Sinister Street, Compton Mackenzie [classic books for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

“Do you think you’ll be staying long?” she inquired.

Michael asked if she wanted the rooms for anyone else.

“No. No. I’m really very glad to let them. You’ll find it nice and quiet here. There’s only Miss Carlyle, who’s in the profession and comes in sometimes a little late. Mr. Murdoch is a chemist. But of course he hasn’t got his own shop now.”

She paused, and seemed to expect Michael would comment on Mr. Murdoch’s loss of independence; so he said, “Of course not,” nodding wisely.

“There was a bit of trouble through his being too kindhearted to a servant-girl,” said Mrs. Murdoch, looking quickly at the door and shaking her curl-papers. “Yes. Though I don’t know why I’m telling you straight off as you might say. But there, I’m funny sometimes. If I take to anybody, there’s nothing I won’t do for them. Alf⁠—that is my old man⁠—he gets quite aggravated with me over it. So if you happen to get into conversation with him, you’d better not let on you know he used to have a shop of his own.”

Michael, wondering how far off were these foreshadowed intimacies with his landlord, promised he would be very discreet, and asked where Mr. Murdoch was working now.

“In a chemist’s shop. Just off of the Euston Road. You know,” she said, beaming archly. “It’s what you might call rather a funny place. Only he gets good money, because the boss knows he can trust him.”

Michael nodded his head in solemn comprehension of Mr. Murdoch’s reputation, and asked his landlady if she had such a thing as a postcard.

“Well, there. I wonder if I have. If I have, it’s in the kitchen dresser, that’s a sure thing. Perhaps you’d like to come down and see the kitchen?”

Michael followed her downstairs. There were no basements in Neptune Crescent, and he was glad to think his bedroom was above his sitting-room and on the top floor. It would have been hot just above the kitchen.

“Miss Carlyle has her room here,” said Mrs. Murdoch, pointing next door to the kitchen. “Nice and handy for her as she’s rather late sometimes. I hate to hear anybody go creaking upstairs, I do. It makes me nervous.”

The kitchen was pleasant enough and looked out upon a narrow strip of garden full of coarse plants.

“They’ll be very merry and bright, won’t they?” said Mrs. Murdoch, smiling encouragement at the greenery. “It’s wonderful what you can do nowadays for threepence.”

Michael asked what they were.

“Why, sunflowers, of course, only they want another month yet. I have them every year⁠—yes. They’re less trouble than rabbits or chickens. Now where did I see that postcard?”

She searched the various utensils, and at last discovered the postcard stuck behind a mutilated clock.

“What will they bring out next?” demanded Mrs. Murdoch, surveying it with affectionate approbation. “Pretty, I call it.”

A pair of lovers in black plush were sitting enlaced beneath a pink frosted moon.

“Just the thing, if you’re writing to your young lady,” said Mrs. Murdoch, offering it to Michael.

He accepted it with many expressions of gratitude, but when he was in his own room he laughed very much at the idea of sending it to his mother in Cheyne Walk. However, as he must write and tell her he would not be home for some time, he decided to go out and buy both writing materials and unillustrated postcards. When he came back he found Mrs. Murdoch feathered for the evening’s entertainment. She gave him the latchkey, and from his window Michael watched her progress down Neptune Crescent. Just before her lavender dress disappeared behind the Portugal laurels she turned round and waved to him. He wondered what his mother would say if she knew from what curious corner of London the news of his withdrawal would reach her tonight.

The house was very still, and the refulgence of the afternoon light streaming into the small room fused the raw colors to a fiery concordancy. Upon the silence sounded presently a birdlike fidgeting, and Michael going out onto the landing to discover what it was, caught to his surprise the upward glance of a thin little woman in untidy pink.

“Hulloa!” she cried. “I never knew there was anybody in⁠—you did give me a turn. I’ve only just woke up.”

Michael explained the situation, and she seemed relieved.

“I’ve been asleep all the afternoon,” she went on. “But it’s only natural in this hot weather to go to sleep in the afternoon if you don’t go out for a walk. Why don’t you come down and talk to me while I have some tea?”

Michael accepted the invitation with a courtesy which he half suspected this peaked pink little creature considered diverting.

“You’ll excuse the general untidiness,” she said. “But really in this weather anyone can’t bother to put their things away properly.”

Michael assented, and looked round at the room. It certainly was untidy. The large bed was ruffled where she had been lying down, and the soiled copy of a novelette gave it a sort of stale slovenry. Over the foot hung an accumulation of pink clothes. On the chairs, too, there were clothes pink and white, and the door bulged with numberless skirts. Miss Carlyle herself wore a pink blouse whose front had escaped the constriction of a belt. Even her face was a flat unshaded pink, and her thin lips would scarcely have showed save that the powder round the edges was slightly caked. Yet there was nothing of pink’s freshness and pleasant crudity in the general effect. It was a tired, a frowsy pink like a fondant that has lain a long while in a confectioner’s window.

“Take a chair and make yourself at home,” she invited him. “What’s your name?”

He told her “Fane.”

“You silly thing, you don’t suppose I’m going to call you Mr. Fane, do you? What’s your other name? Michael? That’s Irish, isn’t it? I used to know a fellow once called Micky Sullivan. I suppose they call you Micky at home.”

He was afraid he was invariably known as Michael, and Miss Carlyle sighed at the stiff sort