Beowulf

her.”
Tears began to roll down Ruby’s cheeks, but instead of looking for her handkerchief she clutched her overall. “It was last night, madam. We had it awful bad our way. Do you know the Green Man at the corner of Station Road? It had two bombs on it. Parlour and all, there isn’t a fragment left; it was just blown to debridge.”
“Dear me, how tragic! I’m afraid I don’t know the neighbourhood. And your friend? Was she … ah, at the Green Man?”
“Oh, madam, no!” Ruby was shocked and reproachful. “That’s a public house and Connie never went to no pubs. She had the Stewdier opposite.”
“The Studio?” Selina had a vision of a photographer’s window full of big studies of grinning boys in uniform and those incredible postcards of little girls in white satin.
“Yes, madam, a Stewdier. Connie made the best jellied eels I ever tasted in mee life. Mee ’usband and I are partial to a bit of eel of a Saturday night. The last time I saw Connie,” Ruby gulped and dragged out a handkerchief at last, “she told me that the war had upset the supply like and she didn’t know ’ow she would keep going.”
Dear me, Selina pondered, why does Ruby pronounce whole sentences correctly and why as suddenly does stewed eel become stewdier? How fascinating dialects would be if one had the time for them. Still, this was a moment for sympathy, not study.
“There’s bricks from it,” Ruby commented with mournful satisfaction, “right the other end of the road. They turned the buses off this morning, that was why I was late; but I could see the blue flag, that means they’re digging for corpses. There won’t be anything left to bury but I thought if I went and stood there in mee black, it would show my respect for Connie. So I’ll take mee afternoon today, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, of course,” Selina said hastily. Somehow the idea had all the paralyzing quality of the raids themselves. It had come out of the fibre of old, roistering, plague-ridden London. Perhaps she had overdone her refusal to listen to bomb stories; it might relieve the mind. What a difference there was, however, between the inexorable earthiness of Ruby and those timorous lady customers who flustered everybody, asking, “Will they come tonight?” “Standing in my black”—what a pity she could not rush to Angelina and tell her all about it. It made her partner’s foolish purchase all the more annoying. Selina sighed, got up, locked the outside door, and hung up the sign, “Closed from two to three.” There would be just time to check over the ledger before they began on teas. She opened the book, but the silent room made her jumpy. If only Angelina had not bought that dog! Her hand jerked (she really must get some mittens to keep her fingers warm; surely in wartime they would be permissible) and her pencil rolled onto the floor. As she stooped to pick it up she found herself staring into Beowulf’s deep-set eyes. “Angelina,” she shouted, “Angelina, you must come downstairs.”
That placid, overfat plaster jowl was simply sneering at her. It was ridiculous to get as nervous as this; perhaps she had better go and make herself a cup of herb tea. Life—and she did not care whether the Vicar approved of it or not—life was simply unendurable.

5
IT WAS COLD. Ruby stamped her feet, waiting for the bus. She hoped that there was not going to be an alert. Whatever Ed might say, she was not going to spend another night in the shelter. It looked and smelled like a tomb. She would much rather lie under the kitchen table beside the fire than have her wrists knotted up with rheumatism before she was fifty. Yes, it felt as if it were going to snow and her bag pulled heavily at her arm. “Here’s a nice bit of fish for you,” old Tippett had said, trotting in just as she was slipping on her coat to leave, “and don’t forget to take some of the stale bread for your cat.” That was the advantage of the Warming Pan; they fed her well at midday and there were plenty of scraps but there was too much supervision, too much Selina following her around and saying, “We want to wash well underneath the shelves, don’t we,” or “Have you dusted the plates,” when they would have to be wiped off, anyhow, before they could be used.
How much time had she spent, Ruby wondered, waiting for a bus? Once inside it there was warmth; you picked up bits of talk, noticed shop windows and the way buildings changed, but standing … she could have lived her life twice over with the minutes and minutes that she had lost on street corners. Waiting for a bus, waiting for a bus; somebody ought to write a song about it, probably they had; what Timothy called a “swingy tune” just evaded her ears. The wind cut round her legs and she glanced back to see if there were many in the queue. All people at a bus stop were potential enemies. They might crowd in front of her, be among the “standing room for two only,” and shove her back to wait an extra quarter of an hour. Today, however, she was early and the rush hour, or what had become, since the raids started, the “rush stampede,” had not yet begun. If only the sirens did not go before she got home. She was a week behind with the wash, but when the kitchen was the only room where she was absolutely certain of the blackout, she could not clutter it up with damp sheets as long as they had to sleep there. She would soon forget what her bedroom was like; and Ed had done it up, new paper and all, only last summer.
The heaviest buildings had a fragile air as if children had