CHAPTER 1
1
As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid
little bomb of bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of
some complex, troubling dream, awoke with a start and lay on her
back looking into the darkness in extreme exhaustion.
The alarm clock continued its nagging, feminine clamour, which
would go on for five minutes or thereabouts if you did not stop it.
Dorothy was aching from head to foot, and an insidious and
contemptible self-pity, which usually seized upon her when it was
time to get up in the morning, caused her to bury her head under
the bedclothes and try to shut the hateful noise out of her ears.
She struggled against her fatigue, however, and, according to her
custom, exhorted herself sharply in the second person plural. Come
on, Dorothy, up you get! No snoozing, please! Proverbs vi, 9.
Then she remembered that if the noise went on any longer it would
wake her father, and with a hurried movement she bounded out of
bed, seized the clock from the chest of drawers, and turned off the
alarm. It was kept on the chest of drawers precisely in order that
she should have to get out of bed to silence it. Still in
darkness, she knelt down at her bedside and repeated the Lord's
Prayer, but rather distractedly, her feet being troubled by the
cold.
It was just half past five, and coldish for an August morning.
Dorothy (her name was Dorothy Hare, and she was the only child of
the Reverend Charles Hare, Rector of St Athelstan's, Knype Hill,
Suffolk) put on her aged flannelette dressing-gown and felt her way
downstairs. There was a chill morning smell of dust, damp plaster,
and the fried dabs from yesterday's supper, and from either side of
the passage on the second floor she could hear the antiphonal
snoring of her father and of Ellen, the maid of all work. With
care--for the kitchen table had a nasty trick of reaching out of
the darkness and banging you on the hip-bone--Dorothy felt her way
into the kitchen, lighted the candle on the mantelpiece, and, still
aching with fatigue, knelt down and raked the ashes out of the
range.
The kitchen fire was a 'beast' to light. The chimney was crooked
and therefore perpetually half choked, and the fire, before it
would light, expected to be dosed with a cupful of kerosene, like a
drunkard's morning nip of gin. Having set the kettle to boil for
her father's shaving-water, Dorothy went upstairs and turned on her
bath. Ellen was still snoring, with heavy youthful snores. She
was a good hard-working servant once she was awake, but she was one
of those girls whom the Devil and all his angels cannot get out of
bed before seven in the morning.
Dorothy filled the bath as slowly as possible--the splashing always
woke her father if she turned on the tap too fast--and stood for a
moment regarding the pale, unappetizing pool of water. Her body
had gone goose-flesh all over. She detested cold baths; it was for
that very reason that she made it a rule to take all her baths cold
from April to November. Putting a tentative hand into the water-and it was horribly cold--she drove herself forward with her usual
exhortations. Come on, Dorothy! In you go! No funking, please!
Then she stepped resolutely into the bath, sat down and let the icy
girdle of water slide up her body and immerse her all except her
hair, which she had twisted up behind her head. The next moment
she came to the surface gasping and wriggling, and had no sooner
got her breath back than she remembered her 'memo list', which she
had brought down in her dressing-gown pocket and intended to read.
She reached out for it, and, leaning over the side of the bath,
waist deep in icy water, read through the 'memo list' by the light
of the candle on the chair.
It ran:
7 oc. H.C.
Mrs T baby? Must visit.
BREAKFAST. Bacon. MUST ask father money. (P)
Ask Ellen what stuff kitchen father's tonic NB. to ask about stuff
for curtains at Solepipe's.
Visiting call on Mrs P cutting from Daily M angelica tea good for
rheumatism Mrs L's cornplaster.
12 oc. Rehearsal Charles I. NB. to order 1/2 lb glue 1 pot
aluminium paint.
DINNER (crossed out) LUNCHEON . . . ?
Take round Parish Mag NB. Mrs F owes 3/6d.
4.30 pm Mothers' U tea don't forget 2 1/2 yards casement cloth.
Flowers for church NB. 1 tin Brasso.
SUPPER. Scrambled eggs.
Type Father's sermon what about new ribbon typewriter?
NB. to fork between peas bindweed awful.
Dorothy got out of her bath, and as she dried herself with a towel
hardly bigger than a table napkin--they could never afford decentsized towels at the Rectory--her hair came unpinned and fell down
over her collar-bones in two heavy strands. It was thick, fine,
exceedingly pale hair, and it was perhaps as well that her father
had forbidden her to bob it, for it was her only positive beauty.
For the rest, she was a girl of middle height, rather thin, but
strong and shapely, and her face was her weak point. It was a
thin, blonde, unremarkable kind of face, with pale eyes and a nose
just a shade too long; if you looked closely you could see crow's
feet round the eyes, and the mouth, when it was in repose, looked
tired. Not definitely a spinsterish face as yet, but it certainly
would be so in a few years' time. Nevertheless, strangers commonly
took her to be several years younger than her real age (she was not
quite twenty-eight) because of the expression of almost childish
earnestness in her eyes. Her left forearm was spotted with tiny
red marks like insect bites.
Dorothy put on her nightdress again and cleaned her teeth--plain
water, of course; better not to use toothpaste before H.C. After
all, either you are fasting or you aren't. The R.C.s are quite
right there--and, even as she did so, suddenly faltered and
stopped. She put her toothbrush down. A deadly pang, an actual
physical pang, had gone through her viscera.
She had remembered, with the ugly shock with which one remembers
something disagreeable for the first time in the morning, the bill
at Cargill's, the butcher's, which had been owing for seven months.
That dreadful bill--it might be nineteen pounds or even twenty, and
there was hardly the remotest hope of paying it--was one of the
chief torments of her life. At all hours of the night or day it
was waiting just round the corner of her consciousness, ready to
spring upon her and agonize her; and with it came the memory of a
score of lesser bills, mounting up to a figure of which she dared
not even think. Almost involuntarily she began to pray, 'Please
God, let not Cargill send in his bill again today!' but the next
moment she decided that this prayer was worldly and blasphemous,
and she asked forgiveness for it. Then she put on her dressinggown and ran down to the kitchen in hopes of putting the bill out
of mind.
The fire had gone out, as usual. Dorothy relaid it, dirtying her
hands with coal-dust, dosed it afresh with kerosene and hung about
anxiously until the kettle boiled. Father expected his shavingwater to be ready at a quarter past six. Just seven minutes late,
Dorothy took the can upstairs and knocked at her father's door.
'Come in, come in!' said a muffled, irritable voice.
The room, heavily curtained, was stuffy, with a masculine smell.
The Rector had lighted the candle on his bed-table, and was lying
on his side, looking at his gold watch, which he had just drawn
from beneath his pillow. His hair was as white and thick as
thistledown. One dark bright eye glanced irritably over his
shoulder at Dorothy.
'Good morning, father.'
'I do wish, Dorothy,' said the Rector indistinctly--his voice
always sounded muffled and senile until he put his false teeth in-'you would make some effort to get Ellen out of bed in the
mornings. Or else be a little more punctual yourself.'
'I'm so sorry, Father. The kitchen fire kept going out.'
'Very well! Put it down on the dressing-table. Put it down and
draw those curtains.'
It was daylight now, but a dull, clouded morning. Dorothy hastened
up to her room and dressed herself with the lightning speed which
she found necessary six mornings out of seven. There was only a
tiny square of mirror in the room, and even that she ...
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