Hurrying a little as she went up the steps, Mrs. Hubbard inserted her latch key into the door of 26 Hickory Road. Just as the door opened, a big young man with fiery red hair ran up the steps behind her.
"Hullo, Ma," he said, for in such fashion did Len Bateson usually address her. He was a friendly soul, with a cockney accent and mercifully free from any kind of inferiority complex. "Been out gallivanting?"
"I've been out to tea, Mr. Bateson. Don't delay me now, I'm late."
"I cut up a lovely corpse today," said Len. "Smashing!"
"Don't be so horrid, you nasty boy. A lovely corpse, indeed! The idea. You make me feel quite squeamish." Len Bateson laughed, and the hall echoed the sound in a great Ha ha.
"Nothing to Celia," he said. "I went along to the Dispensary. 'Come to tell you about a corpse,' I said. She went as white as a sheet and I thought she was going to pass out. What do you think of that, Mother Hubhard?"
"I don't wonder at it," said Mrs. Hubbard. "The idea! Celia probably thought you meant a real one."
"What do you mean-a real one? what do you think our corpses are? Synthetic?"
A thin young man with long untidy hair strolled out of a room on the right, said in a waspish way: "Oh, it's only you. I thought it was at least a posse of strong men. The voice is but the voice of one man, but the volume is as the volume of ten."
"Hope it doesn't get on your nerves, I'm sure."
"Not more than usual," said Nigel Chapman and went back again.
"Our delicate flower," said Len.
"Now don't you two scrap," said Mrs. Hubbard. "Good temper, that's what I like, and a bit of give and take." The big young man grinned down at her affectionately.
"I don't mind our Nigel, Ma," he said.
A girl coming down the stairs at that moment said: "Oh, Mrs. Hubbard, Mrs. Nicoletis is in her room and said she would like to see you as soon as you got back." Mrs. Hubbard sighed and started up the stairs.
The tall dark girl who had given the message stood against the wall to let her pass.
Len Bateson, divesting himself of his mackintosh, said, "What's up, Valerie? Complaints of our behavior to be passed on by Mother Hubbard in due course?" The girl shrugged her thin elegant shoulders.
She came down the stairs and across the hall.
"This place gets more like a madhouse every day," she said over her shoulder.
She went through the door at the right as she spoke.
She moved with that insolent effortless grace that is common to those who have been professional mannequins.
26 Hickory Road was in reality two houses, 24 and 26 semidetached. They had been thrown into one on the ground floor, so that there was both a communal sitting room and a large dining room on the ground floor, as well as two cloakrooms and a small office towards the back of the house. Two separate staircases led to the floors above which remained detached. The girls occupied bedrooms in the right hand side of the house, and the men on the other, the original No. 24.
Mrs. Hubbard went upstairs loosening the collar of her coat. She sighed as she turned in the direction of Mrs. Nicoletis's room.
"In one of her states again, I suppose," she muttered.
She tapped on the door and entered.
Mrs. Nicoletis's sitting room was kept very hot. The big electric fire had all its bars turned on and the window was tightly shut. Mrs. Nicoletis was sitting smoking on a sofa surrounded by a lot of rather dirty silk and velvet sofa cushions. She was a big dark woman still good looking, with a bad tempered mouth and enormous brown eyes.
"Ah! So there you are," Mrs. Nicoletis made it sound like an accusation.
Mrs. Hubbard, true to her Lemon blood, was unperturbed.
"Yes," she said tartly, "I'm here. I was told you wanted to see me specially."
"Yes, indeed I do. It is monstrous, no less, monstrous!"
"What's monstrous?"
"These bills! Your accounts!" Mrs. Nicoletis produced a sheaf of papers from beneath a cushion in the manner of a successful conjurer.
"What are we feeding these miserable students on? Foie gras and quails? Is this the Ritz? Who do they think they are, these students?"
"Young people with a healthy appetite," said Mrs. Hubbard. "They get a good breakfast and a decent evening meal-plain food but nourishing. It all works out very economically."
"Economically? Economically? You dare to say it to me? When I am being ruined?"
"You make a very substantial profit, Mrs. Nicoletis, out of this place. For students, the rates are on the high side."
"But am I not always full? Do I ever have a vacancy that is not applied for three times over? Am I not sent students by the British Council, by London University Lodging Board-by the Embassies-by the French Lycée? Are not there always three applications for every vacancy?"
"That's very largely because the meals here are appetizing and sufficient. Young people must be properly fed."
"Bah! These totals are scandalous. It is that Italian cook and her husband. They swindle you over the food."
"Oh no, they don't, Mrs. Nicoletis. I can assure you that no foreigner is going to put anything over on me."
"Then it is you yourself-you who are robbing me." Mrs. Hubbard remained unperturbed.
"I can't allow you to say things like that," she said in the voice an old fashioned Nanny might have used to a particularly truculent charge. "It isn't a - nice thing to do, and one of these days it will land you in trouble."
"Ah!" Mrs. Nicoletis threw the sheaf of bills dramatically up in the air whence they fluttered to the ground in all directions. Mrs. Hubbard bent and picked them up, pursing her lips.
"You enrage me," shouted her employer.
"I daresay," said Mrs. Hubbard, "but it's bad for you, you know, getting all worked up. Tempers are bad for the blood pressure."
"You admit that these totals are higher than those of last week?"
"Of course they are. There's been some very good cut price stuff going at Lampson's Stores. I've taken advantage of it. Next week's total will be below average." Mrs. Nicoletis looked sulky.
"You explain everything so plausibly."
"There," Mrs Hubbard put the bills in a neat pile on the table. "Anything else?"
"The American girl, Sally Finch, she talks of leaving-I do not want her to go. She is a Fulbright scholar. She will bring here other Fulbright scholars. She must not leave."
"What's her reason for leaving?" Mrs. Nicoletis humped monumental shoulders.
"How can I remember? It was not genuine. I could tell that. I always know." Mrs. Hubbard nodded thoughtfully. She was inclined to believe Mrs. Nicoletis on that point.
"Sally hasn't said anything to me," she said.
"But you will talk to her?"
"Yes, of course."
"And if it is these coloured students, these Indians, these Negresses-then they can all go, you understand? The colour bar, it means everything to these Americans, and for me it is the Americans that matter-as for these coloured ones-Scram!" She made a dramatic gesture.
"Not while I'm in charge," said Mrs. Hubbard coldly. "And anyway, you're wrong. There's no feeling of that sort here amongst the students, and Sally certainly isn't like that. She and Mr. Akibombo have lunch together quite often, and nobody could be blacker than he is."
"Then it is Communists-you know what the Americans are about Communists. Nigel Chapman now-he is a Communist."
"I doubt it."
"Yes, Yes. You should have heard what he was saying the other evening."
"Nigel will say anything to annoy people. He is very tiresome that way."
"You know them all so well. Dear Mrs. Hubbard, you are wonderful! I say to myself again and agwhat should I do without Mrs. Hubbard? I rely on you utterly. You are a wonderful wonderful woman."
"After the powder, the jam," said Mrs. Hubbard.
"What is that?"
"Don't worry. I'll do what I can." She left the room cutting short a gushing speech of thanks.
Muttering to herself "Wasting my time-what a maddening woman she is!" she hurried along the passage and into her own sitting room.