I Would Rather Stay Poor

It was soon after Iris’s seventeenth birthday, a few months after her father had been killed, that she had discovered her mother had become an alcoholic. She had returned from college one hot summer evening to find Kit sitting motionless, her face ashen, her eyes glazed, an empty whisky bottle on the table. This had been an experience that Iris was never to forget. Kit had been unable to speak: unable to move. Terrified, Iris had telephoned for Dr. Sterling who had attended the Loring family ever since they had set up home in Pittsville. He had helped Iris get her mother to bed, then he had taken the frightened girl downstairs and had talked to her.

She would always remember Dr. Sterling’s quiet, kind talk in which he had persuaded her that her mother should go into a sanatorium. Kit had remained there for two months.

Iris got a job as cashier at a movie house at Downside. When Kit was cured, she bought the rooming-house with the money her husband had left her. For months Iris watched her mother. Kit seemed cured, but now just when Iris was beginning to relax, her suspicions were again alerted. She continued to watch, but so far, after the first alarm, she hadn’t further proof that Kit was backsliding.

One evening, a week after the first hint had been dropped about Alice’s boy-friend, Kit came into Calvin’s room. She received a shock.

Looking at himself in the mirror was a tall, heavily-built man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a fawn belted overcoat. He had black sideboards and a black moustache. The sight of this stranger made Kit’s heart skip a beat and she paused in the doorway, asking, ‘What are you doing here?’

The man turned and grinned at her and she recognised Calvin.

‘This is Johnny Acres – Alice’s boy-friend,’ he said. ‘Not bad?’ He took off the halt and tossed it on the bed, then he stripped off the crepe sideboards and the moustache.

As she watched him take off the overcoat and hang it up, he said, ‘In the half light no one would recognise me. Now the problem is how the major and Miss Pearson can get a glimpse of Mr. Acres.’

A little unsteadily, Kit went to the armchair and sat in it.

‘Mr. Acres must have a car,’ Calvin said. He opened the closet and took out the bottle of whisky. ‘Hello! There’s not much here.’ He looked sharply at her. ‘Have you been drinking my Scotch?’

‘Is that all that of a crime?’ she asked sullenly.

‘Can’t you buy your own whisky?’ he said irritably. He poured himself the last of the whisky and dropped the empty bottle into the trash basket. She watched him furtively. ‘As I was saying, Acres has to have a car. This is where we have to spend to gain. I have three hundred dollars. I’ll need at least another three hundred. Have you got it?’

She hesitated, then nodded.

‘I can get it.’

‘Then tomorrow evening we’ll go to Downside. We’ll go to a movie. There’ll be no secret about it. It’s time the old people knew there is more than one romance in the house. Have you told your daughter yet?’

Kit’s face stiffened.

‘No.’

‘Well, you’d better.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘While you’re at the movie, I’ll go along, dressed as Johnny Acres, and buy a second-hand car. I’ll park it behind the bank until we want it.’

She said tonelessly, ‘You’re sure all this is going to be safe?’

His fleshy face hardened.’

‘I’ve waited a long time for this chance: every move I am making is going to be safe.’

A few days later, Major Hardy was the first of the old couple set eyes on Alice’s boy-friend. It was just after eleven o’clock and the major was finishing a crossword puzzle before going to bed. Miss Pearson had already gone upstairs and so had Kit. The major was on his own. He knew Alice had gone out because her hat and coat weren’t in the lobby. In actual fact, Alice was in bed, reading The Manual of Banking and making notes as she read, but the major wasn’t to know this. He wasn’t to know that Kit, wearing Alice’s hat and coat, had sneaked out the back way and had joined Calvin, dressed as Johnny Acres, who was waiting for her down the road in. a newly-bought, second-hand Lincoln.

The major heard a car come up the short drive, went to the window and peered out into the darkness. He saw whom he thought to be Alice getting out of the car. He then saw a heavily-built man, wearing a fawn-coloured overcoat join her. All this he could see clearly as the couple moved into the light from the car’s headlights. They kissed fondly and the major nodded approvingly. Then he watched the woman he thought was Alice run up the steps and he heard her open the front door as the man got back into the car and drove away.

Rather than embarrass her, the major remained where he was. After he heard the women he imagined to be Alice reach the head of the stairs, he turned off the lights and went upstairs himself.

The following morning, he told Kit and Miss Pearson what he had seen when Alice and Calvin had gone off together to the bank.

‘They’ll make a good-looking couple,’ the major said.