“Don’t buckle my rail, lads,” the landlord beseeched. Sweat started out of his forehead at the strain of keeping up with Edna’s drinks order. “Can you make a Harvey Wallbanger?” Edna asked him.
There were more than thirty women now packed into the Snug, perched on each other’s knees, flicking peanuts at each other, rocking and shrieking with laughter, and addressing the odd shout of encouragement to Poor Mrs. Wilmot. The younger women had stripped off their overalls and bundled them into their shopping bags, and were heading back from the Ladies; “Hutch up, hutch up,” they cried. “Where’s Edna with them drinks, I don’t know, taken the kitty and run off to Monte Carlo!”
“Course,” said Mrs. Wilmot under her breath, “it was good of Muriel to fetch me doings from the office. Course I’m not sure what I ought to have, I ought to have forms; course, I’m not sure.”
“Cheer up,” said Leslie-Anne, digging her hard in the ribs. “What are you mumbling on about now?”
Caught unawares, Mrs. Wilmot lurched forward and began to cough violently. With cries of alarm the women nearest to her slapped her on the back. “Here’s Edna with them drinks,” Maureen called, and Edna began to pass the order over their heads: “Six Pernods and blackcurrants, a port and lemon for Poor Mrs. Wilmot, seven Tia Marias and Cokes; and a Pina Colada for Yvonne.”
The noise level rose, the blue fug thickened and drifted, cocktail cherries rolled gaily across the tables. All around Poor Mrs. Wilmot, her colleagues were swaying from side to side on their chairs and stools, singing “Y Viva Espana.” As the debris around her accumulated, her timid little hand shot out and began to sort the cigarette packets, piling the cellophane and foil to one side; as the merriment grew, she looked about her, a swift glance from side to side; seeing herself unobserved, she seized up a packet, emptied it with one practised movement, and swept the cigarettes to the left of the table, while the papers went to the right. They had reached the third round of drinks by then, and her eyes were watering more than ever; never the centre of attention in her life before, she shook inwardly, her head nodded, she looked about her and showed her gums in a frequent wavering smile.
“Poor Mrs. Wilmot’s enjoying herself,” Leslie-Anne said, and returned to her argument with Edna; a friend from Dispatch had left to pursue matrimony full-time, and Edna said anyone was a flaming idiot who gave up a good packing job with three million out of work.
“Let’s hope she gets something out of him,” Edna said. “She got nothing out of the last one.”
“She did. She got shag-pile carpets. You had to take your shoes off when you went in her house.”
“Bugger that for a game of coconuts,” Edna said, unconvinced; it was an expression much in vogue among the rippers. “She took on that Norman when he was a cripple, and he used to sit in his wheelchair and hit her with his stick. She’s too soft-hearted. This’n’ll give her the run-around. He started giving his first wife’s stuff away before her body was out of the house. He went round after the funeral and proposed to Trudie Thorpe’s daughter.”
“He didn’t!”
“He did! Anyway, he gave her a sideboard.”
Muriel listened. This is how their affairs are managed, she thought. Lust, assault; the exchange of furniture. These women had life at their fingertips. She watched Edna, expostulating, tossing the fourth Export Lager down her throat. Her eyes shone, her cheeks shone, and even her bared teeth. I could practise Edna, Muriel thought, I could crack her in one night. She felt in her bag for Mrs. Wilmot’s papers, for the documents that tied her colleague to the working world. It was six-thirty now, and some of the men were beginning to drift homewards, carried out into the wet blue street by the jeers of their mates; a game of darts was in progress, and the women never thought of moving. Their faces were flushed and their eyes alight; Raquel’s mascara ran in black trails down her cheeks, and Leslie-Anne lurched from her chair and staggered into the Ladies to throw up. Edna came back from the bar with a handful of packets of crisps; she stuck another cigarette in her mouth. “Bugger these free-issue,” she said to Maureen. “Have one of these Balkan Sobranie. I’ve ordered us all pie and peas.”
Presently the pianist arrived. Freddo lurched through from the Public, a gangling Welshman with a solemn face and a loud check jacket. He leaned on the piano and somebody passed him up a pint. “I left my heart,” he sang, “in San Francisco.” Poor Mrs. Wilmot tipped back her head and laughed her stifled laugh. Suddenly she dived into her handbag and pulled out her wage packet; tore it open, and scattered its contents onto the table.
“Let it all go,” she wheezed, “what does it matter? Let’s enjoy ourselves while we can, girls! Let’s have one of them Bacardis, and get one for Muriel!”
It was half-past eight before the party broke up. Muriel took care of her bag; she took care of the expressions on her face, and of a few ideas that were beginning to run through her head. Mrs. Wilmot was half carried through the doors, supported under her elbows by Maureen and the green-faced Leslie-Anne. Outside on the pavement, with a cry of “oh, blimey,” Leslie-Anne dropped her and sped to the gutter, where she bent over and retched. It had been a lovely evening. Poor Mrs. Wilmot staggered back against the wall. Over her pinny she wore the long string of cultured pearls which her workmates had given her to remember them by. Her eyes closed. Her life was over, she thought: she was entirely slipping from view. She hummed softly to herself: “Where little cable cars, Climb halfway to the stars…” Soundless, she laughed.
As soon as she saw Mr. Kowalski and his house, Muriel knew it was where she must live. It was a big house, rambling and damp and dark; a permanent chill hung over the rooms. It had been condemned long ago, put on a schedule for demolition, but it seemed likely that before its turn came it would demolish itself, quietly crumbling and rotting away, with its wet rot and dry rot and its collection of parasites and moulds. There were only two lodgers, herself and a young girl, attracted by the card in the newsagent’s window, by the low rent and by the faint spidery foreign hand setting out the terms in violet ink.
Two days went by, after Mrs. Wilmot’s party. During those two days she practised; then she called on Mr. K.
She stood on the doorstep, presenting an altogether lacklustre appearance. “I hear you’ve got a room to rent,” she said. “I could do with a room.”
Mr. Kowalski stood inside the hallway. A low wattage but unshaded bulb cast upon his caller a mottled and flickering pattern of shadows. “Step where I can see you,” he ordered.
The visitor complied, turning up her sunken face. Her hands were blue with the raw autumn cold. Her mouse- coloured coat with its shawl collar reached almost to her ankles; her feet stuck out, monstrously huge in holey bedroom slippers.
“Here’s me stuff,” she said faintly. She indicated a bundle behind her, a battered old suitcase tied up with a plastic clothesline.
Mr. K. appraised her. His eyes were suspicious, sunk into a roll of fat. He stuck his thumbs into his belt, and glared at her in the swaying light; a meek and harmless creature, dowdy and friendless, and with a terrible cough. “Come in,” he said, falling back. “Give me your baggage to port. Come in, you poor old woman, come in.”
