Love, Let Me Not Hunger by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online

to it.
    Thus, as the days grew into weeks, and the weeks approached a month, Rose crept on from one small victory to another. And then one day, in a risk-all, dare-all mood induced by a sale in foodstuffs in the grocer’s which left her with a small surplus, she bought some bits of material that matched the colouring of the outside of the van. She cut and sewed them swiftly into curtains, and that evening they were up and drawn at each side of the windows. One moment her heart leaped at the warmth and the friendliness created by this simple touch, and the next fluttered in anticipated panic at what Jackdaw might say.
    He came home that night from the theatre, more than usually tired and irritated. There had been some trouble over returned articles and the police had been called into the argument before the manager had succeeded in satisfying the complainants. He did not seem even to notice the curtains but sat down heavily at the table that Rose had laid out with sandwiches and coffee.
    But then the unfamiliar kept intruding itself into his consciousness and he finally looked up and became aware of the decorations, and leaning over the table, felt the material between thumb and forefinger. Then he said, “Christ! Women! Always got to be tarting up a place!”
    Rose looked at him, her eyes filled with the agony of the fear that clutched at her. She had known she was going too far. She was so eager to say it before he did, to be the one to leave and at least bring an end to the suspense under which she lived and had been living, that she said, “I’ll go.”
    Williams looked at her long through his heavy-lidded eyes and said, “Back to the railway station, eh, and sitting up?”
    The stubborn chin, which never seemed to agree with the softness and the innocence of the child’s mouth, came up and she said, “Yes. I’ve done it before.” She looked at the curtains and said, “I’ll take those down and get out.”
    Williams said, “Who the hell asked you to? Sit down and shut up. Eat your supper. When I want you to get out I’ll tell you.”
    And so the status remained unchanged. But having asserted her courage and independence and been prepared to take the consequences, some of the fear had been drained out of Rose. He had not forbidden her and so the little “tartings-up” continued. The woman’s touch slowly and surely turned the travelling van, the lone male performer’s living wagon from a pigsty to a home.
    At the beginning of February, parked in a field on the outskirts of Carlisle, Jackdaw said to Rose, “I’m going to be gone for a week. You can stay if you like. I’ll be back. Look after the place.” He left her enough money for food and essentials, but nothing for extras, and disappeared. She had no idea where he was going or whether she would ever see him again. Yet nothing beyond being turned out by the owner could make her leave the little home she had so laboriously and almost secretly built.
    But at the end of a week he returned. He did not tell her, of course, that he had been to visit his wife, but only that the music hall season was over and that they were going to drive the long journey to Chippenham. Rose asked, “What’s there?”
    Williams replied, “Sam Marvel’s Circus. Winter quarters. I’m joining up. Picked up the contract at Cranwell.”
    Again panic squeezed Rose’s heart that the end had come and that he would surely dismiss her now and she would never again see the cushions she had made, the bright chintz covering for the locker seat, the bedspread, the cloth partitions to screen off and emphasise the various “rooms,” and the gay and silly little bits of china she had added to the cabinet.
    “We’ll have about a month to put the show together and rehearse, and then we’ll hit the road,” Jackdaw was saying in, for him, the longest speech she had heard him make since she had joined him. “It’s a lot tougher travelling with the circus. It isn’t like this. It’ll