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“Any letters, Trotman?” Maurice asked the porter at the Bolingbroke Club. “Yes, sir,” Trotman said, passing over a few envelopes. Maurice took a key, and went up to Room 317, where he was believed to spend Monday and Thursday nights. (“Must stay late Monday to make up for the week-end,” Maurice always told his mother and sister, who sighed to hear it yet again, “And I’m dashed late back if I miss the 6:04, eh?” and his mother always said, “Oh, don’t swear, dear, it’s so common.”) The Bolingbroke wasn’t the best club in London, but then it wasn’t the most expensive either, and it suited Maurice’s purpose very well.
He took out his cigar-case, lit a cigar, and lay down on the counterpane to read the letters. Mostly advertising circulars, as he suspected; one was a letter from a schoolmate who was now a tea planter in Ceylon.
Maurice left the stub of his cigar in the ashtray, left the key on the washstand for the maid, and walked down the corridor to the back staircase. Trotman considered Mr. Hall one of the most generous of gentlemen, so he devoted little attention to his itinerary, and saw no reason to investigate whether the bed was slept in on Mr. Hall’s visits to the club.
Maurice walked around the corner, bought a newspaper from a handsome boy in a tweed waistcoat, and waited for the omnibus. It was a fine evening, so he climbed to the top and spent more time gazing at the streets than he spent reading the newspaper. At last, he arrived at the East End, and climbed down the twisting stairs, jumping off just as the bus lumbered away.
That wasn’t all that accelerated his heart. He walked past the steam laundry and the ironmonger’s and the oilshop. He stopped at the chippie for two fish suppers, and Maggie called him “love” as usual. He balanced the two newspaper-wrapped bundles in a sling of the mostly-unread newspaper. His breath was a little short by the time he reached the second storey and rapped on the door of the back room.
Alec opened the door, glanced over his shoulder to see that the curtains were tight-drawn, and then leaned forward to kiss Maurice, leaning far enough to prevent a collision between fish-and-chips and mackintosh.
“I cooked an’ all,” Alec said.
“I’m sorry…” Maurice began.
“No, ta, thanks for the meal. Let’s eat the fish while it’s hot, and the sausages—I think I burnt them a bit—and we’ll save the mushy peas and the tatties for tomorrow’s breakfast, I can pop down and get a couple of eggs from Mrs. Latterly’s shop.”
Alec smoothed down the red gingham tablecloth (it clashed with the greenery-yallery Liberty curtains that had been last year’s Christmas present from Maurice) and set down two enameled tin plates, brittania-metal forks, and pint glasses that, Maurice suspected, had been abducted from a pub.
“Very cozy!” Maurice said. “You’re a regular little Ruth Pinch.”
“Don’t know who that is,” Alec said. “Pinch, eh?” and he pinched Maurice’s bottom as Maurice opened a bottle of ale with his pocketknife.
“They *are* burnt,” Alec said, sawing away.
“A little mustard cures everything,” Maurice said, then took a hurried gulp of ale.
Alec gave a long, sometimes comic account of the job he and the other motor mechanics at the garage had rebuilding a differential. Maurice gave a long, less comic account of his day spent trying to dispose of a float of slightly dodgy railway bonds.
When they had finished their meal, Alec dug into his pocket. “Hold out your hand,” he said, and poured four half-crown pieces into Maurice’s hand, tenderly closing Maurice’s fingers around the coins. “Bit extra this week, on account of that job I told you about.”
“You needn’t pay me back at all,” Maurice said. “But if you do, don’t do it just before we turn in for the night! It makes me feel like, well…”
“Like one of those guardees your pal Rissoles got into schtook with.”
“Risley.”
“Maybe I like feeling sometimes that you’re a whore,” Alec said, with half a grin. “Oi! You lad! The ginger! I’ve got a room, you see, and come with me and I’ll give you a bloody good rogering!”
“Alec!” Maurice said.
“Blushin an’ all, that fair skin of yours just lights up. You like it, though,” Alec said. He pulled his chair (legs squealing on the lino) toward Maurice’s, and pushed his hand between Maurice’s legs.
“I’d still be doing rotten little bits of odd jobs, if you hadn’t lent me the money to go the Polly,” Alec said. “But I’ve always paid for my own room. Might have been one thing if you’d offered me a maisonette in St. John’s wood…”
“I couldn’t have afforded it,” Maurice said. “The temptation to interfere with your independence didn’t arise.”
“And now I’m a skilled man, with a trade, earning a good wage. Once I’ve finished paying you back, I’ll think about looking around for a place that’s a bit nicer.”
“You needn’t,” Maurice said, looking around the small confines of their kingdom: the two chairs at the table, the small clothespress, the nightstand with one leg perilously bowed out. His eyes lingered on the brass bed, spread with a faded quilt and with a trench in the middle that sent them to sleep in each other’s arms even if they hadn’t planned that. “I’ve been happy here.”
“It’s not such a bad gaff, and although the landlady would play up if I brought girls here, she turns a blind eye to us as long as I’m not stuffing you in front of the parlor pianola.”
Sometimes they went to the pub, or other pubs when Alec played on the darts team. Maurice kept a few well-worn blue shirts, and a slightly stained donkey jacket, bought at the street market, so he wouldn’t look too posh. Sometimes they went “Hall for Hall,”(the music hall) or what Maurice called “Hall Squared.”
Sometimes, after Alec had explained that there was no funny business going on, and the fellows didn’t suspect a thing, a few of his mates from the garage or that he had met at the Polytechnic came around, and they played cards. It reminded Maurice very much of his club, although the stakes of the game were lower in absolute terms (and higher in relative ones), the drinks were a growler of beer or bottled ale and not whiskey-and-soda, and the smoke in the air came from gaspers or villainous little brown cigarillos instead of havanas.
The conversation might have had a somewhat higher tone in Alec’s room, because the men who had been to the Polytechnic often plumed themselves on being thinkers, and men of learning. They also often considered themselves advanced political thinkers, which made Maurice uncomfortable so Alec tried to divert the conversation toward other channels. But then the conversation often turned to girls, so Maurice tried to divert it to still other channels.
There was usually a bookseller in the street market, and Maurice was always drawn to his barrow. The bookseller frequently bought up libraries of deceased clergymen; Maurice left the sets of sermons in the barrow but sometimes found a nice classical volume missing from his own collection. This time, impelled by an impulse he couldn’t explain, he spent threepence for a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, then forgot it and left it in his briefcase for several trips in his circuit around his mother’s house, his office, his club, and Alec’s room.
One Tuesday morning, as Maurice was on his way out, Alec yawned and said, “Sorry, no point in you coming ‘round on Thursday. Big push on at the garage—la-di-da society wedding coming up, and half-a-dozen limousines to service and repaint and prink up generally. I’ve no way of knowing how late I’ll be. The money’s good, though, I might be able to give you back a quid and all.”
“That’s a shame,” Maurice said. “I shall miss you.” He turned around, went back into the room, and shut the door. “I’ve nothing on for the evening otherwise,” he said. “Why don’t I come here at the regular time, and get a bit of supper ready for us, whenever you get here?”
“I don’t mind, but how will you get in? Best that you don’t knock up the landlady.”
Maurice leaned back against the door, feeling his throat pound. “You’ve a spare latch-key, haven’t you?” The door of the clothespress didn’t quite shut, so Maurice gestured to the end of the rail where a few items of his clothes hung. “I know that it’s your room, and I admire your independence, but…aren’t I a bit of a permanency around here?”
“’Spose so,” Alec said, and Maurice couldn’t figure out if the elaborate coolness was real or feigned. But it didn’t take long for Alec to locate the spare key in a basket beneath the nightstand, holding a jumble of odds and ends. He pushed it into Maurice’s hand, walked back half a step, then lunged forward again. He grasped Maurice’s arms, kissed him roughly, and pulled away. “You’d better get on. Get to the office.”
Maurice stumbled down the steps and stood outside the front door, his briefcase clutched in front of him, waiting for his ferocious cockstand to diminish so he could walk to the bus stop.
It would take a lot to surprise the other riders of the omnibus, but Maurice nevertheless used the shelter of a newspaper to examine Mrs. Beeton’s magnum opus. He thought that even the “plain family dinners for January,” such as “the remains of turbot warmed in oysters sauce, potatoes; cold pork, stewed steak, open jam tart, baked arrowroot pudding” were a bit beyond what he could achieve with Alec’s limited culinary resources.
Still and all, the gas ring reminded him of the Bunsen burner, from Stinks at school, and his mother’s cook managed to produce quite decent meals even though his sister assured Maurice that the kitchen was a perfect hellhole.
Maurice put the most chipped of the four mugs in the center of the table, and put in a small bunch of cornflowers purchased from the greengrocer, who got rather tired of Maurice’s repeated visits. (The ironmonger was quite cordial on his two visits—one to buy a paring knife when his pocketknife proved unequal to peeling turnips, and a big spoon to stir the stew and then ladle it out, the second, panicked one to buy a larger saucepan.)
“God, I’m knackered,” Alec said when he arrived. Maurice thought he had made a wise choice: stews were supposed to get better the longer they cooked. Alec shrugged off his jacket and sat down, his legs spread wide. Maurice stood behind the chair and leaned forward, massaging Alec’s shoulders. “Smells good, that. What is it?”
“Irish stew,” Maurice said, ducking his head to conceal the look of pride as he sawed away at a cobloaf with the breadknife.
Alec tucked a bandana around his neck and swiped a piece of bread through the gravy. He gestured with the bread at the mug of flowers.
“Mrs. Beeton says that there should always be flowers on the table,” Maurice said. “’As they form no item of expense, there is no reason why they should not be employed every day.’”
“You’re not here every day.”
“But some days, of every year,” Maurice said.