Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton Page B

did not put a match to it until the place opened at eleven o’clock. For these activities he dispensed with his coat and collar, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and wore professional trousers of unknown age and origin. Ella called him (accurately) a Sight.
    But he exchanged few words with Ella at this time of day, drawing into himself and soothing his soul with rubbing, humming, intermittent whistling, and a tacit understanding with the dog.
    For ‘The Midnight Bell’ ran to a dog. It was a belonging of the Governor’s Wife and known as Jim. It trotted placidly about with its head held high, and its brown eyes were filled with a chilling and noble aloofness. ‘Well, what do you want?’ Ella asked it every other five minutes, but it clearly did not want anything. And it wouldn’t ask you for it if it did. It was surprising, indeed, that its pure and passionless detachment from her did not finally repel Ella. But it did not needless to say. She took snub after snub all the morning, and had a profound love for the animal.
    At eleven o’clock ‘The Midnight Bell’ opened. Bob resumed decent clothes and his white coat, and a few people came in. But business was very slack until about half-past twelve, when the place filled up with a sober crowd. Ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, arrowroot biscuits and cheese, sardines or prawns on toast – all these were in constant demand and allayed the fumes of bravery. But these were mostly taken at the bar, and Bob had very little to do. The dog, by this time rather weary, came down to earth so far as to go round smelling everybody in turn (without apparent pleasure), and to trot away and occasionally get a biscuit, which it consumed in the manner of dogs – that is, by having almost to throw it out and catch it again in order to achieve a bite, and then moving its nose despondently amongst the crumbs. Bob was offered drinks, but, remembering yesterday, withheld. In the Public Bar round the corner there were corduroys, pint glasses of beer, hunks of bread and cheese, and arguments – all about as thick as they could possibly be. When, at three o’clock, it was time to turn them all out, there was no need for shouting.
    He then ran upstairs, changed into clean linen and his best clothes, and made himself very spruce altogether. For this was Thursday, his Day Off, and he had not only the whole afternoon, but the whole evening as well, to spend as he wished.
    *
    It was a clear, sunny, winter’s day, and he decided first to relish his liberty in Regent’s Park. This was in accordance with a now almost regular Thursday afternoon routine. Regent’s Park, tea in the West End, a visit to the Capitol or Plaza, dinner at Lyons’ Corner House, a walk, and home.
    Ella could never make out what Bob did with his Thursday afternoons. She suspected adventures. The truth, that he took them and revelled in them alone, was beyond the comprehension of so unambitious and sociable a being as herself.
    Ella often thought that Bob must have, secretly, a Girl. His youth, neatness, and personableness cried out for such an assumption. She little suspected that perhaps these very qualities themselves accounted for Bob’s not having a Girl. Bob was not unaware of his advantages, and fully alive to a certain recurrent tenderness, shyness, and flexibility of Girls in his company. He was, for this reason, supremely sure of being able to get a girl when he wanted one, and so (because Providence has arranged that we may sometimes get what we want but never want what we get) he did not really want a girl. There would be a Girl one day, but at present he walked, on his Thursday afternoons, with far richer and more tremulous absorptions – those of his youth, and his aspiration, and his eighty pounds.
    Most particularly his eighty pounds. Indeed, these little preliminary strolls in Regent’s Park he knew to be nothing but little eighty-pound strolls – a thing which gave him more pleasure than anything else in