Read Online The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Penelope Fitzgerald
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Saunders. She had been left the end of a lease, sub-let. For the next five years, only, they would receive £5 a quarter. That will make a great difference to your way of life, the solicitor told them.
Mrs Saunders continued bottle-capping at the Falcon, because it entitled her to send her daughter to the Licensed Victuallersâ Free School in Latchmere Road. Daisy grew up to be tall and slender, but solid. She had substance to her. Life would get a lot of work out of her. Until it turned grey her hair, recklessly curling, would always attract attention, because of the difficulty of deciding whether it was more brown than red. It was all according to the light.
At fifteen she put her hair up, securing it with strong steel pins, and started as a clerical. That meant crossing the river, along with a hundred and fifty thousand other south Londoners, twice a day. The journey was compared at that time by sociological observers to a great war or catastrophe in a neighbouring land from which the fugitives, forbidden to look back, scurried over the river bridges by any means available to them, only checked by the fear of falling underfoot. At the tram stop there were no queuesâqueues were for free medical dispensaries onlyâand when the tram lurched round the corner, drawing up sharply, the crowd rolled onto it and with it like a dark swarm of bees. You had to attack and be among the first. But defence, too, had to be studied. Daisy went out to work like her friends, closely buttoned, hat-pinned, and corseted against unwanted approaches. She also wore on her wedding finger a broad gold ring, which had come to her from the long unsuspected aunt in Hastings. Had Aunt Ellie ever married? Inside it was an inscriptionâ
Whatever there is to know, That we shall know one day
.
Those who did the approaching, in the stifling proximity of the tram, were inclined not to believe in the wedding-ring, and knew what else Daisy was wearing as well as she did. It was a battle with no accepted rules and when the tram began to roll
with its plunging, strong-smelling human freight, men put their hands over their ticket and money pockets while schoolboys protected their genitals and women every point of contact, fore and aft.
Daisy had been taken on at Lambertâs Glazing Supplies, in Fulham. Dark and unpromising-looking as the warehouse was, it had over its entrance a large stained glass pane representing the Finding of the Lost Sheep. The sky had been cut out of a single piece of opalescent glass in which white and blue had been fused together at random, giving the effect of high summer clouds. Probably no-one in England, in the year 1909, could have produced a panel like this one; certainly Lambertâs couldnât. Although almost every small house in Battersea, Clapham, Streatham and Stockwell had its bit of coloured glass over the front door, Daisy had never seen, either before or in church, anything quite like it before.
The hours at Lambertâs were from eight until eight. Young Daisy arrived with the irrepressible readiness to please, as though on creationâs first morning, which is one of the earthâs great spectacles of wasted force. She was given a stool and a peg in an almost lightless and airless tank behind the glass-store. The columns of figures were a delight to her, particularly if some of them had gone astray. The sight of 8073 foot of glazing at one shilling and sixpence a foot, with quarter-inch lead bars, subsequently changed to five-sixteenths, and the whole estimate to be raised by 13½% gave her satisfaction, as though she had faced defiance and quelled it.
She was earning twelve shillings a week. Mrs Saunders lost her job at the brewery. There was something wrong with her, a pain, not always in the same place. She had the time now to think about it. They had moved into two nice airy rooms on the top floor of a house where the handwritten cards, in every window except theirs, offered
Mrs Saunders continued bottle-capping at the Falcon, because it entitled her to send her daughter to the Licensed Victuallersâ Free School in Latchmere Road. Daisy grew up to be tall and slender, but solid. She had substance to her. Life would get a lot of work out of her. Until it turned grey her hair, recklessly curling, would always attract attention, because of the difficulty of deciding whether it was more brown than red. It was all according to the light.
At fifteen she put her hair up, securing it with strong steel pins, and started as a clerical. That meant crossing the river, along with a hundred and fifty thousand other south Londoners, twice a day. The journey was compared at that time by sociological observers to a great war or catastrophe in a neighbouring land from which the fugitives, forbidden to look back, scurried over the river bridges by any means available to them, only checked by the fear of falling underfoot. At the tram stop there were no queuesâqueues were for free medical dispensaries onlyâand when the tram lurched round the corner, drawing up sharply, the crowd rolled onto it and with it like a dark swarm of bees. You had to attack and be among the first. But defence, too, had to be studied. Daisy went out to work like her friends, closely buttoned, hat-pinned, and corseted against unwanted approaches. She also wore on her wedding finger a broad gold ring, which had come to her from the long unsuspected aunt in Hastings. Had Aunt Ellie ever married? Inside it was an inscriptionâ
Whatever there is to know, That we shall know one day
.
Those who did the approaching, in the stifling proximity of the tram, were inclined not to believe in the wedding-ring, and knew what else Daisy was wearing as well as she did. It was a battle with no accepted rules and when the tram began to roll
with its plunging, strong-smelling human freight, men put their hands over their ticket and money pockets while schoolboys protected their genitals and women every point of contact, fore and aft.
Daisy had been taken on at Lambertâs Glazing Supplies, in Fulham. Dark and unpromising-looking as the warehouse was, it had over its entrance a large stained glass pane representing the Finding of the Lost Sheep. The sky had been cut out of a single piece of opalescent glass in which white and blue had been fused together at random, giving the effect of high summer clouds. Probably no-one in England, in the year 1909, could have produced a panel like this one; certainly Lambertâs couldnât. Although almost every small house in Battersea, Clapham, Streatham and Stockwell had its bit of coloured glass over the front door, Daisy had never seen, either before or in church, anything quite like it before.
The hours at Lambertâs were from eight until eight. Young Daisy arrived with the irrepressible readiness to please, as though on creationâs first morning, which is one of the earthâs great spectacles of wasted force. She was given a stool and a peg in an almost lightless and airless tank behind the glass-store. The columns of figures were a delight to her, particularly if some of them had gone astray. The sight of 8073 foot of glazing at one shilling and sixpence a foot, with quarter-inch lead bars, subsequently changed to five-sixteenths, and the whole estimate to be raised by 13½% gave her satisfaction, as though she had faced defiance and quelled it.
She was earning twelve shillings a week. Mrs Saunders lost her job at the brewery. There was something wrong with her, a pain, not always in the same place. She had the time now to think about it. They had moved into two nice airy rooms on the top floor of a house where the handwritten cards, in every window except theirs, offered
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