Doomsday

Someone had asked Mary Viner as a child why she so disliked going
to school, and had received the pregnant reply: "'Cos one does the
same thing every day"; and at the age of three-and-twenty Mary was
still resenting repetition. Only more so, because life had become
more busily full of it, a circus of dreary tidyings and
cleanlinesses, of washings up and washings down, of moments that
smelt of yellow soap, and tea leaves and paraffin.

Moreover, it could not be helped. And the turning of the domestic
wheel demanded the obedient hands of the dutiful daughter. Mary's
alarum clock set the welkin ringing at half-past six. It was
winter, January and cold. She had cause to know how cold it could
be in that cardboard box of a bedroom with its walls of tile and
plywood sheeting. The very clock seemed to make a bouncing sound
like a pea rattling in a box. The room remained quite dark, and
the day's duties offered her no compensations for the loss of her
warm bed, so she lingered there, guiltily snug, the clothes pulled
up to her chin, her pretty, slim legs tucked up.

Thank heaven she had not to struggle with half a yard of black
hair. A bobbed head had its advantages when your hands got colder
and colder. The house was very still, but across the landing there
travelled a faint sound of harsh, asthmatic breathing. Captain
Hesketh Viner was still asleep, but soon she would hear the little
twittering voice of her mother, like the voice of a rather futile
and busy bird.

O, this house--this "Green Shutters," where everything was heard,
from the stirring of the kitchen fire to the brisk functioning of a
toothbrush! And her father's cough! She flung out of bed suddenly
with a rush of fastidious despair that fought with an inarticulate
compassion. What a life for the three of them, cooped up in this
jim-crack cottage in a little world of other jim-crack cottages!
No wonder that Carslake, solid Georgian Carslake, referred to the
Sandihurst Estate as "Cinder Town."

She lit her candle and scuffled into her clothes, intent upon
making that morning dash downstairs to light the fires in the
kitchen and living-room. Yes, damn Colonel Sykes for exploiting
this patch of clay and sand in Sussex, and for persuading the new
poor to put up cottages and bungalows. Cinder Town! She slithered
down the steep and narrow stairs and into the kitchen, jarring a
slim ankle against the coal-scuttle that was standing where it
should not have stood. And that, too, was her fault! Resenting
this, she jabbed at the thing with her foot, and by way of retort
it tipped a rattling stream of coal upon the floor.

Putting her candle on the kitchen table, and bending down to
recover the lumps of coal, she signalized her submission to the
tyranny of trifles by a sudden rush of tears. There was anger in
her tears, and self-pity, and the rebellion of her youth against
life's aimless and inevitable repetitions. But how foolish! And
like a child she brushed the blurring wetness away with her
fingers, forgetting the coal dust upon them. She put a match to
the kitchen fire, wondering whether it was going to prove sulky,
and while it was deciding that it would burn she collected the cans
for the morning's hot water. And how she yearned for gas! To be
able to slip down and turn a tap, and perhaps slip back to bed
again.