In the ewer there was only an inch of water with a grey heavy surface, and when she lifted the lid of the soap box she found three pound notes wrapped round two half-crowns. She put the lid back: that was just another custom you had to get used to. She took a look round the room, opened a wardrobe and found a tin of biscuits and a pair of boots; some crumbs crunched under her tread. The gramophone record caught her attention on the chair where she'd laid it; she stowed it in the cupboard for greater safety. Then she opened the door not a sound or sign of life looked over the bannisters; the new wood squeaked under her pressure.
Somewhere down below must be the kitchen, the living room, the places where she had to work. She went cautiously down seven o'clock what furious faces! in the hall a ball of paper scuffled under her feet.
She smoothed it out and read a pencilled message: "Lock your door. Have a good time." She didn't understand it: it might as well have been in code she assumed it must have something to do with this foreign world where you sinned on a bed and people lost their lives suddenly and strange men hacked at your door and cursed you in the night.
She found the basement stairs; they were dark where they dropped under the hall, but she didn't know where to find a switch. Once she nearly tripped and held the wall close with beating heart, remembering the evidence at the inquest, how Spicer had fallen. His death gave the house a feeling of importance: she had never been on the scene of a recent death. At the bottom of the stairs she opened the first door she came to, cautiously, expecting a curse; it was the kitchen all right, but it was empty. It wasn't like either of the kitchens she knew: the one at Snow's clean, polished, busy; the one at home which was just the room where you sat, where people cooked and ate and had moods and warmed themselves on bitter nights and dozed in chairs. This was like the kitchen in a house for sale: the stove was full of cold coke; on the window sill there were two empty sardine tins; a dirty saucer stood under the table for a cat which wasn't there; a cupboard stood open full of empties.
She went and raked at the dead coke; the stove was cold to the touch; there hadn't been a fire alight there for hours or days. The thought struck her that she'd teen deserted; perhaps this was what happened in this world: the sudden flight, leaving everything behind, your empty bottles and your girl and the message in code on a scrap of paper. When the door opened she expected a policeman.
It was a man in pyjama trousers. He looked in, said: "Where's Judy?" then seemed to notice her. He said: "You're up early."
"Early?" She couldn't understand what he meant.
"I thought it was Judy rooting around. You remember me. I'm Dallow."
She said: "I thought maybe I'd better light the ^ stove."
"What for?"
"Breakfast."
He said: "If that polony's gone and forgotten "
He went to a dresser and pulled open a drawer. "Why," he said, "what's got you? You don't want a stove.
There's plenty here." Inside the drawer were stacks of tins: sardines, herrings.... She said: "But tea."
He looked at her oddly. "Anyone'd think you wanted work. No one here wants any tea. Why take the trouble? There's beer in the cupboard, and Pinkie drinks the milk out of the bottle." He padded back to the door. "Help yourself, kid, if you're hungry. Pinkie want anything?"
"He's gone out."
"Christ's sake, what's come over this house?'* He stopped in the doorway and took another look at her as she stood with helpless hands near the dead stove. He said: "You don't want to work, do you?"
"No," she said doubtfully.
He was puzzled. "I wouldn't want to stop you," he said. "You're Pinkie's girl. You go ahead and light that stove if you want. I'll shut up Judy if she barks, but Christ knows where you'll find the coke. Why, that stove's not been lit since March."
"I don't want to put anyone out," Rose said. "I came down... I thought... I'd got to light it."
"You don't need to do a stroke," Dallow said. "You take it from me, this is Liberty Hall." He said: "You've not seen a bitch with red hair rooting around, have you?"
"I haven't seen a soul,"
"Well," Dallow said, "I'll be seeing you." She was alone again in the cold kitchen. Needn't do a stroke...
Liberty Hall... she leant against the whitewashed wall and saw an old flypaper dangling above the dresser; somebody a long time ago had set a mousetrap by a hole, but the bait had been stolen and the trap had snapped on nothing at all. It was a lie when people said that sleeping with a man made no difference: you emerged from pain to this freedom, liberty, strangeness. A stifled exhilaration moved in her breast, a kind of pride. She opened the kitchen door boldly and there at the head of the basement stairs was Dallow and the red-haired bitch, the woman he'd called Judy. They stood with lips glued together in an attitude of angry passion: they might have been inflicting on each other the greatest injury of which either was capable. The woman wore a mauve dressing gown with a dusty bunch of paper poppies, the relic of an old November.
As they fought mouth to mouth the sweet-toned clock sounded the half-hour. Rose watched them from the foot of the stairs. She had lived years in a night. She knew all about this now.
The woman saw her and took her mouth from Dailow's. "Well," she said, "who's here?"
"It's Pinkie's girl," Dallow said.
"You're up early. Hungry?"
"No. I just thought maybe I ought to light the fire."
"We don't use that fire often," the woman said.
"Life's too short." She had little pimples round her mouth and an air of ardent sociability. She stroked her carrot hair and coming down the stairs to Rose fastened a mouth wet and prehensile, like a sea anemone, upon her cheek. 'She smelt faintly, stalely of Calif ornian Poppy. "Well, dear," she said, "you're one of us now," and she seemed to present to Rose in a generous gesture the half-naked man, the bare dark stairs, the barren kitchen. She whispered softly so that Dallow couldn't hear: "You won't tell anyone you saw us, dear, will you? Billy gets worked up, an' it don't mean anything, not anything at all."
Rose dumbly shook her head; this foreign land absorbed her too quickly no sooner were you past the customs than the naturalisation papers were signed, you were conscripted....
"There's a duck," the woman said. "Any friend of Pinkie's is a friend of all of us. You'll be meeting the boys before long."
"I doubt it," said Dallow from the top of the stairs.
"You mean...?"
"We got to talk to Pinkie serious."
"Did you have Cubitt here last night?" the woman asked.
"I don't know," Rose said. "I don't know who anyone is. Someone rang the bell and swore a lot and kicked the door."
"That was Cubitt," the woman gently explained.
"We got to talk to Pinkie serious. It's not safe,"
Dallow said.
"Well, dear, I'd better be getting back to Billy."
She paused on a step just above Rose. "If you ever want a dress cleaned, dear, you couldn't do better than give it to Billy. Though I say it who shouldn't. There's no one like Billy for getting out grease marks. An' he hardly charges a thing to lodgers." She bent down and laid a freckled finger on Rose's shoulder. "It could do with a sponge now."
"But I haven't got anything to wear, only this."