The Slaves of Solitude (20 page)

7

She was in by half-past eleven. She undressed, took three aspirins, put out the light, and lay in bed.

At five and twenty past twelve she heard the Lieutenant and Vicki arrive outside the Rosamund Tea Rooms and say good-night in low tones. Then she heard Vicki letting herself in.

About half a minute later there was a soft knock on her door. She did not answer this, and the knock was repeated more loudly.

She said ‘Come in’ and Vicki entered, at once switching on the light. The light blinded Miss Roach, and she glared up at Vicki at the door.

‘Are you awake?’ said Vicki. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes, I’m awake. Come in.’

‘What made you run away?’ said Vicki, in a more or less conciliatory tone, coming to the bed and looking down at her. ‘You didn’t have to run away like that.’

‘Oh, I was just fed up, that’s all,’ said Miss Roach, in the same tone. She noticed that Vicki was now quite sober. ‘I can’t stand that sort of thing –
that’s all.’

‘What sort of thing?’ said Vicki, and moved over to Miss Roach’s dressing-table.

(Oh God – thought Miss Roach – I’ve left my comb out! Oh God – please don’t let her use my comb!)

‘What sort of thing?’ repeated Vicki, in a curious voice, and she picked up Miss Roach’s comb, and began to comb her hair and look at herself in the mirror.

‘Oh, just
that
sort of thing,’ said Miss Roach. ‘How did you get on when I left?’

‘Oh, very well indeed,’ said Vicki, combing away and faintly and complacently smiling to herself. ‘He has technique – your Lieutenant . . .’

She was trying to control herself, but this was too much. The combing, the complacent smile, the disgusting use of the word ‘technique’ to describe the drunken kisses she had
obviously been recently receiving from the Lieutenant – the three together were too much.

‘If you call it technique,’ she said. ‘I’d  call it just plain drunkenness.’

There was a pause. Vicki went on combing her hair.

‘Ah,’ said Vicki. ‘You are angry. I thought you were angry.’ And it was plain that Vicki was angry, too.

‘No, I’m not angry,’ said Miss Roach, controlling herself again. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. I think we’d better go to bed.’

‘Yes, you are angry,’ said Vicki, her temper rising, yet still combing, and looking at herself in the glass. As her temper rose her German accent grew stronger. ‘You are angry.
You are not sporty. You must learn to be sporty, Miss Prude.’

‘You do use some funny expressions,’ said Miss Roach. ‘Don’t you think we’d both better go to sleep?’

Vicki Kugelmann now flung down the comb on to the dressing-table, and turned.

‘I say,’ said Miss Roach. ‘Look out for my comb.’

‘No,’ said Vicki, moving towards the door. ‘You are not sporty, Miss Prim.’ She reached the door and opened it. ‘You must learn to be sporty, my friend. You are the
English Miss. No? . . . Good night.’

The door was closed and she was gone.

With the light still on, Miss Roach gazed at the ceiling.

Now she knew she hated Vicki Kugelmann as she had never hated any woman in her life. Now she knew that she hated her, possibly, as no woman had ever hated any other woman. She hated her
mercilessly. Now she knew that for week after week she had hated her in just this way. She was glad to know. She got out of bed, turned out the light, and got into bed again. She began shivering
and trembling in the dark.

Then, without expecting sleep, she was granted it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1

S
HE
peered through the darkness at her leather illuminated clock. She had to put her face close to it nowadays, for it
was not as illuminated as it once was. And presumably you couldn’t get illuminated paint any more. Or could you? It didn’t matter anyway. Even if you could, they would keep the clock
three months. Or more.

It was a quarter to five in the morning. She had awakened at half-past three, and so she had been torturing herself for over an hour now. Why should she torture herself? Why should she let the
filthy woman torture her? She mustn’t call her a filthy woman. She wasn’t filthy. But then, again, she
was
!

Her words. Her expressions. Not her behaviour, so much as her vocabulary!

‘
Mr. Lieutenant’! . . . ‘Oh, boy’! . . . ‘Uh-huh’! . . . ‘Wizard’!

‘Sporty’! ‘Sporty play’! ‘Sporty shot’! ‘Wizard shot’! . . . ‘Good for you, big boy’! . . . ‘Hard lines’! ‘Hard
lines, old fellow’! ‘Hard cheese’!

‘Skol’! ‘Prosit’! ‘Santé’!
No, that was unfair. The filthy woman had a right, as a ‘foreigner’, to Skol, Prosit and Salut. Or
had
she?

‘Cheers, old chap’! ‘Mud in your eye’! ‘Down the jolly old hatch’!
Oh, my God!

‘Mr. Lieutenant.’ . . . ‘Mr. Major.’ . . . ‘Mr. Car-driver.’ . . . ‘Mr. Chauffeur.’ . . . ‘Mr. Waiter.’ . . .

‘Jolly old bathe.’ . . . ‘Roach.’ ‘Roachy.’ ‘Roach.’ ‘Silly old Roach’ . . .

‘Silly old spoil-sport.’ . . . ‘Old spoil-sport Roach.’

‘Toodle-oo’! . . . ‘Chin-chin’! . . .

‘Be sporty, old thing.’ ‘Be sporty – be sporty’!

‘Technique’ ! . . .
‘Technique’, perhaps, was the most horrible of the lot.

‘You must learn to be sporty, Miss Prude.’ . . .

‘Miss Prim.’ . . .

‘The English Miss.’ . . .

THE ENGLISH MISS! THE ENGLISH MISS!

Miss Roach sat up in bed and took a sip of water in the darkness.

2

But
was
she, after all, an ‘English Miss’ of sorts? Was she (it was anguish merely to use the filthy woman’s filthy words) a
‘spoil-sport?’; not ‘sporty’?

Was she (she must translate these odious epithers into dignified English) insular, too correct, puritanical, inhibited; one who by her lack of vitality, or lack of grace, spoiled the carefree
pleasure of others?

Roach. Roachy. Silly old Roach. Here it was again, you see. ‘Old Roach – old Cockroach’. They had called her that as the schoolmistress at Hove, and here it was again. There
must be something behind it all.

Or was there just something in the surname itself – in the word Roach – the name of a fish – which somehow called forth this manner of address? Was it because of her awful
Christian name – the Enid which she so detested and discouraged people from using – that people fell back upon Roach?

No – there was something more to it than that. She had been a schoolmistress, and there was still, apparently, something schoolmistressy about her.

What! – schoolmistressy, because she had retained a certain quietude and dignity when out with a couple of drunks! Schoolmistressy, because she had objected to the notion of bathing in the
river at half-past ten on a winter’s night of war! Prudish, because she had refrained from sharing with a hysterical German woman the befuddled kisses of a man who had had the effrontery to
choose, as a sort of kissing-station (like a petrol-station), the identical spot upon which he had previously kissed her, afterwards offering her marriage!

No – it wasn’t fair – it wasn’t
fair
! She had merely been her age – she had merely been herself – a plain, nearly middle-aged woman behaving as a
plain, nearly middle-aged woman should. It was those two – plain, nearly middle-aged people both of them – who had behaved like raw and raucous adolescents.

Did Vicki, by the way, think that she – Vicki –
wasn’t
plain and nearly middle-aged? Well – she couldn’t argue about her age, anyway – but did she have
some sort of idea that she wasn’t plain, irredeemably plain –
hideous
, in fact?

Now then, keep your temper – but she
was
hideous, wasn’t she, and the woman
knew
she was hideous, didn’t she?

What if she didn’t? And what if she wasn’t? What if she was, in some way which Miss Roach couldn’t see, attractive? What if she was attractive to men? What if she was
remarkably attractive to men? What if she, Miss Roach, the plain ex-schoolmistress, was jealous of her because she was so remarkably attractive, and was ‘taking’ the Lieutenant away
from her?

No – this was black five-o’clock-in-the-morning madness. She must get things in proportion. Vicki wasn’t attractive. And she wasn’t hideous. She was just a plain, nearly
middle-aged woman like herself – probably just a tiny bit
more
attractive than herself – being blonde and having a nice complexion. And if, as Vicki did, you thought of nothing
in the world but sex and threw yourself at men like that, of course men responded.

Perhaps
she
ought to learn to throw herself at men like that. Perhaps, then, after all, she was something of an ‘English Miss.’ . . . Here she was, back again.

3

An English Miss!

And what right, pray, had a German woman, a German Miss – at such a stage of international proceedings, in the fourth year of bitter warfare between the two nations – to allude, in
such a way, to an English woman – an English woman on her own soil? Really, this was a little cool – was it not? This had not struck Miss Roach before!

What about the hospitality being extended to her? What about the little matter of the courtesy or modesty such hospitality demanded in return? What about the men dying on land and sea and air at
that very moment? What about the food the filthy woman was eating, the clothes she was wearing, the air she was breathing, the liberty she was enjoying?

Oh no! Instead of being in jail, instead of being in a concentration camp, instead of being shot as a spy, she went careering about the countryside with Americans and calling people English
Misses!

And after she, Miss Roach, had invited her! Or as good as invited her – had been the one, anyway, to permit her to come.

And that remark about cocktails – what was it? ‘But of course you English don’t know how to make cocktails – do you?’
You
English! Quite apart from the
drivelling absurdity of the statement! Really – if she thought about this woman much more she would get out of bed and go into her room and strike her.

Miss Roach took another sip of water, and decided to calm down.

The woman, after all, had lived in the country for something like fifteen years. She had, perhaps, a sort of right to speak of ‘you’ English amongst people whom she considered her
friends.

And then, again, she was, presumably, anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler, anti-everything of that sort.

Presumably. But was she?

Was she not, on the other hand, when you came to think of it, exquisitely Nazi, exquisitely Hitler, exquisitely everything of that sort?

4

Miss Roach took another sip at her water, and decided to think this out calmly.

Yes. In calmness she believed she had hit upon the truth: had found the solving clue to the enigma of a personality which had been irritating and puzzling her with increasing intensity for so
long a time.

What about the early Vicki – the timid, the ingratiating one? Did not that original character represent one of the most famous and readily identifiable aspects of the German character
– or at least the German fascist character? Was not the period when Vicki was sucking up to her, trying to get into the Rosamund Tea Rooms, posing as a delightful friend – was not this
period the Ribbentrop one, nauseatingly Ribbentroppish through and through? And making, like Ribbentrop, gross Ribbentroppish mistakes? – offending the friend she sought to make by the
clumsiness of her idiom and manner of thought, exposing her beastliness in a multitude of little ways, in her reluctance to pay for drinks, in turning up late without making proper apologies, in
going to Mrs. Payne behind Miss Roach’s back, and so on and so forth?

And then, with her object achieved, the exquisite conventional Teutonic change of demeanour! The lightning Teutonic arrogance! That first evening with the Lieutenant, when she had kept on
looking over at him before he joined them. The way she had looked at the Lieutenant as they had both discussed her. Her remark outside in the street, ‘
Not if you know how to handle
him.
’ . . .

Then, the same evening, her first performance at the Rosamund Tea Rooms and with Mr. Thwaites – the patience-playing and all the rest! What arrogance, save unique Teutonic arrogance, could
have conceived and achieved a performance of that kind?

And was not this Teutonic arrogance precisely the one which, flowering in the world conditions of the nineteen twenties and thirties, had developed into plain, good-old, familiar,
Jew-exterminating, torturing, jack-booted, whip-carrying, concentration-camp Nazidom? Were not all the odours of Vicki’s spirit – her slyness, her insensitiveness – the heaviness,
ugliness, coarseness, and finally cruelty of her mind – were not all these the spiritual odours which had prevailed in Germany since 1933, and still prevailed?

Was not the woman who, six or seven hours ago, was screaming about being ‘sporty’ and supporting a drunken American in his ambition to bathe – was not this woman one who would,
geographically situated otherwise, have been yelling orgiastically in stadiums, supporting S.S. men in their ambitions, presenting bouquets to her Fuehrer? My God – couldn’t you just
see her!

In fact, if one interpreted Vicki Kugelmann in the light of some aspects of Nazidom, and if one interpreted some aspects of Nazidom in the light of Vicki Kugelmann, were not both illuminated
with miraculous clarity?

In short, was not Vicki a Nazi through and through?

Perhaps, after all, she
was
a spy! That would be a funny one!

Or was all this Miss Roach’s imagination? It was not wise to trust her imagination at a quarter past five in the morning.

As Miss Roach lay pondering upon these things she became aware of a great purring in the sky above and all around – aware of the fact that this had been going on for about ten minutes.

Our planes, going out . . . Or coming back, she didn’t know which . . .

Coming back from burning and burying and exploding German Vickis, German small children, German charwomen and others . . .