Midnight came and quiet, and still the two women worked on. Outside on the landing into the common sink the water kept dripping from the tap. Sheila made a remark about the people away home in Frosses and wondered if they were all asleep at that moment. Outside, the city sank to its repose; only the unfortunate and the unwell were now awake. The epileptic’s wife coughed continually; Bessie, the plump girl, stole the pin from the tie of her lover; downstairs the caretaker, the woman with the red wisps of hair, counted the number of men who went to No. 8; half the profits went to her.
One o’clock came and, as if by mutual consent, the Irish women left their work aside and looked out of the window for a moment. High up they could see the spire of the town hall prodding into the heavens; nearer and almost as high the tower of a church with the black hands passing on the lighted face of a clock; closer still the dark windows of the houses opposite. Glasgow with all its churches, its halls, with its shipping and commerce, its wharves and factories, its richness and splendour, its poor and unhappy, its oppressed and miserable, Glasgow, with its seventeen thousand prostitutes, was asleep.
II
NORAH and Sheila went to bed, wrapped the blue-lettered blankets round their bodies and placed their heads down on the condemnatory sentences: STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT. Almost immediately Sheila was asleep, her knees drawn up under her (for the bed was too short for her body) and her arms around Norah. The young girl could not sleep well now; short feverish snatches of slumber were followed by sudden awakenings, and fears and fancies, too subtle to define, constantly preyed on her mind. Sometimes, when under the influence of a religious melancholy that often took possession of her, she repeated the Hail Mary over and over again, but at intervals she stopped in the midst of a prayer, started as if stung by an asp and exclaimed: “What does the Virgin think of me, me that has committed one of the worst mortal sins in the world!”
In the midst of a prayer she dropped to sleep, maybe for the third time in an hour, but immediately was awakened by a sharp rapping at the door. Sheila heard nothing, she lay almost inert, and perspiring a little.
“Who’s there?” Norah called out.
“The sanitary,” a hoarse voice answered from the landing.
The girl slipped out of bed, hardly daring to breathe lest her companion was disturbed, fumbled round for the matches, lit the oil-lamp and opened the door. Two strangers in uniform stood outside; one, a tall man with a heavy beard, held a lamp, the other, a sallow-faced, shrunken individual, hummed a tune in a thin, monotonous voice and picked his nose with a claw-like finger. The two entered, brushing against the girl who took up her stand behind the door, making a slight rapping noise with her heels on the bare floor.
“How many here?” asked the tall man with the beard.
“Two,” Norah answered, “the woman in the bed and me.”