The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West Page A

grocer’s, and then came to a halt by a bakery window. After loitering for a while she said timidly, “Rose, would you think me very greedy if I bought a doughnut? I have not had one for such a long time. And these look so very light.” This modest demand touched me by its contrast with the wonderful things to eat which Mary and I would give her when we had become famous pianists. I urged her to have one, and got her to add to it a cake of another kind that had mincemeat in it and a Christmas look.
    As we went up the stairs to our flat we saw that the door of the flat on the other side of the landing was open, and that our caretaker, nice fat Mrs. McKechnie, was standing on the threshold, between her bucket and broom, unwrapping a bar of soap. She came forward to greet us, and in the dark well of the staircase, as she was a bundle of sacking and was wearing a black bonnet, nothing of her was visible except the white patches of her round face and her huge hands. I stood and stared at her, fascinated by the chiaroscuro, while she and Mamma exchanged amiabilities. It was like looking at the Man in the Moon, her features were vast and only vaguely illuminated, but one could recognize the expression. She seemed to be regarding Mamma very tenderly, and her rich voice, an oatmealy contralto that always gave us great pleasure, was telling us that she was redding up the Menzies’ flat against their return from Rothesay and would be there all the afternoon, and if Mamma wanted her she had only to tirl the bell.
    “A nice woman,” said Mamma, letting herself into the hall. “I will send her a good present after a month or two in London when I see how the accounts stand.”
    We dropped the parcels down on the kitchen table, and Mamma lit the gas ring, and poured some milk into a saucepan for my cocoa, and I put her doughnut and the other cake on a plate. “I knew it,” said Mamma, “they have left everything beautifully clean. I was sure they were nice people. But look. The mice are terrible. These old houses are all the same. But how lovely they are. These high rooms take in every bit of fineness the day will give them. I must just go to the drawing room and see if they have been polishing Aunt Clara’s furniture.”
    Some minutes passed before she came back and sat down with her elbow on the table, her head on her hand. My milk had boiled, and I had made my cocoa. I was putting on the kettle for her tea.
    “I will not want all that water,” she said. “Pour some away. It will never boil. I was not born to have much of anything. Even an excess of water would be grudged me. It would never boil.”
    She was very pale and she was trembling.
    When I had put the kettle back on the gas she said, “What has happened does not really matter to us. I cannot explain that to you now. But in a way it is of no consequence at all, although it matters more than you can imagine. Aunt Clara’s furniture has gone.”
    I left her and went into the drawing room. It was on the side of the house away from the street, and its two tall windows looked south over the public park known as the Meadows. There was now nothing in the room but our Broadwood upright piano, dragged out to the middle of the floor, and the worn rose-coloured carpet that had come from my mother’s home, and the three big copies of family portraits on the walls, and millions upon millions of motes dancing in the bright emptiness. There had gone the round table supported by the three entwined dolphins, the chairs upholstered in green silk patterned with gold bees, the high desk with the swan mounts. I went into the dining room and saw that the sideboard flanked with the two swaddled nymphs and the chairs with the brass inlay had gone too. Those were just the things I at once remembered. Probably I had forgotten a lot of other things.
    I ran back to the kitchen, crying, “Mamma, shall I run round to the police station and tell them we have been burgled?”
    “But perhaps we