Beowulf

shop smelling musty the owner seemed a very pleasant man. I told him what had happened at the Food Office and we got talking about capitalism and the war….”
“Angelina! I do wish you would be careful. How do you know that he was not a plain-clothesman? You could get arrested under, what is that new statute, 18b?”
“That man a bobby!” Angelina snorted. “Anything but. He said, ‘Now if you really are taking that dog and your partner is interested in egg powder, I’ve got a nice little lot here just come from salvage. I’ll tell you where I got it. Remember that warehouse that went up the other night? Well, these tins were in the cellar and there isn’t a mark on them. Like to have a look?’ I inspected them, Selina, and I bought the lot. Fortunately, I had the money on me for the gas and the fishmonger. It was fairly cheap and we’ve got a year’s supply at least.”
“But is it legal?”
“Probably not. I didn’t stop to inquire. I paid him in pound notes, and he is sending it along tomorrow. Be tween ourselves, I think it was because he was glad to get rid of the bulldog. It looked odd in his window and, of course, he did not understand the symbolism as we do.”
“I hope it is all right,” Selina said doubtfully. “I won der if we ought to put a notice on the cakes.”
“What about?”
“Why, saying they are made with powder.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; nobody expects to buy cakes made with eggs these days.”
“Honesty is the best policy,” and Selina shook her head, “trickery does no good to man or beast.”
“Honesty!” Angelina grunted. “And we have a plutocratic Government. Wait till after the war when we build up the ‘new world.’”
“You don’t think, dear, that it would be better for us if we learn how to use the old?”
“Selina!” Her partner gave a little scream. “Well, I’m not going to argue with you, there isn’t time, but give me another cup of tea. I feel positively Robin Hood.”
Exactly, her colleague thought, remembering the lounge at Bournemouth; that was all the trouble. People did not want to be shaken up by such stampeding vitality. While she would not wish to question God’s purpose, it seemed a pity that no niche existed for her partner’s talents. In Angelina you saw an elderly Englishman, smoking a pipe and strolling about a plantation. Civilization constricted her. And though this energy made her doubly dear because it was so unlike one’s own placidity of life, it was disconcerting to strangers. “I can’t help being worried”—perhaps, now she had accepted Beowulf, Angelina would be sympathetic—“we are a whole quarter overdue and I don’t know where we are going to find the money.”
Angelina wiped her lips after a final mouthful of jam tart. Cook certainly made beautiful pastry. Though how Selina could eat those heavy rock cakes she could not imagine; their very shape suggested stalactites. Her partner was dominated by her appetite, there was no other word for it. She, herself, never worried about food. “I don’t care what I eat,” was a favourite phrase of hers; it left one so free and unencumbered to face the future. Of course, a plump face like Selina’s was never meant for leadership. Oddly enough, it reminded her of Beowulf, the Tippett so resembled a ladylike and gentle bulldog. “Courage, comrade,” she saw herself in shorts, marching at the head of that column in the poster, “would it not be worth while to lose all this and gain New Britain?”
“Perhaps, dear, but the rent? I suppose even in New Britain we should have to meet our liabilities?”
“Oh, Selina, no! That’s what I am always trying to explain to you. There would be no shops because we should own everything in common and the State would be responsible. We shouldn’t have a worry in the world. Of course,” Angelina added as an afterthought, wondering how they would organize an equitable supply of pastry, “we shouldn’t have luxuries either.”
“Do believe me,” Selina continued patiently, pouring out two more cups of tea, “it isn’t that I want to criticize your ideas; but if we shut the shop what is going to become of Cook and Timothy?”
“Couldn’t we all do war work?”
“You know perfectly well, partner, that nobody would employ Timothy. He can hardly lift a broom, let alone a shell. Cook is fifty and Ruby has a husband to look after. And we, ourselves, are trying to feed the public at a very difficult time. Poor old Mr. Rashleigh, for example, how would he get his dinner?”
“Horatio is a man that has never been productive in his life. If he has got to be kept alive, and I sometimes question the necessity, let him go to an old men’s home.” “Well, it may be that in days to come your prophecy will be realized, though I am sure I hope I never live to see it, for I like running the Warming Pan and I can’t think of anything to be ashamed about. But what worries me now, more than the raids, is how am I going to pay the rent with all our customers going to the country? It’s getting worse every day.”
“The owners are probably extremely thankful that we are here to look after the place.” Poor Selina, her colleague thought, how she let a bourgeois environment dominate her! If the war only cleared away that horrible standard of “and I found a perfectly lovely chintz for my bedroom, dear,” it would have one good deed to its credit. Down with homes, Angelina wanted to cry; why do we waste life in houses? All she had ever wanted was to be free and have interesting work. Everything would have been so different if she had been a man. People would not have resented then the surge of vitality that infuriated them in petticoats. New, that was a word that meant what heaven, she supposed, signified