The Postal Hall was not what she had thought. In her world halls were empty spaces defended against the weather and the night by bricks and tiles, and only full for meetings and for feasts. She’d thought the Postal Hall would be a covered clearing in the town. Her sister, unchanged from the young girl who’d emigrated there three years before, would be waiting at the door. Or else, Em thought, she’d simply give the number of the poste restante. Someone would press a bell or make a call to summon her sister from her work. If it was simple to find folk in country towns, then think how easy it would be in cities such as this where everything was done so quickly and so well. Instead she found a sandstone building with many flights of steps, and far too many doors. Her access was blocked by carts and trams. Opposing streams of people competed for the pavement and the road. Never had she witnessed so much speed, heard such urgency or encountered such confidence and hesitation all at once. Never had she seen so many horses: so at ease and so fulfilled, despite the brassy onslaught of the motor cars.
Em crossed with Victor in the wake of two fat men in uniforms. She chose the central entrance to the Postal Hall, and went inside, through giant columns and great bronzed doors. At once, she took her hat from off her hair and held it in her hand. She almost crossed herself and fell down on her knees to pray. Here was a bloated, oblong hall, sepulchral and forbidding. What light there was came through high windows in a dome and from gas chandeliers which hissed like nuns, and were reflected in the polished veiny marbles of the floor. There were a dozen mahogany counters and a score of metal grilles and at each one a jostling queue. All the men and women there had forms or money or parcels or letters in their hands and, even though they whispered as in church, the hubbub of the place was louder, deader than the street. No one seemed to see her there. Their arms banged into hers. She held the paper out with her sister’s number, but no one stopped to help. She called her sister’s name. Her raised voice upset Victor, who had mostly slept despite the city. He pushed his chin against his mother’s breasts, vexed by something. Wind, perhaps, or by the taste of desperation in his mother’s milk. She pushed him to the nipple once again, but he only bit it with his gums, and cried like old men cry, his face a contour map of lines, his eyes squeezed tight. Again she called her sister’s name. But no one came except a post commissionaire, who pointed to his badge and then the door and said that she should leave or ‘cut the noise’.
She joined a queue behind a line of people, most of whom had envelopes or cards. They moved away from her, her homelessness, her baby’s noise, the smell of urine drying on her clothes-line back.
‘Is this the place?’ she asked, and held her sister’s number up. They saw the two words, poste restante, and pointed to an anteroom. Inside were ranks of metal boxes, each with slits and locks, another counter and another queue. When her chance came, Em held her sister’s name and number up against the grille. The woman at the counter glanced at it and disappeared into a closed, back room without a word of greeting. She returned a moment later with a letter. It was the one which Em had sent — thanks to the borrowed literacy of the landlord’s agent — two weeks before. The clerk said, That’s all there is,’ and ‘Identification, if you please.’
Em was confused. She said, ‘My sister, is she here?’ She gave her sister’s name again. She held a conversation that made no sense and made the people in the queue short-tempered and amused. The counter clerk put her sister’s letter to one side. ‘I can’t help,’ she said. Already she was serving someone else.
Outside again, Em could not find a place to rest and contemplate. So this is my life now, she thought. I’m all the Bs — bitched, buggered, and bewildered — and far from home! At least young Victor was asleep again. His mother rolled the end of candle in her hand.
Em walked aimlessly while there was light. She hoped to see her sister on the street. On that first night they slept in stables near the railway yard, but in the morning dogs had sniffed them out and frightened Victor with their barks. Again she walked the streets and looked in all the faces passing by. If she saw women of her sister’s age who looked like maids, she stopped them, mentioning her sister’s name and asking them for help, advice, or work.
‘You’ll not get work with that,’ one woman said, pointing at the top of Victor’s nuzzling head. ‘What is it? Boy or girl? There’s people in this town who’d pay good money for a kid like that. I can find you someone who will give this kid a proper life.’ She held Em’s arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to a place where you can eat and sleep.’ Em had to shout and struggle to get free.
That second night they slept as best they could on sheltered benches at the tramway terminus. The lights were harsh and there was noise from work-gangs cleaning trams. The yardman said she’d have to move, but when he saw the child he let her stay. ‘For just one night,’ he warned. ‘And then you’d better take the baby back to where your people are. A little dot like that won’t last five minutes sleeping rough.’ Em said she had a sister who would help. She told the man her sister’s name and what had happened at the Postal Hall. He shook his head. ‘You’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Your sister’s just one tiny country bean, buried deep down in the sack. You won’t find her by sticking in your hand and pulling ten beans out. This city’s big. You’ve seen the crowds. Your sister, she’s as good as dead unless you’ve got the address of a house.’
Later, he came back. She woke to find him watching her. He had some cold fish and some bread.
‘You’re quite a pretty girl,’ he said, looking more at Victor and Em’s breasts than at her face. ‘You’d better find some man to take you in. You’d better find a proper father for the child.’
Em shook her head and said she didn’t want the bread or fish. She had no appetite. She feared the yardman wanted something in exchange for food. His eyes were flared and restless like a pig in heat. He looked — to use her mother’s phrase — as if his heart had slipped below his belt. She closed her eyes and pulled her shawl across her chest. At last she heard the yardman walk away. He had not left the bread or fish behind.
Now, her third day on the streets, she did her best to keep her problems to herself. She did not try to match the gazes of the men and women in her path. She did not seek — or trust — their kindness any more. She sat with Victor in the sun on the steps of the Postal Hall. She’d tried the clerks in poste restante. This time a man behind the grille had asked for proof of who she was before he’d check the number that she gave. He had looked at her and Victor as if they both were pigeons of disease. She could not stop the tears. She could not stop them running down her cheeks onto her shawl even when she’d fled the Postal Hall and rested in the sun. What should she do? Seek out the yardman? Sell Victor for the highest sum? Head out of town and find her husband’s village once again, beyond the sea-blue fields? Perhaps she ought to step beneath a tram. Or try her luck beneath the hooves and wheels of some fast cart. She was too tough to take these easy routes. In those days life was hard. All life was hard. They raised you then on work, debt, hunger, cold. Three days and nights without a bed in town was better than the seven they had spent walking through the fields and woods. So things were looking up and would improve each day.