Liza Of Lambeth (penguin Twentieth-century Classics)

http://www.ebooksread.com/ _Liza of Lambeth_ SOMERSET MAUGHAM PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd 1897 1 It was the first Saturday afternoon in August; it had been broiling hot all day, with a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating down on the houses, so that the top rooms were like ovens; but now with t he approach of evening it was cooler, and everyone in Vere Street was o ut of doors. Vere street, Lambeth, is a short, straight street leading out of the Westminster Bridge Road; it has forty houses on one side and forty houses on the other, and these eighty houses are very much more like one another than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies like young ladies. They are newish, three-storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bow-window or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the straightness o f the line from one end of the street to the other. This Saturday afternoon the street was full of life; no traffic came down Vere Street, and the cemented space between the pavements was given up to children. Several games of cricket were being played by wildly excited boys, using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and, generally, an old broomstick for bat. The wicket was so large and the bat so small tha t the man in was always getting bowled, when heated quarrels would arise, the batter absolutely refusing to go out and the bowler absolutely insisting on going in. The girls were more peaceable; the y were chiefly employed in skipping, and only abused one another mildl y when the rope was not properly turned or the skipper did not jump sufficiently high. Worst off of all were the very young children, fo r there had been no rain for weeks, and the street was as dry and clea n as a covered court, and, in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat about the road, disconsolate as poets. The number of babies was prodigious; they sprawled about everywhere, on the pavement, round t he doors, and about their mothers' skirts. The grown-ups were gathered round the open doors; there were usually two women squatting on the doorstep, and two or three more seated on either side on chairs; the y were invariably nursing babies, and most of them showed clear signs that the present object of the maternal care would be soon ousted by a new arrival. Men were less numerous but such as there were leant against the walls, smoking, or sat on the sills of the ground-floor windows. It was the dead season in Vere Street as much as in Belgravia, and really if it had not been for babies just come or jus t about to come, and an opportune murder in a neighbouring doss-house, there would have been nothing whatever to talk about. As it was, the little groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity or the merits of the local midwives, comparing the circumstances of their various confinements. 'You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh, Polly?' asked one go od lady of another. 'Oh, I reckon I've got another two months ter go yet,' answered Poll y. 'Well,' said a third. 'I wouldn't 'ave thought you'd go so long by t he look of yer!' 'I 'ope you'll have it easier this time, my dear,' said a very stout old person, a woman of great importance. 'She said she wasn't goin' to 'ave no more, when the last one come.' This remark came from Polly's husband. 'Ah,' said the stout old lady, who was in the business, and boasted vast experience. 'That's wot they al