A Clergyman's Daughter Read online

head to foot with fatigue, she could not sleep. She was unnerved

  and full of forebodings. The atmosphere of this vile place brought

  home to her more vividly than before the fact that she was helpless

  and friendless and had only six shillings between herself and the

  streets. Moreover, as the night wore on the house grew noisier and

  noisier. The walls were so thin that you could hear everything

  that was happening. There were bursts of shrill idiotic laughter,

  hoarse male voices singing, a gramophone drawling out limericks,

  noisy kisses, strange deathlike groans, and once or twice the

  violent rattling of an iron bed. Towards midnight the noises began

  to form themselves into a rhythm in Dorothy's brain, and she fell

  lightly and unrestfully asleep. She was woken about a minute

  later, as it seemed, by her door being flung open, and two dimly

  seen female shapes rushed in, tore every scrap of clothing from her

  bed except the sheets, and rushed out again. There was a chronic

  shortage of blankets at 'Mary's', and the only way of getting

  enough of them was to rob somebody else's bed. Hence the term

  'smash and grab raiders'.

  In the morning, half an hour before opening time, Dorothy went to

  the nearest public library to look at the advertisements in the

  newspapers. Already a score of vaguely mangy-looking people were

  prowling up and down, and the number swelled by ones and twos till

  there were no less than sixty. Presently the doors of the library

  opened, and in they all surged, racing for a board at the other end

  of the reading-room where the 'Situations Vacant' columns from

  various newspapers had been cut out and pinned up. And in the wake

  of the job-hunters came poor old bundles of rags, men and women

  both, who had spent the night in the streets and came to the

  library to sleep. They came shambling in behind the others,

  flopped down with grunts of relief at the nearest table, and pulled

  the nearest periodical towards them; it might be the Free Church

  Messenger, it might be the Vegetarian Sentinel--it didn't matter

  what it was, but you couldn't stay in the library unless you

  pretended to be reading. They opened their papers, and in the same

  instant fell asleep, with their chins on their breasts. And the

  attendant walked round prodding them in turn like a stoker poking a

  succession of fires, and they grunted and woke up as he prodded

  them, and then fell asleep again the instant he had passed.

  Meanwhile a battle was raging round the advertisement board,

  everybody struggling to get to the front. Two young men in blue

  overalls came running up behind the others, and one of them put his

  head down and fought his way through the crowd as though it had

  been a football scrum. In a moment he was at the board. He turned

  to his companion: ''Ere we are, Joe--I got it! "Mechanics wanted--

  Locke's Garage, Camden Town." C'm on out of it!' He fought his

  way out again, and both of them scooted for the door. They were

  going to Camden Town as fast as their legs would carry them. And

  at this moment, in every public library in London, mechanics out of

  work were reading that identical notice and starting on the race

  for the job, which in all probability had already been given to

  someone who could afford to buy a paper for himself and had seen

  the notice at six in the morning.

  Dorothy managed to get to the board at last, and made a note of

  some of the addresses where 'cook generals' were wanted. There

  were plenty to choose from--indeed, half the ladies in London

  seemed to be crying out for strong capable general servants. With

  a list of twenty addresses in her pocket, and having had a

  breakfast of bread and margarine and tea which cost her threepence,

  Dorothy set out to look for a job, not unhopefully.

  She was too ignorant as yet to know that her chances of finding

  work unaided were practically nil; but the next four days gradually

  enlightened her. During those four days she applied for eighteen

  jobs, and sent written applications for four others. She trudged

  enormous distances all through the southern suburbs: Clapham,

  Brixton, Dulwich, Penge, Sydenham, Beckenham, Norwood--even as far

  as Croydon on one occasion. She was haled into neat suburban

  drawing-rooms and interviewed by women of every conceivable type--

  large, chubby, bullying women, thin, acid, catty women, alert

  frigid women in gold pince-nez, vague rambling women who looked as

  though they practised vegetarianism or attended spiritualist

  seances. And one and all, fat or thin, chilly or motherly, they

  reacted to her in precisely the same way. They simply looked her

  over, heard her speak, stared inquisitively, asked her a dozen

  embarrassing and impertinent questions, and then turned her down.

  Any experienced person could have told her how it would be. In her

  circumstances it was not to be expected that anyone would take the

  risk of employing her. Her ragged clothes and her lack of

  references were against her, and her educated accent, which she did

  not know how to disguise, wrecked whatever chances she might have

  had. The tramps and cockney hop-pickers had not noticed her

  accent, but the suburban housewives noticed it quickly enough, and

  it scared them in just the same way as the fact that she had no

  luggage had scared the landladies. The moment they had heard her

  speak, and spotted her for a gentlewoman, the game was up. She

  grew quite used to the startled, mystified look that came over

  their faces as soon as she opened her mouth--the prying, feminine

  glance from her face to her damaged hands, and from those to the

  darns in her skirt. Some of the women asked her outright what a

  girl of her class was doing seeking work as a servant. They

  sniffed, no doubt, that she had 'been in trouble'--that is, had an

  illegitimate baby--and after probing her with their questions they

  got rid of her as quickly as possible.

  As soon as she had an address to give Dorothy had written to her

  father, and when on the third day no answer came, she wrote again,

  despairingly this time--it was her fifth letter, and four had gone

  unanswered--telling him that she must starve if he did not send her

  money at once. There was just time for her to get an answer before

  her week at 'Mary's' was up and she was thrown out for not paying

  her rent.

  Meanwhile, she continued the useless search for work, while her

  money dwindled at the rate of a shilling a day--a sum just

  sufficient to keep her alive while leaving her chronically hungry.

  She had almost given up the hope that her father would do anything

  to help her. And strangely enough her first panic had died down,

  as she grew hungrier and the chances of getting a job grew remoter,

  into a species of miserable apathy. She suffered, but she was not

  greatly afraid. The sub-world into which she was descending seemed

  less terrible now that it was nearer.

  The autumn weather, though fine, was growing colder. Each day the

  sun, fighti
ng his losing battle against the winter, struggled a

  little later through the mist to dye the house-fronts with pale

  aquarelle colours. Dorothy was in the streets all day, or in the

  public library, only going back to 'Mary's' to sleep, and then

  taking the precaution of dragging her bed across the door. She had

  grasped by this time that 'Mary's' was--not actually a brothel, for

  there is hardly such a thing in London, but a well-known refuge of

  prostitutes. It was for that reason that you paid ten shillings a

  week for a kennel not worth five. Old 'Mary' (she was not the

  proprietress of the house, merely the manageress) had been a

  prostitute herself in her day, and looked it. Living in such a

  place damned you even in the eyes of Lambeth Cut. Women sniffed

  when you passed them, men took an offensive interest in you. The

  Jew on the corner, the owner of Knockout Trousers Ltd, was the

  worst of all. He was a solid young man of about thirty, with

  bulging red cheeks and curly black hair like astrakhan. For twelve

  hours a day he stood on the pavement roaring with brazen lungs that

  you couldn't get a cheaper pair of trousers in London, and

  obstructing the passers-by. You had only to halt for a fraction of

  a second, and he seized you by the arm and bundled you inside the

  shop by main force. Once he got you there his manner became

  positively threatening. If you said anything disparaging about his

  trousers he offered to fight, and weak-minded people bought pairs

  of trousers in sheer physical terror. But busy though he was, he

  kept a sharp eye open for the 'birds', as he called them; and

  Dorothy appeared to fascinate him beyond all other 'birds'. He had

  grasped that she was not a prostitute, but living at 'Mary's', she

  must--so he reasoned--be on the very verge of becoming one. The

  thought made his mouth water. When he saw her coming down the

  alley he would post himself at the corner, with his massive chest

  well displayed and one black lecherous eye turned inquiringly upon

  her ('Are you ready to begin yet?' his eye seemed to be saying),

  and, as she passed, give her a discreet pinch on the backside.

  On the last morning of her week at 'Mary's', Dorothy went downstairs

  and looked, with only a faint flicker of hope, at the slate in the

  hallway where the names of people for whom there were letters were

  chalked up. There was no letter for 'Ellen Millborough'. That

  settled it; there was nothing left to do except to walk out into the

  street. It did not occur to her to do as every other woman in the

  house would have done--that is, pitch a hard-up tale and try to

  cadge another night's lodging rent free. She simply walked out of

  the house, and had not even the nerve to tell 'Mary' that she was

  going.

  She had no plan, absolutely no plan whatever. Except for half an

  hour at noon when she went out to spend threepence out of her last

  fourpence on bread and margarine and tea, she passed the entire day

  in the public library, reading weekly papers. In the morning she

  read the Barber's Record, and in the afternoon Cage Birds. They

  were the only papers she could get hold of, for there were always

  so many idlers in the library that you had to scramble to get hold

  of a paper at all. She read them from cover to cover, even the

  advertisements. She pored for hours together over such

  technicalities as How to strop French Razors, Why the Electric

  Hairbrush is Unhygienic, Do Budgies thrive on Rapeseed? It was the

  only occupation that she felt equal to. She was in a strange

  lethargic state in which it was easier to interest herself in How

  to strop French Razors than in her own desperate plight. All fear

  had left her. Of the future she was utterly unable to think; even

  so far ahead as tonight she could barely see. There was a night in

  the streets ahead of her, that was all she knew, and even about

  that she only vaguely cared. Meanwhile there were Cage Birds and

  the Barber's Record; and they were, strangely, absorbingly

  interesting.

  At nine o'clock the attendant came round with a long hooked pole

  and turned out the gaslights, the library was closed. Dorothy

  turned to the left, up the Waterloo Road, towards the river. On

  the iron footbridge she halted for a moment. The night wind was

  blowing. Deep banks of mist, like dunes, were rising from the

  river, and, as the wind caught them, swirling north-eastward across

  the town. A swirl of mist enveloped Dorothy, penetrating her thin

  clothes and making her shudder with a sudden foretaste of the

  night's cold. She walked on and arrived, by the process of

  gravitation that draws all roofless people to the same spot, at

  Trafalgar Square.

  CHAPTER 3

  1

  [SCENE: Trafalgar Square. Dimly visible through the mist, a dozen

  people, Dorothy among them, are grouped about one of the benches

  near the north parapet.]

  CHARLIE [singing]: 'Ail Mary, 'ail Mary, 'a-il Ma-ary--[Big Ben

  strikes ten.]

  SNOUTER [mimicking the noise]: Ding dong, ding dong! Shut your

  ---- noise, can't you? Seven more hours of it on this ---- square

  before we get the chance of a setdown and a bit of sleep! Cripes!

  MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Non sum qualis eram boni sub regno

  Edwardi! In the days of my innocence, before the Devil carried me

  up into a high place and dropped me into the Sunday newspapers--

  that is to say when I was Rector of Little Fawley-cum-Dewsbury. . . .

  DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy, WITH my willy willy--

  MRS WAYNE: Ah, dearie, as soon as I set eyes on you I knew as you

  was a lady born and bred. You and me've known what it is to come

  down in the world, haven't we, dearie? It ain't the same for us as

  what it is for some of these others here.

  CHARLIE [singing]: 'Ail Mary, 'ail Mary, 'a-il Ma-ary, full of

  grace!

  MRS BENDIGO: Calls himself a bloody husband, does he? Four pound

  a week in Covent Garden and 'is wife doing a starry in the bloody

  Square! Husband!

  MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Happy days, happy days! My ivied church

  under the sheltering hillside--my red-tiled Rectory slumbering

  among Elizabethan yews! My library, my vinery, my cook, house-

  parlourmaid and groom-gardener! My cash in the bank, my name in

  Crockford! My black suit of irreproachable cut, my collar back to

  front, my watered silk cassock in the church precincts. . . .

  MRS WAYNE: Of course the one thing I DO thank God for, dearie, is

  that my poor dear mother never lived to see this day. Because if

  she ever HAD of lived to see the day when her eldest daughter--as

  was brought up, mind you, with no expense spared and milk straight

  from the cow. . . .

  MRS BENDIGO: HUSBAND!

  GINGER: Come on, less 'ave a drum of tea while we got the chance.

  Last we'll get tonight--coffee shop shuts at 'ar-parse ten.

  THE KIKE: Oh Jesus! This bloody cold's gonna kill me! I ain't

  got nothing on under my trousers. Oh Je-e-e-EEZE!

  CHA
RLIE [singing]: 'Ail Mary, 'ail Mary--

  SNOUTER: Fourpence! Fourpence for six ---- hours on the bum! And

  that there nosing sod with the wooden leg queering our pitch at

  every boozer between Aldgate and the Mile End Road. With 'is ----

  wooden leg and 'is war medals as 'e bought in Lambeth Cut!

  Bastard!

  DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy, WITH my willy willy--

  MRS BENDIGO: Well, I told the bastard what I thought of 'im,

  anyway. 'Call yourself a man?' I says. 'I've seen things like you

  kep' in a bottle at the 'orspital,' I says. . . .

  MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Happy days, happy days! Roast beef and

  bobbing villagers, and the peace of God that passeth all

  understanding! Sunday mornings in my oaken stall, cool flower

  scent and frou-frou of surplices mingling in the sweet corpse-laden

  air! Summer evenings when the late sun slanted through my study

  window--I pensive, boozed with tea, in fragrant wreaths of

  Cavendish, thumbing drowsily some half-calf volume--Poetical Works

  of William Shenstone, Esq., Percy's Reliques of Ancient English

  Poetry, J. Lempriere, D.D., professor of immoral theology . . .

  GINGER: Come on, 'oo's for that drum of riddleme-ree? We got the

  milk and we got the tea. Question is, 'oo's got any bleeding

  sugar?

  DOROTHY: This cold, this cold! It seems to go right through you!

  Surely it won't be like this all night?

  MRS BENDIGO: Oh, cheese it! I 'ate these snivelling tarts.

  CHARLIE: Ain't it going to be a proper perisher, too? Look at the

  perishing river mist creeping up that there column. Freeze the

  fish-hooks off of ole Nelson before morning.

  MRS WAYNE: Of course, at the time that I'm speaking of we still

  had our little tobacco and sweetstuff business on the corner,

  you'll understand. . . .

  THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-e-EEZE! Lend's that overcoat of yours, Ginger.

  I'm bloody freezing!

  SNOUTER: ---- double-crossing bastard! P'raps I won't bash 'is

  navel in when I get a 'old of 'im!

  CHARLIE: Fortunes o' war, boy, fortunes o' war. Perishing Square

  tonight--rumpsteak and kip on feathers tomorrow. What else d'you

  expect on perishing Thursday?

  MRS BENDIGO: Shove up, Daddy, shove up! Think I want your lousy

  old 'ed on my shoulder--me a married woman?

  MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: For preaching, chanting, and intoning I

  was unrivalled. My Lift up your Hearts' was renowned throughout

  the diocese. All styles I could do you, High Church, Low Church,

  Broad Church and No Church. Throaty Anglo-Cat Warblings, straight

  from the shoulder muscular Anglican, or the adenoidal Low Church

  whine in which still lurk the Houyhnhnm-notes of neighing chapel

  elders. . . .

  DEAFIE [singing]: WITH my willy willy--

  GINGER: Take your 'ands off that bleeding overcoat, Kikie. You

  don't get no clo'es of mine while you got the chats on you.

  CHARLIE [singing]:

  As pants the 'art for cooling streams,

  When 'eated in the chase--

  MRS MCELLIGOT [in her sleep]: Was 'at you, Michael dear?

  MRS BENDIGO: It's my belief as the sneaking bastard 'ad another

  wife living when 'e married me.

  MR TALLBOYS [from the roof of his mouth, stage curate-wise,

  reminiscently]: If any of you know cause of just impediment

  why these two persons should not be joined together in holy

  matrimony . . .

  THE KIKE: A pal! A bloody pal! And won't lend his bloody

  overcoat!

  MRS WAYNE: Well, now as you've mentioned it, I must admit as I

  never WAS one to refuse a nice cup of tea. I know that when our

  poor dear mother was alive, pot after pot we used to . . .

  NOSY WATSON [to himself, angrily]: Sod! . . . Gee'd into it

  and then a stretch all round. . . . Never even done the bloody

  job. . . . Sod!

  DEAFIE [singing]: WITH my willy willy--

  MRS MCELLIGOT [half asleep]: DEAR Michael. . . . He was real