And a lady visited me once a week and asked me if I’d been a bad girl, and wouldn’t I be happier with Jesus? I told her ‘No,’ I didn’t care how dirty he’d been to me I’d go with Jim and no one else. That was true, too. Maybe he’d turned me down, but I was his girl. I only wanted to get clear of gaol to be with him again. He told me it was the same for him. He came and saw me once. You stand in a kind of place with bars around, and they let you talk to your friends. ‘Why, Mazie,’ he said. ‘You know I didn’t mean to get you in here, don’t you?’
‘That’s all right – I haven’t split,’ I said.
‘You aren’t sore at me, Mazie, are you?’ he said, ‘it just happened that way, and it couldn’t be helped. I tried to save my skin. You won’t let on to them here we were working together, will you?’ he said.
I told him he needn’t worry.
‘You’re a sweet kid,’ he told me, ‘I’m fond of you. It’s lonely without you.’
He didn’t talk no more after that, and he went away. He never came back again neither. But somehow I pictured him waiting for me outside. I guessed he’d be helpless without me fiddling with his things and just being near him.
A man likes to have a girl around if it’s only to treat her rough and swear at her, don’t you think? It gives him a queer kind of comfort. And loving a girl makes a man forget to wonder why it was he was born.
I guess that’s what it was like for Jim, anyway. So back in gaol I’d make plans of what we’d do when I was out again. I thought we’d have to lie low for a bit because of my coming from gaol. They keep a pretty sharp eye on you, so I was told by one of the girls. It’s no use working your old game again until they’ve slacked off from watching you. I didn’t want to land Jim into trouble either.
There was a kid in there with me who said she was going to go straight when she was out. She believed in the stuff that the visiting lady handed her. I was wise, though. ‘You’ll never be free of this,’ I said, ‘it clings like mud, don’t you know that?’
‘Oh! Mazie,’ she said, crying, too – young she was – ‘I wish you’d come with me, and we’d go out to the colonies together.’
‘What? and be treated worse than a servant, and scrubbing floors, and people above you?’ I said. ‘I’ve had enough scrubbing inside here to last me a lifetime. When I get outside I’m going to live like a princess. I’ve got a boy waiting for me,’ I said.
She was free before me. ‘I’m going to Canada,’ she said. ‘I’m starting fresh.’
Funny thing – they put her with a clergyman’s wife up in Bristol, and found out a month later she had started her old tricks again, so they gave her three years.
It just shows you, doesn’t it?
I got out in the spring. They talked to me before I left about duty, and citizenship, and humanity, and God. They gave me some money, too. I went out and bought a pair of camiknickers trimmed with lace. I wanted Jim to find me smart. There never was a day like the day I came out. Blue sky and the sun, and people smiling for no reason. I felt like dancing, and screaming with laughter, and being looked at by fellows, and running away in a corner to cry at the same time.
I kept saying to myself, ‘Soon I’ll be seeing him, soon – soon.’ I had myself kind of worked up. D’you see? He’d be somewhere around. I knew that. I’d only got to go and find him; he wouldn’t be far.
So I looked up at the sky and talked like a baby. ‘Here – you be off – you aren’t any use to me,’ and I went down into the Underground where I belonged.
I looked for him all day, and I was getting tired, and sore, too. I felt myself thinking, superstitious like – ‘Maybe there’ll be a sign soon to show me what’s going to happen.’ Yes, it was six o’clock, what they call the rush hour in the Underground. I guessed if Jim was still working he’d be busy at that time. I took a ticket at Bond Street. I had to stand nearly five minutes in a queue. I was hot, my clothes sticking to me, my hat at the back of my head.
I wanted to lie down and die . . .
And the crowd pushing into me, breathing down my neck, straining to get past me, to go their way. I got my feet on the moving stairway – I leaned against the rail. We were taken downwards, away from the light above, down into the Underground. And then I saw Jim. He was across the rail, on the other side, on the same staircase – but coming up. We drew nearer, we were level – and I called out to him, over the barrier that separated us: ‘Jim – here I am – Jim.’ He didn’t look. He didn’t speak. He heard me, but he didn’t do anything. He seemed smarter, different and there was a girl with him – hanging on his arm. I turned, I tried to push back, but there were people coming down behind me all the time and it wasn’t any use. I called out to him once more – ‘Jim – Jim.’
There wasn’t anything I could do. I let the moving stair take me where it wanted – down – down. And he, the last I saw of him was a figure right at the very top, blotted against a girl – going out into the air.
She stretched across to a table and picked up a bottle of nail varnish.
‘So that was my sign,’ she said; ‘he going up the staircase and me going down. That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it? It’ll make a pretty picture for your newspaper. Tell me, do they pay you well for this sort of thing?’
Still she tilted on the edge of her chair, swinging her legs.
‘Aren’t you satisfied yet? D’you like every single scrappy detail? You ask me why I didn’t go back to being a servant? Because, little newspaper boy, servants can’t have the things I want. Why didn’t I go on being a thief? Because I was scared, and I had to have a job that was easy to do. Why did I choose, beyond anything else in the world, to be what I am? Is that what you want, to put it in headlines?’ She laughed, she shrugged her shoulders, she was no longer the Mazie who had told her story, but the Mazie of the moment – ugly, older, hard, false, and without feeling.
She said: ‘Because when I got to the bottom of that moving stairway I walked to a train, and I got out at a station, and I got in another train, and I got out at another station – and as I stood on the platform I prayed hard to God that He should give me a sign. And He did.’
She finished her nails. She dabbed her face with powder, her lips with rouge. She pulled on her coat and her hat, she stood ready with her bag under her arm. She opened her mouth and laughed.
‘What was the sign?’ she said. ‘Why, it came straight from God written big above my head, in letters of fire at the end of the platform – “Follow The Red Light For Piccadilly”.’
Tame Cat
It was difficult to believe that she had grown up at last. She had looked forward to this moment all her life, and now it had come. The little petty worries of childhood lay behind her for ever. No more French, no more hateful plodding round the Louvre, with Mademoiselle in charge, no more sitting at the round table in the petit salon – an English novel surreptitiously concealed behind the volume of history.
Already the life at the pension seemed dim and quite unreal. The child who cried herself to sleep because Mademoiselle had frowned was a stranger to her, a lost shadow. And the chatter of the girls, the little fierce intimacies of day to day, once so important, were now empty, nonsensical things scarce remembered. She was grown up.The wonderful things of life lay before her. To say what she liked, to go as she pleased, to stay at a dance until three in the morning, perhaps, and drink champagne. She might be seen home in a taxi by a young man who would want to kiss her (she would refuse, of course), and the next morning he would send her flowers. Oh! and there would be so many new friends, new things, and new faces. It would not be all dancing and theatres, of course; she knew that. Later on she must settle down seriously to her music; but just for a while she wanted to fill herself with this warm, happy flood of excitement, so new, so tremulous; like the carefree flight of a butterfly, on a May morning, she would dance and she would sing.
‘I’m grown up! I’m grown up!’ The words sang in her ears, and the clatter of the train took t
he theme and thundered it loud, over and over again. ‘I’m grown up! I’m grown up!’
She thought of the welcome that awaited her. Mummy, exquisitely dressed and more beautiful than ever, lovelier than she could ever hope to be, hugging her carelessly and rumpling her hair, ‘Darling, you’re like a fat puppy – go away and play.’ But Mummy would not be able to say that this time, because she had grown so slim since last holidays, and then, having her hair waterwaved had made such a difference to the shape of her face. The new dress, too, and the touch of colour on her lips. Mummy would be proud of her at last. What fun they would have, going about together everywhere, doing the same things, meeting the same people! This was, perhaps, the thing to which she had looked forward most in her life – being with Mummy. They would be such companions. Darling Mummy was so generous, so hopelessly extravagant; she really needed someone to look after her. They would be like sisters.
Of course, there was Uncle John . . . She could not remember the time when there had not been Uncle John. He was not really any relation at all, but it was just the same as though he were. It was at Frinton they had met him first, she believed, when she was a tiny girl, bathing with Mummy in shallow water; but it was all so very long ago. Uncle John had been part of the household now for years. He was useful to Mummy in a hundred ways. It was Uncle John who answered letters for Mummy and argued with tradesmen when the bills were too heavy. It was Uncle John who saw to the tickets on journeys and booked rooms at hotels. Although he did not actually live in the house, he was nearly always in to meals, and when he was not there for lunch or dinner, it meant that he had taken Mummy to a restaurant or to the theatre. It was Uncle John who had made Mummy buy so many new cars at different times, but of course he was a very good driver.
Yes, Uncle John was useful to Mummy, and rather a dear – quite old, though; well over forty. Poor old Uncle John! What was it that one of the girls at the pension had said about him when they had passed through Paris in the summer, on their way to Cannes? ‘That your mother’s tame cat?’ What a good expression! Tame cat. Perhaps Uncle John was rather like a cat, a dear, harmless old tabby tom-cat, purring quietly in a corner, never showing his claws, lapping away peacefully at his saucer of milk. Well, he would carry their coats for them and take them to the theatre and act partner at dances – they were going to be so happy, she and Mummy and Uncle John.
And now she was getting almost too excited to sit still. The cold dark evening did not matter; the stuffy Pullman car did not matter. The train was drawing near to Victoria. Her heart was thumping, and a little pulse beat in her temple. The great, friendly roar of London, the rumble of buses, the yellow light of shops bursting with Christmas decorations – if this was being grown up, then she was younger than she had ever been in her life, young with a hope born of inexperience, a glow within her bright as the unseen paradise. Now was the supreme moment, never equalled and never surpassed, as the train drew into Victoria.
She stepped out on to the platform, eager, flushed, her eyes very bright and blue, her velvet beret on the side of her head. ‘Mummy, Mummy, darling, I’m so happy, so terribly happy to be back!’ But something had happened; something was wrong. Mummy was looking at her in astonishment, almost in dismay, and then as though she were angry, were afraid.
‘Baby – what on earth . . .’ she began, but her voice trailed off uncertainly, and then she laughed, a little too brightly, a little too gay. ‘You’ve done something to yourself, haven’t you?’ and, changing abruptly to a hard, careless tone: ‘I suppose you’ve got a mass of luggage. Go and cope with it, John. I’m freezing. I’ll wait in the car.’
The girl watched her go, a little sick feeling of disappointment in her heart, and turned to the man who waited beside her, his hat in his hand, his eye on her face.
‘Hullo, Uncle John!’ But why must he stare like that, the old sleepy expression gone and a new one in its place, alert, beady, queer?
It was being so different from what she had expected. The breathless feeling of anticipation had fled, and in its place had come a horrid sense of staleness, almost of boredom. She felt lonely and shut within herself. It was something to do with Mummy. Mummy was not well; ever since she had come back from school Mummy had been cold, easily irritated, snappy with her.
And she herself had taken so much trouble to please Mummy. She had been extra careful about her appearance, worn the new dress that suited her, chatted and laughed with Mummy’s friends as though she had been ‘out’ for years. They were charming to her, and made much of her, inviting her to dances, to week-ends, to house-parties, all the gaieties she had hoped for in the train. But now everything was spoilt, because Mummy was not pleased.
From the very beginning, Mummy had been cold to her. The first morning, when they had gone to buy the evening dress, Uncle John in attendance, as usual, and she had wanted the lovely peach velvet with the low back. ‘My dear Baby, don’t be such a little fool; it’s years too old for you,’ brushing her timid question aside. ‘No, Louise,’ to the attendant; ‘something much more simple, in white’; and then, turning round to Uncle John in irritation: ‘Well, what are you gaping at? I suppose you’d like to see the child dolled-up like a tart?’
She had never heard Mummy speak like that in her life before. Quickly, shamefully, she whispered: ‘Yes, let me have the white; it looks very nice,’ hating it in her heart: the band at the waist, the thick shoulder-straps, so school-girlish; but she would wear anything if it would change the expression on Mummy’s face, so hard, with peeved lines at the corner of her mouth.
And then, when Mummy was not looking, Uncle John had whispered in her ear: ‘It’s a damned shame! You’d look lovely in the velvet, lovely,’ smiling at her, patting her hand, as though they were allies, ranging himself on her side as it were, furtively, like an accomplice. ‘If you want anything, come to me,’ he had told her later that day, pulling her into a corner, glancing over his shoulder through the crack in the door. ‘Don’t worry your mother, just come along to me.’ And for a moment she had felt like laughing, he was so much the tabby cat, sleek and well fed, purring slightly and arching his back. ‘Thank you, Uncle John, you’re a lamb,’ she said, kissing him impulsively; when, to her surprise, he went dark red, hesitated a moment, then kissed her back. ‘We’re going to be friends, aren’t we, Baby?’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘But we always have been,’ she answered, feeling, for the first time in her life, shy and uncomfortable, as though he were a stranger.
The days which should have been filled with joy and new interests passed slowly, like the old school holidays, and, for all the change, she might still be the child at the pension. Mummy made excuses for the many invitations they received. ‘Later on, perhaps,’ she would say vaguely, and then go off with Uncle John alone, leaving her to ring up a school friend and spend half a crown at the Plaza.
Christmas Day was spent with Granny in the country, as usual: a heavy mid-day lunch, followed by a walk in the rain in the afternoon; and Boxing Day was relieved by the Circus and a cousin to dinner. But after that the week stretched dully on until New Year’s Eve. Surely nothing would happen to spoil that? Mummy’s funny mood would leave her; Uncle John would be himself again. There was to be a big party at the Savoy; a party given entirely for her, when everyone would know she was grown up and a child no longer. Most passionately she prayed that it would be a success, this, her first party, and Mummy would be the old Mummy, careless and affectionate, proud of her daughter so like a younger sister; and she would wear her new dress, even if it were a little too full, a little too young. ‘Please, God, let everything be all right,’ she whispered at bed-time, rocking on her knees in a fervour of faith; and, going to the window, pulled aside the curtain, where bright in the sky a star shone, as she would shine, fairer than the others, on New Year’s Eve.
Mummy went to bed early the night before the party. She had her dinner taken up to her on a tray. She felt tired, she said, worn out. She hoped she would be better by to-m
orrow, but, really, if she wasn’t, the whole thing would have to be put off, even if it meant disappointing Baby. Better that than the whole house down with ’flu. Her throat was sore, and it might easily be ’flu. One could not be too careful, this time of the year. Her daughter kissed her good-night and wandered, disconsolate, into the drawing-room.
She sat down at the piano and played softly, for fear of disturbing Mummy. It couldn’t be going to be ’flu, not suddenly like this, the night before the party. Sometimes she wondered if Mummy behaved like this on purpose, and, for some queer, unknown reason, did not want her to be happy. And then the door opened, and Uncle John came into the room. He looked flushed and rather excited; he beckoned to her in a mysterious manner.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘be a sport. When the cat’s away . . .’ Had he been to a cocktail party, and drunk one too many? Poor Uncle John. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Mummy’s in bed, you know; she’s not well.’
‘Of course I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m here. Going to take you out to dinner.’
For a moment she stared at him in wonder, and then she smiled. Why, it really was rather sweet of him to think of her all alone. He had guessed her Christmas had been a failure, and now he had called for her, in evening dress and everything, because he was sorry for her. Besides, it must be so boring for him, when there were probably heaps of people he could go out with, to put up with her chatter.
‘Where shall we go?’ she asked, suddenly happy, suddenly excited; and ‘Can I put on my new dress?’ and ‘Could we go to a theatre?’
She ran upstairs, remembering just in time to tiptoe past Mummy’s door. Really, she looked rather nice, she thought, glancing at herself in the long looking-glass, and with a shaky hand she put just a little too much lipstick on her mouth. Uncle John, more of a tabby-cat than ever, waited for her in the hall. He positively purred in satisfaction, tugging at his little moustache.