A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [29]
Fifi had been looking down at the worn sisal runner up the stairs, wondering how long it had been there. The house was clean, in as much as there was no dust or rubbish anywhere, and, as Dan said, very quiet, but to her it was little better than a slum.
At his words she looked up, and there on the landing, at the top of the last run of stairs, were an ancient cooker and an equally old sink with a small geyser above. This, she had to assume, was her new kitchen.
‘I can put up a cupboard on the wall for all our pots and pans,’ Dan said happily. ‘I thought maybe I could fix up a fold-down table-top too, for a surface to prepare food. Then a towel rail and a small shelf for our washing things.’
Fifi came up the last few stairs and caught hold of his arm. ‘I am not washing myself in a kitchen sink,’ she exclaimed indignantly.
‘No one will come up here but us, and I could build a folding screen from here to there,’ he said, putting one hand on the banisters and the other on the wall. ‘We’d be quite private then.’
‘It would still be a kitchen sink. It’s for dirty dishes and straining cabbage,’ she retorted. ‘I’m sorry, Dan, but I can’t possibly live here.’
Dan’s face fell. ‘I know it’s not what you’re used to, Felicity. But it was the best I could do.’
He only ever used her real name when he thought she was being a snob, and mostly it was with a teasing note. But this time it was with real reproach.
‘Oh, come on, Dan,’ she wheedled. ‘I know it’s cheap, and that flats in London are like gold dust, but look at it! You really can’t expect me to live somewhere as squalid as this.’
She didn’t even want to look at the two rooms. What she’d seen already was more than enough to make her want to run out.
‘Please just try to look at it with magic eyes,’ Dan pleaded, reaching out to smooth her cheek, the way he always did when he was trying to get round her.
Fifi’s spirits dropped even lower, for she knew now that when something needed Dan’s magic eyes most normal people would turn it down flat.
‘I’m trying,’ she said wearily. She supposed as it was the top flat no one would be coming up the last flight of stairs but them. ‘But don’t you dare tell me we’ve got to buy a tin bath, and the lav’s outside.’
‘Of course there’s a bathroom,’ Dan grinned boyishly. ‘Would I expect Princess Felicity to go without one? It’s downstairs, and the only reason I said about washing up here is because we have to share it with the other tenants.’
‘Well, I just hope there aren’t dozens of them,’ Fifi retorted, for she’d seen at least six doors on the way up through the three-storey house.
Dan had left for London during the last week in February to start work on a large housing development in Stockwell. The weather was still every bit as bad then, the whole country still in the grip of ice and snow, but it seemed the foreman knew a good worker when he saw one, and he gave Dan other work inside the almost completed houses because he didn’t want to lose him. He even arranged digs for him near the site, and paid his train fare home at weekends.
Fifi hadn’t minded being alone during the week at first. She’d meet up with Patty one night, go to the pictures with one of the girls at work on another, and the remainder of the time she spent reading, making food for the weekend and doing chores. She was so excited at the prospect of moving to London, day-dreaming about all the things they could do there, and each weekend she expected Dan to arrive home with news that he’d found a place for them.
But as the weeks passed and Dan still hadn’t found a flat, she began to feel they would be living apart for ever. It wasn’t that Dan didn’t try. He bought the Evening Standard every day, and rushed to see all the flats in their price range that same evening. But all too often the flat would be gone before he got there, and those that were left either had landlords who didn’t want a married couple, or were so awful that Dan had to turn them down.
He had his name down