Lalage Penrose's flat was on the second floor of a small block of flats
in a narrow and grimy street. Opposite the main entrance was a fried
fish shop, and next door to that a coal and greengrocery stores, with
the latest price per hundredweight of what were untruthfully called the
"Best Household Coals" displayed in huge numerals on each of the
windows. Unwashed children from the uncleanly houses which made up the
rest of the street seemed to spend the whole day, and half the night,
dancing to barrel organs. Garbage and paper littered the roadway, except
where there was sufficient slimy black mud to cover these; but, on the
other hand, there was a large and gaudy public house at the corner,
opposite a similar block of flats, and a cab rank just down the side
turning.
Lalage's flat consisted of three very small rooms, for which she paid
fifty pounds a year. "Inclusive of rates," the agent had said; but, as
the landlord himself was on the Borough Council, his assessment was, of
course, not unduly high. By trade, the owner was a butcher in Maida
Vale, though his friends in Tooting did not know that; moreover,
besides being a councillor, he was a German by extraction; consequently,
with these two qualifications, it was quite natural that he should own
flats of that kind. In Capetown, where men are crude or brutal in their
ways, a judge and jury between them would probably have assessed his
merits at fifty lashes and two years' hard labour; in London, on the
other hand, not only was his person sacred and his property safe from
police raids, but he also had reasonable grounds for expecting to be
mayor in due course--which often meant a knighthood--whilst even the
greatest prize of all, the chairmanship of the new Electricity
Committee, a body having the giving of six-figure contracts, was not
beyond his grasp. He was quite a personage in the municipal life of West
London, as well as in the social life of Tooting, and, being a married
man with a family, he treated his tenants with righteous severity,
distraining on the slightest excuse when he suspected they possessed
anything of value, knowing well that his victims would not dare seek
redress in the Courts.
It was four o'clock exactly when Jimmy knocked at the door of the flat,
which was opened by Lalage herself. "I've no servant," she explained,
"only a woman who comes in once or twice a week." Then she led the way
into the tiny slip of a sitting-room, where she had tea laid out. "I'm
glad you've come," she added, "I was half afraid you wouldn't."
"Why?" he asked with a smile.
She looked at him seriously, her head a little on one side, as though
she were trying to read his character. "You seemed shy, different from
most men. Are you an Englishman?"
He nodded, and gave her a brief sketch of who he was. She listened with
evident interest. "It must be splendid to travel and see things. I have
always longed to, at least I did once, but now----" She broke off with a
hopeless little sigh, and got up abruptly. "I'll fetch the tea now."
The tea things, like everything else in the place, were of the simplest,
cheapest kind, yet as tasteful as was possible considering their price;
but, on the other hand, the tea itself was good, and there was a plate
of daintily-cut bread and butter and another of sandwiches.
"I was so glad of that tea yesterday." Lalage looked up suddenly. "I
hadn't had anything since some bread and milk at breakfast time, and
that horrible black man made me feel quite shaky."
Jimmy frowned. "Why do you starve yourself in that way?" he asked.
In after years, he often thought of this question and her answer. He
had been hungry himself more than once, and he knew, only too well, what
it meant; but, somehow, he had never pictured a well-dressed girl as
suffering that way.
"I only had a penny left, the one I spent on that bun, and no one will
trust you with as much as a loaf round here. I was afraid you would
notice how greedy I was at tea." Then, as he flushed awkwardly and began
to speak, she stopped him with a little gesture. "Why should you have
thought of it? You were very good, as it was. And I'm all right now. I
got a postal order last night," she added rather hurriedly; then she
changed the subject abruptly, and went on to talk of one or two matters
of passing interest, which the papers had been booming for want of
anything of real importance. She had evidently received an average
education, Jimmy could see that plainly, and yet he was puzzled, for in
many of her ideas, and especially in her strong prejudices, she belied
her apparent age; for they were those of a child of fourteen, rather
than of a girl of some two or three and twenty. Insensibly, he found
himself listening to her as one would to a child, and then, a moment
later, she would bring out some cynical scrap of wisdom, evidently the
fruit of bitter experience, which sounded strange coming from her lips.
Yet, despite the utter unconventionality, there was no hint of fastness
about her, and even when she touched by implication on her way of life,
she did so with a kind of frank simplicity, hiding nothing and trying to
excuse nothing.
"What do you think of my little flat?" she asked suddenly, after what
had been rather a long pause. "It's very tiny, of course; but it's a
home, and when you've had nowhere to go to, not even a lodging----" She
broke off, and stared into the fire. "It's simply awful to have
nowhere," she went on after a while. "To walk about hour after hour with
the mud squelching through your shoes, and nothing to eat; and getting
more hopeless as midnight comes on. I was out two whole nights."
Jimmy breathed heavily; he had often heard the same sort of thing from
men; but it sounded very different coming from the lips of a girl.
"And then one day I got ten pounds," Lalage continued, "and I made up my
mind I would have a home. I paid a month's rent in advance--they don't
worry over references if you do that--and I went to some hire-purchase
people for furniture. Then I bought a kettle at the sixpenny halfpenny
shop, and a cup and saucer and plate in the next street, where the
barrows are. By the time I had got curtains and some sheets and one or
two odd things like a lamp, there were only a few shillings left." She
looked up seriously. "You wouldn't think till you try how expensive
furnishing is; but I was so proud of my little home. I am still; and you
know, when you've a place of your own, if you only have bread and milk
no one is any the wiser. I've often been hard up since, but I've always
managed to scrape up the rent and the hire-purchase instalment. One must
do that; they don't give you a day's grace."
Jimmy was chewing savagely at the ends of his moustache. It never
entered into his head that she was trying to play upon his sympathies.
There was some curious quality of simplicity in her manner which forbade
that supposition. She interested him as no woman had ever interested him
before, and, suddenly, he was filled with a desire to know her past,
and, in that, to find excuses for the present.
"Where do you come from?" he asked.
"Hampshire," she answered, adding, "My people are dead. I'm quite alone
in the world." Then, as if to change the subject, she got up from her
seat. "You must have a look round my tiny place."
Jimmy felt almost guilty as he noted her obvious pride in the few little
articles she had collected together. May's cook would have rejected with
scorn the kettle from the sixpenny halfpenny bazaar, and the one or two
pots and pans which had since been bought at the same shop; whilst none
of the Marlow servants would have deigned to use the thick earthenware
plates on the dresser. Yet everywhere there was a perfect cleanliness,
which, possibly, those same servants would never have succeeded in
attaining in the smoke-laden atmosphere of that street.
"I do hate dirt and untidiness," Lalage explained when he made a remark
on the subject. "I do everything myself, except the scrubbing; and I
wouldn't have a woman in for that if it wasn't for my hands; I want to
keep them nice."
She held them out for Jimmy to inspect, with the first touch of vanity
he had seen in her. Perhaps, her pride was justifiable, for they were
well worth looking at, being small and perfectly shaped. She wore no
rings, nor, for the matter of that, any jewellery at all, whilst her
dress was of the simplest.
When they went back to the sitting-room he asked her the time. "I never
carry a watch," he said. "Mine went the way of a good many other things
when I was first knocked out with fever, and I've never managed to
afford another one."
Lalage nodded with sympathetic comprehension. "I know; but it's worst
when you've nothing left to pawn. As for clothes, they give you nothing
on them, at least round here. But you want to know the time." She
opened the window and listened a moment. "It's just on six. I can hear
the periwinkle man coming, and he's never late. This is the last part of
his round, you see, because he doesn't expect to sell much here; then he
goes to a stall for the evening. I know them all, and I think they like
me, because I chat to them. But the people in the other flats," she
shook her head with an air of disgust, "most of them are dreadful; a lot
of horrid foreigners, you know. Still, the caretaker sees they don't
fight on the stairs, and when I shut my door, I feel I shut them all
out."
Jimmy smiled a little grimly; he could picture those other tenants and
their ways. Then, "Will you put your hat on, and we'll go out and get
some dinner?"
She reflected a moment. "Why not get something and bring it in here? It
won't cost nearly so much, though it will be much nicer. Oh, in six
months I've got simply to loathe the smell of a cafe. There's a nice ham
and beef shop where we can get everything we want." She laughed rather
ruefully. "I remember yesterday when I was so hungry looking in there
and wishing I could get a roast chicken they had, all beautiful and
brown, you know, with jelly on it. But they wouldn't have trusted me
with even a quarter of a pound of beef. I suppose they've been robbed
so often. Well, I'll put on my hat, and we'll get what we want. Really,
honestly, I would much sooner have it like that than go to one of the
best restaurants. Don't you yourself think cafes are hateful?"
Jimmy watched her marketing with a distinct sense of admiration. She
knew the local price of everything, and she insisted on having exactly
what she ordered.
"I don't see why they should rob you," she said. "They make huge profits
anyway. Now, I think that's all we want." She ticked the articles off on
her fingers. "Oh, unless you care for something to drink.... Yes, I like
a whisky and soda with my meals; but don't get a whole bottle, it's only
a waste; and they will sell it you by the quartern in that public house.
I'll wait whilst you go in. But don't buy a bottle; I know you haven't
got any money to throw away?" she added.
When he came out, she noted, with evident satisfaction, that he had
obeyed her. "This will make a lovely supper," she declared, and her
smile showed she meant it. "I like shopping like this. It's always nicer
than a cafe, and much less expensive."
Her last remark reminded him of what she had said just as he was going
in for the whisky.
"Why do you think I haven't got any money to throw away?" he asked.
She gave a wise little nod. "You tell me you write, and I know literary
men never have anything to spare."
Jimmy laughed. "How do you know?"
Lalage turned away. "Never mind, but I do know, only too well."