Read Love, Let Me Not Hunger for Free Online

defiant and independent.
    Now the man looked again. The cold electric light had drained her of any colour. For all of her toughness her lips were full and soft, and there was something childish about them. He said, “Would you care for a cuppa coffee? Perhaps you’d join me in something to eat?”
    The invitation appeared to entail no commitment. Rose was both cold and hungry. She said, “Okay,” and then remembered to add, “Thanks.”
    “We’ll have to walk a bit,” he said. “There’s a lorry drivers’ cafe towards the end of the town that keeps open at this hour.” He took the girl’s suitcase from her and marched off, she keeping pace by his side.
    As they passed another street light she saw the bird, which surprised but did not alarm her. She had seen so many strange things in her life that if a gentleman wanted to walk the streets at night or go for his dinner with a bird sitting on his shoulder, that was his business, particularly if he was going to treat.
    They walked along then, side by side in silence, down the main street leading out of the town until the houses began to thin out and they came to an all-night petrol station and garage to which there was a small cafe attached. A number of lorries with trailers were drawn up there, and next to it was a car park.
    They went into the cafe and sat down at one of the white marble-topped tables, and for the first time the man saw the girl in the light and noted that she was pale and thin, but there was an attraction for him in the boniness, in the swirl of reddish hair showing beneath the shabby beret, and in the lonely poverty of her. He asked, “What’s your name?”
    “Rose.”
    “Rose what?”
    “Just Rose.”
    “How long since you’ve eaten, Rose?”
    She gave him a straight answer. “I had a cuppa this morning.”
    He got up and leaned over the table to help her out of her coat. The bird on his shoulder suddenly began to scream and scold and flap its wings, and then made to fly at the girl’s face. The man reached up and seized it, saying, “Come back here and shut up, you black bastard!” He felt into his side pocket and produced a rubber band therefrom which he twisted three times around its beak, effectively silencing it. He then tossed it over in the direction of an empty coat hanger on the wall and said, “Stay there!” The bird obeyed him, flew, and perched on the wooden peg and regarded them resentfully. “Raffles is inclined to be jealous,” he remarked.
    Rose repeated, “Raffles!” And the name brought something to her mind, something she could not at first catch and then did—the poster out in front of the theatre and the grotesque clown. She pointed at the man and said, “You’re—”
    “Jackdaw Williams, at your service.”
    Rose stared at him without self-consciousness. “But you—”
    “—look ever so much better without make-up, I hope you were going to say,” he concluded for her.
    Rose smiled and said, “I didn’t recognise you.”
    Williams merely nodded and said, “Shall we start off with hot soup? What after that? Would you like eggs? Maybe you want to have something a bit more solid.” He inspected the gravy-stained menu. “There’s roast beef on.” He looked at her and she assented.
    He gave the order, and while they waited for the soup to appear he asked, “Where were you going?”
    She replied, “To the railway station.”
    “To sit up all night, eh?”
    “How did you know?”
    He regarded her out of the drawn down lids of his eyes. “Well, for one thing,” he replied, “there are no more trains out of here tonight, and for another—I know.”
    When the soup came with two slabs of greyish bread, she broke the slices into it and commenced to eat voraciously.
    Williams said, “Eat slow, or you’ll chuck it all up later.”
    She did slow down somewhat, but said, “Its all right, I’m used to it. I’m hungry.”
    He said, “I know. Hungry one day—two days—fill up the next. The