Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/37

 turned sour in his tired stomach. Very often he was in pain.

But the thing that astonished him was the dirtiness of the place. From the street the Angel suggested cleanliness and comfort; the paint was fresh, the dcor-step white, but an observant eye might have noticed the dead flowers in the window boxes. Within, a cynical slovenliness prevailed. It was not safe to look under the carpets, or to reflect upon the blankets hidden by the treacherously clean sheets. There were places that smelt. As for the kitchen, and that awful dark and greasy hole where the dishes were washed, they made Sorrell wonder at the innocence of the people who ran their cars into the Angel yard and ate the Angel dinner, and slept in the Angel beds.

The place had a sly filthiness. It was like a wench in silk stockings and lace whose ablutions were of the scantiest. Yet there was money in the "house." Trade was good; Florence Palfrey never gave you the impression that she had to deny herself anything. She was brazen, voracious, insatiable, an animal with bowels full of fire. It was she who made out the bills, and in most of them there was some flagrant item against which the easy English visitor should have protested. In nine cases out of ten they remained mute, and paid. Florence Palfrey knew her world. She bluffed. She chanced the protest, knowing that people would pay and go away and grumble and forget. She knew the world's moral cowardice, its inertia.

Sorrell soon realized that the Angel as an hotel did not matter. The coffee-room, the commercial-room, the bedrooms were of no importance; what mattered was the bar.

Men came to booze.

In fact the "Cubby Hole" of the Angel Inn was a pivot, a fly-trap, a cave into which all sorts of male things crowded, and drank, and made silly noises and sillier laughter, and looked with lustful eyes at Florence Palfrey. At night the room would be full of them, and even in the daytime it was rare for the room beside the bar to be empty. This cavity had a secret, conspiratorial air. The men who sneaked into it dreamed of catching old Palfrey's wife in a mood of consent, and of exciting moments among the red cushions.

The "Cubby Hole" filled Sorrell with nausea.