Read The Dress Lodger for Free Online Page A

evening’s fire and body heat. As he sweeps, he reunites the chairs with their tables, turning them over and setting them on top to discourage the rats from climbing up.
    One by one, he wipes and sets the chairs. Here sat that shy consumptive young girl who came to drag her father home, waiting for Da to drink himself into a semblance of sobriety, or at least to get through hilarious and on to maudlin. She smiled at his jokes patiently, then with her soft gentle voice got him to crying with how he was breaking Ma’s heart, and from there it was easy enough to help him from this chair—which John Robinson now turns over—and out the door for home.
    Sweep, sweep. John Robinson moves on to the next table and collects the sugar-crusted gin glasses left by the factory girls. By the end of the evening each girl had a silk kerchief for her neck given to her by a keelman who had fallen madly in love. He’s seen it a hundred times before. Each will wear her man’s cloth like a lady wears an engagement ring, giving out the favors a hardworking fiance has the right to expect. They will be madly in love until next Saturday night, when there is a row, and the next Saturday night, when perhaps there is a bruise, and then, John Robinson suspects, the smart factory girl will give her neck kerchief back, the stupid one will wear hers to the altar.
    The proprietor of the Labour in Vain puts their glasses to soak in cold soapy water and moves on to the larger table in the back. Oliver’s four students left their newspapers behind on the table; John Robinson collects them to read and to line the windows upstairs. They seemed more nervous than usual tonight, he thinks, sweeping up the hulls from the sunflower seeds Bietler obsessively fished out of his jacket pocket and ate. Usually, they swagger in with their teacher, act bluff and all hail-fellow-well-met like they belong in such a bar and not off sipping sherry at the Bridge Inn. When they think he’s not looking, they wipe the rims of their pint glasses with their shirtsleeves. Usually, they last an hour, maybe two. Tonight though, he couldn’t get them to leave. They switched from beer to rye and knocked back a bottle between them, looking grimmer and grimmer with each round.
    Their four chairs he wipes and turns over.
    Tired John Robinson leans against his broom and surveys his bar. Before he goes upstairs to bed, he must water the gin and correct the wine. He buys as cheaply as he can from a French sailor, mostly vinegared old casks, sweetened with a little packet of grayish-red oxidized lead got off the chemist. He knows he stands a chance of poisoning half his clientele, but most drink beer, so he doesn’t sweat it.
    Saturday seems to be his only solid night since the Quarantine. There was a time, before this cholera business, when any night of the week his
    bar was packed to overflowing, when sailors who didn’t frequent the Life Boat or the Golden Anchor would walk the few blocks up to the Labour in Vain for a pint or six. Then the tap would flow, then the blood would fly! Most nights he’d have to toss out twenty brawny men instead of four sotted students. Ach, that it’s come to this. A few keelmen, four nervous rich kids, lost without their teacher, and him off to get a little piece of Gustine. The proprietor shakes his head. He wonders if Whilky would look kindly on his dress lodger spending so much time downstairs in his brother’s bar. She’s dressed for the Bridge Inn and the Majestic Theatre; she’s dressed to have a vestryman invite her up to his best friend’s dark flat—oh, no, he’s off on business just now, but he left the key under this mat. It’s dangerous for a working girl to keep too much company with one man. And she is smitten. John Robinson saw that the night they sat here in the corner.
    At this last table. Far back in the dark corner. That night a month ago they sat at this same table for two bound by a broken chain of round, white water stains.