The Bazaar and Other Stories (34 page)

⁶
dividing wall, Doris could hear her mother
rustling round in her bed with brisk canine movements. Doris
herself lay like a bar of iron, with her hands knotted under her head.
She heard traffic drag past the end of their hollow street. Light from
a street lamp made a square on the dark. Through the floor there
came up, intermittently, voices – Mrs. Benger,
⁷
below, had someone
with her again.

 

Mrs. Simonez was not on good terms with Mrs. Benger, the
woman below. Mrs. Benger did not behave like a lady; there had
been unpleasantness ever since she moved in. Mrs. Simonez sent
down a series of notes, about late-night noise on the stairs, about
landing lights left burning – for wasted light on that landing Mrs.
Simonez had to pay
her
share. In return, she got only one note
up; Mrs. Benger complained of the smell of cooking. Out on her
landing, where her gas cooker stood, Mrs. Simonez simmered the
stews and hashes that were to nourish Doris on her return. The
skylight over the cooker would not open – it was the landlord’s
business to see to this – so the fumes, naturally, found their way
downstairs. Mrs. Benger’s objection was anti-human – how was the
mother to make Doris a home? She referred Mrs. Benger to the
landlord, and went on with the stews. She would have liked, of
course, to have a tiled kitchenette.

 

Not only was Mrs. Benger no lady, but one really would not like
to say what she
was
. Her landing smelled of cosmetics and cigarette
smoke; she ate out, or had her meals delivered from the delica
tessen.
⁸
Almost every evening, over the supper table, Doris heard
complaints about Mrs. Benger. Doris, herself, could not help feeling
curious – she had been disloyal enough to play up to one or two of
those overtures on the stairs. When the Benger flat door was left
open, Doris could just see a lamp with a tilted shade, in front of a
mirror, spikes of dyed lilac, a wrinkled skin rug. Mrs. Benger went
out, in almost all weathers, in a fur coat of antique smart cut. Often
she wore no hat, always her cherry gauntlets. Under her parchment
make-up she looked about forty. There was no doubt she knew a
number of men. Doris thought: She could tell one a thing or two.
Mrs. Benger, coming up the stairs with her latchkey, had been
obliging enough to let Sydney in one night. He said he had no
doubt she was rather a one. “Mother certainly thinks so,” replied
Doris: at once, Sydney softened to Mrs. Benger. He used to lag on
the stairs, on his way down from the Simonez’, wondering if she
might come to her door.

Doris and Sydney worked in the same office. Since they had started
courting, they fought shy of each other, anywhere round the office,
because they did not want to start any talk. “We don’t want them to
think there’s anything up,” he said – she, actually, could not see why.
Secretiveness was part of her policy; but, on the other hand, this was
her first boy. About once in ten days they nipped off in the lunch
hour to an A.B.C.

⁹
a good way along the Strand, and in the evenings
he sometimes waited for her. At lunch they never said much,
because you are four to a table, and after work they had to fight for
their buses. Nothing would have got started between them if it had
not been for a staff dance.

That night Doris did not sleep; that stuffy night after Mrs.
Simonez had said her say about Sydney was a turning point. She
went to the office next morning heavy lidded and tight lipped.
Some new energy or passion stood behind her impassive face like a
threat, and made people look at her. One does not injure a nature
like hers for nothing. The day, balmy, too fine, with the lassitude
and sweetness of spring in it, declined slowly over her typewriter: at
half-past five she stepped out into clear light. As she waited for
Sydney at their corner, all round her the buildings stood up, bluepink and brittle; a shadowy brightness drowned the street. Sydney,
who had not expected to see Doris, started when she put her hand
on his arm.

“Oh, hullo,” he said.

whistled under his breath and Doris, by him, walked with her eyes
down. When she kept on not speaking he said: “What’s up?”

 

She said: “You in a hurry? I thought we might walk a bit.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. They struck up a bye-street. Sydney

She said in a dead voice: “Oh, one thing and another. No, it’s just
mother, really: she’s been on about you.”

 

“Why, me?” he said. “What’s she been on about?”

 

“You always coming, and – She’s old fashioned, you know.”

 

“Oh, she’s old fashioned, is she? And what have I done?”

 

“It’s what you’ve not done she’s been on at me about. What she
wants to know is, what’s going to come of it.”

 

“Well, I must say – ” he said. “You really have got a nerve.”

 

“Yes, I have got a nerve,” said Doris. “I am fed up.”

 

“What, with your mother?”

 

“No, with you. You don’t know what you want.”

 

“Oh, I know what I want all right.”

 

“Well – ”

 

He stopped dead and looked at her, between gratification and
panic. “You’ve rushed me all right,” he said. “Do I get you a ring, or
what?”

 

She said: “Flowers will do for a start.”

 

“Flowers?” he said. “What do you want,
flowers
?”

 

“Just to show – ” she said, not raising her eyelids. [. . .]
¹⁰

 

“Well, that’s not so very funny,” she said.

Doris came home, late, with a bunch of tinted lilac. The plumes
nodded over the paper sheath – she brushed them past her mother
and went into the bathroom to fill a vase at the tap. “Gracious!” said
Mrs. Simonez, following her, “wherever did that come from?”

“Off a barrow,” said Doris, rather brutally breaking the stems of
the lilac – the stems were too long.

 

“What, you brought that home off a barrow?”

 

“Sydney got it for me.”

 

“That’s not a natural colour,” said Mrs. Simonez. “They dye it.”
She added: “Whatever made him to do
that
?”

 

“We got engaged,” said Doris. She carried the vase from the
bathroom into her room, moved her father’s photo and put the vase
on the bureau, under her mirror. Mrs. Simonez had kept following
her, like someone attracted by a horrible sight. “You did what?” she
said sharply.

 

“We got engaged,” said Doris. She sent a challenging look into
the mirror, over the lilac heads. Mrs. Simonez put her knuckles up
to her mouth and sat down on the divan without saying a word.
Doris put her gloves away in the bureau drawer and said: “We’re ever
so happy, mother.”

 

Silence. She said steadily: “Don’t you be upset.”

 

“It’s all very well,” said Mrs. Simonez. “It’s all very well . . .” Then
a smell of burning came from the landing oven: as her mother sat on
there without moving, Doris went to rescue the shepherd’s pie . . .
The evening was dreadful, altogether; Mrs. Simonez could not look
at her supper; Doris ate with stolid voracity. Now and then she
raised her slow dark eyes and looked across at her mother’s face.
Mrs. Simonez had poured out a glass of water; she sat upright,
sipping at it like a bird. The elbow she rested on the folding table
made it shake on its frail legs. When Doris got up to change the
dishes she said: “After all, mother, you married, yourself.”

 

“It’s
how
you marry,” Mrs. Simonez said.

 

Yes, it was as though Doris had just revealed to her some
shocking disgrace. The thin lips of the mother shut tightly over
unsayable things. Her liquid-glass eyes, with a burning look behind
them, moved in every direction, as though she had not the strength,
yet, to look her abased daughter straight in the eye. “
You
know what
I think of Sydney!” – the exclamation was all she had, so far, allowed
herself. As she continued to sit there at the table her face, under its
cap of hard white waved hair, took on a mauvish tinge. When Doris
got up to fetch the coffee, Mrs. Simonez cried: “What would your
father have said!”

 

Doris simply fetched the coffee. Her heavy composed move
ments had taken on a new sort of majesty. Mrs. Simonez detected
something male, obtuse and cold in Doris’s attitude; it was as though
the girl had moved into another sphere. Doris said: “You’ll learn to
like Sydney, mother: it’s been ever so difficult, till now.”

 

“You’ve been after him,” now burst out Mrs. Simonez. “He’s never
been after you. Oh, I’ve noticed how things were.”

 

“Well, that’s been my affair, hasn’t it.”

 

“It’s all dreadful,” Mrs. Simonez said. She met the unmoving gaze
of Doris; she flinched and her tone changed to the close-up tone of
a beggar. “Then you’ll find a place for the three of us, somewhere,
all three?” she said.

 

“You surely never would want to live with Sydney, mother.”

 

“You mean, you’d go off and leave me to live alone?”

 

That was the root of it;
¹¹
that had been said, now. Doris could
only get up and clear the dishes.

 

As she went out with the tray to the landing sink, a man in a
camelhair overcoat crashed up the stairs to their flat, three steps at
a time. “Could one of you ladies come down?” he said. “Mrs. Benger,
below, has been taken terribly ill.”

“Right,” said Doris. She lodged the tray on the cooker and went
downstairs, through the open door, to the moaning. In Mrs. Benger’s
front room, between hoops of apricot lamplight, the woman’s face
was bent up by the end of the couch – she lay rigid, sweating,
twisting her wrists round. Now and then, inside the folds of her
house-coat, she thrust a knee up. “It’s my inside,” she said.

“You’ll be all right,” said Doris. “Where’s a hot water bottle?”
“I am awful. It’s my inside. Leo knows where the brandy – ”
“Quick!” said Doris to Leo. He looked quite knocked out. Doris

knelt to plug in the electric kettle. “Who’s your doctor?” she said,
bringing the hot bottle.

 

“I haven’t got a doctor.”

 

“Then better get ours.” Doris sent Leo down to telephone from

the hall.

 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Benger, biting her lip, smiling, “I’ve given Leo a

 

fright – ” Something flung her body sideways: she started moaning

 

again. [. . .]
¹²
Going into the back room, Doris stripped off the

 

eiderdown from the bed. A sheaf of flowers in waxed paper lay

 

where Leo had dropped them.

 

“Where’s Leo?”

 

“He’s telephoning.”

 

“I got sick the very moment he came . . . He ought to go,” Mrs.

 

Benger said, looking up with the eyes of a sick monkey as Doris

 

slipped the hot water bottle under the eiderdown.

 

“I’ll tell him,” said Doris. “He won’t go, I’m afraid.”

 

“There’s not much he can do, really.
¹³
You are good, Miss

 

Simonez. I’m ever so sorry. It’s just my inside.”

It was just on midnight when Doris got back to her own flat. Mrs.
Simonez, not even undressed, sat in a chair with her door shut in
front of her gasfire; her eyes were jellies from weeping. When Doris
came in she unbendingly looked at her, but did not say one word.
“She’s all right now,” said Doris. “The doctor’s made her comfortable
for the night.”

“Who’s comfortable?”

“Mrs. Benger; she had an attack. They sent for me down. I
thought you’d hear all the fuss.”

 

“Oh . . . I took it you were with Sydney.”

 

“As if I would run out without saying a word!”

 

“Things are so changed now,” said the mother, “I don’t know what
to expect . . . So she had an attack? Why didn’t you send for me?”

 

“Oh, I and her friend managed.”

 

“I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

 

“Do go off to bed, mother. Why do you sit up and worry?”

 

“I’ve been thinking things over,” said Mrs. Simonez. “You haven’t
got any father, so Sydney properly should come and ask me.”

 

“Sydney’s ready to do whatever you think right.”

Sydney found he was glad they had got everything fixed. He
thought proudly of Doris; he liked her better for having got him in
hand. The tiresome phase of courtship, for a man like Sydney, is the
phase at which he has to be dominating, and Doris had let him out
of this. The day after the evening when she made him buy her the
lilac, he found that he looked forward to leaving his uncle’s and
setting up a little place of his own. He remembered how comfort
able Doris made him, those evenings round at her

“Oh,
¹⁴
mother’s flat –
his thoughts only took an at all unpleasant colour when he recol
lected, also, Mrs. Simonez . . . Doris was content to avoid Sydney
till he had settled to the idea of marriage: at the lunch hour she was
not to be found, and that evening she came out in a hurry – she had
to get back to her sick friend. “Well, look here, when am I to see
you?”
we’ve
got time enough,” she said.

He was beginning to say: “But, what’s the use of our being – ”
when she swung herself on to her bus, in which she sailed slowly out
of his disappointed gaze. All the ride home, Doris’s lips were set in
something just less and more lasting than a smile.

Mrs. Benger had left her door on the latch: Doris walked through
the front room and tapped on the bedroom door. “Righto,” said Mrs.
Benger in her husky, intimate voice – for a moment she reared up
among her pillows and looked at Doris with an intent expression, as
though expecting her to be someone else. “Why, you are good,” she
said, dropping down in her bed again.

“I thought you might want something.”

 

“Well, I don’t know what, really,” Mrs. Benger said, and turned
round the room her consuming dark gaze. Through the window,
behind the big mirror, last light died drearily in the sky. The gasfire
was turned down to a bead. Light from the dwarf lamp at Mrs.
Benger’s