Deep Waters, the Entire Collection

Mr. Porter lay long next morning, and, dressing with comfortable slowness, noticed with pleasure that the sun was shining. Visions of a good breakfast and a digestive pipe, followed by a walk in the fresh air, passed before his eyes as he laced his boots. Whistling cheerfully he went briskly downstairs.

It was an October morning, but despite the invigorating chill in the air the kitchen-grate was cold and dull. Herring-bones and a disorderly collection of dirty cups and platters graced the table. Perplexed and angry, he looked around for his wife, and then, opening the back-door, stood gaping with astonishment. The wife of his bosom, who should have had a bright fire and a good breakfast waiting for him, was sitting on a box in the sunshine, elbows on knees and puffing laboriously at a cigarette.

“Susan!” he exclaimed.

Mrs. Porter turned, and, puffing out her lips, blew an immense volume of smoke. “Halloa!” she said, carelessly.

“Wot—wot does this mean?” demanded her husband.

Mrs. Porter smiled with conscious pride. “I made it come out of my nose just now,” she replied. “At least, some of it did, and I swallowed the rest. Will it hurt me?”

“Where’s my breakfast?” inquired the other, hotly. “Why ain’t the kitchen-fire alight? Wot do you think you’re doing of?”

“I’m not doing anything,” said his wife, with an aggrieved air. “I’m on strike.”

Mr. Porter reeled against the door-post. “Wot!” he stammered. “On strike? Nonsense! You can’t be.”

“O, yes, I can,” retorted Mrs. Porter, closing one eye and ministering to it hastily with the corner of her apron. “Not ‘aving no Bert Robinson to do it for me, I made a little speech all to myself, and here I am.”

She dropped her apron, replaced the cigarette, and, with her hands on her plump knees, eyes him steadily.

“But—but this ain’t a factory,” objected the dismayed man; “and, besides —I won’t ‘ave it!”

Mrs. Porter laughed—a fat, comfortable laugh, but with a touch of hardness in it.

“All right, mate,” she said, comfortably. “What are you out on strike for?”

“Shorter hours and more money,” said Mr. Porter, glaring at her.

His wife nodded. “So am I,” she said. “I wonder who gets it first?”

She smiled agreeably at the bewildered Mr. Porter, and, extracting a paper packet of cigarettes from her pocket, lit a fresh one at the stub of the first.

“That’s the worst of a woman,” said her husband, avoiding her eye and addressing a sanitary dustbin of severe aspect; “they do things without thinking first. That’s why men are superior; before they do a thing they look at it all round, and upside down, and—and—make sure it can be done. Now, you get up in a temper this morning, and the first thing you do—not even waiting to get my breakfast ready first—is to go on strike. If you’d thought for two minutes you’d see as ‘ow it’s impossible for you to go on strike for more than a couple of hours or so.”

“Why?” inquired Mrs. Porter.

“Kids,” replied her husband, triumphantly. “They’ll be coming ‘ome from school soon, won’t they? And they’ll be wanting their dinner, won’t they?”

“That’s all right,” murmured the other, vaguely.

“After which, when night comes,” pursued Mr. Porter, “they’ll ‘ave to be put to bed. In the morning they’ll ‘ave to be got up and washed and dressed and given their breakfast and sent off to school. Then there’s shopping wot must be done, and beds wot must be made.”

“I’ll make ours,” said his wife, decidedly. “For my own sake.”

“And wot about the others?” inquired Mr. Porter.

“The others’ll be made by the same party as washes the children, and cooks their dinner for ‘em, and puts ‘em to bed, and cleans the ‘ouse,” was the reply.

“I’m not going to have your mother ‘ere,” exclaimed Mr. Porter, with sudden heat. “Mind that!”

“I don’t want her,” said Mrs. Porter. “It’s a job for a strong, healthy man, not a pore old thing with swelled legs and short in the breath.”

“Strong—‘ealthy—man!” repeated her husband, in a dazed voice. “Strong—‘eal– Wot are you talking about?”

Mrs. Porter beamed on him. “You,” she said, sweetly.

There was a long silence, broken at last by a firework display of expletives. Mrs. Porter, still smiling, sat unmoved.

“You may smile!” raved the indignant Mr. Porter. “You may sit there smiling and smoking like a—like a man, but if you think that I’m going to get the meals ready, and soil my ‘ands with making beds and washing-up, you’re mistook. There’s some ‘usbands I know as would set about you!”

Mrs. Porter rose. “Well, I can’t sit here gossiping with you all day,” she said, entering the house.

“Wot are you going to do?” demanded her husband, following her.

“Going to see Aunt Jane and ‘ave a bit o’ dinner with her,” was the reply. “And after that I think I shall go to the ‘pictures.’ If you ‘ave bloaters for dinner be very careful with little Jemmy and the bones.”

“I forbid you to leave this ‘ouse!” said Mr. Porter, in a thrilling voice. “If you do you won’t find nothing done when you come home, and all the kids dirty and starving.”

“Cheerio!” said Mrs. Porter.

Arrayed in her Sunday best she left the house half an hour later. A glance over her shoulder revealed her husband huddled up in a chair in the dirty kitchen, gazing straight before him at the empty grate.

He made a hearty breakfast at a neighbouring coffee-shop, and, returning home, lit the fire and sat before it, smoking. The return of the four children from school, soon after midday, found him still wrestling with the difficulties of the situation. His announcement that their mother was out and that there would be no dinner was received at first in stupefied silence. Then Jemmy, opening his mouth to its widest extent, acted as conductor to an all-too-willing chorus.

The noise was unbearable, and Mr. Porter said so. Pleased with the tribute, the choir re-doubled its efforts, and Mr. Porter, vociferating orders for silence, saw only too clearly the base advantage his wife had taken of his affection for his children. He took some money from his pocket and sent the leading treble out marketing, after which, with the assistance of a soprano aged eight, he washed up the breakfast things and placed one of them in the dustbin.

The entire family stood at his elbow as he cooked the dinner, and watched, with bated breath, his frantic efforts to recover a sausage which had fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. A fourfold sigh of relief heralded its return to the pan.

“Mother always—” began the eldest boy.

Mr. Porter took his scorched fingers out of his mouth and smacked the critic’s head.

The dinner was not a success. Portions of half-cooked sausages returned to the pan, and coming back in the guise of cinders failed to find their rightful owners.

“Last time we had sausages,” said the eight-year-old Muriel, “they melted in your mouth.” Mr. Porter glowered at her.

“Instead of in the fire,” said the eldest boy, with a mournful snigger.

“If I get up to you, my lad,” said the harassed Mr. Porter, “you’ll know it! Pity you don’t keep your sharpness for your lessons! Wot country is Africa in?”

“Why, Africa’s a continent!” said the startled youth.

“Jes so,” said his father; “but wot I’m asking you is: wot country is it in?”

“Asia,” said the reckless one, with a side-glance at Muriel.

“And why couldn’t you say so before?” demanded Mr. Porter, sternly. “Now, you go to the sink and give yourself a thorough good wash. And mind you come straight home from school. There’s work to be done.”