The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (68 page)

Any experienced person could have told her how it would be. In her circumstances it was not to be expected that anyone would take the risk of employing her. Her ragged clothes and her lack of references were against her, and her educated accent, which she did not know how to disguise, wrecked
whatever chances she might have had. The tramps and cockney hop-pickers had not noticed her accent, but the suburban housewives noticed it quickly enough, and it scared them in just the same way as the fact that she had no luggage had scared the landladies. The moment they had heard her speak, and spotted her for a gentlewoman, the game was up. She grew quite used to the startled, mystified look that came over their faces as soon as she opened her mouth–the prying, feminine glance from her face to her damaged hands, and from those to the darns in her skirt. Some of the women asked her outright what a girl of her class was doing seeking work as a servant. They sniffed, no doubt, that she had ‘been in trouble’–that is, had an illegitimate baby–and after probing her with their questions they got rid of her as quickly as possible.

As soon as she had an address to give Dorothy had written to her father, and when on the third day no answer came, she wrote again, despairingly this time–it was her fifth letter, and four had gone unanswered–telling him that she must starve if he did not send her money at once. There was just time for her to get an answer before her week at ‘Mary’s’ was up and she was thrown out for not paying her rent.

Meanwhile, she continued the useless search for work, while her money dwindled at the rate of a shilling a day–a sum just sufficient to keep her alive while leaving her chronically hungry. She had almost given up the hope that her father would do anything to help her. And strangely enough her first panic had died down, as she grew hungrier and the chances of getting a job grew remoter, into a species of miserable apathy. She suffered, but she was not greatly afraid. The sub-world into which she was descending seemed less terrible now that it was nearer.

The autumn weather, though fine, was growing colder. Each day the sun, fighting his losing battle against the winter, struggled a little later through the mist to dye the house-fronts with pale aquarelle colours. Dorothy was in the streets all day, or in the public library, only going back to ‘Mary’s’ to sleep, and then taking the precaution of dragging her bed across the door. She had grasped by this time that ‘Mary’s’ was-not actually a brothel, for there is hardly such a thing in London, but a well-known refuge of prostitutes. It was for that reason that you paid ten shillings a week for a kennel not worth five. Old ‘Mary’ (she was not the proprietress of the house, merely the manageress) had been a prostitute herself in her day, and looked it. Living in such a place damned you even in the eyes of Lambeth Cut. Women sniffed when you passed them, men took an offensive interest in you. The Jew on the corner, the owner of Knockout Trousers Ltd, was the worst of all. He was a solid young man of about thirty, with bulging red cheeks and curly black hair like astrakhan. For twelve hours a day he stood on the pavement roaring with brazen lungs that you couldn’t get a cheaper pair of trousers in London, and obstructing the passers-by. You had only to halt for a fraction of a second, and he seized you by the arm and bundled you inside the shop by main force. Once he got you there his manner became positively threatening. If you said anything disparaging about his trousers he offered to fight, and weak-minded people bought pairs of trousers in sheer physical terror. But busy though he
was, he kept a sharp eye open for the ‘birds’, as he called them; and Dorothy appeared to fascinate him beyond all other ‘birds’. He had grasped that she was not a prostitute, but living at ‘Mary’s’, she must–so he reasoned–be on the very verge of becoming one. The thought made his mouth water. When he saw her coming down the alley he would post himself at the corner, with his massive chest well displayed and one black lecherous eye turned inquiringly upon her (‘Are you ready to begin yet?’ his eye seemed to be saying), and, as she passed, give her a discreet pinch on the backside.

On the last morning of her week at ‘Mary’s’, Dorothy went downstairs and looked, with only a faint flicker of hope, at the slate in the hallway where the names of people for whom there were letters were chalked up. There was no letter for ‘Ellen Millborough’. That settled it; there was nothing left to do except to walk out into the street. It did not occur to her to do as every other woman in the house would have done–that is, pitch a hard-up tale and try to cadge another night’s lodging rent free. She simply walked out of the house, and had not even the nerve to tell ‘Mary’ that she was going.

She had no plan, absolutely no plan whatever. Except for half an hour at noon when she went out to spend threepence out of her last fourpence on bread and margarine and tea, she passed the entire day in the public library, reading weekly papers. In the morning she read the
Barber’s Record
, and in the afternoon
Cage Birds
. They were the only papers she could get hold of, for there were always so many idlers in the library that you had to scramble to get hold of a paper at all. She read them from cover to cover, even the advertisements. She pored for hours together over such technicalities as How to strop French Razors, Why the Electric Hairbrush is Unhygienic, Do Budgies thrive on Rapeseed? It was the only occupation that she felt equal to. She was in a strange lethargic state in which it was easier to interest herself in How to strop French Razors than in her own desperate plight. All fear had left her. Of the future she was utterly unable to think; even so far ahead as tonight she could barely see. There was a night in the streets ahead of her, that was all she knew, and even about that she only vaguely cared. Meanwhile there were
Cage Birds
and the
Barber’s Record;
and they were, strangely, absorbingly interesting.

At nine o’clock the attendant came round with a long hooked pole and turned out the gaslights, the library was closed. Dorothy turned to the left, up the Waterloo Road, towards the river. On the iron footbridge she halted for a moment. The night wind was blowing. Deep banks of mist, like dunes, were rising from the river, and, as the wind caught them, swirling north-eastward across the town. A swirl of mist enveloped Dorothy, penetrating her thin clothes and making her shudder with a sudden foretaste of the night’s cold. She walked on and arrived, by the process of gravitation that draws all roofless people to the same spot, at Trafalgar Square.

1

[SCENE:
Trafalgar Square. Dimly visible through the mist, a dozen people, Dorothy among them, are grouped about one of the benches near the north parapet.]

CHARLIE
[singing]:
’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a–il Ma–ary —
[Big Ben strikes ten.]

SNOUTER
[mimicking the noise] :
Ding dong, ding dong! Shut your—noise, can’t you? Seven more hours of it on this — square before we get the chance of a setdown and a bit of sleep! Cripes!

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]: Non sum qualis eram boni sub regno Edwardi!
In the days of my innocence, before the Devil carried me up into a high place and dropped me into the Sunday newspapers–that is to say when I was Rector of Little Fawley-cum-Dewsbury….

DEAFIE [
singing
]: With my willy willy,
with
my willy willy—

MRS WAYNE: Ah, dearie, as soon as I set eyes on you I knew as you was a lady born and bred. You and me’ve known what it is to come down in the world, haven’t we, dearie? It ain’t the same for us as what it is for some of these others here.

CHARLIE
[singing]:
‘Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a-il Ma-ary, full of grace!

MRS BENDIGO: Calls himself a bloody husband, does he? Four pound a week in Covent Garden and ’is wife doing a starry in the bloody Square! Husband!

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]:
Happy days, happy days! My ivied church under the sheltering hillside–my red-tiled Rectory slumbering among Elizabethan yews! My library, my vinery, my cook, house-parlourmaid and groom-gardener! My cash in the bank, my name in Crockford! My black suit of irreproachable cut, my collar back to front, my watered silk cassock in the church precincts….

MRS WAYNE: Of course the one thing I
do
thank God for, dearie, is that my poor dear mother never lived to see this day. Because if she ever
had
of lived to see the day when her eldest daughter–as was brought up, mind you, with no expense spared and milk straight from the cow….

MRS BENDIGO:
Husband!

GINGER: Come on, less ’ave a drum of tea while we got the chance. Last we’ll get tonight–coffee shop shuts at ’ar-parse ten.

THE KIKE: Oh Jesus! This bloody cold’s gonna kill me! I ain’t got nothing on under my trousers. Oh
Je-e-e-eeze
!

CHARLIE
[singing]:
’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary–

SNOUTER:Fourpence! Fourpence for six — hours on the bum! And that there
nosing sod with the wooden leg queering our pitch at every boozer between Aldgate and the Mile End Road. With ’is — wooden leg and ’is war medals as ’e bought in Lambeth Cut! Bastard!

DEAFIE
[singing]:
With my willy willy,
with
my willy willy–

MRS BENDIGO: Well, I told the bastard what I thought of ’im, anyway. ‘Call yourself a man?’ I says. ‘I’ve seen things like you kep’ in a bottle at the ’orspital,’ I says….

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]:
Happy days, happy days! Roast beef and bobbing villagers, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding! Sunday mornings in my oaken stall, cool flower scent and frou-frou of surplices mingling in the sweet corpse-laden air! Summer evenings when the late sun slanted through my study window– I pensive, boozed with tea, in fragrant wreaths of Cavendish, thumbing drowsily some half-calf volume–
Poe tical Works of William Shenstone, Esq.
, Percy’s
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
, J. Lempriere, D.D., professor of immoral theology…

GINGER: Come on, ’oo’s for that drum of riddleme-ree? We got the milk and we got the tea. Question is, ’oo’s got any bleeding sugar?

DOROTHY: This cold, this cold! It seems to go right through you! Surely it won’t be like this all night?

MRS BENDIGO: Oh, cheese it! I ’ate these snivelling tarts.

CHARLIE: Ain’t it going to be a proper perisher, too? Look at the perishing river mist creeping up that there column. Freeze the fish-hooks off of ole Nelson before morning.

MRS WAYNE: Of course, at the time that I’m speaking of we still had our little tobacco and sweetstuff business on the corner, you’ll understand….

THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-e-
eeze
! Lend’s that overcoat of yours, Ginger. I’m bloody freezing!

SNOUTER: — double-crossing bastard! P’raps I won’t bash ’is navel in when I get a ’old of ’im!

CHARLIE: Fortunes o’ war, boy, fortunes o’ war. Perishing Square tonight–rumpsteak and kip on feathers tomorrow. What else d’you expect on perishing Thursday?

MRS BENDIGO: Shove up, Daddy, shove up! Think I want your lousy old ’ed on my shoulder-me a married woman?

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]:
For preaching, chanting, and intoning I was unrivalled. My ‘Lift up your Hearts’ was renowned throughout the diocese. All styles I could do you, High Church, Low Church, Broad Church and No Church. Throaty Anglo-Cat Warblings, straight from the shoulder muscular Anglican, or the adenoidal Low Church whine in which still lurk the Houyhnhnm-notes of neighing chapel elders….

DEAFIE
[singing]: With
my willy willy–

GINGER:Take your ’ands off that bleeding overcoat, Kikie. You don’t get no clo’es of mine while you got the chats on you.

CHARLIE
[singing]:

As pants the ’art for cooling streams,
When ’eated in the chase–

MRS MCELLIGOT
[in her sleep]:
Was ’at you, Michael dear?

MRS BENDIGO: It’s my belief as the sneaking bastard ’ad another wife living when ’e married me.

MR TALLBOYS
[from the roof of his mouth, stage curate-wise, reminiscently]:
If any of you know cause of just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony…

THE KIKE: A pal! A bloody pal! And won’t lend his bloody overcoat!

MRS WAYNE: Well, now as you’ve mentioned it, I must admit as I never
was
one to refuse a nice cup of tea. I know that when our poor dear mother was alive, pot after pot we used to…

NOSY WATSON
[to himself, angrily]:
Sod!… Gee’d into it and then a stretch all round…. Never even done the bloody job…. Sod!

DEAFIE
[singing]: With
my willy willy–

MRS MCELLIGOT
[half asleep]: Dear
Michael.… He was real loving, Michael

was. Tender an’ true…. Never looked at another man since dat evenin’ when I met’m outside Kronk’s slaughter-house an’ he gimme de two pound o’ sausage as he’d bummed off de International Stores for his own supper….

MRS BENDIGO: Well, I suppose we’ll get that bloody tea this time tomorrow.

MR TALLBOYS
[chanting, reminiscently]:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion!…

DOROTHY: Oh, this cold, this cold!

SNOUTER: Well, I don’t do no more — starries this side of Christmas. I’ll ’ave my kip tomorrow if I ’ave to cut it out of their bowels.

NOSY WATSON: Detective, is he? Smith of the Flying Squad! Flying Judas more likely! All they can bloody do–copping the old offenders what no beak won’t give a fair chance.

GINGER: Well, I’m off for the fiddlede-dee. ‘Oo’s got a couple of clods for the water?

MRS MCELLIGOT
[waking]:
Oh dear, oh dear! If my back ain’t fair broke! Oh holy Jesus, if dis bench don’t catch you across de kidneys! An’ dere was me dreamin’ I was warm in kip wid a nice cup a’ tea an’ two o’ buttered toast waitin’ by me bedside. Well, dere goes me last wink o’ sleep till I gets into Lambeth public lib’ry tomorrow.

DADDY
[his head emerging from within his overcoat like a tortoise’s from within its shell]:
Wassat you said, boy? Paying money for water! How long’ve you bin on the road, you ignorant young scut? Money for bloody water? Bum it, boy, bum it! Don’t buy what you can bum and don’t bum what you can steal. That’s my word–fifty year on the road, man and boy.
[Retires within his coat.]