“I was beginning to think so,” murmured Eustace.
“Well, she’s young to be knocked about like this. It gets on their nerves, ye know. I’ll be glad to get ‘er and the missis ‘ome, and that’s a fact.”
Something in the paper whiteness of his face, something in the tone of his hollow-chested voice, and the simple altruism of his remark, affected Eustace. He smelled of sweat and sawdust, but he was jolly decent!
And time went by, the heat and odour thickening; there was almost silence now. A voice said: “They’re a – long time abaht it!” and was greeted with a sighing clamour of acquiescence. All that crowded mass of beings had become preoccupied with the shifting of their limbs, the straining of their lungs towards any faint draught of air. Eustace had given up all speculation, his mind was concentrated blankly on the words: ‘Stand straight–stand straight!’ The spindly child, discouraged by the fleeting nature of success, had fallen into a sort of coma against his knee; he wondered whether she had ringworm; he wondered why everybody didn’t faint. The white-faced mechanician had encircled his wife’s waist. His face, ghostly patient, was the one thing Eustace noticed from time to time; it emerged as if supported by no body. Suddenly with a whispering sigh the young woman, behind, fell against his shoulder, and by a sort of miracle found space to crumple down. The mechanician’s white face came round:
“Poor lidy, she’s gone off!”
“Ah!” boomed the whisky-taster, “and no wonder, with this ‘eat.” He waggled his bowler hat above her head.
“Shove ‘er ‘ead between her knees,” said the mechanician.
Eustace pushed the head downwards, the whisky-taster applied a bunch of keys to her back. She came to with a loud sigh.
“Better for her dahn there,” said the mechanician, “the ‘ot air rises.”
And again time went on, with a ground bass of oaths and cheerios. Then the lights went out to a sound as if souls in an underworld had expressed their feelings. Eustace felt a shuddering upheaval pass through the huddled mass. A Cockney voice cried: “Are we dahn-‘earted?” And the movement subsided in a sort of dreadful calm.
Down below a woman shrieked; another and another took it up.
“‘Igh-strikes,” muttered the mechanician; “cover ‘er ears, Polly.” The child against Eustace’s knee had begun to whimper. “Milly, where was Moses when the light went out?”
Eustace greeted the sublime fatuity with a wry and wasted smile. He could feel the Jewish youths trying to elbow themselves out. “Stand still,” he said, sharply.
“That’s right, Sir,” said the mechanician; “no good makin’ ‘eavy weather of it.”
“Sing, you blighters–sing!” cried a voice: “‘When the fields were white wiv disies.’” And all around they howled a song which Eustace did not know; and then, abruptly as it had gone out, the light went up again. The song died in a prolonged “Aoh!” Eustace gazed around him. Tears were running down the splotchy woman’s cheeks. A smile of relief was twitching at the mechanician’s mouth. “The all clear’s gone! The all clear’s gone!… ‘Ip, ‘ip, ‘ooraay!” The cheering swelled past Eustace, and a swinging movement half lifted him from his feet.
“Catch hold of the child,” he said to the mechanician, “I’ve got her other hand.” Step by step they lifted her, under incredible pressure, with maddening slowness, into the hall. Eustace took a great breath, expanding his lungs while the crowd debouched into the street like an exploding shell. The white-faced mechanician had begun to cough, in a strangled manner alarming to hear. He stopped at last and said:
“That’s cleared the pipes. I’m greatly obliged to you, Sir; I dunno’ ow we’d ‘a got Milly up. She looks queer, that child.”
The child’s face, indeed, was whiter than her father’s, and her eyes were vacant.
“Do you live far?”
“Nao, just rahnd the corner, Sir.”
“Come on, then.”
They swung the child, whose legs continued to move mechanically, into the open. The street was buzzing with people emerging from shelter and making their way home. Eustace saw a clock’s face. Ten o’clock!
‘Damn these people,’ he thought. ‘The restaurants will be closed.’
The splotchy woman spoke as if answering his thought.
“We oughtn’t to keep the gentleman, ‘Enry, ‘e must be properly tired. I can ketch ‘old of Milly. Don’t you bother with us, Sir, and thank you kindly.”
“Not a bit,” said Eustace: “it’s nothing.”
“‘Ere we are, Sir,” said the mechanician, stopping at the side door of some business premises; “we live in the basement. If it’s not presuming, would you take a cup o’ tea with us?” And at this moment the child’s legs ceased to function altogether.
“‘Ere, Milly, ‘old up, dearie, we’re just ‘ome.”
But the child’s head sagged.
“She’s gone off–paw little thing!”
“Lift her!” said Eustace.
“Open the door, Mother, the key’s in my pocket; you go on and light the gas.”
They supported the spindly child, who now seemed to weigh a ton, down stone stairs into a basement, and laid her on a small bed in a room where all three evidently slept. The mechanician pressed her head down towards her feet.
“She’s comin’ to. Why, Milly, you’re in your bed, see! And now you’ll ‘ave a nice ‘ot cup o’ tea! There!”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser,” murmured the spindly child, her china-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on Eustace, her face waxy in the gaslight.
“Stir yer stumps, Mother, and get this gentleman a cup. A cup’ll do you good, Sir, you must be famished. Will you come in the kitchen and have a smoke, while she’s gettin’ it?”
A strange fellow-feeling pattered within Eustace looking at that white-faced altruist. He stretched out his cigarette case, shining, curved, and filled with gold-tipped cigarettes. The mechanician took one, held it for a second politely as who should imply: ‘Hardly my smoke, but since you are so kind.’
“Thank’ee, Sir. A smoke’ll do us both a bit o’ good, after that Tube. It was close in there.”
Eustace greeted the miracle of understatement with a smile.
“Not exactly fresh.”
“I’d ‘a come and ‘ad the raid comfortable at ‘ome, but the child was scared and the Tube just opposite. Well, it’s all in the day’s work, I suppose; but it comes ‘ard on children and elderly people, to say nothing of the women. ‘Ope you’re feelin’ better, Sir. You looked very white when you come out.”
“Thanks,” said Eustace, thinking: ‘Not so white as you, my friend!’
“The tea won’t be a minute. We got the gas ’ere, it boils a kettle a treat. You sit down, old girl, I’ll get it for yer.”
Eustace went to the window. The kitchen was hermetically sealed.
“Do you mind if I open the window,” he said, “I’m still half suffocated from that Tube.”
On the window-sill, in company with potted geraniums, he breathed the dark damp air of a London basement, and his eyes roved listlessly over walls decorated with coloured cuts from Christmas supplements, and china ornaments perched wherever was a spare flat inch. These presents from seaside municipalities aroused in him a sort of fearful sympathy.
“I see you collect china,” he said, at last.
“Ah! The missis likes a bit of china,” said the mechanician, turning his white face illumined by the gas ring; “reminds ‘er of ‘olidays. It’s a cheerful thing, I think meself, though it takes a bit o’ dustin’.”
“You’re right there,” said Eustace, his soul fluttering suddenly with a feather brush above his own precious Ming. Ming and the present from Margate! The mechanician was stirring the teapot.
“Weak for me, if you don’t mind,” said Eustace, hastily.
The mechanician poured into three cups, one of which he brought to Eustace with a jug of milk and a basin of damp white sugar. The tea looked thick and dark and Indian, and Eustace, who partook habitually of thin pale China tea flavoured with lemon, received the cup solemnly. It was better than he hoped, however, and he drank it gratefully.
“She’s drunk her tea a treat,” said the splotchy woman, returning from the bedroom.
“‘Ere’s yours, Mother.”
“‘Aven’t you ‘ad a cup yerself, ‘Enry?”
“Just goin’ to,” said the white-faced mechanician, pouring into a fourth cup and pausing to add: “Will you ‘ave another, Sir? There’s plenty in the pot.”
Eustace shook his head: “No, thanks very much. I must be getting on directly.” But he continued to sit on the window-sill, as a man on a mountain lingers in the whiffling wind before beginning his descent to earth.
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