Keep the Aspidistra Flying (27 page)

He turned out the light and lay on his back, wide awake. At this moment he saw himself with frightful clarity. He took a sort of inventory of himself and his possessions. Gordon Comstock, last of the Comstocks, thirty years old, with twenty-six teeth left; with no money and no job; in borrowed pyjamas in a borrowed bed; with nothing before him except cadging and destitution, and nothing behind him except squalid fooleries. His total wealth a puny body and two cardboard suitcases full of worn-out clothes.

At seven Ravelston was awakened by a tap on his door. He rolled over and said sleepily, ‘Hullo?’ Gordon came in, a dishevelled figure almost lost in the borrowed silk pyjamas. Ravelston roused himself, yawning. Theoretically he got up at the proletarian hour of seven. Actually he seldom stirred until Mrs Beaver, the charwoman, arrived at eight. Gordon pushed the hair out of his eyes and sat down on the foot of Ravelston’s bed.

‘I say, Ravelston, this is bloody. I’ve been thinking things over. There’s going to be hell to pay.’

‘What?’

‘I shall lose my job. McKechnie can’t keep me on after I’ve been in the clink. Besides, I ought to have been at work yesterday. Probably the shop wasn’t opened all day.’

Ravelston yawned. ‘It’ll be all right, I think. That fat chap—what’s his name? Flaxman—rang McKechnie up and told him you were down with ‘flu. He made it pretty convincing. He said your temperature was a hundred and three. Of course your landlady knows. But I don’t suppose she’d tell McKechnie.’

‘But suppose it’s got into the papers!’

‘Oh, lord! I suppose that might happen. The char brings the papers up at eight. But do they report drunk cases? Surely not?’

Mrs Beaver brought the
Telegraph
and the
Herald
. Ravelston sent her out for the
Mail
and the
Express
. They searched hurriedly through the police-court news. Thank God! it hadn’t ‘got into the papers’ after all. There was no reason why it should, as a matter of fact. It was not as if Gordon had been a racing motorist or a professional footballer. Feeling better, Gordon managed to eat some breakfast, and after breakfast Ravelston went out. It was agreed that he should go up to the shop, see Mr McKechnie, give him further details of Gordon’s illness and find out how the land lay. It seemed quite natural to Ravelston to waste several days in getting Gordon out of his scrape. All the morning Gordon hung about the flat, restless and out of sorts, smoking cigarettes in an endless chain. Now that he was alone, hope had deserted him. He knew by profound instinct that Mr McKechnie would have heard about his arrest. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could keep dark. He had lost his job, and that was all about it.

He lounged across to the window and looked out. A desolate day; the whitey-grey sky looked as if it could never be blue again; the naked trees wept slowly into the gutters. Down a neighbouring street the cry of the coalman echoed mournfully. Only a fortnight to Christmas now. Jolly to be out of work at this time of year! But the thought, instead of frightening him, merely bored him. The peculiar lethargic feeling, the stuffy heaviness behind the eyes, that one has after a fit of drunkenness, seemed to have settled upon him permanently. The prospect of searching for another job bored him even more than the prospect of poverty. Besides, he would never find another job. There are no jobs to be had nowadays. He was going
down, down into the sub-world of the unemployed—down, down into God knew what workhouse depths of dirt and hunger and futility. And chiefly he was anxious to get it over with as little fuss and effort as possible.

Ravelston came back at about one o’clock. He pulled his gloves off and threw them into a chair. He looked tired and depressed. Gordon saw at a glance that the game was up.

‘He’s heard, of course?’ he said.

‘Everything, I’m afraid.’

‘How? I suppose that cow of a Wisbeach woman went and sneaked to him?’

‘No. It was in the paper after all. The local paper. He got it out of that.’

‘Oh, hell! I’d forgotten that.’

Ravelston produced from his coat pocket a folded copy of
The Hampstead and Camden Town Messenger
. It was one that they took in at the shop because Mr McKechnie advertised in it—Gordon had forgotten that. He opened it. Gosh! What a splash! It was all over the middle page.

BOOKSELLER’S ASSISTANT FINED.
MAGISTRATE’S SEVERE STRICTURE.
‘
DISGRACEFUL FRACAS
.’

There were nearly two columns of it. Gordon had never been so famous before and never would be again. They must have been very hard up for a bit of news. But these local papers have a curious notion of patriotism. They are so avid for local news that a bicycle-accident in the Harrow Road will occupy more space than a European crisis, and such items of news as ‘Hampstead Man on Murder Charge’ or ‘Dismembered Baby in Cellar in Camberwell are displayed with positive pride.

Ravelston described his interview with Mr McKechnie. Mr McKechnie, it seemed, was torn between his rage against Gordon and his desire not to offend such a good
customer as Ravelston. But of course, after a thing like that, you could hardly expect him to take Gordon back. These scandals were bad for trade, and besides, he was justly angry at the lies Flaxman had told him over the phone. But he was angriest of all at the thought of
his
assistant being drunk and disorderly. Ravelston said that the drunkenness seemed to anger him in a way that was peculiar. He gave the impression that he would almost have preferred Gordon to pinch money out of the till. Of course, he was a teetotaller himself. Gordon had sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t also a secret drinker, in the traditional Scottish style. His nose was certainly very red. But perhaps it was snuff that did it. Anyway, that was that. Gordon was in the soup, full fathom five.

‘I suppose the Wisbeach will stick to my clothes and things,’ he said. ‘I’m not going round there to fetch them. Besides, I owe her a week’s rent.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ll see to your rent and everything.’

‘My dear chap, I can’t let you pay my rent!’

‘Oh, dash it!’ Ravelston’s face grew faintly pink. He looked miserably into the distance, and then said what he had to say all in a sudden burst: ‘Look here, Gordon, we must get this settled. You’ve just got to stay here till this business has blown over. I’ll see you through about money and all that. You needn’t think you’re being a nuisance, because you’re not. And anyway, it’s only till you get another job.’

Gordon moved moodily away from him, his hands in his pockets. He had foreseen all this, of course. He knew that he ought to refuse, he
wanted
to refuse, and yet he had not quite the courage.

‘I’m not going to sponge on you like that,’ he said sulkily.

‘Don’t use such expressions, for God’s sake! Besides, where could you go if you didn’t stay here?’

‘I don’t know—into the gutter, I suppose. It’s where I belong. The sooner I get there the better.’

‘Rot! You’re going to stay here till you’ve found another job.’

‘But there isn’t a job in the world. It might be a year before I found a job. I don’t
want
a job.’

‘You mustn’t talk like that. You’ll find a job right enough. Something’s bound to turn up. And for God’s sake don’t talk about
sponging
on me. It’s only an arrangement between friends. If you really want to, you can pay it all back when you’ve got the money.’

‘Yes—
when!
’

But in the end he let himself be persuaded. He had known that he would let himself be persuaded. He stayed on at the flat, and allowed Ravelston to go round to Willowbed Road and pay his rent and recover his two cardboard suitcases; he even allowed Ravelston to ‘lend’ him a further two pounds for current expenses. His heart sickened while he did it. He was living on Ravelston—sponging on Ravelston. How could there ever be real friendship between them again? Besides, in his heart he didn’t want to be helped. He only wanted to be left alone. He was headed for the gutter; better to reach the gutter quickly and get it over. Yet for the time being he stayed, simply because he lacked the courage to do otherwise.

But as for this business of getting a job, it was hopeless from the start. Even Ravelston, though rich, could not manufacture jobs out of nothing. Gordon knew beforehand that there were no jobs going begging in the book trade. During the next three days he wore his shoes out traipsing from bookseller to bookseller. At shop after shop he set his teeth, marched in, demanded to see the manager, and three minutes later marched out again with his nose in the air. The answer was always the same—no jobs vacant. A few booksellers were taking on an extra man for the
Christmas rush, but Gordon was not the type they were looking for. He was neither smart nor servile; he wore shabby clothes and spoke with the accent of a gentleman. Besides, a few questions always brought it out that he had been sacked from his last job for drunkenness. After only three days he gave it up. He knew it was no use. It was only to please Ravelston that he had even been pretending to look for work.

In the evening he trailed back to the flat, footsore and with his nerves on edge from a series of snubs. He was making all his journeys on foot, to economise Ravelston’s two pounds. When he got back Ravelston had just come up from the office and was sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fire, with some long galley-proofs over his knee. He looked up as Gordon came in.

‘Any luck?’ he said as usual.

Gordon did not answer. If he had answered it would have been with a stream of obscenities. Without even looking at Ravelston he went straight into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes and flung himself on the bed. He hated himself at this moment. Why had he come back? What right had he to come back and sponge on Ravelston when he hadn’t even the intention of looking for a job any longer? He ought to have stayed out in the streets, slept in Trafalgar Square, begged—anything. But he hadn’t the guts to face the streets as yet. The prospect of warmth and shelter had tugged him back. He lay with his hands beneath his head, in a mixture of apathy and self-hatred. After about half an hour he heard the door-bell ring and Ravelston get up to answer it. It was that bitch Hermione Slater, presumably. Ravelston had introduced Gordon to Hermione a couple of days ago, and she had treated him like dirt. But a moment later there was a knock at the bedroom door.

‘What is it?’ said Gordon.

‘Somebody’s come to see you,’ said Ravelston.

‘To see
me
?’

‘Yes. Come on into the other room.’

Gordon swore and rolled sluggishly off the bed. When he got to the other room he found that the visitor was Rosemary. He had been half expecting her, of course, but it wearied him to see her. He knew why she had come; to sympathise with him, to pity him, to reproach him—it was all the same. In his despondent, bored mood he did not want to make the effort of talking to her. All he wanted was to be left alone. But Ravelston was glad to see her. He had taken a liking to her in their single meeting and thought she might cheer Gordon up. He made a transparent pretext to go downstairs to the office, leaving the two of them together.

They were alone, but Gordon made no move to embrace her. He was standing in front of the fire, round-shouldered, his hands in his coat pockets, his feet thrust into a pair of Ravelston’s slippers which were much too big for him. She came rather hesitantly towards him, not yet taking off her hat or her coat with the lamb-skin collar. It hurt her to see him. In less than a week his appearance had deteriorated strangely. Already he had that unmistakable, seedy, lounging look of a man who is out of work. His face seemed to have grown thinner, and there were rings round his eyes. Also it was obvious that he had not shaved that day.

She laid her hand on his arm, rather awkwardly, as a woman does when it is she who has to make the first embrace.

‘Gordon——’

‘Well?’

He said it almost sulkily. The next moment she was in his arms. But it was she who had made the first movement, not he. Her head was on his breast, and behold! she was struggling with all her might against the tears that almost
overwhelmed her. It bored Gordon dreadfully. He seemed so often to reduce her to tears! And he didn’t want to be cried over; he only wanted to be left alone—alone to sulk and despair. As he held her there, one hand mechanically caressing her shoulder, his main feeling was boredom. She had made things more difficult for him by coming here. Ahead of him were dirt, cold, hunger, the streets, the workhouse and the jail. It was against
that
that he had got to steel himself. And he could steel himself, if only she would leave him alone and not come plaguing him with these irrelevant emotions.

He pushed her a little way from him. She had recovered herself quickly, as she always did.

‘Gordon, my dear one! Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry!’

‘Sorry about what?’

‘You losing your job and everything. You look so unhappy.’

‘I’m not unhappy. Don’t pity me, for God’s sake.’

He disengaged himself from her arms. She pulled her hat off and threw it into a chair. She had come here with something definite to say. It was something she had refrained from saying all these years—something that it had seemed to her a point of chivalry not to say. But now it had got to be said, and she would come straight out with it. It was not in her nature to beat about the bush.

‘Gordon, will you do something to please me?’

‘What?’

‘Will you go back to the New Albion?’

So that was it! Of course he had foreseen it. She was going to start nagging at him like all the others. She was going to add herself to the band of people who worried him and badgered him to ‘get on’. But what else could you expect? It was what any woman would say. The marvel was that she had never said it before. Go back to the New Albion! It had been the sole significant action of his
life, leaving the New Albion. It was his religion, you might say, to keep out of that filthy money-world. Yet at this moment he could not remember with any clarity the motives for which he had left the New Albion. All he knew was that he would never go back, not if the skies fell, and that the argument he foresaw bored him in advance.