“Here, take these as well,” said Mrs. Mawson, abruptly holding the garden bunch out. “I’ve plenty, and they’re not sellin’.”
“Oh, but you know they will; it’s early,” protested Flo, though strangely tempted.
“Early, nothing; take them,” ordered Mrs. Mawson. “I know what I can give better than you, don’t I? You’ll be telling me my own business next. Here’s a customer; I can tell by the looks of ’em. Watch me sell . . .”
Flo stood at the stall corner and toyed with the flowers. In the wild bunch there were thirty or forty all tied tightly together as if for companionship; but of the double daffs there were only a dozen with a piece of spruce fir and a piece of wild ivy. These flowers were deeper, egg-yolk, and the dark evergreens set them off, so that for a moment she wondered whether, after all, they weren’t the prettier.
“See,” said Mrs. Mawson, jingling coins in the pocket of her black apron. “What did I tell you? Three bunches, and no grousing, either. Them’s the sort. If I’d known you’d wanted a job, I wouldn’t have minded asking someone like her. You should ’a told me.”
“I wish I had,” said Flo. “It’s very good of you. I’ll write, if I can, sometime, if you’d like . . .”
“Yes, do. Good-bye.”
Flo went on through the market, but she was thinking too much about what was going to happen to her to feel any more interest in the stalls. She turned out at the first door and behind the Town Hall. As she was walking up to the main street she saw Sally Gore crossing with a Navy man. Sally had her hair in long swaying ringlets and was looking up at the sailor with a laugh as if she had known him for years, which Flo didn’t think likely because never before had she seen them together. But, of course, Sally always had been able to get friends anywhere. Flo held back, aware of her loneliness again; and then all at once she felt that it would be a good thing when she got away. She would be able to start fresh. Here everybody knew her, and everything about her, and didn’t bother with her; but there she wouldn’t be so . . . so . . . Well, she’d stick up for herself, as Mrs. Mawson said. And perhaps she’d find someone; and forgetting her flowers she began to look about for the kind of man that she thought she’d like to walk out with. In Duke Street she came unexpectedly into a rush, all the men and boys loosed from the shipyard, jostling and mostly jovial because of pay-day and the afternoon’s freedom before them. They took no notice of her, and to avoid being bumped into she had to stand against the front of the Town Hall. Most of the men were oil-smudged and dirty, their caps greasy, overalls tattered. Flo was used to these things and looked only for faces, but talking and grinning they went past so fast that there was no time to choose. They were a blur and she gave up, and in less than five minutes the younger men were past and there were only the less eager ones, all probably married. She wondered where Jack Oates was; Jack who had gone to sea, nobody knew exactly how or where. She remembered how he had been truant from school for two days and then when they went out for afternoon playtime he had been there behind the shelter and had boasted about the job he had got. After that none of them had seen him for more than nine months till again he had turned up at the school gates, but this time he had been hardly recognisable, he had grown so and broadened. It wasn’t this, however, that had impressed Flo particularly, but the carefree change in him; he seemed so reliant and dependable that all at once she had felt that she wanted to hold his hand and have him look after her. Only, of course, he had not taken any notice of her. She had stood disregarded and seen him go off with five of the eldest boys, and the only thing that she had to be thankful about was that he had ignored Sally Gore and all the other girls as well.
Now the coming of men towards Flo had ended. Instead she was in a weaker flow of office girls and men setting across the bridges towards Barrow and Walney Islands; in the flow but not of it, because all these persons ignored her, passing, talking busily together. Most of the girls were neat and obviously satisfied with themselves, going along with their shoulders slightly swaying and high heels tapping on the smooth, worn macadam. Flo had no idea how different her own manner was; she simply went on, carrying the daffodils, not for show, but as if they were precious. Now she was clear of the buildings and on the first bridge, and a cool wind from off the bay hidden beyond the channel bend flickered the pale petals of her flowers and toyed with the crinkled trumpets. She stopped, facing the wind, looking over the heavy metal balustrade. Immediately beneath by the wharf so that she looked on it as from the top of the mast was a small coaster. The deep hold was nearly empty. Alongside were six railway trucks loaded with new crates, three feet high cubes, and she wondered what was in them and where the vessel would take them. How strange it was, she thought, that she had been at that place so often and seen so many ships and yet she had hardly any idea of where any of them went or of what they took. There was a man sitting side-saddle as it were on the ship’s counter, occasionally sending up a blue curl of smoke from a cherry-wood pipe and gazing down the water, a fatherly kind of a man, and she wished that he had been nearer, then she would have asked where the ship had been and where it had to go to. She felt vaguely sorry that she had not got to know more about the ships before . . . before now when she was leaving them.
On the far side of the channel about a hundred yards below the bridge was the new battleship which seemed to have been there for years, as if it never would be ready. Although everybody in Barrow spoke of it as the “new” battleship, Flo thought that it really looked old already and shabby. This was because of its paint, which was all shades of grey mixed with black and ochre rust-stains from bolts. Even the deck did not yet seem to be finished, and there were gaps in its edge showing against the mottled sky from where she stood, adding to the vessel’s appearance of dilapidation. To Flo it didn’t look anything like worth seven millions of pounds. If only someone had given her just a bit of all that money, she thought longingly, she wouldn’t have to be going away. What would she have done with it? For several minutes her thoughts drifted pleasantly among hats and coats and dresses that she had seen in shops on Dalton Road, and she pictured herself as pretty as a bride in the Daily Sketch which her mother occasionally brought home after she’d been charring.
This happy drift of Flo’s stopped when a stronger wind puff went searching coldly over her shoulders under her frock. She clutched the wings of her worn rabbit-skin collar together with her free hand and started on across the bridge again. Why couldn’t she have a bit of the money that was being spent on the battleship? she wondered. She’d heard them say, and it had been in the North-Western Daily Mail that the battleship had been given to Barrow to build so that they should all have something to do. But it hadn’t given her anything to do. That was why she was having to go away. Why hadn’t the battleship helped her? She looked towards it now feeling resentment, as if it’s great unsightly bulk had somehow picked her out for unfair treatment while being fair to everybody else. And then all at once she realized how foolish this thought was, and a smile shaped her lips and her rounded cheeks showed a dimple each, and she knew that she was really proud of the vessel, as everybody in Barrow was; and that she had really been looking forward to the time when it would at last be ready, a big fine sight, going off round the world for the King. Now it would probably go off without her seeing it again. She had never thought that that would happen.