'So you heard this S.O.S. in the hotel at Birmingham?'
'Yes. Last night, on the National Broadcast.'
'When did you leave Birmingham, then?'
'This morning, of course.' (I'd planned out the journey in my mind, just in case there should be any need to lie my way out of it. Left at ten, lunch at Coventry, tea at Bedford-I'd got it all mapped out.)
'So you thought last night I was seriously ill, and you didn't even leave till this morning?'
'But I tell you I didn't think you were ill. Haven't I explained? I thought it was just another of your tricks. It sounded a damn sight more likely.'
'Then I'm rather surprised you left at all!' she said with so much vinegar in her voice that I knew there was something more coming. But she went on more quietly: 'So you left this morning, did you?'
'Yes. I left about ten. I had lunch at Coventry-'
'Then how do you account for this?' she suddenly shot out at me, and in the same instant she ripped her bag open, took out a piece of paper, and held it out as if it had been a forged cheque, or something.
I felt as if someone had hit me a sock in the wind. I might have known it! She'd caught me after all. And there was the evidence, the dossier of the case. I didn't even know what it was, except that it was something that proved I'd been off with a woman. All the stuffing went out of me. A moment earlier I'd been kind of bullying her, making out to be angry because I'd been dragged back from Birmingham for nothing, and now she'd suddenly turned the tables on me. You don't have to tell me what I look like at that moment. I know. Guilt written all over me in big letters-I know. And I wasn't even guilty! But it's a matter of habit. I'm used to being in the wrong. For a hundred quid I couldn't have kept the guilt out of my voice as I answered:
'What do you mean? What's that thing you've got there?'
'You read it and you'll see what it is.'
I took it. It was a letter from what seemed to be a firm of solicitors, and it was addressed from the same street as Rowbottom's Hotel, I noticed.
'Dear Madam,' I read, 'With reference to your letter of the 18th inst., we think there must be some mistake. Rowbottom's Hotel was closed down two years ago and has been converted into a block of offices. No one answering the description of your husband has been here. Possibly-'
I didn't read any further. Of course I saw it all in a flash. I'd been a little bit too clever and put my foot in it. There was just one faint ray of hope-young Saunders might have forgotten to post the letter I'd addressed from Rowbottom's, in which case it was just possible I could brazen it out. But Hilda soon put the lid on that idea.
'Well, George, you see what the letter says? The day you left here I wrote to Rowbottom's Hotel-oh, just a little note, asking them whether you'd arrived there. And you see the answer I got! There isn't even any such place as Rowbottom's Hotel. And the same day, the very same post, I got your letter saying you were at the hotel. You got someone to post it for you, I suppose. That was your business in Birmingham!'
'But look here, Hilda! You've got all this wrong. It isn't what you think at all. You don't understand.'
'Oh, yes, I do, George. I understand perfectly.'
'But look here, Hilda-'
Wasn't any use, of course. It was a fair cop. I couldn't even meet her eye. I turned and tried to make for the door.
'I'll have to take the car round to the garage,' I said.
'Oh, no George! You don't get out of it like that. You'll stay here and listen to what I've got to say, please.'
'But, damn it! I've got to switch the lights on, haven't I? It's past lighting-up time. You don't want us to get fined?'
At that she let me go, and I went out and switched the car lights on, but when I came back she was still standing there like a figure of doom, with the two letters, mine and the solicitor's on the table in front of her. I'd got a little of my nerve back, and I had another try:
'Listen, Hilda. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick about this business. I can explain the whole thing.'
'I'm sure you could explain anything, George. The question is whether I'd believe you.'
'But you're just jumping to conclusions! What made you write to these hotel people, anyway?'
'It was Mrs Wheeler's idea. And a very good idea too, as it turned out.'
'Oh, Mrs Wheeler, was it? So you don't mind letting that blasted woman into our private affairs?'
'She didn't need any letting in. It was she who warned me what you were up to this week. Something seemed to tell her, she said. And she was right, you see. She knows all about you, George. She used to have a husband just like you.'
'But, Hilda-'
I looked at her. Her face had gone a kind of white under the surface, the way it does when she thinks of me with another woman. A woman. If only it had been true!
And Gosh! what I could see ahead of me! You know what it's like. The weeks on end of ghastly nagging and sulking, and the catty remarks after you think peace has been signed, and the meals always late, and the kids wanting to know what it's all about. But what really got me down was the kind of mental squalor, the kind of mental atmosphere in which the real reason why I'd gone to Lower Binfield wouldn't even be conceivable. That was what chiefly struck me at the moment. If I spent a week explaining to Hilda why I'd been to Lower Binfield, she'd never understand. And who would understand, here in Ellesmere Road? Gosh! did I even understand myself? The whole thing seemed to be fading out of my mind. Why had I gone to Lower Binfield? Had I gone there? In this atmosphere it just seemed meaningless. Nothing's real in Ellesmere Road except gas bills, school-fees, boiled cabbage, and the office on Monday.
One more try:
'But look here, Hilda! I know what you think. But you're absolutely wrong. I swear to you you're wrong.'
'Oh, no, George. If I was wrong why did you have to tell all those lies?'
No getting away from that, of course.
I took a pace or two up and down. The smell of old mackintoshes was very strong. Why had I run away like that? Why had I bothered about the future and the past, seeing that the future and the past don't matter? Whatever motives I might have had, I could hardly remember them now. The old life in Lower Binfield, the war and the afterwar, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, machine-guns, food-queues, rubber truncheons-it was fading out, all fading out. Nothing remained except a vulgar low-down row in a smell of old mackintoshes.
One last try:
'Hilda! Just listen to me a minute. Look here, you don't know where I've been all this week, do you?'
'I don't want to know where you've been. I know what you've been doing. That's quite enough for me.'
'But dash it-'
Quite useless, of course. She'd found me guilty and now she was going to tell me what she thought of me. That might take a couple of hours. And after that there was further trouble looming up, because presently it would occur to her to wonder where I'd got the money for this trip, and then she'd discover that I'd been holding out on her about the seventeen quid. Really there was no reason why this row shouldn't go on till three in the morning. No use playing injured innocence any longer. All I wanted was the line of least resistance. And in my mind I ran over the three possibilities, which were:
A. To tell her what I'd really been doing and somehow make her believe me.
B. To pull the old gag about losing my memory.
C. To let her go on thinking it was a woman, and take my medicine.
But, damn it! I knew which it would have to be.
KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING
KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though
I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have
not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my
br /> goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing.
Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not;
money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in
the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things... . And now abideth faith,
hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is
money.
I Corinthians xiii(adapted)
1
The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon-Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather motheaten already-lounged across the table, pushing a four-penny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb.
The ding-dong of another, remoter clock-from the Prince of Wales, the other side of the street-rippled the stagnant air. Gordon made an effort, sat upright, and stowed his packet of cigarettes away in his inside pocket. He was perishing for a smoke. However, there were only four cigarettes left. Today was Wednesday and he had no money coming to him till Friday. It would be too bloody to be without tobacco tonight as well as all tomorrow.
Bored in advance by tomorrow's tobaccoless hours, he got up and moved towards the door-a small frail figure, with delicate bones and fretful movements. His coat was out at elbow in the right sleeve and its middle button was missing; his ready-made flannel trousers were stained and shapeless. Even from above you could see that his shoes needed resoling.
The money clinked in his trouser pocket as he got up. He knew the precise sum that was there. Fivepence halfpenny-twopence halfpenny and a Joey. He paused, took out the miserable little threepenny-bit, and looked at it. Beastly, useless thing! And bloody fool to have taken it! It had happened yesterday, when he was buying cigarettes. 'Don't mind a threepenny-bit, do you, sir?' the little bitch of a shop-girl had chirped. And of course he had let her give it him. 'Oh no, not at all!' he had said-fool, bloody fool!
His heart sickened to think that he had only fivepence halfpenny in the world, threepence of which couldn't even be spent. Because how can you buy anything with a threepenny-bit? It isn't a coin, it's the answer to a riddle. You look such a fool when you take it out of your pocket, unless it's in among a whole handful of other coins. 'How much?' you say. 'Threepence,' the shop-girl says. And then you feel all round your pocket and fish out that absurd little thing, all by itself, sticking on the end of your finger like a tiddley-wink. The shop-girl sniffs. She spots immediately that it's your last threepence in the world. You see her glance quickly at it-she's wondering whether there's a piece of Christmas pudding still sticking to it. And you stalk out with your nose in the air, and can't ever go to that shop again. No! We won't spend our Joey. Twopence halfpenny left-twopence halfpenny to last till Friday.
This was the lonely after-dinner hour, when few or no customers were to be expected. He was alone with seven thousand books. The small dark room, smelling of dust and decayed paper, that gave on the office, was filled to the brim with books, mostly aged and unsaleable. On the top shelves near the ceiling the quarto volumes of extinct encyclopedias slumbered on their sides in piles like the tiered coffins in common graves. Gordon pushed aside the blue, dust-sodden curtains that served as a doorway to the next room. This, better lighted than the other, contained the lending library. It was one of those 'twopenny no-deposit' libraries beloved of book-pinchers. No books in it except novels, of course. And what novels! But that too was a matter of course.
Eight hundred strong, the novels lined the room on three sides ceiling-high, row upon row of gaudy oblong backs, as though the walls had been built of many-coloured bricks laid upright. They were arranged alphabetically. Arlen, Burroughs, Deeping, Dell, Frankau, Galsworthy, Gibbs, Priestley, Sapper, Walpole. Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place. Pudding, suet pudding. Eight hundred slabs of pudding, walling him in-a vault of puddingstone. The thought was oppressive. He moved on through the open doorway into the front part of the shop. In doing so, he smoothed his hair. It was an habitual movement. After all, there might be girls outside the glass door. Gordon was not impressive to look at. He was just five feet seven inches high, and because his hair was usually too long he gave the impression that his head was a little too big for his body. He was never quite unconscious of his small stature. When he knew that anyone was looking at him he carried himself very upright, throwing a chest, with a you-be-damned air which occasionally deceived simple people.
However, there was nobody outside. The front room, unlike the rest of the shop, was smart and expensive-looking, and it contained about two thousand books, exclusive of those in the window. On the right there was a glass showcase in which children's books were kept. Gordon averted his eyes from a beastly Rackhamesque dust-jacket; elvish children tripping Wendily through a bluebell glade. He gazed out through the glass door. A foul day, and the wind rising. The sky was leaden, the cobbles of the street were slimy. It was St Andrew's day, the thirtieth of November. McKechnie's stood on a corner, on a sort of shapeless square where four streets converged. To the left, just within sight from the door, stood a great elm-tree, leafless now, its multitudinous twigs making sepia-coloured lace against the sky. Opposite, next to the Prince of Wales, were tall hoardings covered with ads for patent foods and patent medicines. A gallery of monstrous doll-faces-pink vacuous faces, full of goofy optimism. Q.T. Sauce, Truweet Breakfast Crisps ('Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps'), Kangaroo Burgundy, Vitamalt Chocolate, Bovex. Of them all, the Bovex one oppressed Gordon the most. A spectacled rat-faced clerk, with patent-leather hair, sitting at a cafe table grinning over a white mug of Bovex. 'Corner Table enjoys his meal with Bovex', the legend ran.
Gordon shortened the focus of his eyes. From the dust-dulled pane the reflection of his own face looked back at him. Not a good face. Not thirty yet, but motheaten already. Very pale, with bitter, ineradicable lines. What people call a 'good' forehead-high, that is-but a small pointed chin, so that the face as a whole was pear-shaped rather than oval. Hair mouse-coloured and unkempt, mouth unamiable, eyes hazel inclining to green. He lengthened the focus of his eyes again. He hated mirrors nowadays. Outside, all was bleak and wintry. A tram, like a raucous swan of steel, glided groaning over the cobbles, and in its wake the wind swept a debris of trampled leaves. The twigs of the elm-tree were swirling, straining eastward. The poster that advertised Q.T. Sauce was torn at the edge; a ribbon of paper fluttered fitfully like a tiny pennant. In the side street too, to the right, the naked poplars that lined the pavement bowed sharply as the wind caught them. A nasty raw wind. There was a threatening note in it as it swept over; the first growl of winter's anger. Two lines of a poem struggled for birth in Gordon's mind:
Sharply the something wind-for instance, threatening wind? No, better, menacing wind. The menacing wind blows over-no, sweeps over, say.
The something poplars-yielding poplars? No, better, bending poplars. Assonance between bending and menacing? No matter. The bending poplars, newly bare. Good.
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
The bending poplars, newly bare.
Good. 'Bare' is a sod to rhyme; however, there's always 'air', which every poet since Chaucer has been struggling to find rhymes for. But the impulse died away in Gordon's mind. He turned the money over in his pocket. Twopence halfpenny and a Joey-twopence halfpenny. His mind was sticky with boredom. He couldn't cope with rhymes and adjectives. You can't, with only twopence halfpenny in your pocket.
His eyes refocused themselves upon the posters opposite. He had his private reasons for hating them. Mechanically he re-read their slogans. 'Kangaroo Burgund
y-the wine for Britons.' 'Asthma was choking her!' 'Q.T. Sauce Keeps Hubby Smiling.' 'Hike all day on a Slab of Vitamalt!'Curve Cut-the Smoke for Outdoor Men.' Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps.'Corner Table enjoys his meal with Bovex.'
Ha! A customer-potential, at any rate. Gordon stiffened himself. Standing by the door, you could get an oblique view out of the front window without being seen yourself. He looked the potential customer over.
A decentish middle-aged man, black suit, bowler hat, umbrella, and dispatch-case-provincial solicitor or Town Clerk-keeking at the window with large pale-coloured eyes. He wore a guilty look. Gordon followed the direction of his eyes. Ah! So that was it! He had nosed out those D.H. Lawrence first editions in the far corner. Pining for a bit of smut, of course. He had heard of Lady Chatterley afar off. A bad face he had, Gordon thought. Pale, heavy, downy, with bad contours. Welsh, by the look of him-Nonconformist, anyway. He had the regular Dissenting pouches round the corners of his mouth. At home, president of the local Purity League or Seaside Vigilance Committee (rubber-soled slippers and electric torch, spotting kissing couples along the beach parade), and now up in town on the razzle. Gordon wished he would come in. Sell him a copy of Women in Love. How it would disappoint him!
But no! The Welsh solicitor had funked it. He tucked his umbrella under his arm and moved off with righteously turned backside. But doubtless tonight, when darkness hid his blushes, he'd slink into one of the rubber-shops and buy High Jinks in a Parisian Convent, by Sadie Blackeyes.
Gordon turned away from the door and back to the book-shelves. In the shelves to your left as you came out of the library the new and nearly-new books were kept-a patch of bright colour that was meant to catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door. Their sleek unspotted backs seemed to yearn at you from the shelves. 'Buy me, buy me!' they seemed to be saying. Novels fresh from the press-still unravished brides, pining for the paperknife to deflower them-and review copies, like youthful widows, blooming still though virgin no longer, and here and there, in sets of half a dozen, those pathetic spinster-things, 'remainders', still guarding hopefully their long preserv'd virginity. Gordon turned his eyes away from the 'remainders'. They called up evil memories. The single wretched little book that he himself had published, two years ago, had sold exactly a hundred and fifty-three copies and then been 'remaindered'; and even as a 'remainder' it hadn't sold. He passed the new books by and paused in front of the shelves which ran at right angles to them and which contained more second-hand books.