Mr Abel kept his shop in such good order that I disliked him before he spoke. There were pencils arranged by length, envelopes by size, and three little pots of nibs which seemed to have been counted into place. My own hall table, not two streets away, contained a buttonhook, a single cufflink and a key which had ceased to open anything in 1909.
“Mrs Bellamy,” he said. “And this is the young lady.”
“Miss Bellamy,” Nell said.
She held her gloves folded in one hand and wore the grey dress I had let down twice. I had come because she asked me to walk with her, not because a woman of twenty-four required her mother to negotiate a few hours’ work. It was a distinction she made before we left, and which I had spent the walk determined not to resent.
Mr Abel glanced at her, then back at me. “My niece speaks well of her.”
“You can ask her about it.”
His smile tightened. Nell was already looking at the book open on the counter.
“Would you show me what you need?” she asked.
“Someone to put these in order. Nothing elaborate.”
He took us through to the little office at the back. Nothing elaborate consisted of a stack of invoices, a cash book with half the entries in pencil and a box of folded papers which he assured Nell were no longer wanted but had better not be thrown away. She sat down in the chair he offered and asked whether he wished to know how much he was owed or how much he had paid out.
“Both, naturally.”
“And when do you need it?”
“The sooner the better.”
“I could do two afternoons a week. I should need to see the other books before saying how long it will take.”
He looked at me again, perhaps hoping I would find her too particular. I had become fascinated by a little globe on his desk.
The interview went on without my assistance. Nell asked for a trial of a fortnight, at six shillings a week, and said she would show him what had been done at the end of each afternoon. He proposed four shillings. She said that would not be enough.
“It is only afternoons.”
“Yes. Two afternoons.”
He took a pen from one of the pots and inspected it. I could see the calculation in his face: a young woman ought to be glad of a beginning, and if she were not, there would be another. My daughter sat very still. She had learnt that from someone other than me. I would have filled the silence with a reason to be liked.
“Five,” he said.
“Six, for the trial. Then you will know whether you want me.”
We left with an agreement and no promise beyond the fortnight. Outside the shop Nell walked for half the street without speaking. At the corner she stopped and began to laugh.
“I thought I was going to be sick.”
“I thought you were going to ask for eight.”
“I wish I had.”
She took my arm. We walked back together past a window full of bonnets which neither of us inspected. When we reached home she wrote the dates on a slip of paper and pinned them above the kitchen table, where I would see them before making arrangements for her time.
That afternoon Ada came to see the room.
She arrived without Bessie, having left her at home to receive a parcel which ought to have come in the morning. She told me this before I asked, and I understood that she had been thinking of my probable opinion all the way down from Hampstead.
“How many came?”
“Ten, including Dora.”
“And what did you discuss?”
“Shakespeare.”
She took off her gloves. “I understood there would be talks.”
“There were a great many.”
“About our work.”
“About a play. And France.”
I brought her into the sitting room. In daylight, without people, it was an ordinary narrow room with too much brown furniture. She stood by the table, touching the fringe of a cushion, and looked at the chairs.
“You could fit more in.”
“Not comfortably.”
“For a proper meeting.”
“It was a proper meeting.”
She turned. I had said it too quickly, as I had said I could manage without Nell. Ada took a moment before answering.
“I meant an organised one. A speaker. We are always looking for places where we aren’t charged as if we were a commercial entertainment.”
“I charged Dora three shillings.”
“Oh.”
I could not tell whether it was too much or too little. The sound had the unfortunate effect of making me certain it was both.
“That doesn’t include tea,” I added.
“You would have to provide more chairs.”
“Then I would charge for them.”
She smiled faintly. “You have become a businesswoman.”
“I have let rooms for four years.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
I did know. It was not helping either of us to pretend every slight had been carefully prepared. I asked whether she wanted tea, and she said she would make it if I showed her where things were. I showed her. She forgot to warm the pot and spilt a little water trying to manage the kettle, but the tea was perfectly drinkable. We had it in the sitting room like two women who had nowhere else to be.
“William asked after you,” she said.
“That’s kind.”
“He wonders whether you should take on all this extra work.”
“How much did you tell him?”
“Not much.”
She lifted the cup with both hands. I had intended to ask her to carry a message back, something witty about William discovering an interest in other people’s work. Instead I watched the effort required to keep the saucer steady and asked whether her wrists were better.
“A little.”
“Bessie says you’ve been getting out.”
“She shouldn’t discuss me.”
“I asked how you were.”
Ada put the cup down. “I’m not ill, Eleanor.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“People begin to arrange things once they decide. They discuss where you should sit and whether you should go. Then your own opinion becomes another thing they have to manage.”
The rain had begun again. I could hear it against the glass, and a cart passing close to the kerb. My sister looked at the fire rather than at me.
“I will charge for a meeting,” I said. “If you want one. We can agree the number and the time.”
She looked back then. “A small one. After Easter.”
“Write to me.”
“As if I were a stranger?”
“As if we were going to remember the same thing afterwards.”
She laughed and reached for her cup. I was glad to have found an answer which did not require one of us to be defeated.
Arthur came that evening with a little package of curtain rings. He had found them at a shop near his office. Nell took them out and spread them on the table, and he watched her with a tenderness I had sometimes overlooked because he was so quiet about it.
“They’ll do,” she said. “They’re just the right size.”
“I took the sample.”
“I wondered where it was.”
“I put it back.”
They bent over the rings together. I thought I might leave them alone, but Nell asked me to stay. She wanted to tell him about the job while I was there, not for protection but because she could see no reason for it to become a private confession.
He listened and nodded. Then he said, “Only until June?”
“It’s a fortnight’s trial.”
“I mean if it goes well.”
“If it goes well, I hope he’ll want me longer.”
“But we’ll have our place.”
“I can walk from there as easily as from here.”
Arthur turned one ring between his fingers. He was still holding it when he answered.
“Mother will say it looks as if I can’t keep you.”
I had expected him to speak of the work, or the shopkeeper, or what Nell would be paid. The nakedness of that little fear stopped me.
“You can tell her what I earn,” Nell said. “Six shillings. It won’t make you a rich man.”
“That isn’t—”
“I know it isn’t.” She put her hand over the ring. “But I can’t spend our whole life making sure nobody thinks something unkind about you.”
He looked at her for a long time. The colour had gone out of his face. I found an excuse to go into the kitchen then, because the staying I had been asked for had become the sort of staying that kept two people from being honest.
I heard their voices through the wall, low and uneven. I could not hear the words. When I went back with a tray Arthur was standing by the window and Nell had put the rings into a box.
He took his cup from me. “Could I see the room they’re using for the readings?”
“You’re in it.”
“Oh.” He looked round at the chairs, the small fireplace, the piano. “It must get rather crowded.”
“It does.”
“I could move the table for you, on the nights you need it.”
Nell looked up. “You needn’t come to do that.”
“I know. But I pass the end of the street.”
She did not thank him at once. She looked at him as though something she had been trying to see had become visible in better light. Then she said he could help on Tuesday, if he liked, and he sat down to drink his tea.
I put an extra slice of cake on his plate. He smiled at me, and for once I had offered it because I wanted him to have it.