The Only Poet by Rebecca West

to you …’
    â€˜And I‘ll try and be a good mother … we’ll try and have a happy little home.’
    They looked away from each other as they approached a glaring lamp.
    Now the alley deviated oddly between the jutting roofs of sordid houses, shelving deeply in rows of cobbled stones from the heights of the upper and middle classes into the depression where Saltgreave kept its poverty and shabby gentility. From this perch one could see, like a well-proportioned panel painted by a skilful artist, the opposite slope of Saltgreave rising glowing to the stars. A wind raced across the valley to Adela’s cheek. She felt cool, pure and altruistic. Drawing deep breaths, she let her spirit aspire: aimlessly, as one permits a kite to soar. Then a little dribble of complaint from Mrs Furnival’s gaping mouth told her that her mother was finding difficulty in stepping down the cobbled stones: like most women of her lowly birth she walked little and her feet were tender. With a sudden access of glory in life, in their mutual affection, and in her strength, Adela bent down and lifted her mother in her arms. The burden was easy: she stepped forward lightly.
    â€˜Adela, put me down!’ her mother’s voice quavered.
    â€˜No, Mother, you’re quite light.’
    The peevish music of a mouth-organ caught her ear, evidently played by some unseen person in the shadow of the alley walls a little further on. It stopped with a sinister suddenness that whipped her nerves taut.
    â€˜Adela! Put me down this minute!’
    Under a projecting gable she perceived three figures. They looked towards her and whispered furtively.
    â€˜But, Mother, it’ll hurt your feet if you try to walk.’
    The figures came towards her with a rush. It happened with the phantasmic smoothness and quickness of a cinematograph film. She lowered her mother on to her feet, and strode forwards against the attack. Saltgreave’s wealth had its waste products – clinker heaps high on each side of the canal: youths such as these lounging at every dark place of the city. Ugly, brutish, passionless save for fitful appetites for vice; inviting the contempt of her sinewy youth for physical reasons alone. Belligerent troglodytes, one might call them.
    â€˜Gi’ us some coppers.’
    â€˜Let us pass.’
    â€˜Gi’ us some coppers to drink yer ’ealth at the pub.’
    â€˜Let us pass.’
    The blood began to flow like wine in her veins. Without distress she heard through the growling threats her mother’s nervous sobs; they seemed like the orchestra tuning up before the curtain rose on some thrilling episode.
    â€˜It ain’t no use yer callin’ for a copper, ’cos there ain’t none for ten minutes’ ’ard walkin’.’ That was true: and the houses turned only their blank back walls on to the alley. ‘Better pike us some coppers quietly, lidy.’
    She feigned to struggle with a hacking cough, and writhed unhappily. He waited. She stooped and picked up his left ankle. As he lost his balance and fell full length with a howl, her fist caught his bigger companion under the jaw. Meanly and with skill her foot struck the third full in the stomach. It was against the traditions of English gentlewomen, but it was war, and it was superb. In a second she had caught up her mother again in her arms and was coursing down the alley like a greyhound.
    â€˜This – this is what I wanted!’ she cried to herself. ‘I feel confident now. Tom Motley may refuse me money and Mrs Tom insult me and that confounded green owl squint at me till kingdom come, but all the same I’ve knocked three loafers flat on their backs for once in my life!’
    A sudden turn of the alley brought them into a main street where the high tenements towering from the glowing stratum of squalid little shops and flaring gin-palaces told them that they were in the haunts of civilization. She