The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 28

The train got into the terminus. Anne left it. She did not know where she was going. She did not know what she was going to do. She went and sat down in the waiting-room and tried to think. For a long time nothing came to her. Then she began to think.

She got up and walked out of the station. She had to buy a suitcase, and she had to find a room. She got the suitcase almost at once, and then bought herself a cheap nightgown, brush and comb, a cake of soap, and a towel. It was terrifying how much things cost, but no one would take her in without luggage. A curious feeling pushed up through her consciousness. These were not the sort of things she had ever bought before. She could do a sum in her head. She could know that she mustn’t spend more than the least possible, but all the time she knew in her own mind that these were not the sort of things she had ever bought before. It was all new to her, this considering of prices, this taking the cheapest thing that was offered.

In the first shop she went into she began to give her name. She got as far as Miss Anne, and stopped dead and bit her lip.

‘No, I’ll pay for it,’ she said.

The girl who was serving her with the nightdress looked up at her with a quick fleeting glance.

When she had got as much as she dared, she turned her attention to the question of a room. There was a policeman at the next crossing. She made her way to him, waited till he was disengaged from the traffic, and then put her request.

‘Can you tell me where I can get a room?’

The policeman was comfortable-looking. Ten years before, he had come up to London. The country burr still lingered in his voice. He said, ‘What kind of a room, miss?’

And Anne said, ‘A very cheap one.’

He directed her to a Young Woman’s Christian, and it sounded frightfully respectable and safe. She went on her way feeling very clever and encouraged. Nothing happened to you if you were sensible.

Nothing could possibly happen to you at a Young Woman’s Christian. It sounded too utterly respectable and safe. She would deposit her luggage-how safe and respectable to have luggage-and she would ask them about jobs. They would know. The mere fact that there was going to be someone whom she could ask was like light in a dark place-the dark place of her ignorance, of her not knowing.

But the Young Woman’s Christian was full. They gave her one or two addresses and said they might be able to take her in next week. She embarked on a long and weary hunt for a room. At last, too tired to be particular, she took what was offered by a woman whom she would have turned down flat at the beginning of her search, a little carneying person with untidy hair and a smooth ingratiating way of speech. She didn’t know how long she would want the room for, and she would leave her things there and go out and get something to eat. She was tired to the very bones of her, and she was so discouraged that there seemed to be no place left for her either to fall or to rise. The world was an empty place. There was no one who cared whether she was alive or dead. ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.’

She ate and drank in a dirty little shop, and then she went back to her room and undressed and went to bed. The day had begun early and there had not been much of the night. She put on her clean nightgown and lay down in the doubtful bed wondering if she would sleep, and that was the last thing she knew until the morning. She slept and slept, and when she woke she was conscious of nothing. The hours of sleep had passed over her and were gone.

Her depression was gone too. She must find a job. And she must write to Jim and Miss Silver. It wasn’t fair to leave them without a word. She had got away, and now that she was quite on her own she could see them again. It was a very heartening thought. She put on her coat and hat, considered whether she could ask Jim to get hold of her bag and her money from Chantreys, and set out first on a quest for a roll. and butter and a cup of tea, and then to look for a job.