She was a bride just returned from honeymooning, this first tenant of mine. Already she was obviously bored with a very disagreeable husband. In her heart she knew he was not proud of her. He kept his marriage to this Canadian girl secret from his English mother.
The bride was a shocking housekeeper and dragged round all day in boudoir cap, frowsy negligee and mules–slip, slop, slip, slop. In my basement I could hear her overhead. Occasionally she hung out a grey wash, left it flapping on the line for a week, unless, for very shame, I took it in to her. “Awfully kind,” she would say, “I’ve been meaning to bring it in these six days. Housekeeping is such a bore!”
As far as I could see she did not do any. Even trees and bushes flutter the dust off, manage to do some renewing. Slip, slop–slip, slop–her aimless feet traipsed from room to room. She did not trouble to raise the lid of the garbage can, but tossed her discards out of the back door. Occasionally she dressed herself bravely and, hanging over the front gate, peered and peered. As people passed, going to Beacon Hill Park, she would stop them, saying, “Was there a thin man in grey behind you when you turned into this street?”
Astonished they asked, “Who would it be?”
“My husband–I suppose he has forgotten me again-a bachelor for so long he forgets that he has a wife. He promised to take me to the Races to-day–Oh, dear!”
Going into her flat she slammed the door and melted into negligee again.
He was a horrid man, but I too would have tried to forget a wife like that. Negligee, bad cooking, dirty house!
They had leased my flat for six months. Three days before the fourth month was up, the man said to me casually, “We leave here on the first.”
“Your lease?” I replied.
“Lease!” He laughed in my face. “Leases are not worth their ink. Prevent a landlady from turning you out, that’s all.”
I consulted the lawyer who admitted that leases were all in favour of the tenant. He asked, “Who have you got there?” I told him.
“I know that outfit. Get ’em out. Make ’em go in the three days’ notice they gave you. Tell them if they don’t vacate on the dot they must pay another full month. Not one day over the three, mind you, or a full month’s rental!”
When I told the couple what the lawyer had said they were very angry, declaring that they could not move in three days’ time, but that they would not pay for overtime.
“All right,” I said. “Then the lawyer…”
They knew the lawyer personally and started to pack violently.
The bride and groom had furnished their own flat–garish newness, heavily varnished, no nearer to being their own than one down payment, less near, in fact, as the instalments were overdue. Store vans came and took the furniture back. The woman left in a cab with a couple of suitcases. The forwarding address she left was that of her mother’s home. The man left a separate forwarding address. His was a hotel.
To describe the cleaning of that flat would be impossible. As a parting niceness the woman hurled a pot of soup–meat, vegetables and grease–down the kitchen sink. She said, “You hurried our moving,” and shrugged.
The soup required a plumber.
This first tenant nearly discouraged me with landladying.
I consulted an experienced person. She said, “In time you will learn to make yourself hard, hard!”
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