But of course it was an
American
paper.
Orwell - Keep the Apidistra Flying
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. The money-god is so cunning. If he only baited his traps
with yachts and race-horses, tarts and champagne, how easy it would be to dodge them. It
is when he gets at you through your sense of decency that he finds you helpless.
The Bovex Ballad jungled in Gordon’s head. He ought to stand firm. He had made war
on money — he ought to stick it out. After all, hitherto he HAD stuck it out, after a
fashion. He looked back over his life. No use deceiving himself. It had been a dreadful
life — lonely, squalid, futile. He had lived thirty years and achieved nothing except
misery. But that was what he had chosen. It was what he WANTED, even now. He
wanted to sink down, down into the muck where money does not rule. But this baby-
business had upset everything. It was a pretty banal predicament, after all. Private vices,
public virtues — the dilemma is as old as the world.
He looked up and saw that he was passing a public library. A thought struck him. That
baby. What did it mean, anyway, having a baby? What was it that was actually happening
to Rosemary at this moment? He had only vague and general ideas of what pregnancy
meant. No doubt they would have books in there that would tell him about it. He went in.
The lending library was on the left. It was there that you had to ask for works of
reference.
The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and
intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one — at least, no male person —
ever consulted works of reference except in search of pornography. As soon as you
approached she pierced you through and through with a flash of her pince-nez and let you
know that your dirty secret was no secret from HER. After all, all works of reference are
pomographical, except perhaps Whitaker’s Almanack. You can put even the Oxford
Dictionary to evil purposes by looking up words like and .
Gordon knew her type at a glance, but he was too preoccupied to care. ‘Have you any
book on gynaecology? ’ he said.
‘Any WHAT? ’ demanded the young woman with a pince-nez flash of unmistakable
triumph. As usual! Another male in search of dirt!
‘Well, any books on midwifery? About babies being bom, and so forth. ’
‘We don’t issue books of that description to the general public,’ said the young woman
frostily.
‘I’m sorry — there’s a point I particularly want to look up. ’
‘Are you a medical student? ’
‘No. ’
‘Then I don’t QUITE see what you want with books on midwifery. ’
Curse the woman! Gordon thought. At another time he would have been afraid of her; at
present, however, she merely bored him.
‘If you want to know, my wife’s going to have a baby. We neither of us know much
about it. I want to see whether I can find out anything useful. ’
The young woman did not believe him. He looked too shabby and worn, she decided, to
be a newly married man. However, it was her job to lend out books, and she seldom
actually refused them, except to children. You always got your book in the end, after you
had been made to feel yourself a dirty swine. With an aseptic air she led Gordon to a
small table in the middle of the library and presented him with two fat books in brown
covers. Thereafter she left him alone, but kept an eye on him from whatever part of the
library she happened to be in. He could feel her pince-nez probing the back of his neck at
long range, trying to decide from his demeanour whether he was really searching for
information or merely picking out the dirty bits.
He opened one of the books and searched inexpertly through it. There were acres of
close-printed text full of Latin words. That was no use. He wanted something simple —
pictures, for choice. How long had this thing been going on? Six weeks — nine weeks,
perhaps. Ah! This must be it.
He came on a print of a nine weeks’ foetus. It gave him a shock to see it, for he had not
expected it to look in the least like that. It was a deformed, gnomelike thing, a sort of
clumsy caricature of a human being, with a huge domed head as big as the rest of its
body. In the middle of the great blank expanse of head there was a tiny button of an ear.
The thing was in profde; its boneless arm was bent, and one hand, crude as a seal’s
flipper, covered its face — fortunately, perhaps. Below were little skinny legs, twisted like
a monkey’s with the toes turned in. It was a monstrous thing, and yet strangely human. It
surprised him that they should begin looking human so soon. He had pictured something
much more rudimentary; a mere blob of nucleus, like a bubble of frog-spawn. But it must
be very tiny, of course. He looked at the dimensions marked below. Length 30
millimetres. About the size of a large gooseberry.
But perhaps it had not been going on quite so long as that. He turned back a page or two
and found a print of a six weeks’ foetus. A really dreadful thing this time — a thing he
could hardly even bear to look at. Strange that our beginnings and endings are so ugly —
the unborn as ugly as the dead. This thing looked as if it were dead already. Its huge
head, as though too heavy to hold upright, was bent over at right angles at the place
where its neck ought to have been. There was nothing you could call a face, only a
wrinkle representing the eye — or was it the mouth? It had no human resemblance this
time; it was more like a dead puppy-dog. Its short thick arms were very doglike, the
hands being mere stumpy paws. 15. 5 millimetres long — no bigger than a hazel nut.
He pored for a long time over the two pictures. Their ugliness made them more credible
and therefore more moving. His baby had seemed real to him from the moment when
Rosemary spoke of abortion; but it had been a reality without visual shape — something
that happened in the dark and was only important after it had happened. But here was the
actual process taking place. Here was the poor ugly thing, no bigger than a gooseberry,
that he had created by his heedless act. Its future, its continued existence perhaps,
depended on him. Besides, it was a bit of himself — it WAS himself. Dare one dodge such
a responsibility as that?
But what about the alternative? He got up, handed over his books to the disagreeable
young woman, and went out; then, on an impulse, turned back and went into the other
part of the library, where the periodicals were kept. The usual crowd of mangy-looking
people were dozing over the papers. There was one table set apart for women’s papers.
He picked up one of them at random and bore it off to another table.
It was an American paper of the more domestic kind, mainly adverts with a few stories
lurking apologetically among them. And WHAT adverts! Quickly he flicked over the
shiny pages. Lingerie, jewellery, cosmetics, fur coats, silk stockings flicked up and down
like the figures in a child’s peepshow. Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks,
undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-
section of the money-world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness,
whoredom, and disease.
And THAT was the world they wanted him to re-enter. THAT was the business in which
he had a chance of Making Good. He flicked over the pages more slowly. Flick, flick.
Adorable — until she smiles. The food that is shot out of a gun. Do you let foot-fag affect
your personality? Get back that peach-bloom on a Beautyrest Mattress. Only a
PENETRATING face-cream will reach that undersurface dirt. Pink toothbrush is HER
trouble. How to alkalize your stomach almost instantly. Roughage for husky kids. Are
you one of the four out of five? The world-famed Culturequick Scrapbook. Only a
drummer and yet he quoted Dante.
Christ, what muck!
But of course it was an American paper. The Americans always go one better on any
kinds of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering, or theosophy. He went
over to the women’s table and picked up another paper. An English one this time.
Perhaps the ads in an English paper wouldn’t be quite so bad — a little less brutally
offensive?
He opened the paper. Flick, flick. Britons never shall be slaves!
Flick, flick. Get that waist-line back to nonnal! She SAID ‘Thanks awfully for the lift,’
but she THOUGHT, ‘Poor boy, why doesn’t somebody tell him? ’ How a woman of
thirty-two stole her young man from a girl of twenty. Prompt relief for feeble kidneys.
Silkyseam — the smooth-sliding bathroom tissue. Asthma was choking her! Are YOU
ashamed of your undies? Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps. Now I’ve a
schoolgirl complexion all over. Hike all day on a slab of Vitamalt!
To be mixed up in THAT! To be in it and of it — part and parcel of it! God, God, God!
Presently he went out. The dreadful thing was that he knew already what he was going to
do. His mind was made up — had been made up for a long time past. When this problem
appeared it had brought its solution with it; all his hesitation had been a kind of make-
believe. He felt as though some force outside himself were pushing him. There was a
telephone booth near by. Rosemary’s hostel was on the phone — she ought to be at home
by now. He went into the booth, feeling in his pocket. Yes, exactly two pennies. He
dropped them into the slot, swung the dial.
A refaned, adenoidal feminine voice answered him: ‘Who’s thyah, please? ’
He pressed Button A. So the die was cast.
‘Is Miss Waterlow in? ’
‘Who’s THYAH, please? ’
‘Say it’s Mr Comstock. She’ll know. Is she at home? ’
‘Ay’ll see. Hold the lane, please. ’
A pause.
‘Hullo! Is that you, Gordon? ’
‘Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Rosemary? I just wanted to tell you. I’ve thought it over — I’ve
made up my mind. ’
‘Oh! ’ There was another pause. With difficulty mastering her voice, she added: ‘Well,
what did you decide? ’
‘It’s all right. I’ll take the job — if they’ll give it me, that is. ’
‘Oh, Gordon, I’m so glad! You’re not angry with me? You don’t feel I’ve sort of bullied
you into it? ’
‘No, it’s all right. It’s the only thing I can do. I’ve thought everything out. I’ll go up to
the office and see them tomorrow. ’
‘I AM so glad! ’
‘Of course. I’m assuming they’ll give me the job. But I suppose they will, after what old
Erskine said. ’
‘I’m sure they will. But, Gordon, there’s just one thing. You will go there nicely dressed,
won’t you? It might make a lot of difference. ’
‘I know. I’ll have to get my best suit out of pawn. Ravelston will lend me the money. ’
‘Never mind about Ravelston. I’ll lend you the money. I’ve got four pounds put away. I’ll
run out and wire it you before the post-office shuts. I expect you’ll want some new shoes
and a new tie as well. And, oh, Gordon! ’
‘What? ’
‘Wear a hat when you go up to the office, won’t you? It looks better, wearing a hat. ’
‘A hat! God! I haven’t worn a hat for two years. Must I? ’
‘Well — it does look more business-like, doesn’t it? ’
‘Oh, all right. A bowler hat, even, if you think I ought. ’
‘I think a soft hat would do. But get your hair cut, won’t you, there’s a dear? ’
‘Yes, don’t you worry. I’ll be a smart young business man. Well groomed, and all that. ’
‘Thanks ever so, Gordon dear. I must run out and wire that money. Good night and good
luck. ’
‘Good night. ’
He came out of the booth. So that was that. He had torn it now, right enough.
He walked rapidly away. What had he done? Chucked up the sponge! Broken all his
oaths! His long and lonely war had ended in ignominious defeat. Circumcise ye your
foreskins, saith the Lord. He was coming back to the fold, repentant. He seemed to be
walking faster than usual. There was a peculiar sensation, an actual physical sensation, in
his heart, in his limbs, all over him. What was it? Shame, misery, despair? Rage at being
back in the clutch of money? Boredom when he thought of the deadly future? He dragged
the sensation forth, faced it, examined it. It was relief.
Yes, that was the truth of it. Now that the thing was done he felt nothing but relief; relief
that now at last he had finished with dirt, cold, hunger, and loneliness and could get back
to decent, fully human life. His resolutions, now that he had broken them, seemed
nothing but a frightful weight that he had cast off. Moreover, he was aware that he was
only fulfilling his destiny. In some corner of his mind he had always known that this
would happen. He thought of the day when he had given them notice at the New Albion;
and Mr Erskine’s kind, red, beefish face, gently counselling him not to chuck up a ‘good’
job for nothing. How bitterly he had sworn, then, that he was done with ‘good’ jobs for
ever! Yet it was foredoomed that he should come back, and he had known it even then.
And it was not merely because of Rosemary and the baby that he had done it. That was
the obvious cause, the precipitating cause, but even without it the end would have been
the same; if there had been no baby to think about, something else would have forced his
hand. For it was what, in his secret heart, he had desired.
After all he did not lack vitality, and that moneyless existence to which he had
condemned himself had thrust him ruthlessly out of the stream of life. He looked back
over the last two frightful years. He had blasphemed against money, rebelled against
money, tried to live like an anchorite outside the money-world; and it had brought him
not only misery, but also a frightful emptiness, an inescapable sense of futility. To abjure
money is to abjure life. Be not righteous over much; why shouldst thou die before thy
time? Now he was back in the money-world, or soon would be. Tomorrow he would go
up to the New Albion, in his best suit and overcoat (he must remember to get his overcoat
out of pawn at the same time as his suit), in homburg hat of the correct gutter-crawling
pattern, neatly shaved and with his hair cut short. He would be as though bom anew. The
sluttish poet of today would be hardly recognizable in the natty young business man of
tomorrow. They would take him back, right enough; he had the talent they needed. He
would buckle to work, sell his soul, and hold down his job.
And what about the future? Perhaps it would turn out that these last two years had not left
much mark upon him. They were merely a gap, a small setback in his career. Quite
quickly, now that he had taken the first step, he would develop the cynical, blinkered
business mentality. He would forget his fine disgusts, cease to rage against the tyranny of
money — cease to be aware of it, even — cease to squirm at the ads for Bovex and
Breakfast Crisps. He would sell his soul so utterly that he would forget it had ever been
his. He would get married, settle down, prosper moderately, push a pram, have a villa and
a radio and an aspidistra. He would be a law-abiding little cit like any other law-abiding
little cit — a soldier in the strap-hanging army. Probably it was better so.
He slowed his pace a little. He was thirty and there was grey in his hair, yet he had a
queer feeling that he had only just grown up. It occurred to him that he was merely
repeating the destiny of every human being. Everyone rebels against the money-code, and
everyone sooner or later surrenders. He had kept up his rebellion a little longer than most,
that was all. And he had made such a wretched failure of it! He wondered whether every
anchorite in his dismal cell pines secretly to be back in the world of men. Perhaps there
were a few who did not. Somebody or other had said that the modern world is only
habitable by saints and scoundrels. He, Gordon, wasn’t a saint. Better, then, to be an
unpretending scoundrel along with the others. It was what he had secretly pined for; now
that he had acknowledged his desire and surrendered to it, he was at peace.
He was making roughly in the direction of home. He looked up at the houses he was
passing. It was a street he did not know. Oldish houses, mean-looking and rather dark, let
off in flatlets and single rooms for the most part. Railed areas, smoke-grimed bricks,
whited steps, dingy lace curtains. ‘Apartments’ cards in half the windows, aspidistras in
nearly all. A typical lower-middle-class street. But not, on the whole, the kind of street
that he wanted to see blown to hell by bombs.
He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small
clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did
THEY know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You
bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born,
being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage
it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on
greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously
transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their
lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras — they
lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The
money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their
standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’ — kept
the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were ALIVE. They were bound up in the bundle of
life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any
chance do.
The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.
He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London
Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under a street lamp. A great wad of paper,
soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which
have been a long time in one’s pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of
his exile, a two years’ foetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all
that. Poetry! POETRY, indeed! In 1935.
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the W. C. But he was a
long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a
drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the
yellow lace curtains.
He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a
line caught his eye.
‘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. The money-god is so cunning. If he only baited his traps
with yachts and race-horses, tarts and champagne, how easy it would be to dodge them. It
is when he gets at you through your sense of decency that he finds you helpless.
The Bovex Ballad jungled in Gordon’s head. He ought to stand firm. He had made war
on money — he ought to stick it out. After all, hitherto he HAD stuck it out, after a
fashion. He looked back over his life. No use deceiving himself. It had been a dreadful
life — lonely, squalid, futile. He had lived thirty years and achieved nothing except
misery. But that was what he had chosen. It was what he WANTED, even now. He
wanted to sink down, down into the muck where money does not rule. But this baby-
business had upset everything. It was a pretty banal predicament, after all. Private vices,
public virtues — the dilemma is as old as the world.
He looked up and saw that he was passing a public library. A thought struck him. That
baby. What did it mean, anyway, having a baby? What was it that was actually happening
to Rosemary at this moment? He had only vague and general ideas of what pregnancy
meant. No doubt they would have books in there that would tell him about it. He went in.
The lending library was on the left. It was there that you had to ask for works of
reference.
The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and
intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one — at least, no male person —
ever consulted works of reference except in search of pornography. As soon as you
approached she pierced you through and through with a flash of her pince-nez and let you
know that your dirty secret was no secret from HER. After all, all works of reference are
pomographical, except perhaps Whitaker’s Almanack. You can put even the Oxford
Dictionary to evil purposes by looking up words like and .
Gordon knew her type at a glance, but he was too preoccupied to care. ‘Have you any
book on gynaecology? ’ he said.
‘Any WHAT? ’ demanded the young woman with a pince-nez flash of unmistakable
triumph. As usual! Another male in search of dirt!
‘Well, any books on midwifery? About babies being bom, and so forth. ’
‘We don’t issue books of that description to the general public,’ said the young woman
frostily.
‘I’m sorry — there’s a point I particularly want to look up. ’
‘Are you a medical student? ’
‘No. ’
‘Then I don’t QUITE see what you want with books on midwifery. ’
Curse the woman! Gordon thought. At another time he would have been afraid of her; at
present, however, she merely bored him.
‘If you want to know, my wife’s going to have a baby. We neither of us know much
about it. I want to see whether I can find out anything useful. ’
The young woman did not believe him. He looked too shabby and worn, she decided, to
be a newly married man. However, it was her job to lend out books, and she seldom
actually refused them, except to children. You always got your book in the end, after you
had been made to feel yourself a dirty swine. With an aseptic air she led Gordon to a
small table in the middle of the library and presented him with two fat books in brown
covers. Thereafter she left him alone, but kept an eye on him from whatever part of the
library she happened to be in. He could feel her pince-nez probing the back of his neck at
long range, trying to decide from his demeanour whether he was really searching for
information or merely picking out the dirty bits.
He opened one of the books and searched inexpertly through it. There were acres of
close-printed text full of Latin words. That was no use. He wanted something simple —
pictures, for choice. How long had this thing been going on? Six weeks — nine weeks,
perhaps. Ah! This must be it.
He came on a print of a nine weeks’ foetus. It gave him a shock to see it, for he had not
expected it to look in the least like that. It was a deformed, gnomelike thing, a sort of
clumsy caricature of a human being, with a huge domed head as big as the rest of its
body. In the middle of the great blank expanse of head there was a tiny button of an ear.
The thing was in profde; its boneless arm was bent, and one hand, crude as a seal’s
flipper, covered its face — fortunately, perhaps. Below were little skinny legs, twisted like
a monkey’s with the toes turned in. It was a monstrous thing, and yet strangely human. It
surprised him that they should begin looking human so soon. He had pictured something
much more rudimentary; a mere blob of nucleus, like a bubble of frog-spawn. But it must
be very tiny, of course. He looked at the dimensions marked below. Length 30
millimetres. About the size of a large gooseberry.
But perhaps it had not been going on quite so long as that. He turned back a page or two
and found a print of a six weeks’ foetus. A really dreadful thing this time — a thing he
could hardly even bear to look at. Strange that our beginnings and endings are so ugly —
the unborn as ugly as the dead. This thing looked as if it were dead already. Its huge
head, as though too heavy to hold upright, was bent over at right angles at the place
where its neck ought to have been. There was nothing you could call a face, only a
wrinkle representing the eye — or was it the mouth? It had no human resemblance this
time; it was more like a dead puppy-dog. Its short thick arms were very doglike, the
hands being mere stumpy paws. 15. 5 millimetres long — no bigger than a hazel nut.
He pored for a long time over the two pictures. Their ugliness made them more credible
and therefore more moving. His baby had seemed real to him from the moment when
Rosemary spoke of abortion; but it had been a reality without visual shape — something
that happened in the dark and was only important after it had happened. But here was the
actual process taking place. Here was the poor ugly thing, no bigger than a gooseberry,
that he had created by his heedless act. Its future, its continued existence perhaps,
depended on him. Besides, it was a bit of himself — it WAS himself. Dare one dodge such
a responsibility as that?
But what about the alternative? He got up, handed over his books to the disagreeable
young woman, and went out; then, on an impulse, turned back and went into the other
part of the library, where the periodicals were kept. The usual crowd of mangy-looking
people were dozing over the papers. There was one table set apart for women’s papers.
He picked up one of them at random and bore it off to another table.
It was an American paper of the more domestic kind, mainly adverts with a few stories
lurking apologetically among them. And WHAT adverts! Quickly he flicked over the
shiny pages. Lingerie, jewellery, cosmetics, fur coats, silk stockings flicked up and down
like the figures in a child’s peepshow. Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks,
undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-
section of the money-world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness,
whoredom, and disease.
And THAT was the world they wanted him to re-enter. THAT was the business in which
he had a chance of Making Good. He flicked over the pages more slowly. Flick, flick.
Adorable — until she smiles. The food that is shot out of a gun. Do you let foot-fag affect
your personality? Get back that peach-bloom on a Beautyrest Mattress. Only a
PENETRATING face-cream will reach that undersurface dirt. Pink toothbrush is HER
trouble. How to alkalize your stomach almost instantly. Roughage for husky kids. Are
you one of the four out of five? The world-famed Culturequick Scrapbook. Only a
drummer and yet he quoted Dante.
Christ, what muck!
But of course it was an American paper. The Americans always go one better on any
kinds of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering, or theosophy. He went
over to the women’s table and picked up another paper. An English one this time.
Perhaps the ads in an English paper wouldn’t be quite so bad — a little less brutally
offensive?
He opened the paper. Flick, flick. Britons never shall be slaves!
Flick, flick. Get that waist-line back to nonnal! She SAID ‘Thanks awfully for the lift,’
but she THOUGHT, ‘Poor boy, why doesn’t somebody tell him? ’ How a woman of
thirty-two stole her young man from a girl of twenty. Prompt relief for feeble kidneys.
Silkyseam — the smooth-sliding bathroom tissue. Asthma was choking her! Are YOU
ashamed of your undies? Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps. Now I’ve a
schoolgirl complexion all over. Hike all day on a slab of Vitamalt!
To be mixed up in THAT! To be in it and of it — part and parcel of it! God, God, God!
Presently he went out. The dreadful thing was that he knew already what he was going to
do. His mind was made up — had been made up for a long time past. When this problem
appeared it had brought its solution with it; all his hesitation had been a kind of make-
believe. He felt as though some force outside himself were pushing him. There was a
telephone booth near by. Rosemary’s hostel was on the phone — she ought to be at home
by now. He went into the booth, feeling in his pocket. Yes, exactly two pennies. He
dropped them into the slot, swung the dial.
A refaned, adenoidal feminine voice answered him: ‘Who’s thyah, please? ’
He pressed Button A. So the die was cast.
‘Is Miss Waterlow in? ’
‘Who’s THYAH, please? ’
‘Say it’s Mr Comstock. She’ll know. Is she at home? ’
‘Ay’ll see. Hold the lane, please. ’
A pause.
‘Hullo! Is that you, Gordon? ’
‘Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Rosemary? I just wanted to tell you. I’ve thought it over — I’ve
made up my mind. ’
‘Oh! ’ There was another pause. With difficulty mastering her voice, she added: ‘Well,
what did you decide? ’
‘It’s all right. I’ll take the job — if they’ll give it me, that is. ’
‘Oh, Gordon, I’m so glad! You’re not angry with me? You don’t feel I’ve sort of bullied
you into it? ’
‘No, it’s all right. It’s the only thing I can do. I’ve thought everything out. I’ll go up to
the office and see them tomorrow. ’
‘I AM so glad! ’
‘Of course. I’m assuming they’ll give me the job. But I suppose they will, after what old
Erskine said. ’
‘I’m sure they will. But, Gordon, there’s just one thing. You will go there nicely dressed,
won’t you? It might make a lot of difference. ’
‘I know. I’ll have to get my best suit out of pawn. Ravelston will lend me the money. ’
‘Never mind about Ravelston. I’ll lend you the money. I’ve got four pounds put away. I’ll
run out and wire it you before the post-office shuts. I expect you’ll want some new shoes
and a new tie as well. And, oh, Gordon! ’
‘What? ’
‘Wear a hat when you go up to the office, won’t you? It looks better, wearing a hat. ’
‘A hat! God! I haven’t worn a hat for two years. Must I? ’
‘Well — it does look more business-like, doesn’t it? ’
‘Oh, all right. A bowler hat, even, if you think I ought. ’
‘I think a soft hat would do. But get your hair cut, won’t you, there’s a dear? ’
‘Yes, don’t you worry. I’ll be a smart young business man. Well groomed, and all that. ’
‘Thanks ever so, Gordon dear. I must run out and wire that money. Good night and good
luck. ’
‘Good night. ’
He came out of the booth. So that was that. He had torn it now, right enough.
He walked rapidly away. What had he done? Chucked up the sponge! Broken all his
oaths! His long and lonely war had ended in ignominious defeat. Circumcise ye your
foreskins, saith the Lord. He was coming back to the fold, repentant. He seemed to be
walking faster than usual. There was a peculiar sensation, an actual physical sensation, in
his heart, in his limbs, all over him. What was it? Shame, misery, despair? Rage at being
back in the clutch of money? Boredom when he thought of the deadly future? He dragged
the sensation forth, faced it, examined it. It was relief.
Yes, that was the truth of it. Now that the thing was done he felt nothing but relief; relief
that now at last he had finished with dirt, cold, hunger, and loneliness and could get back
to decent, fully human life. His resolutions, now that he had broken them, seemed
nothing but a frightful weight that he had cast off. Moreover, he was aware that he was
only fulfilling his destiny. In some corner of his mind he had always known that this
would happen. He thought of the day when he had given them notice at the New Albion;
and Mr Erskine’s kind, red, beefish face, gently counselling him not to chuck up a ‘good’
job for nothing. How bitterly he had sworn, then, that he was done with ‘good’ jobs for
ever! Yet it was foredoomed that he should come back, and he had known it even then.
And it was not merely because of Rosemary and the baby that he had done it. That was
the obvious cause, the precipitating cause, but even without it the end would have been
the same; if there had been no baby to think about, something else would have forced his
hand. For it was what, in his secret heart, he had desired.
After all he did not lack vitality, and that moneyless existence to which he had
condemned himself had thrust him ruthlessly out of the stream of life. He looked back
over the last two frightful years. He had blasphemed against money, rebelled against
money, tried to live like an anchorite outside the money-world; and it had brought him
not only misery, but also a frightful emptiness, an inescapable sense of futility. To abjure
money is to abjure life. Be not righteous over much; why shouldst thou die before thy
time? Now he was back in the money-world, or soon would be. Tomorrow he would go
up to the New Albion, in his best suit and overcoat (he must remember to get his overcoat
out of pawn at the same time as his suit), in homburg hat of the correct gutter-crawling
pattern, neatly shaved and with his hair cut short. He would be as though bom anew. The
sluttish poet of today would be hardly recognizable in the natty young business man of
tomorrow. They would take him back, right enough; he had the talent they needed. He
would buckle to work, sell his soul, and hold down his job.
And what about the future? Perhaps it would turn out that these last two years had not left
much mark upon him. They were merely a gap, a small setback in his career. Quite
quickly, now that he had taken the first step, he would develop the cynical, blinkered
business mentality. He would forget his fine disgusts, cease to rage against the tyranny of
money — cease to be aware of it, even — cease to squirm at the ads for Bovex and
Breakfast Crisps. He would sell his soul so utterly that he would forget it had ever been
his. He would get married, settle down, prosper moderately, push a pram, have a villa and
a radio and an aspidistra. He would be a law-abiding little cit like any other law-abiding
little cit — a soldier in the strap-hanging army. Probably it was better so.
He slowed his pace a little. He was thirty and there was grey in his hair, yet he had a
queer feeling that he had only just grown up. It occurred to him that he was merely
repeating the destiny of every human being. Everyone rebels against the money-code, and
everyone sooner or later surrenders. He had kept up his rebellion a little longer than most,
that was all. And he had made such a wretched failure of it! He wondered whether every
anchorite in his dismal cell pines secretly to be back in the world of men. Perhaps there
were a few who did not. Somebody or other had said that the modern world is only
habitable by saints and scoundrels. He, Gordon, wasn’t a saint. Better, then, to be an
unpretending scoundrel along with the others. It was what he had secretly pined for; now
that he had acknowledged his desire and surrendered to it, he was at peace.
He was making roughly in the direction of home. He looked up at the houses he was
passing. It was a street he did not know. Oldish houses, mean-looking and rather dark, let
off in flatlets and single rooms for the most part. Railed areas, smoke-grimed bricks,
whited steps, dingy lace curtains. ‘Apartments’ cards in half the windows, aspidistras in
nearly all. A typical lower-middle-class street. But not, on the whole, the kind of street
that he wanted to see blown to hell by bombs.
He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small
clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did
THEY know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You
bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born,
being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage
it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on
greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously
transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their
lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras — they
lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The
money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their
standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’ — kept
the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were ALIVE. They were bound up in the bundle of
life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any
chance do.
The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.
He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London
Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under a street lamp. A great wad of paper,
soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which
have been a long time in one’s pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of
his exile, a two years’ foetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all
that. Poetry! POETRY, indeed! In 1935.
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the W. C. But he was a
long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a
drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the
yellow lace curtains.
He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a
line caught his eye.
