Dougal woke again at the very moment, it seemed, that the rain stopped. And at this very moment a whisper and a giggle came from the direction of his cupboard. He switched on his light and got up. The cupboard was empty. Just as he was going to shut the small door again, there was a slight scuffle. He opened the door, put his head in, and found nothing. He returned to bed and slept.
On Monday morning Dougal got his letter. Jinny had finished with him. He went into the offices of Meadows, Meade & Grindley and typed out some of his notes. Then, at the morning tea-break, he walked over to the long, long factory canteen and asked especially for Odette Hill and Lucille Potter. He was told they were not at work that morning. ‘Taking the day off. Foreman’s mad. Absenteeism makes him mad.’ He had a bun and a cup of tea, then another bun. A bell rang to mark the end of the tea-break. The men disappeared rapidly. A few girls loitered, as on principle, talking with three of the women who served the canteen. Dougal put his head on his arms in full view of these few girls, and wept.
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘What’s the matter, son?’ said a girl of about sixteen whom Dougal, on looking up, found to be Dawn Waghorn, one of the cone-winders whose movements when winding the cone, as laid down by the Cambridge expert, had seemed to Dougal, when he had been taken round the floors, very appealing. Dougal put down his head and resumed his weeping.
Dawn patted his poor shoulder. He slightly raised his head and shook it sadly from side to side. A woman came round from the canteen bar with a clean-folded oven cloth which she held out to him. ‘Here, dry your eyes before anyone sees you,’ she said.
‘What’s the matter, mate?’ said another girl. She said, ‘Here’s a hanky.’ She was Annette Wren who was in training for seaming. She was giggling most heartlessly.
‘I’ve lost my girl,’ Dougal said, as he blew his nose on the oven cloth.
Elaine Kent, who was well on in her twenties, an experienced controller of process, turned on Annette Wren and told her to shut her mouth, what was there to laugh at?
The two other canteen women came round to Dougal, and he was now surrounded by women. Elaine Kent opened her bag and took out a comb. With it she combed Dougal’s hair as it moved with his head slowly from side to side.
‘You’ll get another girl,’ said one of the canteen women, Milly Lloyd by name.
Annette giggled again. Dawn slapped her face and said, ‘You’re ignorant. Can’t you see he’s handicapped?’
Whereupon Annette burst into tears.
‘Keep your head still,’ said Elaine. ‘How can I comb you if you keep moving your head?’
‘It calms you down, a good comb,’ remarked one of the canteen.
Milly Lloyd was looking for a fresh handkerchief for Annette whose sobs were tending towards the hysterical.
‘How did you lose your girl?’ said Dawn.
‘I’ve got a fatal flaw,’ Dougal said.
Dawn assumed this to be his deformed shoulder, which she now stroked. ‘It’s a shame,’ she said. ‘little no-good bitch I bet she is.’
Suddenly Merle Coverdale appeared at the door in the long distance and started walking towards the group.
‘Office,’ whispered Milly, ‘typing pool,’ and returned behind the canteen bar.
Merle shouted along the length of the canteen as she approached. ‘Tea for Mr Druce, please. He was out. Now he’s come in. He wants some tea.’ Then she saw the group round Dougal. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said.
‘Migraine,’ Dougal said sadly. ‘A headache.’
‘You should all be back on the floor,’ Merle said to the girls. ‘There’s going to be trouble.’
‘Who you to talk to us like that?’
‘Who’s she, coming it over us?’
And so Merle could do nothing with them. She said meaningfully to Dougal,
‘I had a headache myself this morning. Came into work late. I went for a brisk walk on the Rye. All by myself.’
‘I dimly recall arranging to meet you there,’ Dougal said. ‘But I was prevented.’
Merle gave him a hostile look and said to the canteen women, ‘What about that tea?’
Milly Lloyd put a cup of tea into Dougal’s hand. Merle walked off, bearing Mr Druce’s tea, moving her neck slightly back and forth as she walked all the long length of the canteen. Annette took a cup of tea and, as she gulped it, tried also to express her rage against the girl who had slapped her. As Dougal sipped his tea, young Dawn stroked his high shoulder and said, never mind, it was a shame, while Elaine combed his hair. It was curly hair but cut quite short. Nevertheless she combed it as if it had been as long as the Laughing Cavalier’s.
Dixie sat with Humphrey, Dougal, and Elaine Kent in Costa’s Café. Dixie yawned. Her eyes were sleepy. The only reason she had denied herself an early night was that Dougal was paying for the supper.
‘I’ve felt tired all day,’ she said. She addressed the men, ignoring Elaine as she had done all evening, because Elaine was factory, even though Elaine was high up in process-control. After a trial period Elaine likewise confined her remarks to the men.
‘Look what’s just come in,’ Elaine said. Tall Trevor Lomas had just come in. He sat at the nearest table, with his head and shoulders turned away from Dougal’s party, and stared out of the window. Trevor Lomas was at this time employed as an electrician by the Borough.
Trevor turned his head sleepily and permitted an eye to rest on Humphrey for a small second. Humphrey said ‘Hallo.’ Trevor did not reply.
Trevor’s girl arrived presently, tall and copper-tinted, with a tight short black skirt and much green eye-shadow. ‘Hi, snake,’ said Trevor. ‘Hi,’ said the girl, and sat down beside him.
Dixie and Elaine stared at the girl as she slid out of her coat and let it fall on the back of her chair. They stared as if by duty, and watched every detail. The girl was aware of this, and seemed to expect it.
Then Trevor pushed back his chair, still seated, so that he half-faced Humphrey’s party. He said to his girl in a loud voice: ‘Got your lace hanky on you, Beauty?’
Beauty did not reply. She was holding up a small mirror, putting on lipstick with care.
‘Because,’ said Trevor, ‘I’m going to cry.’ He took his large white handkerchief out of his top pocket and flourished it before each eye in turn. ‘Going to cry my eyes out, I am,’ said Trevor, ‘because I’ve lost me girl. Hoo, I’ve lost me girl.’
Beauty laughed a great deal. The more she laughed the more noisily did Trevor continue. He laid his head on the table and affected to sob. The girl rocked in her chair, her newly painted lips open wide apart.
Then Dixie started to laugh.
Dougal shoved his chair back and stood up. Elaine jumped up and held his arm.
‘Let be,’ she said.
Humphrey, whom the story of Dougal’s weeping in the canteen had not yet reached, said to Dixie, ‘What’s up?’
Dixie could not tell him for laughing.
‘Let be, mate,’ Elaine said to Dougal.
Dougal said to Trevor, ‘I’ll see you up on the Rye outside the tennis court.’
Elaine walked over to Trevor and gave him a push. ‘Can’t you see he’s deformed?’ she said. ‘Making game of a chap like that, it’s ignorant.’
Dougal, whose deformed shoulder had actually endowed him with a curious speciality in the art of fighting, in that he was able to turn his right wrist at an extraordinary back-hand outward angle and to get a man by the throat as with a claw, did not at that moment boast of the fact.
‘Cripple as I am,’ he merely said, ‘I’ll knock his mean wee sex-starved conceited low and lying L.C.C. electrician’s head off.’
‘Who’s sex-starved?’ Trevor said, standing up.
Two youths who had been sitting by the window moved over the better to see. A Greek in an off-white coat appeared, and pointed to a telephone receiver which stuck out of the wall behind him in the passageway to the dim kitchen.