a few minutes later another phrase floated up to me, in an even more acid voice: ‘I agree with you! She is certainly very good-looking.’
It is really a very hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.
With a deep sigh I proceeded to do things with my hair. I have nice hair. It is black—a real black, not dark brown—and it grows well back from my forehead and down over the ears. With a ruthless hand I dragged it upwards. As ears, my ears are quite all right, but there is no doubt about it, ears are démodé nowadays. They are quite like the ‘Queen of Spain’s legs’ in Professor Peterson’s young day. When I had finished I looked almost unbelievably like the kind of orphan that walks out in a queue with a little bonnet and red cloak.
I noticed when I went down that Mrs Flemming’s eyes rested on my exposed ears with quite a kindly glance. Mr Flemming seemed puzzled. I had no doubt that he was saying to himself, ‘What has the child done to herself?’
On the whole the rest of the day passed off well. It was settled that I was to start at once to look for something to do.
When I went to bed, I stared earnestly at my face in the glass. Was I really good-looking? Honestly I couldn’t say I thought so! I hadn’t got a straight Grecian nose, or a rosebud mouth, or any of the things you ought to have. It is true that a curate once told me that my eyes were like ‘imprisoned sunshine in a dark, dark wood’—but curates always know so many quotations, and fire them off at random. I’d much prefer to have Irish blue eyes than dark green ones with yellow flecks! Still, green is a good colour for adventuresses.
I wound a black garment tightly round me, leaving my arms and shoulders bare. Then I brushed back my hair and pulled it well down over my ears again. I put a lot of powder on my face, so that the skin seemed even whiter than usual. I fished about until I found some old lip-salve, and I put oceans of it on my lips. Then I did under my eyes with burnt cork. Finally I draped a red ribbon over my bare shoulder, stuck a scarlet feather in my hair, and placed a cigarette in one corner of my mouth. The whole effect pleased me very much.
‘Anna the Adventuress,’ I said aloud, nodding at my reflection. ‘Anna the Adventuress. Episode I, “The House in Kensington”!’
Girls are foolish things.
In the succeeding weeks I was a good deal bored. Mrs Flemming and her friends seemed to me to be supremely uninteresting. They talked for hours of themselves and their children and of the difficulties of getting good milk for the children and of what they said to the dairy when the milk wasn’t good. Then they would go on to servants, and the difficulties of getting good servants and of what they had said to the woman at the registry office and of what the woman at the registry office had said to them. They never seemed to read the papers or to care about what went on in the world. They disliked travelling—everything was so different to England. The Riviera was all right, of course, because one met all one’s friends there.
I listened and contained myself with difficulty. Most of these women were rich. The whole wide beautiful world was theirs to wander in and they deliberately stayed in dirty dull London and talked about milkmen and servants! I think now, looking back, that I was perhaps a shade intolerant. But they were stupid—stupid even at their chosen job: most of them kept the most extraordinarily inadequate and muddled housekeeping accounts.
My affairs did not progress very fast. The house and furniture had been sold, and the amount realized had just covered our debts. As yet, I had not been successful in finding a post. Not that I really wanted one! I had the firm conviction that, if I went about looking for adventure, adventure would meet me half-way. It is a theory of mine that one always gets what one wants.
My theory was about to be proved in practice.
It was early in January—the 8th, to be exact. I was returning from an unsuccessful interview with a lady who said she wanted a secretary-companion, but really seemed to require a strong charwoman who would work twelve hours a day for £25 a year. Having parted with mutual veiled impolitenesses, I walked down Edgware Road (the interview had taken place in a house in St John’s Wood), and across Hyde Park to St George’s Hospital. There I entered Hyde Park Corner Tube Station and took a ticket to Gloucester Road.
Once on the platform I walked to the extreme end of it. My inquiring mind wished to satisfy itself as to whether there really were points and an opening between the two tunnels just beyond the station in the direction of Down Street. I was foolishly pleased to find I was right. There were not many people on the platform, and at the extreme end there was only myself and one man. As I passed him, I sniffed dubiously. If there is one smell I cannot bear it is that of moth-balls! This man’s heavy overcoat simply reeked of them. And yet most men begin to wear their winter overcoats before January, and consequently by this time the smell ought to have worn off. The man was beyond me, standing close to the edge of the tunnel. He seemed lost in thought, and I was able to stare at him without rudeness. He was a small thin man, very brown of face, with blue light eyes and a small dark beard.
‘Just come from abroad,’ I deduced. ‘That’s why his overcoat smells so. He’s come from India. Not an officer, or he wouldn’t have a beard. Perhaps a tea-planter.’
At this moment the man turned as though to retrace his steps along the platform. He glanced at me and then his eyes went on to something behind me, and his face changed. It was distorted by fear—almost panic. He took a step backwards as though involuntarily recoiling from some danger, forgetting that he was standing on the extreme edge of the platform, and went down and over.
There was a vivid flash from the rails and a crackling sound. I shrieked. People came running up. Two station officials seemed to materialize from nowhere and took command.
I remained where I was, rooted to the spot by a sort of horrible fascination. Part of me was appalled at the sudden disaster, and another part of me was coolly and dispassionately interested in the methods employed for lifting the man off the live rail and back on to the platform.
‘Let me pass, please. I am a medical man.’
A tall man with a brown beard pressed past me and bent over the motionless body.
As he examined it, a curious sense of unreality seemed to possess me. The thing wasn’t real—couldn’t be. Finally, the doctor stood upright and shook his head.
‘Dead as a door-nail. Nothing to be done.’
We had all crowded nearer, and an aggrieved porter raised his voice.
‘Now then, stand back there, will you? What’s the sense in crowding round?’
A sudden nausea seized me, and I turned blindly and ran up the stairs again towards the lift. I felt that it was too horrible. I must get out into the open air. The doctor who had examined the body was just ahead of me. The lift was just about to go up, another having descended, and he broke into a run. As he did so, he dropped a piece of paper.
I stopped, picked it up, and ran after him. But the lift gates clanged in my face, and I was left holding the paper in my hand. By the time the second lift reached street level, there was no sign of my quarry. I hoped it was nothing important that he had lost, and for the first time I examined it.
It was a plain half-sheet of notepaper with some figures and words scrawled upon
