“Stop and have a bit of dinner with us can ye?”
Miriam made her excuse, pleading an engagement and sat down to the piano. The song was a modern ballad with an easy impressive accompaniment, following the air. The performance went off easily and well, Mr. Orly’s clear trained baritone ringing out persuasively into the large room. Weathering a second invitation to spend the evening she got away to her room.
16
Her mind was alight with the sense of her many beckoning interests, aglow with fulness of life. The thin piercing light cast upon her table by the single five candle power bulb, drawn low and screened by a green glass shade was warm and friendly. She attacked her letters, despatching the appointments swiftly and easily in a bold convincing hand and drafted a letter to Mrs. Hermann that she carried with a glow of satisfaction to Mr. Hancock’s room. When his room was cleared in preparation for his last patient it was nearly six o’clock. She began entering his day-book in the ledger. The boy coming up for the letters brought two dentures to be packed and despatched by registered post from Vere Street before six o’clock. “They’ll be ready by the time you’ve got your boots on” said Miriam and packed her cases brilliantly in a mood of deft-handed concentration. Jimmy clattered up the stairs as she was stamping the labels. When he fled with them she gave a general sigh and surveyed the balance of her day with a responsible cheerful wicked desperation; her mind leaping forward to her evening. The day books would not be done, even Mr. Hancock’s would have to go up unentered; she had not the courage to investigate the state of the cash book; Mr. Leyton’s room was ready for the morning; she ran through to Mr. Orly’s room and performed a rapid perfunctory tidying up; many little things were left; his depleted stores must be refilled in the morning; she glanced at his appointment book, no patient so far until ten. She left the room with her everyday guilty consciousness that hardly anything in it was up to the level of Mr. Hancock’s room ... look after Hancock, I’m used to fending for myself ... but he knew she did not do her utmost to keep the room going. There were times when he ran short of stores in the midst of a sitting. That could be avoided.
17
When Miriam entered his room at half past six Mr. Hancock was switching off the lights about the chair. A single light shone over his desk. The fire was nearly out.
“Still here?”
“Yes” said Miriam switching on a light over the instrument cabinet.
“I should leave those things tonight if I were you.”
“It isn’t very late.”