CHARLIE [starting from his sleep]: The perishing papers! C’m on, Ginger! Run like Hell!
[They run, or shamble, as fast as they can to the corner of the Square, where three youths are distributing surplus posters given away in charity by the morning newspapers. Charlie and Ginger come back with a thick wad of posters. The five largest men now jam themselves together on the bench, Deafie and the four women sitting across their knees; then, with infinite difficulty (as it has to be done from the inside), they wrap themselves in a monstrous cocoon of paper, several sheets thick, tucking the loose ends into their necks or breasts or between their shoulders and the back of the bench. Finally nothing is uncovered save their heads and the lower part of their legs. For their heads they fashion hoods of paper. The paper constantly comes loose and lets in cold shafts of wind, but it is now possible to sleep for as much as five minutes consecutively. At this time–between three and five in the morning–it is customary with the police not to disturb the Square sleepers. A measure of warmth steals through everyone and extends even to their feet. There is some furtive fondling of the women under cover of the paper. Dorothy is too far gone to care.
By a quarter past four the paper is all crumpled and torn to nothing, and it is far too cold to remain sitting down. The people get up, swear, find their legs somewhat rested, and begin to slouch to and fro in couples, frequently halting from mere lassitude. Every belly is now contorted with hunger. Ginger’s tin of condensed milk is torn open and the contents devoured, everyone dipping their fingers into it and licking them. Those who have no money at all leave the Square for the Green Park, where they will be undisturbed till seven. Those who can command even a halfpenny make for Wilkins’s café not far from the Charing Cross Road. It is known that the café will not open till five o’clock; nevertheless, a crowd is waiting outside the door by twenty to five.]
MRS MCELLIGOT: Got your halfpenny, dearie? Dey won’t let more’n four of us in on one cup o’tea, de stingy ole gets!
MR TALLBOYS [singing]: The roseate hu-ues of early da-awn–
GINGER: God, that bit of sleep we ’ad under the newspapers done me some good. [Singing] But I’m dancing with tears–in my eyes–
CHARLIE: Oh, boys, boys! Look through that perishing window, will you? Look at the ’eat steaming down the window pane! Look at the tea-urns jest on the boil, and them great piles of ’ot toast and ’am sandwiches, and them there sausages sizzling in the pan! Don’t it make your belly turn perishing summersaults to see ’em?
DOROTHY: I’ve got a penny. I can’t get a cup of tea for that, can I?
SNOUTER: — lot of sausages we’ll get this morning with fourpence between us. ’Alf a cup of tea and a — doughnut more likely. There’s a breakfus’ for you!
MRS MCELLIGOT: You don’t need buy a cup o’ tea all to yourself. I got a halfpenny an’ so’s Daddy, an’ we’ll put’m to your penny an’ have a cup between de t’ree of us. He’s got sores on his lip, but Hell! who cares? Drink near de handle an’ dere’s no harm done.
[A quarter to five strikes.]
MRS BENDIGO: I’d bet a dollar my ole man’s got a bit of ’addock to ’is breakfast. I ’ope it bloody chokes ’im.
GINGER [singing]: But I’m dan-cing with tears–in my eyes–
MR TALLBOYS [singing]: Early in the morning my song shall rise to Thee!
MRS MCELLIGOT: You gets a bit o’ kip in dis place, dat’s one comfort. Dey lets you sleep wid your head on de table till seven o’clock. It’s a bloody godsend to us Square Tobies.
CHARLIE [slavering like a dog]: Sausages! Perishing sausages! Welsh rabbit! ’Ot dripping toast! And a rump-steak two inches thick with chips and a pint of Ole Burton! Oh, perishing Jesus!
[He bounds forward, pushes his way through the crowd and rattles the handle of the glass door. The whole crowd of people, about forty strong, surge forward and attempt to storm the door, which is stoutly held within by Mr Wilkins, the proprietor of the café. He menaces them through the glass. Some press their breasts and faces against the window as though warming themselves. With a whoop and a rush Florry and four other girls, comparatively fresh from having spent part of the night in bed, debouch from a neighbouring alley, accompanied by a gang of youths in blue suits. They hurl themselves upon the rear of the crowd with such momentum that the door is almost broken. Mr Wilkins pulls it furiously open and shoves the leaders back. A fume of sausages, kippers, coffee, and hot bread streams into the outer cold.]
YOUTHS’ VOICES FROM THE REAR: Why can’t he — open before five? We’re starving for our — tea! Ram the — door in! [etc., etc.]
MR WILKINS: Get out! Get out, the lot of you! Or by God not one of you comes in this morning!
GIRLS’ VOICES FROM THE REAR: Mis-ter Wil-kins! Mis-ter Wil-kins! Be a sport and let us in! I’ll give y’a kiss all free for nothing. Be a sport now! [etc., etc.]
MR WILKINS: Get on out of it! We don’t open before five, and you know it. [Slams the door.]
MRS MCELLIGOT: Oh, holy Jesus, if dis ain’t de longest ten minutes o’ de whole bloody night! Well, I’ll give me poor ole legs a rest, anyway. [Squats on her heels coal-miner-fashion. Many others do the same.]
GINGER: ’Oo’s got a ’alfpenny? I’m ripe to go fifty-fifty on a doughnut.
YOUTHS’ VOICES [imitating military music, then singing]:
‘—!’ was all the band could play;
‘—! —’ And the same to you!
DOROTHY [to Mrs McElligot]: Look at us all! Just look at us! What clothes! What faces!
MRS BENDIGO: You’re no Greta Garbo yourself, if you don’t mind my mentioning it.
MRS WAYNE: Well, now, the time do seem to pass slowly when you’re waiting for a nice cup of tea, don’t it now?
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: For our soul is brought low, even unto the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the ground!
CHARLIE: Kippers! Perishing piles of ’em! I can smell ’em through the perishing glass.
GINGER [singing]:
But I’m dan-cing with tears–in my eyes–
’Cos the girl–in my arms–isn’t you-o-ou!
[Much time passes. Five strikes. Intolerable ages seem to pass. Then the door is suddenly wrenched open and the people stampede in to fight for the corner seats. Almost swooning in the hot air, they fling themselves down and sprawl across the tables, drinking in the heat and the smell of food through all their pores.]
MR WILKINS: Now then, all! You know the rules, I s’pose. No hokey-pokey this morning! Sleep till seven if you like, but if I see any man asleep after that, out he goes on his neck. Get busy with that tea, girls!
A DEAFENING CHORUS OF YELLS: Two teas ’ere! Large tea and a doughnut between us four! Kippers! Mis-ter Wil-kins! ’Ow much them sausages? Two slices! Mis-ter Wil-kins! Got any fag papers? Kipp-ers! [etc., etc.]
MR WILKINS: Shut up, shut up! Stop that hollering or I don’t serve any of you.
MRS MCELLIGOT: D’you feel de blood runnin’ back into your toes, dearie?
MRS WAYNE: He do speak rough to you, don’t he? Not what I’d call a reely gentlemanly kind of man.
SNOUTER: This is — starvation Corner, this is. Cripes! Couldn’t I do a couple of them sausages!
THE TARTS [in chorus]: Kippers ’ere! ’Urry up with them kippers! Mis-ter Wil-kins! Kippers all round! And a doughnut!
CHARLIE: Not ’alf! Got to fill up on the smell of ’em this morning. Sooner be ’ere than on the perishing Square, all the same.
GINGER: ’Ere, Deafie! You’ve ’ad your ’alf! Gimme me that bleeding cup.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with joy!…
MRS MCELLIGOT: Begod I’m half asleep already. It’s de heat o’ de room as does it.
MR WILKINS: Stop that singing there! You know the rules.
THE TARTS [in chorus]: Kipp-ers!
SNOUTER: — doughnuts! Cold prog! It turns my belly sick.
DADDY: Even the tea they give you ain’t no more than water
with a bit of dust in it. [Belches.]
CHARLIE: Bes’ thing–’ave a bit of shut-eye and forget about it. Dream about perishing cut off the joint and two veg. Less get our ’eads on the table and pack up comfortable.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Lean up agen me shoulder, dearie. I’ve got more flesh on me bones’n what you have.
GINGER: I’d give a tanner for a bleeding fag, if I ’ad a bleeding tanner.
CHARLIE: Pack up. Get your ’ead agenst mine, Snouter. That’s right. Jesus, won’t I perishing sleep!
[A dish of smoking kippers is borne past to the tarts’ table.]
SNOUTER [drowsily]: More — kippers. Wonder ’ow many times she’s bin on ’er back to pay for that lot.
MRS MCELLIGOT [half-asleep]: ’Twas a pity, ’twas a real pity, when Michael went off on his jack an’ left me wid de bloody baby an’ all…
MRS BENDIGO [furiously, following the dish of kippers with accusing finger]: Look at that, girls! Look at that! Kippers! Don’t it make you bloody wild? We don’t get kippers for breakfast, do we, girls? Bloody tarts swallering down kippers as fast as they can turn ’em out of the pan, and us ’ere with a cup of tea between four of us and lucky to get that! Kippers!
MR TALLBOYS [stage curate-wise]: The wages of sin is kippers.
GINGER: Don’t breathe in my face, Deafie. I can’t bleeding stand it.
CHARLIE [in his sleep]: Charles-Wisdom-drunk-and-incapable-drunk?-yes-six-shillings-move-on-next!
DOROTHY [on Mrs McElligot’s bosom]: Oh, joy, joy!
[They are asleep.]
2
And so it goes on.
Dorothy endured this life for ten days–to be exact, nine days and ten nights. It was hard to see what else she could do. Her father, seemingly, had abandoned her altogether, and though she had friends in London who would readily have helped her, she did not feel that she could face them after what had happened, or what was supposed to have happened. And she dared not apply to organized charity because it would almost certainly lead to the discovery of her name, and hence, perhaps, to a fresh hullabaloo about the ‘Rector’s Daughter’.
So she stayed in London, and became one of that curious tribe, rare but never quite extinct–the tribe of women who are penniless and homeless, but who make such desperate efforts to hide it that they very nearly succeed; women who wash their faces at drinking fountains in the cold of the dawn, and carefully uncrumple their clothes after sleepless nights, and carry themselves with an air of reserve and decency, so that only their faces, pale beneath sunburn, tell you for certain that they are destitute. It was not in her to become a hardened beggar like most of the people about her. Her first twenty-four hours on the Square she spent without any food whatever, except for the cup of tea that she had had overnight and a third of a cup more that she had had at Wilkins’s café in the morning. But in the evening, made desperate by hunger and the others’ example, she walked up to a strange woman, mastered her voice with an effort, and said: ‘Please, Madam, could you give me twopence? I have had nothing to eat since yesterday.’ The woman stared, but she opened her purse and gave Dorothy threepence. Dorothy did not know it, but her educated accent, which had made it impossible to get work as a servant, was an invaluable asset to her as a beggar.
After that she found that it was really very easy to beg the daily shilling or so that was needed to keep her alive. And yet she never begged–it seemed to her that actually she could not do it–except when hunger was past bearing or when she had got to lay in the precious penny that was the passport to Wilkins’s café in the morning. With Nobby, on the way to the hopfields, she had begged without fear or scruple. But it had been different then; she had not known what she was doing. Now, it was only under the spur of actual hunger that she could screw her courage to the point, and ask for a few coppers from some woman whose face looked friendly. It was always women that she begged from, of course. She did once try begging from a man–but only once.
For the rest, she grew used to the life that she was leading–used to the enormous sleepless nights, the cold, the dirt, the boredom, and the horrible communism of the Square. After a day or two she had ceased to feel even a flicker of surprise at her situation. She had come, like everyone about her, to accept this monstrous existence almost as though it were normal. The dazed, witless feeling that she had known on the way to the hopfields had come back upon her more strongly than before. It is the common effect of sleeplessness and still more of exposure. To live continuously in the open air, never going under a roof for more than an hour or two, blurs your perceptions like a strong light glaring in your eyes or a noise drumming in your ears. You act and plan and suffer, and yet all the while it is as though everything were a little out of focus, a little unreal. The world, inner and outer, grows dimmer till it reaches almost the vagueness of a dream.
Meanwhile, the police were getting to know her by sight. On the Square people are perpetually coming and going, more or less unnoticed. They arrive from nowhere with their drums and their bundles, camp for a few days and nights, and then disappear as mysteriously as they come. If you stay for more than a week or thereabouts, the police will mark you down as an habitual beggar, and they will arrest you sooner or later. It is impossible for them to enforce the begging laws at all regularly, but from time to time they make a sudden raid and capture two or three of the people they have had their eye on. And so it happened in Dorothy’s case.
One evening she was ‘knocked off’, in company with Mrs McElligot and another woman whose name she did not know. They had been careless and begged off a nasty old lady with a face like a horse, who had promptly walked up to the nearest policeman and given them in charge.
Dorothy did not mind very much. Everything was dreamlike now–the face of the nasty old lady, eagerly accusing them, and the walk to the station with a young policeman’s gentle, almost deferential hand on her arm; and then the white-tiled cell, with the fatherly sergeant handing her a cup of tea through the grille and telling her that the magistrate wouldn’t be too hard on her if she pleaded guilty. In the cell next door Mrs McElligot stormed at the sergeant, called him a bloody get, and then spent half the night in bewailing her fate. But Dorothy had no feeling save vague relief at being in so clean and warm a place. She crept immediately on to the plank bed that was fixed like a shelf to the wall, too tired even to pull the blankets about her, and slept for ten hours without stirring. It was only on the following morning that she began to grasp the reality of her situation, as the Black Maria rolled briskly up to Old Street Police Court, to the tune of ‘Adeste fideles’ shouted by five drunks inside.
CHAPTER 4
1
Dorothy had wronged her father in supposing that he was willing to let her starve to death in the street. He had, as a matter of fact, made efforts to get in touch with her, though in a roundabout and not very helpful way.
His first emotion on learning of Dorothy’s disappearance had been rage pure and simple. At about eight in the morning, when he was beginning to wonder what had become of his shaving water, Ellen had come into his bedroom and announced in a vaguely panic-stricken tone:
‘Please, Sir, Miss Dorothy ain’t in the house, Sir. I can’t find her nowhere!’
‘What?’ said the Rector.
‘She ain’t in the house, Sir! And her bed don’t look as if it hadn’t been slept in, neither. It’s my belief as she’s gorn, Sir!’
‘Gone!’ exclaimed the Rector, partly sitting up in bed. ‘What do you mean–gone?’
‘Well, Sir, I believe she’s run away from ’ome, Sir!’
‘Run away from home! At this hour of the morning? And what about my breakfast, pray?’
By the time the Rector got downstairs–unshaven, no hot water having appeared–Ellen had gone down into the town to make fruitless inquiries for Dorothy. An hour passed, and she did not return. Whereupon there occurred a frightful, unprecedented thing–a thing never to be forgotten this side of the grave; the Rector was obliged to prepare his
own breakfast–yes, actually to mess about with a vulgar black kettle and rashers of Danish bacon–with his own sacerdotal hands.
After that, of course, his heart was hardened against Dorothy for ever. For the rest of the day he was far too busy raging over unpunctual meals to ask himself why she had disappeared and whether any harm had befallen her. The point was that the confounded girl (he said several times ’confounded girl’, and came near to saying something stronger) had disappeared, and had upset the whole household by doing so. Next day, however, the question became more urgent, because Mrs Semprill was now publishing the story of the elopement far and wide. Of course, the Rector denied it violently, but in his heart he had a sneaking suspicion that it might be true. It was the kind of thing, he now decided, that Dorothy would do. A girl who would suddenly walk out of the house without even taking thought for her father’s breakfast was capable of anything.
Two days later the newspapers got hold of the story, and a nosy young reporter came down to Knype Hill and began asking questions. The Rector made matters worse by angrily refusing to interview the reporter, so that Mrs Semprill’s version was the only one that got into print. For about a week, until the papers got tired of Dorothy’s case and dropped her in favour of a plesiosaurus that had been seen at the mouth of the Thames, the Rector enjoyed a horrible notoriety. He could hardly open a newspaper without seeing some flaming headline about ‘Rector’s Daughter. Further Revelations’, or ‘Rector’s Daughter. Is she in Vienna? Reported seen in Low-class Cabaret’. Finally there came an article in the Sunday Spyhole, which began, ‘Down in a Suffolk Rectory a broken old man sits staring at the wall’, and which was so absolutely unbearable that the Rector consulted his solicitor about an action for libel. However, the solicitor was against it; it might lead to a verdict, he said, but it would certainly lead to further publicity. So the Rector did nothing, and his anger against Dorothy, who had brought this disgrace upon him, hardened beyond possibility of forgiveness.
The Complete Novels Page 56
