“I would rather work, Mr. Massinger. Work is very soothing.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BOURGEOIS OF CLARENDON ROAD
Mrs. Buss had surrendered at last to Eve’s persuasions, and a jobbing carpenter had erected a section-built shed in the back garden at Bosnia Road. The shed had a corrugated iron roof, and Mrs. Buss had stipulated that the roof should be painted a dull red, so that it might “tone” with the red brick houses. The studio was lined with matchboarding, had a skylight in the roof, and was fitted with an anthracite stove. The whole affair cost Eve about twenty-five pounds, with an additional two shillings added to the weekly rent of her rooms. She paid for the studio out of the money she had received from the sale of the furniture at Orchards Corner, and her capital had now dwindled to about forty-five pounds.
Every morning on her way towards Highbury Corner, Eve passed the end of Clarendon Grove, a road lined with sombre, semi-detached houses, whose front gardens were full of plane trees, ragged lilacs and privets, and scraggy laburnums. Eve, who was fairly punctual, passed the end of Clarendon Grove about a quarter to nine each morning, and there was another person who was just as punctual in quite a detached and unpremeditated way. Sometimes she saw him coming out of a gate about a hundred yards down Clarendon Grove, sometimes he was already turning the corner, or she saw his broad fat back just ahead of her, always on the same side of the street.
She christened him “the Highbury Clock,” or “the British Bourgeois.” He was a shortish, square-built man of about five-and-forty, with clumsy shoulders, a round head, and big feet. He turned his toes out like a German when he walked, and he always went at the same pace, and always carried a black handbag. His face was round, phlegmatic, good tempered, and wholly commonplace, the eyes blue and rather protuberant, the nose approximating to what is vulgarly called the “shoe-horn type,” the mouth hidden by a brownish walrus moustache. He looked the most regular, reliable, and solid person imaginable in his top-hat, black coat, and neatly pressed grey trousers. Eve never caught him hurrying, and she imagined that in hot weather he ought to wear an alpaca coat.
They sighted each other pretty regularly for some three months before chance caused them to strike up a casual acquaintanceship. One wet day the Bourgeois gave up his seat to Eve in a crowded tram. After that he took off his hat to her whenever she happened to pass across the end of Clarendon Grove in front of him. One morning they arrived at the corner at the same moment, and the Bourgeois wished her “good morning.”
They walked as far as Upper Street together. It seemed absurd for two humans whose paths touched so often not to smile and exchange a few words about the weather, and so it came about that they joined forces whenever the Bourgeois was near enough to the corner for Eve not to have to indulge in any conscious loitering.
He was a very decent sort of man, and his name was Mr. Parfit. He was something in the neighbourhood of Broad Street, but what it was he did not state, and Eve did not inquire. In due course she discovered that he was a bachelor, that he had lived for fifteen years in the same rooms, that he had a passion for romantic novels, and that he went regularly to Queen’s Hall. He spent Sunday in his slippers, reading The Referee. A three weeks’ holiday once a year satisfied any vagrant impulses he might feel, and he spent these three weeks at Ramsgate, Hastings or Brighton.