I was a ghost, and if I
wasn’t
actually invisible, I felt like it.
Orwell - Coming Up for Air
A man of forty-five had seemed to me older than
this old dodderer of sixty-five seemed now. And Christ! i was forty-five myself. It
frightened me.
So that’s what I look like to chaps of twenty, I thought as I made off between the graves.
Just a poor old hulk. Finished. It was curious. As a rule I don’t care a damn about my age.
Why should I? I’m fat, but I’m strong and healthy. I can do everything I want to do. A
rose smells the same to me now as it did when I was twenty. Ah, but do I smell the same
to the rose? Like an answer a girl, might have been eighteen, came up the churchyard
lane. She had to pass within a yard or two of me. I saw the look she gave me, just a tiny
momentary look. No, not frightened, nor hostile. Only kind of wild, remote, like a wild
animal when you catch its eye. She’d been bom and grown up in those twenty years
while I was away from Lower B infield. All my memories would have been meaningless
to her. Living in a different world from me, like an animal.
I went back to the George. I wanted a drink, but the bar didn’t open for another half-hour.
I hung about for a bit, reading a Sporting and Dramatic of the year before, and presently
the fair- haired dame, the one I thought might be a widow, came in. I had a sudden
desperate yearning to get off with her. Wanted to show myself that there’s life in the old
dog yet, even if the old dog does have to wear false teeth. After all, I thought, if she’s
thirty and I’m forty-five, that’s fair enough. I was standing in front of the empty fireplace,
making believe to wann my bum, the way you do on a summer day. In my blue suit I
didn’t look so bad. A bit fat, no doubt, but distingue. A man of the world. I could pass for
a stockbroker. I put on my toniest accent and said casually:
‘Wonderful June weather we’re having. ’
It was a pretty harmless remark, wasn’t it? Nor in the same class as ‘Haven’t I met you
somewhere before? ’
But it wasn’t a success. She didn’t answer, merely lowered for about half a second the
paper she was reading and gave me a look that would have cracked a window. It was
awful. She had one of those blue eyes that go into you like a bullet. In that split second I
saw how hopelessly I’d got her wrong. She wasn’t the kind of widow with dyed hair who
likes being taken out to dance-halls. She was upper-middle-class, probably an admiral’s
daughter, and been to one of those good schools where they play hockey. And I’d got
myself wrong too. New suit or no new suit, I COULDN’T pass for a stockbroker. Merely
looked like a commercial traveller who’d happened to get hold of a bit of dough. I
sneaked off to the private bar to have a pint or two before dinner.
The beer wasn’t the same. I remember the old beer, the good Thames Valley beer that
used to have a bit of taste in it because it was made out of chalky water. I asked the
barmaid:
‘Have Bessemers’ still got the brewery? ’
‘Bessemers? Oo, NO, sir! They’ve gorn. Oo, years ago — long before we come ‘ere. ’
She was a friendly sort, what I call the elder-sister type of barmaid, thirty-fivish, with a
mild kind of face and the fat arms they develop from working the beer-handle. She told
me the name of the combine that had taken over the brewery. I could have guessed it
from the taste, as a matter of fact. The different bars ran round in a circle with
compartments in between. Across in the public bar two chaps were playing a game of
darts, and in the Jug and Bottle there was a chap I couldn’t see who occasionally put in a
remark in a sepulchral kind of voice. The barmaid leaned her fat elbows on the bar and
had a talk with me. I ran over the names of the people I used to know, and there wasn’t a
single one of them that she’d heard of. She said she’d only been in Lower Binfield five
years. She hadn’t even heard of old Trew, who used to have the George in the old days.
‘I used to live in Lower Binfield myself,’ I told her. ‘A good while back, it was, before
the war. ’
‘Before the war? Well, now! You don’t look that old. ’
‘See some changes, I dessay,’ said the chap in the Jug and Bottle.
‘The town’s grown,’ I said. ‘It’s the factories, I suppose. ’
‘Well, of course they mostly work at the factories. There’s the gramophone works, and
then there’s Truefitt Stockings. But of course they’re making bombs nowadays. ’
I didn’t altogether see why it was of course, but she began telling me about a young
fellow who worked at True lilt’s factory and sometimes came to the George, and he’d told
her that they were making bombs as well as stockings, the two, for some reason I didn’t
understand, being easy to combine. And then she told me about the big military
aerodrome near Walton — that accounted for the bombing planes I kept seeing — and the
next moment we’d started talking about the war, as usual. Funny. It was exactly to escape
the thought of war that I’d come here. But how can you, anyway? It’s in the air you
breathe.
I said it was coming in 1941. The chap in the Jug and Bottle said he reckoned it was a
bad job. The bannaid said it gave her the creeps. She said:
‘It doesn’t seem to do much good, does it, after all said and done? And sometimes I lie
awake at night and hear one of those great things going overhead, and think to myself,
“Well, now, suppose that was to drop a bomb right down on top of me! ” And all this
A. R. P. , and Miss Todgers, she’s the Air Warden, telling you it’ll be all right if you keep
your head and stuff the windows up with newspaper, and they say they’re going to dig a
shelter under the Town Hall. But the way I look at it is, how could you put a gas- mask
on a baby? ’
The chap in the Jug and Bottle said he’d read in the paper that you ought to get into a hot
bath till it was all over. The chaps in the public bar overheard this and there was a bit of a
by-play on the subject of how many people could get into the same bath, and both of
them asked the barmaid if they could share her bath with her. She told them not to get
saucy, and then she went up the other end of the bar and hauled them out a couple more
pints of old and mild. I took a suck at my beer. It was poor stuff. Bitter, they call it. And
it was bitter, right enough, too bitter, a kind of sulphurous taste. Chemicals. They say no
English hops ever go into beer nowadays, they’re all made into chemicals. Chemicals, on
the other hand, are made into beer. I found myself thinking about Uncle Ezekiel, what
he’d have said to beer like this, and what he’d have said about A. R. P. and the buckets of
sand you’re supposed to put the thennite bombs out with. As the bannaid came back to
my side of the bar I said:
‘By the way, who’s got the Hall nowadays? ’
We always used to call it the Hall, though its name was Binfield House. For a moment
she didn’t seem to understand.
‘The Hall, sir? ’
“E means Binfield ‘Ouse,’ said the chap in the Jug and Bottle.
‘Oh, Binfield House! Oo, I thought you meant the Memorial Hall. It’s Dr Merrall’s got
Binfield House now. ’
‘Dr Merrall? ’
‘Yes, sir. He’s got more than sixty patients up there, they say. ’
‘Patients? Have they turned it into a hospital, or something? ’
‘Well — it’s not what you’d call an ordinary hospital. More of a sanatorium. It’s mental
patients, reely. What they call a Mental Home. ’
A loony-bin!
But after all, what else could you expect?
3
I crawled out of bed with a bad taste in my mouth and my bones creaking.
The fact was that, what with a bottle of wine at lunch and another at dinner, and several
pints in between, besides a brandy or two, I’d had a bit too much to drink the day before.
For several minutes I stood in the middle of the carpet, gazing at nothing in particular and
too done-in to make a move. You know that god-awful feeling you get sometimes in the
early morning. It’s a feeling chiefly in your legs, but it says to you clearer than any words
could do, ‘Why the hell do you go on with it? Chuck it up, old chap! Stick your head in
the gas oven! ’
Then I shoved my teeth in and went to the window. A lovely June day, again, and the sun
was just beginning to slant over the roofs and hit the house-fronts on the other side of the
street. The pink geraniums in the window-boxes didn’t look half bad. Although it was
only about half past eight and this was only a side-street off the market-place there was
quite a crowd of people coming and going. A stream of clerkly-looking chaps in dark
suits with dispatch-cases were hurrying along, all in the same direction, just as if this had
been a London suburb and they were scooting for the Tube, and the schoolkids were
straggling up towards the market- place in twos and threes. I had the same feeling that I’d
had the day before when I saw the jungle of red houses that had swallowed Chamford
Hill. Bloody interlopers! Twenty thousand gate-crashers who didn’t even know my name.
And here was all this new life swarming to and fro, and here was I, a poor old fatty with
false teeth, watching them from a window and mumbling stuff that nobody wanted to
listen to about things that happened thirty and forty years ago. Christ! I thought, I was
wrong to think that I was seeing ghosts. I’m the ghost myself. I’m dead and they’re alive.
But after breakfast — haddock, grilled kidneys, toast and marmalade, and a pot of
coffee — I felt better. The frozen dame wasn’t breakfasting in the dining-room, there was
a nice summery feeling in the air, and I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that in that blue
flannel suit of mine I looked just a little bit distingue. By God! I thought, if I’m a ghost,
I’ll BE a ghost! I’ll walk. I’ll haunt the old places. And maybe I can work a bit of black
magic on some of these bastards who’ve stolen my home town from me.
I started out, but I’d got no farther than the market-place when I was pulled up by
something I hadn’t expected to see. A procession of about fifty school-kids was marching
down the street in column of fours — quite military, they looked — with a grim-looking
woman marching alongside of them like a sergeant-major. The leading four were
carrying a banner with a red, white, and blue border and BRITONS PREPARE on it in
huge letters. The barber on the comer had come out on to his doorstep to have a look at
them. I spoke to him. He was a chap with shiny black hair and a dull kind of face.
‘What are those kids doing? ’
‘It’s this here air-raid practice,’ he said vaguely. ‘This here A. R. P. Kind of practising,
like. That’s Miss Todgers, that is. ’
I might have guessed it was Miss Todgers. You could see it in her eye. You know the
kind of tough old devil with grey hair and a kippered face that’s always put in charge of
Girl Guide detachments, Y. W. C. A. hostels, and whatnot. She had on a coat and skirt that
somehow looked like a uniform and gave you a strong impression that she was wearing a
Sam Browne belt, though actually she wasn’t. I knew her type. Been in the W. A. A. C. s in
the war, and never had a day’s fun since. This A. R. P. was jam to her. As the kids swung
past I heard her letting out at them with the real sergeant-major yell, ‘Monica! Lift your
feet up! ’ and I saw that the rear four had another banner with a red, white, and blue
border, and in the middle
WE ARE READY. ARE YOU?
‘What do they want to march them up and down for? ’ I said to the barber.
‘I dunno. I s’pose it’s kind of propaganda, like. ’
I knew, of course. Get the kids war-minded. Give us all the feeling that there’s no way
out of it, the bombers are coming as sure as Christmas, so down to the cellar you go and
don’t argue. Two of the great black planes from Walton were zooming over the eastern
end of the town. Christ! I thought, when it starts it won’t surprise us any more than a
shower of rain. Already we’re listening for the first bomb. The barber went on to tell me
that thanks to Miss Todgers ’s efforts the school-kids had been served with their gas-
masks already.
Well, I started to explore the town. Two days I spent just wandering round the old
landmarks, such of them as I could identify. And all that time I never ran across a soul
that knew me.
I was a ghost, and if I wasn’t actually invisible, I felt like it.
It was queer, queerer than I can tell you. Did you ever read a story of H. G. Wells’s about
a chap who was in two places at once — that’s to say, he was really in his own home, but
he had a kind of hallucination that he was at the bottom of the sea? He’d been walking
round his room, but instead of the tables and chairs he’d see the wavy waterweed and the
great crabs and cuttlefish reaching out to get him. Well, it was just like that. For hours on
end I’d be walking through a world that wasn’t there. I’d count my paces as I went down
the pavement and think, ‘Yes, here’s where so-and- so’s field begins. The hedge runs
across the street and slap through that house. That petrol pump is really an elm tree. And
here’s the edge of the allotments. And this street (it was a dismal little row of semi-
detached houses called Cumberledge Road, I remember) is the lane where we used to go
with Katie Simmons, and the nut-bushes grew on both sides. ’ No doubt I got the
distances wrong, but the general directions were right. I don’t believe anyone who hadn’t
happened to be bom here would have believed that these streets were fields as little as
twenty years ago. It was as though the countryside had been buried by a kind of volcanic
eruption from the outer suburbs. Nearly the whole of what used to be old Brewer’s land
had been swallowed up in the Council housing estate. The Mill Fann had vanished, the
cow-pond where I caught my first fish had been drained and filled up and built over, so
that I couldn’t even say exactly where it used to stand. It was all houses, houses, little red
cubes of houses all alike, with privet hedges and asphalt paths leading up to the front
door. Beyond the Council Estate the town thinned out a bit, but the jerry-builders were
doing their best. And there were little knots of houses dumped here and there, wherever
anybody had been able to buy a plot of land, and the makeshift roads leading up to the
houses, and empty lots with builders’ boards, and bits of ruined fields covered with
thistles and tin cans.
In the centre of the old town, on the other hand, things hadn’t changed much, so far as
buildings went. A lot of the shops were still doing the same line of trade, although the
names were different. Lillywhite’s was still a draper’s, but it didn’t look too prosperous.
What used to be Gravitt’s, the butcher’s, was now a shop that sold radio parts. Mother
Wheeler’s little window had been bricked over. Grimmett’s was still a grocer’s, but it had
been taken over by the International. It gives you an idea of the power of these big
combines that they could even swallow up a cute old skinflint like Grimmett. But from
what I know of him — not to mention that slap-up tombstone in the churchyard — I bet he
got out while the going was good and had ten to fifteen thousand quid to take to heaven
with him. The only shop that was still in the same hands was Sarazins’, the people who’d
ruined Father. They’d swollen to enormous dimensions, and they had another huge
branch in the new part of the town. But they’d turned into a kind of general store and sold
furniture, drugs, hardware, and ironmongery as well as the old garden stuff.
For the best part of two days I was wandering round, not actually groaning and rattling a
chain, but sometimes feeling that I’d like to. Also I was drinking more than was good for
me. Almost as soon as I got to Lower Binfield I’d started on the booze, and after that the
pubs never seemed to open quite early enough. My tongue was always hanging out of my
mouth for the last half-hour before opening time.
Mind you, I wasn’t in the same mood all the time. Sometimes it seemed to me that it
didn’t matter a damn if Lower Binfield had been obliterated. After all, what had I come
here for, except to get away from the family? There was no reason why I shouldn’t do all
the things I wanted to do, even go fishing if I felt like it. On the Saturday afternoon I even
went to the fishing-tackle shop in the High Street and bought a split-cane rod (I’d always
pined for a split-cane rod as a boy — it’s a little bit dearer than a green- heart) and hooks
and gut and so forth. The atmosphere of the shop cheered me up. Whatever else changes,
fishing-tackle doesn’t — because, of course, fish don’t change either. And the shopman
didn’t see anything funny in a fat middle-aged man buying a fishing-rod. On the contrary,
we had a little talk about the fishing in the Thames and the big chub somebody had
landed the year before last on a paste made of brown bread, honey, and minced boiled
rabbit. I even — though I didn’t tell him what I wanted them for, and hardly even admitted
it to myself — bought the strongest salmon trace he’d got, and some No. 5 roach-hooks,
with an eye to those big carp at Binfield House, in case they still existed.
Most of Sunday morning I was kind of debating it in my mind — should I go fishing, or
shouldn’t I? One moment I’d think, why the hell not, and the next moment it would seem
to me that it was just one of those things that you dream about and don’t ever do. But in
the afternoon I got the car out and drove down to Burford Weir. I thought I’d just have a
look at the river, and tomorrow, if the weather was right, maybe I’d take my new fishing-
rod and put on the old coat and grey flannel bags I had in my suitcase, and have a good
day’s fishing. Three or four days, if I felt like it.
I drove over Chamford Hill. Down at the bottom the road turns off and runs parallel to
the towpath. I got out of the car and walked. Ah! A knot of little red and white bungalows
had sprung up beside the road. Might have expected it, of course. And there seemed to be
a lot of cars standing about. As I got nearer the river I came into the sound — yes, plonk-
tiddle-tiddle-plonk! — yes, the sound of gramphones.
I rounded the bend and came in sight of the towpath. Christ! Another jolt. The place was
black with people. And where the water-meadows used to be — tea-houses, penny-in-the-
slot machines, sweet kiosks, and chaps selling Walls’ Ice-Cream. Might as well have
been at Margate. I remember the old towpath. You could walk along it for miles, and
except for the chaps at the lock gates, and now and again a bargeman mooching along
behind his horse, you’d meet never a soul. When we went fishing we always had the
place to ourselves. Often I’ve sat there a whole afternoon, and a heron might be standing
in the shallow water fifty yards up the bank, and for three or four hours on end there
wouldn’t be anyone passing to scare him away. But where had I got the idea that grown-
up men don’t go fishing? Up and down the bank, as far as I could see in both directions,
there was a continuous chain of men fishing, one every five yards. I wondered how the
hell they could all have got there until it struck me that they must be some fishing-club or
other. And the river was crammed with boats — rowing-boats, canoes, punts, motor-
launches, full of young fools with next to nothing on, all of them screaming and shouting
and most of them with a gramphone aboard as well. The floats of the poor devils who
were trying to fish rocked up and down on the wash of the motor-boats.
I walked a little way. Dirty, choppy water, in spite of the fine day. Nobody was catching
anything, not even minnows. I wondered whether they expected to. A crowd like that
would be enough to scare every fish in creation. But actually, as I watched the floats
rocking up and down among the ice-cream tubs and the paper bags, I doubted whether
there were any fish to catch. Are there still fish in the Thames? I suppose there must be.
And yet I’ll swear the Thames water isn’t the same as it used to be. Its colour is quite
different. Of course you think that’s merely my imagination, but I can tell you it isn’t so.
I know the water has changed. I remember the Thames water as it used to be, a kind of
luminous green that you could see deep into, and the shoals of dace cruising round the
reeds. You couldn’t see three inches into the water now. It’s all brown and dirty, with a
film of oil in it from the motor-boats, not to mention the fag-ends and the paper bags.
After a bit I turned back. Couldn’t stand the noise of the gramophones any longer. Of
course it’s Sunday, I thought. Mightn’t be so bad on a week-day. But after all, I knew I’d
never come back. God rot them, let ‘em keep their bloody river. Wherever I go fishing it
won’t be in the Thames.
The crowds swarmed past me. Crowds of bloody aliens, and nearly all of them young.
Boys and girls larking along in couples. A troop of girls came past, wearing bell-
bottomed trousers and white caps like the ones they wear in the American Navy, with
slogans printed on them. One of them, seventeen she might have been, had PLEASE
KISS ME. I wouldn’t have minded. On an impulse I suddenly turned aside and weighed
myself on one of the penny-in-the-slot machines. There was a clicking noise somewhere
inside it — you know those machines that tell your fortune as well as your weight — and a
typewritten card came sliding out.
‘You are the possessor of exceptional gifts,’ I read, ‘but owing to excessive modesty you
have never received your reward. Those about you underrate your abilities. You are too
fond of standing aside and allowing others to take the credit for what you have done
yourself . You are sensitive, affectionate, and always loyal to your friends. You are
deeply attractive to the opposite sex. Your worst fault is generosity. Persevere, for you
will rise high!
‘Weight: 14 stone 11 pounds. ’
Ed put on four pounds in the last three days, I noticed. Must have been the booze.
4
I drove back to the George, dumped the car in the garage, and had a late cup of tea. As it
was Sunday the bar wouldn’t open for another hour or two. In the cool of the evening I
went out and strolled up in the direction of the church.
I was just crossing the market-place when I noticed a woman walking a little way ahead
of me. As soon as I set eyes on her I had a most peculiar feeling that I’d seen her
somewhere before. You know that feeling. I couldn’t see her face, of course, and so far as
her back view went there was nothing I could identify and yet I could have sworn I knew
her.
She went up the High Street and turned down one of the side-streets to the right, the one
where Uncle Ezekiel used to have his shop. I followed. I don’t quite know why — partly
curiosity, perhaps, and partly as a kind of precaution. My first thought had been that here
at last was one of the people I’d known in the old days in Lower B infield, but almost at
the same moment it struck me that it was just as likely that she was someone from West
Bletchley. In that case I’d have to watch my step, because if she found out I was here
she’d probably split to Hilda. So I followed cautiously, keeping at a safe distance and
examining her back view as well as I could. There was nothing striking about it. She was
a tallish, fattish woman, might have been forty or fifty, in a rather shabby black dress.
She’d no hat on, as though she’d just slipped out of her house for a moment, and the way
she walked gave you the impression that her shoes were down at heel. All in all, she
looked a bit of a slut. And yet there was nothing to identify, only that vague something
which I knew I’d seen before. It was something in her movements, perhaps. Presently she
got to a little sweet and paper shop, the kind of little shop that always keeps open on a
Sunday. The woman who kept it was standing in the doorway, doing something to a stand
of postcards. My woman stopped to pass the time of day.
I stopped too, as soon as I could find a shop window which I could pretend to be looking
into. It was a plumber’s and decorator’s, full of samples of wallpaper and bathroom
fittings and things. By this time I wasn’t fifteen yards away from the other two. I could
hear their voices cooing away in one of those meaningless conversations that women
have when they’re just passing the time of day. ‘Yes, that’s jest about it. That’s jest
where it is. I said to him myself, I said, “Well, what else do you expect? ” I said. It don’t
seem right, do it? But what’s the use, you might as well talk to a stone. It’s a shame! ’ and
so on and so forth. I was getting warmer. Obviously my woman was a small shopkeeper’s
wife, like the other. I was just wondering whether she mightn’t be one of the people I’d
known in Lower Binfield after all, when she turned almost towards me and I saw three-
quarters of her face. And Jesus Christ! It was Elsie!
Yes, it was Elsie. No chance of mistake. Elsie! That fat hag!
It gave me such a shock — not, mind you, seeing Elsie, but seeing what she’d grown to be
like — that for a moment things swam in front of my eyes. The brass taps and ballstops
and porcelain sinks and things seemed to fade away into the distance, so that I both saw
them and didn’t see them. Also for a moment I was in a deadly funk that she might
recognize me. But she’d looked bang in my face and hadn’t made any sign. A moment
more, and she turned and went on. Again I followed. It was dangerous, she might spot I
was following her, and that might start her wondering who I was, but I just had to have
another look at her. The fact was that she exercised a kind of horrible fascination on me.
In a manner of speaking I’d been watching her before, but I watched her with quite
different eyes now.
It was horrible, and yet I got a kind of scientific kick out of studying her back view. It’s
frightening, the things that twenty- four years can do to a woman. Only twenty-four
years, and the girl I’d known, with her milky- white skin and red mouth and kind of dull-
gold hair, had turned into this great round-shouldered hag, shambling along on twisted
heels. It made me feel downright glad I’m a man. No man ever goes to pieces quite so
completely as that. I’m fat, I grant you. I’m the wrong shape, if you like. But at least I’m
A shape. Elsie wasn’t even particularly fat, she was merely shapeless. Ghastly things had
happened to her hips. As for her waist, it had vanished. She was just a kind of soft lumpy
cylinder, like a bag of meal.
I followed her a long way, out of the old town and through a lot of mean little streets I
didn’t know. Finally she turned in at the doorway of another shop. By the way she went
in, it was obviously her own. I stopped for a moment outside the window. ‘G. Cookson,
Confectioner and Tobacconist. ’ So Elsie was Mrs Cookson. It was a mangy little shop,
much like the other one where she’d stopped before, but smaller and a lot more flyblown.
Didn’t seem to sell anything except tobacco and the cheapest kinds of sweets. I wondered
what I could buy that would take a minute or two. Then I saw a rack of cheap pipes in the
window, and I went in. I had to brace my nerve up a little before I did it, because there’d
need to be some hard lying if by any chance she recognized me.
She’d disappeared into the room behind the shop, but she came back as I tapped on the
counter. So we were face to face. Ah! no sign. Didn’t recognize me. Just looked at me the
way they do. You know the way small shopkeepers look at their customers — utter lack of
interest.
It was the first time I’d seen her full face, and though I half expected what I saw, it gave
me almost as big a shock as that first moment when I’d recognized her. I suppose when
you look at the face of someone young, even of a child, you ought to be able to foresee
what it’ll look like when it’s old.
this old dodderer of sixty-five seemed now. And Christ! i was forty-five myself. It
frightened me.
So that’s what I look like to chaps of twenty, I thought as I made off between the graves.
Just a poor old hulk. Finished. It was curious. As a rule I don’t care a damn about my age.
Why should I? I’m fat, but I’m strong and healthy. I can do everything I want to do. A
rose smells the same to me now as it did when I was twenty. Ah, but do I smell the same
to the rose? Like an answer a girl, might have been eighteen, came up the churchyard
lane. She had to pass within a yard or two of me. I saw the look she gave me, just a tiny
momentary look. No, not frightened, nor hostile. Only kind of wild, remote, like a wild
animal when you catch its eye. She’d been bom and grown up in those twenty years
while I was away from Lower B infield. All my memories would have been meaningless
to her. Living in a different world from me, like an animal.
I went back to the George. I wanted a drink, but the bar didn’t open for another half-hour.
I hung about for a bit, reading a Sporting and Dramatic of the year before, and presently
the fair- haired dame, the one I thought might be a widow, came in. I had a sudden
desperate yearning to get off with her. Wanted to show myself that there’s life in the old
dog yet, even if the old dog does have to wear false teeth. After all, I thought, if she’s
thirty and I’m forty-five, that’s fair enough. I was standing in front of the empty fireplace,
making believe to wann my bum, the way you do on a summer day. In my blue suit I
didn’t look so bad. A bit fat, no doubt, but distingue. A man of the world. I could pass for
a stockbroker. I put on my toniest accent and said casually:
‘Wonderful June weather we’re having. ’
It was a pretty harmless remark, wasn’t it? Nor in the same class as ‘Haven’t I met you
somewhere before? ’
But it wasn’t a success. She didn’t answer, merely lowered for about half a second the
paper she was reading and gave me a look that would have cracked a window. It was
awful. She had one of those blue eyes that go into you like a bullet. In that split second I
saw how hopelessly I’d got her wrong. She wasn’t the kind of widow with dyed hair who
likes being taken out to dance-halls. She was upper-middle-class, probably an admiral’s
daughter, and been to one of those good schools where they play hockey. And I’d got
myself wrong too. New suit or no new suit, I COULDN’T pass for a stockbroker. Merely
looked like a commercial traveller who’d happened to get hold of a bit of dough. I
sneaked off to the private bar to have a pint or two before dinner.
The beer wasn’t the same. I remember the old beer, the good Thames Valley beer that
used to have a bit of taste in it because it was made out of chalky water. I asked the
barmaid:
‘Have Bessemers’ still got the brewery? ’
‘Bessemers? Oo, NO, sir! They’ve gorn. Oo, years ago — long before we come ‘ere. ’
She was a friendly sort, what I call the elder-sister type of barmaid, thirty-fivish, with a
mild kind of face and the fat arms they develop from working the beer-handle. She told
me the name of the combine that had taken over the brewery. I could have guessed it
from the taste, as a matter of fact. The different bars ran round in a circle with
compartments in between. Across in the public bar two chaps were playing a game of
darts, and in the Jug and Bottle there was a chap I couldn’t see who occasionally put in a
remark in a sepulchral kind of voice. The barmaid leaned her fat elbows on the bar and
had a talk with me. I ran over the names of the people I used to know, and there wasn’t a
single one of them that she’d heard of. She said she’d only been in Lower Binfield five
years. She hadn’t even heard of old Trew, who used to have the George in the old days.
‘I used to live in Lower Binfield myself,’ I told her. ‘A good while back, it was, before
the war. ’
‘Before the war? Well, now! You don’t look that old. ’
‘See some changes, I dessay,’ said the chap in the Jug and Bottle.
‘The town’s grown,’ I said. ‘It’s the factories, I suppose. ’
‘Well, of course they mostly work at the factories. There’s the gramophone works, and
then there’s Truefitt Stockings. But of course they’re making bombs nowadays. ’
I didn’t altogether see why it was of course, but she began telling me about a young
fellow who worked at True lilt’s factory and sometimes came to the George, and he’d told
her that they were making bombs as well as stockings, the two, for some reason I didn’t
understand, being easy to combine. And then she told me about the big military
aerodrome near Walton — that accounted for the bombing planes I kept seeing — and the
next moment we’d started talking about the war, as usual. Funny. It was exactly to escape
the thought of war that I’d come here. But how can you, anyway? It’s in the air you
breathe.
I said it was coming in 1941. The chap in the Jug and Bottle said he reckoned it was a
bad job. The bannaid said it gave her the creeps. She said:
‘It doesn’t seem to do much good, does it, after all said and done? And sometimes I lie
awake at night and hear one of those great things going overhead, and think to myself,
“Well, now, suppose that was to drop a bomb right down on top of me! ” And all this
A. R. P. , and Miss Todgers, she’s the Air Warden, telling you it’ll be all right if you keep
your head and stuff the windows up with newspaper, and they say they’re going to dig a
shelter under the Town Hall. But the way I look at it is, how could you put a gas- mask
on a baby? ’
The chap in the Jug and Bottle said he’d read in the paper that you ought to get into a hot
bath till it was all over. The chaps in the public bar overheard this and there was a bit of a
by-play on the subject of how many people could get into the same bath, and both of
them asked the barmaid if they could share her bath with her. She told them not to get
saucy, and then she went up the other end of the bar and hauled them out a couple more
pints of old and mild. I took a suck at my beer. It was poor stuff. Bitter, they call it. And
it was bitter, right enough, too bitter, a kind of sulphurous taste. Chemicals. They say no
English hops ever go into beer nowadays, they’re all made into chemicals. Chemicals, on
the other hand, are made into beer. I found myself thinking about Uncle Ezekiel, what
he’d have said to beer like this, and what he’d have said about A. R. P. and the buckets of
sand you’re supposed to put the thennite bombs out with. As the bannaid came back to
my side of the bar I said:
‘By the way, who’s got the Hall nowadays? ’
We always used to call it the Hall, though its name was Binfield House. For a moment
she didn’t seem to understand.
‘The Hall, sir? ’
“E means Binfield ‘Ouse,’ said the chap in the Jug and Bottle.
‘Oh, Binfield House! Oo, I thought you meant the Memorial Hall. It’s Dr Merrall’s got
Binfield House now. ’
‘Dr Merrall? ’
‘Yes, sir. He’s got more than sixty patients up there, they say. ’
‘Patients? Have they turned it into a hospital, or something? ’
‘Well — it’s not what you’d call an ordinary hospital. More of a sanatorium. It’s mental
patients, reely. What they call a Mental Home. ’
A loony-bin!
But after all, what else could you expect?
3
I crawled out of bed with a bad taste in my mouth and my bones creaking.
The fact was that, what with a bottle of wine at lunch and another at dinner, and several
pints in between, besides a brandy or two, I’d had a bit too much to drink the day before.
For several minutes I stood in the middle of the carpet, gazing at nothing in particular and
too done-in to make a move. You know that god-awful feeling you get sometimes in the
early morning. It’s a feeling chiefly in your legs, but it says to you clearer than any words
could do, ‘Why the hell do you go on with it? Chuck it up, old chap! Stick your head in
the gas oven! ’
Then I shoved my teeth in and went to the window. A lovely June day, again, and the sun
was just beginning to slant over the roofs and hit the house-fronts on the other side of the
street. The pink geraniums in the window-boxes didn’t look half bad. Although it was
only about half past eight and this was only a side-street off the market-place there was
quite a crowd of people coming and going. A stream of clerkly-looking chaps in dark
suits with dispatch-cases were hurrying along, all in the same direction, just as if this had
been a London suburb and they were scooting for the Tube, and the schoolkids were
straggling up towards the market- place in twos and threes. I had the same feeling that I’d
had the day before when I saw the jungle of red houses that had swallowed Chamford
Hill. Bloody interlopers! Twenty thousand gate-crashers who didn’t even know my name.
And here was all this new life swarming to and fro, and here was I, a poor old fatty with
false teeth, watching them from a window and mumbling stuff that nobody wanted to
listen to about things that happened thirty and forty years ago. Christ! I thought, I was
wrong to think that I was seeing ghosts. I’m the ghost myself. I’m dead and they’re alive.
But after breakfast — haddock, grilled kidneys, toast and marmalade, and a pot of
coffee — I felt better. The frozen dame wasn’t breakfasting in the dining-room, there was
a nice summery feeling in the air, and I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that in that blue
flannel suit of mine I looked just a little bit distingue. By God! I thought, if I’m a ghost,
I’ll BE a ghost! I’ll walk. I’ll haunt the old places. And maybe I can work a bit of black
magic on some of these bastards who’ve stolen my home town from me.
I started out, but I’d got no farther than the market-place when I was pulled up by
something I hadn’t expected to see. A procession of about fifty school-kids was marching
down the street in column of fours — quite military, they looked — with a grim-looking
woman marching alongside of them like a sergeant-major. The leading four were
carrying a banner with a red, white, and blue border and BRITONS PREPARE on it in
huge letters. The barber on the comer had come out on to his doorstep to have a look at
them. I spoke to him. He was a chap with shiny black hair and a dull kind of face.
‘What are those kids doing? ’
‘It’s this here air-raid practice,’ he said vaguely. ‘This here A. R. P. Kind of practising,
like. That’s Miss Todgers, that is. ’
I might have guessed it was Miss Todgers. You could see it in her eye. You know the
kind of tough old devil with grey hair and a kippered face that’s always put in charge of
Girl Guide detachments, Y. W. C. A. hostels, and whatnot. She had on a coat and skirt that
somehow looked like a uniform and gave you a strong impression that she was wearing a
Sam Browne belt, though actually she wasn’t. I knew her type. Been in the W. A. A. C. s in
the war, and never had a day’s fun since. This A. R. P. was jam to her. As the kids swung
past I heard her letting out at them with the real sergeant-major yell, ‘Monica! Lift your
feet up! ’ and I saw that the rear four had another banner with a red, white, and blue
border, and in the middle
WE ARE READY. ARE YOU?
‘What do they want to march them up and down for? ’ I said to the barber.
‘I dunno. I s’pose it’s kind of propaganda, like. ’
I knew, of course. Get the kids war-minded. Give us all the feeling that there’s no way
out of it, the bombers are coming as sure as Christmas, so down to the cellar you go and
don’t argue. Two of the great black planes from Walton were zooming over the eastern
end of the town. Christ! I thought, when it starts it won’t surprise us any more than a
shower of rain. Already we’re listening for the first bomb. The barber went on to tell me
that thanks to Miss Todgers ’s efforts the school-kids had been served with their gas-
masks already.
Well, I started to explore the town. Two days I spent just wandering round the old
landmarks, such of them as I could identify. And all that time I never ran across a soul
that knew me.
I was a ghost, and if I wasn’t actually invisible, I felt like it.
It was queer, queerer than I can tell you. Did you ever read a story of H. G. Wells’s about
a chap who was in two places at once — that’s to say, he was really in his own home, but
he had a kind of hallucination that he was at the bottom of the sea? He’d been walking
round his room, but instead of the tables and chairs he’d see the wavy waterweed and the
great crabs and cuttlefish reaching out to get him. Well, it was just like that. For hours on
end I’d be walking through a world that wasn’t there. I’d count my paces as I went down
the pavement and think, ‘Yes, here’s where so-and- so’s field begins. The hedge runs
across the street and slap through that house. That petrol pump is really an elm tree. And
here’s the edge of the allotments. And this street (it was a dismal little row of semi-
detached houses called Cumberledge Road, I remember) is the lane where we used to go
with Katie Simmons, and the nut-bushes grew on both sides. ’ No doubt I got the
distances wrong, but the general directions were right. I don’t believe anyone who hadn’t
happened to be bom here would have believed that these streets were fields as little as
twenty years ago. It was as though the countryside had been buried by a kind of volcanic
eruption from the outer suburbs. Nearly the whole of what used to be old Brewer’s land
had been swallowed up in the Council housing estate. The Mill Fann had vanished, the
cow-pond where I caught my first fish had been drained and filled up and built over, so
that I couldn’t even say exactly where it used to stand. It was all houses, houses, little red
cubes of houses all alike, with privet hedges and asphalt paths leading up to the front
door. Beyond the Council Estate the town thinned out a bit, but the jerry-builders were
doing their best. And there were little knots of houses dumped here and there, wherever
anybody had been able to buy a plot of land, and the makeshift roads leading up to the
houses, and empty lots with builders’ boards, and bits of ruined fields covered with
thistles and tin cans.
In the centre of the old town, on the other hand, things hadn’t changed much, so far as
buildings went. A lot of the shops were still doing the same line of trade, although the
names were different. Lillywhite’s was still a draper’s, but it didn’t look too prosperous.
What used to be Gravitt’s, the butcher’s, was now a shop that sold radio parts. Mother
Wheeler’s little window had been bricked over. Grimmett’s was still a grocer’s, but it had
been taken over by the International. It gives you an idea of the power of these big
combines that they could even swallow up a cute old skinflint like Grimmett. But from
what I know of him — not to mention that slap-up tombstone in the churchyard — I bet he
got out while the going was good and had ten to fifteen thousand quid to take to heaven
with him. The only shop that was still in the same hands was Sarazins’, the people who’d
ruined Father. They’d swollen to enormous dimensions, and they had another huge
branch in the new part of the town. But they’d turned into a kind of general store and sold
furniture, drugs, hardware, and ironmongery as well as the old garden stuff.
For the best part of two days I was wandering round, not actually groaning and rattling a
chain, but sometimes feeling that I’d like to. Also I was drinking more than was good for
me. Almost as soon as I got to Lower Binfield I’d started on the booze, and after that the
pubs never seemed to open quite early enough. My tongue was always hanging out of my
mouth for the last half-hour before opening time.
Mind you, I wasn’t in the same mood all the time. Sometimes it seemed to me that it
didn’t matter a damn if Lower Binfield had been obliterated. After all, what had I come
here for, except to get away from the family? There was no reason why I shouldn’t do all
the things I wanted to do, even go fishing if I felt like it. On the Saturday afternoon I even
went to the fishing-tackle shop in the High Street and bought a split-cane rod (I’d always
pined for a split-cane rod as a boy — it’s a little bit dearer than a green- heart) and hooks
and gut and so forth. The atmosphere of the shop cheered me up. Whatever else changes,
fishing-tackle doesn’t — because, of course, fish don’t change either. And the shopman
didn’t see anything funny in a fat middle-aged man buying a fishing-rod. On the contrary,
we had a little talk about the fishing in the Thames and the big chub somebody had
landed the year before last on a paste made of brown bread, honey, and minced boiled
rabbit. I even — though I didn’t tell him what I wanted them for, and hardly even admitted
it to myself — bought the strongest salmon trace he’d got, and some No. 5 roach-hooks,
with an eye to those big carp at Binfield House, in case they still existed.
Most of Sunday morning I was kind of debating it in my mind — should I go fishing, or
shouldn’t I? One moment I’d think, why the hell not, and the next moment it would seem
to me that it was just one of those things that you dream about and don’t ever do. But in
the afternoon I got the car out and drove down to Burford Weir. I thought I’d just have a
look at the river, and tomorrow, if the weather was right, maybe I’d take my new fishing-
rod and put on the old coat and grey flannel bags I had in my suitcase, and have a good
day’s fishing. Three or four days, if I felt like it.
I drove over Chamford Hill. Down at the bottom the road turns off and runs parallel to
the towpath. I got out of the car and walked. Ah! A knot of little red and white bungalows
had sprung up beside the road. Might have expected it, of course. And there seemed to be
a lot of cars standing about. As I got nearer the river I came into the sound — yes, plonk-
tiddle-tiddle-plonk! — yes, the sound of gramphones.
I rounded the bend and came in sight of the towpath. Christ! Another jolt. The place was
black with people. And where the water-meadows used to be — tea-houses, penny-in-the-
slot machines, sweet kiosks, and chaps selling Walls’ Ice-Cream. Might as well have
been at Margate. I remember the old towpath. You could walk along it for miles, and
except for the chaps at the lock gates, and now and again a bargeman mooching along
behind his horse, you’d meet never a soul. When we went fishing we always had the
place to ourselves. Often I’ve sat there a whole afternoon, and a heron might be standing
in the shallow water fifty yards up the bank, and for three or four hours on end there
wouldn’t be anyone passing to scare him away. But where had I got the idea that grown-
up men don’t go fishing? Up and down the bank, as far as I could see in both directions,
there was a continuous chain of men fishing, one every five yards. I wondered how the
hell they could all have got there until it struck me that they must be some fishing-club or
other. And the river was crammed with boats — rowing-boats, canoes, punts, motor-
launches, full of young fools with next to nothing on, all of them screaming and shouting
and most of them with a gramphone aboard as well. The floats of the poor devils who
were trying to fish rocked up and down on the wash of the motor-boats.
I walked a little way. Dirty, choppy water, in spite of the fine day. Nobody was catching
anything, not even minnows. I wondered whether they expected to. A crowd like that
would be enough to scare every fish in creation. But actually, as I watched the floats
rocking up and down among the ice-cream tubs and the paper bags, I doubted whether
there were any fish to catch. Are there still fish in the Thames? I suppose there must be.
And yet I’ll swear the Thames water isn’t the same as it used to be. Its colour is quite
different. Of course you think that’s merely my imagination, but I can tell you it isn’t so.
I know the water has changed. I remember the Thames water as it used to be, a kind of
luminous green that you could see deep into, and the shoals of dace cruising round the
reeds. You couldn’t see three inches into the water now. It’s all brown and dirty, with a
film of oil in it from the motor-boats, not to mention the fag-ends and the paper bags.
After a bit I turned back. Couldn’t stand the noise of the gramophones any longer. Of
course it’s Sunday, I thought. Mightn’t be so bad on a week-day. But after all, I knew I’d
never come back. God rot them, let ‘em keep their bloody river. Wherever I go fishing it
won’t be in the Thames.
The crowds swarmed past me. Crowds of bloody aliens, and nearly all of them young.
Boys and girls larking along in couples. A troop of girls came past, wearing bell-
bottomed trousers and white caps like the ones they wear in the American Navy, with
slogans printed on them. One of them, seventeen she might have been, had PLEASE
KISS ME. I wouldn’t have minded. On an impulse I suddenly turned aside and weighed
myself on one of the penny-in-the-slot machines. There was a clicking noise somewhere
inside it — you know those machines that tell your fortune as well as your weight — and a
typewritten card came sliding out.
‘You are the possessor of exceptional gifts,’ I read, ‘but owing to excessive modesty you
have never received your reward. Those about you underrate your abilities. You are too
fond of standing aside and allowing others to take the credit for what you have done
yourself . You are sensitive, affectionate, and always loyal to your friends. You are
deeply attractive to the opposite sex. Your worst fault is generosity. Persevere, for you
will rise high!
‘Weight: 14 stone 11 pounds. ’
Ed put on four pounds in the last three days, I noticed. Must have been the booze.
4
I drove back to the George, dumped the car in the garage, and had a late cup of tea. As it
was Sunday the bar wouldn’t open for another hour or two. In the cool of the evening I
went out and strolled up in the direction of the church.
I was just crossing the market-place when I noticed a woman walking a little way ahead
of me. As soon as I set eyes on her I had a most peculiar feeling that I’d seen her
somewhere before. You know that feeling. I couldn’t see her face, of course, and so far as
her back view went there was nothing I could identify and yet I could have sworn I knew
her.
She went up the High Street and turned down one of the side-streets to the right, the one
where Uncle Ezekiel used to have his shop. I followed. I don’t quite know why — partly
curiosity, perhaps, and partly as a kind of precaution. My first thought had been that here
at last was one of the people I’d known in the old days in Lower B infield, but almost at
the same moment it struck me that it was just as likely that she was someone from West
Bletchley. In that case I’d have to watch my step, because if she found out I was here
she’d probably split to Hilda. So I followed cautiously, keeping at a safe distance and
examining her back view as well as I could. There was nothing striking about it. She was
a tallish, fattish woman, might have been forty or fifty, in a rather shabby black dress.
She’d no hat on, as though she’d just slipped out of her house for a moment, and the way
she walked gave you the impression that her shoes were down at heel. All in all, she
looked a bit of a slut. And yet there was nothing to identify, only that vague something
which I knew I’d seen before. It was something in her movements, perhaps. Presently she
got to a little sweet and paper shop, the kind of little shop that always keeps open on a
Sunday. The woman who kept it was standing in the doorway, doing something to a stand
of postcards. My woman stopped to pass the time of day.
I stopped too, as soon as I could find a shop window which I could pretend to be looking
into. It was a plumber’s and decorator’s, full of samples of wallpaper and bathroom
fittings and things. By this time I wasn’t fifteen yards away from the other two. I could
hear their voices cooing away in one of those meaningless conversations that women
have when they’re just passing the time of day. ‘Yes, that’s jest about it. That’s jest
where it is. I said to him myself, I said, “Well, what else do you expect? ” I said. It don’t
seem right, do it? But what’s the use, you might as well talk to a stone. It’s a shame! ’ and
so on and so forth. I was getting warmer. Obviously my woman was a small shopkeeper’s
wife, like the other. I was just wondering whether she mightn’t be one of the people I’d
known in Lower Binfield after all, when she turned almost towards me and I saw three-
quarters of her face. And Jesus Christ! It was Elsie!
Yes, it was Elsie. No chance of mistake. Elsie! That fat hag!
It gave me such a shock — not, mind you, seeing Elsie, but seeing what she’d grown to be
like — that for a moment things swam in front of my eyes. The brass taps and ballstops
and porcelain sinks and things seemed to fade away into the distance, so that I both saw
them and didn’t see them. Also for a moment I was in a deadly funk that she might
recognize me. But she’d looked bang in my face and hadn’t made any sign. A moment
more, and she turned and went on. Again I followed. It was dangerous, she might spot I
was following her, and that might start her wondering who I was, but I just had to have
another look at her. The fact was that she exercised a kind of horrible fascination on me.
In a manner of speaking I’d been watching her before, but I watched her with quite
different eyes now.
It was horrible, and yet I got a kind of scientific kick out of studying her back view. It’s
frightening, the things that twenty- four years can do to a woman. Only twenty-four
years, and the girl I’d known, with her milky- white skin and red mouth and kind of dull-
gold hair, had turned into this great round-shouldered hag, shambling along on twisted
heels. It made me feel downright glad I’m a man. No man ever goes to pieces quite so
completely as that. I’m fat, I grant you. I’m the wrong shape, if you like. But at least I’m
A shape. Elsie wasn’t even particularly fat, she was merely shapeless. Ghastly things had
happened to her hips. As for her waist, it had vanished. She was just a kind of soft lumpy
cylinder, like a bag of meal.
I followed her a long way, out of the old town and through a lot of mean little streets I
didn’t know. Finally she turned in at the doorway of another shop. By the way she went
in, it was obviously her own. I stopped for a moment outside the window. ‘G. Cookson,
Confectioner and Tobacconist. ’ So Elsie was Mrs Cookson. It was a mangy little shop,
much like the other one where she’d stopped before, but smaller and a lot more flyblown.
Didn’t seem to sell anything except tobacco and the cheapest kinds of sweets. I wondered
what I could buy that would take a minute or two. Then I saw a rack of cheap pipes in the
window, and I went in. I had to brace my nerve up a little before I did it, because there’d
need to be some hard lying if by any chance she recognized me.
She’d disappeared into the room behind the shop, but she came back as I tapped on the
counter. So we were face to face. Ah! no sign. Didn’t recognize me. Just looked at me the
way they do. You know the way small shopkeepers look at their customers — utter lack of
interest.
It was the first time I’d seen her full face, and though I half expected what I saw, it gave
me almost as big a shock as that first moment when I’d recognized her. I suppose when
you look at the face of someone young, even of a child, you ought to be able to foresee
what it’ll look like when it’s old.
