Beowulf Page 9

  It began to grow dark. The squad on the rubbish cone worked without turning their heads, but it was like trying to move a hayrick with wooden pegs. Now and again the pile creaked until it seemed as if it would split and engulf everybody. Ruby grew colder and colder; she could not put her left hand in her pocket because of her bag; how lovely it would be if she were Selina, the owner of the Warming Pan, without a care in the world. The customers might be in the country now but they would come back. She knew Londoners. None of them would stand a country winter. Imagine now having to worry about the price of coal! Her merchant had advised her to buy more before it went up again, but where would she find the price of half a ton or even the space to store it? She undid three more buttons. She would stand for a moment, thinking of Connie, then she must hurry off and get Ed’s meal. “No use to mope,” he would say if she were late. “’Ow about a nice cup of tea?”

  A distant clock struck five. It was almost blackout time. Some rubble shifted and two of the diggers jumped cautiously to the ground. Tears rolled down Ruby’s cheeks as the details of her last visit crowded into her mind. Connie had been less buoyant than usual; she hadn’t bothered to turn the scarred side of her face away from the customers, as she usually did. “I may ’ave to shut,” she had said, popping the last pie on the tray into Ruby’s basket, “I can’t get no eels.” She had stared across the street as if the ocean were the other side of it, as puzzled as a lost puppy. “Go on, h’armistice will be ’ere and you’ll be dancing down the streets with us before you’ve ’ad time to turn round.” It made all the difference to Ed’s temper if he got the tea he liked, and Connie was probably working too hard now that she was alone. “It’s Alec I worry about,” she had answered, slamming the drawer of the cash register so that it sounded exactly like a tram, “’e’s so fond of the place, and sometimes I wonder if the Government don’t mean to close all us small people down.”

  Now Connie and the counter and the shop were all part of the fire-swept graveyard, this rubble that was neither khaki nor grey but a queer colour nobody had seen before, sweeping up to the ragged brick edge that marked the first shell of the still standing houses. A knot of blackout curtains flapped from a hole that had once been a window. Ruby sniffed and wiped her eyes; it was quiet now that the picks had stopped, all that she could hear was a newcomer’s violent sobbing. “I couldn’t get no fish so I went to my sister’s for the night. I wanted to match the teapot lid, the one that got smashed, and my sister said, ‘It isn’t right for you to be wandering round in all that blackout. You stay with me.’”

  The woman, she was in brown with a veil round her hat, was staring at the pit in front of her. “Mee ’ome,” she wept, and her sobs were small explosions in the silence, “mee ’ome, the boiler, the new blankets … and h’everything. ’Ow shall I ever tell Alec?”

  “Connie!” Ruby scolded in a shocked, reproachful voice, “you’re ’ere, you’re not missing and I’m standing around in the cold in mee black for you. Now don’t you go getting yourself all fussed up and upset, we’ll go to my place and have a good cup of tea. It won’t do you no good to ’ang around looking at them stones; come along,” she grabbed her by the arm, “and stop snivelling.”

  6

  ANGELINA FLUNG HER beret onto the hand-woven quilt. They had forgotten the curtains again. The war was a manifestation of governmental incompetence, but as a citizen she would cooperate with the blackout for it involved the masses as well as herself. There was “neither rhyme nor reason,” however, she quoted firmly, in darkening the room during the day. Just because she had forgotten to tie back the extra hangings, Ruby had left them shut. They were more trouble to fix in the evening but she wanted light, the whole world wanted light; if people were wise they would hoard every moment of it, as the silly bankers hoarded gold.

  The window looked out over chimney pots to a plane tree and a square of grey sky. Oh dear, Angelina thought as she twisted the cord round the hook, there is going to be trouble with Selina. The old dear simply has no imagination. Can you believe it, Ella, she had said only yesterday at the meeting, my partner never stops working and she’ll listen to a hard luck story when I should bundle the miscreants out of doors, but she simply does not know what the word “vision” means. I cannot make her grasp the first elements of proletarian economy. “Liquidate her,” Ella always joked, but you could not do that with the Tippett. Selina was classless; it was just that you could not make her see anything that was not, literally, in front of her nose. “Beowulf is a symbol for us, colleague” (“comrade” simply didn’t suit Selina), but no, all the answer she would ever get would be “I’m afraid that plaster dog of yours will pick up a lot of dust.”

  It would soon be time for their early cup of tea, the very nicest moment of the day, Angelina felt, after the dull routine of the morning was over and before they settled to the evening’s task. She looked up at the engagement list hanging over her chest of drawers, but there was nothing down until Saturday. She had always been what the French called “an amateur of meetings.” It gave her such an illusion of travel to hurry off, sometimes before supper, to a hall in some unheard-of suburb of London; you had little adventures, it was most instructive, and occasionally you made new friends. There was that nice schoolmistress whom Selina disliked so much, merely because the poor woman would drop in for tea whenever she was in their neighbourhood, and the extraordinary Czech, whose name they could never pronounce. It added such richness to life, making so many contacts, hearing and learning so many things even if occasionally something went wrong, like the night that odious lecturer had insisted upon coming back with her and they had had, literally, to turn him out at three o’clock in the morning.

  “Come in!” That must be Selina with the tea. She would not say a syllable about being annoyed, but simply create a grey, fluffy atmosphere of rigid disapproval. Perhaps it would be better to say something at once to make it burst? Only this was such a pleasant time, and what harm was there in putting Beowulf in the fireplace downstairs? It wasn’t as if he were alive and she wanted money for his food.

  Selina pushed open the door slowly, trying to balance her tray. Now why couldn’t her partner have opened it? Tea stains looked so ugly on a white cloth, and it was difficult, without spilling something, to turn the handle. “I’ve saved you a piece of jam tart,” she said, poking at the small table that was littered with pencils, phrase books, and a scarf. “If you could make room, Angelina,” she added patiently, steadying the two cups and saucers with their thin, blue dragons, which she always washed herself.

  “Thanks, dear.” Angelina swept the oddments up and dumped them, roughly, on the bed. The walls were the only tidy spaces in the room; and then Selina sat down, involuntarily, exactly opposite the poster that she disliked. A group of girls in summer dresses marched down its paper road, under an arch of Russian letters, waving flags. What a pity it was that Angelina had given up Esperanto! It had been a trial, of course, when she had insisted upon writing out the menus in that language, and she had brought that dreadful professor back from the Congress who had wanted them to put him up for the night; but though eccentric, it had been safe. Was it not a lesson to grumblers? A small evil may be removed and a greater one take its place. Every day now she expected to meet a detective measuring the picture, and to watch her colleague being hauled off to the police station, in that scarlet jumper that looked exactly like a railway flag, screaming things too, that must spell internment for the duration. I should be innocent, Selina reflected, but I should never, never, never survive the disgrace. This was no moment, however, to reopen their perennial quarrel.

  “Did they straighten matters out at the Food Office? What are they going to allow us?”

  “Everything’s O.K.” Angelina said briskly, “except the processed eggs. They say we are not entitled to them.”

  “But, Angelina, that’s ridiculous. Did you explain to them that half our business is in the off-the-premises cakes? This powder is horrible, but if
we are not allowed to buy new laid eggs any more, what are we going to do?”

  “They have no forms suitable for our case.”

  “But, dear …”

  “It’s your own fault, partner, for being honest. You never have used anything but farm eggs. I have told you over and over again that honesty and private enterprise are incompatible.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Selina said angrily, “whether it is public or private has nothing whatever to do with it. We always have bought direct from the farms since we started. Suddenly we are told that sales are forbidden, and I have no quarrel if it is really in the country’s interest. But the shop up the road has an allowance; they told me so this morning. And, my dear, they didn’t have to tell me, I could smell the stuff. But they are just as private as we are. Why shouldn’t we have our ration too?”

  “Because, dear, they have never used anything else but egg powder, and they have a record of their consumption during the past five years. It was stupid of you not to go in for all the counterfeits you could. I always told you so.”

  “It was not foolish to supply our customers or any human being with decent food.” Angelina, she knew, was simply being tiresome. “It is my belief that we owe this war to changes in our national diet. Don’t you tell me that our beef-and-beer grandfathers would have gone off to Munich with an umbrella!” Selina bit savagely into a second rock cake. Currants, she reflected, would be most difficult next season.

  “It is just because you will not understand” (poor darling, how little Selina realized that only her partner’s loyalty might stand between her and the lamp post at the end of the war) “the officials expect private traders to be dishonest. Still, I did what I could for you and there was a new, most charming girl at the Food Office. She went into the matter thoroughly. You see, there is no form printed that meets the case. Teashops have always used powder, and I suppose it occurred to no one in the Government that you had your special farm affiliations. The girl suggested that you write out the facts in triplicate and send it to the Board of Trade, and another, also in triplicate, to the Ministry of Food.”

  “But that will take time, and what about our cakes for Saturday?”

  “They thought we might get an answer in six months.” Angelina could not resist a slight tone of triumph; Beowulf’s reception still rankled.

  “Six months! It means we shall have to go out of business.”

  “Yes, dear.” Angelina sipped her tea contentedly.

  “But is there nothing we can do?” If they once shut down it would mean the end of everything, and whatever would they do about poor old Timothy?

  “Legally, we are finished. But don’t worry, Selina, I haven’t got your inhibitions. I came out of that office, I must confess, in a state of extreme anger. So this is how the Government treats the little man, I was saying to myself, when I saw Beowulf in the shop window. He is going to bring us luck, you know, though we must not be superstitious.” Giving up her little rituals had been Angelina’s greatest sacrifice to her new faith. “Well, as I was saying, I felt depressed and annoyed and there was this bulldog looking ever so forlorn in the middle of a lot of battered tables, and I thought, you darling, I am going to give you a home….”

  “Was he … terribly expensive?” Though if they had to close did it matter if they owed three hundred pounds or three?

  “No, dear, not at all as it turned out. I went in, and in spite of the shop smelling musty the owner seemed a very pleasant man. I told him what had happened at the Food Office and we got talking about capitalism and the war….”

  “Angelina! I do wish you would be careful. How do you know that he was not a plain-clothesman? You could get arrested under, what is that new statute, 18b?”

  “That man a bobby!” Angelina snorted. “Anything but. He said, ‘Now if you really are taking that dog and your partner is interested in egg powder, I’ve got a nice little lot here just come from salvage. I’ll tell you where I got it. Remember that warehouse that went up the other night? Well, these tins were in the cellar and there isn’t a mark on them. Like to have a look?’ I inspected them, Selina, and I bought the lot. Fortunately, I had the money on me for the gas and the fishmonger. It was fairly cheap and we’ve got a year’s supply at least.”

  “But is it legal?”

  “Probably not. I didn’t stop to inquire. I paid him in pound notes, and he is sending it along tomorrow. Be tween ourselves, I think it was because he was glad to get rid of the bulldog. It looked odd in his window and, of course, he did not understand the symbolism as we do.”

  “I hope it is all right,” Selina said doubtfully. “I won der if we ought to put a notice on the cakes.”

  “What about?”

  “Why, saying they are made with powder.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous; nobody expects to buy cakes made with eggs these days.”

  “Honesty is the best policy,” and Selina shook her head, “trickery does no good to man or beast.”

  “Honesty!” Angelina grunted. “And we have a plutocratic Government. Wait till after the war when we build up the ‘new world.’”

  “You don’t think, dear, that it would be better for us if we learn how to use the old?”

  “Selina!” Her partner gave a little scream. “Well, I’m not going to argue with you, there isn’t time, but give me another cup of tea. I feel positively Robin Hood.”

  Exactly, her colleague thought, remembering the lounge at Bournemouth; that was all the trouble. People did not want to be shaken up by such stampeding vitality. While she would not wish to question God’s purpose, it seemed a pity that no niche existed for her partner’s talents. In Angelina you saw an elderly Englishman, smoking a pipe and strolling about a plantation. Civilization constricted her. And though this energy made her doubly dear because it was so unlike one’s own placidity of life, it was disconcerting to strangers. “I can’t help being worried”—perhaps, now she had accepted Beowulf, Angelina would be sympathetic—“we are a whole quarter overdue and I don’t know where we are going to find the money.”

  Angelina wiped her lips after a final mouthful of jam tart. Cook certainly made beautiful pastry. Though how Selina could eat those heavy rock cakes she could not imagine; their very shape suggested stalactites. Her partner was dominated by her appetite, there was no other word for it. She, herself, never worried about food. “I don’t care what I eat,” was a favourite phrase of hers; it left one so free and unencumbered to face the future. Of course, a plump face like Selina’s was never meant for leadership. Oddly enough, it reminded her of Beowulf, the Tippett so resembled a ladylike and gentle bulldog. “Courage, comrade,” she saw herself in shorts, marching at the head of that column in the poster, “would it not be worth while to lose all this and gain New Britain?”

  “Perhaps, dear, but the rent? I suppose even in New Britain we should have to meet our liabilities?”

  “Oh, Selina, no! That’s what I am always trying to explain to you. There would be no shops because we should own everything in common and the State would be responsible. We shouldn’t have a worry in the world. Of course,” Angelina added as an afterthought, wondering how they would organize an equitable supply of pastry, “we shouldn’t have luxuries either.”

  “Do believe me,” Selina continued patiently, pouring out two more cups of tea, “it isn’t that I want to criticize your ideas; but if we shut the shop what is going to become of Cook and Timothy?”

  “Couldn’t we all do war work?”

  “You know perfectly well, partner, that nobody would employ Timothy. He can hardly lift a broom, let alone a shell. Cook is fifty and Ruby has a husband to look after. And we, ourselves, are trying to feed the public at a very difficult time. Poor old Mr. Rashleigh, for example, how would he get his dinner?”

  “Horatio is a man that has never been productive in his life. If he has got to be kept alive, and I sometimes question the necessity, let him go to an old men’s home.” “Well, it may be that in days
to come your prophecy will be realized, though I am sure I hope I never live to see it, for I like running the Warming Pan and I can’t think of anything to be ashamed about. But what worries me now, more than the raids, is how am I going to pay the rent with all our customers going to the country? It’s getting worse every day.”

  “The owners are probably extremely thankful that we are here to look after the place.” Poor Selina, her colleague thought, how she let a bourgeois environment dominate her! If the war only cleared away that horrible standard of “and I found a perfectly lovely chintz for my bedroom, dear,” it would have one good deed to its credit. Down with homes, Angelina wanted to cry; why do we waste life in houses? All she had ever wanted was to be free and have interesting work. Everything would have been so different if she had been a man. People would not have resented then the surge of vitality that infuriated them in petticoats. New, that was a word that meant what heaven, she supposed, signified to most women. Oh, let anything come, anything that would lift her above the level of this grey, this teashop world. She could not help feeling exhilarated when the guns began, though she tried to remember the babies in the Underground, the mean warrens about greater London. She picked up the shopping bag that she had tossed onto the floor and began to go through a roll of receipts tucked into a pocket of it.

  “If everybody leaves London,” Selina said, collecting the teacups, “perhaps they will declare a moratorium?” Crockery was another item. The price was going up by leaps and bounds, and there seemed no ending to the pieces that Ruby could chip. She fitted the milk jug cautiously behind the plates; they could have bought a whole set, she was sure, for what her partner had paid for that wretched dog.