For Love Alone (43 page)

What about washing? She could get to the factory early and wash, or go to the Central Railway Station. How did vagrant women wash? In pools and streams. But here? In the factory then. At the station, money was needed to wash. The factory was her home. It failed her in nothing. Money, washrooms, even affection, she was liked there and everyone knew there what no one knew at home, that she was sailing soon. Such was the good-nature and solidarity of the factory.

The factory backed on a paper factory which had been burned out not long ago. Beside the burned-out factory was a junk and lumber yard, and between the two a small grassy area shut in by a loose arrangement of palings. No one ever went in there. It was no man's land. She had often seen it from upstairs in the hat factory. There was also a vacant grassy space in between the two factories, but this was open to men and dogs. Her green hat had been there for several days, then one day a man had come poking at it and taken it away. Supposing one night, when she was very tired, after nightfall, she went in through that plank gate and slept there? No one at all could see her till morning. Light came early—about four-thirty or five. The night watchman would not look down—in any case, she could sleep right up against the fence nearest the factory and he could not see her. On the other hand, perhaps she could secrete herself in the factory itself, sleep on the roof or the like? But how would she get out to get her food? It was all a question of not walking the two miles back and forth, but if she was to pay extra for her food! Then, could she undress in the grass patch? She could not sleep in her only dress needed for work the next day. Besides, it might rain and she could not arrive drenched in the same dress, a thin silk. She observed all kinds of things, thought about the silk lying on the machine at home, and sharply kept a look-out for a hiding-place where she might sleep at night. How about the cathedral? The
Art Gallery? The latter had a bare open hall where she would be seen. The cathedral was an excellent place, but surely they swept and looked round for tramps who wanted a roof over their heads? There was an infectious disease hospital in the Domain and a little morgue with a very pretty blind corner, covered with vines and half-filled with old gardening implements. But surely it was at night they came to remove the corpses? A funeral with plumes and lights—? Then again it was so far from the factory. She went on. She came to the boat. She sat and dreamed on the boat as it choughed over the waves and she was almost home round the beach path when she remembered that Kitty had run away this morning.

She found the two men stricken, like two old men who had lost their sister, but to their questions: “Did you know?” “Why didn't you tell us?” she returned languid replies. “She ought to get out and make a place for herself, she ought to get a chance.” Lance, with hollow eyes and a suffering air on his cheeks, she saw was near to tears. She said: “It will be cheaper with only three of us instead of four.” Lance asked: “Am I going to stay here all my life?” She went upstairs and found Kitty's room turned upside down—why? She stared for a moment at the familiar mess, forgotten things which Kitty had stored “to come in useful some time.” Now she had left them all behind. All no use now. She was very far from picking and prying into Kitty's things; with a great disillusion about the young girl's life she surveyed everything from the door, when suddenly she saw a very long dark green shawl in wool, which Kitty had knitted at one time, ugly but heavy and nearly a yard wide. It had served Kitty instead of a coat for a long time. This would do! Teresa stepped forward, shook out the shawl and contemplated it with a beating heart. Wrapped in such a shawl against the dew she might do very well one night, if she could find a place in the factory or elsewhere to sleep.

The next day, she packed it in a small valise. The two men questioned her so much about her little valise and looked so frightened that she opened it up smiling and said the shawl was for a poor woman she had met in the street near the factory, who sold matches.
Erskine, too, noticed the little bag and wanted to know if she were going away. She said: “Yes, for the night.” Later, she went up to see Erskine in his room, a thing she had never done, and leaning on the window-sill while he chatted and while he approached and put his arm round her shoulders, she studied the empty spaces underneath the two factories. The one she coveted was well closed. Inside were three or four notice-boards, “No Trespassers”, and “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted”, which had perhaps been thrown over from the junk yard. Or was there an entrance from the junk yard? This frightened her. She realized she would be trespassing and could be fined or sent to jail if she set foot on the little enclosed patch. Was there an entrance through the burned factory, without forcing an entrance? She slowly revolved phrases in her mind, “breaking and entering”,
“vol avec effraction”
—but she would not be stealing. Meanwhile she was answering Erskine, pulling away from him. His hand had wandered up to the gathers on the shoulder of her dress, and now wandered down, he played along the gathers and his eyes shone. She looked at him mildly, unable to understand why he was so restless and bright, his eyes glittering, whispering madly at her. A girl sent by a workroom head for some samples of braids came in the open door and laughed aloud as she said: “Mr Erskine, Miss Allbright wants the Italian braids.” Erskine fretfully, but with a smile, dropped his hands and said: “On my desk, on my desk.” The girl picked up the cards and went out, looking back and laughing.

“You see,” said Teresa thoughtfully, still puzzling about the entrance to the vacant lot, “you are making a scandal!”

“I don't care,” Erskine replied. “I want to make a scandal. You take no notice of me, so I must make a scandal!”

She laughed, and looking out the window, asked: “Do you think anyone could get into that empty lot down there?”

He looked. “I don't know.”

“Would it be hard to pry open those boards there?”

“No, I could do it easily,” he said. “What for?”

“I thought I saw someone in there.”

He turned back to her and came back to running his finger over her dress. “That's the first time I've seen you in a pretty dress.”

“Yes, I made it for my trip abroad.”

“Why don't you wear pretty dresses like that all the time?”

“Why?”

“For me,” he said fiercely. “For me.”

She laughed. “For you? No. I've got to keep them to wear to my jobs in England.”

He dropped his hands and went behind his desk, coolly. “Oh, do you still insist you're going to England?”

“In just about four months.” She smiled. “In three months, I'll give you notice,” and she stared at him, smiling blissfully.

He looked her full in the face, angry but puzzled. “You're a strange girl.”

She said: “You know it's funny I've never been all over the factory, I'd like to some time.”

“I'll show you over.”

“Won't they think it's funny?”

“You're my secretary,” he cried in a rage. “Who's to say no?”

“All right. When? At lunch time today?”

“At lunch—all right, but why?”

“I just want to see it.”

“All right,” he said softly. “Anything you like.”

She went back to her office on the ground floor.

At lunch time he took her over the whole factory; the heavy machines on the top floor, the workrooms, the trimmers' rooms, the showrooms, everywhere. Nowhere but in one department was there anywhere that she could spend the night; that was in the men's felts, a small cramped place full of corners. She asked if there was a night watchman. “Not inside,” said Erskine.

“Can you get out once the place is locked?” she asked.

“I don't think so. Why?”

“So no one might be locked in by mistake.”

“Oh, no, they're too anxious to get home.” He laughed whimsically.

Looking at the factory opposite a horrible thought struck her. “If there was a fire in the night no one could get out!”

“Oh, I suppose they'd break a window and jump out, it's better to jump than to burn.”

Her spirits fell, she lost interest in the factory. He went back with her to her office and stood with his back against the shut door watching her. Then he came round and looked in the mirror hanging on the wooden pillar. Gazing in the mirror, stroking his pale cheek, he asked:

“Oh, what can ail thee knight-at-arms
,

So haggard and so woebegone?”

She ran the sheets into her typewriter for her letter to Jonathan. “What's the matter with you now?”

“Don't I look pale, ill and yellow?” he asked, turning round and exhibiting his face.

“You don't look very well, no.”

“It's your fault.”

“Don't be so stupid, you know it isn't.”

“You don't care for anyone but that sly-looking man,” he said spitefully, coming and tearing the paper out of her typewriter.

“Jonathan is not sly-looking.”

“He's the most deceitful, malicious, dishonest-looking man I ever saw.”

She laughed tenderly. “You don't know him, he is wonderful, tender, and so truthful and modest.”

“I don't like his face.”

She looked at Erskine distantly. He went to the window and turned to say: “And such a time to go to Europe! There'll be war.”

“What do I care?”

“Yes, what do you care?” He came beside her, saying: “You're so pale and beautifully distracted, you're like a woman out of Shakespeare.” She smiled at him.

“Yes, out of Schubert too, Death and the Maiden in one person, you look like death and yet you've got that silly maidenish face too.” She laughed outright. “Go on, get out of here, I've got to write my letter.” He went sideways, looking at her regretfully and angrily and pursing his lips. At the other side of the factory, where the corridor turned, he stopped to look back at her. She smiled. He blew a kiss and at the same time bumped into two young girls coming back from lunch. They all laughed, Erskine airily went on his way. Teresa went on typing to Jonathan. This day, Erskine seemed forced to tease her. He came back towards the end of the afternoon when the long red rays of sun were falling on the dusty floor in the men's felts, which was opposite Teresa's office. Teresa sometimes looked up to see the shadows of the manager or one of his assistants falling with a milk-and-ruby outline hotly on the floor.

Erskine's form, small against the light, fitted into the men's felts and then she saw it pale coming towards her. Her heart began to beat. A resentment stole into her against Erskine, who lately had begun to have the power, with his repeated caresses and embraces in public which were a kind of attack, to excite her. She was afraid she might lose her head and begin to like him, such liking might turn into love and she did not want to love anyone here just when she was going. If she loved him, she might stay here—for ever, anchored in the little harbour where she was born, like a rowboat whose owner had died and which had never been taken off the slips. With concealed trembling she saw him saunter into her room, nonchalant, airy. No sooner was he inside that he started his tricks. He leaned on her desk and remarked: “I just came to tell you you're mad.”

“Go away.”

“You're mad.”

“I want to be mad.”

“I'm better than that fellow over there.”

“How modest!”

He suddenly fell into one of his little rages: “You don't understand anything about men; he's a rascal.”

“It isn't only him. I have a great destiny.”

Erskine straightened up with surprise: “What do you mean?”

“I have some kind of a great destiny, I know. All this can't be for nothing. Glory and catastrophe are not the fate of the common man.”

“God!” he said, feeling his pale chin, his pale eyes on her. “All that you're doing, you mean? You mean, all or nothing?”

“Yes. I know. I have to go, it isn't my fault. I am forced to. If I stay here, I will be nobody. I'd just be taking the line of least resistance.” She said very earnestly: “My father wants me to stay at home and keep the house together, he doesn't know I'm going. Some people years ago asked me to join a certain Eastern order because I had psychic power, at least they said that to attract me. If I stayed here, I'd fall in love with someone—you might make me, for instance—then I'd get married and stay here. I can't do it.”

He looked at her in wonder, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide open. He turned round and marched out. He went into Mr Remark's office, said something about some orders and came marching past again but wheeled, and coming straight up to her desk, said severely: “I love you. You say all that to annoy me.”

They wrangled as usual and he went marching out again round the room and up to his room. In a minute he was on the telephone.

When five-thirty came and the office staff went home, she picked up her bag and took a new turning that led past the two vacant lots and the burned factory. She strolled past, glancing around, but actually sizing up the open spaces and the nailed-up gateway. It was too bright for her now to pause and there were other people in the street, soon the six o'clock stream of workers would be coming past. She went to the railway station and sat in the waiting room for a long while. She went out to get a glass of milk and came back. She hoped that as she was saving the walk home, and yet had
the extra expenditure of supper out, she might be able to eat only a sandwich and some milk. If it was going to cost her extra for supper, it might be better to spend the energy in her usual walk instead.

About eight it was dark and she was dead tired. She went out of the station again carrying her little bag and once more strolled in the street with the burned factory. There were still people about for it was quite near one of the big station entrances; likewise, she saw a policeman passing thoughtfully, on the other side of the street, under a light. She went back to the waiting-room and waited till about ten o'clock. How slowly the time passed. Women who had been waiting for hours gradually left for their late trains, the attendant began to look at her with wonder, so she went out and bought a sandwich, which seemed to disappear in her without leaving a trace. A few minutes later, however, she felt stronger and went out to walk the streets until it was time to try the vacant lot. Unfortunately, this closed gateway could be seen for a long way, from the station ramp, some of the platforms, the long road that went by the station and even a forking side road near the factory. The only thing in its favour was that it was not under a street lamp. She slipped first into the open door-way of the burned factory but the floor of the space was a death trap, piled with stones, charred beams, and tangled wire, with deep hollows between going into some basement. She never had a chance to try opening the gateway itself when she came out and passed and repassed it, for she always heard some footfalls or heard someone. At last she was afraid to be seen flitting there back and forth and she had already used up as much energy as she would have done on her well-accustomed route to the Quay, so she went round the corner of the wedge-shaped lot on which the junk yard stood and round into the lot which stood between the factories. Pressed against the paling fence, she looked up at the windows where she had stood today.