CHAPTER XX

A fortnight later Victoria had returned to the City. Most of the old P.R's had reopened, after passing under the yoke. A coat of paint had transformed them into P.R.R's. In fact their extinction was complete; nothing was left of them but the P. and the chairmanship of the amalgamated company, for their chairman was an earl and part of the goodwill. The P.R. had apparently been bought up at a fair rate. Its shares having fallen to sixpence, most of the shareholders had lost large sums; whereas the directors and their friends, displaying the acumen that is sometimes found among directors, had quietly bought the shares up by the thousand and by putting them into the new company had realised large profits. As the failure had happened during the old year and most of the shops had been reopened in the new, it was quite clear that the catering trade was expanding. It was a startling instance of commercial progress.

Within a week the P.R.R. decided to start once more in the City. Victoria, by her own request, was transferred to Moorgate Street. She did not like the neighbourhood of Oxford Circus; it was unfamiliar without being stimulating. She objected too to serving women. If she must serve at all she preferred serving men. She did not worship men; indeed the impression they had left on her was rather unpleasant. The subalterns at the mess were dull, Mr Parker a stick, Bobby was Bobby, Burton a cur, Stein a lout, Beauty, well perhaps Beauty was a little better and Cairns worthy of a kind thought; but all the others, boys and half men with their futile talk, their slang cribbed from the music halls, their affectations, their loud ties, were nothing but the ballast on which the world has founded its permanent way. Yet a mysterious sex instinct made Victoria prefer even them to the young ladies who frequented Princes Street. It is better to be made love to insolently than to be ordered about.

The Moorgate P.R.R. was one of the curious crosses between the ice cream shop and the chop house where thirty bob a week snatches a sixpenny lunch. It was full of magnificent indifference. You could bang your twopence for a small coffee, or luxuriate in steak and kidney pie, boiled (i.e. potatoes), stewed prunes and cream, and be served with the difference of interest that the recording angel may make between No. 1,000,000 and 1,000,001. You were seldom looked at, and, if looked at, forgotten. It was as blatant as the 'Rosebud' had been discreet. Painted pale blue, it flaunted a plate glass window full of cakes, packets of tea, pounds of chocolate, jars of sweets; some imitation chops garnished with imitation parsley, and a chafing dish full of stage eggs and bacon held out the promise of strong meats. Enormous urns, polished like silver, could be seen from the outside emitting clouds of steam; under the chafing dish too came up vaporous jets.

Inside, the P.R.R. recalled the wilderness and the animation of a bank. To the blue and red tesselated floor were fastened many marble-topped tables squeezed so close together that when a customer rose to leave he created an eddy among his disturbed fellows. The floor was swamped with chairs which, during the lunch hour, dismally grated on the tiled floor. It was clean; for, after every burst of feeding, the appointed scavenger swept the fallen crusts, fragments of pudding, cigarette ends and banana skins into a large bin. This bin was periodically emptied and the contents sent to the East End, whether to be destroyed or to be used for philanthropic purposes is not known.

The girls were trained to quick service here. Victoria found no difficulty in acquiring the P.R.R. swing, for she had not to memorise the variety of dishes which the more fastidious Rosebudders demanded. Her mental load seldom went beyond small teas, a coffee or two, half a veal and ham pie, sandwiches and porridge. There was no considering the bill of fare. It stood on every table, immutable as a constitution and as dull. At the P.R.R., a man absorbed a maximum of stodgy food, paid his minimum of cash and vanished into an office to pour out the resultant energy for thirty bob a week. As there were no tips Victoria soon learned that courtesy was wasted, so wasted none.

The P.R.R. did not treat its girls badly—in this sense, that it treated them no worse than its rivals did theirs; it practised commercial morality. Victoria received eight shillings a week, to which good Samaritans added an average of fourteen pence, dropped anonymously into the unobtrusive box near the cash desk. At the 'Rosebud' tips averaged fourteen shillings a week, but then they were given publicly.

Besides her wages she was given all her meals, on a scale suited to girls who waited on Mr Thirty Bob a Week. Her breakfast was tea, bread and margarine; her dinner, cold pudding or pie, according to the unpopularity of the dishes among the customers, washed down once more with tea and sometimes followed by stewed fruit if the quantity that remained made it clear that some would be left over. The day ended with supper, tea, bread and cheese—a variety of Cheddar which the company bought by the ton on account of its peculiar capacity for swelling and producing a very tolerable substitute for repletion.

As Victoria was now paid less than half her former wages she was expected to work longer hours. The P. R. R. demanded faithful service from half-past eight in the morning to nine in the evening, except on one day when freedom was earned at six. Victoria was driven to generalise a little about this; it struck her as peculiar that an increase of work should synchronise with a decrease of pay, but the early steps in any education always fill the pupil with wonderment.

Yet she did not repine, for she remembered too well the black days of the old year when the wolf slunk round the house, coming every day nearer to her door. She had beaten him off and there still was joy in the thought of that victory. Her frame of mind was quiescent, tempered still with a feeling of relief. This she shared with her companions, for every one of them had known such straits as hers and worse. They had come back to the P. R. R. filled with exceeding joy; craving bread they had been given buns.

The Moorgate P. R. R. was a big depot. It boasted, in addition to the ground floor, two smoking rooms, one on the first floor and one underground, as well as a ladies' dining-room on the second floor. It had a staff of twenty waitresses, six of whom were stationed in the underground smoking-room; Victoria was one of these. A virile manageress dominated them and drove with splendid efficiency a concealed kitchen team of four who sweated in the midst of steam in an underground stokehole.

Victoria's companions were all old P. R's except Betty. They all had anything between two and five years' service behind them. Nelly, a big raw boned country girl, was still assertive and loud; she had good looks of the kind that last up to thirty, made up of fine coarse healthy flesh lines, tending to redden at the nostrils and at the ears; her hands were shapely still, though reddened and thickened by swabbing floors and tables. Maud was a poor little thing, small boned with a flaccid covering of white flesh, inclined to quiver a little when she felt unhappy; her eyes were undecidedly green, her hair carroty in the extreme. She had a trick of drawing down the corners of her mouth which made her look pathetic. Amy and Jenny were both short and darkish, inclined to be thin, always a little tired, always willing, always in a state neither happy nor unhappy. Both had nearly five years' experience and could look forward to another fifteen or so. They had no assertiveness, so could not aspire to a managerial position, such as might eventually fall to the share of Nelly.

Betty was an exception. She had not acquired the P. R. R. manner and probably never would. The daughter of a small draper at Horley, she had lived through a happy childhood, played in the fields, been to a little private school. Her father had strained every nerve to face on the one hand the competition of the London stores extending octopus-like into the far suburbs, on the other that of the pedlars. Caught between the aristocracy and the democracy of commerce he had slowly been ground down. When Betty was seventeen he collapsed through worry and overwork. His wife attempted to carry on the business after his death, bravely facing the enemy, discharging assistants, keeping the books, impressing Betty to dress the window, then to clean the shop. But the pressure had become too great, and on the day when the mortgagees foreclosed she died. Nothing was left for Betty except the clothes she stood in. Some poor relatives in London induced her to join the 'Lethe.' That was three years ago and now she was twenty.

Betty was the tall slim girl into whose breast Victoria had thrust her elbow when they were fighting for bread among the crowd which surged round the door of the Princes Street depot. She was pretty, perhaps a little too delicately so. Her sandy hair and wide open china blue eyes made one think of a doll; but the impression disappeared when one looked at her long limbs, her slightly sunken cheeks. She had a sweet disposition, so gentle that, though she was a favourite, her fellows despised her a little and were inclined to call her 'poor Betty.' She was nearly always tired; when she was well she was full of simple and honest merriment. She would laugh then if a motor bus skidded or if she saw a Highlander in a kilt. She had just been shifted to the Moorgate Street P.R.R. From the first the two girls had made friends and Victoria was deeply glad to meet her again. The depth of that gladness is only known to those who have lived alone in a hostile world.

'Betty,' said Victoria the first morning, 'there's something I want to say. I've had it on my mind. Do you remember the first time we met outside the old P.R. in Princes Street?'

'Don't I?' said Betty. 'We had a rough time, didn't we?'

'We had. And, Betty, perhaps you remember . . . I hit you in the chest. I've thought of it so often . . . and you don't know how sorry I am when I think of it.'

'Oh, I didn't mind,' said Betty, a blush rising to her forehead, 'I understand. I was about starving, you know, I thought you were the same.'

'No, not starving exactly,' said Victoria, 'mad rather, terrified, like a sheep which the dog's driving. But I beg your pardon, Betty, I oughtn't to have done it.'

Betty put her hand gently on her companion's.

'I understand, Vic,' she said, 'it's all over now; we're friends, aren't we?'

Victoria returned the pressure. That day established a tender link between these two. Sometimes, in the slack of three o'clock, they would sit side by side for a moment, their shoulders touching. When they met between the tables, running, their foreheads beaded with sweat, they exchanged a smile.

The customers at the P.R.R. were so many that Victoria could hardly retain an impression of them. A few were curious though, in the sense that they were typical. One corner of the room was occupied during the lunch hour by a small group of chess players; five of the six boards were regularly captured by them. They sat there in couples, their eyes glued to the board, allowing the grease to cake slowly on their food; from time to time one would swallow a mouthful, sometimes dropping morsels on the table. These he would brush away dreamily, his thoughts far away, two or three moves ahead. Round each table sat a little group of spectators who now and then shifted their plates and cups from table to table and watched the games. At times, when a game ended, a table was involved in a fierce discussion: gambits, Morphy's classical games, were thrown about. On the other side of the room the young domino-players noisily played matador, fives and threes, or plain matching, would look round and mutter a gibe at the enthusiasts.

Others were more personal. One, a repulsive individual, Greek or Levantine, patronised one of Betty's tables every day. He was fat, yellow and loud; over his invariably dirty hands drooped invariably dirty cuffs; on one finger he wore a large diamond ring.

'It makes me sick sometimes,' said Betty to Victoria, 'you know he eats with both hands and drops his food; he snuffles too, as he eats, like a pig.'

Another was an old man with a beautiful thin brown face and white hair. He sat at a very small table, so small that he was usually alone. Every day he ordered dry toast, a glass of milk and some stewed fruit. He never read or smoked, nor did he raise his eyes from the table. An ancient bookkeeper perhaps, he lived on some principle.

Most of the P. R. R. types were scheduled however. They were mainly young men or boys between fifteen and twenty. All were clad in blue or dark suits, wore flannel shirts, dickeys and no cuffs. They would congregate in noisy groups, talk with furious energy, and smoke Virginia cigarettes with an air of daredevilry. Now and then one of these would be sitting alone, reading unexpected papers such as the Times, borrowed from the office. Spasmodically, too, one would be seen improving his mind. Victoria, within six months, noticed three starts on the part of one of the boys; French, book-keeping and electrical engineering.

Many were older than these. There were little groups of young men rather rakishly but shabbily dressed; often they wore a flower in their buttonhole. The old men were more pathetic; their faces were expressionless; they came to eat, not to feast.

Victoria and Betty had many conversations about the customers. Every day Victoria felt her faculty of wonder increase; she was vaguely conscious already that men had a tendency to revert to types, but she did not realise the influence the conditions of their lives had upon them.

'It's curious,' she once said to Betty, as they left the depot together, 'they're so much alike.'

'I suppose they are,' said Betty. 'I wonder why?'

'I'm not sure,' said Victoria, 'but it seems to me somehow that they must be born different but that they become alike because they do the same kind of work.'

'It's rather awful, isn't it,' said Betty.

'Awful? Well, I suppose it is. Think of it, Betty. There's old Dry Toast, for instance. I'm sure he's been doing whatever he does do for thirty or forty years.'

'And'll go on doing it till he dies,' murmured Betty.

'Or goes into the workhouse,' added Victoria. A sudden and horrible lucidity had come over her. 'Yes, Betty, that's what it means. The boys are going to be like the old man; we see them every day becoming like him. First they're in the twenties and are smart and read the sporting news; then they seem to get fat and don't shave every day, because they feel it's getting late and it doesn't matter what they look like; their hair grows grey, they take up chess or German, or something equally ridiculous. They don't get a chance. They're born and as soon as they can kick they're thrust in an office to do the same thing every day. Nobody cares; all their employers want them to do is to be punctual and do what they're paid thirty bob a week for. Soon they don't try; they die, and the employers fill the billet.'

'How do you know all this, Vic?' said Betty, eyeing her fearfully. 'It seems so true.'

'Oh, I just felt it suddenly, besides . . .' Victoria hesitated.

'But is it right that they should get thirty bob a week all their lives while their employers are getting thousands?' asked Betty, full of excitement.

'I don't know,' said Victoria slowly. Betty's voice had broken the charm. She could no longer see the vision.