Beowulf Read online

  It was Angelina’s way, her friend had thought, to oppose all projects not originated by herself. There were days during the next year when Selina almost talked herself into believing that the Warming Pan existed, whilst it had, all the time, the quality of pure dream until Miss Humphries had died, had left her unexpectedly three hundred pounds, and she had walked one morning into the ideal, empty shop.

  The seven years telescoped themselves into one, for there had not been a day when she had not felt vibrantly, excitedly alive. She had been frightened at first, no, never when they had actually opened, only during those early moments when they had signed the lease, engaged the waitresses, and she had wondered if she would be able to pay the bills. She remembered now looking up at the newly distempered walls and saying to Angelina, “But will customers ever come?” It had been so astonishing when the first ones had arrived, a flustered lady with parcels and two quarrelling little boys. The second arrival, she had recognized her immediately, had been a governess. “Look, Angelina,” she had whispered, “there is somebody there, what must I do?” Yet it had been sheer gaiety, almost a pretense of being frightened; she had behaved as if she had been for twenty years, not a lady companion with excellent references, but the manageress of a smart hotel. Everything had happened just “as if it had been meant”; for Sarah, the assistant, whose help had been invaluable at the start, had married and left the place indisputably under Selina’s control. Angelina looked after the staff and the purchases, but her heart was really with the courses that she was always taking to improve, as she said, “the future of us women.”

  “Number Seven is leaving this morning,” Timothy remarked. He had emptied the pails of water in the kitchen and had come back to spread his wet cloths on the radiator to dry. Strictly speaking, this was forbidden but Ruby made such a fuss if he cluttered the kitchen up that they pretended not to notice provided that he cleared them away by ten o’clock. “I saw the van draw up as I came down the street. Looks to me as if between the bombs and the people running to the country there won’t be a London left.”

  “I read somewhere,” Selina said severely, “that it will take three years and a half to lay the city in ruins.” It might be statistically correct but she could not help agreeing inwardly with Timothy, who looked the essence of gloom, that this was poor comfort after a noisy night.

  “You can never believe what you read in them papers,” Timothy objected, appealing to her with damp, brown, spaniel eyes—it was the only phrase to use about him, if it did sound bookish.

  “Well, we are not going to give the Germans the satisfaction of making us neglect our jobs; I think that inside handle could do with a rub this morning; it’s the dust, I know, from the explosions.” His glum uneasiness was irritating to the nerves. Selina was just as aware as Timothy that every person gone from the district meant one less possible customer. Those prewar days of January sales when they had served a hundred lunches in a morning had vanished as surely and inevitably as the snowballing moments of her first mittens. To think that she had ever grumbled about the smallness of their oven! Now it was not a question of putting savings in a bank for their old age but of meeting current expenses; she could not even think about the overdue rent. Of course, Selina would have liked to say to the porter, don’t you worry, when you can’t work for us any more there will be a pension waiting; but then someone would have to promise the same thing to Miss Tippett herself, and she could not see the landlord, for instance, offering them anything but notice.

  How strange life was! They fulfilled a need in the neighbourhood; they were, as Selina often remarked, a cross between a village shop and the family doctor. They found old Mrs. Holmes a dressmaker, delivered messages to deaf Miss Clark. People rushed in to telephone; if they were favourites, to dump their parcels. They used them unthinkingly, she reflected, taking up a letter with an indecipherable signature, “… and I must have left the gloves on the window ledge, you could not help noticing them, they were an almost new brown knitted pair with blue dots on the gauntlets and besides your restaurant I was only at Barlow’s and the chemist’s and a cinema. Please send them to me registered and I will pay you back the postage the next time I drop in.” That must come from the angular woman who always grumbled about her table. Yes, the Warming Pan was useful, whatever Angelina might say. Her partner had behaved so oddly ever since she had gone to this new political course; it had been so much easier when she had taken up Eastern philosophy, for then she had made an effort to control her temper. Now she was scornful of the customers, called them the “stupid bourgeoisie,” when they were really such nice people. It made life very confusing.

  “Timothy,” perhaps he would cheer up if she talked to him a little, “have you seen a pair of brown gloves anywhere? A customer says she dropped a pair here the …”—she looked at the date and at the calendar—“the day before yesterday.”

  “Brown gloves, madam?” He was antagonistic immediately, as if she thought that he might have taken them. “There’s this one from last week.” He held up an object from the Found basket with a large hole in one worn, black finger.

  “No, that’s not it. She says brown, and new. Probably she left them somewhere else.” Instinctively, Selina treated all customers as she had humoured a succession of Miss Humphries. “In the bus, I expect.”

  “It’s surprising what people do leave in vehicles,” Timothy commented mysteriously, “’specially in trams.” He shook his leather and, looking at the doorknob with an almost hypnotized stare, started to flick away the dust.

  Selina walked over to the window and began, through sheer habit, to arrange the trays of cakes. With the shortage of eggs and currants, all experiments had gone. She had prided herself before that nowhere in all the district had good standard things and so much variety been united. There had always been nicely browned crumpets and thick gingerbread, rock cakes and buns, the sort of food people wanted after a hard day or some hours of freedom too precious to waste on lunch. Certain afternoons (she remembered Miss Humphries), all she could have swallowed were teacakes with just the right amount of butter. Then there were other moments, after days indoors perhaps because of an east wind that caught the old lady’s chest, when a piece of seed cake, made from Grandmother’s mixture, had brought back blackberry days and times when lessons were the only threat to a placid routine of life. She looked sadly at the meagre row; there was something stinted and miserly about it. It was not the bombs that distressed her, awful as the noise was, so much as the lack of loaded trays to make up for the horrors of the night. She hated ration cards, less because she wanted more food herself than because they were a symbol of some poverty of spirit. They reminded her of vegetarian teachers with cramped ideas. If Angelina would only eat more, she would be less restless and talk less strangely. How detestable the propaganda of the Food Ministry was, with the emphasis upon oatmeal and raw carrots; were they not fighting for an England of plenty, for that older England of sirloins of beef and mountains of cheddar cheese?

  It looked so cold out too, raw and winterly, and there was poor Mr. Rashleigh trotting up the street in his worn-out overcoat. Selina was thankful that Angelina was not there to see him. “That dreadful old man,” she would say, rapping the desk with her pencil. “But, Angelina, we can’t turn him out, he has nowhere to go.” She dreaded seeing again the contemptuous shrug of her partner’s shoulders. “In a properly organized Britain there would be places for such people.” Perhaps it would be a good idea, though a little gloomy, to have homes for all the old. Still, as it appeared that Britain was not organized—“and, you know, dear, elderly people, and I have had so much experience with them, do get dreadfully jealous of each other”—it cost them very little to let him remain upstairs. Nobody would take an attic these days, anyhow. After all, when Angelina spoke of her “new England” it was always of a world of young people swimming or riding motorcycles, and she was not really mechanical, no, indeed, though Selina hardly liked to tell her so; her colleague
could not even hang a picture up without help.

  Selina turned back towards her desk. The room was warm and gay, but for the first time she saw clearly a possible To Let sign at the windows and deserted, empty corridors. As long as I have a pair of hands and work (how often she had said this) nothing matters. Yet it was not mere selfishness now to be afraid; there were Timothy and Ruby, even the furniture itself that had been cleaned and polished for so many years. There are worse things than war, she caught herself thinking, though this, of course, was the result of war. Perhaps the bombing would stop and people would come back again or a factory would be opened; perhaps even some morning they would wake up and find that there was an armistice? “Timothy,” she called, “don’t forget to move the cloths from the radiator before we open the shop.”

  3

  THE SHOP WAS SMALL, a few doors from the Warming Pan, and so inconspicuous that strangers, unless they knew, dismissed it as a warehouse. There was a dingy, Victorian quality about the windows, and the white canisters standing on the counter reminded Horatio, as he stepped inside, of an apothecary’s den. He longed to run his fingers over the blue spirals down their sides or sniff the lids; they must hold spices, he thought, as well as coffee. One expected the owner to be eccentric and bad-tempered, and sometimes Mr. Dobbie was both; at a first glance he looked like an innkeeper, but to the initiate the passivity of his oblong face suggested tea and china.

  Horatio had timed his visit exactly. Jim, the boy, was still polishing the handles of various doors. In ten minutes shoppers would arrive, from real households where they had a wad of ration books and bought not in miserable ounces but in pounds. He looked forward to this chat, for it was a contact with the life he missed so sorely now that his wife was dead and there were no more Sunday suppers where his pupils (“Quite Bohemian, my dear, from all ranks and classes, but art—art is unity”) were welcomed.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dobbie, and how are you this morning? You had rather a noisy night of it, I am afraid.”

  “Noisy! We were up till two with that fire in the Square.” A ledger banged as if its owner would like, with such a gesture, to smash up the war.

  “Ah, yes, incendiaries. Well, well, to think I didn’t hear them, but my hearing’s not so good as it used to be; age, Mr. Dobbie, age, but it’s uphill work quarrelling with time!”

  “Quite.” Mr. Dobbie stared at the empty packing cases that cut off most of the light. “Take the mat outside and shake it, Jim, we must try to get rid of that dust.”

  “Sometimes I feel that to be hard of hearing these days is a blessing in disguise.”

  “Certainly it has its compensations. And what can I do for you this morning, Mr. Rashleigh?”

  It was an inauspicious day, Horatio reflected; Mr. Dobbie was tired. “Why, the same as usual, with Whitehall’s permission.” He handed over his book. “All this rationing must be very bad for business.”

  “Bad! It’s ruinous. And to think,” Mr. Dobbie’s forehead wrinkled into as many lines as the Chinese characters above him, “to think that the Conservative Party did this to me. Lied to us, they did, lied to us… and I voted for them at the last election!” Dobbie could bear any stupidity ill, least of all his own.

  “Don’t say that, Mr. Dobbie, I am sure Mr. Baldwin meant well even if he was misinformed.”

  “Misinformed! Misinformed, Mr. Rashleigh, is hardly the word to use. What do we pay the Government for, I should like to know, with good money taken from your pocket and mine, if they go and deliberately mislead us? They knew—half a pound of second-quality breakfast, Jim, for the gentleman—they knew what those Germans were arming for; and where are they now? Helping us to put out fires and freeze in the dark? Oh, no, most of them are in Canada, safe and warm and toasting their toes at a log fire whilst we, who were idiotic enough to vote for them, catch bronchitis and pay for Spitfires.” He snatched the funnel from Jim’s hand and poured tea through it into a twist of paper.

  “I have heard,” Horatio ventured timidly, “that in Canada they have radiators.”

  “Doesn’t matter, they’ve feathered their nests all right. It’s a shame,” he added kindly, “that a gentleman of your age can’t have a pot of tea when he chooses without having to count the leaves.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dobbie, it is a little hard, especially, if I may say so, for one who has a palate for the beverage. Better a cup a day of the best, though, than four out of some nameless packet.” He hoped Mr. Dobbie had not noticed how many months it was since he had been able to afford his favourite blend.

  “You are right, you are supremely right; now which was it that Mrs. Rashleigh used to come in for at Christmas?” Dobbie glanced admiringly up at the jars above his head. “This one, wasn’t it?” He pointed to a canister.

  “Yes, that was Margaret’s gift to me for years. Such a bitter loss,” he sighed, “I was thinking of her only this morning.”

  “Quite, quite,” Dobbie answered vaguely; he was a bachelor and proud of it. “There’s a lot to be said for the single life, all the same.”

  There was something about Dobbie, Horatio reflected, that stamped him as commercial. He was like—Rashleigh could not think of the term, then all at once the memory surged back to him—a big, vulgar trader selling blankets on the cover of a book of Indian stories, the one, he smiled to think of it now, that had frightened him so as a child. A simple mind could smash itself against that broad, impervious smile. Not that Dobbie was a bad fellow, he knew his place and kept to it, but he was a materialist. Imagine trying to explain to him the meaning of the word “ideal”!

  Jim kicked a pail at the back of the counter and looked up guiltily at the noise. He flicked his duster over an already shiny shelf. “See the grinder’s all right,” Dobbie snapped, reopening the ledger. A merchant was busy enough these days without wasting time in idle conversation. He glanced at the clock. “Funny how much you miss a night’s sleep,” he grumbled, thinking of the glorious moment when he could cross the road and sit down in front of a pint of beer.

  Horatio put a half crown on the counter deliberately, though he had some change in his pocket. The longer that he could remain in the warm shop the better; the hardwood crates with their exotic labels, French or Chinese, suggested the ships that he had sketched for fifty years. Why, he could see the Solent in front of him again, the short blue waves slapping the little tugs and beyond them, an etching rather than a water colour, for the lines were so exquisite, the bow of a liner, Asia-bound.

  “I think I must be due for my tea.” Horatio started, for he had not heard the door click, and looked up, a little suspiciously, at the grey-haired stranger beside him.

  “Yes, Colonel Ferguson,” Dobbie thumbed over a dozen dirty pages fastened with a clip, “you deposited your coupons, didn’t you?” He extracted a paper and looked at it. “Half a pound. Will you take it today?”

  “Please. You had a bad time last night, I am afraid?” “I miss my sleep. We had quite a blaze in the Square.” “It’s marvellous to me the way that people stand it.” “Well, as one of our Ministers remarked the other day, what else is there to do? It isn’t war, though, it’s murder.” Dobbie blew his nose violently, an aggressively white handkerchief floating like a flag against the dust. “Anything more I can do for you, Mr. Rashleigh?” he inquired, for Horatio was still fumbling with his change.

  “No, no, thank you.” Rashleigh slid the coins into his pocket. If he had still been able to afford the six and twopenny China, no tradesman would have dared dismiss him in such a manner. Colonel Ferguson! He gazed icily at his neighbour whilst buttoning his coat. Just because the man had a military title, though with his blue, far-off-looking eyes he seemed more of a sailor, Dobbie wanted to clear the coast, no doubt, before handing him something from “under the counter.” That was the worst of war, the artists suffered first. Horatio turned, almost knocking over the scarlet canister painted with pansies that held a ball of string, and stamped into the street. He would lose himself, and that
was something these other people could not do, painting a petite water colour in case Miss Johnson should reply to his letter, an impression of the Golden Hind perhaps or else Rose Cottage with his dear white ducks waddling towards the pond.

  “A cold morning,” Ferguson remarked, watching the merchant knot two pieces of string together; “somehow it would be easier to put up with these disturbances if we had some sun.”

  “Everyone to their fancy, sir.” Dobbie sifted the tea into a bag and shook it. “Give me a sharp, December day myself.” His plump neck bulged out of its collar as he turned towards the cash register. “That will be three and a penny, or shall I book it to your account?”

  Unlike Horatio, Colonel Ferguson preferred to shop as expeditiously as possible. He put down the exact amount, thrust his parcel into his pocket, and with a brisk “Good morning” left, closing the door carefully behind him. Fire fighting must be a new experience for a man like Dobbie, and he did not look as if he were a fellow who was used to discomfort. He was making a good job of it all the same, the Colonel thought; it was wonderful the way these wardens had tackled the crisis. He crossed the street and turned up towards the park. It would be deserted, but he meant to round the Serpentine for it would be fatal to give up exercise just because this raw, damp, miserable climate took away the heart for it. He had never had to force himself to walk in Lausanne; there he had known the hills from the first wild clump of chicory up to the highest hepaticas, but today he would be as shivery when he got indoors as he was now, having just had breakfast. It was not age, he could swear it was not age. Why, he had felt as gay and young in Lausanne as if he had been fourteen, with life—and the East—still in front of him.