Mary had wept in secret over the thought of having strangers in her house; she had never dealt easily with strangers, and her house was somehow sacred to herself and her two tiny sons; and it seemed to her that the way the Lord had shown to Alfred was unbelievably hard and flinty. But she had one overpowering motive in her life: her children’s good. She wanted to help Alfred, of course; she still loved Alfred, because she had never analysed herself sufficiently to find out that she didn’t; but more than anything she wanted to give her children a future that they might find sufficient. So there had been long years of paying guests and child-bearing, the guests growing fewer as the growing family needed more rooms; a state of affairs with which Alfred Ellis’s superior understanding seemed strangely unable to cope; each time they had to part with a guest he had made it an occasion for loud wailing, threats of bankruptcy, and ultimate bowing to God’s will. And now, with five of her six children alive and grown-up, there remained only one guest: the Indian student on the first floor. And Mary sometimes smiled to remember how she had hated the thought of Ratan Dastur’s coming, and how she would miss that gentle Parsee when at last he would go. At the time, Alfred had forbidden her to take a heathen into the house, but when he heard that the heathen was going to pay five shillings a week more than his predecessor because for some, to Alfred, unfathomable reason he wanted more baths, Alfred had said that perhaps it was God’s will, and who were they to gainsay it. It was almost like a reward, Mary thought sometimes, that the last of her guests should be so lovable a being.
Alfred was eating his sausages when Gareth came back from talking to Molly. He had already told his wife what he thought of his son’s proposed method of making money, and had, of course, laid the blame of his future damnation on her. Hadn’t he told her when Gareth wanted to go to the Academy what the end would be? Hadn’t he? And look what had come of it! Playing vile African tunes while half-naked harlots disported themselves in shameless attitudes! Dancing to hell!
Mary had listened almost indifferently (she was so used to this by now that she could almost anticipate the phrases as they came to his tongue) and marvelled mildly for the thousandth time at the relish Alfred took in the matters of sex. Gareth’s entrance was, she knew, the signal for the tirade to begin again. She hoped that Gareth would be too pleased with himself to care. The only way to deal with Alfred was to let him talk and say nothing; let the torrent wash over you while you shut yourself inside your mind until the storm was over.
“What’s this I hear?” said Alfred, laying down his knife and fork, and glaring.
“That I’ve got five pounds a week, I hope!”
“For what? For what! For pandering to the lowest in human nature. For aiding and abetting the committing of sin. Sin, I tell you. It is sin! You are taking the wages of the devil.”
“Be quiet,” He said it quite casually but distinctly, as on, does to an obstreperous child, and sat down with his plate of sausage.
“Gareth!” said his mother, aghast. “You mustn’t speak to your father like that!”
“What’s to hinder me?”
“What’s to hinder you!” shouted his father, purpling, and more surprised than he had ever been in his life before. “I should have thought common decency and gratitude would have hindered you, that’s what! Haven’t I fed and clothed you all those years? Didn’t I send you to the Academy instead of putting you to a trade like the rest of your kind? And you repay all the care and expense I’ve lavished on you by taking the deliberate way to sin. And not content with that you speak to me disrespectfully at my own table. I never thought I’d live to hear a son of mine—” He choked, partly with rage, partly on a piece of sausage.
Gareth was blithe and unimpressed. “In the first place, if you hadn’t fed and clothed me you’d have been had up by the courts. In the second place, it wasn’t you who sent me to the Academy, it was mother. If you paid for me it was sorely against your will, and you jolly well know it. I’ll pay you back that money because I’d hate to be in your debt for anything. And if you don’t like a sinner in the house I’ll relieve you of my presence any time you like.”
Alfred changed his tone. “Oh, I see! That’s the way the wind blows is it! The minute you begin to make some money you would like to pretend you owe nobody anything. You don’t want any of your five pounds a week to be claimed by the parents who have fed and clothed you. Is that it? Well, you’re making a mistake, my lad. You’ll stay here and pay your share for a change. We have put out a lot on you and we expect something in return.”
Oh, if you don’t mind taking the wages of sin I don’t mind your having them. I said I’d pay you back. And now that I’m earning my living perhaps mum can have a new costume at last.”
“Are you insinuating that your mother is not respectably clothed?”
Gareth winked comfortingly at his distressed mother. “She doesn’t show anything she shouldn’t show, if that’s what you mean by respectable. But she hasn’t had a new coat and skirt for years. Now, perhaps she can have one.”
The venom which showed in Alfred’s stupid eyes spilled over. “Your mother can have all the clothes she wants without you prostituting the talent God gave you to play in a dance hall!”
Gareth’s pale face was suddenly drained of all colour. His eyes, which had been sparkling at this new play of baiting the family tyrant, grew hard and dead as blue stones. He caught his breath in a queer little sound, horrible to hear. His arm went back to push away his chair and he half rose, his eyes fixed on his father’s sneering face.
“Gareth!” cried his mother, in sharp appeal. Gareth hesitated, still staring at his father. And perhaps the fear on his father’s face stayed him even more than his mother’s cry. It was somehow shocking.
And then the door opened and Sara came in. Gareth sat down slowly, suddenly limp and shaken. Sara came over to the table, carrying the plate which she had fetched from the kitchen, and sat down without a word. She had not looked at any of them, and was unaware that there was any crisis. Sara was habitually wrapped up in her own thoughts. So self-absorbed was she that not even the admiring stares of men in the streets and the Underground roused her from her secret brooding.
“Had a tiring day, dear?” her mother asked, trying to bring her little world back to some semblance of normality.
She must forget what she had seen on her son’s face; must rub it out of her mind before the impression became indelible.
“Oh, just the usual.”
“Lady Nora’s trousseau finished?” Alfred shouldn’t have said that. Oh, he shouldn’t have said that!
“Yes. I don’t know why madame bothers with it. They’ll never see the money for it. Pretty dear advertisement. Pass the salt, Gareth.” She caught sight of her brother’s face. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. I feel sick.”
“No job yet?”
“Yes,” his mother said, “he’s got a job with Regan, the conductor.”
“No! How much?”
“Not much,” she said, when she heard. She herself earned only three pounds and fifteen shillings a week, and knew what was much or little with a pitiless clarity. “You should have made him give you more.”
“I’ll have more when he’s had me a month,” Gareth said boastfully. But the jubilation had gone out of him. He was only a shell, dark and empty.
“Is that Mark I hear?” Mary asked, listening to the spatter of water in the next room.
“Yes, he’s in.” Sara’s beautiful, sullen mouth tightened in exasperation. “Must he wash himself at the kitchen sink? We do have a bathroom.”
“Oh, Sara, dear!”
“Well! It’s slovenly and disgusting!” She was tired, and an immense despair overwhelmed her. “We live like pigs in the basement when we might be living in decency upstairs. All because we hang on to a paying guest that we don’t need!”
“Sara!” exclaimed her mother sharply. What was wrong with everyone to-night! “Mr. Dastur’s been with us
four years. You know quite well that none of us want him to go. He’ll stay with us until he’s finished at the University.”
“And then some excuse will be found for having another one. You’ll see!”
“If you don’t control your temper, miss,” her father said, “you’ll leave the table.”
“I’m not in a temper. I only want to know why we live as we do, and why Mark—”
She stopped as the door opened. But it was not Mark, it was Matt. And with his advent the charged atmosphere became suddenly clearer. Matt had no sense of frustration to mar his outlook on life. Matt was free and content. He knew what he wanted in life, and he knew the way to get it, and his bright, watchful dark eyes were full of a careless good humour.
“’Lo, everyone, No, I don’t want anything to eat. Just looked in for a cup of tea in passing. You won’t make it an extra on the bill, will you, Mum? It’s all right,” as Mary made as if to rise, “I’ll get a cup.” He fetched a cup and saucer from the cupboard. “They’ve got the chap who did the postman in. Yes. This afternoon. The police needed that badly. You wait and see the Morning News throwing them bouquets to-morrow. After panning them for months! Huh! Any word of a job, kid?”
“Yes, I’m going to play the fiddle for Regan. Start to-morrow.”
“Good for you! Congratulations, kid! You’ll be the famous one of the family all in a bound. Playing for Regan is first-rate advertisement, isn’t it! There isn’t a single member of the first hundred thousand who won’t know you by sight in a fortnight’s time. I say, Mark,” as his brother came in, “congratulate the kid. He’s been engaged by Regan. The dance band, you know.”
Mark’s absent-minded grey eyes woke to animation and he smiled, a little shyly, at his brother. “And will you like that?” he asked with interest. To Mark the important thing in life was neither money nor fame, but the ability to devote yourself to a job you were interested in. He spent his days in a garage attending to invalid motors, and most of his evenings in the same garage, experimenting. The world for Mark was bounded by the internal combustion engine and what it might be capable of becoming. Even on Sundays he was unmistakably a mechanic. There was a suggestion of motor oil in his untidy dark hair, and his hands, in spite of assiduous scrubbing, still looked very much as they had on Saturday evening. He lived in a world of his own, not, like Sara, because of a lack of sympathy with his surroundings, but because he did not notice his surroundings until they were pointed out to him.
Matt, who lived in no world of his own, had become aware that Sara was on the verge of tears and that Gareth looked ill and miserable for a newly-engaged violinist, and he hastened to deal with Mark’s question. “Of course he’ll like it,” he said. “It’ll be a great jape for him. You can’t do anything without advertisement nowadays, and he’ll be getting advertisement in dollops. And Regan’s good to work with, anyhow. Of course he’ll like it!” He cast round in his mind for something else to say. The kid had no right to be looking like that when he had just reached down his first job. “And when he’s made a little he can walk out and do something else. With a little money you can do anything.” Was that what the kid was sore about? Not being able to play decent stuff? Or—oh, yes, of course! That was it! Father had been holding forth again. He looked for a moment at his parent, glowering and eating his tea with a sulky ferocity at the head of the table. And he added deliberately: “With money, kid, you can be independent of everyone but yourself. Everyone, do you hear.”
Alfred glanced quickly at his eldest son, but Matt’s square face was bland. If there was a challenge there Alfred ignored it. He was afraid of Matt.
Mary was thinking: “By to-morrow this will have blown over and we can have his birthday celebration without bad feeling.” But she did not analyse the thought too closely in case the wish was father to the thought.
Sara was trying to keep back the tears which every now and then blurred the sausages, and wondering why life so suddenly seemed unbearable the minute she entered Number Seventeen. True, she did not find it happy elsewhere, but if not happy it was at least supportable. Coming along the street she had been pleased with the furious splendour of the sunset. It had satisfied something hungry in her, and she had forgotten the petty annoyance of having to wear her humping, heavy rubber boots when the rain had long since ceased to fall. But as soon as the door had closed behind her the old, obscure resentment and hopelessness had risen in a flood and submerged her. The dark hall, with its mean, ugly hatstand and lifeless atmosphere enraged her. She hated everything, and hated herself for her hatred. When she snapped at her patient mother she loathed herself for snapping and her mother for her patience. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she been born like Molly, content with her lot? Asking nothing of life but the things she had known since babyhood. Why had she to be like this!
When Matt rose to go, after having swallowed his tea, she debated with herself whether she should go back to town with him. He might be persuaded to go by bus, and now that the rain had stopped it would be nice to sit on top of a bus and watch the lighted streets go by; and Matt was a sensible creature and comforting to be with. He didn’t suffer from vague and enormous desires, but he had realised the impossibility, the damnable, constricting, suffocating impossibility of Seventeen Sark Street. It would be soothing to be with Matt for a little and feel the fresh air blowing. She raised her head to tell him that she would come with him, and found that the thought of’ having to climb the stairs of a bus was more than she could face. She was tired to the marrow. And what was the point of going bus-riding, anyhow? Going nowhere just to come back again; just like the rest of life. She let him go. And presently, leaving her parents and Mark at the table (Gareth had disappeared), she climbed the dim, shabby stairs to her room at the top of the house.
In he basement of Number Seventeen was the kitchen, looking out on the street, and a living-room where the family took their meals, looking out on a square of bedraggled grass. The front sitting-room on the ground floor was occupied by Ratan Dastur, and the one behind it was the Ellises’ best room where they received visitors. On the first floor were, in front, Dastur’s bedroom and a room shared by Matt and Mark, and, behind, the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis. The top floor was divided into two attics; one was Sara’s, and the other Gareth had shared with his brother Joe until Joe had married and departed to work in a motor cycle works in Coventry, leaving him in sole possession.
As Sara passed his door she noticed that Gareth was sitting on the edge of his bed staring at nothing, and there was such woebegoneness in his attitude that she hesitated, and then moved into the room. The only tender spot in Sara’s heart was reserved for her baby brother. As a small girl she had looked after him when her mother was overburdened with household affairs; washed him, dressed him, bullied him, and shielded him, until, as he grew older he had, in a natural reaction, constituted himself her protector and champion. At the age of eight he fought a boy twice his size who had said that Sara, then nearly twelve, wore second-hand clothes; and had suffered more or less in silence Sara’s exasperated shaking when she saw the state of his own garments, because she might be hurt if she heard about the clothes.
She had meant to say something cheerful, but his resentment seemed to become fused with her own, and she said bitterly: “It’s a lovely life, isn’t it! What do you think we were born for?”
“Don’t you know!” Gareth said, as one pained at an exhibition of ignorance. “To help keep father, of course.”
“I don’t know how someone hasn’t murdered father long ago. It makes me sick, sick, to think that human beings are made like that, and sick to think he’s my father. The preaching hypocrite! Was he horrid about your job?”
Yes.”
“Why do you think we all stay?”
“Joe didn’t,” Gareth said, going round the question.
“No, but Joe doesn’t count. He always ran away from everything. He hadn’t even the spunk to get married before he went to Coventry. Did it on
the sly.”
“Father always beat him more than the rest of us.”
“Only because he was afraid of father and showed it. Hymn-bawling little coward. Of course he would get out! But why does Matt stay, and Mark, and you now?”
“Don’t know. Because of mother. I suppose. It would be awful for her if we all went. Went just to live in digs, I mean.”
“But, you know, mother is responsible for quite a lot of father’s awfulness. She’d be dreadfully hurt and all that if you said so to her, but it’s true. She’s been a door-mat for him ever since they were married. It makes me sick to see her fetching and carrying for him as if he were a king or an invalid. She thinks she’s being so noble when she does it, and all she is doing is making him into the unbearable thing he is. If mother had been another kind of woman father wouldn’t be half so awful as he is. He’d always have been a liar and a hypocrite, because he was born that way, but he wouldn’t have been so selfish or so bullying or quite so—so—oh, so ridiculous as he is. She’s made him like that.”
“I suppose she wanted a quiet life now and then.”
“She could have got it in two weeks if she had stuck up to him in the beginning. It disgusts me to see a woman kowtowing to her husband like that. That’s what mother thinks being a good wife is. I suppose. And she would think you were awful if you told her that it was much more degrading—much more—than being a man’s mistress. That kind of wife loses her self-respect and ruins her husband at the same time.”
“You’ll never be that kind of wife,” Gareth said, a faint amusement showing.
“No, I won’t.” The faint amusement became reflected in her face. “Neither will Molly, you know. Molly is easy-going, but she will tell you just where you get off.”
“You can’t tell me anything I don’t know about Molly.”