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_Title:_ The Pink Shawl
_Date of first publication:_ 1925
_Author:_ Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952)
_Date first posted:_ Oct. 17, 2020
_Date last updated:_ Oct. 17, 2020
Faded Page eBook #20201034
This eBook was produced by: John Routh & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
The Pink Shawl
_by_
Marjorie Bowen
Illustrated by R.M. Brinkerhoff
Rose Smith had never made any attempt to live up to her Christian name;
she had never been anything like a rose; to hear her name and to see her
was to suffer a dislocation of ideas; after that, “rose” would mean
something else to you besides a flower.
The boundaries of her features were in as fluid a state as the frontiers
of central Europe; emotion, the weather, or even a cup of hot tea,
changed the whole map of her face, which appeared to shrink in one part,
swell in another, and be one moment a whitish grey, and the next a
bluish pink; indigestion, perhaps, or a sensitive soul, but poignantly
unbecoming.
But Rose in the backwash of a remote town and the backwash of a remote
faith, was not troubled by her plainness; there were a great many texts
hanging about her simple home and they all inculcated a severe adherence
to morals in preference to any outward adornments; it was tacitly
understood that the clear complexions of the angels in the border of
“Blessed are the pure in heart” were due to the fair air of heaven and
not to the most modest dose of magnesia, and that the purity referred
wholly to the heart and not to any other organ whatever—also “Cleanse
your hearts and not your garments” meant just what it said, and under
garments you might include a lot of things from wallpapers and carpets
to window panes and saucepans; of course you had the laundry van
calling, not that you were afraid your neighbors might think your
cleanliness in question, but that you were afraid they might think you
did your own “washing”—washing it was, not laundry, when you did it
yourself.
For the same reason the steps received a daily mask of hearthstone,
furtively, in the early morning that was Biblical too. Rose often
thought of “whitened sepulchres.”
Rose’s greatest mental adventure was the occasional examination of a row
of rather battered novels, left precariously perched on a shelf, by a
delinquent lodger. Once she found there a pretentious cookery book, with
lots of pictures of engaging pies and cakes, which made her wonder—.
* * * * *
Mrs. Smith and Rose lived with, by, for, on, the lodgers, and as they
were not above two miles from the sea, close to the shops, chapels and
the cinema, they received in the summer, not the summer weather, the
summer months, numbers of “guests” who came from similar houses, steps,
texts, aspidistras, streets, shops and cinemas for a complete “change.”
They had one lodger who, like the wreath on Father’s sepulchre, was
permanent.
And not only permanent but opulent; he was the manager of a store of
more than local celebrity that had lately opened a branch near Malvernia
Terrace.
In the pall of fishy, greasy odor that rose from those secret regions
below and gently settled on the whatnots, photos, bamboo and imitation
leather furniture Mr. Minxton found an atmosphere of home, and often
said so, gratefully; his refined features which looked as if they had
once been melted and only rescued before they “ran” out of all semblance
to humanity, his neat clothes, and his unfaltering courtesy, which
branded him as firmly as the name of the maker branded on the biscuits
he handled so deftly, made Mrs. Smith and Rose decided he was “quite the
gentleman.”
He did not disdain sometimes to descend to the inner mysteries and
contemplate with a calm eye the aftermath of his last meal or the
chaotic pie preparation for his next; custom had blunted his natural
instincts; unflinchingly he praised the curious messes over which Mrs.
Smith labored with a rather bitter pride, and earnestly he talked to
Rose on a subject that he, at least found completely engrossing,
himself.
He, too, went to the chapel and the elegance of his appearance and the
brightness of his smile radiated the sodden melancholy of the provincial
Sunday for Rose.
* * * * *
One day, Rose, walking back beside Mr. Minxton through the liverish
looking streets from the stuffiness of the chapel to the stuffiness of
her home, confided to her cavalier her Life Tragedy.
She had once been engaged; she could hardly believe it herself, she
added frankly, but it had been during the war.
“That accounts,” said Mr. Minxton, soothingly.
Rose blushed beneath her faded pimples.
“He was billeted on us—seventeen and sixpence a week and expecting
three meat meals a day, wanting the best of everything and getting it
too, whether we was out of pocket or not.”
“Ah, I know the sort, too good to him, you were, of course,” said Mr.
Minxton vaguely.
“Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say he hadn’t got a way with him, didn’t
half make himself comfortable though. Mother couldn’t do enough for him,
doing his bit, as they used to say; you know the fuss there was.”
Rose sighed.
“He was a milkman in real life, somewhere in London. Well, he made up to
me, took us both to the movies one night and a fish supper afterwards. I
don’t know half he said, me teeth were that bad and I’d got cotton wool
in me left ear, the side he sat, and what with that and his cracking of
nuts and Mother nudging me to take notice how badly them bits of girls
was behaving with the other soldiers in front, I didn’t catch it all
proper, but Mother said, coming home, ‘take it from me you’re engaged,
Rose,’ and we bought a bottle of whisky and sat in the firelight, and he
said he liked them plain and good with a bit at the bank, and I was
never a looker and I had the bit all right, then.”
“Where has it gone? The bit?” asked Mr. Minxton with a sudden keen
interest. “Did he borrow it?”
“I don’t know about borrowed,” replied Rose drearily. “He had it—”
“But you’ve had time since to get some more together.”
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