Dougal left fourpence on the telephone table and went up to his new room at the very top of Miss Frierne’s house.
He sat down among his belongings, which were partly in and partly out of his zipper bag. There was a handsome brass bedstead with a tall railed head along which was gathered a muslin curtain. It was the type of bed which was becoming fashionable again, but Miss Frierne did not know this. It was the only item of furniture in the room for which she had apologized; she had explained it was only temporary and would soon be replaced by a new single divan. Dougal detected in this little speech a good intention, repeated to each newcomer, which never came off. He assured her that he liked the brass bed with its railings and knobs. Could he remove, perhaps, the curtain? Miss Frierne said, no, it needed the bit of curtain, and before long would be replaced by a single divan. But no, Dougal said, I like the bed. Miss Frierne smiled to herself that she had found such an obliging tenant. ‘Really, I do like it,’ Dougal said, ‘more than anything else in the room.’
The two windows in the room pleased him, looking out on a lot of sky and down to Miss Frierne’s long lawn and those of her neighbours; beyond them lay the back gardens belonging to the opposite street of houses, but these were neglected, overgrown and packed with junk and sheds for motor-bicycles, not neat like Miss Frierne’s and the row of gardens on the near side, with their borders and sometimes a trellis bower.
He saw a little door, four feet high, where the attic ceiling met the wall. He opened it, and found a deep long cupboard using up the remainder of the roof-slope. Having stooped to enter the cupboard, Dougal found he could almost walk in it. He came out, pleased with his fairly useless cave, and started putting away his shirts in the dark painted chest of drawers. He stroked the ceiling, that part of it which sloped down within reach. Some white powdery distemper came off on his fingers. He went downstairs to telephone to Jinny. Her number was engaged.
The linoleum in his room was imitation parquetry and shone with polish. Two small patterned mats and one larger one made islands on the wide floor. Dougal placed a pile of his clothes on each island, then hauled it over the polished floor to the wardrobe. He unlocked his typewriter and arranged his belongings, as all his student-life in Edinburgh Jinny used to do for him. One day in their final year, at Leith docks, watching the boats, she had said: ‘I must bend over the rails. I’ve got that indigestion.’ Already, at this first stage in her illness, he had shown no sympathy. ‘Jinny, everyone will think you’re drunk. Stand up.’ In the course of her illness she stopped calling him a crooked fellow, and instead became bitter, calling him sometimes a callous swine or a worm. ‘I hate sickness, not you,’ he had said. Still, at that time he had forced himself to visit her sometimes in the Infirmary. He got his degree, and was thought of as frivolous in the pubs, not being a Nationalist. Jinny’s degree was delayed a year, he meanwhile spending that year in France and finally London, where he lived in Earls Court and got through his money waiting for Jinny.
For a few weeks he spent much of his time in the flat of the retired actress and singer, Maria Cheeseman, in Chelsea, who had once shared a stage with an aunt of Jinny’s.
He went to meet Jinny at last at King’s Cross. She had bright high cheek-bones and brown straight hair. They could surely be married in six months’ time. ‘I’ve to go into hospital again,’ said Jinny. ‘I’ve to have an operation this time. I’ve a letter to a surgeon in the Middlesex Hospital.
‘You’ll come and visit me there?’ she said.
‘No, quite honestly, I won’t,’ Dougal said. ‘You know how I feel about places of sickness. I’ll write to you every day.’
She got a room in Kensington, went into hospital two weeks later, was discharged on a Saturday, and wrote to tell Dougal not to meet her at the hospital and she was glad he had got the job in Peckham, and was writing Miss Cheeseman’s life, and she hoped he would do well in life.
‘Jinny. I’ve found a room in Peckham. I can come over and see you if you like.’
‘I’ve left some milk on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’
Dougal tried on one of his new white shirts and tilted the mirror on the dressing-table to see himself better. Already it seemed that Peckham brought out something in him that Earls Court had overlooked. He left the room and descended the stairs. Miss Frierne came out of her front room.
‘Have you got everything you want, Mr Douglas?’
‘You and I,’ said Dougal, ‘are going to get on fine.’
‘You’ll do well at Meadows Meade, Mr Douglas. I’ve had fellows before from Meadows Meade.’
‘Just call me Dougal,’ said Dougal.
‘Douglas,’ she said, pronouncing it ‘Dooglass’, ‘No,
‘Oh, Dougal Douglas. Dougal’s the first name.’
‘That’s right, Miss Frierne. What buses do you take for Kensington?’
‘It’s my one secret weakness,’ he said to Jinny.
‘I can’t help it,’ he said. ‘Sickness kills me.
‘Be big,’ he said, ‘be strong. Be a fine woman, Jinny.
‘Understand me,’ he said, ‘try to understand my fatal flaw. Everybody has one.’
‘It’s time I had my lie-down,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring you when I’m stronger.’
‘Ring me tomorrow.’
‘All right, tomorrow.’
‘What time?’
‘I don’t know. Some time.’
‘You would think we had never been lovers, you speak so coldly,’ he said. ‘Ring me at eleven in the morning. Will you be awake by then?’
‘All right, eleven.’ He leaned one elbow on the back of his chair. She was unmoved. He smiled intimately. She closed her eyes.
‘You haven’t asked for my number,’ he said.
‘All right, leave your number.’
He wrote it on a bit of paper and returned south of the river to Peckham. There, as Dougal entered the saloon bar of the Morning Star, Nelly Mahone crossed the road in her rags crying, ‘Praise be to the Lord, almighty and eternal, wonderful in the dispensation of all his works, the glory of the faithful and the life of the just.’ As Dougal bought his drink, Humphrey Place came up and spoke to him. Dougal recalled that Humphrey Place, refrigerator engineer of Freeze-eezy’s, was living in the room below his and had been introduced to him by Miss Frierne that morning. Afterwards Miss Frierne had told Dougal, ‘He is dean and go-ahead.’
Chapter 3
‘WHAT d’you mean by different?’ Mavis said.
‘I don’t know. He’s just different. Says funny things. You have to laugh,’ Dixie said.
‘He’s just an ordinary chap,’ Humphrey said. ‘Nice chap. Ordinary.’
But Dixie could see that Humphrey did not mean it. Humphrey knew that Douglas was different. Humphrey had been talking a good deal about Douglas during the past fortnight and how they sat up talking late at Miss Frierne’s.
‘Better fetch him here to tea one night.’ said Dixie’s stepfather. ‘Let’s have a look at him.’
‘He’s too high up in the Office,’ Mavis said.
‘He’s on research,’ Dixie said. ‘He’s brainy, supposed to be. But he’s friendly, I’ll say that.’
‘He’s no snob,’ said Humphrey.
‘He hasn’t got nothing to be a snob about,’ said Dixie.
‘Anything,’ said Dixie, ‘to be a snob about. He’s no better than us just because he’s twenty-three and got a good job.’
‘But he’s got to do his overtime for nothing,’ Mavis said.
‘He’s the same as what we are,’ Dixie said.
‘You said he was different.’
