He had only ‘pitched on’ Mr. Desert’s book because it was ‘easy sold,’ and he was sorry now that he hadn’t pitched on some one else’s. Mr. Desert had been very decent. He stopped at the corner of the Strand, and went over his money. With the two pounds given him by Michael and his wages he had seventy-five shillings in the world, and going into the Stores he bought a meat jelly and a tin of Benger’s food that could be made with water. With pockets bulging he took a ‘bus, which dropped him at the corner of his little street on the Surrey side. His wife and he occupied the two ground floor rooms, at eight shillings a week, and he owed for three weeks. ‘Py that!’ he thought, ‘and have a roof until she’s well.’ It would help him over the news, too, to show her a receipt for the rent and some good food. How lucky they had been careful to have no baby! He sought the basement. His landlady was doing the week’s washing. She paused, in sheer surprise at such full and voluntary payment, and inquired after his wife.
“Doing nicely, thank you.”
“Well, I’m glad of that, it must be a relief to your mind.”
“It is,” said Bicket.
The landlady thought: ‘He’s a thread-paper–reminds me of a shrimp before you bile it, with those eyes.’
“Here’s your receipt, and thank you. Sorry to ‘ave seemed nervous about it, but times are ‘ard.”
“They are,” said Bicket. “So long!”
With the receipt and the meat jelly in his left hand, he opened the door of his front room.
His wife was sitting before a very little fire. Her bobbed black hair, crinkly towards the ends, had grown during her illness; it shook when she turned her head and smiled. To Bicket–not for the first time–that smile seemed queer, ‘pathetic-like,’ mysterious–as if she saw things that one didn’t see oneself. Her name was Victorine, and he said: “Well, Vic.? This jelly’s a bit of all right, and I’ve pyde the rent.” He sat on the arm of the chair and she put her hand on his knee–her thin arm emerging blue-white from the dark dressing-gown.
“Well, Tony?”
Her face–thin and pale with those large dark eyes and beautifully formed eyebrows–was one that “looked at you from somewhere; and when it looked at you–well! it got you right inside!”
It got him now and he said: “How’ve you been breathin’?”
“All right–much better. I’ll soon be out now.”
Bicket twisted himself round and joined his lips to hers. The kiss lasted some time, because all the feelings which he had not been able to express during the past three weeks to her or to anybody, got into it. He sat up again, “sort of exhausted,” staring at the fire, and said: “News isn’t bright–lost my job, Vic.”
“Oh! Tony! Why?”
Bicket swallowed.
“Fact is, things are slack, and they’re reducin’.”
There had surged into his mind the certainty that sooner than tell her the truth he would put his head under the gas!
“Oh! dear! What shall we do, then?”
Bicket’s voice hardened.
“Don’t you worry–I’ll get something”; and he whistled.
“But you liked that job.”
“Did I? I liked some o’ the fellers; but as for the job–why, what was it? Wrappin’ books up in a bysement all dy long. Let’s have something to eat and get to bed early–I feel as if I could sleep for a week, now I’m shut of it.”
Getting their supper ready with her help, he carefully did not look at her face for fear it might “get him agyne inside!” They had only been married a year, having made acquaintance on a tram, and Bicket often wondered what had made her take to him, eight years her senior and C3 during the war! And yet she must be fond of him, or she’d never look at him as she did.
“Sit down and try this jelly.”
He himself ate bread and margarine and drank cocoa, he seldom had any particular appetite.
“Shall I tell you what I’d like?” he said; “I’d like Central Austrylia. We had a book in there about it; they sy there’s quite a movement. I’d like some sun. I believe if we ‘ad sun we’d both be twice the size we are. I’d like to see colour in your cheeks, Vic.”
“How much does it cost to get out there?”
“A lot more than we can ly hands on, that’s the trouble. But I’ve been thinkin’. England’s about done. There’s too many like me.”
“No,” said Victorine; “there aren’t enough.”
Bicket looked at her face, then quickly at his plate.
“What myde you take a fancy to me?”
“Because you don’t think first of yourself, that’s why.”
“Used to before I knew you. But I’d do anything for you, Vic.”
“Have some of this jelly, then, it’s awful good.”
Bicket shook his head.
“If we could wyke up in Central Austrylia,” he said. “But there’s only one thing certain, we’ll wyke up in this blighted little room. Never mind, I’ll get a job and earn the money yet.”
“Could we win it on a race?”
“Well, I’ve only got forty-seven bob all told, and if we lose it, where’ll you be? You’ve got to feed up, you know. No, I must get a job.”
“They’ll give you a good recommend, won’t they?”
Bicket rose and stacked his plate and cup.
“They would, but that job’s off–overstocked.”
Tell her the truth? Never! So help him!
In their bed, one of those just too wide for one and just not wide enough for two, he lay, with her hair almost in his mouth, thinking what to say to his Union, and how to go to work to get a job. And in his thoughts as the hours drew on he burned his boats. To draw his unemployment money he would have to tell his Union what the trouble was. Blow the Union! He wasn’t going to be accountable to them! HE knew why he’d pinched the books; but it was nobody else’s business, nobody else could understand his feelings, watching her so breathless, pale and thin. Strike out for himself! And a million and a half out o’ work! Well, he had a fortnight’s keep, and something would turn up–and he might risk a bob or two and win some money, you never knew. She turned in her sleep. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘I’d do it agyne…’
Next day, after some hours on foot, he stood under the grey easterly sky in the grey street, before a plate-glass window protecting an assortment of fruits and sheaves of corn, lumps of metal, and brilliant blue butterflies, in the carefully golden light of advertised Australia. To Bicket, who had never been out of England, not often out of London, it was like standing outside Paradise. The atmosphere within the office itself was not so golden, and the money required considerable; but it brought Paradise nearer to take away pamphlets which almost burned his hands, they were so warm.
Later, he and she, sitting in the one armchair–advantage of being thin–pored over these alchemised pages and inhaled their glamour.
“D’you think it’s true, Tony?”
“If it’s thirty per cent. true it’s good enough for me. We just must get there somehow. Kiss me.”
From around the corner in the main road the rumbling of the trams and carts, and the rattling of their window-pane in the draughty dry easterly wind increased their feeling of escape into a gas-lit Paradise.
Chapter IX.
CONFUSION
Two hours behind Bicket, Michael wavered towards home. Old Danby was right as usual–if you couldn’t trust your packers, you might shut up shop! Away from Bicket’s eyes, he doubted. Perhaps the chap hadn’t a wife at all! Then Wilfrid’s manner usurped the place of Bicket’s morals. Old Wilfrid had been abrupt and queer the last three times of meeting. Was he boiling-up for verse?
He found Ting-a-ling at the foot of the stairs in a conservative attitude. “I am not going up,” he seemed saying, “until some one carries me–at the same time it is later than usual!”
“Where’s your mistress, you heraldic little beast?”
Ting-a-ling snuffled. “I could put up with it,” he implied, “if YOU carried me–these stairs are laborious!”
Michael took him up. “Let’s go and find her.”
Squeezed under an arm harder than his mistress’, Ting-a-ling stared as if with black-glass eyes; and the plume of his emergent tail quivered.
In the bedroom Michael dropped him so absent-mindedly that he went to his corner plume pendent, and couched there in dudgeon.
Nearly dinner time and Fleur not in! Michael went over his sketchy recollection of her plans. To-day she had been having Hubert Marsland and that Vertiginist–what was his name? – to lunch. There would have been fumes to clear off. Vertiginists–like milk–made carbonic acid gas in the lungs! Still! Half-past seven! What was happening to-night? Weren’t they going to that play of L.S.D.‘s? No–that was tomorrow! Was there conceivably nothing? If so, of course she would shorten her unoccupied time as much as possible. He made that reflection humbly. Michael had no illusions, he knew himself to be commonplace, with only a certain redeeming liveliness, and, of course, his affection for her. He even recognised that his affection was a weakness, tempting him to fussy anxieties, which on principle he restrained. To enquire, for instance, of Coaker or Philps–their man and their maid–when she had gone out, would be thoroughly against that principle. The condition of the world was such that Michael constantly wondered if his own affairs were worth paying attention to; but then the condition of the world was also such that sometimes one’s own affairs seemed all that were worth paying attention to. And yet his affairs were, practically speaking, Fleur; and if he paid too much attention to them, he was afraid of annoying her.
He went into his dressing-room and undid his waistcoat.
‘But no!’ he thought; ‘if she finds me “dressed” already, it’ll put too much point on it.’ So he did up his waistcoat and went downstairs again. Coaker was in the hall.
“Mr. Forsyte and Sir Lawrence looked in about six, sir. Mrs. Mont was out. What time shall I serve dinner?”
“Oh! about a quarter past eight. I don’t think we’re going out.”
He went into the drawing-room and passing down its Chinese emptiness, drew aside the curtain. The square looked cold and dark and draughty; and he thought: ‘Bicket–pneumonia–I hope she’s got her fur coat.’ He took out a cigarette and put it back. If she saw him at the window she would think him fussy; and he went up again to see if she had put on her fur!
Ting-a-ling, still couchant, greeted him plume dansetti arrested as at disappointment. Michael opened a wardrobe. She had! Good! He was taking a sniff round, when Ting-a-ling passed him trottant, and her voice said: “Well, my darling!” Wishing that he was, Michael emerged from behind the wardrobe door. Heaven! She looked pretty, coloured by the wind! He stood rather wistfully silent.
“Hallo, Michael! I’m rather late. Been to the Club and walked home.”
Michael had a quite unaccountable feeling that there was suppression in that statement. He also suppressed, and said: “I was just looking to see that you’d got your fur, it’s beastly cold. Your dad and Bart have been and went away fasting.”
Fleur shed her coat and dropped into a chair. “I’m tired. Your ears are sticking up so nicely to-night, Michael.”
Michael went on his knees and joined his hands behind her waist. Her eyes had a strange look, a scrutiny which held him in suspense, a little startled.
“If YOU got pneumonia,” he said, “I should go clean out of curl.”
“Why on earth should I?”
“You don’t know the connection–never mind, it wouldn’t interest you. We’re not going out, are we?”
“Of course we are. It’s Alison’s monthly.”
“Oh! Lord! If you’re tired we could cut that.”
“My dear! Impos.
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