If only
Rosemary
were here!
Orwell - Keep the Apidistra Flying
Outside Modigliani’s they had paid off the taxi and were moving for the
door when a big, lank wreck of a man seemed to spring up from the paving-stones in
front of them. He stood across their path like some fawning beast, with dreadful
eagerness and yet timorously, as though afraid that Ravelston would strike him. His face
came close up to Ravelston’ s — a dreadful face, fish- white and scrubby-bearded to the
eyes. The words ‘A cup of tea, guv’nor! ’ were breathed through carious teeth. Ravelston
shrank from him in disgust. He could not help it. His hand moved automatically to his
pocket. But in the same instant Hennione caught him by the ann and hauled him inside
the restaurant.
‘You’d give away every penny you’ve got if I let you,’ she said.
They went to their favourite table in the corner. Hennione played with some grapes, but
Ravelston was very hungry. He ordered the grilled rumpsteak he had been thinking of,
and half a bottle of Beaujolais. The fat, white-haired Italian waiter, an old friend of
Ravelston’s, brought the smoking steak. Ravelston cut it open. Lovely, its red-blue heart!
In Middlesbrough the unemployed huddle in frowzy beds, bread and marg and milkless
tea in their bellies. He settled down to his steak with all the shameful joy of a dog with a
stolen leg of mutton.
Gordon walked rapidly homewards. It was cold. The fifth of December — real winter
now. Circumcise ye your foreskins, saith the Lord. The damp wind blew spitefully
through the naked trees. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. The poem he had
begun on Wednesday, of which six stanzas were now finished, came back to his mind. He
did not dislike it at this moment. It was queer how talking with Ravelston always bucked
him up. The mere contact with Ravelston seemed to reassure him somehow. Even when
their talk had been unsatisfactory, he came away with the feeling that, after all, he wasn’t
quite a failure. Half aloud he repeated the six finished stanzas. They were not bad, not
bad at all.
But intermittently he was going over in his mind the things he had said to Ravelston. He
stuck to everything he had said. The humiliation of poverty! That’s what they can’t
understand and won’t understand. Not hardship — you don’t suffer hardship on two quid a
week, and if you did it wouldn’t matter — but just humiliation, the awful, bloody
humiliation. The way it gives everyone the right to stamp on you. The way everyone
WANTS to stamp on you. Ravelston wouldn’t believe it. He had too much decency, that
was why. He thought you could be poor and still be treated like a human being. But
Gordon knew better. He went into the house repeating to himself that he knew better.
There was a letter waiting for him on the hall tray. His heart jumped. All letters excited
him nowadays. He went up the stairs three at a time, shut himself in and lit the gas. The
letter was from Doring.
DEAR COMSTOCK, — What a pity you didn’t turn up on Saturday. There were some
people I wanted you to meet. We did tell you it was Saturday and not Thursday this time,
didn’t we? My wife says she’s certain she told you. Anyway, we’re having another party
on the twenty-third, a sort of before-Christmas party, about the same time. Won’t you
come then? Don’t forget the date this time.
Yours
PAUL DORING
A painful convulsion happened below Gordon’s ribs. So Doring was pretending that it
was all a mistake — was pretending not to have insulted him! True, he could not actually
have gone there on Saturday, because on Saturday he had to be at the shop; still, it was
the intention that counted.
His heart sickened as he re-read the words ‘some people I wanted you to meet’. Just like
his bloody luck! He thought of the people he might have met — editors of highbrow
magazines, for instance. They might have given him books to review or asked to see his
poems or Lord knew what. For a moment he was dreadfully tempted to believe that
Doring had spoken the truth. Perhaps after all they HAD told him it was Saturday and not
Thursday. Perhaps if he searched his memory he might remember about it — might even
find the letter itself lying among his muddle of papers. But no! He wouldn’t think of it.
He fought down the temptation. The Dorings HAD insulted him on purpose. He was
poor, therefore they had insulted him. If you are poor, people will insult you. It was his
creed. Stick to it!
He went across to the table, tearing Doring’s letter into small bits. The aspidistra stood in
its pot, dull green, ailing, pathetic in its sickly ugliness. As he sat down, he pulled it
towards him and looked at it meditatively. There was the intimacy of hatred between the
aspidistra and him. ‘I’ll beat you yet, you b — ,’ he whispered to the dusty leaves.
Then he rummaged among his papers until he found a clean sheet, took his pen and wrote
in his small, neat hand, right in the middle of the sheet:
DEAR DORING, — With reference to your letter: Go and yourself.
Yours truly
GORDON COMSTOCK
He stuck it into an envelope, addressed it, and at once went out to get stamps from the
slot machine. Post it tonight: these things look different in the morning. He dropped it
into the pillar-box. So there was another friend gone west.
Chapter 6
This woman business! What a bore it is! What a pity we can’t cut it right out, or at least
be like the animals — minutes of ferocious lust and months of icy chastity. Take a cock
pheasant, for example. He jumps up on the hens’ backs without so much as a with your
leave or by your leave. And no sooner it is over than the whole subject is out of his mind.
He hardly even notices his hens any longer; he ignores them, or simply pecks them if
they come too near his food. He is not called upon to support his offspring, either. Lucky
pheasant! How different from the lord of creation, always on the hop between his
memory and his conscience!
Tonight Gordon wasn’t even pretending to do any work. He had gone out again
immediately after supper. He walked southward, rather slowly, thinking about women. It
was a mild, misty night, more like autumn than winter. This was Tuesday and he had four
and fourpence left. He could go down to the Crichton if he chose. Doubtless Flaxman and
his pals were already boozing there. But the Crichton, which had seemed like paradise
when he had no money, bored and disgusted him when it was in his power to go there. He
hated the stale, beery place, and the sights, sounds, smells, all so blatantly and offensively
male. There were no women there; only the barmaid with her lewd smile which seemed
to promise everything and promised nothing.
Women, women! The mist that hung motionless in the air turned the passers-by into
ghosts at twenty yards’ distance; but in the little pools of light about the lamp-posts there
were glimpses of girls’ faces. He thought of Rosemary, of women in general, and of
Rosemary again. All afternoon he had been thinking of her. It was with a kind of
resentment that he thought of her small, strong body, which he had never yet seen naked.
How damned unfair it is that we are filled to the brim with these tormenting desires and
then forbidden to satisfy them! Why should one, merely because one has no money, be
deprived of THAT? It seems so natural, so necessary, so much a part of the inalienable
rights of a human being. As he walked down the dark street, through the cold yet
languorous air, there was a strangely hopeful feeling in his breast. He half believed that
somewhere ahead in the darkness a woman’s body was waiting for him. But also he knew
that no woman was waiting, not even Rosemary. It was eight days now since she had
even written to him. The little beast! Eight whole days without writing! When she knew
how much her letters meant to him! How manifest it was that she didn’t care for him any
longer, that he was merely a nuisance to her with his poverty and his shabbiness and his
everlasting pestering of her to say she loved him! Very likely she would never write
again. She was sick of him — sick of him because he had no money. What else could you
expect? He had no hold over her. No money, therefore no hold. In the last resort, what
holds a woman to any man, except money?
A girl came down the pavement alone. He passed her in the light of the lamp-post. A
working-class girl, eighteen years old it might be, hatless, with wildrose face. She turned
her head quickly when she saw him looking at her. She dreaded to meet his eyes. Beneath
the thin silky raincoat she was wearing, belted at the waist, her youthful flanks showed
supple and trim. He could have turned and followed her, almost. But what was the use?
She’d run away or call a policeman. My golden locks time hath to silver turned, he
thought. He was thirty and moth-eaten. What woman worth having would ever look at
him again?
This woman business! Perhaps you’d feel differently about it if you were married? But he
had taken an oath against marriage long ago. Marriage is only a trap set for you by the
money-god. You grab the bait; snap goes the trap; and there you are, chained by the leg
to some ‘good’ job till they cart you to Kensal Green. And what a life! Licit sexual
intercourse in the shade of the aspidistra. Pram-pushing and sneaky adulteries. And the
wife finding you out and breaking the cut-glass whisky decanter over your head.
Nevertheless he perceived that in a way it is necessary to marry. If marriage is bad, the
alternative is worse. For a moment he wished that he were married; he pined for the
difficulty of it, the reality, the pain. And marriage must be indissoluble, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer, till death do you part. The old Christian ideal — marriage
tempered by adultery. Commit adultery if you must, but at any rate have the decency to
CALL it adultery. None of that American soul-mate slop. Have your fun and then sneak
home, juice of the forbidden fruit dripping from your whiskers, and take the
consequences. Cut-glass whisky decanters broken over your head, nagging, burnt meals,
children crying, clash and thunder of embattled mothers-in-law. Better that, perhaps, than
horrible freedom? You’d know, at least, that it was real life that you were living.
But anyway, how can you marry on two quid a week? Money, money, always money!
The devil of it is, that outside marriage, no decent relationship with a woman is possible.
His mind moved backwards, over his ten years of adult life. The faces of women flowed
through his memory. Ten or a dozen of them there had been. Tarts, also. Comine au long
d’un cadavre un cadavre etendu. And even when they were not tarts it had been squalid,
always squalid. Always it had started in a sort of cold-blooded wilfulness and ended in
some mean, callous desertion. That, too, was money. Without money, you can’t be
straightforward in your dealings with women. For without money, you can’t pick and
choose, you’ve got to take what women you can get; and then, necessarily, you’ve got to
break free of them. Constancy, like all other virtues, has got to be paid for in money. And
the mere fact that he had rebelled against the money code and wouldn’t settle down in the
prison of a ‘good’ job — a thing no woman will ever understand — had brought a quality of
impermanence, of deception, into all his affairs with women. Abjuring money, he ought
to have abjured women to. Serve the money-god, or do without women — those are the
only alternatives. And both were equally impossible.
From the side-street just ahead, a shade of white light cut through the mist, and there was
a bellowing of street hawkers. It was Luton Road, where they have the open-air market
two evenings a week. Gordon turned to his left, into the market. He often came this way.
The street was so crowded that you could only with difficulty thread your way down the
cabbage-littered alley between the stalls. In the glare of hanging electric bulbs, the stuff
on the stalls glowed with fine lurid colours — hacked, crimson chu nk s of meat, piles of
oranges and green and white broccoli, stiff, glassy-eyed rabbits, live eels looping in
enamel troughs, plucked fowls hanging in rows, sticking out their naked breasts like
guardsmen naked on parade. Gordon’s spirits revived a little. He liked the noise, the
bustle, the vitality. Whenever you see a street-market you know there’s hope for England
yet. But even here he felt his solitude. Girls were thronging everywhere, in knots of four
or five, prowling desirously about the stalls of cheap underwear and swapping backchat
and screams of laughter with the youths who followed them. None had eyes for Gordon.
He walked among them as though invisible, save that their bodies avoided him when he
passed them. Ah, look there! Involuntarily he paused. Over a pile of art-silk undies on a
stall, three girls were bending, intent, their faces close together — three youthful faces,
flower-like in the harsh light, clustering side by side like a truss of blossom on a Sweet
William or phlox. His heart stirred. No eyes for him, of course! One girl looked up. Ah!
Hurriedly, with an offended air, she looked away again. A delicate flush like a wash of
aquarelle flooded her face. The hard, sexual stare in his eyes had frightened her. They
flee from me that sometime did me seek! He walked on.
If only Rosemary were here! He
forgave her now for not writing to him. He could forgive her anything, if only she were
here. He knew how much she meant to him, because she alone of all women was willing
to save him from the humiliation of his loneliness.
At this moment he looked up, and saw something that made his heart jump. He changed
the focus of his eyes abruptly. For a moment he thought he was imagining it. But no! It
WAS Rosemary!
She was coming down the alley between the stalls, twenty or thirty yards away. It was as
though his desire had called her into being. She had not seen him yet. She came towards
him, a small debonair figure, picking her way nimbly through the crowd and the muck
underfoot, her face scarcely visible because of a flat black hat which she wore cocked
down over her eyes like a Harrow boy’s straw hat. He started towards her and called her
name.
‘Rosemary! Hi, Rosemary! ’
A blue-aproned man thumbing codfish on a stall turned to stare at him. Rosemary did not
hear him because of the din. He called again.
‘Rosemary! I say, Rosemary! ’
They were only a few yards apart now. She started and looked up.
‘Gordon! What are you doing here? ’
‘What are YOU doing here? ’
‘I was coming to see you. ’
‘But how did you know I was here? ’
‘I didn’t. I always come this way. I get out of the tube at Camden Town. ’
Rosemary sometimes came to see Gordon at Willowbed Road. Mrs Wisbeach would
inform him sourly that ‘there was a young woman to see him’, and he would come
downstairs and they would go out for a walk in the streets. Rosemary was never allowed
indoors, not even into the hall. That was a rule of the house. You would have thought
‘young women’ were plague -rats by the way Mrs Wisbeach spoke of them. Gordon took
Rosemary by the upper arm and made to pull her against him.
‘Rosemary! Oh, what a joy to see you again! I was so vilely lonely. Why didn’t you come
before? ’
She shook off his hand and stepped back out of his reach. Under her slanting hat-brim she
gave him a glance that was intended to be angry.
‘Let me go, now! I’m very angry with you. I very nearly didn’t come after that beastly
letter you sent me. ’
‘What beastly letter? ’
‘You know very well. ’
‘No, I don’t. Oh, well, let’s get out of this. Somewhere where we can talk. This way. ’
He took her arm, but she shook him off again, continuing however, to walk at his side.
Her steps were quicker and shorter than his. And walking beside him she had the
appearance of something extremely small, nimble, and young, as though he had had some
lively little animal, a squirrel for instance, frisking at his side. In reality she was not very
much smaller than Gordon, and only a few months younger. But no one would ever have
described Rosemary as a spinster of nearly thirty, which in fact she was. She was a
strong, agile girl, with stiff black hair, a small triangular face, and very pronounced
eyebrows. It was one of those small, peaky faces, full of character, which one sees in
sixteenth-century portraits. The first time you saw her take her hat off you got a surprise,
for on her crown three white hairs glittered among the black ones like silver wires. It was
typical of Rosemary that she never bothered to pull the white hairs out. She still thought
of herself as a very young girl, and so did everybody else. Yet if you looked closely the
marks of time were plain enough on her face.
Gordon walked more boldly with Rosemary at his side. He was proud of her. People were
looking at her, and therefore at him as well. He was no longer invisible to women. As
always, Rosemary was rather nicely dressed. It was a mystery how she did it on four
pounds a week. He liked particularly the hat she was wearing — one of those flat felt hats
which were then coming into fashion and which caricatured a clergyman’s shovel hat.
There was something essentially frivolous about it. In some way difficult to be described,
the angle at which it was cocked forward harmonized appealingly with the curve of
Rosemary’s behind.
‘I like your hat,’ he said.
In spite of herself, a small smile flickered at the comer of her mouth.
‘It IS rather nice,’ she said, giving the hat a little pat with her hand.
She was still pretending to be angry, however. She took care that their bodies should not
touch. As soon as they had reached the end of the stalls and were in the main street she
stopped and faced him sombrely.
‘What do you mean by writing me letters like that? ’ she said.
‘Letters like what? ’
‘Saying I’d broken your heart. ’
‘So you have. ’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it! ’
‘I don’t know. It certainly feels like it. ’
The words were spoken half jokingly, and yet they made her look more closely at him —
at his pale, wasted face, his uncut hair, his general down-at-heel, neglected appearance.
Her heart softened instantly, and yet she frowned. Why WON’T he take care of himself?
was the thought in her mind. They had moved closer together. He took her by the
shoulders. She let him do it, and, putting her small arms round him, squeezed him very
hard, partly in affection, partly in exasperation.
‘Gordon, you ARE a miserable creature! ’ she said.
‘Why am I a miserable creature? ’
‘Why can’t you look after yourself properly? You’re a perfect scarecrow. Look at these
awful old clothes you’re wearing! ’
‘They’re suited to my station. One can’t dress decently on two quid a week, you know. ’
‘But surely there’s no need to go about looking like a rag-bag? Look at this button on
your coat, broken in half! ’
She fingered the broken button, then suddenly lifted his discoloured Woolworth’s tie
aside. In some feminine way she had divined that he had no buttons on his shirt.
‘Yes, AGAIN! Not a single button. You are awful, Gordon! ’
‘I tell you I can’t be bothered with things like that. I’ve got a soul above buttons. ’
‘But why not give them to ME and let me sew them on for you? And, oh, Gordon! You
haven’t even shaved today. How absolutely beastly of you. You might at least take the
trouble to shave every morning. ’
‘I can’t afford to shave every morning,’ he said perversely.
‘What DO you mean, Gordon? It doesn’t cost money to shave, does it? ’
‘Yes, it does. Everything costs money. Cleanness, decency, energy, self-respect —
everything. It’s all money. Haven’t I told you that a million times? ’
She squeezed his ribs again — she was surprisingly strong — and frowned up at him,
studying his face as a mother looks at some peevish child of which she is unreasonably
fond.
‘WHAT a fool I am! ’ she said.
‘In what way a fool? ’
‘Because I’m so fond of you. ’
‘Are you fond of me? ’
‘Of course I am. You know I am. I adore you. It’s idiotic of me. ’
‘Then come somewhere where it’s dark. I want to kiss you. ’
‘Fancy being kissed by a man who hasn’t even shaved! ’
‘Well, that’ll be a new experience for you. ’
‘No, it won’t, Gordon. Not after knowing YOU for two years. ’
‘Oh, well, come on, anyway. ’
They found an almost dark alley between the backs of houses. All their lovemaking was
done in such places. The only place where they could ever be private was the streets. He
pressed her shoulders against the rough damp bricks of the wall. She turned her face
readily up to his and clung to him with a sort of eager violent affection, like a child. And
yet all the while, though they were body to body, it was as though there were a shield
between them. She kissed him as a child might have done, because she knew that he
expected to be kissed. It was always like this. Only at very rare moments could he awake
in her the beginnings of physical desire; and these she seemed afterwards to forget, so
that he always had to begin at the beginning over again. There was something defensive
in the feeling of her small, shapely body. She longed to know the meaning of physical
love, but also she dreaded it. It would destroy her youth, the youthful, sexless world in
which she chose to live.
He parted his mouth from hers in order to speak to her.
‘Do you love me? ’ he said.
‘Of course, silly. Why do you always ask me that? ’
‘I like to hear you say it. Somehow I never feel sure of you till I’ve heard you say it. ’
‘But why? ’
‘Oh, well, you might have changed your mind. After all, I’m not exactly the answer to a
maiden’s prayer. I’m thirty, and moth-eaten at that. ’
‘Don’t be so absurd, Gordon! Anyone would think you were a hundred, to hear you talk.
You know I’m the same age as you are. ’
‘Yes, but not moth-eaten. ’
She rubbed her cheek against his, feeling the roughness of his day-old beard. Their bellies
were close together. He thought of the two years he had wanted her and never had her.
With his lips almost against her ear he murmured:
‘Are you EVER going to sleep with me? ’
‘Yes, some day I will. Not now. Some day. ’
‘It’s always “some day”. It’s been “some day” for two years now. ’
‘I know. But I can’t help it. ’
He pressed her back against the wall, pulled off the absurd flat hat, and buried his face in
her hair. It was tormenting to be so close to her and all for nothing. He put a hand under
her chin and lifted her small face up to his, trying to distinguish her features in the almost
complete darkness.
‘Say you will, Rosemary. There’s a dear! Do! ’
‘You know I’m going to SOME time. ’
‘Yes, but not SOME time — now. I don’t mean this moment, but soon. When we get an
opportunity. Say you will! ’
‘I can’t. I can’t promise. ’
‘Say “yes,” Rosemary. PLEASE do! ’
‘No. ’
Still stroking her invisible face, he quoted:
‘Veuillez le dire done selon Que vous estes benigne et doulche, Car ce doulx mot n’est
pas si long Qu’il vous face mal en la bouche. ’
‘What does that mean? ’
He translated it.
‘I can’t, Gordon. I just can’t. ’
‘Say “yes,” Rosemary, there’s a dear. Surely it’s as easy to say “yes” as “no”?
door when a big, lank wreck of a man seemed to spring up from the paving-stones in
front of them. He stood across their path like some fawning beast, with dreadful
eagerness and yet timorously, as though afraid that Ravelston would strike him. His face
came close up to Ravelston’ s — a dreadful face, fish- white and scrubby-bearded to the
eyes. The words ‘A cup of tea, guv’nor! ’ were breathed through carious teeth. Ravelston
shrank from him in disgust. He could not help it. His hand moved automatically to his
pocket. But in the same instant Hennione caught him by the ann and hauled him inside
the restaurant.
‘You’d give away every penny you’ve got if I let you,’ she said.
They went to their favourite table in the corner. Hennione played with some grapes, but
Ravelston was very hungry. He ordered the grilled rumpsteak he had been thinking of,
and half a bottle of Beaujolais. The fat, white-haired Italian waiter, an old friend of
Ravelston’s, brought the smoking steak. Ravelston cut it open. Lovely, its red-blue heart!
In Middlesbrough the unemployed huddle in frowzy beds, bread and marg and milkless
tea in their bellies. He settled down to his steak with all the shameful joy of a dog with a
stolen leg of mutton.
Gordon walked rapidly homewards. It was cold. The fifth of December — real winter
now. Circumcise ye your foreskins, saith the Lord. The damp wind blew spitefully
through the naked trees. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. The poem he had
begun on Wednesday, of which six stanzas were now finished, came back to his mind. He
did not dislike it at this moment. It was queer how talking with Ravelston always bucked
him up. The mere contact with Ravelston seemed to reassure him somehow. Even when
their talk had been unsatisfactory, he came away with the feeling that, after all, he wasn’t
quite a failure. Half aloud he repeated the six finished stanzas. They were not bad, not
bad at all.
But intermittently he was going over in his mind the things he had said to Ravelston. He
stuck to everything he had said. The humiliation of poverty! That’s what they can’t
understand and won’t understand. Not hardship — you don’t suffer hardship on two quid a
week, and if you did it wouldn’t matter — but just humiliation, the awful, bloody
humiliation. The way it gives everyone the right to stamp on you. The way everyone
WANTS to stamp on you. Ravelston wouldn’t believe it. He had too much decency, that
was why. He thought you could be poor and still be treated like a human being. But
Gordon knew better. He went into the house repeating to himself that he knew better.
There was a letter waiting for him on the hall tray. His heart jumped. All letters excited
him nowadays. He went up the stairs three at a time, shut himself in and lit the gas. The
letter was from Doring.
DEAR COMSTOCK, — What a pity you didn’t turn up on Saturday. There were some
people I wanted you to meet. We did tell you it was Saturday and not Thursday this time,
didn’t we? My wife says she’s certain she told you. Anyway, we’re having another party
on the twenty-third, a sort of before-Christmas party, about the same time. Won’t you
come then? Don’t forget the date this time.
Yours
PAUL DORING
A painful convulsion happened below Gordon’s ribs. So Doring was pretending that it
was all a mistake — was pretending not to have insulted him! True, he could not actually
have gone there on Saturday, because on Saturday he had to be at the shop; still, it was
the intention that counted.
His heart sickened as he re-read the words ‘some people I wanted you to meet’. Just like
his bloody luck! He thought of the people he might have met — editors of highbrow
magazines, for instance. They might have given him books to review or asked to see his
poems or Lord knew what. For a moment he was dreadfully tempted to believe that
Doring had spoken the truth. Perhaps after all they HAD told him it was Saturday and not
Thursday. Perhaps if he searched his memory he might remember about it — might even
find the letter itself lying among his muddle of papers. But no! He wouldn’t think of it.
He fought down the temptation. The Dorings HAD insulted him on purpose. He was
poor, therefore they had insulted him. If you are poor, people will insult you. It was his
creed. Stick to it!
He went across to the table, tearing Doring’s letter into small bits. The aspidistra stood in
its pot, dull green, ailing, pathetic in its sickly ugliness. As he sat down, he pulled it
towards him and looked at it meditatively. There was the intimacy of hatred between the
aspidistra and him. ‘I’ll beat you yet, you b — ,’ he whispered to the dusty leaves.
Then he rummaged among his papers until he found a clean sheet, took his pen and wrote
in his small, neat hand, right in the middle of the sheet:
DEAR DORING, — With reference to your letter: Go and yourself.
Yours truly
GORDON COMSTOCK
He stuck it into an envelope, addressed it, and at once went out to get stamps from the
slot machine. Post it tonight: these things look different in the morning. He dropped it
into the pillar-box. So there was another friend gone west.
Chapter 6
This woman business! What a bore it is! What a pity we can’t cut it right out, or at least
be like the animals — minutes of ferocious lust and months of icy chastity. Take a cock
pheasant, for example. He jumps up on the hens’ backs without so much as a with your
leave or by your leave. And no sooner it is over than the whole subject is out of his mind.
He hardly even notices his hens any longer; he ignores them, or simply pecks them if
they come too near his food. He is not called upon to support his offspring, either. Lucky
pheasant! How different from the lord of creation, always on the hop between his
memory and his conscience!
Tonight Gordon wasn’t even pretending to do any work. He had gone out again
immediately after supper. He walked southward, rather slowly, thinking about women. It
was a mild, misty night, more like autumn than winter. This was Tuesday and he had four
and fourpence left. He could go down to the Crichton if he chose. Doubtless Flaxman and
his pals were already boozing there. But the Crichton, which had seemed like paradise
when he had no money, bored and disgusted him when it was in his power to go there. He
hated the stale, beery place, and the sights, sounds, smells, all so blatantly and offensively
male. There were no women there; only the barmaid with her lewd smile which seemed
to promise everything and promised nothing.
Women, women! The mist that hung motionless in the air turned the passers-by into
ghosts at twenty yards’ distance; but in the little pools of light about the lamp-posts there
were glimpses of girls’ faces. He thought of Rosemary, of women in general, and of
Rosemary again. All afternoon he had been thinking of her. It was with a kind of
resentment that he thought of her small, strong body, which he had never yet seen naked.
How damned unfair it is that we are filled to the brim with these tormenting desires and
then forbidden to satisfy them! Why should one, merely because one has no money, be
deprived of THAT? It seems so natural, so necessary, so much a part of the inalienable
rights of a human being. As he walked down the dark street, through the cold yet
languorous air, there was a strangely hopeful feeling in his breast. He half believed that
somewhere ahead in the darkness a woman’s body was waiting for him. But also he knew
that no woman was waiting, not even Rosemary. It was eight days now since she had
even written to him. The little beast! Eight whole days without writing! When she knew
how much her letters meant to him! How manifest it was that she didn’t care for him any
longer, that he was merely a nuisance to her with his poverty and his shabbiness and his
everlasting pestering of her to say she loved him! Very likely she would never write
again. She was sick of him — sick of him because he had no money. What else could you
expect? He had no hold over her. No money, therefore no hold. In the last resort, what
holds a woman to any man, except money?
A girl came down the pavement alone. He passed her in the light of the lamp-post. A
working-class girl, eighteen years old it might be, hatless, with wildrose face. She turned
her head quickly when she saw him looking at her. She dreaded to meet his eyes. Beneath
the thin silky raincoat she was wearing, belted at the waist, her youthful flanks showed
supple and trim. He could have turned and followed her, almost. But what was the use?
She’d run away or call a policeman. My golden locks time hath to silver turned, he
thought. He was thirty and moth-eaten. What woman worth having would ever look at
him again?
This woman business! Perhaps you’d feel differently about it if you were married? But he
had taken an oath against marriage long ago. Marriage is only a trap set for you by the
money-god. You grab the bait; snap goes the trap; and there you are, chained by the leg
to some ‘good’ job till they cart you to Kensal Green. And what a life! Licit sexual
intercourse in the shade of the aspidistra. Pram-pushing and sneaky adulteries. And the
wife finding you out and breaking the cut-glass whisky decanter over your head.
Nevertheless he perceived that in a way it is necessary to marry. If marriage is bad, the
alternative is worse. For a moment he wished that he were married; he pined for the
difficulty of it, the reality, the pain. And marriage must be indissoluble, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer, till death do you part. The old Christian ideal — marriage
tempered by adultery. Commit adultery if you must, but at any rate have the decency to
CALL it adultery. None of that American soul-mate slop. Have your fun and then sneak
home, juice of the forbidden fruit dripping from your whiskers, and take the
consequences. Cut-glass whisky decanters broken over your head, nagging, burnt meals,
children crying, clash and thunder of embattled mothers-in-law. Better that, perhaps, than
horrible freedom? You’d know, at least, that it was real life that you were living.
But anyway, how can you marry on two quid a week? Money, money, always money!
The devil of it is, that outside marriage, no decent relationship with a woman is possible.
His mind moved backwards, over his ten years of adult life. The faces of women flowed
through his memory. Ten or a dozen of them there had been. Tarts, also. Comine au long
d’un cadavre un cadavre etendu. And even when they were not tarts it had been squalid,
always squalid. Always it had started in a sort of cold-blooded wilfulness and ended in
some mean, callous desertion. That, too, was money. Without money, you can’t be
straightforward in your dealings with women. For without money, you can’t pick and
choose, you’ve got to take what women you can get; and then, necessarily, you’ve got to
break free of them. Constancy, like all other virtues, has got to be paid for in money. And
the mere fact that he had rebelled against the money code and wouldn’t settle down in the
prison of a ‘good’ job — a thing no woman will ever understand — had brought a quality of
impermanence, of deception, into all his affairs with women. Abjuring money, he ought
to have abjured women to. Serve the money-god, or do without women — those are the
only alternatives. And both were equally impossible.
From the side-street just ahead, a shade of white light cut through the mist, and there was
a bellowing of street hawkers. It was Luton Road, where they have the open-air market
two evenings a week. Gordon turned to his left, into the market. He often came this way.
The street was so crowded that you could only with difficulty thread your way down the
cabbage-littered alley between the stalls. In the glare of hanging electric bulbs, the stuff
on the stalls glowed with fine lurid colours — hacked, crimson chu nk s of meat, piles of
oranges and green and white broccoli, stiff, glassy-eyed rabbits, live eels looping in
enamel troughs, plucked fowls hanging in rows, sticking out their naked breasts like
guardsmen naked on parade. Gordon’s spirits revived a little. He liked the noise, the
bustle, the vitality. Whenever you see a street-market you know there’s hope for England
yet. But even here he felt his solitude. Girls were thronging everywhere, in knots of four
or five, prowling desirously about the stalls of cheap underwear and swapping backchat
and screams of laughter with the youths who followed them. None had eyes for Gordon.
He walked among them as though invisible, save that their bodies avoided him when he
passed them. Ah, look there! Involuntarily he paused. Over a pile of art-silk undies on a
stall, three girls were bending, intent, their faces close together — three youthful faces,
flower-like in the harsh light, clustering side by side like a truss of blossom on a Sweet
William or phlox. His heart stirred. No eyes for him, of course! One girl looked up. Ah!
Hurriedly, with an offended air, she looked away again. A delicate flush like a wash of
aquarelle flooded her face. The hard, sexual stare in his eyes had frightened her. They
flee from me that sometime did me seek! He walked on.
If only Rosemary were here! He
forgave her now for not writing to him. He could forgive her anything, if only she were
here. He knew how much she meant to him, because she alone of all women was willing
to save him from the humiliation of his loneliness.
At this moment he looked up, and saw something that made his heart jump. He changed
the focus of his eyes abruptly. For a moment he thought he was imagining it. But no! It
WAS Rosemary!
She was coming down the alley between the stalls, twenty or thirty yards away. It was as
though his desire had called her into being. She had not seen him yet. She came towards
him, a small debonair figure, picking her way nimbly through the crowd and the muck
underfoot, her face scarcely visible because of a flat black hat which she wore cocked
down over her eyes like a Harrow boy’s straw hat. He started towards her and called her
name.
‘Rosemary! Hi, Rosemary! ’
A blue-aproned man thumbing codfish on a stall turned to stare at him. Rosemary did not
hear him because of the din. He called again.
‘Rosemary! I say, Rosemary! ’
They were only a few yards apart now. She started and looked up.
‘Gordon! What are you doing here? ’
‘What are YOU doing here? ’
‘I was coming to see you. ’
‘But how did you know I was here? ’
‘I didn’t. I always come this way. I get out of the tube at Camden Town. ’
Rosemary sometimes came to see Gordon at Willowbed Road. Mrs Wisbeach would
inform him sourly that ‘there was a young woman to see him’, and he would come
downstairs and they would go out for a walk in the streets. Rosemary was never allowed
indoors, not even into the hall. That was a rule of the house. You would have thought
‘young women’ were plague -rats by the way Mrs Wisbeach spoke of them. Gordon took
Rosemary by the upper arm and made to pull her against him.
‘Rosemary! Oh, what a joy to see you again! I was so vilely lonely. Why didn’t you come
before? ’
She shook off his hand and stepped back out of his reach. Under her slanting hat-brim she
gave him a glance that was intended to be angry.
‘Let me go, now! I’m very angry with you. I very nearly didn’t come after that beastly
letter you sent me. ’
‘What beastly letter? ’
‘You know very well. ’
‘No, I don’t. Oh, well, let’s get out of this. Somewhere where we can talk. This way. ’
He took her arm, but she shook him off again, continuing however, to walk at his side.
Her steps were quicker and shorter than his. And walking beside him she had the
appearance of something extremely small, nimble, and young, as though he had had some
lively little animal, a squirrel for instance, frisking at his side. In reality she was not very
much smaller than Gordon, and only a few months younger. But no one would ever have
described Rosemary as a spinster of nearly thirty, which in fact she was. She was a
strong, agile girl, with stiff black hair, a small triangular face, and very pronounced
eyebrows. It was one of those small, peaky faces, full of character, which one sees in
sixteenth-century portraits. The first time you saw her take her hat off you got a surprise,
for on her crown three white hairs glittered among the black ones like silver wires. It was
typical of Rosemary that she never bothered to pull the white hairs out. She still thought
of herself as a very young girl, and so did everybody else. Yet if you looked closely the
marks of time were plain enough on her face.
Gordon walked more boldly with Rosemary at his side. He was proud of her. People were
looking at her, and therefore at him as well. He was no longer invisible to women. As
always, Rosemary was rather nicely dressed. It was a mystery how she did it on four
pounds a week. He liked particularly the hat she was wearing — one of those flat felt hats
which were then coming into fashion and which caricatured a clergyman’s shovel hat.
There was something essentially frivolous about it. In some way difficult to be described,
the angle at which it was cocked forward harmonized appealingly with the curve of
Rosemary’s behind.
‘I like your hat,’ he said.
In spite of herself, a small smile flickered at the comer of her mouth.
‘It IS rather nice,’ she said, giving the hat a little pat with her hand.
She was still pretending to be angry, however. She took care that their bodies should not
touch. As soon as they had reached the end of the stalls and were in the main street she
stopped and faced him sombrely.
‘What do you mean by writing me letters like that? ’ she said.
‘Letters like what? ’
‘Saying I’d broken your heart. ’
‘So you have. ’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it! ’
‘I don’t know. It certainly feels like it. ’
The words were spoken half jokingly, and yet they made her look more closely at him —
at his pale, wasted face, his uncut hair, his general down-at-heel, neglected appearance.
Her heart softened instantly, and yet she frowned. Why WON’T he take care of himself?
was the thought in her mind. They had moved closer together. He took her by the
shoulders. She let him do it, and, putting her small arms round him, squeezed him very
hard, partly in affection, partly in exasperation.
‘Gordon, you ARE a miserable creature! ’ she said.
‘Why am I a miserable creature? ’
‘Why can’t you look after yourself properly? You’re a perfect scarecrow. Look at these
awful old clothes you’re wearing! ’
‘They’re suited to my station. One can’t dress decently on two quid a week, you know. ’
‘But surely there’s no need to go about looking like a rag-bag? Look at this button on
your coat, broken in half! ’
She fingered the broken button, then suddenly lifted his discoloured Woolworth’s tie
aside. In some feminine way she had divined that he had no buttons on his shirt.
‘Yes, AGAIN! Not a single button. You are awful, Gordon! ’
‘I tell you I can’t be bothered with things like that. I’ve got a soul above buttons. ’
‘But why not give them to ME and let me sew them on for you? And, oh, Gordon! You
haven’t even shaved today. How absolutely beastly of you. You might at least take the
trouble to shave every morning. ’
‘I can’t afford to shave every morning,’ he said perversely.
‘What DO you mean, Gordon? It doesn’t cost money to shave, does it? ’
‘Yes, it does. Everything costs money. Cleanness, decency, energy, self-respect —
everything. It’s all money. Haven’t I told you that a million times? ’
She squeezed his ribs again — she was surprisingly strong — and frowned up at him,
studying his face as a mother looks at some peevish child of which she is unreasonably
fond.
‘WHAT a fool I am! ’ she said.
‘In what way a fool? ’
‘Because I’m so fond of you. ’
‘Are you fond of me? ’
‘Of course I am. You know I am. I adore you. It’s idiotic of me. ’
‘Then come somewhere where it’s dark. I want to kiss you. ’
‘Fancy being kissed by a man who hasn’t even shaved! ’
‘Well, that’ll be a new experience for you. ’
‘No, it won’t, Gordon. Not after knowing YOU for two years. ’
‘Oh, well, come on, anyway. ’
They found an almost dark alley between the backs of houses. All their lovemaking was
done in such places. The only place where they could ever be private was the streets. He
pressed her shoulders against the rough damp bricks of the wall. She turned her face
readily up to his and clung to him with a sort of eager violent affection, like a child. And
yet all the while, though they were body to body, it was as though there were a shield
between them. She kissed him as a child might have done, because she knew that he
expected to be kissed. It was always like this. Only at very rare moments could he awake
in her the beginnings of physical desire; and these she seemed afterwards to forget, so
that he always had to begin at the beginning over again. There was something defensive
in the feeling of her small, shapely body. She longed to know the meaning of physical
love, but also she dreaded it. It would destroy her youth, the youthful, sexless world in
which she chose to live.
He parted his mouth from hers in order to speak to her.
‘Do you love me? ’ he said.
‘Of course, silly. Why do you always ask me that? ’
‘I like to hear you say it. Somehow I never feel sure of you till I’ve heard you say it. ’
‘But why? ’
‘Oh, well, you might have changed your mind. After all, I’m not exactly the answer to a
maiden’s prayer. I’m thirty, and moth-eaten at that. ’
‘Don’t be so absurd, Gordon! Anyone would think you were a hundred, to hear you talk.
You know I’m the same age as you are. ’
‘Yes, but not moth-eaten. ’
She rubbed her cheek against his, feeling the roughness of his day-old beard. Their bellies
were close together. He thought of the two years he had wanted her and never had her.
With his lips almost against her ear he murmured:
‘Are you EVER going to sleep with me? ’
‘Yes, some day I will. Not now. Some day. ’
‘It’s always “some day”. It’s been “some day” for two years now. ’
‘I know. But I can’t help it. ’
He pressed her back against the wall, pulled off the absurd flat hat, and buried his face in
her hair. It was tormenting to be so close to her and all for nothing. He put a hand under
her chin and lifted her small face up to his, trying to distinguish her features in the almost
complete darkness.
‘Say you will, Rosemary. There’s a dear! Do! ’
‘You know I’m going to SOME time. ’
‘Yes, but not SOME time — now. I don’t mean this moment, but soon. When we get an
opportunity. Say you will! ’
‘I can’t. I can’t promise. ’
‘Say “yes,” Rosemary. PLEASE do! ’
‘No. ’
Still stroking her invisible face, he quoted:
‘Veuillez le dire done selon Que vous estes benigne et doulche, Car ce doulx mot n’est
pas si long Qu’il vous face mal en la bouche. ’
‘What does that mean? ’
He translated it.
‘I can’t, Gordon. I just can’t. ’
‘Say “yes,” Rosemary, there’s a dear. Surely it’s as easy to say “yes” as “no”?
