Michael wished he could have an opportunity of explaining to Barnes that on account of Daisy’s friendship for Dolly, he and she and the cast-off had spent a night in the police-cells. He thought it would have amused him.
“Where’s the Half Moon?” he asked instead.
Daisy said it was a place in Glasshouse Street for which she had no very great affection. However, Michael was anxious to see it; and soon they left the Orange to visit the Half Moon.
It was a public-house with nothing that was demirep in its exterior; but upstairs there was a room frequented after eleven o’clock by ladies of the town. They walked up a narrow twisting staircase carpeted with bright red felt and lit by a red-shaded lamp, and found themselves in a room even more densely fumed with tobacco smoke than downstairs at the Orange. In a corner was an electric organ which was fed with a stream of pennies and blared forth its repertory of ten tunes with maddening persistence. One of these tunes was gay enough to make the girls wish to dance, and always with its recurrence there was a certain amount of cake-walking which was immediately stopped by a commissionaire who stood in the doorway and shouted “Order, please! Quiet, please! No dancing, ladies!” To the nearest couple he always whispered that the police were outside.
Daisy, having stigmatized the Half Moon as the rottenest hole within a mile of the Dilly, proceeded to become more cheerful with every penny dropped into the slot; and finally she invited Michael to come back with her to Judd Street, as her boy had gone down to Margate to see Young Sancy, a prospective lightweight champion, who was training there.
“Anyway, you can see me home,” she said. “Even if you don’t come in. Besides, my flat’s all right. It is, really. You know. Comfortable. He’s very good to me, is Bert, though he’s a bit soppified. He dresses very nice, and he earns good money. Well, three pound a week. That’s not so bad, is it?”
“That’s all right,” said Barnes. “With what you earn as well.”
“There’s a nerve,” said Daisy. “Well, I can’t stay moping indoors all the evening, can I? But he’s most shocking jealous is Bert. And he calls me his pussy-cat. Puss, puss! There’s a scream. He’s really a bit soft, and his eyes is awful. But it’s nice, so here’s luck.” She drained her glass. “‘Do you love me, puss?’ he says. Silly thing! But they think a lot of him at the office. His governor came down to see him the other morning about something he’s been writing. I don’t know what it was. I hate the sight of his writing. I carry on at him something dreadful, and then he says, ‘My pussy-cat mustn’t disturb me.’”
Daisy shrieked with laughter at the recollection, and Michael who was beginning to be rather fearful for her sobriety suggested home as a good move.
“I shan’t go if you don’t come back with me,” she declared.