Part 22

Left to himself, Mr. Smeeth came to the conclusion once again that his wife was to be envied. She made a great fuss, far more noise than he ever did, but she didn’t really dislike these disturbances and strokes of bad luck. Any sort of happening, even an apparent misfortune, braced her up and left her really enjoying it. What she didn’t like was a quiet life, the same thing day after day.

She came in now like a savoury whirlwind. “Draw up, Dad. We won’t wait for Edna. She’ll be down in a minute. Help yourself to that stew and take plenty of it because the meat’s nearly all bone. Dig down and you’ll get the barley, and that’ll do your old inside good.”

“What’s this about Edna, then?”

“Far as I can see, you can’t really blame her, though she’s probably been acting a bit too independent. Edna _is_ independent, though better that, in the long run, than too much the other way. But she’s only a child, when all’s said and done, and I know she liked the work and wanted to stop on there. For two pins, I’d slip down to Finsbury Park to-morrow and give that floor manager or whoever he is a piece of my mind. All favouritism really, that’s what it boils down to, and of course Edna hadn’t been there long and ought to have kept quiet--though a girl’s a right to speak up for herself, and I’d be the last to say she hasn’t--but they begin picking on her and she stands up for herself and lets out one or two things she oughtn’t to and the next thing is, she’s told to go.”

This was not a very clear account of how a girl came to be suddenly dismissed from an important firm of retail drapers, but it seemed to satisfy Mr. Smeeth, who did not ask for any details. The truth is, he had gone through this scene before, and he knew now that it was not worth trying to discover exactly what had happened. Edna returned, looking her usual self except that she wore a slightly tragic air.

“When do you finish then, Edna?” her father asked.

“This week. And the sooner the better. I wouldn’t go to-morrow if I hadn’t to get my week’s money. Lot of pigs, they are. I knew one or two girls--Ivy Armitage, for one--who’s been there and they told me what it was like, but of course I wouldn’t believe ’em but it didn’t take me long to see they weren’t talking so silly as I thought.”

“And what’s the next move, then?” demanded Mr. Smeeth rather wearily.

“Don’t you worry, Dad. I’m not going to stick about home long. I’ll find something.”

“What she’d like to do is to go to Madame Rivoli’s in the High Street,” Mrs. Smeeth explained, “and learn the business properly.”

“What business? I’ll trouble you for the greens, Edna.”

“Millinery. You know Madame Rivoli’s in the High Street, the place where I got that very nice purple hat of mine that fell into the water at Hastings that time? Mrs. Talbot keeps it now. You know, her husband died of eating oysters about four years ago, and nobody round here would touch ’em for months--well, that’s Mrs. Talbot, a little woman, looks a bit Frenchified--smart, y’know, Dad, but overdoes it a bit. I pointed her out to you one day, and you said if you’d legs as thin as that you’d take the trouble to hide ’em and I thought she heard you.”

“And then you talk about _me_ talking,” cried Edna. “That’s a nice way to talk, isn’t it? And about Mrs. Talbot, too. You couldn’t want anybody nicer than Mrs. Talbot.”

“All we want is for you to mind your own business,” said Mrs. Smeeth, forgetting that this really was Edna’s business. “But if you want something to do, you can be fetching that pudding in and making yourself useful, while I finish this. And be careful getting it out. Use the cloth.”

“And where does Madame Rivoli come in?” asked Mr. Smeeth.

“She doesn’t come in. It’s just a _name_, y’see, Dad. Miss Murgatroyd had it before Mrs. Talbot. It catches people, makes them think all the hats are Paris models. For all that, it’s the best little hat shop we’ve got about here. If you know of a better one in Stoke Newington, I’d like to know where it is, I would really. Only thing that keeps _me_ away from that shop is the prices they ask--oh, wicked, they are--you might as well go to the West End and have done with it. But Mrs. Talbot does a fine business--I don’t think it’s altogether her shop, I think she just manages it, and somebody told me two Jews really owned it. Now then, Edna,” and Mrs. Smeeth sprang to her feet and took the pudding from her daughter, “just nip back for the plates and then we’re all right. There we are. It’ll taste better than it looks. This pudding always does. Plenty for you, Dad?”

“Just middling, Mother,” said Mr. Smeeth.

“Well, if that isn’t enough, you can always come again, can’t you? What about you, Edna? Don’t want any, I suppose? Well, you’re going to have some. You eat that and see if it doesn’t make you feel better.”

“I’ve tasted worse,” said Mr. Smeeth judicially. “Bit heavy, though, isn’t it?”

“Oo, Mother, you can’t have mixed it properly,” cried the fastidious Edna. “It’s like lead. It is really. I’ll have a bit more of the apple, please. I can’t eat the crust.”

“Now if you’d been me and I’d been _my_ mother,” said Mrs. Smeeth with an attempt at severity, “you’d have been made to eat what was on your plate and not gone picking and choosing like that. But it’s not come out as well as it might, I must say.”

“Well, to get back to what we were talking about,” said Mr. Smeeth, laying down his spoon and shaking his head at an offer of more pudding. “Where does this Mrs. Talbot or Madame Rivoli or whoever it is come in? What’s she got to do with us? I’ve forgotten how it all started. You go on and on and what with purple hats and oysters and legs and Jews, I don’t know where I am. Now then, start again, if we _must_ have it.”

“Oh, you tell him, Edna, while I go and make the tea. And for goodness’ sake be careful you don’t mention purple hats and oysters or else your father will be leaving home. Old silly!” And Mrs. Smeeth, as deft as a juggler, swept herself and half a dozen plates and a few dishes out of the room.

“It’s like this, Dad,” Edna began. “My friend, Minnie Watson, knows this Mrs. Talbot who’s managing Madame Rivoli’s because her mother has known her a long time and Minnie Watson introduced me to Mrs. Talbot and we got on talking and Minnie Watson told her afterwards I wanted to go in for the millinery if I could----”

“Ah, we’re coming to it at last, are we?”

“Well, the point is, Mrs. Talbot told Minnie Watson that she liked the look of me and that if I wanted to go as an apprentice, I could do, and they’d teach me the business. Only I’d have to go for six months first without getting any money at all, and then they’d pay me something after that--not much at the start, but afterwards I could earn a lot, because you can if you’re a proper milliner and know the business.”

“That’s the idea now, you see, Dad,” said Mrs. Smeeth, coming in with the tea. “Learning the millinery. I don’t say it’s a bad idea, because it’s not, and, if you ask me, I should say Edna had as good a chance of making something out of it as any girl I know, because she’s good with her fingers--when she cares to use ’em and that’s not often in the house--and she likes altering hats, which is more than I ever did.”

“Everybody says I’m clever at it,” said Edna, looking rather defiant.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘everybody,’ but if you mean your Minnie Watsons and such like, I don’t think whatever they say amounts to much. They’d tell you anything for tuppence. But still, Dad, it’s not a bad idea--but, as I told her, this apprenticeship business is coming a bit hard on us because it’s working for nothing and now that she’s been earning money, she’s used to having it to spend, and we’ve got to keep her looking decent and she’ll still want to be spending something and she’ll be bringing nothing in for a long time. You say I haven’t a head for business, Dad--and I dare say I haven’t and I don’t know that I want to have--but I saw that as soon as she mentioned it and asked her what she thought we were going to get out of it.”

“Dad can’t talk,” cried Edna, looking across at him triumphantly, “’cos he wanted me to be a teacher and if I’d started to be a teacher, I’d have been going to college now, and then he’d have had to be paying for me, never mind me not earning anything.”

“Yes, but you didn’t want to be a teacher, did you?” said Mrs. Smeeth, as if that somehow settled the matter.

“Besides, my girl,” Mr. Smeeth began, rather pompously.

“Take your tea, Dad.” It was a curious thing, but whenever Mr. Smeeth had some really dignified statement to make, Mrs. Smeeth invariably broke in to hand him a cup or a plate or to ask him to put some coal on the fire or to see if there was somebody at the front door.

“Go on, Dad, what were you saying?” said Mrs. Smeeth, observing that he was frowning a little at his cup.

“I was going to say that teaching’s one thing and millinery’s another thing. If you’d have decided to be a teacher, Edna, I was ready to make a sacrifice to see that you became one. Teaching’s a profession. Safe, too. Once you become a teacher, you’re safe for the rest of your life----”

“Awful old maids they look too, some of the old ones. Lord help us, what a life!” Mrs. Smeeth shuddered, shook her head, then smiled at her husband, encouraging him to continue with his little speech.

“But this millinery business is quite a different thing. There may be money in it and there may not--I don’t know. What I do know is, it’s in a different class altogether, not the same standing at all. I’d do for one what I wouldn’t do for the other. So don’t throw that teaching affair in my face because it’s outside the argument altogether.”

“Oh, all right.” Edna wriggled her shoulders. “Don’t go on and on about it. If I can’t go, I suppose I can’t, that’s all.” She pushed her cup away and rose from the table. Then she stopped and looked at them, and Mr. Smeeth saw, to his dismay, that her eyes were filling with tears. Like that, she looked hardly a day older than she had done when he still played childish games with her. “But I did want to go. It’s the only thing I’ve really wanted to do since I left school. And if I went, I might be earning quite a lot in a year or two and some day I might be able to have a shop of my own. If George had wanted to do something like this, you wouldn’t have said no to him--oh----”

She was making for the door, but her father’s shout stopped her.

“Here, wait a minute,” he called out. Then, when she halted, he threw a quick glance at her streaming little face, looked across at her mother and then down at the table-cloth, and said: “Well, I suppose you’d better have a try at it then, Edna.”

“Oo, can I?” She was all delighted eagerness now, and darted across to him. “I can, can’t I?”

Awkward, a trifle shamefaced, Mr. Smeeth made a movement as if to put his arm round her, but apparently thought better of it and merely patted her nearest shoulder-blade. “That’s all right,” he muttered. “That’s all right.”

“Can I go round and see her now?” said Edna, her eyes shining and her feet dancing with impatience. Then she flew out of the room.

“Well, Dad,” said Mrs. Smeeth. “I won’t say I’m sorry you’ve decided that way, because I’m not. I believe it’s what she’s wanted some time. She doesn’t know whether she’s on her head or her heels now. Ah!--” and she gave a tremendous sigh--“I like to see them happy. After all, we’ve only got to live once----”

“How do you know?” demanded her husband.

“Well, I don’t know, if it comes to that, Mister Clever,” she retorted good-humouredly. “All the same, I’ve a very good idea. But what I wanted to say is this, Dad. I wasn’t going to give her permission to start this business. And don’t say I persuaded you, because I didn’t. You did it yourself. You know what it means. She’ll be earning next to nothing for a year or two, and though she’ll have to pull herself in a bit now she’s not earning anything, she can’t be kept on nothing. So don’t you turn round on me and tell me I don’t know that twelve pennies make a shilling or something of that sort. It’s your own doing, this time. I made up my mind I wouldn’t say a word. And if you think you can do it all right, well and good; I’m glad.”

“Of course I can do it,” he told her, rather indignantly. Then out it came. “Matter of fact, I’ve got that rise.”

“You’ve not?”

“Yes, I have.”

“How much?”

“I’ve been put up to three seventy-five, that’s more than a pound a week more than I’ve been getting.” And as he said it, Mr. Smeeth asked himself if he wasn’t behaving like a complete fool.

Mrs. Smeeth descended on him impetuously and gave him a resounding kiss. “I knew there was something coming,” she cried jubilantly. “I told you about Mrs. Dalby’s sister, didn’t I? She told me again that money and good luck were coming through a stranger, a middling-coloured man in a strange bed. And that was this Mr. Golspie of yours, I’ll bet. Nearly four hundred a year, isn’t it, now? That’s something like. My cousin, Fred Mitty, was boasting the other night about what he could make sometimes, and now this will be something to tell him to-morrow night. And fancy you just sitting there as if nothing had happened and never saying a word! I never knew anybody so close, you old oyster you! But that shows what they think of you, doesn’t it? And you always worrying about your job and talking as if you were going to be out in the street next minute!” She ran on and on, happy and excited, while he filled his pipe and tried to appear very cool and collected. Actually he was being pulled two ways. One half of him was gratified, no, more than gratified, delighted by her pleasure and her pride in him, and the other half was dubious and demanded to know if he realised what he had done.

“Now look here, Dad,” said Mrs. Smeeth, “we must celebrate the great occasion somehow to-night. It’s no good luck coming to the house if we’re not going to take any notice of it. Let’s go out somewhere. Let’s enjoy ourselves.”

“I thought we were going to do that to-morrow,” he told her drily, “when Fred Mitty and company arrive.”

“But that’s different. I mean, just ourselves, just you and me. Let’s go and see a good picture or down to the second house at Finsbury Park or something like that, and sit in the best seats, and you buy yourself a cigar and buy me some chocolates for once, and let’s do it properly. Come on, boy. What do you say?”

The Saving Man and the Small Investor in Mr. Smeeth went down before the affectionate husband and the proud male. When she looked at him like that, it would be a sin and a shame to refuse her. “All right, Edie. You decide where you want to go, and we’ll go.”

“I’ll just put George’s dinner out and put the dirty things under the tap,” she announced breathlessly, flushed and bright-eyed, a girl again, “and while I’m doing that, you look at the paper and see where you’d like to go. Give me those two cups. No, I can manage. You just sit there and have a quiet smoke.”

He could hear her singing, in her own cheerful vague fashion, above the faint clatter of crockery in the kitchen, while he had his quiet smoke. He did not look at the paper to see where he would like to go. She could decide that, and she would soon enough when she had washed up. For a week or two, she would be feeling rich and would be bringing out all sorts of plans. If by the end of this night she had not thought of twenty different ways of getting rid of a good deal more than an extra pound or so a week, he would be surprised. She had a weakness for hire purchase schemes, to begin with, and he detested them, both as a man of business and a careful householder. Well, after the first excitement had gone he would have to put his foot down; no more of these fairy tale views of life; somebody had to do the thinking. Now his thoughts took on a sombre colouring. He had never envied the rich their luxurious pleasures; he was a simple chap, and their way of life seemed to him ridiculous; he did not want a great deal for himself; but what he did want--and for this he was prepared to envy anybody--was security, to know that decency and self-respect were his to the end of his days. To be safe in his job while he was fit for it, and after that to have a little place of his own, with a garden (he had never done any real gardening, but he always found it easy to imagine himself doing it very well and enjoying it) and a bit of music whenever he wanted it--that was not asking much, and yet, for all the firm’s increased turnover and its rises, he could not help thinking it was really like asking for the moon.

“’Lo, Dad,” cried George, entering briskly. “How’s things?”

“Pretty good, boy. How’s the car trade?”

“Not so dusty. You don’t know anybody who’d like to lend me sixty quid, do you, Dad?”

“I don’t,” replied Mr. Smeeth very decidedly.

“Pity,” said George, who showed no signs of disappointment. “If I could put my hand on sixty quid this minute, I could make money. A cert. Sounds like horse racing, doesn’t it, but it isn’t----”

“And I should hope not,” said his father, looking at him severely.

“Second-hand car deal. Money for nothing. Ah, well--you wait a bit.”

“Well, you be careful, with your money for nothing.”

“Leave it to me, Dad,” said George coolly.

Mr. Smeeth looked wonderingly at him. It seemed only yesterday when he was filling his stocking and putting the Meccano set by the boy’s bedside. And now--leave it to him, sixty quid, a cert! Mr. Smeeth took his pipe out, stared at it, and then whistled softly.

V

“Come along, Dad,” cried Mrs. Smeeth, pouring out the Rich Ruby Port for the ladies. “Buck up. Join in the fun.” She had herself a rich ruby look, for what with eating and drinking and shouting and laughing and singing, her face was crimson and almost steaming.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mitty overheard her. “That’s right,” he roared, drowning every other voice in the room. “Come on, Pa. Take your turn. No shirking. Take your turn, Pa. Show us a conjuring trick.”

“Oh, shut up, Fred,” Mrs. Mitty screamed, pretending to chide him, as usual, and really drawing attention to his astonishing drollery. “You’ve gone far enough.”

Mr. Smeeth could not do any conjuring, but if he had been given unlimited powers, he knew one trick he would have liked to perform that instant, a trick that involved the immediate disappearance of Mr. Fred Mitty. It was Saturday night, the little party was in full swing, and they were all in the front room, all, that is except the Mitty girl and Edna, who had gone out together for an hour or so, probably round to the pictures. In addition to the Mitty pair, there were Dalby and Mrs. Dalby (whose sister told fortunes with cards). Mr. Smeeth had seen the room when it had had more people in it, but he had never known it when it had seemed so full. He had always thought of Dalby, who lived at 11, Chaucer Road, was a bandy-legged insurance agent, and fancied himself as a wag and a great hand at parties, as a noisy chap, but compared with Fred Mitty he was quiet and decent and merely another Smeeth. It had not taken Mr. Smeeth ten minutes to discover that he disliked Mitty intensely, and every thing that Mitty had done and said since (and for the last hour or so he had insisted on calling Mr. Smeeth “Pa”) had only increased that dislike, which did not stop short at Fred, but extended to Mrs. Mitty and the girl, Dot. He had never known three people he had disliked more.

Mrs. Smeeth’s cousin was a fellow in his early forties who had probably not been bad-looking once in a cheap flashy style. He had curly fair hair, very small, light-coloured greedy eyes, a broken nose, and a large loose mouth that went all out to one side when he talked. He reminded Mr. Smeeth at once of those cheap auctioneer chaps who take an empty shop for a week or two and pretend they are giving everything away. Mr. Mitty’s complexion seemed to be permanently rich and ruby, and it had evidently cost somebody a good deal in its time, though--as Mr. Smeeth assured himself, vindictively--not necessarily Mr. Mitty himself, who clearly brought out visiting with him a colossal thirst and appetite. He was a funny man, a determined wag, and the noisiest Mr. Smeeth had ever known. He shouted all the time, just like one of those cheap auctioneers. His jokes gave you a pain in the stomach and his voice a headache. Moreover, he seemed to Mr. Smeeth quite obviously a silly boaster, a liar, and a man not to be trusted a yard. Such men frequently ally themselves to quiet little women, but Fred Mitty--fortunately for some quiet little woman--had found a female of his own kind. Mrs. Mitty, who had a long blue nose and hair that was bright auburn at the ends and grey-brown near the roots, was as brassy as her husband. Her scream accompanied his roar. If she said anything playful to you, she hit your nearest rib with her bony elbow; and if you said anything playful to her, she slapped you on the arm. Here she differed from Fred, who banged you on the back and poked you in the ribs, unless you were a woman and not too old, and then he hugged you or invited you to sit on his knee. Dot, the solitary offspring of this brassy pair, was about Edna’s age and was all legs and golden curls and a hard blue stare. She talked of becoming a film actress. Mr. Smeeth, who did not know much about Hollywood, but nevertheless had a horror of the place, told her quite sincerely that he hoped she would get there, and added, with perfect truth, that she reminded him of those Broadway girls on the pictures. Edna of course--the silly child--had been fascinated at once by Dot; and as for Mrs. Smeeth, who really had no more sense about people at times than a baby, she seemed to be infatuated with all three of them.

“Will you have a little port wine, Mrs. Dalby?” said Mr. Smeeth, who felt that he must do something.

“Just the tiniest, weeniest sip, Mr. Smeeth,” she replied. And when he had brought her the Rich Ruby she continued, “Lively to-night, aren’t we?”

“Very,” he told her.

She gave him a quick look. “Well, it’s nice to see people enjoying themselves. But you look a bit tired to-night, Mr. Smeeth.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Do I? Feel all right, y’know, Mrs. Dalby.” Did he feel all right? What about that little tick-tick of pain somewhere inside him? “I’ve been working hard just lately. We’ve been busy, for once.”

“You’re inside all the time, aren’t you?” said Mrs. Dalby seriously and sympathetically. “And that’s what tells on you. Tom works very hard--though you wouldn’t think so, to hear him talk--but he’s out most of the time, on his round, you know, and so it’s not so bad for him, unless we get a spell of nasty damp weather and then he begins to feel it in the chest. He’s had chest trouble before.”

“Has he really?” said Mr. Smeeth. This was not a very cheerful conversation, but nevertheless it pleased him. Mrs. Dalby was a nice, quiet, ladylike sort of woman, and talking to her in this company was like having a few words with a sane person in a madhouse.

“That’s right, Fred,” Mrs. Smeeth shouted. “Do help yourself.”

“Trust me!” roared Fred, who was pouring himself out some whisky. Yes, there was a bottle of whisky, as well as some beer and the Rich Ruby. So far as Mr. Smeeth could see, half the week’s housekeeping money must have been spent on this racket.

“Yes, trust _’im_,” screamed Mrs. Fred, putting down her empty glass. “If you don’t take that bottle away from him, he’ll have it all before you know where you are.”

“Ah like ma droap o’ Scoatch, d’ye ken,” Fred bellowed in a very hoarse voice and in what he imagined to be a Scots accent. “Wha’ day ye say, Meesees Macphairson? Hoch aye!”

“Oh, stop it, Fred,” cried his wife.

“Good as a turn, you are, Fred,” said Mrs. Smeeth admiringly.

“Reminds me of the chap from Aberdeen,” Dalby began. But it was no use. It was not his evening.

“There was a Scottie I knew in Brum,” Fred shouted.