Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

  ‘Little Ladies like to have their little Secrets, don’t they,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I know all their little ways.’

  She wished he wouldn’t call her a Little Lady. Particularly as she was about twice his size – twice his size, that was to say, as masculine should compare to feminine – actually they were about the same in height and weight. Also she believed that, in his present fondling of her knee, he was by some subconscious process of sensuous symbolism transferring his thoughts and utterances concerning Secrets, to thoughts and utterances concerning Knees, and was getting a trifle lascivious. But she hoped she was mistaken.

  ‘Don’t they?’ said Mr. Eccles, and, seeing her look thoughtful, ‘Well – what’s going on in its little head now?’

  ‘Oh – nothing much,’ said Ella. ‘Nothing much – eh? Come along, now. What is it? You mustn’t have any secrets from me, you know.’ And he moved his hand from her knee in order to drink some more champagne.

  At last it seemed as though she had an opportunity to voice her reservations, and she rushed to seize it before it went.

  ‘Well . . .’ she said, ponderously, toying thoughtfully with her glass.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, you seem to talk as though our Engagement was all fixed. . . .’

  ‘Well – isn’t it?’

  ‘But it can’t be. Can it?’

  ‘And why can’t it – little Grey-Eyes-Puzzle-Head?’ said Mr. Eccles, putting his head on one side in a rapture of poetic quizzicality.

  ‘No,’ said Ella, ‘I’m Serious. . . .’

  ‘Are you? I love you when you’re Serious!’

  She suspected, among other things, that the drink had gone to his head already – there were people like that, she knew from experience in the bar – in which case she would never divert him from this overbearing flippancy.

  ‘No. I am serious,’ said Ella. ‘You mustn’t mind what I say. . . .’

  ‘I shan’t mind. I don’t mind what anybody says,’ said Mr. Eccles, and she was certain he was drunk.

  ‘But it’s so Impossible,’ she said. ‘It might be all right if I was in your Class. But I’m not.’

  ‘Aren’t you in my class? What would that matter, if it’s true?’

  ‘Well, I’m not Educated. I should let you down. We could never be married and Set Up.’

  ‘Educated? What’s education. Do you mean Aitches?’ said Mr. Eccles, with surprising, and perhaps slightly painful frankness.

  ‘No – it’s not Aitches,’ said Ella, who, in fact, had always taken great pride in her management of these, ‘it’s other things.’

  ‘Grammar?’ suggested Mr. Eccles.

  ‘Yes. Grammar, if you like. And it’s not only Grammar that gives you away, is it?’

  ‘What else does, then?’

  ‘Well – everything. I’m not a Lady – that’s what it amounts to,’ said Ella, glad to have got this out. ‘And that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Mr. Eccles, neither exactly denying nor exactly confirming this accusation against herself, but just pooh-poohing her in general.

  ‘But it’s true. And when you come to think about it quietly you’ll see it is.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘And what about all your people?’

  ‘What people?’ ‘Well, all your Army People, and all that,’ said Ella, shyly. . . .

  ‘Oh bother my Army people.’

  ‘But you can’t just bother them. Imagine me being introduced to them at a Tea Party.’ Not usually an articulate person, she was now rather pleased with her argumentative power, and even had a dim hope that she might yet prevail upon him to grant her some Stay of Engagement, or other concession, which would give her time to think about it all and discover some line of escape if necessary.

  ‘But you wouldn’t have to be introduced to them.’ ‘But I would, if we were married.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose you would,’ said Mr. Eccles.

  ‘Besides there’s my people, too,’ she said, playing her trump card. ‘They’re only poor people, you know. They haven’t got an Aitch to their name.’

  ‘Haven’t they?’

  ‘No, of course they haven’t,’ she said, feeling justified in sacrificing her mother in her cause. ‘And I don’t expect you’d like that.’

  ‘But would I have to meet them?’ said Mr. Eccles, perhaps a faint gleam of dismay showing in his eyes.

  ‘Well – that’s marriage, isn’t it. I don’t want to Deceive you about myself you know – just because I Pass.’ She knew now that she was being rather a humbug, and she paid for it instantly.

  ‘Ah – but that’s what’s so wonderful about you,’ he said. ‘You’re so Honest. I can See it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all very well . . .’ said Ella, but now she had lost the thread. ‘You see –’

  ‘Besides, I don’t see what you’re getting at. If we love each other what do people matter?’

  ‘Yes – but –’

  ‘Well. What?’

  ‘Well, I think we ought to think about it, that’s all.’

  And with those words she knew that she had come to the end of her resources, and as it were bowed her head, looking at her wine glass, and awaiting sentence in the pause that followed.

  ‘You darling,’ she heard Mr. Eccles saying. ‘Do you know what’ll be happening to you in a moment?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll be coming round and kissing you in front of all these people if you’re not careful.’

  She did not answer but looked at her glass.

  ‘Or giving you a good spanking. I don’t know which,’ said Mr. Eccles with indescribable roguishness. ‘What about some more champagne?’

  So ended Ella’s last attempt that evening to break through the walls of his imperturbability and gaiety – her principal concern thenceforward being to see that he did not drink too much and make fools of them both in public – a feat which she accomplished with some success on the strength of her barmaid’s experience – eventually leading him to dinner at the Corner House again, and doing her utmost, as he escorted her back, to avoid Railings – at any rate Railings as near ‘The Midnight Bell’ as before. But here she had no success, for he had by now got those Railings, and no others, established in his conservative mind as the fixed and rightful Embracing Station, and manoeuvred towards them inexorably.

  CHAPTER XX

  NEXT DAY ELLA went over to see her mother. This was Friday. No word ever passed between them as to why she seemed to have taken to coming over on Friday instead of Thursday, her day off, and Ella suspected her mother of suspecting that she was devoting her one stretch of liberty in the week to Mr. Eccles, which of course she was. Ella’s mother was a little more cheerful, or less acutely miserable, this week, her Stiff Neck having left her. When asked if it was better, ‘Oh yes, that’s gone,’ she said, in the peculiarly disinterested and ungrateful tone people have when agonizing inflictions, which they groan under while in progress, have the grace to leave them.

  ‘Well, – how’s the Gentleman?’ said Ella’s mother, the very first moment after they had fixed the tea things to their liking and had settled down in front of the fire for their chat in the gloaming. Thus she unwittingly revealed the main stream of her thought throughout the entire past week, and confirmed Ella’s suspicions.

  Ella wished that her mother could have chosen some other epithet than ‘the Gentleman’ – there was something half-awed and furtive about it, something respectful yet anticipatory, which put the absurd Mr. Eccles she knew into so utterly false and romantic a light that she felt ashamed both of him and her mother. But then she wished, really, that her mother would not talk about him at all.

  ‘Oh – he’s all right,’ she said, and looked into the fire, knowing that the topic could not drop here.

  ‘Has he taken you to the theatre and dinner again?’ asked her mother.

  How these poor old people rushed ahead of themselves in their expectations! Had not o
ne theatre and dinner been enough for her? On the one hand so ready to be cast down, on the other they were so intemperate in their hopes, urged by their longing and belief in their children, that no miracle could unduly impress or suffice them.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just to the Pictures. . . .’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Mrs. Prosser, ‘That’s something. . . .’

  ‘And to tea once or twice,’ said Ella, with all the mixed emotions of one seeing her mother spiritually transformed into a starved dog, and having reluctantly to grant it the bones and scraps which were its due.

  ‘Really,’ said Mrs. Prosser, ‘I think he must be Taken – don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose he is,’ said Ella, ‘a bit.’

  ‘I should say more than a bit,’ said Mrs. Prosser, ‘if he takes you out like that. I should say he’s really Taken.’

  And the metaphorical lapping-up noise she made over this conclusion made Ella feel quite abased. And what a meal it was in her power to provide if she cared! If she only told the whole truth, and confided to her mother the degree in which Mr. Eccles was actually Taken! But no – at all costs she had to withhold the remotest suspicion of where the land really lay from her mother. If once that came out, and her mother was told that so far from his being merely Taken, they were already Engaged, or as good as Engaged, then, unless she was to break her poor heart later, the door would be shut even further against any of those corridors of escape which she still felt must appear in this unaccountable situation. Not that she really believed she was Engaged, or, being so, that she knew she wanted to escape. All that had happened was that he had succeeded in bringing her to implying that they were Engaged. Beyond that she could look no further at present.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ she said, hoping her mother might take a barely perceptible hint to stop questioning her.

  ‘Has it come to Christian names yet?’ asked Mrs. Prosser, evidently meaning to make this the topic of the afternoon.

  ‘Well, I suppose it has, really.’

  ‘What is his Christian name by the way?’

  ‘Ernest,’ said Ella, having to use hydraulic pressure even here.

  ‘Ernest, eh? Well – that’s a very nice name.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes. I do, and let’s hope he really is in earnest.’ And Mrs. Prosser gave a weak and awkward little laugh.

  She had now given herself away with piteous frankness, and Ella, convulsively putting out her hands as though to warm them over the fire, smiled, shuddered, and was at a loss.

  ‘And if he’s a Gentleman, as you say he is,’ said Mrs. Prosser, ‘there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be in earnest.’

  That word Gentleman again. Ella was keenly aware that in using this term her mother was thinking timidly in terms of social strata rather than natural behaviour, and the slavish humility it implied appalled her. She was perfectly ready in her own mind to recognize and appraise the social gulf between Mr. Eccles and herself, but to hear her mother glibly acknowledging, nay revelling in it like this, somehow offended what little family pride she had and seemed to lower them both. She had to make some sort of protest.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a hint of reproach. ‘But you mustn’t go building castles in the air, you know.’

  But that, of course, was the wrong thing to have said, suggesting, as it obviously did, that the air was perfectly mature for castles, that she herself was as much for castles as her mother, and that she was merely warning her mother not to tempt Providence too far in the presence of such amazing auspices. And of course she had wanted to convey exactly the opposite. This was like her unintentional admission yesterday of a Secret with Mr. Eccles – she was always getting herself tied up by what she said. What with both of them, she didn’t know where they would land her.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs. Prosser, ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ But it was quite clear that she delightedly would and did.

  When Ella left her mother that evening she reflected that the slow process of years had probably at last turned the scales so that her mother was now, in point of moral wisdom and family experience, going down the decline where she would be less of a mother and resource, than a mental junior whom Ella at last would have to lead. This reflection did anything but improve the bleakness and loneliness of her situation – a depressed sense of which had been upon her all day. On the other hand, what if her mother was in the right? She had no one else to confide in, and it might well be that she was a fool, and a selfish fool, jeopardizing the happiness of others, to turn up her nose (if turning up her nose she was) at the unparalleled Mr. Eccles and all he offered. Always ready to blame herself, she could quite well see this point of view without overcoming a rebellious feeling which at certain moments could almost make her wish that she had not been faced with the dilemma at all. But then she was always in a low, super-analytical frame of mind after leaving her mother.

  Another slight shock was awaiting her that night. This occurred in the bar about five minutes after they had opened and were waiting for customers to enter.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ said Bob, who was glancing at the evening newspaper on his stool the other side of the bar. ‘Was that you I saw in Baker Street yesterday evening?’

  ‘Baker Street?’ said Ella, trying to gain time. It was curiously frightening, at the best of times, to learn that you had been looked upon, unknown to yourself – giving you a sudden defenceless sense of your objectiveness in the eyes of others.

  ‘I was in Baker Street,’ she said. . . .

  ‘Oh, then it was you. I thought it was. I was on a bus,’ said Bob, who seemed inclined to drop the matter there.

  But this would never suffice Ella. What had he seen? It must have been while they were going to tea after the Cinema. Did he have hold of her arm then? Or was it when they came out? Or didn’t he take it till they got inside Regent’s Park?

  ‘What was I doing?’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean – what were you doing?’ said Bob, catching her tone of alarm, and looking up at her in an amused and slightly ironical way. ‘You were just walking along.’

  She would have to brave it out.

  ‘Did you see “Mr.” “Eccles”?’ she said, wrapping him round and round in strenuous inverted commas in her endeavour to disclaim any responsibility for his name or his person, and pretending to wipe the bar.

  ‘No,’ said Bob. ‘I thought you were alone. Who’s Mr. Eccles?’

  ‘Oh – didn’t you see him?’

  ‘No – I only saw you in a flash. Who’s Mr. Eccles?’

  ‘Oh – don’t you remember Mr. Eccles?’

  ‘No. Not the slightest.’

  ‘He took me to the theatre – don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, him. I remember.’

  ‘He took me out again yesterday. He’s ever so nice,’ said Ella, speaking as one who enlarges upon the charms of her uncle; but this did not deceive Bob.

  ‘Oh – so it’s come to that, has it?’ he said.

  ‘Come to what?’

  ‘I thought it would,’ said Bob. ‘When I saw you together that night.’

  She knew he was just fooling with her according to their convention, but was alarmed to learn that he remembered that first evening in the bar so clearly.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Bob.’

  ‘What’s silly?’

  ‘You don’t think –’

  ‘Think what?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d –’

  ‘Why not? I thought he was very nice.’

  ‘Did you?’ (Here was a surprise, if you liked!)

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob, ‘nice looking, too.’

  ‘Nice looking? . . . Him?’ said Ella. (A funny sort of way to speak about the man to whom you were betrothed! But she was so disconcerted, and Bob’s view was above all others of such vital importance to her, that she could not help it.)

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob, ‘I thought he was very nice looking.’

  ‘Nice looking, perhaps,??
? said Ella, meaning that he looked a nice person – a very different thing, ‘But not nice looking.’

  ‘No,’ said Bob, ‘I mean nice looking.’

  ‘But, Bob,’ said Ella, ‘He’s Old. . . .’

  ‘Is he? I didn’t notice it.’

  Was Bob just trying to be perverse, or had she herself got an entirely wrong slant on Mr. Eccles? Looking back, she could see now that her own opinion at one time had not differed so very much from Bob’s. In those early days she definitely had thought Mr. Eccles nice looking, for his age, and it had not occurred to her to think of him as Old. It was only in his capacity as a practicable marrying proposition that his elderliness had been brought to the fore, and that his relative nice looks had been therefore discounted. But Bob couldn’t know anything about that.

  ‘Well, he’s Getting on,’ she said. ‘At any rate.’

  ‘So are we all,’ said Bob.

  ‘Yes. I suppose we are,’ said Ella, and decided she would have to think about all this later. Mr. Eccles with the stamp of Bob’s approval was a very different Mr. Eccles. If Bob passed him, then surely he was passed – in her eyes there could be no fiercer test. In that case there was no reason why she should not be able to shed that lurking feeling of something remotely indecent – yes, indecent, she had to admit it – in Mr. Eccles’ advances, and look him squarely in the face and judge him on his merits.

  ‘Of course,’ said Bob, ‘if you’ve got so many people running after you. . . .’

  Was this a conspiracy? First her mother – now Bob. They clearly thought it was a wonderful idea – and they would throw her into his arms between them. She did not know whether she liked Bob going on like this, or not. On the one hand it had the gratifying result of improving Mr. Eccles’ appearance – and therefore the appearance of her entire commitment – a hundredfold in her eyes. On the other hand, it came just at the time when she had been seeking to identify and establish the causes of her inner rebellion, and so put her in further confusion. Also it hammered home yet again Bob’s hopeless indifference to her, in his carefree acquiescence in the elderly Mr. Eccles as a partner for her – an acquiescence which she could not help suspecting might be due to certain inner categories and associations in his mind which would have been different had she been a more attractive woman.