2

Mrs. Dacey’s front window was whitewashed from inside, and the words “High Class” had been scrawled across it. "'Susan Dacey, licensed to sell tobacco,’” Samuel read aloud. “Is it a restaurant too?”

“You must tell her that,” Mr. Allingham said, opening the door. A bell rang. “It hasn’t been called that before.” He held his foot against the door so that the bell kept ringing. “She’s a woman in a thousand.”

A tall, thin, dignified woman came through the private door at the back of the shop, her hands clasped in front of her. She was dressed in black almost down to the ankles, with a severe white collar, and she held her head primly as though it might spill. God help the other nine hundred and ninety-nine. But she smiled then, and her eyes were sharp and light; the dullness raced from her mouth, leaving it cruel and happy.

“Take your trotter off the door,” she said.

The bell stopped.

“That’s better. You made enough noise to wake the dead.” She was a well-spoken woman, clear and precise, like a schoolmistress.

“Keeping well, Mrs. Dacey? This is a new friend, Sam Bennet. Two pies and two coffees, please. Where’s Polly?”

“Up to no good,” said Mrs. Dacey, stepping behind the counter. Her grand dress floated around her. “You’re from the country,” she said, over her shoulder, as she turned the coffee, tap on the brass um. “How did you find Ikey Mo?”

“That’s me.” Mr. Allingham blushed on one side of his face. “I’m not from the country really.” Samuel told her where he came from. “I met Mr. Allingham in the station. I’m going to sleep in his flat tonight.”

“I’d sooner sleep in an ashpit,” she said.

The coffee was thick and white and tasteless. They took their cups to a cubicle and Samuel brushed off the crumbs from his chair with his sleeve. His hat was gone. There were small pellets of dirt in the dust at his feet.

“You’ve got a bottle on your finger,” she said.

“There, you see, everybody notices. Why don’t you take it off, Sam? It isn’t a decoration, it isn’t useful, it’s just a bottle.”

“I think my finger must have swollen, Mr. Allingham. The bottle’s much tighter now.”

“Let me have a look at you again.” Mrs. Dacey put on a pair of spectacles with steel rims and a hanging chain. “He’s only a baby.”

“I’m twenty.”

“Ikey Mo, the baby farmer.” She walked carefully to the back of the shop and called, “Polly, come down here. Polly. Polly.”

A girl’s voice called back from high up the house, “What for, ma?”

“Come and get a gentleman’s bottle off.”

“It sounds like a Russian composer, doesn’t it, darling?” George Ring said, at the door. “What a marvelous dress, you look like a murderess.”

He sat down next to Samuel.

“I couldn’t get Rose to move. She’s going to lie there all day in a tantrum. Do tell me what’s happening, everybody.”