Perhaps there would be no morning.
10
IT WAS A QUARTER to seven. The siren might sound at any moment, and then the wardens were particular about torches. However often she made the trip to Mr. Dobbie’s shop, it was still a nightmare to Selina. Either she fell off the pavement or she bumped into the grating of the house next door. There was something morally reprehensible about the blackout, and in spite of the raids she could not crush out a feeling in her heart that “they” had decreed it merely to upset daily life as much as possible.
Selina began to bundle up her blankets into an old rug-strap. Her bed was stripped under a much-washed counterpane, and this gave the room an air of transience; it made it, she decided, rather like a warehouse. She had never had enough money to furnish it properly, with “nice pieces” such as the bureau that Mrs. Spenser had once shown her, with smooth drawers and a cedar scent. People did not realize the high cost of neatness. Her almost obligatory uniform, the blouse and tweed coat and skirt, were far more expensive than the vague, elaborate clothes of many of her customers. The skirts would get shiny no matter how careful she was; she brushed them, wore the two suits alternate days, and had never been known to stain them, not even in the damson season, but they wore out with constant use; and so the curtains, which had really been faded before the war began, were never replaced and her cupboard could neither be shut nor opened in a hurry.
If she could have one really long night’s sleep in her own bed, she would not feel so depressed, Selina thought. It was doubtful if Mr. Dobbie’s basement, smelling of coffee and sacking, was really safer than the house; only she could not leave poor old Mr. Rashleigh alone in his attic, and there was no knowing how Cook and Mary would behave, left to their own devices. There were moments when she wished that they slept out, like Ruby. She pulled the strap tighter round her bed roll, and the worn leather came away in her hand.
Selina stood looking at her luggage, at the blankets and pillow sprawling over the carpet and the small, heavy suitcase with the documents and her other coat and skirt. She could not endure any more, she thought, there must be a limit to endurance, though there didn’t seem to be. Her arms would not work, and she could not think. Cook went downstairs heavily; it was a signal that she was late. If she did not hurry, Angelina, who was, alas, so restless, would get that creaking deck chair. She ought to find a piece of cord (her mind outlined the actions, as if by listing them they were accomplished) and knot the two bits of strap together, but she was too tired; she sat down in her chair again and remembered, for no particular reason, a day when Miss ‘Humphries had been particularly trying and one of the big black trunks had got mislaid at the station. She could see the palm tree now with the branch split in two behind the little wicker tea table and hear Miss Humphries storming at her, so loud that all the people in the lounge had stopped to listen: “Surely you know, Miss Tippett, that two and two make four? I thought you had counted the luggage at the station.”
It had been on the tip of Selina’s tongue to resign her position right away. She had heard a lady giggling, and everyone had stared at her. Why, it had been the moment, and it came back as if it were happening all over again, when she had first met Angelina. A figure had strode over from the desk, with such untidy hair, poor, dear Angelina, it was so characteristic of her, how much better she looked now that she had had it cropped, and had said, “Trunks, did I hear that you have lost a trunk? Those incompetent fools at the station did the same thing with my suitcase the other day, but the stationmaster ought to have been in the diplomatic service. I can’t tell you how kind he
