The Likes of Us by Barstow Stan

Author:Barstow, Stan [Barstow, Stan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2013-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

He gave the waitress his name and she pulled out a table so that they could sit side by side with their backs to the wall.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Famished.’

‘The steak and kidney pie’s good. So’s the fillet steak, for that matter. And to start with I can recommend either the pate or the whitebait. They’re both delicious.’

They ordered, and Madge sat forward to lean on her elbows and scrutinise her surroundings from this new vantage point.

‘This is a quaint place.’

‘You’ve never been before?’

‘I didn’t even know it existed.’

‘It can’t have changed much since the turn of the century. A real old music-hall pub. Can’t you imagine it full of gents with mutton-chop whiskers and ladies of doubtful reputation with low necklines, too much make-up, and big hats?’

Their drinks came. Collins lifted his glass and turned his head to look into her face. ‘Cheers!’

Madge echoed him. She had speculated earlier about where he would take her if he wanted to impress her on this first evening out. The Metropole? The French restaurant at the Queen’s? But she saw now that he was not the man to establish false precedents. He might indeed take her to such places sometimes, but she would know now that it was a special occasion. Impress her? She was just a little irked to realise that he had succeeded in doing that simply by not at all trying to do so.

Had her father lost his wealth Madge Greenaway would have missed what it bought, but – providing there were no attendant disgrace – she would have coped with her changed circumstances. For Madge’s life was conditioned not by considerations like happiness and fulfilment, but by a sense of the fitting, and it was a sense she would have applied in whatever drawer of the social cupboard she had found herself. Not that she thought much about this. It was in instinct for the way she wished to appear to other people; and it had more to do with respect – hers for herself as she felt it reflected in the eyes of others – than with anything as obvious as popularity and being liked.

When it became clear, as it soon did, that Edgar Collins was more than casually interested in her, she began to think about the matter of marriage to him.

She wasn’t in love with Collins but she was fond of him. As the junior partner in a small firm of architects he wasn’t the most obviously desirable match; but he was young enough and ambitious enough to better himself, and Madge was not averse to pushing him where it might seem needed. She was nearly thirty. Opportunities for marriage were bound to become fewer. Spinsterhood, however proud, had no place in her scheme of things. She ought to be married.

She made up her mind; not so much that she would say yes when he asked her to marry him, but that she would lead him into a position where he would ask. For she sensed that behind the smiles, the jokes, the cool banter, Collins was a little in awe of her.

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