The Fancy (35 page)

“I suppose I’ll have to, but a day isn’t much. Couldn’t you try, David? You’d be much better at it than me.”

“Me? Good God, no. It’s woman’s work. Look out, darling, I’m coming out. Chuck me my towel.”

“Find somewhere nice, though,” he called, going into the bedroom all wet to find a cigarette. “And make it in this neighbourhood. I don’t want to be far from the office again. I can’t think how I ever existed at Earl’s Court. Why don’t you try that place—what’s it called—Chessington Lodge? It’s quite a good spot.”

“Oh, David it’d be much too expensive. We couldn’t possibly. Even if Kathleen didn’t let me have this cheap, I should think the Chessington Court flats are about twice as much as this.”

“Well, somewhere else then. There must be masses of flats. You’ll find something.”

She would have to find something, that was all. She went into the kitchen for a cloth to wipe up the mess he had made on the bathroom floor and across the the subjectan alonghall. She would have to start making the flat presentable for Kathleen too. That was another thing. All the broken crockery that they had slung so lightheartedly into the dustbin, the picture that David had torn down because he didn’t like it, breaking the frame and making a hole in the wall, the burns on the dressing-table and the mantelpiece, the crack in the sink where they had dropped the mincer, the curtain in the sitting-room that was torn because David would never bother to move the desk and draw it properly—all these things that had seemed funny at the time would have to be put right before Kathleen came back. She would never understand how Sheila had managed to do so much damage on her own.

Sheila took three days out from the factory and returned, having achieved nothing, to a rating from Mr. Gurley for having stayed away without a doctor’s certificate. She didn’t dare take any more time off. She had been to nearly all the estate agents in Bloomsbury and was now putting advertisements in papers at great expense, spending her lunch hour scouring the newspapers in the Public Library and the rest of the day writing letters under cover of her report card. How could anyone take an interest in reduction gears under the circumstances? Kathleen was coming home in a week and she was as far off as ever from finding somewhere to live. David was still hopeful. He could not understand why she was making such heavy weather of it. He didn’t seem to realise that there was not one hole or corner in all London, much less in Bloomsbury. She had even tried hotels, but they were all much too expensive or had people sleeping in the bathrooms. Everyone in England was living in London and Sheila was getting desperate.

On the night before Kathleen’s homecoming, they packed glumly at the flat. What Sheila had been terrified of all along was going to happen. They were going to be separated. David was going to put up at some bachelor apartments with a man who worked on his paper and Sheila was going to stop on with Kathleen, as Kathleen had suggested.

“I still don’t see why I can’t stop on here too,” said David for the hundredth time, banging drawers about and kicking at cupboard doors. “I wouldn’t mind the sofa a bit—or Kathleen could have it and we could have the bedroom. She’d be tickled to death to have a man in the house.” Sheila was tired of explaining to him that it was as impossible to tell Kathleen they were living together as to tell her parents.

“To start with, she’d tell Mummy, at once,” she said. “She’s frightfully thick with them—more than with me really. She used to live down at Swinley, you know, and they were always shoving her down my neck as a friend. Look, David, you must take this old pair of shoes, even if you don’t want them. She mustn’t ever know.”

“She’d understand. Your unfortunate upbringing, my darling, makes you think everyone has the same outlook as you had before I took you in hand. She’ll probably be thrilled to think you’ve grown up at last. I dare say I shall tell her myself if the water at Toddy’s place isn’t hot. I’ll be coming round for baths.”

“David, if you dare! You don’t know what she’s like. She just simply isn’t the sort of person that could ever understand. I mean, she wears lisle stockings and glasses and awfully good-style coats and skirts. I don’t think she’s ever had a boy-friend, she’s probably never even been kissed——”

“Well, I might put that right for her then, mightn’t I?” He was impossible. He simply refused to understand. He made it doubly difficult have to find somewhere else.pa for her by being particularly gay and sweet and loving when all she wanted was for him to remove all traces of himself as quickly as possible. She held out against going out to dinner with him. She had to stay behind and clean the flat. At last he was ready and she helped him to carry his things down to the taxi.

The night porter was on duty. “Leaving us?” he said. He never called anyone “sir.”

“Turned out into the snow,” grinned David and added something which Sheila couldn’t hear, but which made them both laugh. She had a sudden glimpse of David telling his friend Toddy about her and then laughing. Did men talk about their women as women did about their men? Surely David wouldn’t—but men were impossible when they got together. She couldn’t bear him to be going back to that masculine world which he had left to come to her. She kissed him on the pavement, dragging him well out of the porter’s view and watched the tail light of his taxi disappear with something like panic in her heart. It was absurd to mind saying good-bye when she was going to see him for dinner tomorrow.

Tomorrow was Saturday. She had the afternoon off and she was going once more to do the weary round of the agents.

Kathleen had arrived when she got back at lunch-time and her presence was already all over the flat. It smelled of her toothpaste—she always cleaned her teeth at least three times a day—and of her
clothes, which always smelied as though they had just come back from the cleaner’s, which they usually had. A Revelation suitcase was open on the bed, unpacked down to the layer of shoes, each pair wrapped in tissue paper, and every crevice filled with neatly rolled gloves and stockings. There was a patent case for dresses too. with Kathleen’s dull clothes folded over a rail in the lid. The things she had unpacked were hung out all over the room to rid them of non-existent creases. Kathleen’s ivory brush and comb set were on the dressing-table beside Sheila’s scrap lot, where David’s moulting brushes had been. Kathleen’s green pyjamas were even laid out on David’s pillow.

“But Shee darling, you look awful!” were Kathleen words as she came in from the kitchen with the china hairpin tray which she had hunted out from the dresser where Sheila had put it. “So tired, and so thin. My dear, you’re a stick!” Kathleen always spoke with exclamation marks. Her conversation was very tiring.

“You haven’t been looking after yourself properly. I can see that,” she went on, kissing her with her cheek. “Hardly a scrap of food in the place, no milk or butter, and no fruit, with the shops simply stacked with it! I spent a night at Swinley on the way here and saw your people. Auntie Lena told me you were working like a nigger, and had got much too thin, but I never expected to find you looking so utterly worn out. What on earth have you been doing to yourself?”

“Oh, I’m a bit tired,” said Sheila, looking for her shoes, which Kathleen had moved.

“Tired? I should think you are! Now you just sit down. I’ve got some coffee making. Have you had any lunch?”

“No—yes,” said Sheila. “I won’t have any coffee, thanks all the same, Kath. I’ve got to rush out as soon as I’ve changed.”

“Rush out, where to? You ought to take it easy when you do get time off. I always do. They work us terribly hard, you know, at the Min., but I find I can take it in my stride by eating the right things and relaxing with a good book whenever I c have to find somewhere else.paan. My dear Shee, how can you exist in those ridiculous underclothes?” she cried, as Sheila stepped out of her trousers. “I’d die of cold.”

“Not in summer, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes I should.” Kathleen picked up the dungarees from the floor where Sheila had left them and began to fold them, running her thumbnail down the crease. “My goodness, don’t they smell of oil! I’ll pop round to the cleaners with them this afternoon. They’ll get them done quickly for me. They know me.”

“So they do me,” said Sheila, “but I still shouldn’t have anything to wear on Monday. You leave those dungarees alone, Kathleen.”

“Well, well, well,” said Kathleen, “aren’t we getting snappy in our old age? You’ve been living alone too long. It’s high time I did come home, I can see that.”

“Look Kath,” She had got to know sometime, and it might as well
be now. “It’s awfully sweet of you to suggest me staying on here with you, but I know you’d much rather be here alone. I mean, there’s not really room here for two,” she lied, thinking of how perfectly it had suited her and David. “If I could just stay here for a few days until I find something, then I’ll push off and leave you to it. It’ll be much better if I have a place of my own. I’d have gone already only it’s rather hard to find anywhere in a hurry these days.

Kathleen was staring at her. “My dear Shee, what on earth are you talking about? You must be mad! Of course we’ll stay here together. It’ll be grand fun, and I’m going to look after you, see that you eat properly and go to bed early. I don’t know how you could think I wouldn’t want you. We shall get on famously !”

“No honestly, Kath, I don’t think I will, thanks awfully all the same. It would never work. I get up terribly early. I should wake you.”

The thought of sharing the bed with Kathleen, even for a few nights, was repugnant. “Then I go out quite a lot in the evening, you know, and I’d disturb you coming in. I should be an awful nuisance to you.”

Kathleen had very large, prominent teeth which she brought close to your face when she talked to you, buttonholing you with her eyes, staring, and watching your mouth when you spoke. “I never heard of such a silly idea!” she said. “Whatever would Auntie Lena say? She was so pleased that we were going to be together. She didn’t like your living alone at all, you know.”

“I can’t help that,” said Sheila stubbornly, moving away from her to the dressing-table. “I’ve made up my mind. I really shall go as soon as I can find somewhere.” Kathleen followed her, watching closely while she did her face, still arguing, outraged. In a minute, she’ll make me say it, thought Sheila. I shall say : “I don’t want to live with you,” and then there’ll be trouble.

“Well, I must say, you are queer,” went on Kathleen. “You’ve certainly changed, and I don’t know that it’s for the better. You were never independent like this a year ago, and we used to have such fine times together. I hated going away and leaving you, you know, when you first came here. You seemed to want me so much to stay. I can’t think what’s happened to you. Still, I expect it’s just because you’re tired. I shan’t worry you. I shall just leave you alone and then presently you’ll d the subjectan alongrop this silly attitude and we shall both live here happily ever after. What do you say?” Things that Kathleen said always demanded an answer.

“I’ve made up my mind,” said Sheila getting up and putting on her jacket.

“Oh well, we’ll wait and see.” Kathleen smiled indulgently, “Where are you going?”

“Out,” said Sheila, and went.

Some of the agents had shut at one o’clock and at others it was the same old story. What Sheila wanted and the price she could pay
made them smile pityingly. Having no experience of flats and rents she had no idea whether it was because it was war-time or because she was asking the impossible. There must be something, somewhere. She had come down to considering anything in London. If it couldn’t be Bloomsbury, David would have to put up with it. He had lived at Earl’s Court for ages before he knew her, and if he felt as she did he wouldn’t mind where it was so long as they were together.

Towards five o’clock, she was beginning to despair. She was very tired and the extra high-heeled shoes she had put on to annoy Kathleen were making her feet ache. She would try one more agent on her list and then give up, and have to admit failure when she saw David tonight.

Bell, Watson and Lampeter were on the first floor above a stationer’s shop in Kingsway. She had been there twice and thought the clerk looked at her sickenedly as she toiled up the stairs and entered the outer office. It was quite a prosperous-looking place, with a green leather sofa and chairs and a table with old magazines on it.

“If you’d care to wait just a minute or two,” said the clerk, “Mr. Bell will be free.”

Sheila sat down on the sofa and waited without hope. Presently the inner door opened and a woman in furs came out, accompanied with hand-washings by E. Dexter Bell.

“Ah, Miss—er,” said Mr. Bell. “Not found anything yet then? I’m afraid I’ve got nothing more to offer you, but if you’d just like to step into my office, we’ll have another look.” His manner with young clients was ponderously patronising, with older ones, if they were well off, it was unctuous, and if they were not it was belittling.

Sheila followed his broad back down the passage between the glass partitions which gave forth sounds of clicking typewriters and sat down in the chair before his desk which she had occupied, the first time optimistically, the second with faint hope and now with no hope at all. At a smaller desk in the corner, a woman in a pink blouse with her hair in little sausage curls, sat going through letters with a wetted finger.

On Mr. Bell’s desk was a revolving stand such as you find outside newsagents. The sections were headed : “FURN : HOUS : UNF : MAIS : etc.,” and held overlapping index cards instead of postcards,

“Let’s see,” said Mr. Bell, spinning it round, “it’s a flat you’re after, isn’t it? Unfurnished, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Furnished,” said Sheila.

“Of course.” He turned the stand again and ran his finger down the file. “Blah, blah, blah,
this
one might do.” He flipped out a card. “H’m, h’m, h’m, and
this.
I’m afraid we’ve still not very much to offer you, my dear young lady. You’re asking something when you ask for a furnished flat these days. They the subjectan along’re as rare as a shilling tip in Aberdeen.”