and Daisy were once more closeted together, typing out from the entries in the ledgers.
Rose was becoming weary of her new life. All her initial enthusiasm had gone, bit by bit. She longed to have a bed of her own again and decent meals. Her pin-money had gone quickly on items which Daisy had considered frivolous, such as an expensive vase for flowers and even more expensive flowers to put in it. Their wages had melted away on meals at Lyons, cosmetics, perfume that Rose felt she must have and new gloves and various other little luxuries. The winter weather was horrible.
The pin-money she had brought to her new life had run out and their combined wages did not allow them any luxuries. She was tired of cooking cheap meals on the gas ring in their room, tired of saving pennies for the gas meters, weary of the biting cold in this seemingly endless winter. She found that although Daisy did not like to read, she loved being read to, and so that was the way they passed most of their evenings.
Her clothes were beginning to smell of cooking, and regular sponging down with benzene did not seem to help much. Their underclothes had to be washed out in the bathroom and then hung on a rack before the gas fire. The sweat-pads from their blouses and dresses took ages to dry.
One morning Rose discovered a spot on her forehead. She could never remember having any spots on her face before.
She could only admire Daisy’s fortitude. Daisy never complained. Rose did not know that Daisy, after her initial rush of gratitude after their escape, was as miserable as she was.
Daisy was every bit as conscious of the rigid English class distinctions as Rose and was afraid that any complaint from her would be treated as the typical whining of the lower classes.
One morning, as they arrived for work, it began to snow. Small little flakes at first and then great feathery ones already speckled with the dirty soot of London.
By lunchtime, it was a raging blizzard.
“We won’t even be able to get along to Lyons for lunch,” mourned Rose, “and my back hurts with all this useless work.”
“There’s a pie shop round the corner,” said Daisy.
“Oh, would you be a dear and get us something?” said Rose. “I’ll see if there is anywhere here I can make tea. I think there is a kitchen upstairs next to the executive offices. Take my umbrella.”
Daisy struggled out into the whirling snow. She bought two mutton pies and hurried back towards the office. A news-vendor was shouting, “Society murder. Read all about it!”
Daisy bought a paper and breathed a sigh of relief when she entered the bank and shut the door on the white hell outside.
“I’ve got tea,” said Rose when she entered the room. “There was no one upstairs. I’ll wait until they have gone this evening and smuggle the tea things back. Mrs Danby won’t see me. She never even comes near us any more, and Captain Cathcart must have forgotten that we wanted real work.”
“I’ve got the pies. Look at me coat,” said Daisy. “Soaked already. We’ll never get home in this.”
“Home,” echoed Rose bleakly, thinking of that awful room.
“Look, I bought the
Rose took a bite of the pie. “This is really good. We should buy another two to take home.”
“I say!” exclaimed Daisy. “You’ll never believe who’s gone and got himself murdered.”
“Who?”
“That Freddy Pomfret. Remember him? We met him at Telby Castle last year.”
“So we did,” said Rose.
“It says here, ‘Man-about-town, the Honourable Mr Frederick Pomfret, was found shot dead in his town flat in St James.’”
As Daisy read on, Rose furrowed her brow. She remembered Freddy as vacuous and silly with his white face and patent leather hair. Hardly the man to incite anyone to murder him. But there was something else, something about Freddy nagging at the back of her mind.
At the end of the working day, they went out into a white world. London had gone to sleep under a thick blanket of snow.
“Let’s see if the underground is working,” said Daisy. “The Central London Railway goes to Holborn and then we can walk home.”
They stumbled through white drifts to King William Street Station and took the hydraulic lift down to the platforms. Trains consisted of three carriages hauled by electric locomotives. These were powered by the largest power-generating station in the country. The coaches were known as padded cells and they were long and narrow with high-backed cushioned seats and no windows. Gatemen stood on platforms at the end of each carriage to call out the names of the stations.
They paid the two pennies each fare and waited in the crush until they managed to get on ‘the tube’, as it was known.
“We should have travelled like this before,” said Rose. “The omnibus is so slow. Why didn’t we think about it?”
“I did,” said Daisy. “But it frightens me to be so far underground with all them buildings on top of us.”
They got out at Holborn Station. The snow, which had eased a little when they left the office, had returned in all its ferocity. By the time they reached the hostel, they were cold and their clothes were soaked.
Rose searched in her purse. “I have no pennies left. What about you?”
“No, but I’ve found a way to fix it.” Daisy crouched over the meter with an army knife bristling with gadgets and fiddled about with a thin blade until a penny rattled down and then another.
“Oh, Daisy, that’s robbery.”
“That’s warmth,” said Daisy cheerfully, dropping the coins back in, turning the dial and then lighting the small gas fire. They took off their wet clothes. Rose still felt self-conscious at disrobing in front of Daisy, but Daisy had no such qualms. She stripped naked and then wrapped herself in a wool dressing-gown and began to hang her clothes in front of the fire. Rose followed suit.
“Have we anything to eat?” she asked.
“’Fraid not,” said Daisy gloomily.
There was a knock at the door. Rose opened it a crack. Miss Harringey stood there. “A gentleman has called,” she said, her voice heavy with disapproval.
“Did he give a name?”
“A Mr Jarvis.”
“Tell him to wait and I will be down directly.”
Rose scrambled into dry clothes, leaving off the misery of stays, and hurried down the stairs.
Mr Jarvis stood in the hallway carrying a basket. “Mr Jarvis! How on earth did you get here in this dreadful weather?” asked Rose.
“I rode one of the big horses, one of the ones that pull the fourgon. Here are some things for you” – he proffered the basket – “and here is a letter. Please do not say anything. I think the lady of the house is listening. Good evening.”
He opened the street door and mounted the large shire-horse which was tethered outside, by dint of scraping snow off the low wall outside the house and using it as a mounting block.
Rose hurried upstairs. In the room, she opened the letter. It was from her mother, Lady Polly, to say that they had returned from Nice and would Rose please stop all this nonsense and come home.
“What’s in the basket?” asked Daisy.
Rose lifted the cloth cover and gave a delighted cry. “Food! Oh, do look, Daisy. Game pie and wine and biscuits, cake, tea, coffee, and he’s even put in a bottle of milk. And there are other things.”
Daisy laid two plates and two cups on the table along with the cheap knives and forks they had purchased. “We’ll need to drink the wine out of teacups.”
“We haven’t a corkscrew.”
“I have,” said Daisy, producing the knife again and twisting a corkscrew out from among the many implements.
As their clothes steamed and the room warmed up, both began to feel more cheerful. “I know what it was,” said Rose suddenly.
