'Justice must have its way, I see,' said Victoria.
'What you call justice,' grumbled Duckie, 'I call it damned hard lines.'
For some minutes Victoria discussed the housing problem with the fat jolly woman. Duckie was in a cheerful mood. One could hardly believe, when one looked at her puffy pink face, that she had seen fifteen years of trouble.
'Landladies,' she soliloquised, 'it's worse. You take my tip Vic, you steer clear of them. You pay as much for a pigsty as a man pays for a palace. If you do badly they chuck you out and stick to your traps and what can you do? You don't call a policeman. If you do well, they raise the rent, steal your clothes, charge you key money, and don't give 'em any lip if you don't want a man set at you. Oh, Lor!'
Duckie went on, and as she spoke her bluntness caused Victoria to visualise scene after scene, one more horrible than another: a tall dingy house in Bloomsbury with unlit staircases leading up to black landings suggestive of robbery and murder; bedrooms with blinded windows, reeking with patchouli, with carpets soiled by a myriad ignoble stains. The house Duckie pictured was like a warren in every corner of which soft-handed, rosy-lipped harpies sucked men's life-blood; there was drinking in it, and a piano played light airs; below in the ground floor, through the half open door, she could see two or three foreigners, unshaven, dirty-cuffed, playing cards in silence like hunters in ambush. She shuddered.
'Yes, but Fritz isn't so bad,' broke in Lissa. She had all this time been wrangling with Zoé.
'No good,' snapped Zoé, 'he's a . . . a bouche inutile.' Her pursed-up lips tightened. Fritz was swept away to limbo by her practical French philosophy.
'I like him because he is not useful' said Lissa dreamily. Zoé shrugged her shoulders. Poor fool, this Lissa.
'Who is this Fritz you're always talking about?' asked Victoria.
'He's a . . . you know what they call them,' said Duckie brutally.