The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley — Read

Having taken the plunge, Miss Trant found herself at once in another world. It was, so far, chiefly a world of tea and chops and telegrams. The tea and chops came from her Rawsley landlady, who was very interested, very sympathetic, but unpunctual with meals. It was her habit to offer Miss Trant odd cups of tea the moment she saw her coming in, whatever the hour; and the meals, when they did arrive, seemed to be always a chop -- a "nice chop," which apparently meant one that was burnt on the outside and quite raw in the interior. "Sit you down and 'ave a cup o' tea, Miss Trant, and I'll do you a nice chop," this was the good lady's formula. Fortunately, Miss Trant was hardly ever hungry that first week. Perhaps it was the telegrams that took away her appetite. Although the Trants had for generations made a trade, as it were, out of alarms and excursions, a telegram had still been something of an event at Hitherton, and even at the Old Hall the sight of a little brown envelope called up visions of catastrophe. But now the little brown envelopes fell in showers. The telegram was apparently the common method of communication in this extraordinary world, where everybody seemed to be "wiring" everybody else. Prompted by Jimmy Nunn, armed with the current number of The Stage, she "wired" the proprietors of Winter Gardens, Alfresco Pavilions, Kursaals, Chalets, and Playhouses, mostly in places she had never heard of before, and even such people as printers and costumiers had to be "wired" too; and all these wires promptly produced other wires, some of them so compressed that they might as well have been in cipher, and others of a staggering length and fluency, like strange heads coming round the door and screaming at the top of their voices at her. Of all the others, only Mr. Oakroyd, who frequently trotted round to the Post Office for her, shared her amazement at all this wiring. "Eh! -- we're keeping all t'telegraph lads i' t' country on t'run," he would cry. "It's war ner workin' for a bookie. " The waste of money appalled him, but he could not help being delighted by the dash and importance of it all. At the Post Office he soon became a familiar figure. "If I bring yer onny more," he would tell them, "happen you'll be declaring a divvy this year"; and the three young women behind the counter would nod and say, brightly, if vaguely: "That's right"; and they were all very friendly.

Living in such a world of telegraphy, Miss Trant felt she had no right to sit down and enjoy a meal at her leisure. She did sit down -- though she always felt she ought to be standing up -- but she ate her chops as hastily and perfunctorily as her landlady had cooked them. The latter, we may say, proffered a brief sketch of a dinner, and Miss Trant, in her turn, replied with a brief sketch of a diner. It was only late in the evening, when there were no more "dates" to be considered and no more problems to be instantly solved, that she achieved any real sustenance. This she did by drinking a large cup of cocoa (a weakness of hers) and munching her way through innumerable buttered Digestive biscuits while staring at a book. The book was Barlasch of the Guard, borrowed on the payment of twopence and a deposit of half a crown from the little stationer's in the marketplace, and very slow the story seemed too, after all the telegrams. She was beginning to read these things with the air of an old soldier listening to a fellow veteran only a year or two older than herself.