But that made me hesitate. If I told her the truth, what would she make of it? I had thought her almost tommish, once; but now - well, maybe she had only ever been an ordinary girl, asking me to a lecture for friendship’s sake. Or perhaps she had liked girls once, then turned her back on them - like Kitty! That thought made me cautious: if a torn with a bruise turned up at Kitty’s door, I knew very well what a welcome she would get. I put my head in my hands. ‘It was a gent,’ I said quietly, ‘I’ve been living in the house of a gent, in St John’s Wood, for a year and a half. I let him make me a’- I remembered a phrase of Mrs Milne’s - ‘a pack of promises. He bought me all manner of stuff. And now...’ I raised my eyes to hers. ‘You must think me very wicked. He said he would marry me!’
She look terribly surprised; but she had also begun to look sorry, too. ‘It was this bloke blacked your eye for you, I suppose,’ she said, ‘and not a ladder, at all.’
I nodded, and raised a hand to the bruise at my cheek; then I put my fingers to my hair, remembering that. ‘What a devil he was!’ I said then. ‘He was rich as anything, could do what he pleased. He saw me on my balcony, just as you did, in a pair of trousers. He -’ I blushed. ‘He used to like to make me dress up, as a boy, in a suit like a sailor...’
‘Oh!’ she cried, as if she had never heard anything more awful. ‘But the wealthy ones are the worst, I swear it! Have you no family to go to?’
‘They - they’ve all thrown me over, because of this business.’
She shook her head at that; then grew thoughtful again, and glanced quickly at my waist. ‘You ain’t - you ain’t in trouble, are you?’ she asked quietly.
‘In trouble? I -’ I couldn’t help it: it was as if she was handing me the play text, for me to read it back to her. ‘I was in trouble,’ I said, with my eyes on my lap, ‘but the gent fixed that when he beat me. It was on account of it, I think, that I was so poorly, earlier on ...’
At that, there came a very queer and kind expression to her face; and she nodded, and swallowed - and I saw I had convinced her.
‘If you truly have nowhere, it will not hurt, I suppose, for you to stay a night - just one night - here with us. And tomorrow I shall give you the names of some places where you might find abed...’
‘Oh!’ I felt ready to swoon all over again, in sheer relief. ‘And Mr Banner,’ I said, ‘won’t mind it?’
Mr Banner, it turned out, had no objection to my staying there at all; indeed, as before, he proved pleasanter than his wife, and willing to go to all sorts of trouble for the sake of my comfort. When they ate - for I had interrupted them as they were about to take their tea - it was he who set a plate before me and filled it with stew. He brought me a shawl when I shivered; and, when he saw me limping into the room after a visit to the privy, he made me pull off my boots, and fetched a bowl of salty water for me to soak my blistered feet in. Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase, rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke.
Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; account-sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn’t stir; it was Ralph who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing envelopes... She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven o’clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me.
Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned.
‘I had better go up, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind sleeping in here, I hope? I’m afraid there’s nowhere else for you.’ I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket and a sheet.
‘Do you have everything you need?’ she asked then. ‘The privy is out the back, as you know. There’s a jug of clean water kept in the pantry, if you’re thirsty. Ralph will be up at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if Cyril wakes me. You’ll have to leave at eight, of course, when I do.’ I nodded quickly. I wouldn’t think about the morning, just yet.
There was an awkward silence. She looked so tired and ordinary I had a foolish urge to kiss her cheek good-night, as Ralph had. Of course, I did not; I only took a step towards her as she nodded to me and prepared to make her way upstairs, and said, ‘I am more grateful to you, Mrs Banner, than I can say. You have been very kind to me - you, who hardly know me; and more especially your husband, who doesn’t know me at all.’
As I spoke she turned to me, and blinked. Then she placed her hand on a chair-back, and smiled a curious smile. ‘Did you think he was my husband?’ she said. I hesitated, suddenly flustered.
‘Well, I -’
‘He ain’t my husband! He’s my brother.’ Her brother! She continued to smile at my confusion, and then to laugh: for a moment she was the pert girl I had spoken with in Green Street, all those months before...
But then the baby, in the room above us, gave a cry, and we both raised our eyes to the sound, and I felt myself blush. And when she saw that, her smile faded. ‘Cyril ain’t mine,’ she said quickly, ‘though I call him mine. His mother used to lodge with us, and we took him on when she - left us. He is very dear to us, now...’
The awkward way she said it showed there was some story there - perhaps the mother was in prison; perhaps the baby was really a cousin‘s, or a sister’s, or a sweetheart’s of Ralph’s. Such things happened often enough in Whitstable families: I didn’t think much of it. I only nodded; and then I yawned. And seeing me, she yawned too.
‘Good-night, Miss Astley,’ she said from behind her hand. She did not look like the Green Street girl now. She looked only weary again, and plainer than ever.
I waited a moment while she stepped upstairs - I heard her shuffling above me, and guessed of course that she must share her chamber with the baby - then I took up a lamp, and made my way out to the privy. The yard was very small, and overlooked on every side by walls and darkened windows; I lingered for a second on the chilly flags, gazing at the stars, sniffing at the unfamiliar, faintly riverish, faintly cabbagey, scents of East London. A rustling from the neighbouring yard disturbed me and I started, fearing rats. It was not rats, however, but rabbits: four of them, in a hutch, their eyes flashing like jewels in the light I turned on them.
I slept in my petticoats, half-lying, half-sitting between the two armchairs, with the blankets wrapped around me and my dress laid flat upon them for extra warmth. It does not sound very comfortable; it was, in fact, extraordinarily cosy, and for all that I had so much to keep me ill and fretful, I found I could only yawn and smile to feel the cushions so soft beneath my back, and the dying fire warm beside me. I was woken, in the night, twice: the first time by the sound of shouting in the street, and the slam of doors and the rattle of the poker in the grate, in the house next door; and the second time by the crying of the baby, in Florence’s room. This sound, in the darkness, made me shiver, for it recalled to me all the awful nights that I had spent at Mrs Best’s, in that grey chamber overlooking Smithfield Market. It did not, however, last for very long. I heard Florence rise and step across the floor, and then return - with Cyril, I supposed - to bed. And after that he didn’t stir again, and neither did I.
When I woke next morning it was at the slam of the back door: this was Ralph, I guessed, le
aving for work, for the clock showed ten to seven. There was movement overhead soon after that, as Florence rose and dressed, and much activity in the street outside - amazingly close, it all sounded to me, who was used to slumbering undisturbed by early risers in Diana’s quiet villa.
I lay quite still, the contentment of the night all seeping from me. I didn’t want to rise and face the day, to pull my pinching boots back on, bid Florence good-bye, and be a friendless girl again. The parlour had grown very cold overnight, and my little makeshift bed seemed the only warm place in it. I pulled the blankets over my head, and groaned; groaning, I found, was rather satisfying, so I groaned still louder... I stopped only when I heard the click of the parlour door - then lifted the blankets from my face to see Florence squinting at me, gravely, through the gloom.
‘You’re not ill again?’ she said. I shook my head.
‘No. I was only - groaning.’
‘Oh.’ She looked away. ‘Ralph has left some tea. Shall I fetch you some?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘And then - then you must get up, I’m afraid.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I shall get up now.’ But when she had gone I found I could not get up, at all. I could only lie. I needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger’s parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie ...
Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, meaningfully.
‘It’s a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘I have to take Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, won’t you, when I come back? You really will?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ I said; yet when she reappeared, five minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, and shook her head. I gazed back at her.
‘You know, don’t you, that you cannot stay here. I must go to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I shall be late.’ With that, she caught hold of the bottom of the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said. ‘I must be sick, after all.’
‘If you’re sick, you must go to a place where they will care for you properly!’
‘I’m not that sick!’ I cried then. ‘But if I might only lie a little and get my strength... Go on to work, and I’ll let myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home. You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan’t take anything.’
‘There’s little enough to take!’ she cried. Then she threw her end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how my head aches!’ I looked at her, saying nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of calmness, and her voice grew stiff: ‘You must do as you said, I suppose, and let yourself out.’ She caught up her coat from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of paper and a coin. ‘I’ve made you a list,’ she said, ‘of hostels and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money’- it was a half-crown - ‘is from my brother. He asked me to tell you good-bye and good luck.’
‘He’s a very kind man,’ I said.
She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat were the colour of mud. She said, ‘There’s a piece of bacon still warm in the kitchen, which you may as well have for your breakfast. Then - oh! then you really must go.’
‘I promise I will!’
She nodded, and pulled at the door. There came a blast of icy air from the street outside that made me shiver. Florence shivered, too. The wind blew the brim of her hat away from her brow, and she narrowed her hazel eyes against it, and tightened her jaw.
I said, ‘Miss Banner! I - might I come back, sometime, on a visit? I should like - I should like to see your brother, and thank him...’ I should like to see her, was what I meant. I had come to make a friend of her. But I didn’t know how to say it.
She put a hand to her collar, and blinked into the wind. ‘You must do as you like,’ she said. Then she pulled the door shut, leaving the parlour chill behind her, and I saw her shadow on the lace at the window as she walked away.
After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and quite miraculously, to lighten. I rose, and braved again the chilly privy; then I found the slice of bacon that had been put aside for me, and took a piece of bread and a bunch of cress, and ate my breakfast standing at the kitchen window, gazing sightlessly at the unfamiliar view beyond it.
After that I rubbed my hands, and glanced about me, and began to wonder what to do.
The kitchen, at least, was warm, for someone - Ralph, presumably - had lit a small fire in the range, early on, and the coals were only half consumed. It did seem a shame to waste their lovely heat - and it could not hurt, I told myself, to boil up some water for a bit of a wash. I opened a cupboard door, looking for a pan to set upon the hob, and came across a flat-iron; and seeing this I thought: They wouldn’t mind, surely, if I warmed that, too, and gave my battered frock a little press...
While I waited for these things to heat I wandered back into the parlour, to separate the armchairs that had made my bed, and set the blankets in a tidy pile. This done, I did what I had been at first too bewildered, and then too sleepy, to do the night before: I stood and had a proper look around.
The room, as I have said, was a very small one - far smaller, certainly, than my old bedroom at Felicity Place - and there were no gas-jets in it, only oil-lamps and candlesticks. The furniture and decorations were, I thought, a rather curious mixture. The walls were bare of paper, like Diana’s, but had been stained a patchy blue, like a workshop’s; for decoration they had only a couple of almanacks - this year’s and last year’s - and two or three dull-looking prints. There were two rugs upon the floor, one ancient and threadbare, the other new and vivid and coarse and rather rustic: the kind of rug I thought a shepherd, suffering some disease of the eyes, might weave to while away the endless gloomy hours of a Hebridean winter. The mantelpiece was draped with a fluttering shawl, just as my mother’s had been, and upon it were the kind of ornaments I had seen, as a child, in all my friends’ and cousins’ homes: a dusty china shepherdess, her crook broken and inexpertly mended; a piece of coral, beneath a dome of soot-spotted glass; a glittering carriage-clock. Besides these, however, there were other less predictable items on display: a creased postcard, with a picture of working-men on it and the words Dockers’ Tanner or Dockers’ Strike!; an oriental idol, rather tarnished; a colour print of a man and woman in working-gear, their right hands clasped, their left hands supporting a billowing banner: Strength Through Unity!
These things did not much interest me. I looked next at the alcove beside the chimney-breast, where there was a set of home-made shelves, fairly bursting with books and magazines. This collection was also very mixed, and very dusty. There was a good supply of shilling classics - Longfellow, Dickens, that sort of thing - and one or two cheap novels; but there were also a number of political texts, and two or three volumes of what might be called interesting verse. At least one of these - Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass - I had seen before on Diana’s bookshelves at Felicity Place. I had tried to read it once in an idle moment: I had thought it terribly dull.
These shelves and their contents claimed my attention for a minute or so; it was seized after that by two pictures which hung from the rail above. The first of these was a family portrait, and as stiff, as quaint and as marvellously intriguing as other families’ portraits always are. I looked for Florence first, and found her - aged, perhaps, fifteen or so, and very fresh and plump and earnest - seated between a white-haired lady and a younger, darker girl, who had the beginnings of a barmaid’s flash good looks about her and must, I thought, be a sister. Behi
nd them stood three boys: Ralph, minus his sailor’s whiskers and wearing a very high collar; a rather older brother who looked very much like him; and an older brother again. There was no father.
The second portrait was a picture-postcard photograph: it had been placed in the edge of the large picture’s frame, but its corner curled a little, showing a loop of faded writing on the back. The subject of the portrait was a woman - a heavybrowed woman with untidy dark hair: she seemed to be sitting very squarely, and her gaze was rather grave. I thought she might be the sister from the family group, grown up; or she might be a friend of Florence’s, or a cousin, or - well, anybody. I leaned over to try to read the handwriting that showed where the card curled over; but it was hidden, and I didn’t like to pluck it free - it wasn’t that intriguing. Then I caught the bubbling of the pan of water I had set upon the stove, and hurried out to see to it.
I found a little tin bowl to wash in, and a block of green kitchen soap; and then - since there was no towel, and I didn’t think it really polite to use the dish-cloth - I danced about before the range until I was dry enough to climb back into my dirty petticoats. I thought, with a little sigh, of Diana’s handsome bathroom - of that cabinet of unguents that I had liked to sample for hours at a time. Even so, it was marvellous to be clean again, and when I had combed my hair and tended my face (I rubbed a bit of vinegar into the bruise, and then a bit of flour); when I had thumped the filth from my skirts and pressed them flat and put them on again, I felt fit and warm and quite unreasonably gay. I walked back into the parlour - it was a matter of some ten steps or so - stood for a second there, then returned to the kitchen. It was, I thought, a very pleasant house; as I had already begun to notice, however, it was not a very clean one. The rugs, I saw, all badly wanted beating. The skirting-boards were scuffed and streaked with mud. Every shelf and picture was as dusty as the sooty mantelpiece. If this was my house, I thought, I would keep it smart as a new pin.