Sir!' She Said

by Alec Waugh

  As the water splashed slowly from the geyser, she sat on the edge of the bath reading the morning’s letters. It was a typical Londoner’s mail. There were one or two bills; an invitation to a private view; a five-line note from a friend reminding her that she was to be called for that evening at half-past eight; a couple of circulars; a letter signed “Mabel Carstairs” expressing a hope that Julia would be able to dine with them on Wednesday week. “. . . it is so long since we have seen you. . .” the letter ended. “I do hope that you’ll be able to.” The word “so” was underlined. “Cat!” was Julia’s comment. “But I suppose,” she added, “that I’ve got to go.”

  Had scarcely supposed it before her telephone bell had begun to ring. “So early,” she thought. “I don’t mind betting that it’s a wrong number.” It was not, however. It was a fretful, worried and familiar voice she heard.

  “Oh, you, Leon, yes. I thought at this hour of the night it must be a wrong number.”

  “I know, I know. It’s terribly early. Of course it is. But I was so afraid of missing you. It seemed the best chance; and there was something I had to say to you.”

  “Why, of course, yes. What is it?”

  “It’s about Wednesday week. You got a letter from Mabel this morning, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Well, yes, oh yes, I suppose I am.”

  “It’ll make things much easier for me here if you do.”

  A retort leapt to Julia’s lips. It was so like Leon Carstairs, that: to see everything in terms of himself: thinking of what would make things easier for him: never thinking whether they would be difficult for her: whether it would be easy or pleasant for her to accept his wife’s hospitality: to sit at his wife’s table: meeting her and talking to her as a friend. That was the kind of consideration that would never present itself to Leon Carstairs. He saw the whole situation in terms of his own difficulties and troubles. He was too self-centred to consider her. It would have been easy for her to be bitter. But it would have been of no use. There was no sense in trying to alter people. You had to accept them for what they were.

  “All right, Leon,” she said. “I’ll go. And I’ll write to-night to Mabel. I’ll be seeing you on Thursday, shan’t I?”

  “Well, that’s another thing I wanted to speak to you about. I wondered if you could manage Wednesday or Friday night instead?”

  “Oh, Leon, why?”

  “Well, it’s like this, you see. . .” And he had embarked on a long explanation of a business opening that it was really important for him to follow up. “I can’t tell what it may lead to. And anything like that is so valuable for me just now.”

  Wearily Julia listened. “If you can’t, you can’t,” she said at length. “But I can’t manage Wednesday or Friday, I’m afraid.”

  “Not manage Wednesday or Friday? What are you doing, then?”

  “On Wednesday I’m dining with my father.”

  “Couldn’t you put that off?”

  She shook her head. “He’ll be alone. I’ve promised to keep him company. I’ve not been there for a week.”

  “Surely he’ld understand?”

  “I don’t know. He might. But I’m not asking him. I’m sorry, Leon. Wednesday’s just not possible.”

  “What about Friday, then?”

  “I’m going to a show on Friday.”

  “Who with?”

  “Nobody that you know.”

  There was a pause. “Oh, very well, then,” said Carstairs, “if there’re all these people who matter to you more than I do. . . ”

  There was a peeved note in his voice that irritated Julia.

  “Don’t be absurd, Leon. One can’t put people off at the last moment. It’s you who are making difficulties. At the beginning of last week I asked you what evenings you would be free. You don’t expect me to spend all my time behind a telephone, do you, waiting for you to change your mind?”

  “Of course not, only. . . oh well, if you can’t put off either of your engagements, we’ll stick to Thursday. I’ll put off mine.”

  “I don’t want you to do that.”

  “What else is there for me to do? I must see you. And if you can’t get yourself free, I must get myself free.” He spoke fretfully as though he were blaming her, as though he were trying to put her in the wrong. “I don’t want to put off this engagement of mine, naturally. I’m not sure what it may not lead to and you know how important it is for me just now. . .”

  But that she could not stand. She had listened to so many of his business troubles. Of his hope of being taken into partnership; of the necessity of his putting through one or two good deals. She could not stand a repeat performance. “Oh, very well,” she said, “we’ll make it Friday. I’ll manage to extricate myself somehow.”

  Immediately the voice at the other end changed its tone.

  “Can you? Would you really? I’ld be so grateful. Will it be very difficult?”

  “I’ll manage it.”

  “It will be difficult, though?”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “I know, I know, But then nothing is easy nowadays, is it? And you are free, after all, aren’t you? If you knew how much I have on my mind just now. . .”

  Julia scarcely listened. There he goes again, she thought. His freedom, his difficulties. Never her troubles. Never her difficulties. Did he never wonder whether she hadn’t things on her mind? She hadn’t wanted to put off Jim on Friday. It would have been a friendly, unexacting evening; with no sentiment, with no obligations; just cosy chatter over a good dinner and some show or other afterwards, something bright with music, gay dresses, lots to laugh over. The kind of evening that made one think of the world as a place worth living in. She’ld have enjoyed Friday. But there was Leon moaning about his troubles.

  “At any rate, I’ll be seeing you on Friday,” he was finishing. “That’s something to count the seconds to. When shall I call for you? Quarter to?”

  “Make it quarter past. We’re pretty busy at the shop just now.”

  “Quarter past, then. Good-bye, my dear.”

  “Good-bye.” With a sigh Julia put back the receiver, and hurried across the passage to a bath that was in danger of overflowing. Another two minutes of that, she thought, and the flat would have been flooded.

  By the time she had finished her bath “the slattern” had arrived.

  She was a slattern, fifty years of age, begrimed, with a shapeless shuffling figure, a peaked nose and unkempt hair. Every time Julia looked at her, her spirits sank. Martha Dunkin seemed the composite expression of all the woes that lie in waiting for human flesh. “I ought to get rid of her,” Julia thought. “She’s bad for me, she makes me feel that nothing in the world goes right. She suggests gloom and ill-health and destitution. She makes me start the day with the feeling that life’s all wrong. I’ve troubles enough of my own without having hers piled on to me. I ought to have some one gay about the place. I ought to get rid of her.” But you could not get rid of a person whose universe in Upper Islington of drunken husband, and gambling sons was dependent on the twenty-five weekly shillings that you gave her. “No one else would put up with her,” thought Julia, “so I must.”

  This morning as every other morning brought its own particular complaint. “Last night me’usband come’ome drunk. Fell down and broke’is teeth,’e did, two of’em,” such was the slattern’s greeting as she set before Julia the coffee and fruit and toast that constituted her daily breakfast.

  Julia endeavoured to be sympathetic.

  “I hope he didn’t hurt himself,” she said.

  The slattern sniffed.

  “Don’t mind if’e did. Served’im right it would’ave done. It’s them teeth I’m worrying over. He clears ten shillings every now and again as a waiter. Who’s going to take on as waiter a man with his front teeth knocked out?”

  “He could get some false teeth put in.”

  “And’ow is’e goin’ to
afford false teeth? False teeth aren’t’ad for nothin’.”

  She spoke in the apathetic way of those who have no longer the force and courage to stand up to life, who accept life’s buffetings with their hands lying limply at their sides. Her inertness irritated Julia.

  “What about insurance? Isn’t he insured?”

  “’ow could’e be. Not even on the dole he isn’t. Left his job on his own account.’Adn’t the sense even to let himself get sacked as my boys did. They bring in their eighteen shillings a week regerler. But the old man, why he drinks twice what he earns. Now’e won’t be able to earn that.”

  “How much would it cost to have them repaired?” asked Julia.

  The slattern pondered.

  “Well, not less than three pounds, Miss, surely, and how could we be expected. . .”

  Julia cut her short. “Suppose I were to advance you the three pounds out of your wages?”

  “That would be very kind of you, Miss, I’m sure. Very, very kind; but that would mean no wages for me for two and a half weeks, and with the expenses coming in day by day. . .”

  “Then suppose I were to pay you the three pounds, and you were to pay me back half a crown till the amount’s made up?”

  “Well, if you was to do that. . . well, yes, Miss, it’ld be very kind of you, I’m sure.”

  Her features expressed neither gratitude nor animation. As the door closed behind her Julia sighed. One day she might be like that herself. Old, and tired, with the fight drained out of her. But for her there might not be anyone ready to see her over the rough patches. The thought made life seem suddenly rather terrifying, and the sunlight seemed a mockery as it shone through the window on to the gay green-coloured walls with their black framed etchings; on to the green-painted woodwork of the fireplace, and the green chintz-covered chairs. Life wasn’t the gay thing that sunlight made it seem. Sunlight was like youth. They were fleeting, both of them. And after them the dark hours came. “Heavens,” thought Julia, “this won’t do. I must cheer myself up.”

  Walking over to the gramophone, she put on a record.

  There’s a rainbow round my shoulder

  And the sky is blue above

  And the sunshine’s bright

  And the world’s all right

  For I’m in love.

  The tune was gay. She smiled as she hummed the words; though it wasn’t really like that, she thought as her feet followed the syncopated beat. Love didn’t make the world all right. It added another complication to it. It upset your plans: so that you had to lie your way out of engagements that you’ld prefer to keep.

  “Heavens, I’m in a bad mood,” she thought.

  She felt better half an hour later as she sat beside Jean Ryland in Prew Catholic’s establishment in Brooke Street, opening the morning’s mail; a mail that contained cheques and accounts and invoices and estimates; a mail that suggested prosperity and success and comfort: a smooth-running world that did not need to worry about infirmity and poverty and age.

  The atmosphere of the shop was pleasant. The long, high-windowed, well-proportioned room that had seen in its days of private ownership innumerable Victorian dinners follow their seven-coursed progress from sherry to vintage port, was brightly hung, not only with frocks and scarves and jumpers, but with the many-shaped and many-coloured fabric of light extravagance that comprises the decor of life for a modern woman. In the glass showcases were amber cigarette cases and amber holders; gold and silver and enamel briquets; the green and blue of Chinese porcelain and jade. There were metal and brocaded bags, Japanese scent bottles, Indian and Burmese shawls. There were fans; vast feathered fans from Venezuela; and small parchment fans with extravagant John Armstrong designs trailed over them. The lavender-coloured walls were fantastic with Oliver Messel masks, and bright with Cedric Morris flowers.

  “It’s a place, that if I didn’t work in, I’ld like to live in,” Jean Ryland had once said.”

  Jean Ryland was a jolly and gay-tempered girl; fair-haired, fair-skinned, grey-eyed, and prettyish; in the early twenties; the second daughter of a comfortably incomed family. There had been no more need for her to work than there had been for Julia. Most of her friends worked, however, and she enjoyed the feeling of independence that work gave her.

  “When you’re paying for your own cigarettes and taxis, you’ve a right,” she had argued, “to use your latchkey as you like.”

  For unlike Julia she had continued to live in her parents’ house.

  “I can’t think,” she had once said, “why you wanted to take that flat. It’s a very jolly one, and I daresay it’s fun being on one’s own. But it’s a lot of trouble. You’ve got much less spare pocket money. And you’re not really half as comfortable there as you would be in with your people.”

  “You’re freer.”

  “In what way? I’ve got all the freedom that I want. I go where I like when I like with whom I like. My people never ask me any questions. And as it’s my own money that I’m spending, they’ve no check on how I’m spending it. You couldn’t be freer than that, could you?”

  Julia had replied evasively. “There are other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Oh, well. . .”

  Jean Ryland had looked at her suspiciously. “If you start saying things like that,” she had said, “I shall begin to believe that you’re not living in that flat alone.”

  Julia had laughed at that. “I’m afraid you’ll have to search very hard before you find any skeleton in my cupboard, worse luck.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  They were friends, in the way that people are who work together. Away from the shop they never saw each other. It never occurred to them to mingle their private lives. Had they met casually at some party, they would probably have done no more than smile at one another. If one of them were to leave it would be improbable that they would meet again. But a year of shared tasks and interests had bred between them a genuine if incomplete intimacy. They knew nothing of each other, yet they knew each other. Julia’s dark mood passed as she sat by Jean, opening the letters, filing, arranging, docketing the orders and invoices and cheques; as afterwards they set about the preliminaries of the morning’s work: the choice of models: the dressing of showcases: as later she answered telephones, interviewed clients, arranged fittings. The first hour passed swiftly and eventlessly. It was close upon eleven when a young man in the late twenties, tall, pleasantly good-looking, and well-groomed, strolled into the shop, looked round it vaguely, then said in a slow, indistinct but rather agreeable voice: “I was thinking about a screen.”

  His visit caused no particular surprise. In the last three weeks he had been into the shop seven or eight times. He had come originally to help a middle-aged woman choose a frock. While she had been experimenting with a number of models he had examined the Chinese jade, asking Jean Ryland a question or two. He had hesitated when his friend had returned with her choice made. “Look here,” he had said, “I can’t make up my mind about that jade. I’ll come some other time.”

  He had come back within three hours; had smiled friendlily. “That jade,” he had said, and walking over to the showcases had begun to play about with a cigarette case.

  “The hardest thing in the world,” he had said, “is to choose a cigarette case for a girl. One thinks one ought to get something small and dainty, something that’ll bear the same relations to a man’s case that a woman’s watch does to a man’s. But what’s the use of giving that sort of case to a woman who’s smoking all day long, and never gets through more than a third of any cigarette she starts. I’m not really sure that there’s any sense in giving her one at all?”

  He ended the remark interrogatively.

  “I thought,” said Jean, “that you had come here to buy some jade.”

  “Yes. so I did really, but. . .”

  He paused; there was a winning, rather helpless look upon his face. The girls exchanged a glance.

  “Now, wh
at do you really want?” said Julia.

  “I don’t know.”

  It was said in such a forlorn, kindergartenish note, that the two girls burst out laughing. That laugh made them friends. They felt cosy, the three of them together.

  “I must buy something, anyhow,” he said.

  In the end he bought a bottle of black narcissus.

  “Where shall I send it?” Julia asked.

  He had looked blank at that.

  “Send it? Oh, well, yes. . . no,. . . no, I think I’ll take it with me.”

  When he had gone out the two girls looked at one another.

  “I don’t think he wanted that for anyone,” said Julia.

  “I don’t think he wanted anything at all.”

  “What did he come back for, then?”

  “Which did he come back for? That’s how I’ld have put it.”

  They laughed merrily. “Well, if it’s that,” said Julia, “we’ll soon find out.”

  They didn’t. Two days later he came in and bought a cigarette lighter. The next day he took some bath salts. During the next week he acquired a wire tree; a glass ashtray, a leather blotter. In the week following a jade dragon, and a Chinese teacup were added to his collection. And each time he smiled and chatted friendlily, but without any show of preference.

  “I think he’s fallen for us both,” said Jean.

  “I think,” Julia retorted, “that he’s a lounge lizard with more time and money than he knows what to do with.”

  Jean pouted. “Is he—I don’t think he is. I hope he isn’t. I would like to know what he is though.”

  His purchases had told them nothing. They had not even learnt from them his name or his address. They were small objects that he had bought, and he had preferred to take them away with him. His present interest in a screen was his first experiment in bulk.