The Fancy Read online

  Humming tunelessly, Edward went down the hutches. When they saw him coming, all the rabbits except Queenie stood on their hind legs with their soft pale bellies against the wire. The adolescent families kicked and plunged and piled themselves up at the end of the runs. Edward felt like a God; his sack was Cornucopia. Putting the potatoes down to cool, he went from hutch to hutch, squatting down for a word with each rabbit as he pushed the cabbage through the wire. When he was a boy, he had read a book about a man who discovered how to speak the language of animals, and for years it was his dream that this would happen to him. He would growl at strange dogs and make snuffling and whinnying noises at horses in the street when no one was looking, in the hope of hitting on the secret. Half ashamed of his childishness, he still toyed occasionally with the fancy. He twitched his high-boned prominent nose at a large buck rabbit who twitched back at him, chewing sideways and staring out of hazel eyes. Sometimes in the evening when he was feeling particularly happy, Edward might have gone down on all fours to kick and whiffle and pretend be was a rabbit, but for the fear that Connie would look out of the window and think he had gone mad.

  “Wonder if she has her fancies,” he said to the buck. “When she’s alone, does she pretend to be somebody else? I wonder if everybody does. Perhaps we should all think we were mad if we could see each other when we were alone. But then of course, we shouldn’t be alone, should we?” He laughed and went on down the hutches. He had a long session with Queenie. Incredible to think of what was going on inside her.

  He lifted the roof of the hutch and put in his hand to see if he could feel anything. “Quickening” he believed the expression was. He had once heard Dorothy and Mrs. Munroe and Connie talking about it in hissing whispers upstairs. Queenie immediately pressed herself into a corner of the cage.

  “All right, my dear,” said Edward, shutting up the hutch, “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Couche-toi, couche-toi.” He often spoke bits of French to the rabbits, as they were Belgian. Connie had caught him once saying “Comment ça va?” to an ailing buck. Well, perhaps he was mad. He’d be talking to himself next like the old girl who zig-zagged down Church Avenue in a thick black veil and a purple cloak.

  He gave all the rabbits a spoonful of potato. Yes, he would definitely get that doe in kindle. Have to think announcementI s. about getting some new hutches too. He was only in a small way now, but one day he was going to do big things. He might even become well known, like Allan Colley. It was almost dark by the time he was at the last hutch. Why should the little grey doe in there make him think suddenly of the factory and his new job tomorrow? He peered in at her, dealing delicately with her potato. How odd ; she reminded him of the little fair girl he had noticed when the foreman was pointing out the bench he would be in charge of tomorrow. He hadn’t noticed much about the girls, perching in their grey overalls round the tableful of metal, except that there seemed a terrifying lot of them. Time enough to take stock of them tomorrow, when he had to meet them. He had deliberately been trying not to think about tomorrow in case he should start thinking up unnatural, jocular remarks. Dinah would be nice to him, though ; he knew her. He had seen her this afternoon looking tousled, and he had seen this other girl. It was tea-time and she was taking little nibbles out of an enormous bun, just like the little grey doe was doing with the potato.

  The kitchen doorway suddenly flung an oblong of light on to the garden. “Edward!” called Connie. “It’s black-out time. Are you coming in to do it? I’ve half killed myself trying to get the shutter up in here.”

  “You shouldn’t try, dear,” said Edward, going indoors, “You know I always do it.”

  “The doctor’s dared me to lift weights,” said Connie, while Edward fitted the wooden shutter into the glass of the door, still happy from his rabbits.

  Connie had her back to him, bending over the sink to fill the kettle. She was wearing a blue skirt and a belted tunic blouse that made her waist look quite small. Edward was suddenly moved to put his arms round her from behind and squeeze her. He turned her round and kissed her, while she held the kettle awkwardly between them.

  “Ted, for Heaven’s sake—you’re getting me all wet. What’s the matter with you? Let me go, I want to turn the tap off. Oh don’t, Ted, you’re horrible.”

  “Connie,” began Edward, and she saw what was coming and slid her eyes away. “Now Ted, you know what the doctor said after my illness.”

  “But Connie, that was months ago. It must be all right now.”

  “D’you want to make me ill again?”

  “Why don’t you go to the doctor again and find out if it’s all right?”

  “I’ve been,” she said after a pause, turning away. He knew she was lying but he didn’t challenge her. No use laying yourself open to any more humiliation. Just as well Connie had had that illness really. She had felt like this about him before that, but now they could keep the pretence of the doctor between them, for decency’s sake.

  Connie patted her hair. “I’m going to put the kettle on. We’re going to have one more game before the News. You going to play?”

  “Might as well,” said Edward. “I’ll go and change.”

  The living-room looked pleasant with the curtains drawn and the centre light on. It was three lamps hanging from a circular wooden bracket, which in the days when lorries had gone down Church Avenue, used sometimes to revolve slowly, making the shadows travel. Pretty the way it shone on Dorothy’s fair hair. She did it drawn up at the sides into curls on top, and low at the back definitely blyh in a silky fold. Connie’s hair had only just been permed and was set in tight little curls under an invisible hairnet. Smart, but it made her face look too big, because she had had it cut, to give the perm longer to grow out. Edward preferred it when it was growing out and she could brush it at night without fear of losing the set.

  Mrs. Munroe’s hair under the light reminded Edward of the blue-black oil that covered the engines at Kyle’s before they were cleaned. It was drawn down from the middle into two immense coils over each ear, studded insecurely with hairpins, with a few wisps escaping horizontally from the centre.

  Mr. Munroe hadn’t got any hair ; his head was like a billiard ball in the light—Spot, because there was a mole on it. No, he had got one hair ; it grew out of the mole. Len’s hair was dark red and followed backward the sloping line of his forehead.

  Edward passed a hand over his own head. Funny soft stuff. It wasn’t really thinning; it was just very fine hair. Connie had once said in a moment of vision that it was like the pile on her camel hair coat.

  “Your turn to play, Ted,” she said, spreading her cards into a fan and shutting them up secretively. “For Heaven’s sake, I never knew anybody take so long to decide, did you, Pop?”

  “When I used to play at the Conservative Club,” began her father laying down his cards and preparing to tell a story, “there was a chap by the name of Bayliss, who——”

  “He’s a dark horse is our Ted,” said Don, through a waggling cigarette, “these slow starters always get your money in the end.”

  “This chap Bayliss, I remember, always used to count twenty-five before he played a card. I wasn’t a bad player in those days ; used to go up there nearly every night, as your mother will tell you. Whist mostly—that was my game. I remember I asked this chap——”

  “Oh shut up, Pop,” said Dorothy, “I can’t hear myself think.” She played a card, took it back again, fidgeted and played another. Her father leaned across the table to Edward. “So I asked him : ‘Are you aware,’ I said, ‘that out of every game, you waste, on an average, four minutes and ten seconds?’—I’d done a quick calculation in my head. ‘Multiply that by—’ ”

  “It’s your turn to play, Pop,” screamed Connie and Dorothy, “do attend to the game!”

  At ten to nine, Mrs. Munroe began to say : “Mustn’t miss the News.” At five to, she said it again, and : “Nearly News time, hadn’t we better turn it on in case your clock’s slow? She susp
ected all clocks, even Big Ben.

  Connie looked sharply at the green glass clock whose works were reflected in the oval mirror that hung forward over the mantelpiece. “That clock never loses.”

  “What about the News?” said her father looking up from his cards, with the air of one making an original suggestion.

  “Might hear something about a big Bomber raid one of these days,” said Don confidentially.

  “Let’s finish the game then, for Heaven’s sake, if we’ve got to hear it,” said Connie. “It’s your turn, Mum.”

  “Well, turn it on, Ted. It always takes such a time to warm up. Oh Dorothy, you’re never going Rummy already? I might definitely blyh have known it; the only time I get a decent hand, someone else gets a better. I said to myself when I saw the cards Connie dealt me, there’s a snag somewhere, I said.”

  Mrs. Munroe had been disappointed so often in life that she never expected anything else. Ill luck had dogged her. She had married a pleasant spoken man who looked like one day becoming manager of the Soft Furnishings at Hennessy’s. He had turned out to be an unpleasing bore, who watched upstart after upstart climb through Soft Furnishings above him until he retired with a limited pension and the conviction that he had earned his right to be about the house all day. Mrs. Munroe had wanted sons, and both her children had been daughters, and straight-haired at that. Connie, too, had inherited her grandmother’s legs. Small wonder that Mrs. Munroe, who had set her heart on marrying her to Fred Emery had been landed with a son-in-law like Edward. She had cried all through the wedding, even through the Breakfast, which was at the Crown, with wine and little sandwiches stuck with flags. A streak of pump water, she had thought when she first met Edward, and she still thought so.

  She knew by now that no story that she ever read would live up to the promise of its opening, and that if she ever went to the theatre, there would be a slip in the programme to say that an understudy was replacing the star she had come to see. Everything she ordered in restaurants was “off,” shops sold out at her approach and she had only to step on to a bus for it to be going to its garage——” Next stop only.” As for her digestion, well it was no good hoping that what she sent down wouldn’t turn to bile ; she knew it would as soon as she saw it on her plate.

  Big Ben boomed through the booming of Mr. Munroe on Bayliss. Connie shut him up. “We might as well listen if we are going to hear it. There might be something about rations.” Don shuffled the cards like a conjuror and flicked them round the table, while they listened to the Summary. A bombing raid on Germany was announced, so colossal that even Mrs. Munroe was impressed.

  “There you are,” said Don, with an air of showmanship, “what did I tell you?”

  “However did you know?” asked Dorothy, pop-eyed.

  “… and other operations, fifty-three of our aircraft are missing,” concluded the wireless respectfully.

  “Ah, I thought so.” Mrs. Munroe’s face would have lifted if the flexor muscles hadn’t permanently atrophied. “We shan’t have any planes left if they go on like this.”

  “How many d’you think we’ve got?” said Don. “Funny thing about that raid, though. It seems that—but no, I’d better not tell you as they haven’t announced it.”

  “Oh Don, do,” said Dorothy, and her mother said : “They ought to tell us everything. It’s not right.” Her voice had a moaning monotony. “Hear about the National Day of Prayer, Connie? We might go to church. Dorothy and I went last year. They had two collections.”

  “They make me sick,” said Connie getting up to go to the kitchen. “First they make the War and then they try and make us pray for it.”

  “What was the News?” asked Mr. Munroe, who had been out of the room washing his hands.

  “Oh nothing, Pop ; you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “I remember when wireless was first invented,” he began wondered whether p along telling Edward.

  “Oh get up, Pop, do,” said Dorothy, “I’m trying to lay the table.” He stood in front of the sideboard to tell Edward about crystal sets, but Dorothy wanted to get at the silver drawer.

  Edward sat with the paper, watching them eat an enormous meal with the distaste of one who has already eaten. Mrs. Munroe brought food for Connie, but it was always understood that Edward had his own tea beforehand. He sometimes wondered if that was why she chose to eat so late, so that there should be no danger of having to provide for him. They ate a lot and took a long time over it Connie ate slowly, picking and pushing at the food on her plate, while she chewed with her front teeth, because her back ones were unreliable. Mrs. Munroe ate absorbedly, with her eyes on what she was going to eat next. Don ate with his mouth open, and Dorothy ate greedily, snatching at the food with sharp bites, her eyes bright. Mr. Munroe slopped his tea into the saucer, crumbled his bread and shed tomato skins off the side of his plate on to the table. At intervals, he would put down his knife and fork, wipe his mouth, clear his throat and begin to talk, until someone jogged him and told him to Get on with it, everybody else was on cheese.

  Edward folded the paper, flung it on the floor and said suddenly : “I’ve got a new job.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Connie stared at him, her jaws working automatically. “You’ve never left Canning Kyle’s?”

  “No, but I’ve been switched from the Fitting Shop into the Inspection Shop—means a bit more pay.”

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Munroe, helping herself to pickles and inspecting the label balefully as if she knew what they were going to do to her, “but you can never trust ’em once they start to switch you. First it’s from one shop into another. All right. Then they switch you again and once they get you on the move, they’ll switch you right out before you know it. I’m not going to buy this grade two salmon again, Connie. It’s not worth the points.”

  “No, but this is a step up,” said Edward patiently. “I’m to be charge hand, with a bench of ten girls under me.”

  “Ten girls under you,” said Don forgetting himself. “Boy, oh boy, what a bedful.” Connie drew herself up with thin lips and Mrs. Munroe rapped the table with the handle of a laden fork, so that a bit of beetroot fell on to the tablecloth. Connie dipped her napkin in water to rub at the stain.

  cy

  Chapter 2

  *

  Sheila rolled over with her eyes shut and slapped down the alarm clock. It fell on to the floor and started to ring again. She was half out of bed by the time she had quelled it, so she let herself fall the rest of the way, and sat on the white wooem; text-align: pa by nowlly rug rubbing her eyes. The vaseline on her eyelids had made them sticky. She was very pretty, in a surprised retroussée way. Her mouth was always slightly open, and when she smiled, her lower lip caught under her top teeth and a dimple appeared. She smiled now, and prodded the dimple ; it was one of her exercises.

  If anyone had told me three years ago, she thought, that I’d be getting up at six every morning, I’d have knocked them down. And not only getting up at six, but not really minding it. To think of all the mornings I used to breakfast in bed at eleven o’clock after a party, feeling so glamorous, but really such a mess. Much too fat and my powder too white and my hair too tightly permed.

  She got up, and pulling off her hair-net, lifted her hair away from her head and shook it out. On the way to the bathroom, she looked in the mirror, earnestly, with parted lips. A bit puffy. If one was married, one would have to wake first and do one’s face.

  Beyond the bathroom window, dawn was just investigating the well of the flats ; tradesmen’s lifts, zig-zagging iron staircases, frosted windows, tall chromium taps and a tin of Vim or a milk bottle on kitchen window sills, bedroom windows with the curtains drawn. She closed the window, shivering in her nightdress. Oh God, the winter! The gardener down at Swinley had said it would be a hard one because the berries were so thick. A morning like this made you think of the inevitable weeks ahead when a gearwheel was an aching block of ice, when you couldn’t think about inspecting, or ab
out anything except how cold you were, and when you knew that whatever they said, no one else was as cold as you.

  Going barefoot into the compact little kitchen, she put her coffee to heat on the electric stove and padded back into the bedroom. All her life she had wanted a flat with a fitted carpet. All the years at Swinley, in the draughty, polished house where even breakfast was announced by a gong, she had wanted a place where you could walk in and out of rooms naked if you wanted to, where you could have a bath at mid-day or midnight and eat when you were hungry instead of when the servants expected you to be.

  And now she had got it, thanks to Kathleen being evacuated with her office and letting Sheila have the flat at a rent which was more than covered by her wages at Canning Kyle’s. Thanks to the war, really. It was agony of course, but without it, she would never have got away from home, unless she had married Timothy, and Sheila had always thought she was destined for higher things than that.

  The worst thing about getting up early was that you never knew what to wear. Clothes that seemed suitable at six in the morning were all wrong by six at night She put on a jersey and a pair of linen dungarees. They were old, but they had faded to a blue that was attractive with her red jacket She had her coffee and cereal while she was doing her face. Her hair took longer now that she was doing it this new way. She had meant to make her bed properly this morning, turning the mattress and everything, but there was no time now. She whipped the clothes on to the floor and threw the pillows into a corner. Sordid when you got in, but it was good for them to air. She was going to do some housework tonight too ; she might even scrub the kitchen floor.