How Beautiful Are Thy Feet Read online

  ‘Take down this ad, please,’ the accountant spoke into the receiver. ‘Good-o.’

  He turned to Miss Trueman, ‘Now I come to think of it, he is like a boot — a blucher boot.’

  He bent to the phone. ‘Yes … Are you right? … Professional Engagements, Girl for Office Work. Eighteen to nineteen years. Must be smart. Apply, Modern Shoe Co., Hoddle St, Collingwood … Yes, that’s right … Good-bye …’

  ‘Another new girl,’ said Miss Trueman.

  3

  It rained during the night. It had just stopped when the accountant gave a last look round his room before leaving for work.

  He paid seven and sixpence a week for his room. The house was only a few hundred yards distance from the factory. It was occupied by a woman and her three sons. Two of them were out of work. The woman did piece work for a shirt manufacturer, folding shirts after picking loose threads from the seams. She worked till late at night. Sometimes she earned twelve shillings for the week in this way.

  The accountant’s room was the best in the house. In one corner was a large, oval table. On the table was a kerosene case lying on its side. On the top of the box was a kettle. Inside were two aluminium saucepans, a collection of odd cups, plates and cutlery. Under the table stood a box full of briquettes.

  There was a mantelpiece above the fire place It bore a collection of bowls, plates and ornaments. A naked dancer of white, blown glass, poised on one foot, with both arms flung upwards; a porcelain Naiad, dancing with curved back, holding pipes to her lips; a Lalique figure of a kneeling woman; an example of Mexican pottery …

  The bowls and plates bore gay designs. The plates rested against the wall between several studio portraits of pretty girls. The portraits bore inscriptions, ‘Here’s tae ye’; ‘Your friend’; ‘With love’; ‘Yours’, and then a name. A chest of drawers beside the window was laden with books.

  The mirror was hidden by piles of books. Besides the chest of drawers, on the floor, was a enormous green bottle.

  The solitary window opened to an alley. Couples often kissed and clung to each other in the alley.

  Sometimes, returning home late, the accountant would lean out of the window and offer them a cigarette. Once he invited a couple to climb through and share a crayfish and have a drink with him.

  Sometimes the girls he brought to his room objected to them. They said, ‘Aren’t they awful’, or, ‘Just listen to them’. But the accountant never saw anything to take exception to in their actions or their conversation. He liked them. He defended them. He felt akin to them.

  He stood stroking his chin and looking thoughtfully at the small top drawer of the chest of drawers. He swung over and opened it. He rummaged among the contents. His expression changed. He drew forth half a cake of chocolate. He broke off a piece and put it in his mouth. The remainder he placed in his pocket.

  For breakfast, he had drunk a cup of bonox and eaten an egg which he had dropped into his shaving mug before pouring in the boiling water. He had then shaved. By the time he had finished shaving it was ‘near enough’. He generally finished off with a piece of chocolate, if he had not eaten it all the night before.

  He looked at his watch. It was seven fifteen. His ‘early morning’. He hobbled down the passage, his eyes on the floor. In narrow places he could not swing his crutches. It was difficult walking. There was a stand half-way down the passage with an aspidistra. He swung one crutch in and around it. His shoulders rocked.

  He closed the door behind him and drew a deep breath. The air was sweet from the night’s rain. He lit a cigarette. There was no wind. Smoke in my eyes this morning. With movements of his lips, he transferred the cigarette to the corner of his mouth. The cigarette projected at an angle. The smoke would go past his ear, each swing forward. He had to keep the cigarette in his mouth. His hands had to retain their hold on the grips.

  He sprang from the pavement and swung down the centre of the road. It gave him more room to swing his crutches. He did not have to watch people approach him nor calculate the length and timing of his jumps so that, at the critical stage, when they drew level, his crutches would be firm on the ground. At this stage of his progression more space was available for a person to pass, than when his crutches were moving through the air in a forward swing. He did not often strike his crutches against the legs of those who passed. He had acquired a sense of proximity. The tips of his crutches swerved from objects that would bring him down. His crutches had become part of him. Sometimes he ran his hand up and down the wood in a gesture of affection.

  A Bottle-o, leaning forward over the bar joining the shafts of his small cart, was struggling up the rise towards him.

  He had a pliable mouth, one corner of which rose towards his left eye when he made his call. His face was wrinkled. To amplify his ‘bottle-o’, he raised a curved hand to the side of his mouth. The cry was young and pure and so entirely mismated with its originator that it seemed a separate creation. His eyes were quick and bright.

  He stopped for a rest. He pushed his hat to the back of his head and scratched within his mop of hair.

  ‘It’s a bastard,’ he said to the accountant.

  ‘Yes, it is a bastard,’ said the accountant pleasantly, resting on his crutches. ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ he pulled out his case.

  The Bottle-o took one with dirty fingers.

  The accountant struck a match, and, within cupped hands, held it to the cigarette. A crust of cemented dust from old sheds formed a ridge along each of the Bottle-o’s lips, dividing the dry, outer curve from the pink moistness within.

  He drew a breath of smoke with a great satisfaction.

  ‘How’s business?’ asked the accountant.

  ‘I’m not doing too good. The people around ’ere don’t booze like they useter.’

  The accountant was interested. He wondered why the people round here didn’t booze like they used to. He looked at the cramped houses with their dirty, wooden walls, and thought about the people who lived in them. He had a vision of black bottles tilted to mouths, of clothless deal tables and crying children.

  He smiled. ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘No bloody money,’ said the Bottle-o.

  ‘That’s a fact,’ replied the accountant.

  ‘Well, I must be goin’,’ said the Bottle-o. ‘Goin’ to be a nice day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hooroo.’

  ‘Hooroo.’

  The accountant passed the garage where he kept his car. He had learned to drive with the aid of special controls, fixed so that they could be worked with his ‘good’ leg. He did not use the car for going to work.

  He turned into the main street. He was among them … They walked quickly … they were everywhere … a stream of factory workers … he was among the eyes … he was alone among the eyes … girls walking quickly … with unbuttoned coats, walking quickly … The sides of overcoats floating outspread … like wings, partly folded … bent heads and short, quick steps … lifted heads … and long striding legs … with creased stockings … with slim, smooth stockings … clean frocks, just ironed … filthy frocks, and old stains … walking quickly … high heels tapping on the pavement … an endless stream of tapping heels … and those who ran with lifted heels, their soles zip-zipping on asphalt and passed … Oo-oo! wait on … and caught up to friends, panting … Why didn’t you wait? … and drew a deep breath … Phew! I ran all the way from the station.

  And the youths among them … everywhere the youths and the men among them … youths with belts around loose-hipped, grey trousers … soiled, grey trousers of flannel .. with old coats … hurrying … hatless youths with thick hair … with hats on the side of their head … men with cracked, leather bags … with suits grease-polished … talking loudly … silent … looking fixedly at the legs of girls ahead of them … at the jerking buttocks of girls ahead of them … walking quickly … into the shadow of factories … into black doors … into the hungry mouths of monsters … seized with shriek
s of triumph … the whistles … the seven-thirty whistles … the van of an army of whistles … shooting up from around them … loud … short and staccato … long, drawn … faintly from distances … lost behind belching black smoke curling from tall chimneys … the whistles … hurry …

  At the factory door, the accountant paused and turned to watch a little girl and her brother passing.

  The brother kept his eyes concentrated on the footpath a few yards ahead of him. He held his arms apart from his sides and smiled with delight. He was only two years old and his little sister was taking him for a walk as far as the dairy.

  She walked a little ahead of him. Every now and then she turned and encouraged him with words and gestures. The hem of his ragged outer garment had been torn and a trailing piece dragged behind him on the wet pavement. It was sodden with water. Sometimes, when he stopped and looked back to ascertain the distance he had travelled, he trod on it with his little flat shoes and the squeezed mud and water made a tiny, circular ridge on the path.

  The elbows were out of his coat. It had no buttons, but was held in place with safety pins. The one fastening the neck was undone. His little sister’s socks were concertinad just above her shoes. Her legs were dirty. He short dress ended half-way between her knees and her hips. Her legs above the knee were just as thin as her calves. She skipped and twirled and hummed a tune as she led the little boy on his adventure.

  His progress was very deliberate, and the Pied-piper-like encouragement of his sister did not hasten his valiant step. Sometimes, when seeking the acclaim he felt was his due, he raised his eyes from the pavement and looked at the little girl expectantly. When he did this, the little girl clucked encouragingly and repeated. ‘That’s a good boy, Jim. Come on, now. That’s a good boy.’

  After such expressions of confidence, the little boy did not look so often, with irresolute eyes, at the enormous distance stretching between him and the rickety front gate of the house they had just left. He felt a great faith in the little girl.

  The little girl suddenly realised that, besides being engaged upon a milk-purchasing expedition, she was also taking her only brother on his first social visit to the dairyman.

  She bustled up to the little boy, with sounds of concern at the sight of the unfastened safety pin. She knelt before him on the wet pavement, and, placing the safety pin in her mouth, she pulled the tattered coat more decorously above him and fastened it with pats of the hand and soft, maternal sounds of reproach and affection. The little boy took this manifestation of concern at his appearance with the utmost seriousness. He bent his head and watched the fingers of his sister improving the arrangement of his garment. While effecting such alterations as were satisfactory to her, she murmured: ‘You must look nice, dear. We must fasten you up.’ She then rose and eyed him with her head on one side. The little boy kept his eyes on her face, anxiously awaiting a sign of approval. ‘Now then,’ said the little girl, holding out her hand, and grasping it, the little boy walked solemnly beside her, the draggled hem of his coat dragging in the mud.

  The accountant entered the office.

  Mary walked in, carrying a book called White Sin, by S. Andrew Wood.

  She placed it on the desk while she took off her hat. The accountant glanced at it.

  She said, ‘It’s George’s. His mother gave it to him.’

  She gazed at herself in a hand mirror. She looked intently at an imagined pimple, pressing the spot with her fingers.

  ‘I love books. No one ever gives me books for a present. I read an awful lot, too. I wish people would give me books.’

  ‘George’s mother gave it to George; did she?’ said the accountant. ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh! just a present. She says George “helps” her a lot. She says she “relies” on him. Sometimes, she puts her arm around his neck and says, “You help me such a lot, George.” She’s funny, isn’t she? George just puts up with it.’

  ‘And how was George, last night?’ asked the accountant.

  ‘Oh! he’s well. A friend of his is over from Tasmania.’

  She commenced dusting.

  ‘He invited him out to his place for the evening, but, instead of bringing him to his place, he brought him to our place.

  There’ll be another row, I suppose. His mother says he comes to our place too often. She says he’ll wear out his welcome and that.’

  Mary swung a chair from its position against a table and placed it on top of another chair in the centre of the room. She commenced sweeping beneath the tables.

  ‘But, if he’s in love with you …’ suggested the accountant.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I say. Last night, I heard a bike bell ring.

  Mum was ironing clothes, piles and piles of them — you know. When I went out, George had this chap with him and he introduced me. I thought this is funny — you know. He brought him in then and they stopped till eleven. I made savouries — you know … biscuits with round pieces of tomato and bits of sardine in the centre. They looked nice. George took him to the station afterwards. When he came back he said, “I wasn’t going to bring him home to our place. Not on your life … With her there … She’d get narked again. She doesn’t like other chaps about with me. Not at home. She says it spoils our friendship, other men about.”’

  Mary stood erect. She stayed her sweeping. ‘Isn’t she silly?’

  The phone rang. Mary bent to the table, one arm outstretching, holding the broom. ‘The Modern Shoe Company here … Yes … Who …? Hold on …’

  She placed the receiver on the table and said to the accountant: ‘Pat. O’Connor wants to know if he can start yet.’

  ‘Ring up and ask Davis.’

  Mary pressed the buzzer connected with the clicking room. She spoke into the receiver, ‘Mr Davis, Pat. O’Connor wants to know if you want him to start … all right, Mr Davis.’

  She turned to the phone. ‘There is no work, yet. Mr Davis is sorry to have to keep telling you … yes … Good-bye.’

  She went on sweeping. After a while she said, ‘George was engaged once.’ The accountant’s back was to her, yet she spoke as if she had averted her face.

  ‘Was he really?’ said the accountant, looking up, interested.

  ‘Yes. It was up in the country. George had a lot of papers and things in his room. I helped him to clear some of them out.

  There was a lot of letters from her. She was always saying she was lonely and that sort of thing — you know. He was sorry for her. So he got engaged to her. It was really out of pity … to take her away from the place and that sort of thing. He didn’t love her. He said she was thrilled to bits, but he wasn’t.’

  She was silent awhile, sweeping slowly.

  The accountant stroked his chin, and gazed at a calendar picture of the Duke of Gloucester.

  Mary drew a breath. ‘George said she had sex appeal,’ then, with an embarrassed little laugh, ‘What is that? I mean how do you make it?’

  ‘Ah! that’s the question,’ said the accountant, leaning back in his swivel chair and looking at the roof. ‘We all want to know that. Its worst enemies are corsets and woollen singlets.’

  ‘Coo!’ exclaimed Mary. She looked ahead of her in silence, softly biting a finger nail. ‘I suppose you would have to be passionate,’ she said, wistfully.

  ‘I daresay that would help,’ said the accountant. He was thinking of Biddy Freeman and their meeting that night.

  ‘George says I’m not passionate enough. I can’t kiss back. I always think, I wonder is he laughing at me. You act sort of silly when you kiss back — you know. My girl friend says you should just put your lips near theirs, then draw away, sort of. Keep doing it. She says it brings them on.’

  The accountant looked at her quickly, ‘Brings them on,’ he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard aright.

  ‘Yes — you know … makes them want to kiss you a lot.’ She looked at him simply.

  ‘Oh!’ said the accountant, looking at the Duke again. ‘It would certainly do th
at. I can quite imagine the effect on a man confronted with a girl acting like a hen drinking.’ He laughed as with secret enjoyment. ‘By jove, I can! Would it bring him on? Good Lord!’

  ‘This girl used to ask George to take her out, when he lived up there. George didn’t mind. I don’t think that’s right, do you, girls asking men to take them out? Shouldn’t it always be the man that does that?’

  ‘Not now,’ said the accountant. ‘Mark your man and go for him. It’s an all-in scramble. Ask him to take you out if he doesn’t ask you. It all depends on the way you do it.’

  Miss Trueman entered. ‘What depends on what?’ she asked the accountant.

  ‘We were just discussing your hat and the way you wear it,’ he said, looking hard at the shallow-crowned, brown felt, resting jauntily on her soft hair. ‘We both agree you must be French. You carry it perfectly.’

  Miss Trueman smiled into his eyes. I’ll bet half these stories about his carryings on are true enough. She said: ‘Do you know there are half a dozen girls waiting out in front to see you.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the accountant, sitting erect. ‘I forgot about that advertisement. I’ll see them in Mr Fulsham’s office. Mary, you send them in one at a time. Give me a scribbling pad.’

  ‘There’s one smart looking girl out there wearing our shoes,’ said Miss Trueman.

  ‘Two marks for her straight away,’ said the accountant. He raised himself on to his crutches. He heard Mary at the door.

  ‘Will the first one here, come through, please?’

  He swung into Mr Fulsham’s office.

  He had interviewed six girls, when Freda Beveridge and her brother entered. The brother was a man about thirty. He was well dressed and confident. He smiled and held his hand across the table and said, ‘Mr McCormack?’

  The accountant, grasping the hand and looking into his eyes, said ‘Yes.’ He thought, ‘This bird must know me. I wonder who he is.’

  ‘Mr Surrey, of Surrey & Carl, told me to see you direct, Mr McCormack.’