So now everything was in the bass. She tested the weight, but it wasn’t very heavy, after all. The tying could be left, for there was sure to be something that she had forgotten. She went down and sat by the fire which was nearly out because the half hundredweight of coal was nearly gone and would have to last till Monday. At eleven Mrs. Royer came in with three-pennyworth of chips, which they shared, eating them straight from the newspaper. Flo liked them except for the grease that clogged her fingers.
“Wonder if there’ll be a chip-shop where you’re goin’?” Mrs. Royer murmured, indifferent after a gossipy day. She wiped her fingers on her skirt down her thigh, feeling too indolent to reach to her stockings.
Flo without thinking rinsed when she went to run more water into the kettle.
“To-morrer night, where will you be?”
“I don’t know,” said Flo; after that they scarcely spoke till they were both about to get into bed. Flo, though usually she slept by the window, asked if she could be in the middle.
“Warmest place, but I’ll give it to you . . .,” said her mother, resigned. Nevertheless, she was asleep in less than ten minutes, and began a series of little snoring bouts; she would snore louder and louder, and then unexpectedly her whole body would jerk and the snores would end abruptly, though only to begin within a minute or two and work up to the climax once more. Flo had known of this previously, but she had never realized how regular and peculiar it was; and the next night there would be no more of this snoring and twitching going on beside her. This was the end of their intimacy. She lay and stared at the blank of gloom that was the ceiling and wondered whether even yet she might draw back; announce firmly in the morning that she was not going to go away. Why should she?
At half-past eleven Ivy came in, but idled about downstairs till after midnight. She came up with a candle carelessly held so that grease dripped and congealed in long icicles. She noticed the bass and Flo’s costume ready over the cane chair.
“Lucky devil . . . wish it was me,” she said gruffly, seeing Flo open-eyed.
Mrs. Royer jerked into silence but did not wake.
“I’d sooner stay,” said Flo.
“Don’t be a wet hen. What is there in this hole?” asked Ivy, pulling things off and dropping them anywhere round the bed foot. “Anywhere’d be better than here. God, if I got half a chance . . .”
She flopped into bed and curled her back so that Flo felt her notched spine.
“What’s up; had a row with Charlie?” Flo asked gently.
“The squirt!” and Ivy lay loggishly and would say no more.
Flo, touched by her companions’ warmth, was aware of their utter indifference. On the bare wood floor the alarm clock ticked harshly and busily, keeping to its job in the manner of a businessman with no time to waste. Above the roofs the periodic boom of the Town Hall clock told of the new day’s coming. Flo, too unsettled inside herself to sleep, dozed fitfully. Then the gratering running of the first tram along Duke Street, a hundred yards eastward, told that day was begun—five o’clock. The alarm burst so suddenly into its crow that Flo, who had been waiting expectant, started spasmodically; the others lay on unmoving. The clock set off on its ticking job again, as if nothing had happened, and the steady snoring crescendo started towards yet another climax.
“Time,” said Flo, putting her hand on Ivy’s shoulder. And it was as if the smooth skin there was magnetic. The hand closed; and after the hand the body was drawn, so that for a moment they lay close incurved together. “The last time,” whispered Flo in a sudden access of love.