-tray supplied by a Whisky firm. The walls were lined with a series of prints depicting moustached cavalrymen in a variety of brilliant uniforms; there was a fireplace with a well-provided fire; the floor was of chessboard oil-cloth, broken by an occasional mat, and the whole atmosphere was spotless, tidy, bright, and a little chilly. This was no scene for the brawler, but rather for the principled and restrained drinker, with his wife. In here and in the Saloon Bar ‘The Midnight Bell’ did most of its business – the two other bars (the Public and the Private) being dreary, seatless, bareboarded structures wherein drunkenness was dispensed in coarser tumblers and at a cheaper rate to a mostly collarless and frankly downtrodden stratum of society. The Public Bar could nevertheless be glimpsed by a customer in the Saloon Bar, and as the evening wore on it provided the latter with an acoustic background of deep mumbling and excited talk without which its whole atmosphere would have been lost – without which, indeed, the nightly drama of the Saloon Bar would have been rather like a cinematograph drama without music. . . .

When Bob came down to this, Ella was already at her post, in casual conversation with Freda, her companion barmaid, who had only arrived at ‘The Midnight Bell’ a few weeks ago, who did not sleep in, and with whom Bob had but the lightest acquaintanceship. The Governor, too, was in evidence; and so was the Governor’s Wife. And the Governor’s Wife’s Sister was somewhere about.

Of this trio of administrators, two – the Governor and his wife – made no attempt at divergence from type. They were as benign as they were bloated. It was pretty obvious to everybody that they might both burst at any moment, but this fact seemed to contribute towards rather than detract from
their unvarying benevolence. Indeed, swathed round and round with their own tissue, they appeared to be numbed and protected from the general apprehensiveness which besets ordinary humanity. Instead, the rare qualities of warmth, geniality, fair-mindedness, and complete tranquillity had been given opportunity to flourish. Above all, complete tranquillity. The Governor and his wife would burst all in good time, and when they thought proper; and the same principle would apply to everything else concerning them. They were both about fifty. The Governor wore a large blonde moustache on a round, flat face: the Governor’s Wife had her hair peroxided and bobbed. You would have judged her a woman of vivid, and even lurid experience, and rightly. But this would have belonged to her youth, and that would have been cast behind when the Governor married her eighteen years ago. She was not legally married to the Governor, for she had a husband living; but no one knew this. At night she wore black, semi-evening dress. The Governor remained in his grey suit. This was a terribly tight fit (possibly because no tailor in the world could be made fully to credit the proportions demanded), and he never made any attempt to button the coat. The spectacle of his waistcoat, and all it contained, was doubtless an indecent spectacle to snobs, but a pure delight to the naïve. It was the same shape as the world, but a little smaller. The Governor, as he walked about, was a kind of original Atlas. He took the burden not on his shoulders, like the mythological figure, but in the middle. You could positively find yourself trying to spot the continents on the Governor’s waistcoat. His legs were surprisingly small for such a burden – tapering down from the waist to feet of little more than normal size. His wife’s legs and feet were the same. It was for this reason that the shape of both of them could be said to resemble less that of the pig than that of the tadpole – a much more agreeable comparison. And the kindest comparison was welcome in the case of these two, who were, in the last analysis, as charming human beings as could be found. They possessed, between them, over half a dozen chins.

The Governor’s Wife’s Sister was a different proposition altogether. She was, to begin with, thin. She was also dark, and tall, and bony, and ugly, and her dark brown eyes were the quick eyes of one who has been trapped at last and is looking about for a cunning escape. She was intensely unpopular amongst her subordinates, and, in fact, something of a blot upon the house. She was, however, all-powerful – the true ruler and organizer of ‘The Midnight Bell.’ She had, it was widely known, a Head for Business. As the Governor’s Wife’s Sister her status was disputable; and this made her ascendancy all the more bitter. ‘Who does she think
she
is, anyway?’ Ella would ask, and Bob would ask the same. The Governor, they said, was the one they took orders from. They were employed by the
Governor
weren’t they? Or were they not? One day they were going to tell her off. In the meantime they obeyed her commands, which were peremptory, and bore her quibbles, which were continuous, without demur. But one day they were going to tell her off. In that faith they survived.

A
S BOB CAME
down to the bar, the large round clock, fixed high on the wall above the opening leading from the bar to the lounge, stood at five past five. It did not do this because the time was five past five, or even because anybody thought it was. The house was due to open at five, and would do so. The clock was five minutes fast – a naïve ruse employed by this trade for the purpose of ejecting, with greater facility, its lingering and incredulous customers at closing time.

One minute before opening time. . . . A faint bustle of preparation in the other bars, but deep silence in the Saloon. . . . Bob switched on the lights in the Lounge (this was his routine) and went in and poked the fire into a crackling blaze. . . . He came back and encountered the Governor lifting the
flap of the bar, and coming out to unbolt the door. The Governor almost invariably opened his own house. He carried the
Evening News
in his hand, and he gave it to Bob. This was also routine.

‘That there Prince of Wales again,’ said the Governor.

‘What? – fallen off?’ asked Bob, scanning the headlines.

The Governor grunted an affirmative, and moved on towards the door.

‘He’ll break his neck – one of these days,’ said Ella, patting her hair in a bottle-surrounded little mirror she had secreted near the till. ‘That boy. . . .’