Something Short and Sweet Page 7

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Like hide the thimble.’

  ‘Thass it. Like hide the thimble. Like that. Only these was duck eggs.’

  ‘Where’d she hide ’em?’ I said.

  ‘Oh! In … where what? Oh! all over the show. Upstairs, downstairs. Everywhere. In the oven. In bed. Oh, she was a Tartar. She was hot.’

  ‘With running about so much?’

  ‘Ah, thass it! Running about so much. And then …’ He looked hard at me, without a twinkle. ‘You goin’ to cork this in? Keep it secret all right?’

  I promised faithfully to cork it in, and he went on:

  ‘Well, then he turned up. Sam. All of a sudden she looks out of the window and there he is coming up the garden path. By God that give me a turn.’

  He made motions of a man in a variety of agonies, sweat, thirst, fright, more thirst. I could see he must have been a good deal upset.

  ‘What did you do?’ I said.

  ‘Oh! I never done anything. I couldn’t. I was scared stiff. It was her who done it. “Here, quick,” she says, “in the cellar.” And there I was. And there I stopped.’

  ‘How long for?’ I said.

  ‘For a week!’

  ‘A week! Why didn’t she let you out?’

  ‘She forgot! Forgot all about me. Didn’t I tell you how forgetful she was? Oh, she was shocking! Sometimes I’d go up for a dozen duck eggs and she’d bring the boar out and then I’d go for apples and she’d bring me duck eggs. You see?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see. But why did she lock you in at all? You were all right. You weren’t doing anything.’

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You go up to the house and in the corner cupboard you’ll see a bottle marked liniment. You bring it. I want to rub my back. It gives me what’ho! every time I stir.’

  So I went to fetch the bottle and after that, for some reason, perhaps because he kept drinking the liniment instead of rubbing his back with it, the tale warmed up. He began to tell me how he lay in the cellar night and day, in complete darkness, not daring to shout out and wondering what would happen to him. But what I wanted to know most was how he had lived – what he had had to eat.

  ‘Eat!’ he said. ‘Eat? I never had a mossel. Not a mossel. All I’d got was a mite o’ pepper and salt screwed up in a mite o’ paper in my westcit pocket.’

  ‘You must have got down to skin and bone,’ I said.

  ‘Skin and bone … you’re right,’ he said. ‘Thass about all I was. And shouldn’t have been that if it hadn’t been for the nails.’

  He went on to tell me, then, how after the third or fourth day, after he had searched every inch of the cellar, floor and ceiling, on his hands and knees, he got so desperate that he began to prize out the nails of the floor boards and how after that there was nothing for it but to eat them and how he made a fire of his pocket linings and splinters of floorboard and anything handy and lit it with the only match he had and how he collected water off the damp walls in a tobacco tin and how at last he put the nails in and stewed them.

  ‘Stewed ’em,’ he said. ‘All one night and all one day. And then ate ’em. I had to. It was either that or snuff it.’

  ‘By golly!’ I said. ‘What did they taste like?’

  ‘’Course it’s been a long time ago,’ he said. ‘They tasted like … oh, I don’t know. I had plenty o’ pepper and salt on ’em. That took the taste out a bit.’

  I sat silent, thinking it over.

  ‘’Course it’s the iron what done it,’ he said. ‘Iron’s good for you. Ain’t it? It was only the iron what done it.’

  I still sat silent. It was a fine story, but somehow it seemed, as I sat there in the hot shade of the elders, with their thick sourish smell rank in the sun, almost too good. I couldn’t swallow it. I believed all about the duck eggs and the woman and the cellar and everything – all except the nails. Stewed nails! I kept turning it over in my mind and wondering.

  And he must have seen my unbelief. Because suddenly he said:

  ‘You don’ believe me now,’ he said. ‘Do you? You think I’m stuffin’ you?’

  He looked at me long and hard, with a gaze from which the habitual devilry had been driven out by a marvellous innocence.

  ‘Look at that then.’

  He seemed suddenly to have had an inspiration. He opened his mouth, baring his teeth. They were old and broken and stained by the yellow and brown of decay.

  ‘See ’em?’ he said. ‘That’s rust. Nail rust. It got into my teeth.’ He spoke with impressive reverence. ‘It got into my teeth eating them nails and I never been able to get it out again.’

  He gave a sigh, as though burdened with the telling of too much truth.

  ‘That’s where women land you,’ he said.

  The Kimono

  I

  It was the second Saturday of August, 1911, when I came to London for the interview with Kersch and Co. I was just twenty-five. The summer had been almost tropical.

  There used to be a train in those days that got into St. Pancras, from the North, about ten in the morning. I came by it from Nottingham, left my bag in the cloakroom and went straight down to the City by bus. The heat of London was terrific, a white dust heat, thick with horse dung. I had put on my best suit, a blue serge, and it was like a suit of gauze. The heat seemed to stab at me through it.

  Kersch and Co. were very nice. They were electrical engineers. I had applied for a vacancy advertised by them. That morning I was on the short list and Mr. Alexander Kersch, the son, was very nice to me. We talked a good deal about Nottingham and I asked him if he knew the Brownsons, who were prominent Congregationalists there, but he said no. Everyone in Nottingham, almost, knew the Brownsons, but I suppose it did not occur to me in my excitement that Kersch was a Jew. After a time he offered me a whisky and soda, but I refused. I had been brought up rather strictly, and in any case the Brownsons would not have liked it. Finally, Mr. Kersch asked me if I could be in London over the week-end. I said yes, and he asked me at once to come in on Monday morning. I knew then that the job was as good as settled and I was trembling with excitement as I shook hands and said good-bye.

  I came out of Kersch and Co. just before twelve o’clock. Their offices were somewhere off Cheapside. I forget the name of the street. I only remember, now, how very hot it was. There was something un-English about it. It was a terrific heat, fierce and white. And I made up my mind to go straight back to St. Pancras and get my bag and take it to the hotel the Brownsons had recommended to me. It was so hot that I did not want to eat. I felt that if I could get my room and wash and rest it would be enough. I could eat later. I would go up West and do myself rather well.

  Pa Brownson had outlined the position of the hotel so well, both in conversation and on paper, that when I came out of St. Pancras with my bag I felt I knew the way to the street as well as if it had been in Nottingham. I turned east and then north and went on turning left and then right, until finally I came to the place where the street with the hotel ought to have been. It wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe it. I walked about a bit, always coming back to the same place again in case I should get lost. Then I asked a baker’s boy where Midhope Street was and he didn’t know. I asked one or two more people, and they didn’t know either. ‘Wade’s Hotel,’ I would say, to make it clearer, but it was no good. Then a man said he thought I should go back towards St. Pancras a bit, and ask again, and I did.

  It must have been about two o’clock when I knew that I was pretty well lost. The heat was shattering. I saw one or two other hotels but they looked a bit low class and I was tired and desperate.

  Finally I set my bag down in the shade and wiped my face. The sweat on me was filthy. I was wretched. The Brownsons had been so definite about the hotel and I knew that when I got back they would ask me if I liked it and all about it. Hilda would want to know about it too. Later on, if I got the Kersch job, we should be coming up to it for our honeymoon.

  At last I picked up my bag again. Across
the street was a little sweet shop and café, showing ices. I went across to it. I felt I had to have something.

  In the shop a big woman with black hair was tinkering with the ice-cream mixer. Something had gone wrong. I saw that at once. It was just my luck.

  ‘I suppose it’s no use asking for an ice?’ I said.

  ‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind waiting.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘As soon as ever I get this nut fixed on and the freezer going again. We’ve had a breakdown.’

  ‘All right. You don’t mind if I sit down?’ I said.

  She said no, and I sat down and leaned one elbow on the tea-table, the only one there was. The woman went on tinkering with the freezer. She was a heavy woman, about fifty, a little swarthy, and rather masterful to look at. The shop was stifling and filled with a sort of yellowish-pink shade cast by the sun pouring through the shop blind.

  ‘I suppose it’s no use asking you where Midhope Street is?’ I said.

  ‘Midhope Street,’ she said. She put her tongue in her cheek, in thought. ‘Midhope Street, I ought to know that.’

  ‘Or Wade’s Hotel.’

  ‘Wade’s Hotel,’ she said. She wriggled her tongue between her teeth. They were handsome teeth, very white. ‘Wade’s Hotel. No. That beats me.’ And then: ‘Perhaps my daughter will know. I’ll call her.’

  She straightened up to call into the back of the shop. But a second before she opened her mouth the girl herself came in. She looked surprised to see me there.

  ‘Oh, here you are, Blanche! This gentleman here is looking for Wade’s Hotel.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m lost,’ I said.

  ‘Wade’s Hotel,’ the girl said. She too stood in thought, running her tongue over her teeth, and her teeth too were very white, like her mother’s. ‘Wade’s Hotel. I’ve seen that somewhere. Surely?’

  ‘Midhope Street,’ I said.

  ‘Midhope Street.’

  No, she couldn’t remember. She had on a sort of kimono, loose, with big orange flowers all over it. I remember thinking it was rather fast. For those days it was. It wouldn’t be now. And somehow, because it was so loose and brilliant, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It made me uneasy, but it was an uneasiness in which there was pleasure as well, almost excitement. I remember thinking she was really half undressed. The kimono had no neck and no sleeves. It was simply a piece of material that wrapped over her, and when suddenly she bent down and tried to fit the last screw on to the freezer the whole kimono fell loose and I could see her body.

  At the same time something else happened. Her hair fell over her shoulder. It was the time of very long hair, the days when girls would pride themselves that they could sit on their pig-tails, but hers was the longest hair I had ever seen. It was like thick jet-black cotton-rope. And when she bent down over the freezer the pig-tail of it was so long that the tip touched the ice.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ the girl said. ‘My hair’s always getting me into trouble.’

  ‘It’s all right. It just seems to be my unlucky day, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ the woman said. ‘Instead of the ice? Instead of waiting?’

  ‘That’s it, Mother. Get him some tea. You would like tea, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Very much.’

  So the woman went through the counter-flap into the back of the shop to get the tea. The girl and I, in the shop alone, stood and looked at the freezer. I felt queer in some way, uneasy. The girl had not troubled to tighten up her kimono. She let it hang loose, anyhow, so that all the time I could see part of her shoulder and now and then her breasts. Her skin was very white, and once when she leaned forward rather farther than usual I could have sworn that she had nothing on at all underneath.

  ‘You keep looking at my kimono,’ she said. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s very nice,’ I said. ‘It’s very nice stuff.’

  ‘Lovely stuff. Feel of it. Go on. Just feel of it.’

  I felt the stuff. For some reason, perhaps it was because I had had no food, I felt weak. And she knew it. She must have known it. ‘It’s lovely stuff. Feel it. I made it myself.’ She spoke sweetly and softly, in invitation. There was something electric about her. I listened quite mechanically. From the minute she asked me to feel the stuff of her kimono I was quite helpless. She had me, as it were, completely done up in the tangled maze of the orange and green of its flowers and leaves.

  ‘Are you in London for long? Only to-day?’

  ‘Until Monday.’

  ‘I suppose you booked your room at the hotel?’

  ‘No. I didn’t book it. But I was strongly recommended there.’

  ‘I see.’

  That was all, only ‘I see’. But in it there was something quite maddening. It was a kind of passionate veiled hint, a secret invitation.

  ‘Things were going well,’ I said, ‘until I lost my way.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘I came up for an interview and I got the job. At least I think I got the job.’

  ‘A bit of luck. I hope it’s a good one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is. Kersch and Co. In the City.’

  ‘Kersch and Co.?’ she said. ‘Not really? Kersch and Co.?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why, do you know them?’

  ‘Know them? Of course I know them. Everybody knows them. That is a bit of luck for you.’

  And really I was flattered. She knew Kersch and Co.! She knew that it was a good thing. I think I was more pleased because of the attitude of the Brownsons. Kersch and Co. didn’t mean anything to the Brownsons. It was just a name. They had been rather cold about it. I think they would have liked me to get the job, but they wouldn’t have broken their hearts if I hadn’t. Certainly they hadn’t shown any excitement.

  ‘Kersch and Co.,’ the girl said again. ‘That really is a bit of luck.’

  Then the woman came in with the tea. ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had no dinner.’

  ‘Oh! No wonder you look tired. I’ll get you a sandwich. Is that all right?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  So the woman went out to get the sandwich, and the girl and I stayed in the shop again, alone.

  ‘It’s a pity you booked your room at the hotel,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t booked it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh! I thought you said you’d booked it. Oh! My fault. You haven’t booked it?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘We take people in here,’ she said. ‘Over the cafe. It’s not central of course. But then we don’t charge so much.’

  I thought of the Brownsons. ‘Perhaps I ought to go to the hotel,’ I said.

  ‘We charge three and six,’ she said. ‘That isn’t much, is it?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Why don’t you just come up and see the room?’ she said. ‘Just come up.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Come up and see it. It won’t eat you.’

  She opened the rear door of the shop and in a moment I was going upstairs behind her. She was not wearing any stockings. Her bare legs were beautifully strong and white. The room was over the cafe. It was a very good room for three and six. The new wall-paper was silver-leaved and the bed was white and looked cool.

  And suddenly it seemed silly to go out into the heat again and wander about looking for Wade’s Hotel when I could stay where I was.

  ‘Well, what do you think of it?’ she said.

  ‘I like it.’

  She sat down on the bed. The kimono was drawn up over her legs and where it parted at her knees I could see her thighs, strong and white and softly disappearing into the shadow of the kimono. It was the day of long rather prim skirts and I had never seen a woman’s legs like that. There was nothing between Hilda and me beyond kissing. All we had done was to talk of things, but there was nothing in it. Hilda always used to say that she would keep herself for me.

  The gir
l hugged her knees. I could have sworn she had nothing on under the kimono.

  ‘I don’t want to press you,’ she said, ‘but I do wish you’d stay. You’d be our first let.’

  Suddenly a great wave of heat came up from the street outside, the fierce, horse-smelling, dust-white heat of the earlier day, and I said:

  ‘All right. I’ll stay.’

  ‘Oh, you angel!’

  The way she said that was so warm and frank that I did not know what to do. I simply smiled. I felt curiously weak with pleasure. Standing there, I could smell suddenly not only the heat but the warmth of her own body. It was sweetish and pungent, the soft odour of sweat and perfume. My heart was racing.

  Then suddenly she got up and smoothed the kimono over her knees and thighs.

  ‘My father has just died, you see,’ she said. ‘We are trying this for a living. You’ll give us a start.’

  Somehow it seemed too good to be true.

  II

  I know now that it was. But I will say more of that later, when the time comes.

  That evening I came down into the shop again about six o’clock. I had had my tea and unpacked my things and rested. It was not much cooler, but I felt better. I was glad I had stayed.

  The girl, Blanche, was sitting behind the counter, fanning herself with the broken lid of a sweet-box. She had taken off her kimono and was wearing a white gauzy dress with a black sash. I was disappointed. I think she must have seen that, because she pouted a bit when I looked at her. In turn I was glad she pouted. It made her lips look full-blooded and rich and shining. There was something lovely about her when she was sulky.

  ‘Going out?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought of going up West and celebrating over Kersch and Co.’

  ‘Celebrating? By yourself?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’m alone. There’s no one else.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  I knew what she meant in a moment. ‘Well,’ I said, almost in a joke, ‘why don’t you come?’

  ‘Me?’ she said, eyes wide open. ‘You don’t mean it. Me?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I do mean it.’