A FORTNIGHT later Victoria had returned to the City. Most of the old
P.R's had reopened, after passing under the yoke. A coat of paint had
transformed them into P.R.R's. In fact their extinction was complete;
nothing was left of them but the P. and the chairmanship of the
amalgamated company, for their chairman was an earl and part of the
goodwill. The P.R. had apparently been bought up at a fair rate. Its
shares having fallen to sixpence, most of the shareholders had lost
large sums; whereas the directors and their friends, displaying the
acumen that is sometimes found among directors, had quietly bought the
shares up by the thousand and by putting them into the new company had
realised large profits. As the failure had happened during the old year
and most of the shops had been reopened in the new, it was quite clear
that the catering trade was expanding. It was a startling instance of
commercial progress.
Within a week the P.R.R. decided to start once more in the City.
Victoria, by her own request, was transferred to Moorgate Street. She
did not like the neighbourhood of Oxford Circus; it was unfamiliar
without being stimulating. She objected too to serving women. If she
must serve at all she preferred serving men. She did not worship men;
indeed the impression they had left on her was rather unpleasant. The
subalterns at the mess were dull, Mr Parker a stick, Bobby was Bobby,
Burton a cur, Stein a lout, Beauty, well perhaps Beauty was a little
better and Cairns worthy of a kind thought; but all the others, boys and
half men with their futile talk, their slang cribbed from the music
halls, their affectations, their loud ties, were nothing but the ballast
on which the world has founded its permanent way. Yet a mysterious sex
instinct made Victoria prefer even them to the young ladies who
frequented Princes Street. It is better to be made love to insolently
than to be ordered about.
The Moorgate P.R.R. was one of the curious crosses between the ice cream
shop and the chop house where thirty bob a week snatches a sixpenny
lunch. It was full of magnificent indifference. You could bang your
twopence for a small coffee, or luxuriate in steak and kidney pie,
boiled (_i.e._ potatoes), stewed prunes and cream, and be served with
the difference of interest that the recording angel may make between No.
1,000,000 and 1,000,001. You were seldom looked at, and, if looked at,
forgotten. It was as blatant as the 'Rosebud' had been discreet. Painted
pale blue, it flaunted a plate glass window full of cakes, packets of
tea, pounds of chocolate, jars of sweets; some imitation chops garnished
with imitation parsley, and a chafing dish full of stage eggs and bacon
held out the promise of strong meats. Enormous urns, polished like
silver, could be seen from the outside emitting clouds of steam; under
the chafing dish too came up vaporous jets.
Inside, the P.R.R. recalled the wilderness and the animation of a bank.
To the blue and red tesselated floor were fastened many marble-topped
tables squeezed so close together that when a customer rose to leave he
created an eddy among his disturbed fellows. The floor was swamped with
chairs which, during the lunch hour, dismally grated on the tiled floor.
It was clean; for, after every burst of feeding, the appointed scavenger
swept the fallen crusts, fragments of pudding, cigarette ends and
banana skins into a large bin. This bin was periodically emptied and
the contents sent to the East End, whether to be destroyed or to be used
for philanthropic purposes is not known.
The girls were trained to quick service here. Victoria found no
difficulty in acquiring the P.R.R. swing, for she had not to memorise
the variety of dishes which the more fastidious Rosebudders demanded.
Her mental load seldom went beyond small teas, a coffee or two, half a
veal and ham pie, sandwiches and porridge. There was no considering the
bill of fare. It stood on every table, immutable as a constitution and
as dull. At the P.R.R., a man absorbed a maximum of stodgy food, paid
his minimum of cash and vanished into an office to pour out the
resultant energy for thirty bob a week. As there were no tips Victoria
soon learned that courtesy was wasted, so wasted none.
The P.R.R. did not treat its girls badly--in this sense, that it treated
them no worse than its rivals did theirs; it practised commercial
morality. Victoria received eight shillings a week, to which good
Samaritans added an average of fourteen pence, dropped anonymously into
the unobtrusive box near the cash desk. At the 'Rosebud' tips averaged
fourteen shillings a week, but then they were given publicly.
Besides her wages she was given all her meals, on a scale suited to
girls who waited on Mr Thirty Bob a Week. Her breakfast was tea, bread
and margarine; her dinner, cold pudding or pie, according to the
unpopularity of the dishes among the customers, washed down once more
with tea and sometimes followed by stewed fruit if the quantity that
remained made it clear that some would be left over. The day ended with
supper, tea, bread and cheese--a variety of Cheddar which the company
bought by the ton on account of its peculiar capacity for swelling and
producing a very tolerable substitute for repletion.
As Victoria was now paid less than half her former wages she was
expected to work longer hours. The P. R. R. demanded faithful service
from half-past eight in the morning to nine in the evening, except on
one day when freedom was earned at six. Victoria was driven to
generalise a little about this; it struck her as peculiar that an
increase of work should synchronise with a decrease of pay, but the
early steps in any education always fill the pupil with wonderment.
Yet she did not repine, for she remembered too well the black days of
the old year when the wolf slunk round the house, coming every day
nearer to her door. She had beaten him off and there still was joy in
the thought of that victory. Her frame of mind was quiescent, tempered
still with a feeling of relief. This she shared with her companions, for
every one of them had known such straits as hers and worse. They had
come back to the P. R. R. filled with exceeding joy; craving bread they
had been given buns.
The Moorgate P. R. R. was a big depot. It boasted, in addition to the
ground floor, two smoking rooms, one on the first floor and one
underground, as well as a ladies' dining-room on the second floor. It
had a staff of twenty waitresses, six of whom were stationed in the
underground smoking-room; Victoria was one of these. A virile manageress
dominated them and drove with splendid efficiency a concealed kitchen
team of four who sweated in the midst of steam in an underground
stokehole.
Victoria's companions were all old P. R's except Betty. They all had
anything between two and five years' service behind them. Nelly, a big
raw boned country girl, was still assertive and loud; she had good looks
of the kind that last up to thirty, made up of fine coarse healthy
flesh lines, tending to redden at the nostrils and at the ears; her
hands were shapely still, though reddened and thickened by swabbing
floors and tables. Maud was a poor little thing, small boned with a
flaccid covering of white flesh, inclined to quiver a little when she
felt unhappy; her eyes were undecidedly green, her hair carroty in the
extreme. She had a trick of drawing down the corners of her mouth which
made her look pathetic. Amy and Jenny were both short and darkish,
inclined to be thin, always a little tired, always willing, always in a
state neither happy nor unhappy. Both had nearly five years' experience
and could look forward to another fifteen or so. They had no
assertiveness, so could not aspire to a managerial position, such as
might eventually fall to the share of Nelly.
Betty was an exception. She had not acquired the P. R. R. manner and
probably never would. The daughter of a small draper at Horley, she had
lived through a happy childhood, played in the fields, been to a little
private school. Her father had strained every nerve to face on the one
hand the competition of the London stores extending octopus-like into
the far suburbs, on the other that of the pedlars. Caught between the
aristocracy and the democracy of commerce he had slowly been ground
down. When Betty was seventeen he collapsed through worry and overwork.
His wife attempted to carry on the business after his death, bravely
facing the enemy, discharging assistants, keeping the books, impressing
Betty to dress the window, then to clean the shop. But the pressure had
become too great, and on the day when the mortgagees foreclosed she
died. Nothing was left for Betty except the clothes she stood in. Some
poor relatives in London induced her to join the 'Lethe.' That was three
years ago and now she was twenty.
Betty was the tall slim girl into whose breast Victoria had thrust her
elbow when they were fighting for bread among the crowd which surged
round the door of the Princes Street depot. She was pretty, perhaps a
little too delicately so. Her sandy hair and wide open china blue eyes
made one think of a doll; but the impression disappeared when one looked
at her long limbs, her slightly sunken cheeks. She had a sweet
disposition, so gentle that, though she was a favourite, her fellows
despised her a little and were inclined to call her 'poor Betty.' She
was nearly always tired; when she was well she was full of simple and
honest merriment. She would laugh then if a motor bus skidded or if she
saw a Highlander in a kilt. She had just been shifted to the Moorgate
Street P.R.R. From the first the two girls had made friends and Victoria
was deeply glad to meet her again. The depth of that gladness is only
known to those who have lived alone in a hostile world.
'Betty,' said Victoria the first morning, 'there's something I want to
say. I've had it on my mind. Do you remember the first time we met
outside the old P.R. in Princes Street?'
'Don't I?' said Betty. 'We had a rough time, didn't we?'
'We had. And, Betty, perhaps you remember . . . I hit you in the chest.
I've thought of it so often . . . and you don't know how sorry I am when
I think of it.'
'Oh, I didn't mind,' said Betty, a blush rising to her forehead, 'I
understand. I was about starving, you know, I thought you were the
same.'
'No, not starving exactly,' said Victoria, 'mad rather, terrified, like
a sheep which the dog's driving. But I beg your pardon, Betty, I
oughtn't to have done it.'
Betty put her hand gently on her companion's.
'I understand, Vic,' she said, 'it's all over now; we're friends, aren't
we?'
Victoria returned the pressure. That day established a tender link
between these two. Sometimes, in the slack of three o'clock, they would
sit side by side for a moment, their shoulders touching. When they met
between the tables, running, their foreheads beaded with sweat, they
exchanged a smile.
The customers at the P.R.R. were so many that Victoria could hardly
retain an impression of them. A few were curious though, in the sense
that they were typical. One corner of the room was occupied during the
lunch hour by a small group of chess players; five of the six boards
were regularly captured by them. They sat there in couples, their eyes
glued to the board, allowing the grease to cake slowly on their food;
from time to time one would swallow a mouthful, sometimes dropping
morsels on the table. These he would brush away dreamily, his thoughts
far away, two or three moves ahead. Round each table sat a little group
of spectators who now and then shifted their plates and cups from table
to table and watched the games. At times, when a game ended, a table was
involved in a fierce discussion: gambits, Morphy's classical games, were
thrown about. On the other side of the room the young domino-players
noisily played matador, fives and threes, or plain matching, would look
round and mutter a gibe at the enthusiasts.
Others were more personal. One, a repulsive individual, Greek or
Levantine, patronised one of Betty's tables every day. He was fat,
yellow and loud; over his invariably dirty hands drooped invariably
dirty cuffs; on one finger he wore a large diamond ring.
'It makes me sick sometimes,' said Betty to Victoria, 'you know he eats
with both hands and drops his food; he snuffles too, as he eats, like a
pig.'
Another was an old man with a beautiful thin brown face and white hair.
He sat at a very small table, so small that he was usually alone. Every
day he ordered dry toast, a glass of milk and some stewed fruit. He
never read or smoked, nor did he raise his eyes from the table. An
ancient bookkeeper perhaps, he lived on some principle.
Most of the P. R. R. types were scheduled however. They were mainly
young men or boys between fifteen and twenty. All were clad in blue or
dark suits, wore flannel shirts, dickeys and no cuffs. They would
congregate in noisy groups, talk with furious energy, and smoke Virginia
cigarettes with an air of daredevilry. Now and then one of these would
be sitting alone, reading unexpected papers such as the _Times_,
borrowed from the office. Spasmodically, too, one would be seen
improving his mind. Victoria, within six months, noticed three starts on
the part of one of the boys; French, book-keeping and electrical
engineering.
Many were older than these. There were little groups of young men rather
rakishly but shabbily dressed; often they wore a flower in their
buttonhole. The old men were more pathetic; their faces were
expressionless; they came to eat, not to feast.
Victoria and Betty had many conversations about the customers. Every day
Victoria felt her faculty of wonder increase; she was vaguely conscious
already that men had a tendency to revert to types, but she did not
realise the influence the conditions of their lives had upon them.
'It's curious,' she once said to Betty, as they left the depot together,
'they're so much alike.'
'I suppose they are,' said Betty. 'I wonder why?'
'I'm not sure,' said Victoria, 'but it seems to me somehow that they
must be born different but that they become alike because they do the
same kind of work.'
'It's rather awful, isn't it,' said Betty.
'Awful? Well, I suppose it is. Think of it, Betty. There's old Dry
Toast, for instance. I'm sure he's been doing whatever he does do for
thirty or forty years.'
'And'll go on doing it till he dies,' murmured Betty.
'Or goes into the workhouse,' added Victoria. A sudden and horrible
lucidity had come over her. 'Yes, Betty, that's what it means. The boys
are going to be like the old man; we see them every day becoming like
him. First they're in the twenties and are smart and read the sporting
news; then they seem to get fat and don't shave every day, because they
feel it's getting late and it doesn't matter what they look like; their
hair grows grey, they take up chess or German, or something equally
ridiculous. They don't get a chance. They're born and as soon as they
can kick they're thrust in an office to do the same thing every day.
Nobody cares; all their employers want them to do is to be punctual and
do what they're paid thirty bob a week for. Soon they don't try; they
die, and the employers fill the billet.'
'How do you know all this, Vic?' said Betty, eyeing her fearfully. 'It
seems so true.'
'Oh, I just felt it suddenly, besides . . .' Victoria hesitated.
'But is it right that they should get thirty bob a week all their lives
while their employers are getting thousands?' asked Betty, full of
excitement.
'I don't know,' said Victoria slowly. Betty's voice had broken the
charm. She could no longer see the vision.