I must be tolerant, Selina muttered, leaning over to roll up the covers again; if that wretched bulldog means so much to her, I must try not to let her see that I think it’s vulgar. I wonder how much she really gave for it?
Still, they had got the processed eggs, Miss Tippett reflected, as she tried to thread a piece of too short string through the buckle of the broken strap.
There was an ominous silence in the street. How easy it would be to sleep, at once, in her chair. Somehow Selina shook herself awake and pulled on her woollen gloves. With all her belongings under her arms, she looked like a porter. I ought to have an armlet, she thought, catching sight of herself in the mirror. How grotesque in the twentieth century, she almost said aloud, shuffling up the staircase to tap at Horatio’s door. “We are all going down to the shelter tonight, Mr. Rashleigh; I’ll come back for you as soon as I’ve taken along the blankets.”
Some obscure sound came from her boarder’s room. The usual ritual of objection, she supposed, only half listening to it. “Now, Mr. Rashleigh, you must remember it is not ourselves we have to consider. I need you to help me with the girls. They turn that basement topsy-turvy without our supervision.”
Dear, dear, how trying the old could be! Selina started downstairs, trying to keep her bundle from flicking each step and catching all the dust. The handle of her case cut into her fingers, but she could not make three separate journeys. How much longer could this go on, she wondered? Her neck was permanently stiff, and if she got much more rheumatic she would not be able to write up the ledger. Perhaps she was a fool to bother about Horatio and Cook. If the poor old gentleman wanted to die in his bed, it was really more sensible to leave him in peace; only then she would feel guilty all night, knowing that he was alone in that insecure attic. Nor was it really her affair if Cook had hysterics and screamed. Why did she go on dragging herself to the shelter, why didn’t she stay on in her own room and sleep? Sleep, she thought, it was a silver word, a smoky silver. At the thought of it her eyes half closed; and then, of course, the makeshift handle of her roll slipped and a pillow began to bulge. She stopped under the faint blue light on the landing to repack and rest.
Nobody had noticed in peacetime how steep the staircase was. It must be a very old house. The shadowy walls stretched above her head like cliffs, and then, as she turned the corner for the final flight, she seemed to be staggering into a mine. One of these nights somebody would trip over a rug and fall to the bottom. She stopped suddenly at the thought of it, feeling her knees catch against an invisible rope.
Mary was still fumbling at the front door. “Must have been the raid, yesterday, madam, it seems to stick.” She was in the new siren suit that had caused so much excitement in the kitchen, but the hood was too big and it had fallen back on her shoulders. She tugged the handle angrily and the door opened with a jerk. Selina dropped her bundle to switch off the light hastily, hoping no wardens were outside. “Timothy said this morning it must have shaken the frame.”
“Oh, it will take years to put things in order again,” Selina said, staring up into the dark sky. What wicked people those Germans were, always making wars. The headlines seemed continuous: the Somme, that nephew of Miss Humphries getting killed, victory, and now, in spite of all those Armistice Days (Miss Humphries had never missed being wheeled into the park for the Silence), it was happening a second time in an even more unpleasant way. I wonder what it is really all about, she thought; only it was a good thing not to have said this to Angelina! “Dear, dear,” she managed to switch her torch on in spite of her thick gloves, “we live in difficult times.”
“Cook says we should be ever so much safer in the Tube.”
“I’m sure we couldn’t be cosier or more secure than we are. It is very kind of Mr. Dobbie to let us come to his basement. And it is much healthier than being underground with thousands of people.”
Mary was unconvinced. She pulled her hood forward wistfully, looking like a gnome in a pantomime chorus. “Cook says they have games in the station and her sister met ever such a nice gentleman, he had a radio no bigger than a sandwich box. It was ever so gay.” She slammed the front door shut and picked up the tea basket.
There was just enough light to see the railings round the area of the neighbouring house. Selina felt her torch slip gradually from the hand that was trying to hold both it and the strap. If her blankets came unrolled in the filth of the street she would never feel like using them again. She had to walk so unnaturally too, taking tiny, stiff steps like a penguin, partly because it was so difficult to see and partly because of the weight dragging at both shoulders. I know I shall get sciatica next, she thought, for the cold pierced her coat as if it were not wool but porous blotting paper.
It was strange how seldom she had been out at night. There had been a ban on darkness in her youth, and Miss Humphries, of course, had never stirred out after sunset. How
