To escape, she must save money. She gave up her visits to the cinema and sat in the Borough Gardens instead. Passers-by glancing at the old woman dumped on a bench (chairs cost twopence), supposed she was a tramp; for in her desperate ambition to amass every possible penny she wore her oldest clothes and economized on the laundry and the cleaners. She was the more tramp-like because she 106had now fallen into a trick of talking to herself, muttering scraps of poetry learned in childhood, testing her memory of dates and foreign capitals, or commenting to herself on those who walked past. These assertions of a mind at liberty were of the nature of exorcisms: they warded off the frightful consideration of how she would fare later on, when there was no more fine weather allowing her to sit out of doors, and no more summer visitors to the Peacock to stand between her and Dennis. If people in the Borough Gardens supposed her to be a tramp, visitors at the Peacock knew her to be a bore. She encumbered them with attempts at conversation, had nothing to say, and could not be shaken off. Besides, she smelled.

One afternoon she was intercepted on the doorstep by Mr Fry. He had, he said, a little something to request, a little adjustment. Her heart began to bang like a door in an empty house.

‘The fact of the matter is, Mrs Fry and I, we’ve been talking things over with a view to what’s fair to all and will disoblige none. And we’ve got a little proposition to make.’

He had never spoken so slowly.

‘Business is good, this summer. Things are looking up.’

‘No doubt the fine weather has something to do with it,’ she answered, suddenly enabled to be cunning.

‘Exactly! Which being so, we must make hay while the sun shines. So what we have to suggest, Mrs Fry and myself, is that for the present you should take your tea in the little room.’

‘In your room?’107

‘Ours in a manner of speaking. But during the afternoon you can look on it as your own. You’ll find it very snug. By so doing, the lounge will be left free for Transients.’

He paused. His hand stirred the coins in his pocket.

‘I’m sure you’ll see our point of view, Miss St John. Being here as a Permanent, and on such special terms, I am quite sure you will see our point of view.’

Bewildered by relief and ignominy, and the ignominy of feeling relief, she turned mechanically towards the lounge. Mr Fry coughed, and opened the door of the little room.

He had been so sure of her assent that the tea-tray was already set on the partially cleared table, and a small bentwood chair drawn up. For the rest, the little room contained a desk, two filing-cabinets, a linen-press, a sewing-machine, a dressmaker’s dummy robed in a faded cretonne wrapper, a safe, two stuffed armchairs and a wicker one, all greasy and familiarized. She sat down, and immediately became conscious of the noises in the room. The blindcord bobbin tapped on the window-pane. A newspaper thrown down on the floor rustled intermittently. Two bluebottles, caught on the dangling flypaper, buzzed on different notes. One buzzed more feebly than the other, being nearer exhaustion. Ravenous with shock, she devoured bread and butter which was bread and margarine, till only one slice remained. She mastered herself then, and left it. Sipping her tea, she looked at the trade calendars on the walls: horses ploughing, a child feeding a parrot, a thatched cottage … Suddenly, there was a new noise in the room. The wicker chair had creaked. As she listened, it creaked again. She sprang up and touched 108the cushion. It was warm. She knew infallibly that Dennis had been sitting in it.