Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 34

  Later that evening, Daisy Warwick made a note on the telephone pad in her hall. It was the last of several such notes. The page now read:

  1 yard black petersham

  Buttons or zip?

  Mary's baby

  Lunching at Aunt Bess's on Sunday

  Cushions?

  Miss Davis dead.

  For this was the evening when she made her weekly telephone call to Susan in London, and unless she had a list before her she found that the precious minutes had slipped by, and the things which she really wanted to tell the girl had been forgotten.

  The weekly list was always a source of great hilarity to her husband whenever he waited by the telephone. There was something surrealistic about the juxtaposition of such items as: 'Uncle John's asthma cure' and 'Try really ripe Stilton', or 'Theatre tickets' and 'Bed socks'. The present week, with its jumble of dress-making, births, deaths, lunches and cushions, was well up to standard, and he commented upon it to his wife.

  'Well,' she said truthfully, 'life's like that.'

  And her husband was obliged to agree.

  Susan Warwick shared a flat in Earls Court with four other girls. The rooms were large and lofty. The windows were the sash variety, of enormous size, and as the flat was on the first floor, it was light. This was one of its few advantages.

  Susan shared a bedroom with Penny Way. The other three shared the second bedroom. The sitting-room, heated by an archaic gas-fire whose meter gulped down shillings at an alarming rate, overlooked the front garden. The kitchen and bathroom, both small and dismal, were huddled together on a landing at the back of the house half a floor below. It was hardly surprising that the girls lived mainly on toast, made over the gas fire, with various spreads upon it, or bowls of soup which could be heated easily on the kitchen gas stove and carried aloft to be drunk by the fire.

  The house had been built in 1890 when three resident servants had been considered the absolute minimum for keeping such an establishment running properly. It was now owned by a gentleman who lived very comfortably in Switzerland, and whose interest in this house, and a number of others which he owned, was purely financial.

  Susan's house was now divided into four parts. The ground floor and basement were occupied by two young men, one with a sable coat and a pink rinse, the other with a black velvet cloak and a blue rinse, who minced off at eleven each morning and returned long after midnight, invariably squabbling at the top of their high-pitched voices.

  On the floor above lived two young couples, and a newlyborn baby who cried nightly, and wrung Susan's soft heart with its misery.

  Up in the attics, where once the three maids had slept in more affluent days, lived a middle-aged artist who sometimes emerged with a portfolio of drawings, but more often sat in a haze of cigarette smoke, a bottle beside him, in his eyrie, and contemplated fame—preferably without working for it.

  Of all the motley inhabitants, Susan found him the most repulsive. They occasionally met on the stairs. During the year in which she had lived there, she had watched him deteriorate from a slovenly, garrulous good-for-nothing into a shaking, morose wreck of a man. He had lost a great deal of weight, his eyes watered, his head trembled uncontrollably. His clothes, always stained and spotted, were now filthy and torn. Susan suspected, from the reek of the man, that he was now drinking methylated spirit. She flattened herself against the wall, and held her breath as he passed, praying that he would not engage in facetious conversation. She need not have worried. He now scarcely noticed her as he groped his way up and down the stairs.

  After a year of London life under these conditions, Susan was beginning to have doubts. During her last year at school in Caxley, the thought of living in London in a flat, away from all who knew her in Springbourne, seemed the height of sophistication. Oh, to be free!

  She was happy at home, and fond of her parents and brothers. The two boys were some years older than she was, and were already out in the world. Susan envied them, and was rather sorry for herself, left behind, over-duly cosseted, in her opinion, by her father and mother.

  It was too much, she felt, to be obliged to be in by ten every night. And why on earth, she asked herself privately, should she tell her parents who she was with every time? Couldn't they trust her? Heaven knows, at seventeen she was old enough to look after herself!

  Or was she? In her less rebellious moments, Susan admitted that her parents were only doing their duty. There were occasions when Susan had found herself non-plussed—even frightened. There had been that drunken youth at the bus-stop. Only Susan's speed and natural agility had kept her from his unwelcome embrace. Then there was that dubious party at Roger's where everything was plunged in semi-darkness and everyone seemed remarkably gloomy until mysterious tablets were passed round. Susan had had the sense to make her way to the bathroom, throw away her tablets, and creep from the house.

  Her own home seemed doubly welcome after that incident. She lay in bed and looked with pleasure at all her much-loved treasures. There were her books, ranging from babyhood's Beatrix Potters to last week's purchase—a Penguin edition of a pop-singer's autobiography.

  The bedside lamp cast a cosy amber glow over the patchwork quilt her mother had made. Normally, she considered it hideous and rather sentimental. Her mother was given to fingering sections here and there, saying: 'Isn't this sweet? Part of your first smock, darling.' Or, 'Grandma gave me this. It came from a tablecloth she bought in Lisbon.'

  But after Roger's horrible party, even the patchwork quilt had its charm, and her parents, looking up from their books when she returned early, had seemed so sane and wholesome that she had kissed them heartily, much to their surprise and pleasure.

  After she left school, she took a secretarial course in London, living in the hostel attached to it and going home thankfully most week-ends.

  She found the work gruelling, particularly shorthand. On the other hand, the rudimentary French and German which she had already taken at school, was so slowly and so badly taught that she sat through each class becoming more and more furious. She tried, in vain, to get her parents to cancel these extras.

  'Oh, I'm sure it will come in useful, dear,' they replied vaguely. 'Just do your best and be patient.'

  'But it's wasting your money!' Susan persisted.

  'Well, that's our loss, isn't it? We want you to make the best of your time there.'

  The greatest attraction of the secretarial college was Penny Way. Penny had been at school with her, but a form ahead. She was an attractive girl, dark and lively, and outstandingly good at acting. To Susan, she had always been something of a heroine. At college, Penny was still one jump ahead, for she was living in the Earls Court flat whilst Susan was incarcerated in the hostel.

  Penny was kind, in an off-hand way, to her junior and Susan was suitably grateful for her condescension. Occasionally, they travelled back from Caxley to London on the Sunday evening train, but Susan was careful not to intrude if Penny happened to be accompanied by a young man.

  In the last week of the last term, Susan obtained a post in an advertising agency in Kensington. She was talking about lodgings to a bevy of friends when Penny approached.

  'We need another girl,' she said. 'Barbara's off to Geneva. Like to join us?'

  Susan glowed with pleasure.

  'Better come and see the dump,' said Penny, 'and meet the others. Then we can tell you about rent and so on, if you're interested. Come about eight. We usually eat at seven.'

  If Susan thought this was rather cavalier treatment, the unworthy thought was instantly dismissed, and she presented herself at the shabby front door with its flaking paint, at eight o'clock promptly. No-one answered the bell, and she stood at the top of the flight of dirty steps, surveying her surroundings.

  They were not inspiring. The minute front garden had two jaded variegated laurel bushes as its sole adornment. On the sour black earth, which did its best to nourish this natural growth, were cigarette cartons, sweet wrappings, a sauc
epan lid, several grimy plastic bags and a child's plastic beach shoe.

  On the steps, leading from this square yard of flotsam to the young gentlemen's basement, stood a posse of unwashed milk bottles, a small red dustbin with no lid, and an extraordinary number of screwed-up bags which had contained potato crisps. Presumably, the occupants consumed these as their main item of diet, thought Susan.

  Having rung the bell a second time, with no result, she opened the door timidly. She was in an outer hall, once whitened daily with hearth-stone no doubt, but now grey and dusty. A door, with frosted glass in its upper half, led her into the main hall.

  This, and the stairs leading from it, were covered in brown linoleum. Susan mounted the stairs, hardly conscious of the grime around her, so thrilled was she at the thought of emanicipation ahead.

  It was very dark on the first floor, but the sound of music thumping away behind one door must mean that someone was home. She banged loudly upon it, and Penny flung it open, looking surprised.

  'Oh, hello! I forgot you were coming. Come in.'

  The noise from the ancient gramophone was deafening, and the fumes from the gas fire were equally stupefying. Two girls lolled, one at each end of the vast broken-down couch, their trousered legs lodged on the back of it. They did not move as Susan was brought forward.

  'Barbara,' said Penny, giving no hint of which one she was. 'And Jane. Dobby's out, and Pam's doing her face. This is Susan.'

  Barbara and Jane nodded in a friendly way, but said nothing. They seemed to be attending closely to the music, in a stunned sort of way. Susan was not surprised.

  'Well, this is it,' said Penny, waving a hand vaguely to indicate the amenities of the room. Susan looked about her, observing the frayed and dirty curtains, the sagging armchairs, the greasy rug in front of the fire, and the two enormous oil paintings of Highland scenes which occupied most of the wall space. But her spirits rose. She could settle here very happily—particularly if Penny were here.

  'Better see the bedroom,' said Penny, leading the way across the landing. 'This is ours.'

  Two single beds were lost in the vastness of what had once been the main bedroom of the house. In the enormous bay window, in front of the sagging net curtains, brown with London dirt, stood a small dressing-table circa 1935, with plenty of chrome fittings and a badly-spotted looking-glass. Apart from two cane-bottomed chairs and a rickety chest of drawers with grained marmalade paint, this seemed to be the only piece of furniture in the room. Here again was the ubiquitous brown linoleum, but beside each bed lay a thin strip of carpeting which had once been a stair carpet, judging by the worn stripes across it.

  'The beds aren't bad,' said Penny, giving one a thump. 'But you'd better bring your own sheets and blankets. Towels too, of course—and a few tea-towels would help.'

  'I could do that,' said Susan, still besotted.

  Penny went before her to the kitchen. If the rest of the accommodation had been disheartening, then this was downright repellent, and even Susan's spirits quailed. An enormous black frying-pan, full of congealed fat containing pieces of burnt onion, potato and bacon rinds, dominated the gas stove. This itself was an ancient monster, furred with the black grease of many years.

  The walls of the kitchen ran with small rivulets of condensation which had left lines of brown encrustations over the years. A naked electric light bulb, covered with a fine film of grease, hung over the stove. The one window was tightly shut, and papered with an oiled paper representing stained glass. It was not very convincing.

  'Window won't open,' commented Penny laconically, observing Susan's glances. 'All the windows have the jim-jams, but there's such a hell of a draught from most of them I think we get all the fresh air we need.'

  Susan nodded half-heartedly.

  'Next door's the loo,' went on Penny, throwing open the door of a dismal room housing a vast peeling bath, encased in pitch-pine, and a regal-looking lavatory seat with tarnished brass fittings. A snarl of tangled water pipes, flaking generously, wreathed about the walls and gurgled.

  'How do you heat the water?' asked Susan.

  'There's a boiler down below, and an old dear is supposed to keep it going. She comes every morning—in theory, that is. Mostly the water's tepid. We chuck in a kettleful of boiling water to pep it up, and get a decent bath when we go home.'

  'What about rent?'

  'We pay thirty quid a week.'

  'What? Each?' shrieked Susan, appalled.

  'Don't be funny. Six quid apiece. Can't get anything for much under. The gas fire's extra, of course. And our grub. We usually buy our own.'

  'I think that will be all right. I'll have a word with my parents next week-end and tell you then. Is that all right?' asked Susan anxiously.

  'Fine,' said Penny carelessly. 'Start the first of next month, if you want to come. Barbara's off then.'

  She closed the bathroom door after three resounding bangings. At the third, the brass door knob came away in her hand. She thrust it back expertly.

  'Better say farewell now. I'm due to go out in ten minutes and my current young man swears like a trooper if he's kept waiting.'

  Susan said goodbye, and made her way downstairs and into the street. A small Negro girl, her frizzy hair sticking out in a dozen small plaits, each ending in a flighty scarlet bow, was busy jumping up and down the steps. She looked up at Susan, bright-eyed.

  'You live there?' she queried.

  'I'm going to,' replied Susan, smiling.

  'I wouldn't,' said the child, still jumping.

  Susan went on her way, elated by this exchange. Later, she was to wonder if it had not been some sort of warning.

  Her parents had been very understanding about the flat, although Susan's mother was shocked when she saw it, by the conditions under which Susan was going to live, and she said so.

  'It's nothing but a slum. Will you really be happy there?'

  'Of course I will. Hundreds of other girls live in far worse places than this. It only wants a good clean.'

  'It needs blowing up, and rebuilding,' said Daisy Warwick. 'But if you are prepared to live here, my dear, we'll do all we can to make you comfortable.'

  Sheets, blankets, towels, a chair, some saucepans and crockery were carried from Springbourne to Earls Court. A large box of useful tinned food and some jars of home-made jam and marmalade, as well as bottles of fruit from the Warwicks' garden made their way into the rickety store cupboard in the flat's kitchen. Susan prepared to enjoy life.

  On the whole, she was happy for the first few months, although there were several things about sharing which annoyed her. During the first week she spent Saturday afternoon washing the paintwork and scrubbing the floor of their bedroom. She cleaned the windows as far as she could reach, and polished the battered furniture. Even if the room did not look much more attractive, at least it smelt clean.

  It was as much as she could do to remain silent when she saw Penny flicking cigarette ash to the floor that evening. She realised before many days passed that Penny was hopelessly untidy, and thought nothing of borrowing anything in the flat without bothering to ask permission. Scarves, jewellery, tights, even coats were missing when Susan looked for them, and her opinion of Penny, once so high, now plummeted.

  It was annoying too to see how the groceries, which she brought to the flat, were eaten readily by all and not replaced. She did not mind putting in her share, nor doing her part of the sketchy daily cleaning and shopping, but it soon became apparent that she was carrying most of the burden. Hating to quarrel, she did her best, but resentment began to grow.

  The advertising job did not work out as she hoped, and she left after three months and took a post with a typing agency. This meant that she was sent out to different offices which were short-handed. The pay was good, and she thought that the varied experience would be useful.

  She found that the experiences were varied all right. One of her temporary employers turned out to be a dipsomaniac, two were addicted to stroking
her legs, and another—a hard-faced woman journalist—had such a vitriolic tongue that she reduced Susan to tears within half a day. But on the whole, she enjoyed the work and gloried still in her independence.

  She went home less and less, and when her parents did see her they began to grow increasingly anxious. Hurried meals, late nights, stuffy offices and the slummy flat were taking their toll. Susan had lost weight, had a series of painful boils, and was so tired that she spent most of the week-end asleep.

  'Why don't you come home for a time,' urged her mother. 'You can always go back if you want to, but whatever's the good of earning these large wages if they all go on rent and fares? And just look at you—all eyes, and as thin as a rail!'

  'Lovejoys need a secretary,' added her father. 'They'd be decent people to work for. And I met Mallet at Rotary lunch yesterday. He is looking for an assistant. There are plenty of openings locally. Do think about it. Your mother and I would love to have you at home.'

  That had been in June, and very tempting Susan had found the offer. But she still clung to her independence. It would be a retrograde step, she felt, to return to Springbourne—almost an admission of failure. She turned her back on the garden, sweet with roses and strawberries, on the haymakers in the fields and all the joyous freshness of early summer, and went back to London.

  It was harder to bear than ever in hot weather, and that summer was long and fine. The journeys across London by bus or tube were a nightmare in the rush hour. After a day at work, it was almost unendurable to squash among hundreds of other tube-travellers, all hot, perspiring, and as cross as she was herself. One evening of sultry heat, she fainted on her feet, but the crush was so great that she remained upright, supported by a kindly Jamaican giant who insisted on refreshing her from his hip flask, and poured most of it down her new cotton frock.

  The flat was more squalid than ever. The windows refused to open, and the smell of stale cooking hung about the place revoltingly. By late summer, Susan was heartily sick of the whole sordid set-up. It was as much as she could do to speak civilly to the other girls. She was tired of having no privacy, no quietness—for the gramophone seemed to play endlessly—and no time in which to sit and rest, to mend her clothes, to read or to write letters.