1
Every One’s Entitled to what they can get, was Ethel Eastwood’s motto. Always had been. It was the only sensible way of looking at things, after all. Nobody was going to give you anything on a plate, you had to look out for yourself or you’d have a thin time of it and serve you right. Anyone who thought different was soft, and Ethel didn’t mind telling them so. Soft. That’s all there was to it. She’d seen that very early on in life. Charlie Martin was soft. He’d never have got any-where, never, even if he hadn’t lost half his arm in world war one. Of course they’d had a nice bit of fun together, she wouldn’t say no to that; walking along in the dark with Charlie’s arm round her waist, stopping to kiss in every archway, it had been pleasant enough, she could still remember the feel of it. But all that, as she often said to Mrs. Clapham next door, all that sex stuff, to call it by its proper name, it doesn’t last. It soon dies off. And while it lasts, what is it? For a man, perhaps—they make such fools of themselves over it, it must take them bad. But for a woman, it’s something and nothing. Anyway, if you ask me, it’s more a question of how than who. And as I say, it doesn’t last. Nothing really matters except a roof over your head and something to eat. You’d have thought Charlie Martin would have understood that, but no! The way he carried on! The way he created, when he came back from the war and found Ethel had married Mr. Fred Eastwood while he was in hospital!
“That pompous old bastard!” Charlie shouted.
He shouted quite loud; you could hear him all down the terrace. Not that Ethel minded, really; she wasn’t afraid of Charlie; let him shout his head off. The neighbours would be sure to tell Mr. Eastwood, of course; but what of that? She could handle Fred. In those days she had everything a man wanted; fair and bosomy, with fine firm thighs—an old man like Fred would put up with a lot to get her. She’d seen at once, when he came collecting his rents that night and she’d fetched the card and the money to the door, her mother being poorly, that he was taken with her, so the next rent-day she went to the door without the money and had to turn and pretend to look for it in the dresser, and of course it was natural to ask him in while he waited, and that was how it all began. To do Fred justice, he was a kind, decent old chap enough; before he ever so much as asked her to marry him, he said, looking at her meaningly like:
“I hear Charlie Martin’s in hospital, like to lose his arm.”
“There’s nothing between me and Charlie Martin,” said Ethel firmly. “He might have stolen a kiss or two now and again, like some others I could mention, but that’s all.”
That disposed of Charlie Martin all right, put him in the place where he belonged. Also, Ethel saw with sardonic amusement, the mention of kisses had stirred old Fred up. His eyes quite shone and he came out promptly with a proposal of marriage, and Ethel accepted him on the spot, before he could change his mind. Seeing that her mother was ill and her father had deserted them long ago, and the war was coming to an end and there would be no more high wages for munition workers, she was only too glad of the chance. Playing around with Charlie was fun, but this was serious business, this was real life.
She married old Fred and he made a will in her favour and explained all his property to her: houses it was chiefly, scattered about in Ashworth and all around, places he’d picked up here and there as chance offered, for he had a keen eye for a bargain, had Fred. Ethel soon took it all in and was able to help him with his accounts, and they enjoyed making up the books and balancing the cash and that together. She was sharp in all that kind of thing.
“You’ve the makings of a good business woman, Ethel,” Fred often said admiringly.
Then Charlie came home and went straight to her mother’s house, looking for Ethel, and her mother, lying bedridden downstairs by the kitchen hearth, sent him straight down to Naseby Terrace.
“You’d have done better to keep him away from me, mother,” said Ethel later.
Her mother said nothing but gave her a grim smile with a tinge of triumph in it; there was no love lost between Ethel and her mother.
So Charlie came to Naseby Terrace and shouted at her. He was a smallish fellow, slight and dark, and with half his right arm off didn’t look much of a man. He quivered in his rage, too, which seemed childish to Ethel. But how his eyes flashed! And the abuse he poured out on Fred and herself! Really it was surprising where he found all those words—in the army, Ethel shouldn’t wonder. Ethel was not at all upset by his ravings, however; indeed in a way she rather enjoyed them. It wasn’t unpleasant to know he had wanted her so much, and on the other hand, it was most satisfying to know that she had married Fred, and had all his property safely behind her. Charlie would leave soon and she and Fred would be comfortable together. And so it proved. After a last wild tirade against Ethel’s treachery and cold-heartedness, Charlie had suddenly burst out sobbing; the tears lay quite thick on his cheeks as he turned and staggered from the house.
“I’ve had Charlie Martin here this afternoon,” said Ethel to her husband when he came in for his tea. (It was better to tell him, as an insurance against the neighbours’ talk, thought Ethel sensibly; she was always sensible.) “He seemed in quite a taking because I’d married you.”
“I’m sorry about his arm,” said Fred, frowning a little. After a moment he said: “Shall I give him a job rent-collecting, eh?”
“Better not,” said Ethel sensibly.
“Just as you like, love,” said Fred.
Ethel never saw Charlie again. She heard about him from time to time, naturally, him being a local boy as you might say. He lived rather a wild life for a few months, getting drunk and being unemployed and that, and then suddenly he married some girl or other and got a caretaker job over Bradford way. Ethel, as she always said, did not mind Charlie getting married; it was the sensible thing for him to do, after all, and at that time she was expecting a child and hadn’t much time for thoughts of Charlie. Her child was stillborn, and in any case its poor little body was so malformed and puny that perhaps living would have been a crueller fate for it. And after all, what did she and Fred want with a child, said Ethel sensibly. They were perfectly comfortable and well satisfied as they were. (Fred, however, seemed disappointed.) But what was so maddening to Ethel was the feckless, the improvident, the extravagant, the disgracefully prodigal way in which Charlie and his wife set to work to have children. Four! Four, no less! With Charlie always in and out of jobs, his gratuity long since spent, his wife scrubbing floors to keep them, often nothing else coming in but his pension, and still they went on having children! It was really disgusting. Some people have no sense of decency, said Ethel.
Meanwhile her own life went comfortably on. Her mother at long last died, which was a satisfaction to Ethel, and almost immediately afterwards she received a formal notification, as next of kin, of the death of her father in some far-off south-country poor-law hospital—they weren’t called poor-law hospitals now, but that’s what they were, of course; might as well face facts, thought Ethel sensibly. She went off down south with Fred’s full approval and gave her father a decent burial. It was very satisfactory to have both her tiresome parents so well settled.
Then presently Fred fell ill—after all, he was now well on in the seventies. It was a stroke. But contrary to the general expectation he lived a long time bedridden. Ethel nursed him well and faithfully, as she often told herself and others. She kept him clean and comfortable, served him good meals and administered with reasonable regularity most of the medicines prescribed for him. Of course she was obliged to leave him alone a good deal—there was the shopping to do, and anyway you couldn’t be expected to sit hours on end in a cold bedroom, talking to somebody who could only make noises at you in return. At one time the old man, during one of his better periods, took to wandering about the house while she was out; but fortunately there was a lock on the bedroom door, so she was able to lock him in.
At last he died. It was certainly a relief, and of course all the property being her own now was a satisfaction. There were two houses in Naseby Terrace, five up and down the main Ashworth to Hudley Road, six scattered about the lower parts of Ashworth near the railway station, a lock-up shop near Holmelea way, and High Royd, a sort of old farmstead without any land attached, up on Blackstalls Brow. Ethel, a buxom widow who looked very well in her black, settled down to a comfortable life alone. She was a good cook and always made nice meals for herself, she kept her house spotless; she went to chapel often enough to be respectable, and occasionally came out with a rather handsome donation to some charity to keep up her standing, but she did not engage herself deeply in any cause, social, religious, political or charitable, because in her experience they cost more than they were worth. Nor did she bother herself overmuch with friends. She had plenty of acquaintances, and they were all she needed, really; friends were apt to be a trouble and an expense.
It was during this most prosperous period of Ethel’s life that Charlie Martin died, and his widow, encumbered with debt and with four children to feed, none of them as yet earning, turned up one afternoon in Naseby Terrace and begged Ethel’s help. This wife of Charlie’s had been a pretty girl once, thought Ethel shrewdly, gazing in silence at the haggard, weeping, shabby woman. She had had to bring the two youngest children with her, having nobody to leave them with at home—if they had a home. They were ill-brought-up children, with grubby hands and running noses, whom their mother continually had to reprove and slap for climbing or kicking Ethel’s well polished and thickly upholstered chairs.
“They don’t take after Charlie in looks, do they?” said Ethel in her firm, sensible tones.
The children fixed dark inimical eyes on her, and Charlie’s widow sobbed. It seemed that the dying Charlie had been terribly distressed to leave his wife and children in their unprovided state.
“Who will look after you? How will you manage?” he moaned. “I’ve been a bad husband to you, Gladys.” His wife denying this strenuously, he muttered, turning his head away: “Well—I did my best.” There was a long pause, then he said suddenly: “You’d best go to Ethel. Yes, tell Ethel,” he repeated: “She won’t see you starve.”
“He was right, of course,” said Ethel, preening herself. “You can count on me, Mrs. Martin. Charlie and I were old flames, Mrs. Martin—it was long before he met you, of course. Don’t give all that another thought, of course,” said Ethel, giving Charlie’s widow a full account of how Charlie and she were engaged and then she met Mr. Eastwood and married him. “How Charlie did carry on, to be sure, when he came back and found me married! But that’s all water under the bridge now, Mrs. Martin. Don’t give it another thought.”
“It’s Charlie’s children I’m thinking of, Mrs. Eastwood,” said Charlie’s widow, not without dignity.
“Well, you’ve so many, haven’t you?” said Ethel. “But let me see now. What can I do to help you, eh?”
She probed every detail of the unhappy widow’s situation.
“You must excuse me asking all these questions, Mrs. Martin, but I’m a business woman, you see, and I like to know how I stand.”
Eventually, declining the i.o.u. which she herself was the first to mention, she lent the Martins five pounds, extracting the money from her handbag before their eyes and counting it over several times.
“Now if you need any more, be sure to come and tell me, Mrs. Martin,” she said cheerfully as she showed them all out of the front door.
She spoke in her usual loud tones—why not?—and one or two passers-by, who could not but overhear, turned an enquiring glance in her direction, while Mrs. Martin hung her head and seemed overpowered with shame.
This incident had occurred near Christmas—there was a mess of dirty melted snow on the ground—and when the following Christmas brought much the same weather, Ethel bethought herself of the Martin children (if indeed she had ever forgotten them) and wondered whether their shoes were good enough to keep out the snow-broth. She sent Gladys Martin five pound notes in a registered envelope. These were acknowledged in a grateful scrawl. She sent the same next Christmas, and again the next, but now the acknowledgment came in a much firmer handwriting and was signed by Charles M. Martin, who stated that, as his mother’s eldest son, he hoped to repay Mrs. Eastwood’s kind loans shortly. Ethel was vexed; she had enjoyed being generous to Charlie’s widow and telling anyone who would listen about her generosity.
“Repay, indeed! I’d like to see them repay a farthing. I shall believe it when I see it. There’s not much chance of Charlie Martin’s widow ever being able to repay anything, I can tell you,” said Ethel.
However, in the following autumn, who should turn up in Naseby Terrace but Charles M. Martin, dressed in khaki if you please, a young man of nearly nineteen, enlisted for this Hitler’s war which had just begun. He resembled his father now quite closely, having sparkling dark eyes just like those Charlie had turned on Ethel before he went off to world war one. Taller than his father, though, and more of a man than Ethel remembered Charlie to have been. For a moment Ethel’s heart quite turned over, and she invited the lad into the house in quite a flutter. But he would not come in further than the hall. Standing there stiffly, with his heels together, and speaking with a kind of anger in his tone which was really quite uncalled for in the circumstances, thought Ethel, he offered her first four five-pound notes to repay the debt, and then two pounds twelve shillings and fivepence in small change by way of compound interest. Ethel was quite taken aback as he stood there counting pennies into her hand. She accepted the five-pound notes, naturally, but suggested the lad should retain the rest for himself, as he was going off to the war and everything. He refused, very sharply as Ethel thought.
“He’ll change his mind if he comes back only half a man, like his father,” she said on a grumbling note to Mrs. Clapham.
(Mrs. Clapham, her next-door neighbour and tenant, being the wife of a man who for health reasons had been demoted to a part-time job, could be patronised, and thus was a useful listener.)
However, none of the Martin children were killed or maimed in Hitler’s war. The two boys came home safely and got good jobs, one in engineering and the other in textiles, and the two girls both married quite well and rather young, and they all had lots of children. It was really disgusting, as Ethel said, how many children those Martins had. Showed you what kind of people they were at bottom. But what did it matter to Ethel Eastwood? She had her property; she prospered.
It was after the war was over that things began to go not quite so well with Ethel.
Fred Eastwood’s property was old. One or two of the houses stood in slum property scheduled for clearance—they had been scheduled thus for so many years that Ethel had come to view the likelihood of anything happening to them with derisive disbelief; but now they were duly requisitioned and pulled down. Ethel received compensation, of course, and obtained good advice on how to reinvest the money; but it was not the same. Meagre dividend cheques with enormous income tax sums deducted, were not the same to Ethel as the solid cash she had taken week by week from tenants’ hands. Income Tax you could fiddle a bit under those conditions, but when it was taken off before you started, as you might say, where were you? And living expenses going up and up, all the time. Because of some stupid law she could not put up her tenants’ rents; yet all the time they were asking for outside paint, and roof repairs, and new sinks, and pipes repaired, and pointing. Pointing! Her own house, the house she lived in, stood at the end of Naseby Terrace. At one time she had been proud of the extra size and distinction which this position conferred, but now she was maddened by the area of that exposed side wall. It was horribly beaten upon by the wind and rain which came sweeping from the west across Ashworth Municipal Park. Yes, that wall would need to be pointed soon, as sure as fate. And its size! And the amount workpeople charged nowadays! Outrageous! It wasn’t as if they worked hard, either; their working day was nothing but talk and tea. Taking one thing with another, she was quite glad to take the Dean girl as lodger—it was a kind act, as she explained to Mrs. Clapham, and the girl was well-behaved if a little hoity-toity, and punctual on the dot with her rent. Of course Ethel wouldn’t have kept her a week if she hadn’t been punctual with her rent—“not a week,” she told Mrs. Clapham emphatically. Mrs. Clapham believed her.
Of course Ethel saw at once what was up when Dot Dean began going out with that Mr. Cressey.
“She’s head over heels for him,” she said to Mrs. Clapham with relish, laughing her coarse loud laugh. “Yes, head over heels. Though I’m sure I can’t tell you why. I don’t think much to him myself, and that’s a fact. He’s nothing much to look at, and these schoolmasters don’t get much pay.”
Mrs. Clapham opined that Mr. Cressey was always very kind and polite.
“Well, yes, though he was very sharp with me once when I asked Dot what film they were going to. There was a rather hot one on, I’d been told, and I gave her a hint not to go. ‘That is for Miss Dean to decide,’ he said. Such airs and graces! And what is he, after all? I don’t think much to him. He’s lame, you know. He limps. Oh, not much, I grant you; it doesn’t show much, I daresay he takes pains enough for that, he doesn’t do it always, it’s more a sort of a pause than a limp, but there it is.”
Mrs. Clapham thought that Mr. Cressey might be one of those who had been ill in childhood; they called them spastics.
“Spastics!” exclaimed Ethel scornfully. “Such fancy names! Why don’t they call them cripples outright and be done with it? Cripples, that’s what they are. I like to give things their proper names,” she concluded virtuously.
All the same, when there was this talk of Dot Dean’s leaving Ashworth and going to her sister in Scarborough, Ethel was vexed, for the girl was well-behaved and punctual with her rent and always looked clean and smart, quite a credit to her landlady. Besides, who would Ethel get as a tenant, in her place? As things stood nowadays, she couldn’t afford to be without a lodger in the house. It was really a very great relief when after the Easter holidays Dot seemed to change her mind and decide to remain in Ashworth.
“It’s that Mr. Cressey,” said Ethel shrewdly. “Though what she can see in him! And it’ll never come to anything, you know. Mark my words, it’ll never come to anything. It’ll just go on and on, you know, without ever coming to anything. But why should I worry? She won’t give up hope easily, Dot won’t. She’ll stay on, hoping against hope, as they say,” said Ethel, laughing heartily.
Mrs. Clapham said she thought there was a possibility that Dorothea and Mr. Cressey might get engaged.
“He’s not the kind to do anything wrong,” she suggested.
“Oh, there’ll be nothing wrong” said Ethel with crushing emphasis. “Not in my house, I can tell you. No, there’ll be nothing wrong. But if they did by some strange chance get engaged, it’d be years before they could marry—schoolmasters don’t get much pay, you know. Why should they? Their year’s work is half holiday. But I don’t think they’ll get engaged. Still, they might. There’s no telling what foolishness folks will get up to when they think they’re in love. But I shall be surprised if it comes to anything.”
As the weeks went on, however, she somewhat modified this view.
“You might be right about our Dot and that Cressey,” she told Mrs. Clapham, nodding confidentially. “They’re still going strong.”
“Well, I hope he does and I hope she’s happy,” said Mrs. Clapham with an air of defiance.
Mrs. Eastwood snorted.
There came a sunny evening when Ethel, hearing steps on the stairs, heaved herself quickly out of her chair—she had grown bulky and heavy of late, though still a fresh-cheeked, well-looking woman—and hurried out to intercept her lodger. She returned to Mrs. Clapham, who was having a cuppa with her to pass the time till her husband came home, chuckling sardonically.
“Yes, I think you’re going to be right,” she said. “Madam’s just gone out dressed up to the nines, everything clean on her. I will say that for Dot, she’s always spruce and clean. But such a look on her face! She’s right down besotted with him.” She chuckled. “I wished her luck,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Ethel,” said Mrs. Clapham. “Young folk don’t like having these things touched on.”
Mrs. Eastwood laughed.
“What will you do for a lodger if she gets engaged?” said Mrs. Clapham.
“I shall have plenty of time to find somebody else, before it comes to a wedding,” said Ethel with confidence.
“Well, I must be off and get my old man his tea,” said Mrs. Clapham, rising.
“It’s awkward for you, him coming in at such awkward times,” said Ethel.
Her voice oozed sympathy, but under its cover she was really giving Mrs. Clapham a little dig about her husband’s inferior job, in return for Mrs. Clapham’s uncalled-for comment about her good wishes to Dot Dean. Ethel was skilful at thus planting a barb under the pretence of defending its recipient—she prided herself on giving, as she said, as good as she got, always. Mrs. Clapham, fully aware of her hostess’s intention, coloured a little as she wished her cheeribye and slipped out by the back door, which stood open.
2
It was not much more than an hour later that Ethel to her surprise heard the front door latch turn. Who could it be? She heaved herself up quickly and hurried out into the hall, alert to defend her property. She had not been quite quick enough to intercept the intruder, however, for her lodger was already halfway up the stairs.
“Dot! Is that you? You’re home early,” exclaimed Ethel.
“Am I?” said Dot in a spiritless tone. She stood with her back to Ethel, not moving, one hand resting on the banisters.
At once Ethel knew what was the matter. She knew. She guessed. You couldn’t deceive Ethel.
“I knew it in a flash,” she heard herself saying to Mrs. Clapham. “That Cressey hasn’t come up to scratch. He’s disappointed her. He’s made it clear he doesn’t intend matrimony, and wasn’t Madam Dot disappointed! I’ve always been pretty quick in the uptake, you know, and I guessed it as soon as I saw her. Talk about drooping! She looked right down wilted! Or perhaps I’d better say jilted!”
She could not help grinning.
Dot turned towards her.,
“By the way, Mrs. Eastwood,” she said in a high uneven tone: “I was going to tell you on Friday, but I may as well mention it now. Will you take a fortnight’s notice from Friday, please? I’ve decided to join my sister in Scarborough immediately.”
She ran up the stairs and into her room and bolted the door behind her.
Ethel stood gaping. Then a gust of anger swept over her. Who did Dot Dean think she was, giving Mrs. Ethel Eastwood notice in an offhand way like that? Standing halfway up the stairs! Throwing it out without any reason given, as cool as a cucumber.
“No reason given,” she heard herself explaining to Mrs. Clapham. “Not a single word of any reason. That’s what annoyed me, Mrs. Clapham. Not a word of excuse or reason. Of course it was all due to that Cressey you’re so fond of—he’s let her down. But that doesn’t excuse her throwing me off like that, does it? ‘Join my sister in Scarborough immediately.’ Hoity-toity! After all I’ve done for her, too. These young people nowadays have no gratitude, Mrs. Clapham, no decent feeling at all. Look at those Martins! And now Dot Dean. No consideration for me, having to get another lodger at short notice, no consideration at all.”
At this her anger suddenly fell from her, and fear took its place. The money, crisp new notes, which Dot had paid her so regularly every week for the last two years, would cease in a couple of weeks. Its absence would leave a terrible gap in Ethel’s budget.
All her worries rushed forward, clamouring, beating upon her mind with painful blows. A new lodger. And who could she find? You read such awful things nowadays about men lodgers murdering their landladies and stealing their money; not that Ethel was fool enough to keep much in the house, but that didn’t seem to prevent the murders. On the other hand, women lodgers were usually pernickety, wanting this or that and continually grumbling. Who could she find? Where could she look? Should she advertise? No; that was sure to bring one of those murdering thieving men down on her. Who could she consult? And there was that side of the house which really must be pointed before the winter rains. And the sink at Number 17 which was badly cracked, you couldn’t say otherwise, and the shop which needed outside painting. There was her income tax and her Schedule A, and the ball tap upstairs which was behaving badly, and her bank balance which was lower than it ought to be. Dot’s defection had hit her in her most sensitive spot. Her financial position was threatened.
She sighed and came to herself and found she was still standing at the foot of the stairs, just where Dot had left her. Vexed, she shook her head irritably and moved with ponderous steps towards the kitchen. On the way she caught sight of herself in the hall-stand mirror. Her large square face, usually so set and firm, looked weak and frightened. How thin and grey her hair was nowadays! She was growing old. Old and poor. Panic seized her. She sank heavily into the kitchen rocking chair, a horsehair relic of Fred’s mother’s days. Too dispirited to rock, she sat forward motionless, her hands spread on her knees, her shoulders hunched, brooding.
3
After a while she began to rally from the first shock of the blow. Well! She wasn’t going to be knocked over by a chit of a girl giving notice. Not she. Not Ethel Eastwood. If she couldn’t find another lodger to her liking, she’d have to make up the money in other ways. When this new Rent Act came in she’d be able to put up all her tenants’ rents—not before it was time, either, thought Ethel virtuously. She stirred, and began to rock herself slowly backwards and forwards. Meanwhile … Was there anything she could do meanwhile? Anything to make up the loss of Dot’s money?
Yes! She rather thought there was! Ethel smiled, and began to rock more vigorously. Tenants needn’t think they could put her off with silly presents instead of paying their rent, thought Ethel with a virtuous sniff—for it was only a present, after all, whatever he might say. He said it would more than pay a month’s rent, but that was nonsense. She’d take it back, and ask for her money in exchange. After all that was what she had meant in accepting it—simply to hold it as a kind of pledge, for him to redeem with the rent money when he was able. He’d better be able now. Because Mrs. Ethel Eastwood couldn’t wait any longer for her rightful money, not with Dot leaving and everything. She’d go up there first thing tomorrow morning, you could bet on that.
But wait a minute. Why not go now? She wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink all night unless she did something to offset Dot’s notice. When money worries harassed her mind she was apt to toss and turn in a perfect stew for hours. So why not go tonight? It was a nice light evening. She could take the Hudley bus as far as Blackstalls Bridge, change there into the Black-stalls Brow bus, get off at Brow Lane and walk up to High Royd, get her money and come down the lane and catch the bus on its return journey, just as she had done before. (Though it was a shame to have to spend four bus fares to get her rightful rent, still, for the sake of peace of mind, she’d do it for this once, and teach that Freeman a lesson.) Of course it might take a little longer than it had before to get her money, with the present coming into it and all that. But not much longer. She rather fancied she was a match for Mr. Francis Freeman. More than a match, she rather thought.
She laughed aloud, and rising from her chair began to bustle about the house making preparations. There was no sound from Dot’s room as she passed the door.
“Probably sobbing her heart out beneath the bedclothes,” thought Ethel, smiling. “Well, she needn’t think I shall beg her to stay, because I shan’t.”
She took out Freeman’s present from her wardrobe drawer and without troubling to wrap it up wedged it into her big shopping bag. (It was small enough to fit in fairly easily; that in itself showed you how little value the thing had, didn’t it? Quite a small thing. She’d been a ninny ever to accept it, even as a mere pledge, a token; but she’d been feeling pretty well off at the time and the old man had a way with him.) She put on her good flowered print and her off-white coat and hat and her chamois gloves and black court shoes, and decided as she looked in the glass that although her hair was thinning and her bust swelling, she was still a smart good-looking woman, equal to anybody.
She caught the Hudley bus without any rush, made the transfer to the Blackstalls bus at Blackstalls Bridge successfully, secured a good front seat, and clasping her bag firmly in her ample lap, was borne away up and up among the hills that surrounded Ashworth and Hudley.
“It must be awkward driving up these hills in the winter,” reflected Ethel, as she had done the last two months when she had visited Mr. Freeman. “I shouldn’t like to be a driver on this route. But then, of course, they’re paid for it.”
At Brow Lane she dismounted. The bus rolled away along the flank of the hill.
Ethel stood considering. There were two routes up to High Royd. The main way led up Brow Lane, a steep cobbled causeway which curved round the slope of the overhanging brow from which its name was derived and brought you to the side of the farmstead before meeting a gate and degenerating into a mere bridle path over the moors to Blackstalls. (This was the old route to the upland township of Blackstalls, Ethel had heard say, but it was so steep and rough that later road-makers had rejected it with a shudder and taken the longer way round.) There was, however, another route to the house available for pedestrians which was even shorter and steeper than the lane; namely some steps through a stile in the wall and a flagged pathway straight up the rocky, grassy, heathery bank itself. This pathway was certainly much shorter, reflected Ethel; if she took the pathway, she would have more time in which to extract the rent money from Freeman. But it was really appallingly steep. And then again, possibly the fact that the interview must be very short because she must leave quickly to catch the bus might be useful in the interview with Freeman. She could perhaps more easily bustle him into it. She turned up Brow Lane.
Soon she came in sight of the old stone house. It was very old: stone lettering above the porch gave its date as 1672. Its twin-gabled roof was made of stone tiles. As she approached Ethel eyed these suspiciously; but apart from a little moss here and there they looked in good condition.
The appearance of High Royd vexed her. She had let it very cheaply because it was almost a ruin, but now it looked quite smart, “all poshed up,” Ethel described it to herself, with glossy black and white paint, and old tubs painted black standing by the door with cheap flowers, nasturtiums and such, growing in them. Of course she ought to have been pleased because her property had certainly increased in value under Mr. Freeman’s care, but somehow it annoyed her. She disliked all that arty, highbrow stuff. She felt at once snubbed and contemptuous in its presence. Who had ever authorised that expenditure on paint, anyway? Certainly not Ethel; as far as she knew she had ordered simply the minimum number of coats of a respectable drab. No doubt Freeman had painted it all himself—just like his cheek. The inside of the house was just as bad, too, she remembered sourly; some of the walls were painted different colours, and others had pictures actually painted on them. Such nonsense! There was one very long picture, for instance, a kind of panorama of what you could see from the front windows of the house, showing the hills and the valley and Ashworth and Hudley down at opposite sides in the distance, with mill chimneys smoking. As if mill chimneys were proper things to be put in pictures!
Hot and breathless from the climb, Ethel paused a minute before turning along the front of the house to the doorway. A large black cat, its paws tucked in, lay on the wall facing her in the evening sunshine. Motionless, it gazed at her stonily from gleaming yellow eyes. Ethel took a step forward. The cat leaped up and fled, with an effect of insult. Ethel tramped on angrily. She felt a trifle nervous, for Mr. Freeman was a rather overpowering sort of man—“his eyes stick out like chapel pegs,” she remembered uneasily—but all the same she meant to stand no nonsense; she couldn’t afford to stand any nonsense now that she was losing her lodger; she meant to have her rent.