Business as Usual Page 6
Miss Watts, the other typist, is older. She might be thirty-five or thirty or even twenty-eight. It depends on the time of day, and the weather, and the light in which she’s standing, and whether anything pleasant is liable to happen, like the rain stopping at lunch-time. She doesn’t seem to have a Boy, or if she has she’s more reticent about him. Perhaps, at thirty-five (or thirty) financial security is the only thing that matters. But I doubt it. And I’m twenty-seven already.
Do you remember how you railed once against the mentality which demands and gets a safe job for forty years, and is rewarded by a marble clock, suitably inscribed, on retiring at the end of the forty-first? Could there, by the way, be a more ghoulish gift?
Anyway, good-night,
Hilary
Martin’s Restaurant
Saturday, 1.30
September 19th
Oh, Basil, there are compensations! It’s worth sleep-walking from nine to six all the week just to wake up on Saturday with half a day and a night and another day after that unquestionably one’s own. I came out of Everyman’s and watched all the other people with hockey sticks and skates and suit-cases tearing for buses. But I strolled, feeling marvellous. Rather as if I’d kicked off a tightish pair of shoes.
It’s just petty-cash pleasure of course. I can count all the things that go to make it. Hours of idleness ahead; nothing heavy to carry; nowhere to go in a hurry; dry pavements underfoot; all the back-street restaurants to choose from, and most of Friday’s envelope still in my bag.
God, I’m so happy! Isn’t it absurd? I suppose we’re so bottled up during the week that Saturday’s uncorking is apt to let off a colossal head of excitement. Set down on paper, though, I expect it all just looks rather tiresome. I wish I had you here. It’s such a waste being happy alone. Happiness won’t hoard, either. It isn’t the least use trying to keep it for the next black mood. It won’t even keep overnight.
Here’s my lunch. A rump steak with crisped potatoes, and green things, because of your food lectures first: biscuits, Camembert cheese, black coffee and a cigarette coming.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Those dots mean that I’ve eaten the rump steak (bi-manually). Cheese and biscuit stage now; so I can write again. Oh – writing! Shall I rush into the Post Office next door and put through a trunk call to Edinburgh? I suppose not. It would spoil Mrs MacQueen’s Saturday afternoon so to know that your young woman had rung up from London (the wickedness of it!) when you were out. I don’t know that talking’s much good either on second thoughts. Perhaps there isn’t any way of making contact. It’s alarming, sometimes, to think of all the other things there are in your life besides me; and all so gravely important. But you know I adore you to be busy and talked about as the coming authority on pre-natal metabolism.
I love calling for you at the Medical School and watching your students crash out with their note-books full of your ideas. I’m blown out with pride when you come up to me and dust the chalk off your fingers on to the sleeve of my coat. Oh, Basil, fake up a conference quite soon and come up to London, and dine at length with all the European authorities on obstetrics and take me out to supper afterwards in some minor pub.
Well, in the meantime there’s this week-end. I shall go down to the Embankment after I’ve posted this, and walk as far as Chelsea. Water and thin sunlight and spotted plane trees spilling leaves into it. Pleasant. There was frost last night. Then I’ll buy bread and fruit and chocolate at one of the little shops which don’t close on Saturday, and take a bus back to the Minerva after tea. I’ve got three books for the week-end, but this evening I shan’t mind doing all the save-sixpence jobs: stocking washing (surreptitious, because of the notices about washing of garments. One wraps the Lux in a bath-towel, usually upside down and leaving an accusing, paper-chase trail).
After that, dull letters, even bills; shoe-cleaning; a book and a cigarette to make up for it all afterwards. Ten hours in bed … breakfast just when I feel like it and where I wake up. I’m going to eat rolls and fruit and chocolate instead of going downstairs. There’s always Eno’s34 if I’m taken with thirst. I won’t move till eleven.
If it’s sunny I’ll go out for an hour to watch the dogs and ducks swimming in the Serpentine. If not, not. And after lunch I shall read …
I may write to you again, too.
Love, darling,
Hilary
PS – Now I know what people mean by ‘A month of Sundays.’ Heaven!
Minerva
Saturday Evening
September 19th
Dearest Family,
I’ve washed six pairs of stockings and darned three, ironed two blouses and two sets of collars and cuffs, and run yards of elastic into everything I could lay hands on. Laundry’s such a fierce item that I’m going to try to do it myself. But I thought I’d begin gradually.
Thank you for the biscuits and cigarettes and most appropriate Lux and the money for a library subscription. Such intelligent presents, as if you’d both worked in London on £2:10:0 a week and knew just what it won’t run to! I’ve eaten some biscuits and used the Lux and smoked two cigarettes, and taken out a subscription (Fiction C35 offered to the Staff at a reduced rate) from Everyman’s Library.
Don’t worry about the hours of work. They’re long, but at present nobody could call the work I do intellectual or exacting. I mean, it oughtn’t to kill anybody merely to copy hundreds of people’s names and addresses from the library folders (where we keep the lists of books the subscribers want sent to them) on to the labels which go out with the books. And that’s all I do so far. So I don’t think you need be anxious. At least two-thirds of my brain is free to think about irrelevant things, such as new rooms and plans for the week-end. (Though if more than two-thirds of my attention wanders, very odd things happen to the labels.)
I don’t think, incidentally, that I’m going to stay at the Minerva much longer. If you’re working in London it’s exasperating to come too much in contact with people who’re merely living there. I don’t see anybody at breakfast of course, but their talk at dinner is all about bridge parties and charity and the people they’d met in the Park. If I lived in rooms I needn’t hear them.
I’m going to spend this weekend in utter laziness; but next Saturday I shall interview landladies. Can you give me any idea of the sort of questions one asks? What does a room look like when it is:
(a) Damp?
(b) Verminous?
(c) Unventilated?
After the profound interest I took in the Housing Problem during my second year at Oxford you’d think that some of the details would have stuck in the memory. But I’d be grateful for all the practical points with which you could stiffen my theoretical knowledge before next Saturday.
And now I think I’ll go to bed. It’s wonderfully soothing to know that I can stay there to-morrow morning for As Long As I Like.
Much love,
Hilary
The Minerva
Wednesday
September 23rd
Basil Rainford, Esq:
Dear Sir,
Herewith we beg to enclose the penultimate paragraph of our previous communication of Saturday’s date. This page was inadvertently omitted; it had become detached and was not discovered (under the wash-stand by an interested chambermaid) until the letter of which it was part had been despatched. For this oversight we trust that you will accept our apologies, together with the assurance that everything in our power will be done to prevent the recurrence of such a mishap.
Have you ever noticed, Basil, how Commerce jibs at the simple statement? Circumlocution creeps into one’s blood. Nothing is ever just ‘lost’ though it may – and often does ‘become detached’ and is in consequence ‘temporarily mislaid.’ We commence … communicate … insert … query … indicate … proceed …But on the other hand we even things up by talking about Jan … and Feb … and corres36 … and sub … and memo … and advert … and
par37 … Like a man in top hat and shirt sleeves, it takes getting used to. Sometimes we make ‘slight slips’; ‘some assistant’ is a useful scapegoat for an ‘inexplicable oversight’, even for a ‘gross blunder’ (committed, more often than not, by the person composing the letter). It’s a good game. Played occasionally. But think what it must do to your way of thinking after twenty years. Miss Sparling’s an expert at it. Her mind must be incapable of unstereotyped thought. Except, perhaps, her dislike of me, which is a new and most luxuriant growth. But then, of course, she’s one of those trap-mouthed women who’d rather wrangle than not.
Talking of Miss Sparling, I’ve disgraced myself to-day. Not irrevocably, Mr Simpson assures me. Still, quite prominently, as usual. Monday morning began it. The room was cold and the clock-hands seemed to have stuck somewhere between nine and ten. Label-writing became more than I could bear. It does, you know, very soon. At first it’s a game; then it’s just dull; but after two hours it’s so gruesomely boring that it’s not to be borne. I always wonder how Miss Hopper gets through the day at all, even though she does choose people’s Books for the Brain. She seems to do nothing much but ‘check’ the things I’ve done already. She looks to see that the addresses are right and the labels in the proper books, and if the cardboard library folders have been written up properly and filed in the right drawers. She watches me, too, quite a lot. It’s sometimes unnerving. The other day she said: ‘I do like to watch you write, you know. You do it so easily. You must have done ever such a lot of it.’
But to-day I suddenly felt that I couldn’t bear to scratch on in the usual way that meant reaching the bottom of the pile of books to be sent out somewhere in the middle of the afternoon. So I worked furiously and as fast as I dared. When I’d finished that pile I filed all the library folders I could find, tidied everything I could see, filled Miss Hopper’s ink-pot and unobtrusively went to lunch.
I only got as far as the cloakroom. I was pulling on my hat in front of that mirror when I heard Miss Hopper behind me. She said: ‘Aren’t you feeling quite well?’ I said: ‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ And smiled quite kindly at her because I’d done such a lot of work and was feeling proud. Then I picked up my bag and tried to get past.
‘You’re never leaving the building?’ said Miss Hopper. ‘You can’t, you know, not without Sister or Miss Ward give you leave.’
‘But how does anybody ever get out?’ I said as I pulled on my gloves. ‘One must lunch, after all. I’ve never asked Sister yet.’
‘But you can’t lunch at half-past eleven when your time is one,’ said Miss Hopper.
‘But it is one o’clock,’ I said. (Though I had a horrid, sudden doubt.)
Miss Hopper just said: ‘Come downstairs and look at the clock.’
She showed me three, and they all bore her out. It was all very public and shaming. For once the typists stopped: Mr Simpson came up and murmured: Miss Dowland said: ‘If you bring chocolate, dear, it helps.’
They all hustled me back to my labels, and for the next hour and a half I just obstinately sat, though I may have written two more. At five minutes to one Mr Simpson came up and said that he’d see I wasn’t idle. So after lunch he gave me a list of books that I could type for him. It was nice to get to know their names, wasn’t it?
I spent the afternoon over his list. It wasn’t altogether wilful meandering, either. I just couldn’t get the prices to add up right, and whenever I was half-way up the shillings column Miss Hopper sent me to get something for her or a packer brought me back one of my more illegible labels and I had to begin at the bottom again.
I have to remind myself quite often these days that I’m doing a job and justifying my existence, and helping patriots to Buy British; and oftener still that in the natural course of events it won’t last for ever or even for very many months. Because I’d hate to be Miss Lamb and type hundreds of form letters a day; letters to say how obliged we are for an esteemed order, and how we beg to hand people an invoice therewith, and that we can’t imagine what’s happened to their goods, but we will take the matter up with the Postal Authorities.
If anyone wants to do this sort of work really well or happily she has to be either so stupid that elementary detail is enough for her or else so efficient that she hardly needs to think of it at all. I’m neither. So, at the moment, Basil, dear, it hardly looks as if I’d make my mark. There’s nothing remarkable about this sort of work unless you do it badly.
And yet, it is work, and masses of people haven’t got it and would probably jump at it. Oughtn’t that dog-in-possession feeling to be enough to satisfy a girl?
What a Mondayish letter! I’d better go and have a bath. That’s to say, supposing I can afford another sixpence. And that reminds me, I’m going to look for a room somewhere else. Not, of course, altogether because I grudge the sixpences. But when one uses hot baths as pick-me-ups in the evenings and for practical purposes in the mornings as well, it begins to come expensive. Besides, I like the hotel even less on second thoughts: I don’t like the people who are unfriendly in an Anglo-Indian way38, and the people who insist on being friendly are worse. Besides, typists don’t live in hotels: as far as I can make out they live with aged parents or in hostels, where you get a cubicle and bed-rock board for twenty-something shillings a week. I doubt if I could bear that, but if I’m to rent a small flat when my salary makes it possible, I’ve got to live on my week’s earnings now. Twenty pounds sounds well, but it doesn’t go far when one’s furnishing – even two rooms and a cubby hole.
So I’m collecting information about all the people who let lodgings and can be recommended as respectable (remem-bering the Corset gentleman and his proposals) for a working girl of just the most moderate means. There should be lots of names on the list by the end of this week: on Saturday I’ll go and look them up.
Tell me, what about the book? Oughtn’t it to be emerging into the proof stage quite soon? Of course I shall want to see it, just as soon as there is anything to see, even those galley things like fly-papers which are so difficult to read and so exhausting for the arms unless one could become a fly for the occasion and have them hung up to crawl over. You know, dear, that any opinion I may form will be entirely valueless, but I shall understand (remembering) the bits you explained to me in the summer. And I shall enjoy strewing those galleys about my room and nonchalantly inviting people in to see me.
Oh, darling, I must tell you, Mr Simpson intercepted me when I was creeping home at six o’clock and said that I was please not to worry about my slight slip this morning. He did hope that I wouldn’t let it get on my mind. Bless him!
And you,
Hilary
Minerva
Saturday, September 26th
Oh, My Dear,
Hunting rooms is almost as bad as hunting jobs. And quite the world’s worst way of spending any Saturday. I set out with my list, very cross, and went grandly to look at Ladies Clubs. But of course they were much too expensive. And, anyway, I dislike their elderly boarding-school atmosphere. So I went in to the place which advertised Bed-sitting-rooms for Ladies instead. All dingy and unreasonably far from bus stops. I tramped about with my list, grudging the September sunshine that would have been lovely on nearly everything, but which showed up holes in carpets and dirt on windows and lines on landladies’ faces. Dust danced in it and smells rose through it and I turned tail in the middle. I dashed down to the Embankment to smoke a cigarette and watch seagulls. When I felt better I stroked off the names of the places I’d been to and started off again.
And now I’ve found some sort of a hole for myself. It belongs to a house that provides homes for Ladies Only – all sorts of impoverished ladies from midwives to ministers’ widows. It’s run by the inevitable Colonel’s wife who’s come down in the world.
Something obscure seems to have happened to that Colonel: she doesn’t like him mentioned except for purposes of advertisement. No palm-pots here, of course: you walk into a narrow passage that smells of
damp oilcloth and mice. But not, thank heaven, of meals either past, present or to come.

At the end of the passage there’s a door marked Office in amateurish printing. Behind this the Colonel’s wife lives, in a bed-sitter like everybody else; only, because her room is also the place of business there’s more sit and less bed about it than most. Of course, the japanned39 screen shouts wash-stand40 at anyone, but the divan41 and the arm-chair and the bureau with its elephant-foot letter-weights and its blotting-pad are most convincing. The Colonel’s wife was inclined to be rather Anglo-Indian with me at first, especially as most of the rooms cost more than I’d decided to afford. But just as I had given up hope she owned to one at seventeen shillings a week.
‘It mayn’t be quite as comfy as the others,’ she said. ‘But then – well, we can’t have everything for nothing in this world, can we?’
All the same, I like it. It’s small and down the basement stairs, but there’s an antique kitchen stove which nobody has taken the trouble to screen, and I shall be able to stow away any amount of things in its ovens. I like the white walls, the red cotton curtains, and the shabby red carpet. And I like the narrow panes of glass above the ex-area door42 and the foreshortened view of passing ankles. I prefer my bed to be a bed, which is fortunate. For seventeen shillings a week one doesn’t get a divan. That sort of elegance costs twenty-five and sixpence. There’s a basket-chair which creaks and reminds me of Lady Hilda’s. And a table with one leg shorter than the rest. But mercifully the bath (which is miles away on the first floor), the gas-fire and electric light are penny-in-the-slot. I’m all for the copper standard and I’m moving in tomorrow. Address, 23 Burford Street, WC.