Coquette Read online

could ... you could buy material for a frock.You could buy underclothes, stockings, shoes. Not all of them, but whatyou wanted. Or you could buy a hat and sweets and scent and ... oh, lotsof things! A whole pound to spend! Slowly, slowly came Sally's mindround to something from which it instantly darted away. It crept backagain. It seized upon her will. With a pound you could ... you couldmake your hair look nice and your face....

  After the resolve, Sally was quite cool. She turned to greet her motherwith entire self-possession. But her ears were strained, becauseoverhead she heard a heavy footstep.

  ix

  The thing determined, Sally was faced with a great difficulty. She didnot know how to do things. She had to find out. You couldn't make a foolof yourself and ask at a shop. She had talked to May once or twice about... making your hair look nice ... well, dyeing it, if you wanted toknow; and May could only show her advertisements clipped from the Sundaypaper. She had not kept those advertisements: she had not liked the lookof them. Mother wouldn't know. She must do it at once. A bold plan hadcome into her mind. She was near the end of her second year with MissJubb. She could go into the West End if only she looked nice enough. Ifshe could do it to-night or to-morrow she could meet May Pearcey firstthing on Monday morning, get her to tell Miss Jubb Sally was ill, andperhaps go after some situation during the day. What a game! But how wasshe to get the stuff? That was the difficulty. No, it was the easiestthing of all. Mrs. Perce! Mrs. Perce used peroxide, because she had oncebeen a barmaid. But that meant a long time. Sally must have somethingquick in its action. Mrs. Perce would know. Mrs. Perce knew everythingof that kind. The notion of going shopping with her mother wasabandoned. She had more important things to do. She would go and seeMrs. Perce immediately after tea. Then, while old Perce was playing thepiano, she would get to know everything. Sally became wildly animated.She glimpsed the future. Transformed, she would conquer. Toby would bewon. She would be in the West End. A whole new vista opened before her,glittering with promise. Never had she been so excited, even when Tobyfirst spoke to her.

  Mrs. Minto wearily threw off her dingy cloak and raked the fire, so thatthe kettle began to boil. She looked in a lethargic way at Sally, as acat looks at a stranger in whom it is not at all interested; and thenmechanically took down the tea-caddy from the mantelpiece. As shestooped over the kettle there seemed to be cramp in all her limbs. Thelittle bell-pull of hair was smaller than ever, and the hair itself wasmore grey. Her whole bearing expressed a lifeless dejection. Pantingfaintly as the result of her late posture, Mrs. Minto brought the teapotto the spotless table, and clumsily touched the teacups and spoons sothat they jarred upon Sally's nerves. Everything her mother did nowannoyed Sally. The slow motions, the awkward way in which her fingersturned to thumbs, the shortsightedness that made her unable to thread aneedle or read a paper except through an old magnifying glass, thegeneral air of debility and discouragement. Sally felt furious with herall the time--"Old fool ... old fool!" she would frantically murmur toherself; and then would fall again into despair at her own sensation offrustrate youth. She had lost love for her mother, had no pity to givein its place; and only awoke in these moments of dreadful exasperationto the sense that she was still dependent upon Mrs. Minto for herexistence. During this tea-time, while her mother mutely ate bread andmargarine, Sally was away in the clouds, dreaming of all that herwindfall was to produce. It was to produce beauty, opportunity,happiness. So much for a pound to do! Sally was so impatient to call onMrs. Perce that she could hardly eat anything or drink her tea.

  "You _are_ worritting and fidgetting, Sally," cried Mrs. Minto,peevishly. "Sit still, there's a good girl. I don't know what's come tomy 'ead. It feels all funny inside, and if I put my hand there it's likeI got a bruise. And yet I don't remember knockin' myself anywheres, andI can't understand it at all, because it's not as if I'd taken anythingto disagree with me; and yet there it is, a nasty pain all inside my'ead and a feeling as though I'd got a bruise on the outside. I wastelling Mrs. ... oh, dear, what is her name?... Mrs. ... Roberson aboutit, and she said that's what her 'usband used to suffer from, and ..._he_ took...."

  Sally ignored the rest of the speech. Her mother rambled on; and Sallylooked at the clock. She'd get to Hornsey Road about six. That would betime enough. There would be the Clancy kids playing in the doorway, soshe would go straight upstairs to Mrs. Perce; and she would say....

  Self-absorbed, both went mechanically on with the unappetising meal.Upstairs Toby walked once more into his own room; and then came runningheavily down the stairs and past their door and then right down to thestreet. Sally's heart was in a flutter, and her eyes flew once again tothe clock. It was so early for Toby to be going out. She would not seehim, then. She would not see him, and all her excitement was gone likean exploded toy balloon. The heart was taken out of her enterprise. Hewas going out: he did not want her: he was finished with her. Sallycould not repress the single sob that rose to her lips.

  "... so I asked Mr. Flack if they'd ever kep' it, and he said no, theynever had, and told me to try at Boots's, down by the Nag's Head...."

  "Oh, _mother_," cried Sally, beside herself. "Do shut up about yourhead. It gives me the hump." Then, as she became aware of what she hadsaid, she defensively proceeded. "Well, you keep on talking about it,and it doesn't do any _good_ to talk about it. If you want to know, I'mill myself. I've got a headache, and I've got the rats...."

  "You got no call to speak to your mother that way," said Mrs. Minto. "IfI'd a spoke to _my_ mother like that, I should have got the strap. Somind that, Sally. It's not nice. I've noticed you getting veryunmannerly and out of hand lately. Very rude. I don't know what to dowith you, you're so rude. It's not right, and it worries me so that Ican't think what I'm doing. I was talking about it the other day to Mrs.Roberson, and _she_ says...."

  "Yes, ma," said Sally, rising, and going to the door to take her hatdown from the peg. "She seems to have got a lot to say. Doesn't seem tobe much sense in what she says."

  "Now, you're not to...." By this time Sally had one sleeve on and wasfeeling for the other. In a glance at her little peaked determined face,and obstinate mouth, Mrs. Minto's spirit suddenly failed. Where she hadmeant to be maternally peremptory she became querulous. "Wherever yougoing now?" she asked weakly. "Oh, you _are_ a naughty wilful girl."

  "Out," said Sally, bluntly. Unheeding the outcry that followed, she wasout of the door and down the stairs before her mother could check her;and with a new ugly sense of revolt was on her way to see Mrs. Perce ina mood of reckless despair. Left alone, Mrs. Minto washed feebly up, andsighingly dried the cups and plates and rearranged them in the cupboard.Presently she sat in a limp curve over the fire, in a kind of stupor,dreaming of she knew not what. Every now and then she would give a jerkin anger at Sally's rudeness and recently uncontrollable highhandedness,which recurred to her attention whenever her thoughts touched reality.For the rest she sat motionless, until the coal-blocks subsided and thefire went black.

  x

  Out in the dark streets, Sally was as if enveloped. First she lookedthis way and that for Toby; but he was gone. A wave of hysteria passedover her. She hated him. She hated him for such loutish cruelty. Hedidn't care. And because he did not care, although she tried to feelindifferent, she loved him the more. Blindly she walked away from thehouse, and heard the trams grinding, and the rattle of carts over therough paving. Holloway Road at this point is at its worst--dull andugly, with an air of third-rate respectable indigence. She crossed theroad, and passed into a squalid thoroughfare called Grove Road, andmarched past the ugly houses with her head in the air, pretending thatshe had no interest whatever in Toby. All her thoughts were busyinventing indifference; and her consciousness was at each turn confusingand contradicting her thoughts. If solitude had been possible to her,Sally would have cried; but as a rule she cried very little, bothbecause she was rarely alone and because she was not naturallyhysterical. Fighting, therefore, against what she felt to be weakness,she proceeded on her way, trying to laug
h at rival butchers shoutinginsults and challenges across the street. At the post office near herold home she changed her open postal-order, and was given ahalf-sovereign and ten shillings-worth of silver. This money shecarefully put, in paper, inside her blouse. She was then ready for herinterview.

  At the old address new tenants already occupied the first floor flat,and Mr. Clancy stood at the gate smoking his pipe. The man who lived inthe ground floor flat next door still showed his glass-covered sign "WhyPay Rent?" Children littered the few inches of asphalt which served asfront garden to the two houses. Seeing Sally, Mr. Clancy took his pipeout of his mouth, spat, and nodded at her in a friendly