The Stories of William Sansom by William Sansom

Author:William Sansom [Elizabeth Bowen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571279722
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Impatience

‘BEAT it off away now,’ said the Dropper, ‘blow.’

‘Sod you for a start‚’ Sally said.

‘You too, darling.’

‘——!’

With these remarks the two men withdrew, each a little, neither too much.

In that lovely winter weather, quiet with the first hunter’s thrill of fog, sharp and curiously calm, London rose clear of long-leaved September and curled towards its fires, saw the curtains drawn over yellow windows, walked swifter among the daylit greys, dreamed through the petrol hurry of horse-leather and the evening street-lamp. Toys reddened in the shops. A church-bell no longer echoed its summer air—but now engraved the dark cold night. Black leaves gave up their wet mysterious smell. And in the ornamental districts a mist hazed the trees, graceful arches and the classic porticos of great mansions stood softly severe—it was not a white mist but silver grey beneath a red low sun, and one looked around suspiciously for the rime that was not yet there.

But the feeling struck different in the streets behind the Circus—Beak, Brewer, Lisle in their narrow grime feared winter. All those who would every day stand on corners prepared themselves to shiver, they looked up to where the chilly haze of the sky fogged down at the brown brick housetops, they saw vegetable scraps and litter in the gutters lie cold and severe, no longer moving meat for flies. Chestnut men were coming back, the Italian fruitfulness of barrows gave way to mahogany winter fare of dates and nuts and oranges. These streets were not good in winter, they smelled of raw smoke, wind blew through frayed clothes, no trees gave them grace.

The café door was closed on the Dropper and Salvatore Page. Urn-steam clouding the window patched out the street. Separately, they drank their middle-morning tea. Dropper Culbertson crunched with long straight lines of teeth a dough of pastry blooded with jelly-bright jam. Sally Page ate nothing, he sulked, and in the silence now and then gave a mince of a twist-up to his shoulder, raised his chin a little like a woman offended. Culbertson fumed. His long mouth with lip mud-coloured as his face munched up and down—it was a line of lip so thin as to appear toothless above a great square bony jaw. Each wanted to be out and back to his shop, each lingered to appear not to hurry.

Matters between these two had come to a head. From the first, they had not met well. And this perhaps had affected their feeling for each other ever since. One evening Culbertson had been taking a stout and roll-mops with a big man he was close to, a man for whom he sometimes moved stuff and at other times leant his muscle. One of the boys had come in the bar with Salvatore Page. They had sat next door at the counter, and Sally had soon got going with the Dropper’s big man, his valuable friend and boss. Sally was small, with sleek dark hair and thick clownish eyebrows, and his flexible mouth,

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