The room was full of blue smoke, the beautiful eighteenth century table spread with hot crumpets and buttered toast, a Wedgwood Chinese teapot, with cups and plates to match, an opened jar of anchovies, and a litter of papers in process of reassembly by Miss Otter. Among the papers, Griselda noticed, seemed to be a number of very grimy and unpractised looking letters; others were inexplicable drawings in pompeian red on fresh white cartridge paper.
‘All this clutter!’ ejaculated Miss Otter, smilingly. ‘No, please don’t help me. I am an untidy old woman. You sit down and eat your tea.’
Griselda had never previously met with tea in the shop, or indeed, any other meal. It was true, however, that each day she left Mr Tamburlane to provide for himself while she took lunch in a teashop. Today she was ready to tuck in.
‘Good-bye, Mr Tamburlane,’ said Miss Otter, strapping her portfolio, ‘I’ll find my own way to the door. Good-bye, Miss de Reptonville. If you’ll take an old woman’s advice, you’ll turn down the next proposal you receive. Come what may, you should turn it down. No matter how keen on you the other party seems to be. Feelings change, you know, with the passage of the years. Nor is that the only reason.’ She was on her way through the shop. ‘Don’t forget what I say. Miss de Reptonville.’ The outer door shut.
‘Don’t you worry.’ said Mr Tamburlane to Griselda, repeating Lord Roller’s counsel. ‘I talked to Miss Otter very fully about your tragic misfortune. I think that together we shall have the great happiness of recapturing the lamb that has strayed. It is fortunate indeed that I was by when your need arose. Have a Bath Oliver?’ He extended an exquisite Wedgwood biscuit box.
‘Thank you. I’d like another piece of anchovy toast first.’
‘I imagine, Miss de Reptonville, that my words of cheer fill you with scepticism?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not very hopeful that I shall find my friend. But it is very kind of you to concern yourself.’
‘You probably think that I am a crank and that Miss Otter is mad?’ He was eating crumpet after crumpet.
‘Certainly not.’
‘And that our weekly paper, if it exists at all, has less than no power in the land?’
‘Not at all.’ Griselda began to wish she had never confided in Mr Tamburlane.
‘Yes, Miss de Reptonville, you certainly think all these things; How surprised you will be! That is all I care to say at the moment. How surprised you will be! How pleasantly and delicately surprised!’
‘Would you let me see a copy of your paper?’
‘Subcribers only, you will recall. I fear your sceptical attitude unfits you as yet to enter that charmed cricle.’ He had begun to drink cups of tea in as quick succession as he had eaten crumpets.
‘I see.’
‘Child of loveliness, yours but to reap where Miss Otter and I have sown.’
He began to talk about books; and very shortly afterwards Griselda was engaged upon a dreary quest for lodgings in and around Ladbroke Grove.
XVIII
In the end, a decision being urgently necessary, she settled upon a small rectangular residence in a block of flats built for young, and presumably underpaid, office workers of her own sex, by a semi-charitable organization, the New Vista Apartments Trust. Situated just off the western side of that great dividing thorough-fare, the Edgware Road, Greenwood Tree House purported to improve upon such commercial lodgings as could be obtained for a like rental. Under the rules, tenants had to move out upon reaching the age of thirty; and were expected, though not compelled, to interest themselves in the work of the YWCA or in some cognate organization approved by the Management Committee. The block was not an unreservedly first-class piece of construction, owing to shortage of funds; but it had been designed (for less than the rightful fee) by an eminent cathedral architect, and therefore reflected the very best in contemporary design.
In addition to her depression about Louise, Griselda now began to suffer from positive loneliness. Although Mr Tamburlane’s mysterious paper was stated to be issued weekly, he soon made it clear that nothing was likely to come of the quest for Louise for several months. Combined with the obscurity about how the paper in any way forwarded the quest, and Mr Tamburlane’s incommunicativeness upon matters of detail, this announcement confirmed Griselda’s view that the whole episode was a dismal exercise in whimsicality, conducted at her expense, or possibly a patch of moonshine from the minds of two near-lunatics. Miss Otter visited Mr Tamburlane regularly each Friday, but rarely remained closeted with him for so long as on that first occasion. Upon entering and leaving, she continued to favour Griselda with cryptic and prophetic observations: ‘Next time a title comes your way, Miss de Reptonville, I think you would be most unwise to lose your chance’; or simply ‘More friends are what you need most at the moment, my dear.’
In three months of inner misery, Griselda made only a single friend, apart from Mr Tamburlane, who continued as punctiliously complimentary as on the day she met him. The new friend was Peggy Potter, her neighbour in Greenwood Tree House. Peggy was a broad, well-built girl with a large bust; a little taller than Griselda, and with a quantity of more or less fair hair hanging to her shoulders. She wore woollen dresses, of which Griselda felt that Lousie would have strongly disapproved, and had a reserved air derived, as Griselda soon discovered, from a conviction that she had little in common with her fellow inmates. This circumstance, combined with the fact that, before coming to London she had passed her entire existence in Bodmin, where she had graduated at University College, made her as a friend for Griselda something of a cul-de-sac. Ultimately Griselda realized that inner misery was a positive handicap when seeking to extend a social circle.
It was the pipes in the passage which brought Peggy and Griselda together. Each apartment was equipped with an electric radiator dependant upon a shilling meter; but outside in the passages were occasional steam coils, installed to guard the cocoanut matting and other decorations from injury by damp. The flow of electricity was so costly that the tenants formed the habit of drying their stockings and underclothes on these pipes, which were kept hardly more than lukewarm. The practice was specifically forbidden in the Rules: but as the Rules in most cases failed to provide for sanctions (the Management Committee felt that small fines, for example, were anachronistic and reminiscent of the evil days before the Truck Act) this particular Rule was obeyed only by those who wore no stockings. The practice was to steal out after eleven o'clock and drape the coils: realistically, the difficulty was the insufficient number of the installations. Griselda and Peggy became friends upon Peggy suggesting that they sidetrack the general run of inmates by sharing the use and the cost of a single electric heater. This arrangement involved them in constant use of one another's rooms.
They began to drink tea together, and Griselda lent Penny a packet of ‘Lux.’ In less than a week, Peggy suggested that Griselda accompany her to hear some music. It proved to be a recital of songs by Duparc, given by a rather elderly Belgian woman, retired some years previously from the provincial operatic stage of her country. The Wigmore Hall was almost empty, and Griselda was slightly scared by the unaccountable permanent decorations behind the platform; nor were the seats which Peggy and Griselda occupied either very cosy or very close to the centre of interest: none the less Griselda enjoyed the evening because she was so glad to have a friend to share her enjoyment. During the interval, which was rather long, she gave expression to this feeling by offering to stand Peggy a cup of coffee: but the Wigmore Hall proved not to offer refreshments. Outside, at the end of the recital, a group of excitingly dressed women with collection boxes and very little English beset the small audience for contributions some continental charity. Griselda gathered that the charity had been founded to commemorate the recitalist's wonderful work for the Allies during the World War.