Minty Alley Page 2

  He rose and turned on the lights.

  ‘Bring my dinner, Ella,’ he said, and when she brought in the first dish he smiled at her.

  ‘Where did you say that room was, Ella?’

  ‘Two streets from here, sir. No. 2, Minty Alley. It’s a very short alley.’

  ‘Well, we’ll go there.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen the place, sir. I don’t think you’ll like it. There are a lot of people there, sir. Ordinary people.’

  ‘So much the better. I am sure I will like it. 2, Minty Alley. It sounds good. I shall go down and look at the room tomorrow.’

  Chapter Two

  Minty Alley was not two hundred yards away and the house was one on which his glance must often have rested. But it was only now when he approached it as a prospective lodging-house that he took particular notice of it. No. 2 stood at a corner, far in from the street. He walked down the yard, mounted a few steps, knocked and waited. The yard was quite clean; so was the front of the house, though badly in need of a coat of paint. Through the open jalousies he could see a neat little drawing-room, centre-table, bentwood chairs, antimacassars, what-nots and china ornaments. Among the pictures was one of Christ with a bleeding heart.

  Haynes knocked again, and then he heard a voice, a woman’s voice.

  ‘Maisie! Somebody knocking. Go and see who it is. Don’t keep the person waiting.’

  But nobody came.

  The same voice spoke again, more sharply.

  ‘But, girl, you didn’t hear me? The bigger you grow, the lazier you getting. Go at once.’

  There was the sound of bare feet in the room behind the drawing-room. The blind opened, a good-looking young face, presumably Maisie’s, appeared and asked sourly:

  ‘Anybody there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Haynes, ‘I want to see Mrs. Rouse, the owner of this house, about a room she has to let.’

  ‘Wait, please,’ said the young woman and turned back inside.

  ‘Tante, it’s somebody come to see about the room.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus give me patience with this child!’

  There were rapid footsteps and a slight scuffle. A short, stout woman came quickly to the door, opened it, and said:

  ‘Come in, Mr. Haynes. We know you. We see you passing up and down.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Haynes, ‘and you are Mrs. Rouse, I expect. My servant told me you had a room here to let and I have come to have a look at it.’

  ‘Yes, sir … You must excuse my appearance. I make cakes for sale, you know, and I am busy in the kitchen with them.’

  She had no need to apologize for her appearance. She was a woman somewhere in the forties, fat, yet with a firmness and shapeliness of figure which prevented her from looking gross. Her face was a smooth light-brown with a fine aquiline nose and well-cut firm lips. The strain of white ancestry responsible for the nose was not recent, for her hair was coarse and essentially negroid. Her apron was dirty, but the dress below was clean.

  ‘Will you follow me, sir?’ She made a slight bow and turned and led the way, carrying herself erect with a mature grace and dignity which Haynes thought assumed for the occasion but which he learnt to know later were natural to her.

  In the dining-room they met Maisie – the same girl whose face had peeped through the blind, only now her hair was smoother. Though not as light in colour as the aunt, she also was smooth-skinned and brown. Haynes looked at her, but saw her smiling at him and turned his eyes away.

  ‘You want the key, Tante?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t wish anything,’ said Mrs. Rouse, and descended four or five steps into the yard.

  The house was built in a simple style, square and containing five rooms, drawing-room and dining-room on one side and three bedrooms on the other. But at some time after it had been built, two rooms had been added to the original structure on the side opposite the kitchen, which was a separate building about ten feet away.

  ‘This room is tenanted already, sir,’ said Mrs. Rouse, pointing to the first, ‘and this is yours.’

  The room was small, but clean, with two large windows. Haynes knew that he would take it, had, indeed, decided to do so from the time Ella had mentioned the place, but he did not say so at once. He stole a glance at the kitchen and saw a number of people.

  ‘No one will disturb you here, you know, Mr. Haynes. You’ll be quite private,’ said Mrs. Rouse. ‘Any – er – friend of yours you want to come and see you at any time, you will be able to have them.’

  Haynes felt the blood in his face, but that decided him.

  ‘You think it will suit you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, madam. I think it will … And the price is two dollars and fifty cents?’

  ‘Yes. Two dollars fifty.’

  ‘Well, I’ll pay you now and come on the first.’

  ‘Thank you. But if you want to move in now you can, you know, Mr. Haynes. That will be all right.’

  That would suit Haynes very well. He would move at once.

  ‘You are a bachelor, Mr. Haynes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, if you like we can board you, you know. All your meals, clothes, washing, you can get everything done here.’

  She smiled at him hopefully.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs. Rouse. But Ella, my servant, is in charge of everything. She washes the clothes, cooks all my meals and so on. I could not think of carrying on without Ella, she has been with me so long and understands me so well.’

  ‘I only thought as you were giving up house you wouldn’t keep a servant. That’s why I asked.’

  ‘But if I do make a change, of course, I’ll board with you,’ said Haynes.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Rouse, smiling happily.

  At the front door she paused.

  ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable with us, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I am sure I will be, madam,’ replied Haynes. He stood for a second uncertainly, and then, quite spontaneously, offered her his hand. She took it with a little start of surprise, and looked at him so kindly and with such a gratified smile that he could see he had made a good impression on his future landlady.

  Chapter Three

  Early next morning began the transfer of Haynes’s belongings. Ella remained at No. 9 to despatch and he went to No. 2 to receive.

  He was down pretty early, about seven o’clock, but Mrs. Rouse and her household were already quite busy. Yesterday, while he was in the room making arrangements with her, he had been aware of people in the kitchen, but had no opportunity of noting more than that the majority were women. But now as he sat in his room facing the kitchen, idling, while Ella was packing things on the cart (and, no doubt, having stiff arguments with the man as to how much exactly constituted a load), as he sat there he could make a more detailed observation of his surroundings and his future neighbours.

  The surroundings were nothing the eye would dwell on without reason. The yard was reddish dirt and bits of stone, but much more dirt than stone, so that on rainy days it would be a mass of slippery mud, treacherous to shoe and slipper, and needing care even from naked feet. Opposite his room was the kitchen, long, low and concrete-floored, with two doors that opened on to the yard and two windows that looked into the alley. As is usual in the tropics, all windows and doors were wide open and he could see straight into it. Joined to the kitchen was the bathroom, and in front of the bathroom but to one side was a pipe with a sink. For the rest there was nothing else to see but the encircling hedge and the upper portions of the neighbouring buildings. A dull enough prospect. But if the surroundings were drab, the inhabitants were busy.

  First there was Mrs. Rouse, who gave him a fine good morning, but had no time for anything else. She concentrated on the contents of two or three pots on the fire, but at intervals turned to a table, where, unfortunately, he could not see what she was doing. She called frequently to one Aucher, a tall, heavily-built, quiet-looking youth
of about twenty – dressed in a patched and dirty pair of blue trousers and an old jacket without shirt or merino. He seemed rather dirty to be making cakes. He put large sheets of tin covered with cakes into the stove and took them out for Mrs. Rouse to see if they were baked enough, meanwhile regulating the heat by attending to the wick, usually at the dictation of Mrs. Rouse, who from her frequent admonitions and exhortations to those around her was clearly the officer commanding. In the kitchen was another black man with curly hair, wearing socks and slippers, black trousers and a white jacket. He was kneading flour and never once did he turn his head. He had a good deep voice.

  At first the yard was empty, but after a time a long, bony black girl came out of the kitchen and went to the sink, where she washed dishes; and not long after, a little boy, nearly white, came from inside the house. He played about in the yard with two marbles, stopping to take an interest in the contents of the first cartload which Ella sent down, only the first, because Mrs. Rouse, happening to see him, told him not to be fast, and to go inside and take his book. The boy, who at once obeyed orders, was about eight years old, unhealthy-looking but cute. It was his colour, however, which rather startled Haynes. He wondered at the presence of so fair a skin among all those dark people. Brownish though Mrs. Rouse might be it was inconceivable that she should be a party to any form of miscegenation which would produce offspring with hair so straight and complexion so fair.

  He had not taken his book for ten minutes when Mrs. Rouse called to him by name, Sonny, and sent him to the front to see if Philomen and Maisie were coming. He came back and said ‘No.’ Mrs. Rouse said that she could not understand what was keeping them back, and added that it was the last day she would let Maisie go.

  When Haynes went up for lunch, Ella came down. Haynes ate quickly and went back to release her. As soon as she had left, Mrs. Rouse came to the door of the room, followed by the black man.

  ‘Mr. Haynes, this is Mr. Benoit, your landlord.’

  The man came in, and she went back into the kitchen.

  ‘I am Benoit,’ he said and shook hands.

  He was rather a big man with a slight paunch. His very black face was undistinguished-looking, neither handsome nor ugly. The very dark skin and curly hair showed traces of Indian blood. The only thing one might have noticed was a rather cruel mouth below the sparse moustache. He might have been anything between thirty-five and fifty, perhaps somewhere in the forties. Benoit was very much at his ease at once, and, as he told Haynes not long afterwards, he knew from Mrs. Rouse’s description that Haynes was not one of those chaps who was stuck up.

  ‘You do a lot of reading, I see,’ he said, looking at the books.

  ‘Do you like books?’ said Haynes.

  ‘No time for that, man. Since I leave school I ain’t open a book.’

  While he spoke he was eating ground-nuts which he took from his pocket and shelled expertly. He chewed with short quick bites.

  ‘Have a few,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Haynes and took two.

  ‘Nuts is good things for men to eat,’ he observed. ‘You had lunch already?’

  ‘Otherwise I couldn’t eat these,’ Haynes said. ‘They would ruin my appetite.’

  ‘You different to me. I not going to eat till near two, but I will eat four cents nuts and roast corn, I’ll suck orange, eat fig, mango, anything, the whole morning; and that wouldn’t prevent me eating my regular.’

  He laughed, shelled two nuts at once, blew the thin skin away, threw the kernels into his mouth and walked over to the window to look at something or someone in the street.

  ‘Ella is coming,’ he said. ‘You have a nice, fat cook, man. The first day she come here to ask about the room I like her, though I didn’t know who she was. Mrs. Rouse tell me you say she does everything for you, and you wouldn’t let her go.’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, guard your property. I am a man girls like, you know. If she fall in my garden I wouldn’t have to lock the gate to keep her in.’

  He laughed so heartily that Haynes was compelled to summon a sickly smile and ignore the shocking insinuation.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later, Haynes,’ said Benoit, shaking hands again. ‘If you want any help in moving anything just call me.’

  Chapter Four

  On the Saturday evening Haynes, his back to the yard, sat by the window smoking. The first exhilaration of newness had already worn off, and he contemplated his immediate future with a lack of enthusiasm almost amounting to gloom. The room was small and irksome after the luxury of five rooms in the other house; particularly one of the book-shelves was four inches too short to fit in with the other against the only available side. It stuck out at an offensive angle. From the open doors of the kitchen came an unwavering smell of baking and cooking. One door was directly opposite the door of his room, and so many people were up and down and taking a glance at him that he often had to keep his own door closed, a grave hardship in a tropical climate. And there were more people to come yet. In the room next to his was a Miss Atwell, who was in defensive confinement. She was kept by a Mr. Cross, who had not turned up for weeks, and Miss Atwell consequently owed. She owed rent, she owed for other things, and was in fear of seizure. So she preferred to stay inside, keeping door and window tightly closed, running a serious risk of suffocation in the terrible heat. He had been taken by Maisie’s face the first day, but whenever he looked at her she was looking at him and smiling, which discouraged him. Also she had a cold and spat voluptuously. Philomen, the Indian servant, who lived in the house, was fat and brown and pleasant-looking. Her masses of straight black hair banded down by a white cloth gave her a picturesque effect. She exuded good nature and smiled amicably, so that Haynes felt as much at ease with her as with Mrs. Rouse. But on the whole he wished he had not decided so precipitously.

  Ella interrupted his reflections.

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  ‘Good night, Ella.’

  But she did not go.

  Haynes swung his chair round.

  ‘What is wrong, Ella?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. Good night, sir.’

  Well, it wasn’t Ella’s fault. She had acted for the best.

  In the kitchen the lights were bright. Everything had been washed and cleaned and put away, for tomorrow there would be no cakes to make. Supper would soon be ready. Sometimes the family ate in the dining-room, but more often they snatched their meals in the kitchen. Tonight, however, a large white cloth had been spread on the kitchen table. Wilhelmina was washing dishes at the sink. Philomen was out, probably buying the groceries for the Sunday cooking. Benoit was nowhere to be seen. John, the cake-seller, and Aucher were sitting on a little bench which faced the room, Aucher replying in monosyllables to John’s casual remarks.

  Aucher was as taciturn as he looked and inspired a vague respect. John was quite unremarkable except for a prevailing simplicity of disposition and a fondness for cast-off garments.

  Suddenly Maisie rushed round the house calling:

  ‘Sonny! Sonny! Look, your mother come.’

  Mrs. Rouse came to the kitchen door. Sonny, who was in the kitchen waiting for his supper, dashed out, held hands with Maisie, and the two of them ran round the house to the front.

  ‘Our lodger has come, Mr. Haynes,’ said Mrs. Rouse.

  ‘Everybody seems very glad.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Rouse. ‘We all like her. She is a nurse, you know, so that if you get sick you have somebody on the spot to attend to you.’

  ‘I hope I don’t get ill,’ said Haynes, for want of something to say rather than with any intention of mischief.

  ‘Oh, Mr. Haynes! I didn’t mean that. Nothing like that must happen to you while you are here,’ she said.

  The dining-room door opened and a short, thin, fair woman in a nurse’s uniform came down the steps, her son holding on to one hand. Behind came Maisie with two or three parcels in her arms. The nurse went to the kitchen door, held Mrs. Rouse’s face in her hand
s and kissed her twice.

  ‘So you are back, nurse?’

  ‘Yes, Ma Rouse. And how you all pass the time? Everybody well?’

  ‘Everybody. Come in.’

  Maisie had entered the kitchen by the other door and was opening the parcels at a table while John and Wilhelmina and even the solemn-faced Aucher crowded round her.

  ‘Come to the light, Sonny. Let me see you well.’ It was the nurse’s voice. ‘How is mother’s child? Come and kiss me again, child.

  ‘How did he behave, Ma Rouse?’

  ‘He behaved well, nurse,’ said Mrs. Rouse.

  ‘Good. There’s a kiss for that. Come and see what I have brought for you.’

  ‘But Maisie! What do you mean? Opening everything the nurse bring like that!’

  Maisie danced gaily outside.

  ‘The nurse bring rum and wine and cherry brandy and cake. And garters for me and stockings for Mrs. Rouse and cloth to make a suit for Sonny; and a tie for Mr. Benoit … And when she opened her purse to pay the taxi-man was only notes. Big times!’

  This she said partly to John and Aucher, who had followed her outside, and partly to nobody in particular.