A Bed of Roses

She had reached Westminster Bridge. Her thoughts fell away from the comfortable presence of Major Cairns. Hunched up against the parapet sat the old vagrant she had seen there before, motionless, his rags lifting in the breeze, puffs of smoke coming at long intervals from his short clay pipe. Victoria shuddered; it seemed as if her life were bound to a wheel which brought her back inexorably to the same spot until the time came for her to lose there energy and life itself. She turned quickly towards the Embankment, and, as she rounded the curve, caught a glimpse of the old vagrant. The symbol of time had not moved.

Another twenty minutes of quick walking had brought her to the City. She was no longer fearful of it; indeed she almost enjoyed its surge and roar. Log that she was, tossed on a stormy sea, she could not help feeling the joy of life in its buffeting. Not even the dullness and eternal length of Queen Victoria Street, which seems in the City, like Gower Street, indefinite and interminable, robbed her of the curious exultation which she felt whenever she entered the precincts. Here at least was life and doing; ugly doing perhaps, but things worthy of the name of action. At Mansion House she stopped for a moment to look at the turmoil: drays, motorbuses, cabs, cycles, entangled and threatening everywhere the little running black mites of humanity.

As Victoria passed the Bank and walked up Princes Street she felt hungry, for it was nearly one o'clock. She turned up a lane and stopped before a small shop which arrested her attention by its name above the door. It was called 'The Rosebud Café,' every letter of its name being made up of tiny roses; all the woodwork was painted white; the door was glazed and faced with pink curtains; pink half blinds lined the two small windows, nothing appearing through them except, right and left, two tall palms. 'The Rosebud' had a freshness and newness that pleased her; and, as it boldly announced luncheons and teas, she pushed the white door open and entered. The room was larger than the outside gave reason to think, for it was all in depth. It was pretty in a style suggesting a combination of Watteau, Dresden China, and the top of a biscuit tin. All the woodwork was white, relieved here and there by pink drapery and cunningly selected water colours of more or less the same tint. From the roof, at close intervals, hung little baskets of paper roses. The back part of the room was glazed over, which showed that it lay below the well of a tall building. Symmetrically ranged were little tables, some large enough for four persons, mostly however meant for two, but Victoria noticed that they were all untenanted; in fact the room was empty, save for a woman who on her hands and knees was loudly washing the upper steps of a staircase leading into a cellar, and for a tall girl who stood on a ladder at the far end of the room critically surveying a picture she had just put up.

Victoria hesitated for a moment. The girl on the ladder looked round and jumped down. She was dressed in severe black out of which her long white face, mantling pink at the cheeks, emerged like a flower; indeed Victoria wondered whether she had been selected as an attendant because she was in harmony with the colour scheme of the shop. The girl was quite charming out of sheer insignificance; her fair hair untidily crowned her with a halo marred by flying wisps. Her little pink mouth, perpetually open and pouting querulous over three white upper teeth, showed annoyance at being disturbed.

'We aren't open,' she said with much decision. It was clearly quite bad enough to have to look forward to work on the morrow without anticipating the evil.

'Oh,' said Victoria, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know.'

'We open on Monday,' said the fair girl. 'Sharp.'

'Yes?' answered Victoria vaguely interested as one is in things newly born. 'This is a pretty place, isn't it?'

A flicker of animation. The fair girl's blue eyes opened wider. 'Rather,' she said. 'I did the water colours,' she explained with pride.

'How clever of you!' exclaimed Victoria. 'I couldn't draw to save my life.'

'Coloured them up, I mean,' the girl apologised grudgingly. 'It was a long job, I can tell you.'

Victoria smiled. 'Well,' she said, 'I must come back on Monday and see it finished if I'm in the City.'

'Oh, aren't you in the City?' asked the girl. 'West End?'

'No, not exactly West End,' said Victoria. 'I'm not doing anything just now.'

The fair girl gave her a glance of faint suspicion.

'Oh, aye, I see,' she said slowly, thoughtfully considering the rather full lines of Victoria's figure.

Victoria had not the slightest idea of what she saw. 'I'm looking out for a berth,' she remarked casually.

'Oh, are you?' said the girl with renewed animation. 'What's your line?'

'Anything,' said Victoria. She looked round the pink and white shop. A feeling of weariness had suddenly come over her. The woman at the top of the steps had backed away a little, and was rhythmically swishing a wet rag on the linoleum. Under her untidy hair her neck gleamed red and fleshy, touched here and there with beads of perspiration. Victoria took her in as unconsciously as she would an ox patiently straining at the yoke. To and fro the woman's body rocked, like a machine wound up to work until its parts drop out worn and useless.

'Ever done any waiting?' The voice of the girl almost made Victoria jump. She saw herself being critically inspected.

'No, never,' she faltered. 'That's to say, I would, if I got a billet.'

'Mm,' said the girl, eyeing her over. 'Mm.'

Victoria's heart beat unreasonably. 'Do you know where I can get a job?' she asked.

'Well,' said the girl very deliberately, 'the fact of the matter is, that we're short here. We had a letter this morning. One of our girls left home yesterday. Says she can't come. They don't know where she is.'

'Yes,' said Victoria, too excited to speculate as to the implied tragedy.

'If you like, you can see the manager,' said the girl. 'He's down there.' She pointed to the cellar.

'Thank you so much,' said Victoria, 'it's awfully kind of you.' The fair girl walked to the banisters. 'Mr Stein,' she cried shrilly into the darkness.

There was a rumble, a sound like the upsetting of a chair, footsteps on the stairs. A head appeared on a level with the floor.

'Vat is it?' growled a voice.

'New girl; wants to be taken on.'

'Vell, take her on,' growled the voice. 'You are ze 'ead vaitress, gn, you are responsible.'

Victoria had just time to see the head, perfectly round, short-haired, white faced, cloven by a turned up black moustache, when it vanished once more. The Germanic 'gn' at the end of the first sentence puzzled her.

'Sulky beast,' murmured the girl. 'Anyhow, that's settled. You know the wages, don't you? Eight bob a week and your lunch and tea.'

'Eight.' gasped Victoria. 'But I can't live on that.'

'My, you are a green 'un,' smiled the girl. 'With a face like that you'll make twenty-five bob in tips by the time we've been on for a month.' She looked again at Victoria not unkindly.

'Tips,' said Victoria reflectively. Awful. But after all, what did it matter.

'All right,' she said, 'put me down.'

The girl took her name and address. 'Half-past eight sharp on Monday,' she said. ''cos it's opening day. Usual time half-past nine, off at four two days a week. Other days seven. Nine o'clock mid and end.'

Victoria stared a little. This was a business woman.

'Sorry,' said the girl, 'must leave you. Got a lot more to do to-day. My name's Laura. It'll have to be Lottie though. Nothing like Lottie to make fellows remember you.'

'Remember you?' asked Victoria puzzled.

'Lord, yes, how you going to make your station if they don't remember you?' said Lottie snappishly. 'You'll learn right enough. You let 'em call you Vic. Tell 'em to. You'll be all right. And get yourself a black business dress. We supply pink caps and aprons; charge you sixpence a week for washing. You get a black openwork blouse, mind you, with short sleeves. Nothing like it to make your station.'

'What's a station?' asked Victoria, more bewildered than ever.

'My, you are a green 'un! A station's your tables. Five you get. We'll cut 'em down when they begin to come in. What you've got to do is to pal up with the fellows; then they'll stick to you, see? Regulars is what you want. The sort that give no trouble 'cos you know their orders right off and leave their twopence like clockwork, see? But never you mind: you'll learn.' Thereupon Lottie tactfully pushed Victoria towards the door.

Victoria stepped past the cleaner, who was now washing the entrance. Nothing could be seen of her save her back heaving a little in a filthy blue bodice and her hands, large, red, ribbed with flowing rivulets of black dirt and water. As her left hand swung to and fro, Victoria saw upon the middle finger the golden strangle of a wedding ring deep in the red cavity of the swollen flesh.

CHAPTER XIV

'You come back with me, Vic, don't you?'

'You silly,' said Victoria, witheringly, 'I don't go off to-day, Gertie, worse luck.'

'Worse luck! I don't think,' cried Gertie. 'I'll swap with you, if you like. As if yer didn't know it's settling day. Why there's two and a kick in it!'

'Shut it,' remarked a fat, dark girl, placidly helping herself to potatoes, 'some people make a sight too much out of settling day.'