Cakes and Ale

Rosie took a cigarette and pensively tapped its end on the table, but she did not light it.

“We came back from the hospital just like he said. We walked back; I felt I couldn’t sit still in a cab, and I felt all dead inside me. I’d cried so much I couldn’t cry any more, and I was tired. Ted tried to comfort me, but I said: ‘For God’s sake shut up.’ After that he didn’t say any more. We had rooms in the Vauxhall Bridge Road then, on the second floor, just a sitting room and a bedroom, that’s why we’d had to take the poor little thing to the hospital; we couldn’t nurse her in lodgings; besides, the landlady said she wouldn’t have it, and Ted said she’d be looked after better at the hospital. She wasn’t a bad sort, the landlady; she’d been a tart and Ted used to talk to her by the hour together. She came up when she heard us come in.

“ ‘How’s the little girl to-night?’ she said.

“ ‘She’s dead,’ said Ted.

“I couldn’t say anything. Then she brought up the tea. I didn’t want anything, but Ted made me eat some ham. Then I sat at the window. I didn’t look round when the landlady came up to clear away, I didn’t want anyone to speak to me. Ted was reading a book; at least he was pretending to, but he didn’t turn the pages, and I saw the tears dropping on it. I kept on looking out of the window. It was the end of June, the twenty-eighth, and the days were long. It was just near the corner where we lived and I looked at the people going in and out of the public house and the trams going up and down. I thought the day would never come to an end; then all of a sudden I noticed that it was night. All the lamps were lit. There were an awful lot of people in the street. I felt so tired. My legs were like lead.

“ ‘Why don’t you light the gas?’ I said to Ted.

“ ‘Do you want it?’ he said.

“ ‘It’s no good sitting in the dark,’ I said.

“He lit the gas. He began smoking his pipe. I knew that would do him good. But I just sat and looked at the street. I don’t know what came over me. I felt that if I went on sitting in that room I’d go mad. I wanted to go somewhere where there were lights and people. I wanted to get away from Ted; no, not so much that, I wanted to get away from all that Ted was thinking and feeling. We only had two rooms. I went into the bedroom; the child’s cot was still there, but I wouldn’t look at it. I put on my hat and a veil and I changed my dress and then I went back to Ted.

“ ‘I’m going out,’ I said.

“Ted looked at me. I dare say he noticed I’d got my new dress on and perhaps something in the way I spoke made him see I didn’t want him.

“ ‘All right,’ he said.

“In the book he made me walk through the park, but I didn’t do that really. I went down to Victoria and I took a hansom to Charing Cross. It was only a shilling fare. Then I walked up the Strand. I’d made up my mind what I wanted to do before I came out. Do you remember Harry Retford? Well, he was acting at the Adelphi then, he had the second comedy part. Well, I went to the stage door, and sent up my name. I always liked Harry Retford. I expect he was a bit unscrupulous and he was rather funny over money matters, but he could make you laugh and with all his faults he was a rare good sort. You know he was killed in the Boer War, don’t you?”

“I didn’t. I only knew he’d disappeared and one never saw his name on playbills; I thought perhaps he’d gone into business or something.”

“No, he went out at once. He was killed at Ladysmith. After I’d been waiting a bit he came down and I said: ‘Harry, let’s go on the razzie to-night. What about a bit of supper at Romano’s?’ ’Not ’alf,’ he said. ‘You wait here and the minute the show’s over and I’ve got my make-up off I’ll come down.’ It made me feel better just to see him; he was playing a racing tout and it made me laugh just to look at him in his check suit and his billycock hat and his red nose. Well, I waited till the end of the show and then he came down and we walked along to Romano’s.

“ ‘Are you hungry?’ he said to me.

“ ‘Starving,’ I said; and I was.

“ ‘Let’s have the best,’ he said, ’and blow the expense. I told Bill Terris I was taking my best girl out to supper and I touched him for a couple of quid.’

“ ‘Let’s have champagne,’ I said.

“ ‘Three cheers for the widow!’ he said.

“I don’t know if you ever went to Romano’s in the old days. It was fine. You used to see all the theatrical people and the racing men, and the girls from the Gaiety used to go there. It was the place. And the Roman. Harry knew him and he came up to our table; he used to talk in funny broken English; I believe he put it on because he knew it made people laugh. And if someone he knew was down and out he’d always lend him a fiver.

“ ‘How’s the kid?’ said Harry.

“ ‘Better,’ I said.

“I didn’t want to tell him the truth. You know how funny men are; they don’t understand some things. I knew Harry would think it dreadful of me to come out to supper when the poor child was lying dead in the hospital. He’d be awfully sorry and all that, but that’s not what I wanted; I wanted to laugh.”

Rosie lit the cigarette that she had been playing with.

“You know how when a woman is having a baby, sometimes the husband can’t stand it any more and he goes out and has another woman. And then when she finds out, and it’s funny how often she does, she kicks up no end of a fuss; she says, that the man should go and do it just then, when she’s going through hell, well, it’s the limit. I always tell her not to be silly. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her, and isn’t terribly upset, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just nerves; if he weren’t so upset he wouldn’t think of it. I know, because that’s how I felt then.

“When we’d finished our supper Harry said: ‘Well, what about it?’

“ ‘What about what?’ I said.

“There wasn’t any dancing in those days and there was nowhere we could go.