No More Learning

So here
he lay, Gordon Comstock, in a slum attic on a ragged bed, with his feet sticking out of his
socks, with one and fourpence in the world, with three decades behind him and nothing,



nothing accomplished! Surely NOW he was past redemption? Surely, try as they would,
they couldn’t prise him out of a hole like this? He had wanted to reach the mud — well,
this was the mud, wasn’t it?

Yet he knew that it was not so. That other world, the world of money and success, is
always so strangely near. You don’t escape it merely by taking refuge in dirt and misery.
He had been frightened as well as angry when Rosemary told him about Mr Erskine’s
offer. It brought the danger so close to him. A letter, a telephone message, and from this
squalor he could step straight back into the money-world — back to four quid a week,
back to effort and decency and slavery. Going to the devil isn’t so easy as it sounds.
Sometimes your salvation hunts you down like the Hound of Heaven.

For a while he lay in an almost mindless state, gazing at the ceiling. The utter futility of
just lying there, dirty and cold, comforted him a little. But presently he was roused by a
light tap at the door. He did not stir. It was Mother Meakin, presumably, though it did not
sound like her knock.

‘Come in,’ he said.

The door opened. It was Rosemary.

She stepped in, and then stopped as the dusty sweetish smell of the room caught her.
Even in the bad light of the lamp she could see the state of filth the room was in — the
litter of food and papers on the table, the grate full of cold ashes, the foul crocks in the
fender, the dead aspidistra. As she came slowly towards the bed she pulled her hat off and
threw it on to the chair.

‘WHAT a place for you to live in! ’ she said.

‘So you’ve come back? ’ he said.

‘Yes. ’

He turned a little away from her, his arm over his face. ‘Come back to lecture me some
more, I suppose? ’



‘No. ’


‘Then why? ’

‘Because — ’

She had knelt down beside the bed. She pulled his arm away, put her face forward to kiss
him, then drew back, surprised, and began to stroke the hair over his temple with the tips
of her fingers.

‘Oh, Gordon! ’

‘What? ’

‘You’ve got grey in your hair! ’

‘Have I? Where? ’

‘Here — over the temple. There’s quite a little patch of it. It must have happened all of a
sudden. ’

“‘My golden locks time hath to silver turned,”’ he said indifferently.

‘So we’re both going grey,’ she said.

She bent her head to show him the three white hairs on her crown. Then she wriggled
herself on to the bed beside him, put an arm under him, pulled him towards her, covered
his face with kisses. He let her do it. He did not want this to happen — it was the very
thing that he least wanted. But she had wriggled herself beneath him; they were breast to
breast. Her body seemed to melt into his. By the expression of her face he knew what had
brought her here. After all, she was virgin. She did not know what she was doing. It was
magnanimity, pure magnanimity, that moved her. His wretchedness had drawn her back
to him. Simply because he was penniless and a failure she had got to yield to him, even if
it was only once.


‘I had to come back,’ she said.



‘Why? ’


‘I couldn’t bear to think of you here alone. It seemed so awful, leaving you like that. ’

‘You did quite right to leave me. You’d much better not have come back. You know we
can’t ever get married. ’

‘I don’t care. That isn’t how one behaves to people one loves. I don’t care whether you
marry me or not. I love you. ’

‘This isn’t wise,’ he said.

‘I don’t care. I wish I’d done it years ago. ’

‘We’d much better not. ’

‘Yes. ’

‘No. ’


‘Yes! ’


After all, she was too much for him. He had wanted her so long, and he could not stop to
weigh the consequences. So it was done at last, without much pleasure, on Mother
Meakin’s dingy bed. Presently Rosemary got up and rearranged her clothes. The room,
though stuffy, was dreadfully cold. They were both shivering a little. She pulled the
coverlet further over Gordon. He lay without stirring, his back turned to her, his face
hidden against his arm. She knelt down beside the bed, took his other hand, and laid it for
a moment against her cheek. He scarcely noticed her. Then she shut the door quietly
behind her and tiptoed down the bare, evil-smelling stairs. She felt dismayed,
disappointed, and very cold.



Chapter 11

Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws
be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of
spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds
do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so
on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805.

But how absurd that even now, in the era of central heating and tinned peaches, a
thousand so-called poets are still writing in the same strain! For what difference does
spring or winter or any other time of year make to the average civilized person
nowadays? In a town like London the most striking seasonal change, apart from the mere
change of temperature, is in the things you see lying about on the pavement. In late
winter it is mainly cabbage leaves. In July you tread on cherry stones, in November on
bumt-out fireworks. Towards Christmas the orange peel grows thicker. It was a different
matter in the Middle Ages. There was some sense in writing poems about spring when
spring meant fresh meat and green vegetables after months of frowsting in some
windowless hut on a diet of salt fish and mouldy bread.

If it was spring Gordon failed to notice it. March in Lambeth did not remind you of
Persephone. The days grew longer, there were vile dusty winds and sometimes in the sky
patches of harsh blue appeared. Probably there were a few sooty buds on the trees if you
cared to look for them. The aspidistra, it turned out, had not died after all; the withered
leaves had dropped off it, but it was putting forth a couple of dull green shoots near its
base.

Gordon had been three months at the library now. The stupid slovenly routine did not irk
him. The library had swelled to a thousand ‘assorted titles’ and was bringing Mr
Cheeseman a pound a week clear profit, so Mr Cheeseman was happy after his fashion.
He was, nevertheless, nurturing a secret grudge against Gordon. Gordon had been sold to
him, so to speak, as a drunkard. He had expected Gordon to get drunk and miss a day’s
work at least once, thus giving a sufficient pretext for docking his wages; but Gordon had
failed to get drunk. Queerly enough, he had no impulse to drink nowadays. He would
have gone without beer even if he could have afforded it. Tea seemed a better poison. All
his desires and discontents had dwindled. He was better off on thirty bob a week than he



had been previously on two pounds. The thirty bob covered, without too much stretching,
his rent, cigarettes, a washing bill of about a shilling a week, a little fuel, and his meals,
which consisted almost entirely of bacon, bread-and-marg, and tea, and cost about two
bob a day, gas included. Sometimes he even had sixpence over for a seat at a cheap but
lousy picture-house near the Westminster Bridge Road. He still carried the grimy
manuscript of London Pleasures to and fro in his pocket, but it was from mere force of
habit; he had dropped even the pretence of working. All his evenings were spent in the
same way. There in the remote frowzy attic, by the fire if there was any coal left, in bed if
there wasn’t, with teapot and cigarettes handy, reading, always reading. He read nothing
nowadays except twopenny weekly papers. Tit Bits, Answers, Peg’s Paper, The Gem,
The Magnet, Home Notes, The Girl’s Own Paper — they were all the same. He used to get
them a dozen at a time from the shop. Mr Cheeseman had great dusty stacks of them, left
over from his uncle’s day and used for wrapping paper. Some of them were as much as
twenty years old.

He had not seen Rosemary for weeks past. She had written a number of times and then,
for some reason, abruptly stopped writing. Ravelston had written once, asking him to
contribute an article on twopenny libraries to Antichrist. Julia had sent a desolate little
letter, giving family news. Aunt Angela had had bad colds all the winter, and Uncle
Walter was complaining of bladder trouble. Gordon did not answer any of their letters.
He would have forgotten their existence if he could. They and their affection were only
an encumbrance. He would not be free, free to sink down into the ultimate mud, till he
had cut his li nk s with all of them, even with Rosemary.

One afternoon he was choosing a book for a tow-headed factory girl, when someone he
only saw out of the corner of his eye came into the library and hesitated just inside the
door.

‘What kind of book did you want? ’ he asked the factory girl.

‘Oo — jest a kind of a ROmance, please. ’

Gordon selected a ROmance. As he turned, his heart bounded violently. The person who
had just come in was Rosemary. She did not make any sign, but stood waiting, pale, and
worried-looking, with something ominous in her appearance.



He sat down to enter the book on the girl’s ticket, but his hands had begun trembling so
that he could hardly do it. He pressed the rubber stamp in the wrong place. The girl
trailed out, peeping into the book as she went. Rosemary was watching Gordon’s face. It
was a long time since she had seen him by daylight, and she was struck by the change in
him. He was shabby to the point of raggedness, his face had grown much thinner and had
the dingy, greyish pallor of people who live on bread and margarine. He looked much
older — thirty-five at the least. But Rosemary herself did not look quite as usual. She had
lost her gay trim bearing, and her clothes had the appearance of having been thrown on in
a hurry. It was obvious that there was something wrong.

He shut the door after the factory girl. ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he began.

‘I had to come. I got away from the studio at lunch time. I told them I was ill. ’

‘You don’t look well. Here, you’d better sit down. ’

There was only one chair in the library. He brought it out from behind the desk and was
moving towards her, rather vaguely, to offer some kind of caress. Rosemary did not sit
down, but laid her small hand, from which she had removed the glove, on the top rung of
the chair-back. By the pressure of her lingers he could see how agitated she was.

‘Gordon, I’ve a most awful thing to tell you. It’s happened after all. ’

‘What’s happened? ’

‘I’m going to have a baby. ’

‘A baby? Oh, Christ! ’

He stopped short. For a moment he felt as though someone had struck him a violent blow
under the ribs. He asked the usual fatuous question:

‘Are you sure? ’


‘Absolutely. It’s been weeks now. If you knew the time I’ve had! I kept hoping and
hoping — I took some pills — oh, it was too beastly! ’



‘A baby! Oh, God, what fools we were! As though we couldn’t have foreseen it! ’

‘I know. I suppose it was my fault. I — ’

‘Damn! Here comes somebody. ’

The door-bell ping’d. A fat, freckled woman with an ugly under- lip came in at a rolling
gait and demanded ‘Something with a murder in it. ’ Rosemary had sat down and was
twisting her glove round and round her fingers. The fat woman was exacting. Each book
that Gordon offered her she refused on the ground that she had ‘had it already’ or that it
‘looked dry’. The deadly news that Rosemary had brought had unnerved Gordon. His
heart pounding, his entrails constricted, he had to pull out book after book and assure the
fat woman that this was the very book she was looking for. At last, after nearly ten
minutes, he managed to fob her off with something which she said grudgingly she ‘didn’t
think she’d had before’.

He turned back to Rosemary. ‘Well, what the devil are we going to do about it? ’ he said
as soon as the door had shut.

‘I don’t see what I can do. If I have this baby I’ll lose my job, of course. But it isn’t only
that I’m worrying about. It’s my people finding out. My mother — oh, dear!
It simply
doesn’t bear thinking of. ’

‘Ah, your people! I hadn’t thought of them. One’s people! What a cursed incubus they
are! ’

‘MY people are all right. They’ve always been good to me. But it’s different with a thing
like this. ’

He took a pace or two up and down. Though the news had scared him he had not really
grasped it as yet. The thought of a baby, his baby, growing in her womb had awoken in
him no emotion except dismay. He did not think of the baby as a living creature; it was a
disaster pure and simple. And already he saw where it was going to lead.


‘We shall have to get married, I suppose,’ he said flatly.



‘Well, shall we? That’s what I came here to ask you. ’


‘But I suppose you want me to marry you, don’t you? ’

‘Not unless YOU want to. I’m not going to tie you down. I know it’s against your ideas
to marry. You must decide for yourself. ’

‘But we’ve no alternative — if you’re really going to have this baby. ’

‘Not necessarily. That’s what you’ve got to decide. Because after all there IS another
way. ’

‘What way? ’

‘Oh, YOU know. A girl at the studio gave me an address. A friend of hers had it done for
only five pounds. ’

That pulled him up. For the first time he grasped, with the only kind of knowledge that
matters, what they were really talking about. The words ‘a baby’ took on a new
significance. They did not mean any longer a mere abstract disaster, they meant a bud of
flesh, a bit of himself, down there in her belly, alive and growing. His eyes met hers.
They had a strange moment of sympathy such as they had never had before. For a
moment he did feel that in some mysterious way they were one flesh. Though they were
feet apart he felt as though they were joined together — as though some invisible living
cord stretched from her entrails to his. He knew then that it was a dreadful thing they
were contemplating — a blasphemy, if that word had any meaning. Yet if it had been put
otherwise he might not have recoiled from it. It was the squalid detail of the five pounds
that brought it home.

‘No fear! ’ he said. ‘Whatever happens we’re not going to do THAT. It’s disgusting. ’

‘I know it is. But I can’t have the baby without being married. ’

‘No! If that’s the alternative I’ll marry you. I’d sooner cut my right hand off than do a
thing like that. ’



Ping! went the door-bell. Two ugly louts in cheap bright blue suits, and a girl with a fit of
the giggles, came in. One of the youths asked with a sort of sheepish boldness for
‘something with a kick in it — something smutty’. Silently, Gordon indicated the shelves
where the ‘sex’ books were kept. There were hundreds of them in the library. They had
titles like Secrets of Paris and The Man She Trusted; on their tattered yellow jackets were
pictures of half-naked girls lying on divans with men in dinner-jackets standing over
them. The stories inside, however, were painfully harmless. The two youths and the girl
ranged among them, sniggering over the pictures on their covers, the girl letting out little
squeals and pretending to be shocked. They disgusted Gordon so much that he turned his
back on them till they had chosen their books.

When they had gone he came back to Rosemary’s chair. He stood behind her, took hold
of her small firm shoulders, then slid a hand inside her coat and felt the warmth of her
breast. He liked the strong springy feeling of her body; he liked to think that down there,
a guarded seed, his baby was growing. She put a hand up and caressed the hand that was
on her breast, but did not speak. She was waiting for him to decide.

‘If I marry you I shall have to turn respectable,’ he said musingly.

‘Could you? ’ she said with a touch of her old manner.

‘I mean I shall have to get a proper job — go back to the New Albion. I suppose they’d
take me back. ’

He felt her grow very still and knew that she had been waiting for this. Yet she was
determined to play fair. She was not going to bully him or cajole him.

‘I never said I wanted you to do that. I want you to marry me — yes, because of the baby.
But it doesn’t follow you’ve got to keep me. ’

‘There’s no sense in marrying if I can’t keep you. Suppose I married you when I was like
I am at present — no money and no proper job? What would you do then? ’

‘I don’t know. I’d go on working as long as I could. And afterwards, when the baby got
too obvious — well, I suppose I’d have to go home to father and mother. ’



‘That would be jolly for you, wouldn’t it? But you were so anxious for me to go back to
the New Albion before. You haven’t changed your mind? ’

‘I’ve thought things over. I know you’d hate to be tied to a regular job. I don’t blame you.
You’ve got your own life to live. ’

He thought it over a little while longer. ‘It comes down to this. Either I marry you and go
back to the New Albion, or you go to one of those filthy doctors and get yourself messed
about for five pounds. ’

At this she twisted herself out of his grasp and stood up facing him. His blunt words had
upset her. They had made the issue clearer and uglier than before.

‘Oh, why did you say that? ’

‘Well, those ARE the alternatives. ’

‘I’d never thought of it like that. I came here meaning to be fair. And now it sounds as if I
was trying to bully you into it — trying to play on your feelings by threatening to get rid
of the baby. A sort of beastly blackmail. ’

‘I didn’t mean that. I was only stating facts. ’

Her face was full of lines, the black brows drawn together. But she had sworn to herself
that she would not make a scene. He could guess what this meant to her. He had never
met her people, but he could imagine them. He had some notion of what it might mean to
go back to a country town with an illegitimate baby; or, what was almost as bad, with a
husband who couldn’t keep you. But she was going to play fair. No blackmail! She drew
a sharp inward breath, taking a decision.

‘All right, then, I’m not going to hold THAT over your head. It’s too mean. Marry me or
don’t marry me, just as you like. But I’ll have the baby, anyway. ’

‘You’d do that? Really? ’


‘Yes, I think so. ’



He took her in his arms. Her coat had come open, her body was warm against him. He
thought he would be a thousand kinds of fool if he let her go. Yet the alternative was
impossible, and he did not see it any less clearly because he held her in his arms.

‘Of course, you’d like me to go back to the New Albion,’ he said.

‘No, I wouldn’t. Not if you don’t want to. ’

‘Yes, you would. After all, it’s natural. You want to see me earning a decent income
again. In a GOOD job, with four pounds a week and an aspidistra in the window.
Wouldn’t you, now? Own up. ’

‘All right, then — yes, I would. But it’s only something I’d LIKE to see happening; I’m
not going to MAKE you do it. I’d just hate you to do it if you didn’t really want to. I want
you to feel free. ’

‘Really and truly free? ’

‘Yes. ’

‘You know what that means? Supposing I decided to leave you and the baby in the
lurch? ’

‘Well — if you really wanted to. You’re free — quite free. ’

After a little while she went away. Later in the evening or tomorrow he would let her
know what he decided. Of course it was not absolutely certain that the New Albion would
give him a job even if he asked them; but presumably they would, considering what Mr
Erskine had said. Gordon tried to think and could not. There seemed to be more
customers than usual this afternoon. It maddened him to have to bounce out of his chair
every time he had sat down and deal with some fresh influx of fools demanding crime-
stories and sex-stories and ROmances. Suddenly, about six o’clock, he turned out the
lights, locked up the library, and went out. He had got to be alone. The library was not
due to shut for two hours yet. God knew what Mr Cheeseman would say when he found
out. He might even give Gordon the sack. Gordon did not care.



He turned westward, up Lambeth Cut. It was a dull sort of evening, not cold. There was
muck underfoot, white lights, and hawkers screaming. He had got to think this thing out,
and he could think better walking. But it was so hard, so hard! Back to the New Albion,
or leave Rosemary in the lurch; there was no other alternative. It was no use thinking, for
instance, that he might find some ‘good’ job which would offend his sense of decency a
bit less. There aren’t so many ‘good’ jobs waiting for moth-eaten people of thirty. The
New Albion was the only chance he had or ever would have.

At the corner, on the Westminster Bridge Road, he paused a moment. There were some
posters opposite, livid in the lamplight. A monstrous one, ten feet high at least, advertised
Bovex. The Bovex people had dropped Corner Table and got on to a new tack. They were
running a series of four-line poems — Bovex Ballads, they were called. There was a
picture of a horribly eupeptic family, with grinning ham-pink faces, sitting at breakfast;
underneath, in blatant lettering:

Why should YOU be thin and white? And have that washed-out feeling? Just take hot
Bovex every night — Invigorating — healing!

Gordon gazed at the thing. He drank in its puling silliness. God, what trash!
‘Invigorating — healing! ’ The weak incompetence of it! It hadn’t even the vigorous
badness of the slogans that really stick. Just soppy, lifeless drivel. It would have been
almost pathetic in its feebleness if one hadn’t reflected that all over London and all over
every town in England that poster was plastered, rotting the minds of men. He looked up
and down the graceless street. Yes, war is coming soon. You can’t doubt it when you see
the Bovex ads. The electric drills in our streets presage the rattle of the machine-guns.
Only a little while before the aeroplanes come. Zoom — bang! A few tons of T. N. T. to
send our civilization back to hell where it belongs.

He crossed the road and walked on, southward. A curious thought had struck him. He did
not any longer want that war to happen. It was the first time in months — years, perhaps —
that he had thought of it and not wanted it.

If he went back to the New Albion, in a month’s time he might be writing Bovex Ballads
himself. To go back to THAT! Any ‘good’ job was bad enough; but to be mixed up in
THAT! Christ! Of course he oughtn’t to go back. It was just a question of having the guts



to stand firm. But what about Rosemary? He thought of the kind of life she would live at
home, in her parents’ house, with a baby and no money; and of the news running through
that monstrous family that Rosemary had married some awful rotter who couldn’t even
keep her. She would have the whole lot of them nagging at her together. Besides, there
was the baby to think about.