FullReads

The woman is lying in the doorway of the sitting-room, a small table with broken glass and wax flowers on the floor near her. She hides her face as she hears the light step.

“Did you hurt yourself? Can I help you?”

She drags her up, supports her into the bedroom and on to the unmade bed, and goes out into the kitchen. A look of weary disgust crosses her face as she sees the litter on the table. There is a knock at the back door, she opens it; three children peer cautiously in, keen-eyed London children with precocious knowledge of the darker sides of life. They enter holding one another’s hands. The eldest signs to the others to sit down, steals up the passage, peers through the slit of the door, and returns with a satisfied look and nods to the others.

“Your mother is not well, I am afraid,” the woman says timidly, she is nervous with children. The three pairs of eyes examine her slowly to see if she is honest.

“Our mother is in heaven!” says the boy as if repeating a formula.”That’s our stepmother, and she’s boozed!”

“Johnny!” calls the woman from the inner room. The boy’s face hardens into a sullen scowl, and she notices that he raises his hand involuntarily as if to ward off a blow, and that the smaller ones change colour and creep closer to one another. He goes to her–there is a murmur of voices.

“She sez I’m to get your tea!” he remarks as he comes out, and stirs up the dying fire.”Ain’t you ‘ad nothin’ since mornin’?”

She evades the question by asking: “Have you children had anything?”

“We had some bread with us.” He opens a purse.

“There’s nothin’ in it, an’ father gave’ er ‘arf a sovereign this mornin’!”

“I will give you some money if you come upstairs, and then you can get my tea.”

The boy is deft-handed, prematurely cute, with a trick of peering under his lashes. It annoys her, and she is relieved when she has had her tea and got rid of him. She is restless, upset, she feels this means moving again. What a weary round a working woman’s life is! She is so utterly alone. The silence oppresses her, the house seems filled with whispers; she cannot shake off this odd feeling, she felt it the first time she entered it; the rooms were pretty, and sh
e took them, but this idea is always with her.

She puts on her hat and goes out, down the half-finished road and into a lighted thoroughfare. Costers’ carts are drawn up alongside the pavement; husbands and wives with the inevitable perambulator are pricing commodities; girls are walking arm in arm, tossing back a look or a jest to the youths as they pass. The accents of the passers-by, the vociferous call of the vendors, the jostling of the people jar on her; she turns back with tears in her eyes. Her loneliness strikes doubly home to her, and she resolves to join a woman’s club; anything to escape it. She pauses near the door to get her latchkey, and notices the boy at the side entrance. He draws back into the shade as he sees her. She stands at her window and looks out into the murky summer night; a man comes whistling down the street; the boy runs to meet him, she sees him bend his head to catch the words better and then they turn back. She lights the gas and tries to read, she dreads the scenes she feels will follow, and she trembles when the door slams below and steps echo down the passage.