Cotter's England by Christina Stead Read Free Book Online

which made her angry; and one signed Johnny, and written by a woman she had known long ago up north, a ragged, dirty, big-faced, black-haired woman who hated the world and was determined to live on it for nothing; a bold, harsh, fearless tramp whom Nellie admired. Johnny was on her way south and expected to stop with Nellie when she reached London; but she was vagabonding and might not be in for months. Johnny wrote once every four or five years.
    Nellie stretched out on the bed, shook off her shoes and lay smoking. She was flattered that Johnny had not forgotten her. She thought of Johnny and what Johnny had taught her, of a girl who had died for Johnny; and of others, a person called Jago, a man of forty who had taught Nellie what the world was, when Nellie was sixteen; and of an Indian boy in the Jago circle who had died a terrible death; and of things that would never come out now. Yet she suddenly began to tremble. She jumped up, "Ah, no! Ah, no!" She was loyal to comrades in the unnamed rebel battalion she marched in, outcasts, criminals, the misunderstood, women not one of whom could show a clean record; but she wished Johnny were not coming. Johnny did not believe in marriage. Nellie had not seen her since before her marriage to George. George would not tolerate the tramp woman; and what if he found out, suspected something? George was aboveboard, intolerant, and had no use for castaways, for the aimless refractory suffering bohemian. But Johnny's contempt and wrath were sufferings Nellie could not endure, either.
    She walked up and down, went downstairs, presently got a bottle from a locked cupboard and began to drink. The cupboard was locked only against herself, because she was short of money at present and liked to have a drink for visitors.
    Someone opened the street door. Nellie washed the glass, put away the bottle and called from the kitchen. It was Caroline Wooller. Nellie at once became joyful, told Caroline to go upstairs, she'd be up in a jiffy with tea and sausage rolls, and she lifted a gay tender face to Caroline as she went upstairs.
    Caroline was a tall sober-faced woman, with thick loose fair hair, blue eyes and a small mouth.
    Nellie came up to the front room in the attic with her tea tray, sat down and told about her family in Bridgehead, putting everything in a dramatic light; and then while Caroline lay back on the bed, seeming very tired, Nellie began smoking furiously in silence. Caroline sighed.
    "Well, chick, what happened to you? Were you all right while your Nellie was away?"
    Caroline exclaimed, "Nellie, I've got a job! Right away! Joseph—that man—recommended me and I got a job at once with the Rehousing Committee. It happened they needed someone at once."
    Nellie was not pleased and said nothing.
    A strange thing had happened. Caroline wondered what Nellie would think of it. Her friend Belle Coyne thought it very strange. It happened through Belle Coyne. Belle who was, she said, descended from a bastard son of one of the old English kings, was a girl in the Roseland office who had befriended her after Nellie left. She knew Caroline was looking for a room in London and brought in a newspaper with a remarkable advertisement in the R OOMS TO L ET . It said, special low terms and homelike conditions for colonial and dominion girls; and quoted a very low rent.
    "Belle came to London with me. I could never have found it without Belle. It was in a street, a broad street with villas running down to the Thames; but I can't tell you where, except that it was near a bridge. It was a big dark red house of brick with four stories and a slate roof and with a lot of ground in front. There was no front door. The entrance was at the side, a flight of steps under a glass canopy. You see, as I had been out to America, Belle thought I could say I was from overseas. I had my tartan silk dress on."
    She paused, thinking about the event.
    "Aye, pet."
    "The woman who opened the door was not what we expected.