As I passed a group of three one called out to the others in a mocking voice, “There’s a pretty boy for you!” I almost ran so that I should not hear any more, then I locked myself into the lavatory, and although the door was tried many times I would not come out till the end of the journey.
I sat on a low wall in the Close. The sun was full on the burnt-gold cathedral and it warmed me through my clothes. I was writing a postcard to my aunt.
“I hope you have not been worrying about me. I am quite all right but I will never go back to school. I have a very nice room here with hot and cold water. The cathedral is lovely, I have been wandering all over it.
Denton.”
On the other side of the postcard was a picture of the Royal Clarence Hotel, where I had taken a room. I had found the asking a little easier this time. The housekeeper had seen me as I came in and had stopped to talk to me. She was a thin woman with small bones and tight grey hair. She seemed amused by me and I was able to lie easily.
“But what about your luggage?” she suddenly asked.
“Oh, my mother’s bringing that in the car tomorrow.”
“Then what are you going to sleep in tonight?” Her eyes lighted up. She watched my face turning red, then said with relish:
“I don’t suppose it’ll hurt you to sleep in your skin!”
I grinned, feeling ashamed, and she led me to my bedroom. It was called Abbotsford. The name was in white Gothic letters on the shiny brown door. She left me there. I was pleased when she had gone. I was flattered but revolted by her.
I sat down on the bed to count my money; it was dwindling rapidly. I had had to leave seventeen and six at the office downstairs. I knew that I ought to have found cheaper lodgings, but the dread of squalor was too strong. I did not even go in search of them.
When I had posted the card I stood by the box, wondering if I had been foolish, but then I decided that sooner or later my aunt and grandfather would have to know where I was.
I went into a chemist’s shop to buy a toothbrush and some paste, then I looked into the windows in the High Street. I found the antique-shops I had first seen with my mother. In the window of one, the same cracked Worcester salmon-scale plate was still there. The Dartmoor Pixies stared out at me drearily from the souvenir shop, so I turned and walked slowly back to the hotel.
In the high dining-room upstairs the chandelier was already lighted. I sat down in the warm yellow room and began to eat. It was a long meal, and with each mouthful I kept asking, “What am I going to do tomorrow’ What am I going to do tomorrow?”
I slept again that night in my shirt. It was getting tousled and dirty now. I felt old and dirty too, as if I had never been young and fresh. When at last the morning came, I got up and bathed, and then rubbed the cuffs and collar of my shirt with a wet corner of the towel. It was lucky that I did not need to shave yet; there was only a little golden hair on my upper lip. The hair on my head was matted, for two days it had only been combed with my fingers.
I wanted to leave the hotel as quickly as possible in case my aunt should ring up when she got my postcard. I decided to go for a long walk, and made my way out of the town until at last I came to the green fields. I sat down under some trees near a pond.
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