In The Dark

  The main reason for the shop’s popularity, however, was something more vital. Times were very hard, that winter. The shortages had worsened; rumours of food deliveries – tinned salmon, butter, tea – led to mutinous queues and even riots. Bread and potatoes had doubled in price, coal was scarce, and sugar practically nonexistent. There was talk of rationing. Families were struggling to survive, living on bread-and-a-scrape, cabbage leaves picked up from the gutter when the market closed, and thrice-boiled tea.

  Despite this, there was plenty on offer at Mr Turk’s shop. His lights blazed into the dingy street. People pressed their noses against the glass, gazing into his theatre of meat – shapely legs of mutton, hanging in a row; heaped, glistening necklaces of sausages. And he was its impresario, standing behind the counter in his rust-smudged apron. In that time of hunger a sirloin held more allure than any showgirl. And even when stocks were low he somehow rustled up some choice cuts he had put aside for his special customers. How he managed this was anyone’s guess.

  Winnie liked going to the butcher’s. Archie, her tormentor, the ruination of her hopes, had long since gone. He had enlisted on his eighteenth birthday and hadn’t been heard of since. Her relief at his departure filled her with guilt, for she was a kind-hearted girl, but she was relieved. She was glad. It was terrible but true. No doubt she would be punished for it but then he had punished her and after all she wasn’t hoping for him to be killed, she wasn’t that sinful. Down in Kent, where her father lived, she had heard the bombardment across the Channel when she had gone there for a visit; she had felt the earth tremble. At night she had seen the orange glow of the fires. And she had prayed for them all, even for Archie. She wasn’t that heartless.

  It was a grey, foggy day at the end of February, a real pea-souper, the sort of day that had barely begun before it was time to light the street lamps again. Figures hurried along the high street, their heads bent, they loomed out of the fog and were gone. Trams rattled past, jangling their bells in warning; a motor lorry rumbled by, belching smoke. Winnie, chilled to the bone, hurried towards the butcher’s shop. She had been out and about, running some errands, and forgotten to buy the lard.

  The shop was busy, as always, the assistants chopping up meat and dumping it on the scales, their heads cocked sideways as they inspected the weight, their hands wiping themselves on their aprons. Winnie stood next in line at the counter. Under the glass lay a huge, goosepimpled ox tongue, its great root wrenched from the throat. The young girl in front of Winnie said: ‘Sixpennyworth of pieces, please.’

  It was then that Winnie saw Mrs Clay. She hadn’t spotted her at first because her mistress’s back was turned and she was wearing her velvet jacket with the pinched-in waist. The poor woman must be freezing. She was standing by the counter talking to Mr Turk. Her hat feathers trembled as she shook her head; she appeared to be disagreeing with something Mr Turk said. He tapped his finger against his nose and she burst out laughing.

  Mrs Clay twirled around on her heels, like a mare shying. She caught sight of Winnie and stopped.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped.

  ‘I’ve come for the lard.’

  Mrs Clay laughed shrilly. ‘And why do we need lard?’ Her face looked hectic; there were high spots of colour on her cheeks.

  ‘For the pasties,’ said Winnie.

  Mrs Clay looked at Winnie as if she had arrived from some foreign country. In the electric light her mistress looked coarser, with her reddened face and the wrinkles showing around her eyes. She said: ‘I came here for the chops. It’s best to see them first, to see what we’re getting.’

  Later it all made sense but Winnie was a trusting girl, she believed what she was told. Besides, her mind was elsewhere. She was wondering if Mr Flyte, the blind lodger, would ask her to read to him again that night, and whether she could cope with the long words. When she stumbled, his knee started jiggling up and down. This only made her the more flustered. Besides, who was this Karl Marx? She had asked Mr Flyte to explain but he seemed to think that everybody knew. He really could be very trying.

  Winnie walked home with Mrs Clay. It was dark now, and the fog was so thick that they could only sense they were passing under a bridge by the echoing sound of their footsteps. Several bridges loomed above them, carrying the trains from the coast to the Waterloo Station, to London Bridge and Charing Cross. Down below, in the narrow street, buildings reared up on either side. She couldn’t see them; just the bleary lights shining in their windows. This neighbourhood had a shifting population, people came and went, it was due to the railway termini nearby. Winnie, a village girl, found it mystifying that people could live yards from each other and never meet. And yet she found it thrilling – the heedlessness, the freedom, the faint scent of decadence like something rotting behind the stove. A girl like herself could arrive from Kent and fall into bad ways. A person could be murdered and not found for weeks. She read about such things in her Penny Pictorial, the sort of magazine that Mr Flyte would no doubt consider beneath his interest.

  She wished she liked him more. There was a bit of the bully about Mr Flyte – Alwyne. He bullied her into saying things she didn’t believe. And when she helped him across the road he stroked her wrist with his finger. Still, she repeated to herself, the poor man had few enough pleasures in his life. And tragedy was not choosy in those it afflicted; a falling shell didn’t care who it blew apart. There had been plenty of evidence of this over the past few years. She avoided walking past the Hop Exchange in the Borough Road, for instance, because an amputee stood in its doorway selling matches. They didn’t want to beg, they had their pride, so she always bought a box for a halfpenny but he never said thank you and once he had spat at her feet and now her room was stacked with matchboxes, it had cost her a fortune. All for a war veteran with one leg, hopping outside the Hop Exchange.

  Winnie wanted to laugh but there was nobody to share the joke. Mrs Clay wasn’t the type, and besides, she seemed wrapped up in her own concerns. Winnie’s mistress walked in silence, her teeth chattering with the cold. Mr Boyce would have appreciated it but he was missing in action. He had sent her a letter from the Front, describing his nincompoop of a commanding officer and ending with a joke: If bread is the staff of life, what is the life of the staff? One long loaf.

  She missed Mr Boyce keenly. It was funny – she always thought of him as Boyce, it came naturally. Yet trying to call Mr Flyte Alwyne was like clambering over a five-barred gate.

  They crossed the road at the Mitre. A roar of laughter came from the saloon bar. Somebody else was telling a joke. Winnie thought: I’ll tell the hopping joke to Ralph. He didn’t have Boyce’s sense of humour, but she loved him. He was like her little brother and she would walk to the ends of the earth for him.

  *

  ‘The modern bourgeois society that had sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms,’ read Winnie. ‘It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.’

  Winnie stopped, exhausted. This was more tiring than heaving buckets of coal upstairs. She had no idea what she was reading, of course; the strain was caused by trying to get the words right. ‘Bourgeois’ had been one of the worst, but she had learnt it now. Alwyne Flyte sat there, his eyes closed. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. It was certainly boring enough.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  ‘With the development of industry’ she said, ‘the pro – pro –’

  ‘Proletariat!’

  ‘Pardon. The proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more.’

  Just then she noticed the mess on the carpet – slivers of bone scattered over the hearthrug. Brutus must have brought in yet another trophy from the butcher’s. He had been taken there a lot recently. In fact, she now noticed a larger piece, complete with knuckle, jutting out from under a cushion where the dog had att
empted to hide it for later. The place looked like a slaughterhouse.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Mr Flyte.

  ‘Improvements in the art of destruction will keep pace with its advance and every year more and more will be devoted to the costly engines of war.’

  She should be cleaning it up. In fact she should be washing up the supper dishes but Mr Flyte had insisted she sit with him in the back room.

  ‘You understand, don’t you Winnie? Workers of the world unite!’ Mr Flyte waved his arms. Ash flew off his cigarette. More mess to brush off the carpet. ‘You have nothing to lose but your chains.’ He leant forward. ‘It’s happened in Russia, it’ll be happening here, you mark my words. Comrade Lenin is here in our midst!’

  ‘Where?’ she asked, alarmed.

  ‘Here!’ He tapped his head; more ash fell. ‘It’s ideas, not guns, that will change the world. We have to seize the moment, Winnie, while the enemy is weak, to sweep the capitalist class system out of existence!’

  First I’d better sweep up those bones, thought Winnie. ‘Will that be all?’ she asked.

  ‘Wars have no use, otherwise. They’re utterly self-destructive, don’t you understand? You remember what Marx said, about the military process? We read it last week. Whoever wins, the outcome is imposed by the conqueror on the conquered, and thus carries within itself the seeds of future wars.’

  Winnie didn’t remember, of course. She had far too much on her plate. She watched his eyes fluttering; they reminded her of saints in church, plaster models of them in rapture.

  ‘If we don’t break this cycle, that will be the pattern of the twentieth century! You mark my words, Winnie. The only solution is to put power into the hands of people like yourself.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ asked Winnie. ‘I’m quite happy as I am.’

  Mr Flyte sighed. ‘Oh, Winnie.’

  ‘But I agree about ending war,’ she said. ‘It must have been terrible.’ She summoned up her courage. ‘What was it like, Mr Flyte?’

  ‘Alwyne!’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You don’t want to know, my dear.’

  Silence fell. She shouldn’t have asked, but the question had been burning in the back of her mind. There was nobody else she could approach on the matter – certainly not poor Mr Spooner, upstairs. And nowadays she felt more relaxed with Mr Flyte. His hectoring familiarity was starting to rub off on her and she felt bolder about asking him questions – even, on occasion, teasing him. She was starting to get the measure of the man. Besides, though undoubtedly clever, he was as helpless as a baby. In that department it was she who held the power. Workers of the World Unite!

  ‘Tickling the ivories again, I hear.’ Mr Flyte jerked his head towards the wall. Mrs Clay was playing the piano in the front parlour. ‘She’s taking that Chopin too fast.’

  ‘I think it’s lovely,’ said Winnie. ‘I love it when she plays.’

  ‘Wonder what she’s so happy about?’

  Winnie shrugged, and then remembered that he couldn’t see. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  There was no doubt that Mrs Clay’s humour had much improved during the past few weeks. She not only played the piano. Sometimes, when there was nobody around, she sang. She spent longer at her toilette and tried on a large number of outfits before deciding what to wear. Her bedroom looked ransacked. Winnie didn’t mind clearing it up, however, because she was glad her mistress’s spirits had lifted. There was less friction all round. However, she was hardly going to speculate about the cause, even if she knew it, with the grubby old lodger. It was Mrs Clay who paid her wages.

  The music stopped, as if her mistress had guessed their thoughts. The door opened and she came into the room. Mr Flyte, as always, remained seated. This was due either to his political convictions or his blindness; Winnie never knew.

  ‘Winnie, could we have a word?’ she asked.

  Winnie jumped up. ‘I’m so sorry about the dishes, I’ll be going down directly.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  Mr Flyte got to his feet. ‘I’ll be off,’ he said. ‘Got an appointment with a pint of mild.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said Winnie. ‘Where’s your coat?’

  He waved her away. ‘I can manage.’ At the door he turned: ‘What exactly was that bit of fish we ate tonight? I’ve been trying to work it out.’

  ‘Hake,’ said Mrs Clay shortly. ‘I think.’

  Alwyne left the room. He didn’t like being helped around in the house. They heard him fumbling for his coat in the hallway, and then the click of the front door.

  ‘He’s a strange man, isn’t he?’ said Mrs Clay. ‘Something I can’t put my finger on. And so swarthy. Do you think he’s an Israelite?’

  ‘But he’s from Bolton.’

  ‘That’s no reason. They get everywhere.’ She looked at Winnie in a vague way. ‘You mustn’t let him presume on you, Winnie. I heard him trying to bamboozle you on your half-day.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’m learning things.’

  Mrs Clay’s heart wasn’t in this conversation. Winnie had turned up the gas jets, for reading, and lit two lamps. She could see her mistress’s face quite clearly. Mrs Clay was agitated. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright.

  ‘Tomorrow night you can make the suppers. I’ve put some beans to soak. You can make some rissoles, mash them up with the barley and that bit of mince.’ She added, casually: ‘I shall be out.’

  ‘Out?’

  The mantel clock chimed the hour. Nine o’clock already! The evening felt all out of kilter.

  ‘I’m meeting a friend.’ Mrs Clay went to the door. ‘Mind you boil the barley first.’

  And she was gone.

  *

  After the show Neville took her to supper at the Café Royal, in Regent Street. It was lit like a palace, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and candles glowing behind fluted pink shades. Columns, topped with naked figures, supported a ceiling painted with frescos. They knew him there. The head waiter shook Neville’s hand and showed them to a table next to a potted palm. A band of old men scraped at their violins.

  ‘Champagne?’ Neville asked her.

  A vase of tuberoses sat on the tablecloth. The scent made her head swim. Neville clicked his fingers and the waiter reappeared. They all seemed powerless to resist him. Eithne sat there, in her watered-silk dress that was too loose on her now and that shamed her in these surroundings. She needed fattening up. Fattening up for the slaughter. Eithne felt the laughter bubble up; she clapped her hand across her mouth. Neville was opening his heavy, leather-bound menu. He fished out a pair of spectacles and she was absurdly disarmed. The man had a weakness! She felt as gay as a pit pony released from the underworld; she tossed her mane and galloped round the meadow.

  And other people took this for granted! She had no idea there were so many people left in the world to do this sort of thing. The place was filled with men and women who dined out as a matter of course, they were a dazzle of top hats and crimson gowns, they had lives as unimaginable as creatures from Mars, and yet they were here with her tonight, just for tonight, and the moment was thrilling to her.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ asked Neville.

  Eithne couldn’t reply I was picturing the cow-heel stew I cooked, stirring the pan as it grew thicker and thicker until it turned into a grey glue so disgusting that even my boarders couldn’t eat it, and they were HUNGRY. Mrs O’Malley’s dentures got stuck together, and even the dog wouldn’t go near the leftovers. And now it’s funny because it doesn’t matter, I’m alive, we’re all alive, and better still I’m here.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘Hungry as a horse.’

  ‘Can’t be doing with wilting violets who peck at their soup.’

  How many wilting violets had Neville brought there? None could touch her tonight, none was as powerful as Eithne Clay because she needed this place more than they had ever needed it. Who cared about her ill-fitting gown
with its frayed cuffs that Winnie had promised to mend? Tonight she was the queen of the Café Royal and even the waiter sensed it as he stood there waiting for her order.

  ‘I’ll have the oysters,’ she said, ‘and the sole, and the veal escalope.’

  He bowed and withdrew, folding the menu gracefully, like a prayer book. She smiled across at Neville. ‘You’re spoiling me.’

  ‘We only live the once.’

  Paul’s face flashed in front of her, and was gone. He would want this for her, it was no betrayal that she was sitting here sipping champagne that fizzed in her nostrils. He would want her to be happy.

  ‘Do you believe in heaven and hell?’ she asked.

  Neville raised his eyebrows. ‘Now that’s a question for a Thursday night.’

  She drained her glass. ‘I don’t believe in any of it. Not any more.’ She eyed him recklessly, challenging him. The wine had gone straight to her head.

  ‘It’s a big bad world,’ Neville said. ‘We must shift for ourselves.’

  He passed her the basket of rolls. Eithne took one and broke open the crust. It released the sweetest aroma. Inside, it was white and as fluffy as thistledown. This was holy. They could keep their God.

  ‘I’m so tired of eating nasty hard grey bread with lumps of potato in it,’ she said. ‘Why do they make us eat it? I’m so tired of it all.’

  ‘Baker I know, he bakes bread like this. Give me the nod and I’ll get him to deliver you a loaf. Loaves. As much as you want, my dear, sky’s the limit.’

  My dear. ‘You know everybody, don’t you?’