Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
At about nine o’clock, however, under the stimulus of a few drinks, the burden of life, for them at any rate, grew rather lighter, and as usual they became a little ‘fresh,’ and she was made the butt of their friendly irony and arrogance. As usual she was up to them, and was seldom at a loss for a reply to throw back over her shoulder as she got them their drinks.
If anything had happened to Ella, then, which made her a different Ella to the Ella who had served in the same bar, months back, when Mr. Eccles had not appeared on the scene, and she was calmly living her daily life with Bob as an eternal fixture, it was not observable by the gentlemen, or the Governor, or the Mrs., or any of the staff.
And, indeed, what had taken place in those dull months? Nothing, really, whatever – nothing out of the common lot of any girl in London, if you came to think about it. She had had an elderly admirer, (what girl has not been in such a dilemma at some time or another?) about whom she had not been able fully to make up her mind. Nothing in that. A connection of hers had been ill – a stepfather whom she disliked, and there had been domestic troubles. Nothing in that. She had been depressed by the fogs and the cold – who had not? She had looked for another job, but it hadn’t come to anything – an ordinary enough occurrence. She had had what the gentlemen in the bar would have called a slight ‘crush’ on the waiter. But that was not the first time a girl had a ‘crush’ on a man she worked with. You soon get over that. No – seen from an outsider’s point of view she was lucky if she had nothing more to grumble about, and the gentlemen committed no error in tact in joking with her and teasing her just as usual.
And on no occasion did she give the smallest suspicion that she required special treatment – and indeed it never flashed across her mind that she did. She was too busy, among other things. A little while before closing time the crowded bar became rather more hilarious than usual, owing to the rambling absurdities of an exceptionally intoxicated little man, who had been drinking himself to stupefaction under Ella’s chiding yet friendly eyes. He liked Ella, he said. And she was a damned clever girl, too. ‘Exactly,’ he said when she said anything. She was clever. Ella had often found that it was not difficult to acquire a reputation for cleverness with those who were drunk, for she had only to say the most commonplace things, for which they in their fuddled and groping minds had been long searching, and, lo, they were proclaimed with vinous rapture as shrewd, cutting, universal, solemn, awe-inspiring verities. Thus to-night she had happened to remark that too many cooks sometimes spoiled the broth. ‘Exactly!’ said the bemused man, and later became so silly that he was led away amid laughter, still protesting that she was Clever.
Then came closing time, and the new man, in stentorian tones, amazing in so small a man, began to call ‘All out!’ ‘All right, but you’ll have to hurry,’ she whispered conspiratorially, as she always did, to her favourites who begged for a last drink. And ‘Good-night, Sir!’ she cried, ‘Good-night,’ and wiped the bar and tidied up roughly (ready for next morning) in the same old way. And she felt the draught coming in from the opened doors, as she always did.
‘Good-night, Ella!’ ‘Good-night, Sir!’ ‘Good-night.’ And at last they had all gone, as they always did, and the doors were being bolted in silence.
‘Cheery lot to-night,’ said the Governor, coming through the bar, and ‘Yes,’ said Ella, though she really thought they were just about the same as ever. This was one of the Governor’s pet sayings at the end of the day, and she always answered agreeably in the same way – a sort of blessing, as the house settled down in a peaceful hush to its normal and anticipated repose.
But at about half-past ten that night, John, the new waiter at ‘The Midnight Bell,’ coming up tired to bed after a hard day’s work in the job he had taken on, listened, and heard the barmaid weeping.
THE END
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Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky