Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (34 page)

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In briefly suspecting that the girl had being, and pursued activities, apart from them, Marion and Bella had been right. She did. In point of fact Jenny was unmistakably drinking at the fount of her own life within a minute and a half of her departure from the house.

It had been stated in the dining-room that no young man was eating out his heart for Jenny. But waiting for Jenny in the darkness, at the corner of the road, there was one who did nothing less than this. He was a young, pale electrician, with thin features and a consumptive look, of the name of Tom Lockyer.

In justice to Jenny’s integrity it should be said that although he was eating his heart out for her, she neither allowed, acknowledged, nor even fully credited that he was doing any such thing. The passion of love had not as yet awakened in Jenny’s immature breast, and those who know not love in themselves, know it not in others.

The fierceness with which this pale young man was gnawing at his own vitals was indicated by the fact that he had come all the way from Camden Town, where he lived near to Jenny, solely in order to escort her back and have a little more time with her during the evening.

She smiled graciously upon him as she came up, and he
perceived that she was in a good mood.

‘You been waitin’ long?’ she said.

‘No. ’Bout ten minutes,’ he replied. There was no other acknowledgment of his having come over all this way to fetch her, which had been arranged previously, and was now taken for granted. She was young and hard. They walked immediately, and at a good pace, up towards the High Road,

‘Well, ’ow d’you get on, Jen?’

Jenny was not the sort to provide information of this kind without being asked first, but she was perfectly well aware that he would ask her.

‘Oo – ever so well,’ she replied with genuine enthusiasm. ‘They ain’t half nice old people.’

Being insanely and hatefully in love with her, the fires of jealousy leaped up in Tom at hearing this. In his heart he had hoped that it might have been otherwise; that things might have somehow gone ill with her; that some failure or disappointment might have come to break her perpetual composure, and so have made her turn to him for compassion or aid. But he had foreseen the pleasure she would take in her new employment. Behind his love for her, he knew enough of her character to have diagnosed her talent – her fostered and unique talent – of pleasing and being pleased at first sight, and, insignificant a person as he was, he could have enlightened Marion and Bella in many ways. She always pleased: she took pleasure in pleasing. She had ensnared him and originally raised his hopes purely by the devilish and undirected exercising of this gift. And now she continued to please everyone, but had discontinued, for no reason, apparently, save that he loved her, attempting to please him.

He knew this only at the back of his mind. In the forefront thereof, remembering the brief perfection of the time when it had pleased her to please him, he adored and believed in her. The only obstacle, he imagined, was that she did not love him ‘in that way.’ She had admitted as much, while as frequently testifying to her knowledge of the excellence of his character and affections.

‘Oh – that’s good,’ he said. He dissimulated: but to please
Jenny herself was now his sole aim in life. ‘S’pect it’ll be a bit of all right, then,’ he added.

‘Yes. Looks like it, certainly. They’re ever such nice old girls.’

The surging spirits of Marion and Bella, who were at this moment gazing at their treasure’s handiwork in the kitchen, might have been a little curbed had they known that they were being called ‘old girls,’ in the street outside to a strange young man.

‘An’ it looks as though they like me, too,’ she added, brightly though modestly.

‘You ain’t half a good little girl, ain’t you, Jen,’ said Tom, quietly, and with the minutest pinch of sarcasm in his voice.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she returned, in the same light spirit.

‘Oh – nothin’.’

And actually Tom did not quite know what he had meant. All the same there were worlds of significance behind the remark, and the way in which he had uttered it. It was, in fact, a perfect expression of the peculiarly insidious and tricky quality of her character.

She was as unaware as himself of anything having come to light like this, and went on cheerfully.

‘Oo – and he isn’t half a funny old Boy, either,’ she said. ‘All with a grey beard, like Bernard Shaw.’

All wearers of beards, young or old, in Jenny’s blithe classification, resembled Bernard Shaw.

‘He’s ever such a fine looking old chap, though,’ she added. ‘I like him.’

Tom now brought up the question of how they were going to dispose of the evening.

‘Well,’ said Jenny, in a kind of naïve, detached tone, which habitually crept in when she was about to seek favours. ‘I feel I could do with a little something to eat.’

This was all against the notions of Tom, who longed to take her to the pictures. At the pictures Jenny softened, and allowed him to hold her hand.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought we might go to the pictures.’

‘Well – we could go to the pictures after – if you liked.’

Tom thought painfully of the expense involved by this double programme. His salary, which was three pounds ten a week, had once resembled great riches, but now it was but a despicable little army of funds wherewith to pursue his present campaign. But as in bodily disease a man will spend all the money he has to work a cure, regarding health as a thing transcending base economy, so Tom poured out all he had for the sake of love. He had become, in fact, a pastmaster in the art of spending money he did not have. All the same, he was not going to give in without a struggle.

‘It’d be too late for the Pictures – wouldn’t it?’ he said.

‘Not for the Big picture,’ said Jenny, and there was no further appeal.

They therefore made their way to the Lyons in the High Road. This had lately been enlarged and refurbished in the modern manner, with a large show window piled with gelatinous sweets, a soda fountain, and white glazed tiles in the ceiling.

To Jenny these Lyons’ establishments were almost as great a pleasure as the pictures. They appeased her social cravings, they provided her with entertainment (she was enormously interested in people), and what was more they furnished a setting for herself. Indeed she was something of a Langtry in these places, her extraordinary prettiness never failing to excite glances, stares, and all manner of looks, furtive and admiring, or gallant and lighthearted, from the rather pawky young men of the district. With her usual gift for pleasing at first sight she was always on delightful terms of friendship with the staff, with whom she conversed agreeably in their slack moments. Having given her order she would look around her with the air of one definitely alive. She missed nothing, and the assortment around her of ‘old boys’ and ‘old girls,’ whose clothes and features were singled out for her satire and ridicule, filled the conversation to the exclusion of almost all else.

She knew her way extremely well about the menu, and was in the habit of demanding rather outlandish dishes unknown to customers with less initiative. But to-night she was
frustrated by the majority of these being ‘off,’ and so made do with two fillets of fish, and fried potatoes – that is to say, ‘chips.’ But she did not call them ‘chips,’ for there was much that was genteel in Jenny. Tom made do with a cup of coffee.

‘I love you, Jen – that’s what’s the matter with me,’ said Tom, when the food had come, and he was watching her delicate little teeth at work upon it.

‘Don’t be so silly, Tom,’ she said, looking modestly at her plate. She naturally felt that it was rather inconsiderate to go on calmly filling her face after such a declaration, but common sense protested that there was no earthly use in stopping. So she continued to lift her fork to her mouth, though in a rather wriggling and self-effacing way.

‘Don’t look,’ she said, suddenly bending forward with a sly glance.

‘What?’

‘There’s ever such a funny old thing sitting behind you. Don’t look.’

The admonition not to look was of course an irresistible temptation (after a methodic pause) by degrees and unconcernedly to turn the head, and in this way the attention was diverted from the problem of unrequited love.

The rest of the meal was largely a repetition of this, there being many other unconscious (and indeed conscious) objects of derision or flippant criticism within the restaurant, which catered for the sad and failing income.

After a roll and butter and some St. Ivel cheese, which Jenny again, in a naïve abstract spirit, ‘thought’ she would have, she had finished. They rose and went to the door.

In their journey from the table to the door Jenny said nothing about Turkish Delight. In fact, she was scrupulously careful not even to
look
Turkish Delight – possibly too careful. At any rate, in Tom’s imagination, it seemed that if he did not get Turkish Delight the entire evening was endangered. For it was an axiom that, amid all the varied delights that generous nature showered, to Turkish Delight Jenny was most consistently faithful.

He therefore purchased Turkish Delight with the money he
did not have, and they went out into the air. They had decided upon a small picture house in the neighbourhood of Camden Town, and they boarded a ’bus to take them there. She was very cheerful upon the ’bus – already allowing him to hold her hand, and even returning his pressures and intertwining her fingers with his. Turkish Delight after food was to Jenny like a cigar crowning a banquet; and she seldom failed to mellow under its influence.

Most of it, however, was held over until they were in the cinema. Then, all at once, a delicious, almost salacious little rattle took place in the darkness, and Tom knew that she had begun. The bag was passed to him, but he fortunately desired only one lump, and said as much. Apart from this Jenny despatched a quarter of a pound in the same fraction of an hour. A pound an hour was Jenny’s usual speed with Turkish Delight.

They were in the shilling seats, and as she had foreseen they were just in time for the Big picture. As far as Jenny was concerned, sensuousness advanced little beyond the realms of Turkish Delight during the showing of this, though she still allowed him to hold her hand. She concentrated fully upon the pictures; he thought only of herself and her hand. She did not as a rule like being ‘touched.’ But an exception was always made at the pictures, and he was happy because, though she in no way surrendered to him, she was placid and acquiescent. Her attention being elsewhere, she did not speak, and so could not contradict or damp him. Accordingly he was beguiled into a state of mind wherein he could almost imagine that she was his own, and that the cold world was paradise.

How erroneous such a state of mind was became clear enough when the show was over and they were out in the chilly street. She set out at a brisk pace towards her home, to which he was accorded the brief privilege of escorting her. Panic seized him. He had to make use of this period to wrangle with her about when he was going to see her next – a matter upon which she was always very arbitrary and doubtful.

To-night he managed to exact a promise from her that she
would meet him to-morrow evening – that was if he did not mind her coming an hour later and bringing with her Violet, a friend of hers known to him, whom she was meeting first.

‘Well,’ she said, as they came into sight of the corner at which she always made him leave her. ‘That’s been a very enjoyable evening.’ She slackened her pace relentlessly.

She never failed to express her gratitude in this way, but it did not in the slightest manner appease him. His sole thought was to sidle her up against the railings and delay her with words of love.

He generally managed to achieve this. She looked along the street as he spoke soft, burning words, and passers-by imagined that they were lovers.

To-night, much as usual, she promised him a kiss if he in his turn would guarantee to ‘go after it.’ He agreed, and she at once disconcertingly forced the pace by putting up her face. She gave him quite good measure while it lasted. Then, with a cool ‘So long, then,’ she left him.

As he walked away it was as clear as day that she had no use in the world for him. He had brought off nothing: got not an inch further with her. The evening had cost him, altogether, five shillings and threepence – a soul-searing sum. He was wretchedly unhappy but could lodge no specific complaint against her.

Throughout the whole evening she had merely been perfectly herself.

Tom had a long walk back, but Jenny only a few paces to go.

She lived with some people called Molden, who occupied rooms above the pet animal shop she had spoken of, in a little street branching off Park Street. Both street and shop were in an equally dejected and decayed state. The shop sported a large sign outside, which, with the aid of cages and bowls containing living captive things brought out into the front in the day time, served to attract the attention of the populace in Park Street itself. Nevertheless it remained an enigma how Mr. Jefferies, the proprietor, contrived to keep either himself or his animals alive. No light was thrown upon the miracle by
Mr. Jefferies himself, who had given up marvelling, talking to his fellow beings, and shaving regularly. The animals were brought in at night time, and huddled into a confined space, wherein they formed a perplexed company – a number of canaries, rabbits, parrots, guinea-pigs, lizards and goldfish being left alone, throughout the still hours of the night, in the presence of the mystery of their unnatural contiguity and without clue to the obscure part they played in Mr. Jefferies’ and cosmic existence.

Jenny was in no way related to the Moldens. She had been a close friend of Ada Molden, the daughter, and she now stayed with them. Her mother had died when she was fourteen, and she had first of all lived with her uncle and aunt – the Taylors. The Taylors were a slovenly pair, whose quarrels were a theme in the neighbourhood, and her sojourn with them had never been a success. So soon as she had obtained work in the factory she had begun to drift away from them, gaining new friends, new ideas, and new tastes in a slightly higher though more flashy stratum of Camden Town society. Finally there was an outburst in which Jenny was arraigned for being ‘above herself,’ and imagining herself ‘too good for them.’ Peaceful relations were resumed, but when a little later Jenny had suggested going to live with Ada Molden, with whom at that time she was thicker than ever before or afterwards, they raised no objection and were indeed glad to be rid of her. Occasionally she visited them, but this was becoming rarer and rarer, and otherwise she had dropped completely out of their lives. She appeared in fine raiment when she did appear, and when she had gone they forebode darkly of her future.