hope you’ll be comfortable,” she said. “It makes all the difference when you’re away from home, whether you’re comfortable. Not that there’ll be any need for you to feel away from home in this house. There’s an hour left in the fire, so you’ll be all right for a bit.”
“Thank you, Mrs Pollard.”
“You’ll be hungry after your long journey. I’ve a meal on for you. Stew.”
“Thank you. That’ll be nice.”
“Yes. You’d as well to let me know if you don’t like it. Not that I approve of fads, but there it is, if you don’t like it you’d as well to let me know. We’re very partial to stews in this house.”
“We?”
“The old man upstairs. Not that he eats.”
There was a brief silence. Then, uneasily, Mrs Pollard asked him: “Will you take your dinner in with me, Mr Barnes, or would you rather have it in here?”
“In here would be very nice, thank you,” he replied, glancing mechanically round the room.
“As you wish,” she said, and she closed the door behind her.
Barnes lit the fire with one of his seven remaining matches. Then suddenly he felt that a spell of breathing was about to assail him. He lay back on the sofa, in the manner that he had found most suitable, and awaited it. Quite soon it came. Wave after wave of breathing flooded him, and sent all his thoughts to his brain, where they jostled for the best positions. It was useless to attempt to pick any of them out. There was nothing for it but to lie there and wait for them to stop.
Soon it was all over, and he went to the window. It was dark, and the lights of the houses were patterned all over the hills. His thoughts were settling down now, and as he stood there, gazing into the darkness, he thought of his life to date. An education, that was all it had been. Cambridge and Winchester. Fine names. The Pay Corps. A fine regiment. And then, after Cambridge, the hard school of life. A brief spell on the newspaper, serving the interests of Droitwich and its environs. A short while detecting earthquakes. A stint in the kitchens, specialising in savouries and nougat. A variety of little jobs, of odds and ends of one kind and another, all performed with varying degrees of utter incompetence. It had all been nothing but a preparation. Now, in this great city, Barnes, thirty-nine, of no fixed abode, would discover the purpose of existence. Here, in this bed-sitting room, the humiliations and trials of the past would serve their purpose. He knew it. Already much of his nervousness had passed away, for the arrival had been smoother than he had dared to hope.
He was still by the window when Mrs Pollard returned with the silver casserole—a prize for lupins. Proudly she placed it on the table, and then she removed the lid, with its valued inscription in the best Latin that money could buy.
“I’ve brought you your dinner,” she said, and he came over from the window and took his position behind it. He felt suddenly hungry, and he ate, as always, with frenzied, uncritical zeal. He was well liked wherever he ate. Mrs Pollard sat opposite, presiding over him intently, and the long, heavy silence was broken only by the steady munch of his eating. As the meal drew to a close, and the eating ceased to occupy all his attention, he began to wish that she was not in the room with him. He felt that it was not the done thing, in the early stages of a landlady-lodger relationship, and he felt doubly glad that he had not chosen to eat in her room.
His nervousness had returned, and he felt a shock when Mrs Pollard asked him how he had found the stew.
“Very good,” he said hastily.
“Say if it’s not,” she said. “We may as well get things straight from the start.”
“No,” he assured her. “I meant it.”
Silence fell again, heavier even than before. This time there was no eating to disturb it, and at length, with a great effort, Mrs Pollard spoke.
“Would you like some coffee?” she inquired. “Or some tea?”
“Coffee would be very nice, thank you.”
“I’ll fetch you some coffee.”
Over coffee they talked a little.
“You’re familiar with these parts?” she asked.
“I’ve not been here before, no.”
“We were new to it too.”
“We?”
“Pollard. He was Birmingham and I’m Hornchurch.”
Why didn’t she go, now, back to Hornchurch, or at least to her kitchen, where a landlady belongs? He longed for her to go.
“What part do you come from?” she asked at length.
“London and Margate and Evesham and Barnstaple and the Isle of Wight.”
“Well, I never. And it’s the Isle of Wight you’ve come from now, is it? Quite a change for you, this must be.”
“No. I’ve come from Birmingham.”
“Oh. Like Pollard.” There was another pause, broken once more by Mrs Pollard. “You had a good job in Birmingham, I suppose?”
“I was a teacher.”
“Oh. Very nice.”
“I taught scripture and games.”
“And now you’re going to be a teacher here too.”
“No. No, I’m starting afresh. I’m going to be a writer.”
“Oh. Very nice. What sort of thing will you write, if it isn’t a rude question?”
It wasn’t a rude question, and so he felt that he ought to reply. “Poems,” he said, somewhat surlily.
“A poem is a lovely thing.”
“Yes.”
An impasse! Mrs Pollard made no attempt to get round it. She sensed that further inquiries might not be welcome yet, and for this he was grateful. He was also grateful to her for making no reference to the rent.
“I’ll go and put the kettle on for your bottle,” she said. “You want to feel well-aired after a long journey.”
While she was gone Barnes fetched from his suitcase a sheet of blank quarto writing paper. On it he wrote: “Poem, by Barnes,” and then he placed it in the middle of his table, where it would await him in the morning.
“I’ll show you how to make your bed,” Mrs Pollard said on her return, and he followed her to the sofa. She lifted the back of the sofa to its full extent, and then she brought the seat forward and at the same time lowered it, to reveal, where previously there had been only a sofa, a bed. She then pursued the reverse process, taking care to lift the under-bar so that the springs wouldn’t catch and be torn to ribbons. She then asked Barnes to demonstrate, just for her peace of mind. He proved a most unresponsive pupil, and it was several minutes before she felt that she could safely leave him. To him these minutes were as charged with the torture
