Grass in Piccadilly

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Of all the nonsense! Why the hell can’t they go up the front stairs?”

  “It won’t inconvenience you, ’m, not more than using the front stairs does. They got to get up somehow.”

  “Of course they’ve got to get up. It’s pure snobbishness. It’s the sort of thing that makes me see red.”

  Alfred could see that. Very awkward. It was nothing to do with him, he wished he had never mentioned the stairs, only he had supposed she knew. Nor could he conceive why she cared one way or the other. The best thing he could do was to clear out. Likely enough she’d have a word with her father. The question of painting the door could wait. He murmured something about Mrs. Parks being after him and hurried down to the basement.

  Penny went into her bedroom and examined her face. She looked dirty but she had no time to clean it now. A bit more powder to cover it and some lipstick would have to do. She ran a comb through her hair, but she was not paying any attention to her appearance. She was seething with rage and, as always nowadays when she was angry, it upset her solar plexus. She knew she was knotting herself up but she could not stop. Back stairs! Insulting people! It would hurt them even to meet people on their lovely front carpet! God, she’d tell them what she thought!

  Charlotte was waiting for Penny. She called to her as she reached the first floor.

  “Come in here, dear, and have a look at my bedroom.” The room was imprinted with Charlotte’s taste. She was Regency minded and, considering the difficulties of the times, had achieved a charming effect. “Look at these curtains. Wasn’t I lucky to get that stripe? Appallingly expensive and cruel on our clothing books. So lucky your father never wants new clothes. Oh, Penny, dear, would you speak to that nice friend of yours, Mrs. Duke, about using the front stairs. I’m sure she only forgot, but she took the little girl up that way . . .”

  Penny’s words fell over each other.

  “Why on earth shouldn’t they . . . blasted snobs . . . awful way to bring up a child . . . enough to give it an inferiority complex for life . . .”

  Charlotte had no idea what had caused the outbreak, but she knew that Penny had far too many of these sudden raging, almost hysterical, attacks. She opened the door. Deliberately she made her voice cool and a little hard.

  “I don’t think the situation needs quite such fervour. I’ll have a talk with Mrs. Duke myself. Between us we’ll arrange something. Come along and have a drink, you must be tired.”

  Penny said no more. She was near tears. Charlotte could see them gleaming unshed in her eyes. “Poor child,” she thought, “I wish to goodness she could like me enough to treat me as her safety valve.”

  * * * * *

  Gladys Parks was cooking the tea. Not in the vast kitchen. She and Alfred had scarcely bothered to discuss that. The stone-flagged kitchen with its pantry, larder and scullery took up a whole half of their flat. “Gives me chilblains on the feet to look at it,” she said. The other half of their flat had small rooms where once servants had slept. In no time one of these was converted into a kitchen-living-room; hot, stuffy but cosy. The big kitchen made a nice drying-room, and it was fine for Alfred’s wood, paint and all the rest of it, and it was, of course, the passage-way from the door to the flat, but that was all. Gladys, mentally and physically, closed the door on it, counting it only part of her home in the way a country woman might reckon part of her home a field next door on which she kept a few chickens. All that Gladys wanted was in her parlour, her kitchen and their bedroom. The gold spread for her bed with matching curtains. The lovely plush suite for the front room the Council had given them when a bomb hit their place. The walnut bedroom suite they had managed to save, damaged a bit but polished to look all right. The cosy armchairs sagged to fit their shapes, the radio, the enlarged photos of the children, the ornaments, all these comforts were packed into the small rooms; rooms which felt right and smelt right. Nobody, not even Alfred and Gladys themselves, knew what the years of living with Rene had meant. Rene had been wonderful. No daughter could have been better. Frank had been fine, seemed really sorry when they got a place of their own. But they were hard years. Gladys had cooked and done housework as if she were at home, but there was never a day when she didn’t think, “Oh, what I could do with that kitchen knife of mine,” or “How Rene puts up with this frying pan I don’t know.” Rene’s stuff was new, supposed to be good and all that, but Gladys mentally despised it. “Never knew pile come out of a carpet the way this does.” “Never can seem to get this paint clean. Doesn’t pay for the work somehow.” It was lucky they had gone to stay with Ivy in Northamptonshire. It wasn’t luck that Lady Nettel wanted help at Peasefield. Gladys hadn’t unpacked her things before Ivy was being asked by half the village if her mother was stopping and would like some work. Gladys never would have worked if she hadn’t taken to Charlotte. Charlotte said, “It’s a horrible job. We’re selling the house, it’s being cleaned up for possible buyers.” Charlotte had worked herself. She was sorting china in a cupboard which was in the passage which Gladys was scrubbing when the question of homes cropped up. Charlotte said:

  “I’m trying to take everything Sir John is used to with us. He’s not going to find it easy to settle down in London.”

  Gladys had never been one to hold back her thoughts.

  “Lucky to have a home, London or anywhere else.”

  Charlotte had turned from the cupboard to look at Gladys.

  “Haven’t you got a home?”

  Just as simple as that it had been. A week later they had gone back to London and the day after they had viewed the basement. Charlotte and the architect had been there. It was arranged where the bath was to go, and to have gas fires and a gas stove fixed. Charlotte had been apologetic. She had looked up at the feet passing on the pavement outside.

  “It’s only a semi-basement, but it’s dark. I do wish you had more light, or that we could fix a sitting-room on the ground floor . . .”

  Neither Gladys nor Alfred paid much attention to what was said. They were seeing their door shut, a nice coal fire, their own chairs, their own food cooked as they liked it, their own taste given way to in everything. No Rene saying, “Go slow with the salt, Mum. Frank hates salt.” No Frank saying, “Will you be going to the pictures Friday? Got two or three pals coming in.” It was all right going to the pictures, they usually did once a week. But having to go, wet or whatever, that was what got you down.

  Gladys prodded the sausages in her frying pan. It was as if she dug them in the ribs, and said, “This is a bit of all right, old dears.” She heard Alfred come down and go into the big kitchen to put away his things. She heard his bag clank as he laid it on the stone floor. She raised her voice.

  “Mrs. Dill fixed all right?”

  Alfred came in. He went to the sink to wash his hands.

  “Nice young lady she is. Gave me a drop of whisky. Three pound ten a bottle it was.”

  Gladys clicked her tongue against her teeth.

  “Three pounds ten! What some people won’t give for a drink! You finished up there?”

  “No. Doing the hall to-night.”

  “Pity she couldn’t ’ave got that hall done before they all come. Proper creating there’s going to be from four and five if they get paint on theirselves. Five’s a proper madam.”

  “Nice little flat they’ve got up there.”

  “Nice little stairs to climb. You should’ve ’eard the men last week what brought their things.”

  Alfred had already several times heard what the men had said. He had heard what the various sets of men had said who carried furniture up to the different floors. He had heard Gladys’s views on the furniture. When Gladys repeated a story too often he ceased to hear it, it was part of his background, as a brook might be passing his door. He gave his mind to the important subject of Penny’s paint. Take a bit of mixing that would. He’d have to get her to see a bit done and make up
her mind it was what she wanted. Not the sort of young lady to be patient with what she didn’t like. He was pulled from his musing by Gladys leaving her sausages and tapping him on the arm.

  “You know I said it was queer the third arranging all the furniture himself. I’d like to see you ’aving the sauce to arrange ours without me. Well, she came to-day.”

  Gladys’s voice was so full of unspoken things that Alfred had to play up to her.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Queer. I was in the front hall when their taxi drives up. He smiles at me ever so nice. ‘This is Mrs. Parks, Jenny, dear. You wait with her while we get the luggage up.’ I didn’t like to see him carrying luggage, him having only one leg, but he was gone up the back stairs before I found me words. Pretty little thing Mrs. Willis. Dark with great dark eyes. I said it was a nice morning and I was glad it was fine for her to move in, that seeing the house in the sunlight made such a difference. She stares at me, and then she says”—Gladys nudged Alfred with her elbow to be sure he was listening—“‘Everything’s worse when it’s dark!’”

  Alfred had no intention of gossiping about the flats. He equally had no hope of stopping Gladys from gossiping. The best he had ever been able to do was not to encourage her.

  “Shy most like.”

  Gladys shook her head. She dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “Put me in mind of your sister.”

  Alfred jerked his thumb at the sausages.

  “I’ll put you in mind of somebody if you burn my tea. Ella was all right till she had that fright.”

  Gladys went back to her sausages. She had met Alfred through Ella. She and Ella had worked in the same factory in Bermondsey. She had always thought Ella a bit soft. You had to be a bit soft to go off your rocker because a man in a train tried to have you. Still, Alfred and his brothers were all right, and Ella had been put away these past twenty years and more. There had been a time when Gladys had never mentioned Ella, she had looked upon a sister-in-law in an asylum as a disgrace, but with the years Ella had taken on the status of a pet. “When we go to see Ella next time we’ll take her this string of beads. Such a one for bright colours.” “When we go to Ella’s I’ll tie this ribbon round the sweets. Ever so nice to see the way she smiles at something pretty.” Alfred had only one brother alive and both parents were dead, and what had once been at the outside one visit to Ella a year was now a visit every other month. He hoped Gladys was wrong about Mrs. Willis, but Gladys had a way of being right. Nice young gentleman that Mr. Willis. Didn’t want anything like that to happen. He, too, looked upon Ella as a pet. As Gladys put the food on the table he appreciated the connection when she said: “Would you like a cat?”

  Alfred drew up his chair.

  “Reckon there’s mice?”

  “Wish I knew what happened to Mouser.”

  Alfred had no illusions about Mouser. As no scrap of him was ever found after the bomb blasted their home—though he was well known in their part of Bermondsey—it was almost certain he had gone hurriedly and fragmentarily to his maker. He had hinted as much to Gladys several times, but she would not be hinted at. She liked graves with decent gravestones.

  “Somebody offered a cat?”

  “That Mrs. Duke. She comes down here. I was cleaning my stove. She knocks, got a funny voice, speaks very low and deep.” Gladys imitated. ‘Could you do with a ket?’ I asks what sort of cat and she says, ‘Half a Siamese. He belongs to my little girl, but, of course, a ket up all these stairs is out of the question.’”

  “What’s a Siamese like?”

  “Never saw one.”

  Alfred helped himself to mustard.

  “Foreign. Spoilt he’ll be, no good for mousing?”

  “I said that, but she says, ‘Try him, Mrs. Parks. He’s a wonderful mouser.’”

  “Little girl know her mother’s giving him away?”

  “No. Mrs. Duke says she isn’t putting it that way. She says, ‘Jane’s such an emotional child I shall just say the ket’s living downstairs.’”

  Alfred sipped his tea. He liked a cat about the place, particularly if there were mice, but he didn’t want anything new-fangled and foreign, still, what had to be had to be. This conversation as to whether they would have the cat or not was abortive. The cat was theirs, they could not hurt a child.

  “I’ll fix up a box for him and get some earth from the square garden.”

  Gladys giggled.

  “Mrs. Duke says as he goes to the proper place. Sits on the seat and all.”

  Alfred was shocked.

  “Not here, he doesn’t. A box is what’s right for a cat and a box is what he’s going to have.”

  Gladys was still giggling.

  “You’ll never guess his name. ‘Trinity,’ she says. ‘He’s three in one, half-Siamese, quarter-tabby and quarter-ginger.’”

  Alfred was disgusted.

  “That’s blasphemy. In this house he’ll be Mouser, same as the last.”

  “Not to me, he won’t. Not after hearing her. To me he’ll be Ket.” Gladys looked at the clock. “There’s that tunes you like programme on the wireless. Turn it on.”

  Alfred crossed to the radio. The room was filled with the sugary tremblings of a Würlitzer organ. He went back to his food. He and Gladys chewed in contented silence.

  * * * * *

  Jack Willis fixed the curtain-tie to hooks he had just screwed into place. The curtains were rose coloured to match the carpet. He thought they looked pretty good. He always had wanted Jenny to have a pink and blue room, and it was a piece of cake Uncle Fred coughing it up. Of course Uncle Fred had a lot of stuff, but he could sell it for a nice piece. Coughing up all this furniture for the flat must have set him back the thick end of three hundred pounds. Decent of Dad to cough up the rent. Queer really, they had never wanted him to marry Jenny, but now they couldn’t do enough to shove them together. Jack thought it odd they should ever have supposed he would not marry Jenny. He had gone about with Jenny since they met playing tennis when she was fourteen and he was sixteen. Couldn’t say the family had been keen even at that age. “Jenny Parsons again. Why always Jenny? You’ve lots of other friends, Jack, darling.” He had no idea why it had to be Jenny. Most of the other girls he knew did things better than Jenny. Played games better, swam better, danced better; there was nothing Jenny shone at; but a holiday was not a holiday that had not a lot of Jenny in it. He would lie in bed and plan. He had asked Jenny to meet him for a bathe, but he would go and fetch her. It looked a pretty good day, he would enjoy the walk. He would get her to come to the pictures. He would wangle an invitation for her to that dance. Presently he left school and went to work in the family business. Had to start at the bottom; not much money in it, not enough to marry on, but that was not dirty work to keep him from marrying Jenny; it was the family way. Willis and Sons had stores all over the place. They could have shoved him anywhere, but they started him in Brighton. That was the family way too. You might want to fix something to suit your private life, but you didn’t. The business came first. At the moment when Jack left school the best men for him to learn under were in Brighton, so that was that. Jenny was still at school in so far as she ever went to school. Her going to school was a very hit and miss affair; any excuse and her mother kept her at home. Jenny liked school. It was never her fault. When the war started family opposition weakened. There was always a chance he might have had it. But he couldn’t marry then. If he had got his—Jenny wouldn’t have wanted to be Mrs. Willis, never get on with his family on her own. So Jenny became an A.T. Jack had never thought much of himself. Knew himself for a very ordinary type; the Air Force had given him more of an opinion of himself than he had ever possessed before. That was because on a station the pilots were somebody. But any opinion he had of himself went when he was smashed up. He knew the station code. No one said more than they could help when a crew ha
d it. Bad for morale to talk about that sort of thing. No good yattering that he had lost a leg. He was not about any more and that was that. Piece of cake he had married Jenny before that happened, but he wished he knew if his having only one leg worried Jenny. If it had weighed on her mind. If it had anything to do with what happened.

  Jenny came in. She was wearing an orange apron over her blue frock. Jack could have sung she looked so lovely. It was certainly something having her to himself at last. She said:

  “Could you come in the kitchen while I work? It’s such a long way off. You wouldn’t hear me if I screamed.”

  To hell with it! It was not far to the kitchen. Just through into the other half of the house. Of course he would hear her if she screamed, only she would not scream. Why should she? He wished he was not such a fool. There must be the right thing to say if only he knew what it was. No good her getting ideas about being lonely. He had to go to work every day. She would be a lot on her own. He put an arm round her.

  “May be getting an old man, but I can still hear quite nicely with an ear-trumpet.”

  Jenny was comforted by his arm.

  “I know I’m an idiot. It was just I felt sort of creepy.”

  The kitchen was at the back of the other half of the house. They reached it through their dining-room. Then across the other landing past the back stairs. It was cut off a bit, but there was only an arch through to the other side, no door, and she could leave the dining-room and kitchen doors open. It was a nice cheerful kitchen. His mother had advised him about that. “Make the kitchen cheerful. You men are so apt to forget how much time we women spend in kitchens.”

  The paint and distemper were yellow and so were the curtains. Yellow was Jenny’s favourite colour. He had put a jar of roses on the window ledge. Of course they could not usually afford flowers in the kitchen, but they were nice for a welcome.

  Jenny had been washing china. It was stacked on the kitchen table. Jack felt ashamed. What an ass he was leaving her to work alone. It was just the flat being new and such a lot of things needing doing.