Keep the Aspidistra Flying (16 page)

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?’

‘I didn’t. I always come this way. I get out of the tube at Camden Town.’

Rosemary sometimes came to see Gordon at Willow-bed Road. Mrs Wisbeach would inform him sourly that ‘there was a young woman to see him’, and he would come downstairs and they would go out for a walk in the streets. Rosemary was never allowed indoors, not even into the hall. That was a rule of the house. You would have thought ‘young women’ were plague-rats by the way Mrs Wisbeach spoke of them. Gordon took Rosemary by the upper arm and made to pull her against him.

‘Rosemary! Oh, what a joy to see you again! I was so vilely lonely. Why didn’t you come before?’

She shook off his hand and stepped back out of his reach. Under her slanting hat-brim she gave him a glance that was intended to be angry.

‘Let me go, now! I’m very angry with you. I very nearly didn’t come after that beastly letter you sent me.’

‘What beastly letter?’

‘You know very well.’

‘No, I don’t. Oh, well, let’s get out of this. Somewhere where we can talk. This way.’

He took her arm, but she shook him off again, continuing, however, to walk at his side. Her steps were quicker and shorter than his. And walking beside him she had the appearance of something extremely small, nimble and young, as though he had had some lively little animal, a squirrel for instance, frisking at his side. In reality she was not very much smaller than Gordon, and only a few
months younger. But no one would ever have described Rosemary as a spinster of nearly thirty, which in fact she was. She was a strong, agile girl, with stiff black hair, a small triangular face and very pronounced eyebrows. It was one of those small, peaky faces, full of character, which one sees in sixteenth-century portraits. The first time you saw her take her hat off you got a surprise, for on her crown three white hairs glittered among the black ones like silver wires. It was typical of Rosemary that she never bothered to pull the white hairs out. She still thought of herself as a very young girl, and so did everybody else. Yet if you looked closely the marks of time were plain enough on her face.

Gordon walked more boldly with Rosemary at his side. He was proud of her. People were looking at her, and therefore at him as well. He was no longer invisible to women. As always, Rosemary was rather nicely dressed. It was a mystery how she did it on four pounds a week. He liked particularly the hat she was wearing—one of those flat felt hats which were then coming into fashion and which caricatured a clergyman’s shovel hat. There was something essentially frivolous about it. In some way difficult to be described, the angle at which it was cocked forward harmonised appealingly with the curve of Rosemary’s behind.

‘I like your hat,’ he said.

In spite of herself, a small smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.

‘It
is
rather nice,’ she said, giving the hat a little pat with her hand.

She was still pretending to be angry, however. She took care that their bodies should not touch. As soon as they had reached the end of the stalls and were in the main street she stopped and faced him sombrely.

‘What do you mean by writing me letters like that?’ she said.

‘Letters like what?’

‘Saying I’d broken your heart.’

‘So you have.’

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it!’

‘I don’t know. It certainly feels like it.’

The words were spoken half jokingly, and yet they made her look more closely at him—at his pale, wasted face, his uncut hair, his general down-at-heel, neglected appearance. Her heart softened instantly, and yet she frowned. Why
won’t
he take care of himself? was the thought in her mind. They had moved closer together. He took her by the shoulders. She let him do it, and, putting her small arms round him, squeezed him very hard, partly in affection, partly in exasperation.

‘Gordon, you
are
a miserable creature!’ she said.

‘Why am I a miserable creature?’

‘Why can’t you look after yourself properly? You’re a perfect scarecrow. Look at these awful old clothes you’re wearing!’

‘They’re suited to my station. One can’t dress decently on two quid a week, you know.’

‘But surely there’s no need to go about looking like a rag-bag? Look at this button on your coat, broken in half!’

She fingered the broken button, and then suddenly lifted his discoloured Woolworth’s tie aside. In some feminine way she had divined that he had no buttons on his shirt.

‘Yes,
again!
Not a single button. You are awful, Gordon!’

‘I tell you I can’t be bothered with things like that. I’ve got a soul above buttons.’

‘But why not give them to
me
and let me sew them on for you? And, oh, Gordon! You haven’t even shaved today. How absolutely beastly of you. You might at least take the trouble to shave every morning.’

‘I can’t afford to shave every morning,’ he said perversely.

‘What
do
you mean, Gordon? It doesn’t cost money to shave, does it?’

‘Yes, it does. Everything costs money. Cleanness, decency, energy, self-respect—everything. It’s all money. Haven’t I told you that a million times?’

She squeezed his ribs again—she was surprisingly strong—and frowned up at him, studying his face as a mother looks at some peevish child of which she is unreasonably fond.

‘
What
a fool I am!’ she said.

‘In what way a fool?’

‘Because I’m so fond of you.’

‘Are you fond of me?’

‘Of course I am. You know I am. I adore you. It’s idiotic of me.’

‘Then come somewhere where it’s dark. I want to kiss you.’

‘Fancy being kissed by a man who hasn’t even shaved!’

‘Well, that’ll be a new experience for you.’

‘No, it won’t, Gordon. Not after knowing
you
for two years.’

‘Oh, well, come on, anyway.’

They found an almost dark alley between the backs of houses. All their lovemaking was done in such places. The only place where they could ever be private was the streets. He pressed her shoulders against the rough damp bricks of the wall. She turned her face readily up to his and clung to him with a sort of eager violent affection, like a child. And yet all the while, though they were body to body, it was as though there were a shield between them. She kissed him as a child might have done, because she knew that he expected to be kissed. It was always like this. Only at very rare moments could he awake in her the beginnings of
physical desire; and these she seemed afterwards to forget, so that he always had to begin at the beginning over again. There was something defensive in the feeling of her small, shapely body. She longed to know the meaning of physical love, but also she dreaded it. It would destroy her youth, the youthful, sexless world in which she chose to live.

He parted his mouth from hers in order to speak to her.

‘Do you love me?’ he said.

‘Of course, silly. Why do you always ask me that?’

‘I like to hear you say it. Somehow I never feel sure of you till I’ve heard you say it.’

‘But why?’

‘Oh, well, you might have changed your mind. After all, I’m not exactly the answer to a maiden’s prayer. I’m thirty, and moth-eaten at that.’

‘Don’t be so absurd, Gordon! Anyone would think you were a hundred, to hear you talk. You know I’m the same age as you are.’

‘Yes, but not moth-eaten.’

She rubbed her cheek against his, feeling the roughness of his day-old beard. Their bellies were close together. He thought of the two years he had wanted her and never had her. With his lips almost against her ear he murmured:

‘Are you
ever
going to sleep with me?’

‘Yes, some day I will. Not now. Some day.’

‘It’s always “some day”. It’s been “some day” for two years now.’

‘I know. But I can’t help it.’

He pressed her back against the wall, pulled off the absurd flat hat and buried his face in her hair. It was tormenting to be so close to her and all for nothing. He put a hand under her chin and lifted her small face up to his, trying to distinguish her features in the almost complete darkness.

‘Say you will, Rosemary. There’s a dear! Do!’

‘You know I’m going to
some
time.’

‘Yes, but not
some
time—now. I don’t mean this moment, but soon. When we get an opportunity. Say you will!’

‘I can’t. I can’t promise.’

‘Say “yes,” Rosemary.
Please
do!’

‘No.’

Still stroking her invisible face, he quoted:

‘
Veuillez le dire donc selon
Que vous estes benigne et doulche
,
Car ce doulx mot n’est pas si long
Qu’il vous face mal en la bouche
.’

‘What does that mean?’

He translated it.

‘I can’t, Gordon. I just can’t.’

‘Say “yes,” Rosemary, there’s a dear. Surely it’s as easy to say “yes” as “no”?’

‘No, it isn’t. It’s easy enough for you. You’re a man. It’s different for a woman.’

‘Say “yes,” Rosemary! “Yes”—it’s such an easy word. Go on, now; say it. “Yes!”’

‘Anyone would think you were teaching a parrot to talk, Gordon.’

‘Oh, damn! Don’t make jokes about it.’

It was not much use arguing. Presently they came out into the street and walked on, southward. Somehow, from Rosemary’s swift, neat movements, from her general air of a girl who knows how to look after herself and who yet treats life mainly as a joke, you could make a good guess at her upbringing and her mental background. She was the youngest child of one of those huge hungry families which still exist here and there in the middle classes. There had been fourteen children all told—the father was a country solicitor. Some of Rosemary’s sisters were married, some
of them were schoolmistresses or running typing bureaux; the brothers were farming in Canada, on tea-plantations in Ceylon, in obscure regiments of the Indian Army. Like all women who have had an eventful girlhood, Rosemary wanted to remain a girl. That was why, sexually, she was so immature. She had kept late into life the high-spirited sexless atmosphere of a big family. Also she had absorbed into her very bones the code of fair play and live-and-let-live. She was profoundly magnanimous, quite incapable of spiritual bullying. From Gordon, whom she adored, she put up with almost anything. It was the measure of her magnanimity that never once, in the two years that she had known him, had she blamed him for not attempting to earn a proper living.

Gordon was aware of all this. But at the moment he was thinking of other things. In the pallid circles of light about the lamp-posts, beside Rosemary’s smaller, trimmer figure, he felt graceless, shabby and dirty. He wished very much that he had shaved that morning. Furtively he put a hand into his pocket and felt his money, half afraid—it was a recurrent fear with him—that he might have dropped a coin. However, he could feel the milled edge of a florin, his principal coin at the moment. Four and fourpence left. He couldn’t possibly take her out to supper, he reflected. They’d have to trail dismally up and down the streets, as usual, or at best go to a Lyons for a coffee. Bloody! How can you have any fun when you’ve got no money? He said broodingly:

‘Of course it all comes back to money.’

This remark came out of the blue. She looked up at him in surprise.

‘What do you mean, it all comes back to money?’

‘I mean the way nothing ever goes right in my life. It’s always money, money, money that’s at the bottom of everything. And especially between me and you. That’s
why you don’t really love me. There’s a sort of film of money between us. I can feel it every time I kiss you.’

‘Money! What
has
money got to do with it, Gordon?’

‘Money’s got to do with everything. If I had more money you’d love me more.’

‘Of course, I wouldn’t! Why should I?’

‘You couldn’t help it. Don’t you see that if I had more money I’d be more worth loving? Look at me now! Look at my face, look at these clothes I’m wearing, look at everything else about me. Do you suppose I’d be like that if I had two thousand a year? If I had more money I should be a different person.’

‘If you were a different person I shouldn’t love you.’

‘That’s nonsense, too. But look at it like this. If we were married would you sleep with me?’

‘What questions you do ask! Of course I would. Otherwise, where would be the sense of being married?’

‘Well, then, suppose I was decently well off,
would
you marry me?’

‘What’s the good of talking about it, Gordon? You know we can’t afford to marry.’

‘Yes, but
if
we could. Would you?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, I would, I dare say.’

‘There you are, then! That’s what I said—money!’

‘No, Gordon, no! That’s not fair! You’re twisting my words round.’

‘No, I’m not. You’ve got this money-business at the bottom of your heart. Every woman’s got it. You wish I was in a
good
job now, don’t you?’

‘Not in the way you mean it. I’d like you to be earning more money—yes.’