I was in the chair immediately, and the man seemed to be clipping at my locks and lathering my face, both at the same time. I daresay he had applied a whiff of chloroform, which, at that period, was something quite new. People always spoke about a whiff of it, as if it had been a Ramón Allones or a Larraniaga.
There were three chairs in the shop, but the man had firmly directed me to a particular one, the one to my left, because that was the one where the light was, or so I supposed was the reason. The man had an assistant, it seemed, in case the shop might suddenly be packed out. The assistant struck me as being pretty well all black, after the style of a Negro, but that might have been only because the whole shop was so dark and smoky. In any case, he could only have been about four feet two inches high, or even less. I wondered how he managed at the chairs. Probably, when at work, he had a box to stand on. All he did now was lean back against the announcements in the far-right-hand corner, waiting until he was needed. The master was as tall as the assistant was short, lean and agile as a daddy longlegs. Also, he was completely clean-shaven and white. One could not help wondering whether anything grew at all, or ever had. Even his hair could well have been some kind of wig. I am sure that it was. It was black and slightly curly and horribly neat. I didn't have my eyes on the pair of them for very long, but I can see them both at this very moment, though, in the case of the assistant, without much definition. Sometimes we can see more without definition than with it. On the marble slab in front of me was a small lighted oil lamp and a single burning candle, smoking heavily, and submerging the other smells. This in the very middle of an ordinary weekday morning. Probably, of course, it was only imitation marble. Probably everything in the shop was an imitation of some kind.
Having your hair cut at that time cost only a few pence, though there was a penny or two more for the tip; and being shaved was often a matter of "Leave it to you, sir." But I knew nothing of that, because, as I have said, I had never had either thing done to me for money in a shop. I began to count up in my head how much I might have in my pocket. I had already begun to support my mother, and, in the nature of things, it can't have been a large sum. Frightening ideas ran about my mind as to how much might be demanded of me. It seemed almost as if I were being treated to everything that the shop had to offer. I tried not to think of what might happen were I unable to pay in full.
At one time, the man was holding a bright silvery razor in either hand, which I suppose had its own logic from a commercial point of view. The razors seemed far shinier than those at home. Reflections from the two of them flashed across the ceiling and walls. The razors also seemed far sharper than ours, as was only to be expected. I felt that if an ear were to be streaked off, I should be aware of it because I should see the blood; but that my whole head could go in a second, without my knowing anything at all about it—ever again, of course. I knew how small my head was, and how long and thin my neck. In the mirror I could see something of what was in hand, but not very much, because the mirror was caked and blackened, quite unlike the flickering razors. I doubted whether blood could have been made out in it, even a quite strong flow. I might well see the blood itself, long before the reflection of it.
But the worst thing came suddenly from behind me. Having no knowledge of what went on in these shops, I had never heard about the practice, then taken for granted, of "singeing." The customers regularly used to have the ends of their hair burnt off with a lighted taper. I don't suppose you've even heard of it happening, but it went on until fairly recently, and it only stopped because the shops couldn't get the trained assistant. It was said to "seal" the hairs, as if they had been letters. All that may sound like a good joke, but the thing itself was not at all like a joke.
It was of course the dusky assistant who was doing it—though it suddenly struck me that it might be a disease he had, rather than his natural colouring, perhaps something linked with his being so short. All I know is, and this I can swear to you, that he did not light the taper he held, at either the candle or the lamp. At one moment the bright light behind me was not there, or the assistant there, either. At the next moment the light was so strong and concentrated that, even in the dirty mirror, the reflection was dazzling me.
I think that really it was hypnotizing me. Hypnotism was something else that was fairly new at the time. It wasn't even necessary for the two in the shop to set about it deliberately. The idea of being hypnotized was in the air and fashionable, as different things are at different times. People suddenly went off who would have felt nothing at all a few years earlier.
I felt that my whole body was going round and round like a catherine wheel, feet against head. I felt that my head itself was going round and round in the other dimension, horizontally, so to speak, but faster. At that age, hypnotism had never actually come my way, even though it was being joked about everywhere. As well as all this, there was a sound like a great engine turning over. I think that really I lost myself for a short spell. Fainting was much commoner in those times than it is now, and not only with young girls. What it felt like was a sudden quick fall, with all my blood rushing upward. There were effects on the stage of that kind: clowns with baubles going down through trap-doors and coming up again as demons with pitchforks. They don't show it on the stage anymore, or not so often.
When I came round I was somewhere quite different. Don't ask me exactly how it had come about. Or exactly where I was, for that matter. I can only tell you what happened.
The first thing I knew was a strong smell of cooking.
Baking was what it really smelt like. Everyone at that time knew what baking smelt like, and I more than most, because my mother baked everything—bread, puddings, pies, the lot, even the cat food. I supposed I was down in the cellar of the building. Anyway, I was in some cellar. Of course, the kitchen quarters were always in what was called the basement, when the house was good enough to have a basement. So the smell was perfectly natural and acceptable.
The only thing was that the place seemed so terribly hot. I thought at first that it might be me, rather than the room, but that became hard to believe.
I was sprawled on a thick mattress. It seemed just as well, and kind of someone, because the floor as a whole was made of stone, not even smooth stone, not smooth at all, but rough. There was enough light for me to see that much. My mattress was considerably fatter than the ones given to the felons in Newgate or to the poorer debtors, and it was most welcome, as I say, but the stuff inside was peeping out everywhere through rents, and the color of the thing was no longer very definite, except that there were marks on it which were almost certainly blood.
I put my hand to my head, but I didn't seem to be actually bleeding through the hair, though it was hard to be sure, as I was sweating so heavily. Then I gave a gulp, like a schoolboy. I suppose I was still more or less a schoolboy. Anyway, I nearly fainted all over again.
At the other end of the cellar, if that is what the place was, a huge woman was sitting on a big painted chair, like a throne. The light in the place came from a small lamp on a kind of desk at her side. She had heavy dark hair falling over one shoulder, and a swarthy face, as if she had been a Spanish woman. She wore a dark dress, open all the way down the front to the waist, as if she had just put it on, or could not bear to fasten it owing to the heat, or had been doing some remarkably heavy work. Not that I had ever before seen a woman looking quite like that, not even my mother, when we were alone together. And there was a young girl sitting at her feet, with her head in the woman's lap, so that I could see only that she had dark hair, too, as if she had been the woman's daughter, which of course one would have supposed she was, particularly as the woman was all the time stroking and caressing the girl's hair.
The woman gazed across the cellar at me for some time before she uttered a word. Her eyes were as dark as everything else about her, but they looked very bright and luminous at the same time. Of course, I was little more than a kid, but that was how it all seemed to me. Immediate
ly our eyes met, the woman's and mine, something stirred within me, something quite new and strong. This, although the light was so poor. Or perhaps at first it was because of the poor light, like what I said about sometimes seeing more when there is no definition than when there is.
I couldn't utter a word. I wasn't very used to the company of women, in any case. I hadn't much wished for it, as I have said.
So she spoke first. Her voice was as dark as her hair and her eyes. A deep voice. But all she said was: "How old are you?"
"Seventeen and a half, ma'am. A bit more than that, actually."
"So you are still a minor?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you live in the City of London?"
"No, ma'am."
"Where then do you live?"
"In South Clerkenwell, ma'am."
"But you work in the city of London?"
"No, ma'am. I only come to the city on errands."
In those days, we were taught at school how to reply to catechisms of this kind. I had been taught such things very carefully. I must say that whatever else I might have to say about education in general. We were told to reply always simply, briefly, and directly. We used to be given exercises and practices.
I must add that the woman was well-spoken, and that she had a highly noticeable mouth. Of course, my faculties were not at their best in all that heat and after the series of odd things that had been happening to me: complete novelties, at that age.
"Whom do you visit on these errands?"
"Mostly people in the backstreets and side streets. We're only in a small way so far." It was customary for everyone who worked for a firm to describe that firm as "we," provided the firm was small enough, and sometimes not only then. With us, even the boozy women who cleaned everything up did it.
"Hardly heard of in the wider world, we might say?"
"I think that could be said, ma'am." I had learned well that boasting was always idle, and led only to still closer interrogation.
"Are your parents living?"
"My father is supposed to be dead, ma'am."
She transfixed me. I was mopping at myself all the time.
"I think he's dead, ma'am."
"Was he, or is he, a sailor, or a horsebreaker, or a strolling player, or a hawker?"
"None of those, ma'am."
"A Gay Lothario, perhaps?"
"I don't know, ma'am."
She was gazing at me steadily, but she apparently decided to drop the particular topic. It was a topic I specially disliked, and her dropping it so easily gave me the impression that I had begun to reach her, as well as she me. You know how it can happen. What hypnotism was then, telepathy is now. It's mostly a complete illusion, of course.
"And your mother? Was she pretty?"
"I think she still is pretty, ma'am."
"Describe her as best you can."
"She's very tiny and very frail, ma'am."
"Do you mean she's ill?"
"I don't think she's ill, ma'am."
"Do you dwell with her?"
"I do, ma'am."
"Could she run from end to end of your street, loudly calling out? If the need were to arise. Only then, of course. What do you say?"
At this strange question, the girl on the floor, who had hitherto been still as still, looked up into the woman's face. The woman began to stroke the girl's face and front, though from where I was I could see neither. Besides, it was so hot for caresses.
"I doubt it, ma'am. I hope the need does not arise." We were taught not to make comments, but I could hardly be blamed, I thought, for that one.
"Are you an only child?"
"My sister died, ma'am."
"The family diathesis seems poor, at least on the female side."
I know now that this is what she said, because since then I've worked hard at language and dictionaries and expressing myself, but I did not know then.
"Beg pardon, ma'am?"
But the woman left that topic, too.
"Does your mother know where you are now?"
At school, it might have been taken as rather a joke of a question, but I answered it seriously and accurately.
"She never asks how I spend the day, ma'am."
"You keep yourselves to yourselves?"
"I don't wish my mother to be fussed about me, ma'am."
Here the woman actually looked away for a moment. By now her doing so had a curious effect on me. I should find it difficult to put it into words. I suddenly began to feel queasy. For the first time, I became aware physically of the things that had been happening to me. I longed to escape, but feared for myself if I succeeded.
The woman's eyes came back to me. I could not but go out to meet her.
"Are you or your mother the stronger person?"
"My mother is, ma'am."
"I don't mean physically."
"No, ma'am."
The hot smell, familiar to me as it was, and for that reason all the more incongruous, seemed to have become more overpowering. It was perhaps a part of my newly regained faculties. I had to venture upon a question of my own. At home it was the customary question. It was asked all the time.
"Should not the oven be turned down a little, ma'am?"
The woman never moved a muscle, not even a muscle in her dark eyes. She simply replied "Not yet." But for the first time she smiled at me, and straight at me.
What more could be said on the subject? I knew that overheated ovens burned down houses.
The catechism was resumed.
"How much do you know of women?"
I am sure I blushed, and I am sure that I could make no reply. Our exercises had not included such questions, and I was all but dying of the heat and smell.
"How close have you dared to go?"
I could not withdraw my eyes, though there was nothing that part of me could more deeply wish to do. I hated to be mocked. Mockery was the one thing that could really make me lose control, go completely wild.
"Have you never been close even to your own mother?"
I must all the while have looked more like a turkey than most because my head was so small. You may not allow for that, because it's so much larger now.
You will have gathered that the woman had been drooling slightly, as women do when appealing in a certain way to a man. As I offered no response, she spoke up quite briskly.
"So much the better for all of us," she said, but this time without a trace of the smile that usually goes with remarks of that kind. Then she added, "So much the better for the customers."
I was certainly not going to inquire what she meant, though I had no idea what I was going to do. Events simply had to take their course, as so often in life, though one is always taught otherwise.
Events immediately began to do so. The woman stood up. I could see that the chair, which at first seemed almost like a throne, was in fact hammered together from old sugar boxes and packing cases. The coloring on the outside of it, which had so impressed me, looked much more doubtful now.
"Let's see what you can make of Monica and me," said the woman.
At that the little girl turned to me for the first time. She was a moon-faced child, so pale that it was hard to believe so swarthy a woman could possibly be her mother.
I'm not going to tell you how I replied to what the woman had said. Old though I am, I should still hesitate to do so.
There was a certain amount of dialogue between us.
One factor was that heat. When Monica came to me and started trying to take off my jacket, I could not help feeling a certain relief, even though men, just as much as women, were then used to wearing far heavier clothes, even when it was warm.
Another factor was the woman's bright and steady gaze, though there you will simply think I am making excuses.
Another factor again was that the woman had unlocked something within me that my mother had said should please never be unlocked, never, until she herself had passed away. It was disloyal, but there's usually dis
loyalty somewhere when one is drawn in that way to a person, and more often than not in several quarters at once.
I did resist. I prevaricated. I did not prevail. I leave it there. I don't know how fond and dutiful you proved at such a time in the case of your own mother.
Monica seemed sweet and gentle, though she never spoke a word. It did, I fear, occur to me that she was accustomed to what she was doing; a quite long and complicated job in those days, which only married ladies and mothers knew about among women. Monica's own dress was made simply of sacking. It was an untrimmed sack. I realized at once that almost certainly she was wearing nothing else. Who could wonder in such heat? Her arms and legs and neck and round face were all skinny to the point of pathos, and white and slimy with the heat. But her hands were gentle, as I say. In the bad light, I could make nothing of her eyes. They seemed soft and blank.
The woman was just standing and gazing and waiting. Her arms rested at her sides, and once more she was quite like a queen, though her dress was still open all down the front to the waist. Of course that made an effect of its own kind too. It was a dark velvet dress, I should say, with torn lace around the neck and around the ends of the sleeves. I could see that she was as bare-footed as little Monica, but that by no means diminished her dignity. She was certainly at her ease, though she was certainly not smiling. She was like a queen directing a battle. Only the once had she smiled; in response to my silly remark about turning down the oven; when I had failed to find the right and unfunny words for what I had meant, and meant so well.
I could now see that the solitary lamp stood on a mere rough ledge rather than on any kind of desk. For that matter, the lamp itself was of a standard and very inexpensive pattern. It was equipped with a movable shade to direct the weak illumination. My mother and I owned a dozen lamps better than that, and used them too, on many, many occasions.
In the end, Monica had me completely naked. She was a most comfortable and competent worker, and, because there was nowhere else to put them, she laid out all my different things neatly on the rough floor, where they looked extremely foolish, as male bits and pieces always do, when not being worn, and often when being worn also.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 81
