“She give me it,” said Vartouhi haughtily. A woman who lived in a small dark house like this, though she did have a brave son who killed Germans, had no right to proclaim that people’s hats were second-hand.
“Summer before last she had that. I remember thinking at the time it was too young for her. Well, you’d better be going now. I’ll be in to-morrow, you tell Miss Fielding.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Archer.”
“Good morning.”
Vartouhi went away down the path with her dancing walk.
“Who on earth’s she?” demanded the pretty young woman as Mrs. Archer shut the door. Mrs. Archer explained.
“Oh—a refugee. Poor thing. What a day to wear a hat like that! I s’pose it’s the only one she’s got.”
“It looked O.K. to me,” said the voice from upstairs. George had been reconnoitring above the window curtain.
Vartouhi was so excited and filled with admiration at George’s medal that her mood lasted all the time she was filling her rucksack with provisions and household requirements in St. Alberics, and when she got home she hurried to tell Miss Fielding about it. Miss Fielding was standing at the table dabbling absently in some pastry with her eyes fixed upon a book about monads.
“Did you get the fish?” she demanded.
“Yas. Four bit cod. Miss Fielding, Mrs. Archer son get a medal!”
“I presume that was why she didn’t turn up this morning,” said Miss Fielding coldly.
“Yas. Miss Fielding, George (that his name, George) kill three Germans in the snow! There was many people there, a little boy and a pretty girl and some old ones too also.”
“A small boy? Mrs. Archer’s grandson, do you mean?” asked Miss Fielding. “What was he like? Did he look intelligent? I want him to do Little Frimdl.”
“He show me how to fire a gun—pr-r-r-r-r—!” and Vartouhi smiling broadly, machine-gunned the kitchen.
Miss Fielding shut her eyes. “And I was Relying on him,” she muttered. “He does not sound the right type at all. How tiresome. Vartouhi, finish this pastry, will you? it seems to be too wet, I think,” and she retired with her book to the drawing-room.
But Vartouhi put it in the boiler and made some fresh.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS NOW three weeks before Christmas, the time of ever-darkening days, and breakfast by artificial light, and thick mists that dripped from the black trees, and colds in the head. The inhabitants of Sunglades were all fairly healthy, as health goes in the winter in England, for they had money with which to buy such extra nourishing food as was legally obtainable, the house was warm and comfortably furnished, and none of them—except Vartouhi who was very young, and Richard who was used to the weight of his secret cross—was suffering deep anxiety.
Richard’s ankle improved rapidly and he was able to go for longer and longer walks, including one excursion into Blentley, famed for its beautiful Roman Catholic church, which gave him, despite his disapproval of Roman Catholicism, considerable pleasure. It had been a severe trial to him to be unable to walk, for he had what someone has called (the quotation is made from memory) “the characteristic passion of the wise and good for walking,” and a walking tour had been part of his yearly programme ever since he had been old enough to take holidays by himself. He liked equally well to walk alone or in company, but if he took a companion, their conversation must be impersonal yet entertaining and their step must suit with his own, or else their next suggestion of a walk was met with the most courteous of refusals. Despite the dreariness of the weather there were occasionally days when walking was possible, and he continued to be out two or three times a week in that country which was so lacking in surprises and so full, to him, of charm.
The rehearsals for Little Frimdl continued with regularity, and the play even made some progress as a whole, for as it had no drama and the characters were abstractions, questions of licking it into shape and putting it across and building up a part and all the rest of it simply did not arise: you came on as Peace or Ignorance or Non-Co-operation and said your piece and that was all there was to it. Richard, who considered that one of his most useful gifts was a capacity for conserving his energies, made no attempt to produce anyone, but concentrated on showing them all how to wear their clothes, and on constructing some non-naturalistic scenery out of plywood, brown paper and blackboard chalks, and fixing up a simple but effective lighting system. Miss Fielding’s collection of theatrical accessories that were left over from other plays in the past came in usefully here. He was busy for the rest of his time working up his lectures for the European Reconstruction Council and received weekly parcels of books from the London Library, his subscription to which was one of his few self-indulgences.
One afternoon he took the early bus into St. Alberics to consult the public library, and, on being informed that the particular book he wanted was not to be had there, asked if there was any other library in the town. He was told that there was; at Telegraph House he would find a small but up-to-date library where, the librarian was sure, he could obtain the work he wanted. On entering Telegraph House, a Victorian mansion of the ’sixties now converted into offices, he was surprised to see in its hall a portrait of the same lady who reigned above the mantelpiece in the drawing-room at Sunglades. It appeared from the inscription below the picture that the late Mrs. Fielding had been the prime mover in the founding of the Telegraph House Library, which consisted of three rooms lined with technical volumes and works on economics and sociology, supported by private subscriptions and a small charge to the public and a tiny yearly income left by the lady herself. The books were renewed as the facts they contained became out of date. Richard obtained the one he wanted, and the little institution, with its voluntary assistant and its thrice-weekly opening, appeared to him to be admirably administered and performing a useful public work. He felt a respect for Our Mother which he certainly had not felt before.
As he came down the steps he seemed to hear someone blowing a car-hooter. The street was almost empty as it was tea-time, and after bringing his mind back from where it was wandering, he decided that the hooter was being blown at him. He looked down at the foot of the steps and saw a sports car.
“Hallo—can I give you a lift?” called Alicia.
“If your driving has improved—yes, thank you,” he answered, limping down towards her.
“Actually, I don’t drive as badly as most women,” she retorted, opening the door for him. He got in beside her and put his books at the back. “Do you want to go home?”
“Well, is there somewhere we can get some tea near here? I want to talk to you; I have been meaning to write to you but I’ve been very busy lately. Is that a place over there?” peering across the road.
“It looks ropey to me,” said Alicia, suddenly feeling happy.
“Never mind—never mind, it won’t hurt us for fifteen minutes,” he said impatiently, collecting his books again, and she drove across to the Myrna Café, which had a dish of dark, damp sausages displayed beside a vase of red paper flowers in its steamy window.
“Cripes,” muttered Alicia as he opened the door.
“You must be used to this sort of thing if you’re working in a factory,” he said, sitting down at a marble table.
“Our canteen is so clean you could eat off it if you had any appetite,” said Alicia waving and smiling to someone dimly seen through steam and cigarette smoke at the other end of the room.
“Who’s that?” demanded Richard, turning round.
“Two girls from my factory. I don’t know the boys.” The girls had rich yellow curls on their shoulders, men’s jackets over sweaters, and trousers, and heavy, expensive shoes. Their grubby little hands had painted nails and the paint was thick on their eighteen-year-old faces. The boys were in battle-dress. All four looked soft and sleepy with happiness.
There’ll be blue birds over
The white cliffs of Dover
hummed Alicia, in time with the roaring wireless. Sh
e liked being here so much! in the hot, greasy noisy room with the smell of tea and stale frying, under the red shaded lights, with the gathering winter dusk outside. Richard had piled his books on the table and unwound his blue scarf and presently she slipped off her fur coat.
“Two cups of tea, please,” said Richard, to the thin little girl who came to take their order.
“Sometimes the cake is quite good at these places,” suggested Alicia. “What they call cut cake.”
“And a piece of cut cake,” added Richard austerely.
“Don’t you want any?”
He shook his head. In fact he had come out with half a crown, as his supply of money was almost at an end and he would have no more until a cheque arrived for an article he had written for an American paper, and he did not intend to spend a farthing more than he must.
The tea was hot and weak in thick cups and they were each given one teaspoonful of sugar by the little waitress. Richard watched her all the time she was serving them, noticing her spotted dark dress and the white marks on her nails, her childish thin neck and the coloured slide on her lank hair. Alicia watched him curiously.
“When everyone,” he said suddenly, and drank some tea, “when everyone (and when I say everyone I include the last and most besotted Indian in Mexico and also all the Japanese) has enough to eat and his share of what’s good in the world, then, and only then, will I cease from mental fight. What I wanted to ask you was——”
She had been watching the colour that had come into his thin face, and now interrupted him—
“I don’t believe you eat enough.”
“I eat enough. I don’t pay much attention to what I do eat or eat as much as most people think necessary, possibly.”
“That isn’t awfully sensible, if you’re not strong, is it?”
“It may be subconsciously due to my health; I don’t know. In any case, by this time it is a habit, and not an interesting habit either. And it’s part of my political beliefs not to overeat. As I was going to say, is there any part-time work to be had in your factory?”
Alicia’s common sense had warned her that he would not want to ask her anything romantic, and she was able to answer almost without disappointment.
“I’m afraid not. We did think of getting it started but the work doesn’t lend itself to part-timing. Why? Do you want a job?”
He explained what he did want, and she was able to give him the address of a friend who worked in a converted shed with other part-timers in the town, sorting rivets. He thanked her and made a note of it, then glanced at her plate, where she had left half a slice of pale wettish cake.
“Don’t you want that?” She shook her head.
“You shouldn’t waste food,” he said calmly, and ate it himself. Alicia gazed at him, fascinated. He certainly has the most original line, she reflected. Any other man on this planet would have said, I’m so sorry—it looks awful—I should never have brought you here. But then no other man would have brought me here.
“Is that why you don’t like to see food wasted—because so many people haven’t enough to eat?” she asked, and he nodded.
“I’ve never thought about it,” confessed Alicia suddenly, longing to abase herself.
“Well, it would be surprising if you had,” answered Richard judicially. “Miss Fielding tells me that your father handles Government contracts for clothing which brought him in, before this war, an income of something like ten thousand pounds a year. Unless you were an outstandingly unusual woman, like Barbara Bodichon or Beatrice Webb, you could not possibly enter imaginatively into the lives of the poor.”
“It’s not quite true that I’ve never thought about it,” she said, ashamed of her first impulse, “since I’ve been in the factory I’ve thought about it quite a lot, as a matter of fact.”
“You seem to have the desirable quality of being honest with yourself,” said Richard approvingly. “But of course, the workers in your factory are not poor.”
“No, that’s true. Those girls down there,” jerking her head towards the back of the room, “get plenty to eat and as good a time as I do, in their own way.”
She hoped he would ask her if she did have a good time, but there was more than one disappointment for Alicia that afternoon. He only nodded again and offered her a case with two cigarettes in it.
“You——” she said as he lit her cigarette with a match; he seemed to have no lighter, “I suppose you care about the poor more than anything, don’t you?”
It was a clumsy speech, but she was moved, and could only speak clumsily. In this hot, noisy café, so sordid and full of ordinary people, where there was nothing beautiful or serious, she felt closer than she had ever been in her most intimate moments with H. to what she vaguely thought of as “real things.”
Richard did not answer at once. He leant forward and stared down at the table as if intently thinking. Then he began to say slowly:
“You used the right word when you said ‘care.’ The poor you have always with you, as Jesus said in another sense, and part of my mind always aches with the knowledge of them. They ask so little. At least 90 per cent. of the British want a small house and a garden; a vote recently taken among men in the armed forces showed that that was what 95 to 98 per cent. wanted, and an inquiry made in Birmingham proved that 96.7 of the city’s population wanted it too. If you ask almost any of them casually what they want from life, the answer’s invariably the same—‘nice little house and a bit of garden.’ Some of them are greedy, of course, but they haven’t the monopoly of that vice. Most greed is innocent and the frightened greed of the poor is the most innocent kind. ‘A nice little house and a bit of garden’ and the wish is probably true for the poor all over the globe. That’s all; and we have so mismanaged the wasted garden of the world, as some writer1 called it, that they can’t even have that. It isn’t that they can’t have art and riches and leisure (which most of them don’t want anyway); they can’t have enough food, or time to rest their overworked bodies, to make love, or delight in their children without fear for their future.”
He stopped, and coughed. Alicia did not say anything, and after a moment he went on:
“What I feel about the poor shapes the pattern of my whole life. I seldom talk about this, but since you asked me and because I like you, I have spoken of it. Now if you agree we will talk about other things.”
He stopped talking, and carefully tapped the ash from his cigarette, without looking at her. Alicia still said nothing. Colour came into her face, and she drank some tea without noticing that it was cold. The words Because I like you still sounded in her mind and she was ashamed because she remembered them, and only them, clearly out of all the words he had spoken. Presently she said:
“You didn’t tell me all this the other night when I asked you what you liked doing best.”
“You were talking about what gave me pleasure. I can’t say my feelings about the poor do that.”
“You said that this feeling—sort of—influences your whole life. How do you mean?”
“I believe that I can help to alleviate, though of course in a microscopically small way, the lot of the poor all over the world by teaching Economics and supporting the Communist movement. I do both those things. And I live entirely on what I can earn. An aunt left me three pounds a week when I was twenty-one, but I pay that into the Communist Party funds for four months out of the year, and the rest of it goes to help the prisoners from the Spanish Civil War who are still interned in France and other countries. When I am destitute, which does not often happen, I borrow from my mother—no one else. And I even pay her back!” He gave the smile that Alicia was beginning to watch for, and she smiled too.
“Are you a Communist?” she asked.
“I am not a member of the Party, but what political views I have approach nearest to Communism, I suppose.”
After thinking this over, Alicia said candidly:
“You know, I think you must have a ropey time. Worrying about
the poor, and giving all your money away and not eating much. And you say you’re happy!”
“I am,” he said instantly. “Don’t I look it?”
She studied his face, with its high forehead and beautiful mouth, and had to admit to herself that happiness, though of a kind most unlike what she was used to calling happiness, did shine there.
“Well, yes, you do. But I’m damned,” said Alicia, forgetting to be charming as she thought bitterly of her own unhappiness, “if I know why.”
“I like the human race, and I’m doing what I think is my duty. And, fortunately, I like that too,” said Richard, beginning to cocoon himself up in the muffler.
“Pi!” she jeered.
He took no notice beyond smiling indulgently at her, and beckoned to the waitress.
“Are you going to drive me home?” he asked.
“If you like. Why?”
“This is all the money I’ve got,” holding up the half-crown, “and I want to leave the change for the child.”
After he had paid the bill, Alicia watched him put the coppers and silver under a plate. She did not offer to pay for her own tea. Why should she? It had not been a very nice party; she felt as if her shins had been barked. But she went on liking him, and a vague comparison between himself and H. continued in her mind. H., with his money and his cigars! she suddenly thought. It used to be enough to choke you.
“I thought Communists didn’t approve of tipping; isn’t it an insult?” she said maliciously, as he helped her on with her coat.
He did not answer, but gently shooed her out of the café with outstretched palms. She turned at the door to wave good-bye to the munition girls, who waved dreamily back, and then they went into the black-out.
“Damn, it’s snowing,” she said, feeling a tiny icy touch on her face. “And I haven’t got the hood up. Shall we bother?”
“Splendid,” he answered absently. “No; it isn’t wet snow.”
“Won’t you get a cold or something?” She was adjusting the windscreen wiper as he settled himself in his seat.