A Voice Like Velvet

‘Well, we could go to a theatre.’

‘What sort?’

‘Something musical, if you like.’

‘When?’

‘Saturday. Tomorrow. I’ve decided to start a job on Monday and I’ll be leaving here.’

She swung round.

‘Leaving?’

‘Yes. I didn’t come here for always. Miss Wisdon only did it to oblige. My other house is being painted.’

She would not commit herself, but he felt certain she would turn up, if only because he secretly prayed she wouldn’t. She ran in, and then ran back to say she had examined the papers and he could take her to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a twopenny bus ride, and that if she turned up, she’d meet him there in time for the first house. ‘I say if. I ought not to come out with you at all, after the way you treated me.’

‘It’s very kind of you.’

‘I wouldn’t do it for everyone.’

‘Well, thank you.’

He retired to wait in dread for the following evening.

When it came, he told Miss Wisdon he thought he would go and make sure of how to reach Ponds Corporation, so as not to be late for Monday morning, and she was very pleased, though she told him not to linger long in the West End on a Saturday night. She looked very grave about this, and so did Iris. The future seemed a dizzy and bewildering affair, and his evening with Violet offered some light relief. Perhaps it was at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, once again within sound of music, or at any rate musical noises, that he decided Ponds Corporation could not be allowed to hold him for long, if at all. Violet turned up on the tick. She looked surprisingly nice, a trifle startling, wearing a little red hat with a huge white feather jutting out of the top of it. She was for a time surprisingly shy and subdued, blushing profusely when she said: ‘Hullo, Squit!’

‘Good evening, Violet,’ he said, raising a felt hat bought that very morning. ‘It is most kind of you to have come.’

‘I bet you thought I wouldn’t,’ she said.

They went in. They were both very shy until a turn came on called ‘The Orchestra Conductor’, in which a man climbed up out of the orchestra pit with a fiddle and started to conduct the orchestra. A fat lady hurried on as if she was the outraged manageress about to send him off the stage. In two seconds they were fighting with such astonishing abandon, mainly involving the violin and the manageress’s skirts, that the audience, led by Violet, was in an uproar of delight, Violet rocking to and fro and reaching crescendo with the cry: ‘Ooh, my dear, she’s got her behind in his face …!’ It was a great success, and Violet kept up her enthusiasm with such verve that the gentleman in front kept turning round and asking her if she would mind keeping her hands to herself. What she said to him would not bear mentioning, but he got up and walked off to the bar with an expression of extreme horror on his face. Violet was very interested in the bar, but it was still a little improper for ladies to be seen in bars, so she had to be content with ice cream and chocolates. Out in the street again he had his first hint that something was wrong with the post-war world. Out-of-works were parading with banners round Shepherd’s Bush Green. The banners cried: ‘We want work. Where are your promises? We are the heroes!’ He took Violet home on the 17 bus. When they got off it was dark and she said: ‘We won’t go in yet,’ in sinister tones. She took him along a side street to some trees she seemed to know. He felt very nervous indeed. She said he had been ‘sweet’, and wasn’t quite the squit she thought, and that the rest of the evening was on her.

‘Oh?’ he said, puzzled. He was very young about women.

‘I love you. You’re sweet.’

They were under the tree.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ he began.

‘No, don’t you understand? I’ll be your girl. I thought you were a sissy, but you’re not.’

‘A sissy?’

‘Oh, stop kidding,’ she giggled, ‘you are a One,’ and she dug him in the ribs. ‘Shall I take off my hat? Or what?’

He supposed he owed quite a lot to Violet; for breaking the ice, as it were. She was quite nice about things, almost motherly. He supposed she was a naughty little girl. But he remembered her now as a cockney girl who got him the biggest black eye of his life. When they got to her door at last he thought the evening was over. But thrills were the spice of life to her. She whispered that pa and ma would be in bed, and that they would have five minutes in the parlour, ‘so long as we are quiet’. Unfortunately, she omitted to inform him about the stairs leading off the hall to the basement. Tip-toeing in with beating heart, he missed his footing and fell with prolonged and resounding thuds down the twenty-four steps to Violet’s dropsical grandma’s kitchen. Dropsical grandma evidently slept there, for nightmarish screams broke out on the instant, being taken up by the sounds of creaking beds above, opening doors and a male voice bawling: ‘Who’s muckin’ abart darn there?’ Followed the massive vision of the Sanitary Inspector himself, replete with blunderbuss. Much of what he called him was now happily lost in the limbo where lurk all such unhappy misdemeanours, but he remembered a cuff which sent him reeling some four hundred yards backwards down the corridor. ‘You whipper-snapper,’ was one thing the Sanitary Inspector thought about him. ‘You seducer of innicent gells! Get art—afore I chuck you art!’