Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (68 page)

She saw that this telegram, which she had failed to explain by letter, was piquing his curiosity dreadfully, and that he resented her having any concern, apart from him, which could warrant the extravagance.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no one died.’

‘Really?’ He spoke as though someone certainly ought to have died in atonement for the outrage upon his appointment with her.

‘No. It was nothing at all bad. I just couldn’t come.’

‘Couldn’t you have sent a letter?’ (Plomp.)

‘Yes, I suppose I might. But it’d have meant going out and posting it late at night.’

‘You seem to have a wonderful lot of money to throw away, with a telegram whenever you feel like it,’ he said, absolutely abandoning himself to his livery spleen. ‘I didn’t know you were as rich as all that.’

Oh – the meanness of that! – with its betrayal of his inner jealous knowledge of her poverty as the power he tyrannically held over her, of his miserly fear of having that power reduced by the minutest symptom of economic liberty – he, with all his riches, and she with her wretched little shilling on a telegram!

‘Oh –’ she said, ‘one’s got to be extravagant sometimes you know.’

‘Has one?’ he said. ‘I hope that’s not going to be your attitude in the happy domestic future.’ And she saw him grinning in a green way as he walked along. She had forgotten, of course, that they were supposed to be Engaged! Remembering that, she saw his point of view a little more, but it was hard to subdue her rising temper. (Plomp.)

‘What
did
happen, then?’ he said, and she wondered what on earth she was going to say, as she had unwisely prepared nothing in all the time since she had last seen him.

‘Oh – I had to go out. . . .’

‘Oh yes? Who with?’

‘Well – it was with Bob, as a matter of fact.’

‘
Who
?’

‘Bob.’

‘
Who?
’ (Plomp.)

‘Bob.’

‘You don’t mean the
waiter
, do you?’

‘Yes. What’s wrong?’

‘Well, this is
Funny
,’ said Mr. Eccles, completely giving way. ‘I didn’t imagine I was going to have a
waiter
as a rival. This is really amusing.’

‘Well, there’s nothing amusing in being a waiter.’

‘I’m sure there isn’t,’ said Mr. Eccles, who was too choking with rage to think of anything better for the moment.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’

‘So you put me off and upset my plans just because you thought you’d go out with the waiter. Really. Are you sure it wasn’t the pantry boy?’

Ella felt she could hit him in the face for this, remembering Bob’s charming impulse to take her out.

‘There’s no need to talk like that,’ she said. ‘Bob’s just as good as anybody.’

‘I may tell you that you upset all our arrangements at home,’ said Mr. Eccles parenthetically, ‘and that I had to have bread and cheese for lunch that day.’

Dear me, thought Ella sarcastically, that was too bad.

‘Well I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘if you were thrown out. But I was feeling fed up with you at the time.’ It was coming out now – not quite as dramatically as she had hoped.

‘
You
– fed up – with
Me
?’ said Mr. Eccles, in laboured tones of exasperated incredulity at this hellish affront to his majesty.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘Really,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I think you forget our Positions.’ (Plomp.)

‘What Positions?’

‘
Our
Positions,’ said Mr. Eccles not quite daring to say monetary and social Positions, which was what he meant.

‘I don’t see any difference in our positions.’

‘Don’t you? I don’t suppose you would.’ (Plomp.)

‘Just because you’re well off, you’re not God Almighty, you know.’

‘There’s no Need –’ began Mr. Eccles.

‘All right. I know! There’s no need to drag in the deity. Say it.’ Her blood was up now, and it was going to be a good old row. In addition to which it was coming on to rain rather hard. She wished more than ever that she did not have to share his umbrella, as it was extremely awkward to conduct a row with anybody while you were hunched up against them in the wet and they were poking the top of your head all the time.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘We can at least keep our talk decent.’ (Plomp-plomp.)

‘I’m afraid you’re rather ashamed of my company, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘Well, as you seem to prefer the company of
waiters
to my own, I’m afraid I am.’

‘You seem to forget that Bob’s my friend.’

‘I can see that. I’m sure you have everything in common.’ (Plomp.)

‘And anyway,’ said Ella. ‘Even
Bob
’
s
better than
Spies
.’

This was rather unfortunately put, seeming to allow, as it did, that Bob himself was pretty far down in the depths, but was at least one shade higher than Spies. But she was getting so confused and bothered with trying to shorten her neck to escape the plomps that this was all she could think of to convey to him her advantage over him concerning the red-faced gentleman.

‘What
do
you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’m sure I don’t. . . .’

‘He came into the bar to look me over.’

‘Who?’

‘You know all right.’

‘I’m sure I don’t. . . .’

‘Oh yes you do.’

‘
When
did he come in?’

‘So you
do
know then?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean – at all.’ (Plomp.)

‘Well – I’m not going to be discussed and spied upon – as though you were buying a horse. I’ve got some feelings you know.’

‘So you don’t
like
my
oldest
friends to whom I
happen
to mention you
casually
in
passing
?’ said Mr. Eccles, attacking her, and defending himself, in the same sentence, and at this he brought down the umbrella upon her head with such a savage and furious jab that he nearly had her hat off.

‘Here! Look out!’ said Ella.

‘What?’

‘Your umbrella.’

‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Eccles sarcastically.

‘If that’s your oldest friend, I can only say I don’t like his manners, that’s all,’ said Ella.

‘Well, if you prefer your public-house friends to mine – there’s nothing more to be said.’

‘You’re doing it again,’ said Ella.

‘What?’

‘Can’t you hold your umbrella higher?’

‘You’re losing your temper, aren’t you?’

‘Well – I don’t want my eye put out.’

‘Really, this is the Limit!’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I’ve a good mind to leave you stone dead.’

‘All right. There’s no need to Shout.’

‘I wasn’t Shouting.’

‘Yes, you were.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were.’

‘
You
were Shouting, you mean,’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘There you go again.’

‘Where?’

‘Shall
I
hold it?’

‘
Shouting
, indeed! My patience isn’t eternal, you know.’

‘Well, you can always stop it if you want to. I shouldn’t regret it.’

‘Oh, wouldn’t you!’

‘Why should I?’

‘Oh – wouldn’t you! . . .’

‘Why?’

‘You’ve got an eye on the main chance all right. Don’t think I don’t understand the situation.’

But this was more than flesh and blood could stand. As another plomp was just about to descend she dodged from under his angry and hateful umbrella, and walked away up Great Portland Street.

For a few moments she walked at an even pace, giving him an opportunity to follow her. But it came on to pelt, and she had to run nearly all the way home to ‘The Midnight Bell.’

C
HRISTMAS! . . . YOU COULD
hardly believe it in such murky weather. . . .

For a long while Ella had known that this uncanny festival, so insincerely stimulated and out of keeping with a harsh commercial era, had been on the way; but it had never dawned upon her that London was about suddenly to enter, as it were, the foggy yet festooned Christmas tunnel, until she came down one morning and found that the Governor and his wife, unknown to everybody, had decorated the bar!

After that she had no difficulty in realising the event, for the bars were crowded morning and night. London Spent at this time of year, and there was a great deal of noise and excitement. Afterwards London repented having Spent, got thoroughly scared, and contrastingly left you high and dry and desolate in the New Year. They had no consideration for your emotions.

Not a word from her strange, strange lover. Or rather ex-lover, she had to presume, since it was over a week since she
had left him in the street. If he had loved her truly, surely he would have written to her, and not have let a few bitter words stand in the way of the bright future he had planned. And, with her expert knowledge of Mr. Eccles’ psychological processes, she still felt she would hear from him – probably just before Christmas Day. And what then? Patch it up and marry him? In this dreary season, with India Off, and nothing On, and still no Change in her stepfather, and Bob sending her into a decline, she so felt the world falling away from her, that she again believed she could marry him in sheer despair. She, of course, could never write to him. Lacking unconditional withdrawal, she could never forgive him that remark about having an eye to the main chance. At least technically she could never forgive him. Actually she could, because it was so uncommonly near the flat truth! But the preservation of her human dignity would never allow her to tell him that, if they reached eighty years of age together in blissful married life.

‘It’s perfectly simple,’ said Master Eric. ‘It’s Latin.’

‘Is it?’ said Ella. As this morning was Christmas Eve, and she had three times the work on her hands cleaning out and preparing the bar, she intensely wished that Master Eric would go and ‘Help’ somebody else. But he had chosen to come inside the bar with her this morning, and had been swanking about his Christmas presents and getting in her way for fully half an hour. But she was irritable this morning, as it was another grey and bitterly cold day, with the tips of her fingers freezing, and, as usual, she detested the gloomy necessity of burning electric light in the morning.

She suspected, too, that this weather was at last beginning to tell even on Master Eric’s nerves, for he had been unusually impatient with her stupidity this morning, restlessly hovering around her in his ennui, and taking her up and ragging her on every point.

‘Amo, I love – Amas, thou lovest,’ said Master Eric. ‘Amat, he loves. Go on – say that. Amo, amas, amat.’

‘Amo, amas, amat,’ said Ella. ‘Will that do?’

‘Yes. That’s right. Now say a different verb. Not amo, but
I
am
ano. Go on. Just the same as the other. I
am
ano –’

‘Iamano,’ said Ella, and saw the catch just in time. ‘No, I won’t say that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a catch. You want me to say I
am
an ass.’

‘No, I don’t. I just want you to decline the verb. Go on. I
am
ano –’

‘No. I saw that one.’

‘Well try this one, then,’ said Master Eric, ‘if you can’t do Latin. It’s a riddle. Just give me the answer.’

‘Adam and Eve and Kick me

Went down to the river to bathe

Adam and Eve were drowned

Who do you think was saved?’

Ella knew this one, too, though it was Pinch Me in her own version. She did not answer.

‘Go on,’ said Master Eric. ‘Who?’

She mumbled something, and the next moment Master Eric had come up to her, seizing both her arms in his fierce young grasp, and was getting ready to kick her. ‘What did you say?’ he said, now in a high state of excitement. ‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything. Look out, you’re hurting. Leave go, Eric.’

‘Yes, you did. You said Kick Me!’ cried Master Eric, quite beside himself. ‘You said Kick Me! All right – I’ll Kick you!’

‘Here, leave go! You’re hurting!’ cried Ella, in real alarm and confusion, for the little boy, in that hysteria which sometimes seizes the young when they cannot get what they want, was strugglingly driving her back all along the bar, wildly kicking at her and pulling at her dress. ‘I’ll Kick you! I’ll Kick you!’ he yelled, and ‘Stop it! Don’t be rough!’ cried Ella receiving two fiercely painful hacks on the shin. At this a whiskey bottle fell over in the skirmish and she really began to get desperate for the child seemed to have gone mad. But all at once he was seized away from her by a stronger grasp,
and she heard a smart report. This was the sound of the palm of Bob’s hand over his head.

He had smacked his head, and now he was bundling him out of the bar!

A piercing yell arose; there was further skirmishing, another report (louder this time), sustained murderous yelling – and then the inner door was closed, and Bob was coming back to her.

‘Did he hurt you?’ said Bob, a little shaky himself.

‘Oh, Bob,’ cried Ella, gazing at him. ‘You shouldn’t have smacked his head.’

But there was, in her heart, a kind of surging gratitude for his instantaneous chivalry in protecting her, and an adoring admiration of his strength and manly firmness, which showed in his eyes.

‘Never mind about his head,’ said Bob. ‘Has he hurt you?’

‘Yes – he kicked me ever so hard,’ she said. ‘And look at my dress.’

‘Yes. I saw him,’ said Bob, and ‘Here, let me,’ as she started to tie the bow of her jumper, which Master Eric had torn asunder.

‘He’s been working up for that a long time –’ said Bob, but all Ella knew was that he was near and touching her as he tied the bow, and she felt that she would not mind being assaulted by all the children in London if only such a sequel awaited her each time.

‘But, Bob, should you have smacked his head?’ she said, thinking of the possible consequences.

‘I’ll smack it again when I see him,’ said Bob. ‘Just listen to him – the little beast.’

For all this time the sound of screaming had not ceased for a moment from upstairs, where apparently someone was trying to console him. Although he was a ‘kid,’ she saw now that he
was
rather a little beast, and that a kind of submerged snobbish hatred and scorn of her which the child had mysteriously harboured ever since he had been in the house, had at last reached its climax in the disaster of a few minutes ago.