Beowulf

and what harm was there in putting Beowulf in the fireplace downstairs? It wasn’t as if he were alive and she wanted money for his food.
Selina pushed open the door slowly, trying to balance her tray. Now why couldn’t her partner have opened it? Tea stains looked so ugly on a white cloth, and it was difficult, without spilling something, to turn the handle. “I’ve saved you a piece of jam tart,” she said, poking at the small table that was littered with pencils, phrase books, and a scarf. “If you could make room, Angelina,” she added patiently, steadying the two cups and saucers with their thin, blue dragons, which she always washed herself.
“Thanks, dear.” Angelina swept the oddments up and dumped them, roughly, on the bed. The walls were the only tidy spaces in the room; and then Selina sat down, involuntarily, exactly opposite the poster that she disliked. A group of girls in summer dresses marched down its paper road, under an arch of Russian letters, waving flags. What a pity it was that Angelina had given up Esperanto! It had been a trial, of course, when she had insisted upon writing out the menus in that language, and she had brought that dreadful professor back from the Congress who had wanted them to put him up for the night; but though eccentric, it had been safe. Was it not a lesson to grumblers? A small evil may be removed and a greater one take its place. Every day now she expected to meet a detective measuring the picture, and to watch her colleague being hauled off to the police station, in that scarlet jumper that looked exactly like a railway flag, screaming things too, that must spell internment for the duration. I should be innocent, Selina reflected, but I should never, never, never survive the disgrace. This was no moment, however, to reopen their perennial quarrel.
“Did they straighten matters out at the Food Office? What are they going to allow us?”
“Everything’s O.K.” Angelina said briskly, “except the processed eggs. They say we are not entitled to them.”
“But, Angelina, that’s ridiculous. Did you explain to them that half our business is in the off-the-premises cakes? This powder is horrible, but if we are not allowed to buy new laid eggs any more, what are we going to do?”
“They have no forms suitable for our case.”
“But, dear …”
“It’s your own fault, partner, for being honest. You never have used anything but farm eggs. I have told you over and over again that honesty and private enterprise are incompatible.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Selina said angrily, “whether it is public or private has nothing whatever to do with it. We always have bought direct from the farms since we started. Suddenly we are told that sales are forbidden, and I have no quarrel if it is really in the country’s interest. But the shop up the road has an allowance; they told me so this morning. And, my dear, they didn’t have to tell me, I could smell the stuff. But they are just as private as we are. Why shouldn’t we have our ration too?”
“Because, dear, they have never used anything else but egg powder, and they have a record of their consumption during the past five years. It was stupid of you not to go in for all the counterfeits you could. I always told you so.”
“It was not foolish to supply our customers or any human being with decent food.” Angelina, she knew, was simply being tiresome. “It is my belief that we owe this war to changes in our national diet. Don’t you tell me that our beef-and-beer grandfathers would have gone off to Munich with an umbrella!” Selina bit savagely into a second rock cake. Currants, she reflected, would be most difficult next season.
“It is just because you will not understand” (poor darling, how little Selina realized that only her partner’s loyalty might stand between her and the lamp post at the end of the war) “the officials expect private traders to be dishonest. Still, I did what I could for you and there was a new, most charming girl at the Food Office. She went into the matter thoroughly. You see, there is no form printed that meets the case. Teashops have always used powder, and I suppose it occurred to no one in the Government that you had your special farm affiliations. The girl suggested that you write out the facts in triplicate and send it to the Board of Trade, and another, also in triplicate, to the Ministry of Food.”
“But that will take time, and what about our cakes for Saturday?”
“They thought we might get an answer in six months.” Angelina could not resist a slight tone of triumph; Beowulf’s reception still rankled.
“Six months! It means we shall have to go out of business.”
“Yes, dear.” Angelina sipped her tea contentedly.
“But is there nothing we can do?” If they once shut down it would mean the end of everything, and whatever would they do about poor old Timothy?
“Legally, we are finished. But don’t worry, Selina, I haven’t got your inhibitions. I came out of that office, I must confess, in a state of extreme anger. So this is how the Government treats the little man, I was saying to myself, when I saw Beowulf in the shop window. He is going to bring us luck, you know, though we must not be superstitious.” Giving up her little rituals had been Angelina’s greatest sacrifice to her new faith. “Well, as I was saying, I felt depressed and annoyed and there was this bulldog looking ever so forlorn in the middle of a lot of battered tables, and I thought, you darling, I am going to give you a home….”
“Was he … terribly expensive?” Though if they had to close did it matter if they owed three hundred pounds or three?
“No, dear, not at all as it turned out. I went in, and in spite of the