‘Come and dance,’ I said.
Once I held her I realized how little it had meant holding Wanda. The very knowledge of Hesta made it perfect. My hand resting on her body, accustomed, my chin brushing the top of her head.
‘Darling,’ I said, and sighed for no reason.
‘You seemed to be getting on very well with Wanda,’ she said.
‘She’s not bad.’
‘Talking and laughing, anyway. I saw you. Then you pretend you don’t like parties. What were you laughing at when I passed you dancing?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said.
‘How much do you like her?’
‘Don’t be silly, sweetheart,’ I said.
It was all right for me to mind Hesta dancing with Julio, but it seemed stupid for Hesta to mind me dancing with Wanda. It was boring talking about it, anyway.
‘Darling,’ I said, ‘do you remember that first time we danced, last spring, and we didn’t say anything, and afterwards we found a taxi; do you remember?’
‘H’m,’ she said.
‘It was wonderful, wasn’t it? I wish it was then, I wish we could go back.’
It gave me the same thrill just to think of it. I felt sentimental, foolish; I had probably drunk too much. I wanted us to be home in the Rue du Cherche-Midi.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
‘No, we can’t. Don’t be absurd,’ she said.
‘It’ll be midnight soon, darling. We’ll stick together, won’t we? You’ll dance with me when it’s twelve o’clock.’
‘Yes, if they dance.’
She was clapping her hands mechanically, glancing over her shoulder. The band started another tune.
‘You don’t have to go back,’ I said; ‘let’s go on dancing.’ We had one more, but she went to the table afterwards, I hating letting her go. There was a scene now everywhere, with paper caps and streamers and nonsense. Then the lights went out and immediately there was confusion and laughter, and excited voices. ‘What’s happening?’ said Wanda, beside me, pulling my arm.
‘I suppose it’s twelve o’clock,’ I said. She was rather a fool after all. I looked around for Hesta, but I could not see her. Then the clock struck, and afterwards the lights went up again and there were cheers, and people shook hands and kissed each other, and the band began to play, and everyone shouted and sang. It was all very forced. Hesta was laughing, and throwing a streamer at someone. She did not seem to see me. I had to get up and dance with a girl in green that I did not know.
We were having breakfast one morning. I sat up in bed, stirring my coffee, and Hesta was curled up on the end, half dressed, buttering a croissant for me.
‘I think I’ll go to London on Tuesday,’ I said.
‘Oh! will you really?’ she said.
‘I think so, darling, I want to get all this business settled, and I’m not sure how long it will take altogether. You see, if they undertake to publish the book, even then it probably won’t be done for a few months. I’ll have to ask for an advance.’
‘How are the finances?’
‘Not so good. I’ve nearly come to the end. That cheque lasted over a year, you know, just. You don’t have to worry, though.’
‘I’ve my own allowance, anyway.’
‘Yes, but I’d rather you used mine.’
‘Have another cup, Dick?’
‘Yes, I think I will. Well now, if I go over on Tuesday I can start routing up my father’s publisher on Wednesday morning.’
‘You’ve decided to do that?’
‘I think it’s the only way. It’s beastly, but it can’t be helped. I’d never get a hearing otherwise.’
‘Can’t I come with you?’
‘What - to London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh! darling - I don’t think you’d better. I’d adore you to, of course, but I honestly think I must see this through alone.’
‘What shall I do when you’re away?’
‘It won’t be long, darling. You’ll be all right, with Wanda and the rest.’
‘Yes. . . .’
‘You won’t be lonely, will you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Why, you’re always going out these days, anyway.’
‘It will seem funny.’
‘I’ll be as quick over it as I can. And think how marvellous it will be coming back, saying I’ve sold the book.’
‘H’m.’
‘I shall miss you like hell, but I’m sure it would be a mistake for you to come to London, darling; you’d be bored, hanging around all the time.’
‘Yes.’
‘Cheer up, sweetheart, we’ll have the time of our lives when this business is through.’
It was an excitement to me, to be going to London. I had to buy a bag and some things. I had lived anyhow for such a long time now.
Hesta packed for me. She was not much good at it, but better probably than I could have done myself.
‘Put the MS. at the bottom,’ I said,‘and see that it’s not crushed. I can’t give the publisher something looking like lavatory paper.’
‘I’ll fold your suit over it,’ she said; ‘the edges won’t curl up if there’s your suit to keep them flat. Of course you ought to have it typed.’
‘I’ll get that done in London,’ I said.
‘Do you think you’ll want two pairs of pyjamas?’ she said.
‘What? I don’t know - Shove ’em in, at any rate.’
It was a business packing; I was not sure what I should need in London.
‘All these ties, Dick?’ she said.
I was searching furiously through a drawer.There did not seem to be any links.
‘Oh! damn and blast, I can’t find a thing. What, darling?’
‘These ties - you never wear this blue one.’
‘Don’t fuss me, sweet, I don’t know what I’m doing; put all the ties in. I don’t care. Can I borrow your comb?’
‘Yes, I can get another.’
‘Oh! Lord - look at this shoe.The heel is trodden right down. You might have seen and sent it somewhere.’
‘You never wear that pair. How could I know? Dick, listen - you don’t seem to have socks that go with that dark suit - and there’s one here full of holes.’
‘Look, beloved, is this hat too awful?’
‘Pretty bad. Perhaps if you wear it on one side people will think you’re an artist.’
‘I wish we hadn’t left everything to the last minute,’ I said.
I scarcely slept at all the last night for thinking of going to London, and wondering about the publisher, and hating to leave Hesta. I got up early the next morning.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ she said, looking away from me, her face hard and queer.
‘So do I,’ I said, but I didn’t mean it really, because I wanted to go deep down, and I kissed her feverishly, and then tore into the other room to see that I had my passport stamped by the British Consul in Nantes. It was strange, looking at it, holding it in my hands, for all that seemed very long ago, and then Hesta came and worried me with keys.
‘How pathetic you look in that photo,’ she said, ‘like a little boy lost.’
I shut it up quickly, and bent down to fasten my suitcase.
‘You’d better find a taxi in the Boulevard Montparnasse,’ I said.
There wasn’t time to do much thinking, because everything was so hurried. Hesta came with me to the Gare du Nord. I went by the ten o’clock train, travelling second-class. The porter stowed my case away on the rack, and I walked up and down the platform with Hesta.
‘I promise I won’t be long,’ I said, ‘and you mustn’t be lonely; you go out and have a good time.’
‘Where will you stay?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure, I’ll find a little cheap hotel.’
‘You’ll write, won’t you?’ she said.
‘I can’t promise, I may not have much time.You mustn’t count on it.’
‘En voiture - messieurs,
mesdames,’ someone shouted.
‘I’ve got to go, darling,’ I said.
I kissed her hurriedly, blindly; I didn’t want to admit to myself I cared. I leant out of the window looking down on her on the platform. She seemed so little, like a child, and scared.
‘You’ve never left me before,’ she said.
‘I’ll be all right,’ I told her; ‘I’ll come back soon. London won’t alter me.’
‘That’s not the point,’ she said.
‘What is it, then?’
But at that moment the train began to move slowly. ‘Dick,’ she called, ‘Dick.’ I waved my hand, I smiled, I couldn’t very well shout out before all the people on the platform that I loved her.
‘Take care of yourself, babe,’ I said. I went on looking out of the window, and watching her figure become smaller and smaller till it was swallowed up in a mass of moving figures, and then we turned a corner and I could not see the platform any more.
I settled myself down with a paper and began to read, and though I was excited about London and the book, I felt empty, somehow, dull. . . .
8
I arrived in London about a quarter-past five. I knew that there were many small hotels round Bloomsbury way. I got hold of a taxi and told the fellow to drive me in that direction, and I would tap on the glass when I found somewhere I liked.
It seemed warmer in London than it had been in Paris. It was so different though, dreary, with a hint of fog. A lonely place to arrive in. It was difficult to see much in the dim light.The streets were very full, people standing in queues on the pavements waiting for buses. The shops looked weary and used, there was a general atmosphere of Christmas being over, and the whole cold month of January to be faced.
The taxi lumbered around Russell Square.The fog was thicker here, every house seemed to be an hotel, and none particularly inviting. I finally tapped on the glass before one in Guilford Street. A page-boy came out to take my bag. ‘Have you booked a room, sir?’ he said. ‘No,’ I said.
I had to follow him along to an office and look through a shutter at a woman in spectacles. She was difficult at first, saying it was full.
‘It will be for a week, probably longer,’ I said.
‘Oh! in that case . . .’ she began. I had to sign a book while she did things with keys.
‘Take the gentleman to No. 58,’ she said.
There wasn’t a lift, we trudged upstairs to the third floor. The boy showed me into a small room with a sloping ceiling. It was cold, no central heating. Stripes on the wallpaper and a thing in the fireplace like a fan. A maid came along with hot water in a brass can. I opened the window and smelt the fog. I could hear a newspaper-boy shouting at the end of the street: ‘Late night final.’
‘What time will you be called in the morning, sir?’ asked the maid.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Breakfast in the dining-room from eight o’clock on,’ she said.
I wanted to be back in Paris, going over to the Dôme for a drink. London wasn’t any good to me.
I went downstairs and there was a lounge with people sitting before a fire.There was an old lady with white hair, knitting, talking to a man in pince-nez. The rest were reading papers. I picked up a paper, but the news was not interesting to me, who had not been in England for so long. At seven o’clock a gong sounded for dinner, mournful and hollow. I sat myself at a little table in a corner. There was a vase of sad flowers. There were waitresses dressed in black, and no one raised their voice above a whisper.
I thought at first somebody was dead, but after a while I saw it was just England. The bread was cut in little squares from a tin loaf, and there was tepid tomato soup, followed by tepid cod, followed by tepid steak, fried potatoes and cabbage, followed by tepid castle pudding.
‘Coffee in the lounge, sir?’ asked the waitress.
‘No, thanks,’ I said.
I lit a cigarette and went and looked up the address of my father’s publisher in the telephone-book. I found it easily enough. John Torrence, Ltd, 33, Lower Bedford Street. Torrence himself was dead, but I remembered his partner, Ernest Grey, a tall thin fellow. He used to come down and stay at home. He would remember me. I wondered what story my father and mother had told after I ran away; whether they had said the truth or whether they had made up some tale of my having gone abroad. Grey used to come down about twice a year, and of course my father always saw him when he went up to London to attend some dinner or give a lecture. I would not make a long business of my letter. I would just ask for an interview, mentioning my book. I found a pen and some paper in the lounge.
Dear Mr Grey [I wrote], You will be surprised to get this letter from me. I have been abroad for nearly two years. I would be very grateful if you could give me an interview some time. The fact is, I have written a book, and a play too, and I should so much like to have your opinion and your advice. I shall be staying here all the week, and hope to have a reply from you soon.
I wondered if it seemed cool. I did not know how to write letters.
I posted it; he or one of his secretaries would open it in the morning. There did not appear to be anything to do now but wait. I went up to my room, bored, vaguely depressed.
I kept wondering what Hesta was doing.
I had never known London very well. Sometimes I had come up for a few days with Mother from home. We used to stay at the Langham Hotel. She would take me with her when she did her shopping. I remembered going to Shoolbred’s and Peter Robinson’s and as a special treat I was given an ice at Gunter’s.
There was the theatre, too, when I grew older, the front row of the dress circle at a matinée, and then long, dull dinner-parties in the evening, when I must change into stiff clothes, and escort my mother to friends of hers and my father’s, where I never spoke a word, but sat glum in my chair, my ears tingling, my hands very nervous with the knives and forks.
There was a little sense of shame when, because of my youth, I left the dining-room with the ladies, and upstairs in the drawing-room my presence also seemed superfluous, so that I wandered awkwardly to a bookcase, pretending to examine the covers and bindings of the volumes, and I would overhear my mother saying in a low tone to our hostess: ‘Yes, Richard is a great reader.’
They would leave me undisturbed - Richard who would also write one day, they supposed. How nice if he had inherited some of his father’s genius, and they did not suspect that the row of books meant nothing to the solemn-faced boy who stood with his back turned to them, but that he was yearning to be free of their quiet atmosphere, free of the scraps of earnest conversation, and away somewhere, anywhere, in the streets of London, with other men and other women, doing strange things that they would never know.
So I had this memory of London, and another one too, a memory of hunger and distress, loneliness and poverty, black thoughts hammering at my mind, and coming to a bridge that spanned the river, leaning against this, staring down into the cold grey water, and the hand laid upon my shoulder and the voice in my ear.
This was a memory that lingered with me like a message of hope and a whisper of beauty, but it hurt because of the beauty. I did not want to think of it, nor of the shabby restaurant with the table in one corner, nor the twisting turning streets, the throb of traffic, the warm dusty air, the call of adventure round a hidden wall, nor the sudden swift vision of a ship at anchor amidst the lights and shadows of the Lower Pool. This was another London, belonging to another time; now I was a writer who would have business with a famous publisher, and I was living alone in an hotel with my MS. safe upstairs in a trunk and a woman waiting for me in Paris. Life was very earnest, life was very sane. I did not swing along the streets with my hands in my pockets, I sat over my lunch in the City, a copy of the Spectator propped against the glass in front of me, and I looked about me studying the faces of men. I went one evening to a Russian play, and ‘This is marvellous,’ I thought. ‘This is marvellous,’ but really I was not quite sure, really I wondered whe
ther the dramatist had been laughing at me up his sleeve.
I clung to the illusion that I was very busy, I went over my MS. once more, I straightened the pages, and then I took it to a typing agency in the Strand, and left it with them, loath to be parted from it, but in two days it was with me once again, and this meant another reading through.
It looked different typed, braver, more mature. I read literary papers, I scanned the criticisms of recent books to see if there were any that resembled mine. I resented them all; it seemed to me too many people wrote in England, too many people had ideas.
On the Friday a letter arrived for me with the crest of John Torrence, Ltd, on the back of the envelope.
It said Mr Ernest Grey would be able to see me on Tuesday morning at eleven-thirty. This, and no more.The letter was typed by the secretary, signed with his signature. I supposed this was customary, I supposed I could hardly expect an answer from Grey himself.
Meanwhile, I must live till Tuesday. The dragging by of a weekend. It was winter, too. I went from cinema to cinema, bored by them all. I wondered how being alone in a city could ever have seemed an adventure to me, and a thrill. The atmosphere of an hotel, the mournful emptiness of having no one to speak to and nothing to do.
For the first time I began to envy people who had homes. A settled home, somewhere that belonged. Furniture one knew, things one had bought. Food that was not restaurant food. Clothes hung properly in wardrobes. I began to imagine a small house somewhere with a garden, and coming back to it, weary and content. I imagined not existing from day to day, but continuously, a calm even day of living. Things done for one, and one not being aware. The efficiency of servants, the pleasant monotony of order. I imagined Hesta with her hair rumpled, gardening, and then going in to change, and a maid bringing out to me an evening paper; or the comfort of dark evenings in the winter, the curtains drawn, a blazing fire, dogs about the place, sighing and stretching themselves, and Hesta lying on a sofa reading a book. I imagined the security of settled money, of a steady income, putting my car away in a garage, and coming into my own house, picking up my own letters in the hall. Looking about me, calling ‘Hesta?’ and then a child shouting from a room overhead, running on to a landing, peering through the banisters, and I glancing up, laughing, saying ‘Hullo!’