Mr Hire's Engagement Read Free Page B

you held your breath as the whole house shook.
    But all this activity seethed outside the walls. Within the room itself was a compact body of silence, firmly welded, unimpaired, and Mr. Hire sitting over his empty cup, was probably awaiting the end of the comfortable sensation the hot coffee had given him.
    At last he got up, buttoned his overcoat, wound a scarf round his neck. He took the bowl from which he had been drinking and washed it under the tap, wiped it with a dish-cloth that hung from a nail, and put it away in the cupboard. He swept the breadcrumbs onto a piece of cardboard, greasy from this habitual usage, threw them into the stove, went over to the bed and turned it down.
    What else was there to be done? Wind the alarm-clock, which made a splash of white on the mantelpiece and now marked half-past eight.
    Was that all? He took off his shoes and polished them, sitting on the edge of the bed, his neck still held stiffly, his left cheek tinned upwards.
    Yes, that was all. The little boy began his exercise over again, and the bow scraped on a second string. The man next door must be reading the newspaper aloud, for his murmuring voice ran on, as monotonously as a running tap.
    Mr. Hire left his uncomfortable perch on the bed, settled down in the arm-chair, facing the dead stove and the face of the alarm-clock, and made no further movement except to thrust his hands, which had been freezing on the arms of the chair, into his pockets.
    Ten minutes to nine... Nine o'clock... Five past nine ... He never once closed his eyes. He wasn't looking at anything. It was as though he were in a train which would take him nowhere. He didn't even sigh. A little warmth was at last accumulating inside his overcoat, and he hugged it closely to him, while his toes, in the bedroom slippers were stiff with cold.
    Twenty past nine . . . twenty-five past. . . twenty-six past. . .
    A door banged from time to time. People went downstairs, so noisily that they seemed to be stumbling on every step. Gradually things became so quiet that the policeman's whistle could be heard from the crossroads.
    Nine twenty-seven . . . Mr. Hire rose, turned off the electric light, and, in the dark, found his way back to his arm-chair, whence he could now see nothing but the vaguely luminous hands of the alarm-clock.
    Not until ten o'clock did he become impatient, and then only to the extent that his fingers moved inside his pockets. The next-door tenants were asleep, but somewhere else a baby was crying, and its mother was crooning to soothe it:
    'La ... la ... la ... la .. .'
    Mr. Hire got up and walked to the window, outside which all was dark. Shortly afterwards a light was switched on, scarcely three yards away, a window lit up a bedroom whose smallest details were thus revealed.
     
     
    The woman closed the door behind her with a kick that must have produced a thunderous bang, but the noise did not carry across the courtyard. She was in a hurry, in a bad temper perhaps, for it was with an abrupt movement that she lifted up the bedclothes to slip in a hot-water bottle she had been carrying under her arm.
    Mr. Hire did not move. His own room was in darkness. He was standing up, his forehead pressed against the icy window-pane, and only his eyes moved to and fro, watching his neighbour's every gesture.
    When she had tucked in the bedclothes again, she proceeded to unpin her hair, which fell to her shoulders, not very long, but thick, auburn-coloured and silky. And she rubbed the back of her neck and her ears, stretching herself with a kind of sensual satisfaction.
    There was a mirror in front of her, above a wooden dressing-table. It was into this that she was looking, into this that she continued to gaze as she pulled her black wool dress up by the hem, to draw it over her head. Then, dressed in her slip, she sat down on the edge of the bed to take off her stockings.
    Even from Mr. Hire's room it was evident that she had goose-flesh, and having removed