Beowulf

mine h’out?”
“Oh, it wasn’t a tooth from me ’ead but a steel one from a comb. The doctor said, ‘You must ’ave swallowed it with your oatmeal. I’d give it a miss for a bit,’ ’ee says, ‘and try something with more nourishment.’ It’s funny what you find in them oats.”
“Sweepings,” Ruby nodded portentously, “it’s what ’appens to us working class. Not that I know h’anything of politics meeself,” she added hastily, “it’s what mee ’usband says.”
“’Ee’s right, whatever ’appens we suffer.”
Ruby was silent for a moment, for they were approaching the bridge; it was the bit of the journey that she enjoyed the most. She liked looking back over Chelsea, especially in spring when the lilacs were out, with here and there a flowering chestnut. Lambs, she would say, remembering her country childhood and egg hunts in the neighbour’s meadow. She had never wanted to return to her village, people were too inquisitive, too credulous, always “nosing into one” as she complained to Ed, but she often wished that they lived nearer to a common. Then the river itself was a broad silver road leading to the sea. It gave her a feeling of safety and pride, her father having been a sailor. He had never been away long enough for her to forget him because he was usually on a coaster, but his visits home had been infrequent and marked by pennies to be spent unexpectedly in the village shop. She had always felt herself apart from the other families of ploughmen and bricklayers and it had made her restless; the same urge that had driven her father to sea had led her to throw up that good place at the Manor and try her luck in London. “Somehow,” she said, pushing a little, for Mrs. Gates had taken advantage of the bus’s swaying to grab more than her fair share of the seat, “I feel nothing can ’appen as long as the sea is round us.” She looked out with satisfaction on a tug and a couple of coal-smeared barges floating on water that was the exact grey of their smoke.
“You’re right, there,” Mrs. Gates snorted, “not, mind you, that I’m against them foreigners but it stands to reason they can’t be as ’andy as we are, never ’aving no sea to be on.” A couple of gulls swooped from the parapet up into the misty sky. The next bridge, which they could just see through the diamond opening of the splinter netting, seemed almost silver.
“Ed says, ’ee don’t think the German workers want war any more than we do; it’s all That Man.”
“For meeself,” Mrs. Gates gripped her umbrella ominously, “there’s only one thing to do with a Jerry and that’s shoot ’im. Pity there couldn’t be an h’earthquake to settle them once for all.”
“Yet I worked for a German lady once and she was that quiet you wouldn’t ’ave thought she was different from ourselves.”
“Sly! That’s what they are, and ’ow do you know what she was thinking? It’s not my business, of course, but an English family’s good enough for me. Still,” Mrs. Gates continued affably, “times ’ave bin ’ard, I know; you can’t pick and choose.”
They had left the Thames and come to Battersea Park. It was empty but reassuring, for the trees stood, unlike the houses, with hardly a twig disarranged. There was even a glimpse of a circular flower bed, neatly dug up to wait for winter frosts.
“I see you’re in black,” Mrs. Gates went on. “I ’ope nothing’s ’appened?”
“It’s for Connie. She ’ad that shop at the corner of Station Road, where they got it so badly last night. Ed, ’ee’s thoughtful like that, came all the way back to tell me. ’Ee didn’t want me to see it, though of course they turned the traffic off, but I got out and walked along as far as the ropes. There’s just a ’ole where the shop used to be; it’s all stones and dust.”
“They’re not men, those Germans, they’re fiends. Sometimes I think, though, we brought it on ourselves. There’s no reverence in the young nowadays, they don’t know what work means.”
“Yes, the ’ussies, waggling about with their little caps and their perms. They don’t get down to no scrubbing of floors like we ’ave to do. And what about our ’usbands? There’ll be ’omes broken up in this war, Mrs. Gates, and it’s these minxes as is responsible.” Ruby had caught Ed’s glance of admiration for a thing in khaki, with more money than manners, only the Saturday before; and Mrs. Gates nodded in solemn agreement.
“Now, Connie she was well off though I wouldn’t say but what she’s ’ad a ’ard life sometimes. Got into trouble and got out of it. She ’ad a good place with ’omely folk where she sat down to dinner; but her sister Vi was different, she worked at the kaff. That’s where the girls met Alec. ’Ee’s Connie’s ’usband. It was Alec’s friend who was going out with Vi. Posh boys they was, both of ’em, and Vi told ’em she was living at ’ome. Now, Vi loved her night out, but Connie was quiet like and when the boy found out that Vi was at the kaff, ’ee wouldn’t ’ave no more to do with ’er. Called ’er awful names, ’ee did, that’s what comes of telling stories. I couldn’t tell a lie meeself, could you?”
“Sooner or later, we reap what we ’ave sown.”
“Sometimes it’s pretty late. I know a fishmonger who made ’is money in the last war but ’is misdeeds don’t seem to have caught up with ’im. ’Ee’s simply using ’is experience all over again.”
“We must leave h’everything to Providence, and believe me,” Mrs. Gates looked intently at her companion, “we shall not be disappointed in our trust.”
“I ’ope not,” Ruby said hastily, she had no wish to get into an argument, with poor Connie so much on her mind. “Well, Alec, ’ee married Connie and ’ee was a