The mere contact with
Ravelston
seemed to reassure him somehow.
Orwell - Keep the Apidistra Flying
Rosemary was ‘cruel’ to him — that was
how he saw it. Perversely, for the mere pleasure of tormenting himself and making
Ravelston uncomfortable, be began to invent an imaginary character for Rosemary. He
built up a picture of her as a callous creature who was amused by him and yet half
despised him, who played with him and kept him at arm’s length, and who would
nevertheless fall into his arms if only he had a little more money. And Ravelston, who
had never met Rosemary, did not altogether disbelieve him. He broke in:
‘But I say, Gordon, look here. This girl, Miss — Miss Waterlow, did you say her name
was? — Rosemary; doesn’t she care for you at all, really? ’
Gordon’s conscience pricked him, though not very deeply. He could not say that
Rosemary did not care for him.
‘Oh, yes, she does care for me. In her own way, I dare say she cares for me quite a lot.
But not enough, don’t you see. She can’t, while I’ve got no money. It’s all money. ’
‘But surely money isn’t so important as all that? After all, there ARE other things. ’
‘What other things? Don’t you see that a man’s whole personality is bound up with his
income? His personality IS his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you’ve
got no money? You can’t wear decent clothes, you can’t take her out to dinner or to the
theatre or away for week-ends, you can’t carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about
with you. And it’s rot to say that kind of thing doesn’t matter. It does. If you haven’t got
money there isn’t even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except
in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women’s hostel, and my bitch
of a landlady won’t allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet
streets — that’s what Rosemary associates me with. Don’t you see how it takes the gilt off
everything? ’
Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty bloody when you haven’t even the money to
take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and
also with desire, he thought of Hermione’s body, naked like a ripe warm fruit. With any
luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him
now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. Sexual starvation is awful among
the unemployed. They were nearing the flat. He glanced up at the windows. Yes, they
were lighted up. Hermione must be there. She had her own latchkey.
As they approached the flat Gordon edged closer to Ravelston. Now the evening was
ending, and he must part from Ravelston, whom he adored, and go back to his foul lonely
bedroom. And all evenings ended in this way; the return through the dark streets to the
lonely room, the womanless bed. And Ravelston would say ‘Come up, won’t you? ’ and
Gordon, in duty bound, would say, ‘No. ’ Never stay too long with those you love —
another commandment of the moneyless.
They halted at the foot of the steps. Ravelston laid his gloved hand on one of the iron
spearheads of the railing.
‘Come up, won’t you? ’ he said without conviction.
‘No, thanks. It’s time I was getting back. ’
Ravelston’s fingers tightened round the spearhead. He pulled as though to go up, but did
not go. Uncomfortably, looking over Gordon’s head into the distance, he said:
‘I say, Gordon, look here. You won’t be offended if I say something? ’
‘What? ’
‘I say, you know, I hate that business about you and your girl. Not being able to take her
out, and all that. It’s bloody, that kind of thing. ’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. ’
As soon as he heard Ravelston say that it was ‘bloody’, he knew that he had been
exaggerating. He wished that he had not talked in that silly self-pitiful way. One says
these things, with the feeling that one cannot help saying them, and afterwards one is
sorry.
‘I dare say I exaggerate,’ he said.
‘I say, Gordon, look here. Let me lend you ten quid. Take the girl out to dinner a few
times. Or away for the week-end, or something. It might make all the difference. I hate to
t hink —’
Gordon frowned bitterly, almost fiercely. He had stepped a pace back, as though from a
threat or an insult. The terrible thing was that the temptation to say ‘Yes’ had almost
overwhelmed him. There was so much that ten quid would do! He had a fleeting vision of
Rosemary and himself at a restaurant table — a bowl of grapes and peaches, a bowing
hovering waiter, a wine bottle dark and dusty in its wicker cradle.
‘No fear! ’ he said.
‘I do wish you would. I tell you I’d LIKE to lend it you. ’
‘Thanks. But I prefer to keep my friends. ’
‘Isn’t that rather — well, rather a bourgeois kind of thing to say? ’
‘Do you think it would be BORROWING if I took ten quid off you? I couldn’t pay it
back in ten years. ’
‘Oh, well! It wouldn’t matter so very much. ’ Ravelston looked away. Out it had got to
come — the disgraceful, hateful admission that he found himself forced so curiously often
to make! ‘You know, I’ve got quite a lot of money. ’
‘I know you have. That’s exactly why I won’t borrow off you. ’
‘You know, Gordon, sometimes you’re just a little bit — well, pigheaded. ’
‘I dare say. I can’t help it. ’
‘Oh, well! Good night, then. ’
‘Good night. ’
Ten minutes later Ravelston rode southwards in a taxi, with Hermione. She had been
waiting for him, asleep or half asleep in one of the monstrous armchairs in front of the
sitting-room fire. Whenever there was nothing particular to do, Hennione always fell
asleep as promptly as an animal, and the more she slept the healthier she became. As he
came across to her she woke and stretched herself with voluptuous, sleepy writhings, half
smiling, half yawning up at him, one cheek and bare arm rosy in the firelight. Presently
she mastered her yawns to greet him:
‘Hullo, Philip! Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting ages. ’
‘Oh, I’ve been out with a fellow. Gordon Comstock. I don’t expect you know him. The
poet. ’
‘Poet! How much did he borrow off you? ’
‘Nothing. He’s not that kind of person. He’s rather a fool about money, as a matter of
fact. But he’s very gifted in his way. ’
‘You and your poets! You look tired, Philip. What time did you have dinner? ’
‘Well — as a matter of fact I didn’t have any dinner. ’
‘Didn’t have any dinner! Why? ’
‘Oh, well, you see — I don’t know if you’ll understand. It was a kind of accident. It was
like this. ’
He explained. Hermione burst out laughing and dragged herself into a more upright
position.
‘Philip! You ARE a silly old ass! Going without your dinner, just so as not to hurt that
little beast’s feelings! You must have some food at once. And of course your char’s gone
home. Why don’t you keep some proper servants, Philip? I hate this hole-and-comer way
you live. We’ll go out and have supper at Modigliani’s. ’
‘But it’s after ten. They’ll be shut. ’
‘Nonsense! They’re open till two. I’ll ring up for a taxi. I’m not going to have you
starving yourself. ’
In the taxi she lay against him, still half asleep, her head pillowed on his breast. He
thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a
week. But the girl’s body was heavy against him, and Middlesbrough was very far away.
Also he was damnably hungry. He thought of his favourite corner table at Modigliani’s,
and of that vile pub with its hard benches, stale beer-stink, and brass spittoons. Hermione
was sleepily lecturing him.
‘Philip, why do you have to live in such a dreadful way? ’
‘But I don’t live in a dreadful way. ’
‘Yes, you do. Pretending you’re poor when you’re not, and living in that poky flat with
no servants, and going about with all these beastly people. ’
‘What beastly people? ’
‘Oh, people like this poet friend of yours. All those people who write for your paper.
They only do it to cadge from you. Of course I know you’re a Socialist. So am I. I mean
we’re all Socialists nowadays. But I don’t see why you have to give all your money away
and make friends with the lower classes. You can be a Socialist AND have a good time,
that’s what I say. ’
‘Hermione, dear, please don’t call them the lower classes! ’
‘Why not? They ARE the lower classes, aren’t they? ’
‘It’s such a hateful expression. Call them the working class, can’t you? ’
‘The working class, if you like, then. But they smell just the same. ’
‘You oughtn’t to say that kind of thing,’ he protested weakly.
‘Do you know, Philip, sometimes I think you LIKE the lower classes. ’
‘Of course I like them. ’
‘How disgusting. How absolutely disgusting. ’
She lay quiet, content to argue no longer, her arms round him, like a sleepy siren. The
woman-scent breathed out of her, a powerful wordless propaganda against all altruism
and all justice. 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?
how he saw it. Perversely, for the mere pleasure of tormenting himself and making
Ravelston uncomfortable, be began to invent an imaginary character for Rosemary. He
built up a picture of her as a callous creature who was amused by him and yet half
despised him, who played with him and kept him at arm’s length, and who would
nevertheless fall into his arms if only he had a little more money. And Ravelston, who
had never met Rosemary, did not altogether disbelieve him. He broke in:
‘But I say, Gordon, look here. This girl, Miss — Miss Waterlow, did you say her name
was? — Rosemary; doesn’t she care for you at all, really? ’
Gordon’s conscience pricked him, though not very deeply. He could not say that
Rosemary did not care for him.
‘Oh, yes, she does care for me. In her own way, I dare say she cares for me quite a lot.
But not enough, don’t you see. She can’t, while I’ve got no money. It’s all money. ’
‘But surely money isn’t so important as all that? After all, there ARE other things. ’
‘What other things? Don’t you see that a man’s whole personality is bound up with his
income? His personality IS his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you’ve
got no money? You can’t wear decent clothes, you can’t take her out to dinner or to the
theatre or away for week-ends, you can’t carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about
with you. And it’s rot to say that kind of thing doesn’t matter. It does. If you haven’t got
money there isn’t even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except
in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women’s hostel, and my bitch
of a landlady won’t allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet
streets — that’s what Rosemary associates me with. Don’t you see how it takes the gilt off
everything? ’
Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty bloody when you haven’t even the money to
take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and
also with desire, he thought of Hermione’s body, naked like a ripe warm fruit. With any
luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him
now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. Sexual starvation is awful among
the unemployed. They were nearing the flat. He glanced up at the windows. Yes, they
were lighted up. Hermione must be there. She had her own latchkey.
As they approached the flat Gordon edged closer to Ravelston. Now the evening was
ending, and he must part from Ravelston, whom he adored, and go back to his foul lonely
bedroom. And all evenings ended in this way; the return through the dark streets to the
lonely room, the womanless bed. And Ravelston would say ‘Come up, won’t you? ’ and
Gordon, in duty bound, would say, ‘No. ’ Never stay too long with those you love —
another commandment of the moneyless.
They halted at the foot of the steps. Ravelston laid his gloved hand on one of the iron
spearheads of the railing.
‘Come up, won’t you? ’ he said without conviction.
‘No, thanks. It’s time I was getting back. ’
Ravelston’s fingers tightened round the spearhead. He pulled as though to go up, but did
not go. Uncomfortably, looking over Gordon’s head into the distance, he said:
‘I say, Gordon, look here. You won’t be offended if I say something? ’
‘What? ’
‘I say, you know, I hate that business about you and your girl. Not being able to take her
out, and all that. It’s bloody, that kind of thing. ’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. ’
As soon as he heard Ravelston say that it was ‘bloody’, he knew that he had been
exaggerating. He wished that he had not talked in that silly self-pitiful way. One says
these things, with the feeling that one cannot help saying them, and afterwards one is
sorry.
‘I dare say I exaggerate,’ he said.
‘I say, Gordon, look here. Let me lend you ten quid. Take the girl out to dinner a few
times. Or away for the week-end, or something. It might make all the difference. I hate to
t hink —’
Gordon frowned bitterly, almost fiercely. He had stepped a pace back, as though from a
threat or an insult. The terrible thing was that the temptation to say ‘Yes’ had almost
overwhelmed him. There was so much that ten quid would do! He had a fleeting vision of
Rosemary and himself at a restaurant table — a bowl of grapes and peaches, a bowing
hovering waiter, a wine bottle dark and dusty in its wicker cradle.
‘No fear! ’ he said.
‘I do wish you would. I tell you I’d LIKE to lend it you. ’
‘Thanks. But I prefer to keep my friends. ’
‘Isn’t that rather — well, rather a bourgeois kind of thing to say? ’
‘Do you think it would be BORROWING if I took ten quid off you? I couldn’t pay it
back in ten years. ’
‘Oh, well! It wouldn’t matter so very much. ’ Ravelston looked away. Out it had got to
come — the disgraceful, hateful admission that he found himself forced so curiously often
to make! ‘You know, I’ve got quite a lot of money. ’
‘I know you have. That’s exactly why I won’t borrow off you. ’
‘You know, Gordon, sometimes you’re just a little bit — well, pigheaded. ’
‘I dare say. I can’t help it. ’
‘Oh, well! Good night, then. ’
‘Good night. ’
Ten minutes later Ravelston rode southwards in a taxi, with Hermione. She had been
waiting for him, asleep or half asleep in one of the monstrous armchairs in front of the
sitting-room fire. Whenever there was nothing particular to do, Hennione always fell
asleep as promptly as an animal, and the more she slept the healthier she became. As he
came across to her she woke and stretched herself with voluptuous, sleepy writhings, half
smiling, half yawning up at him, one cheek and bare arm rosy in the firelight. Presently
she mastered her yawns to greet him:
‘Hullo, Philip! Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting ages. ’
‘Oh, I’ve been out with a fellow. Gordon Comstock. I don’t expect you know him. The
poet. ’
‘Poet! How much did he borrow off you? ’
‘Nothing. He’s not that kind of person. He’s rather a fool about money, as a matter of
fact. But he’s very gifted in his way. ’
‘You and your poets! You look tired, Philip. What time did you have dinner? ’
‘Well — as a matter of fact I didn’t have any dinner. ’
‘Didn’t have any dinner! Why? ’
‘Oh, well, you see — I don’t know if you’ll understand. It was a kind of accident. It was
like this. ’
He explained. Hermione burst out laughing and dragged herself into a more upright
position.
‘Philip! You ARE a silly old ass! Going without your dinner, just so as not to hurt that
little beast’s feelings! You must have some food at once. And of course your char’s gone
home. Why don’t you keep some proper servants, Philip? I hate this hole-and-comer way
you live. We’ll go out and have supper at Modigliani’s. ’
‘But it’s after ten. They’ll be shut. ’
‘Nonsense! They’re open till two. I’ll ring up for a taxi. I’m not going to have you
starving yourself. ’
In the taxi she lay against him, still half asleep, her head pillowed on his breast. He
thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a
week. But the girl’s body was heavy against him, and Middlesbrough was very far away.
Also he was damnably hungry. He thought of his favourite corner table at Modigliani’s,
and of that vile pub with its hard benches, stale beer-stink, and brass spittoons. Hermione
was sleepily lecturing him.
‘Philip, why do you have to live in such a dreadful way? ’
‘But I don’t live in a dreadful way. ’
‘Yes, you do. Pretending you’re poor when you’re not, and living in that poky flat with
no servants, and going about with all these beastly people. ’
‘What beastly people? ’
‘Oh, people like this poet friend of yours. All those people who write for your paper.
They only do it to cadge from you. Of course I know you’re a Socialist. So am I. I mean
we’re all Socialists nowadays. But I don’t see why you have to give all your money away
and make friends with the lower classes. You can be a Socialist AND have a good time,
that’s what I say. ’
‘Hermione, dear, please don’t call them the lower classes! ’
‘Why not? They ARE the lower classes, aren’t they? ’
‘It’s such a hateful expression. Call them the working class, can’t you? ’
‘The working class, if you like, then. But they smell just the same. ’
‘You oughtn’t to say that kind of thing,’ he protested weakly.
‘Do you know, Philip, sometimes I think you LIKE the lower classes. ’
‘Of course I like them. ’
‘How disgusting. How absolutely disgusting. ’
She lay quiet, content to argue no longer, her arms round him, like a sleepy siren. The
woman-scent breathed out of her, a powerful wordless propaganda against all altruism
and all justice. 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?
