The Slaves of Solitude

by Patrick Hamilton

‘All right, then. I’ll call you Roach. How are you, Roach?’ And he shook hands with her.

  ‘Yes. We will call her Roach,’ said Vicki. ‘How are you, Roachy, old thing.’ And she shook hands with her as well.

  From that moment it was Roach, Roachy, Roach. They made her drink the whole of her gin, put another in front of her, and everything, hazy enough already, got hazier and hazier.

  There was a wireless blazing away in a corner of the room; a dance-band came on; and soon Vicki was demanding that they should all dance. First of all she whirled round the middle of the room with one man after another, and then she danced solo, while everyone watched her. Her manner of dancing was to lift her skirt to her knees with her left hand, and to put forth her right hand high into the air, shaking its forefinger to and fro.

  5

  Miss Roach never remembered how they got out into the air again, but she remembered sitting in front with the ill-looking driver, and talking quietly and soberly to him, while Vicki, sprawled out on more than one pair of knees behind, talked, rallied, challenged, sang German songs, sang French songs, demanded a cigarette, demanded a light, was queenly, was coy, rebuked, threatened to smack, and smacked . . . Yes, it was Vicki’s evening all right . . .

  Then they were in the packed saloon bar of the Dragon, and fighting their way to the counter . . . Then the Lieutenant was making a scene because there were no more spirits left, and then they were drinking odious glasses of bitter beer, unable properly to stand on their feet because of the jostling crowd, and hardly able to hear each other talk because of the noise.

  Then they were all in a corner of the dining-room of the Dragon, which was deserted except for themselves, and whose lights were mostly turned down, and whose waiter, ill-looking and deferent, like the car-driver, sorted out and made some sort of sense of their conflicting demands. ‘Listen to me, Mr. Waiter!’ cried Vicki. (She also called him ‘Garçon’ and ‘Herr Ober’.)

  They had some cold soup and some cold chicken, and someone bought two bottles of champagne. At the end of the meal the Lieutenant drank off the remains of one of these bottles, amounting to about half a pint, from the bottle. But he could not quite manage it all, and Vicki finished it off for him . . .

  Then they were in the crowded bar again, drinking the odious bitter. The ill-looking driver again appeared in the crowd to appeal to the Lieutenant, but was again dismissed. The order of the day now was to go down to the river before going back. Hearnsden was a river beauty-spot, and it had to be seen. ‘We’ll go and bathe,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Let’s all go and bathe.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Miss Roach. ‘You can’t bathe in the middle of the winter.’ ‘Can’t you?’ he said. ‘I can.’ And he turned to Vicki. ‘You’ll come and bathe with me, won’t you?’ ‘Yes, of course I will,’ said Vicki. ‘We’ll all go and have a jolly old bathe.’

  Confused as she was with drink and noise, Miss Roach could clearly enough see how Vicki was sucking up to the Lieutenant, hanging on to his words, playing up to his vanity. At moments she felt a wave of anger rising at this, but she held it back. She’s drunk, of course, she said to herself, they’re both drunk, and I’ve got to keep my head. All this will seem different in the morning, she thought, and if only I can get them home it’ll be all right.

  Then they were out in the moonlit air, with the Lieutenant in the middle taking their arms, and walking towards the river. The two other American officers had completely disappeared, and never appeared again.

  Miss Roach had been fairly certain that when they reached the waterside the Lieutenant would reverse his decision to bathe, but this did not happen. He sat down on the grass and began to take off his shoes. ‘Don’t be absurd. You can’t! You can’t!’ said Miss Roach, in desperation, and even Vicki looked a little abashed and said nothing.

  ‘Well, let’s paddle anyway,’ said the Lieutenant, who had got off his shoes and socks and was rolling up his trousers, and ‘No – don’t be silly – don’t be silly!’ said Miss Roach. ‘You’ll catch your death!’

  ‘No. Let’s paddle. We’ll paddle,’ cried Vicki. ‘Come on, Roachy! We’ll all paddle.’ And she also began to take off her shoes.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Miss Roach. ‘Stop him. Don’t be silly!’ But Vicki was now taking off her stockings.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you silly old Roach,’ she said. ‘Don’t be such a silly old spoil-sport!’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to, anyway,’ said Miss Roach, and she began to walk away.

  ‘Come on, Roachy – silly old spoil-sport-Roachy!’ cried Vicki. ‘Come on in and paddle!’ But Miss Roach walked further away.

  When she was about two hundred yards away, she looked back. It was, of course, quite impossible to paddle in the river, as the bank fell sheer into deep water. Instead, the Lieutenant and Vicki were sitting on the bank and putting their feet into the water. In the bright moonlight the Lieutenant was to be seen sitting in a sort of stupor, and Vicki was clinging on to him and screaming girlishly with pain and pleasure.

  ‘I’m going back to the car. I’ll wait for you there!’ she shouted.

  ‘All right, Roachy, old thing – you wait in the car!’ Vicki shouted back. ‘Toodle-oo! Chin-chin!’

  6

  She was sitting in front again, talking quietly to the ill-looking driver, when they returned. It took some time to convince the Lieutenant that the Dragon was closed, and that he could not drink anything more, but at last he got into the back of the car with Vicki, and they drove off.

  As they drove back she did not quite know what was going on in the back in the way of hand-holding or hugging, and nothing would induce her to look. But something was going on, and hardly a word was uttered until they were approaching Thames Lockdon . . .

  ‘Well – that was a very pleasant evening, Mr. Lieutenant,’ said Vicki, at last, ‘and a very pleasant paddle. Thank you very much for both, my friend.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘You’re cute. I always said you were cute, I always said she was cute, didn’t I, Roachy?’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ said Miss Roach, and a few moments later the car drew up outside the Rosamund Tea Rooms, and the Lieutenant paid the ill-looking driver, who passed out of Miss Roach’s life for ever.

  ‘Come on, now we’re going for a walk,’ said the Lieutenant, taking both their arms again.

  ‘No, we really must go in,’ said Miss Roach, and ‘No – let’s go for a walk,’ said Vicki, and ‘No, we must go in, really!’ said Miss Roach, and ‘Come on,’ said the Lieutenant, and ‘Yes, come on,’ said Vicki. ‘Be sporty. For heaven’s sake be sporty, you silly old Roach!’ ‘It’s not a question of being –’ Miss Roach could not bring herself to bring out this terrible word and so did not finish her sentence. ‘Oh – quit arguing,’ said the Lieutenant, pulling at both of them, and in order to avoid a sort of free fight in the street, Miss Roach gave in.

  It was queer how she knew from the beginning where the Lieutenant was going to take them. He was going to take them where he always took her when he wanted to kiss her – he was going to take them to the Park. She was fairly sure, in fact, that he was going to take them to the same seat, and this, she felt, was going to be going a bit too far. She might be mistaken, however, and in the meantime she tried to make herself as agreeable as possible.

  This was not difficult to do, because most of the time, as they walked along, Vicki was singing German, French, or Hungarian songs, and in these, of course, neither the Lieutenant nor Miss Roach was able to join her.

  Sure enough, the Lieutenant steered them, with the certainty of a somnambulist, in the direction of the Park, and the seat in question came in sight.

  For one delightful moment she thought the Lieutenant was going to pass it. It was, in fact, possible that some premonition of danger entered the Lieutenant’s befuddled head. But, having got three or four yards past the seat, he defied this premonition, if he had ever had any such thing, and stopped.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.
‘Let’s sit down a bit.’

  ‘No, don’t let’s sit down – let’s go on walking. It’s nice,’ said Miss Roach, and ‘No,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘let’s sit down,’ and ‘Yes,’ said Vicki, ‘let’s sit down and look at the river.’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Roach, ‘I don’t want to sit down,’ and ‘Aw, come on,’ said the Lieutenant, and ‘Yes, come on,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Well, you sit down, I’ll go on walking,’ said Miss Roach, and ‘Aw, come on,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘quit being obstreperous.’ And with these words he practically hauled her down on to the seat.

  ‘Yes, she’s very obstreperous tonight, isn’t she?’ said Vicki, who was sitting the other side of the Lieutenant.

  ‘Obstreperous, is she?’ said the Lieutenant, and he began to look at her gravely . . .

  No – he couldn’t. Drunk as he was, he couldn’t! Surely he couldn’t!

  ‘Look at that swan,’ she said desperately. ‘He seems to be making a night of it, too – doesn’t he.’

  But all the Lieutenant did was to repeat, ‘Obstreperous, is she?’ and to look at her more gravely still.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ she began, but by this time he had taken hold of her in his arms and was kissing her on the mouth.

  ‘How’s that for obstreperousness?’ he said when he had finished, and then he turned to Vicki. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Are you obstreperous too?’ And he kissed Vicki in the same way.

  Miss Roach rose. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I’m going home. I’m sorry, but I want to go home.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the Lieutenant, taking her arm. ‘Come and sit down.’ ‘Yes, don’t be silly,’ said Vicki. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘No – I want to go home,’ said Miss Roach, and the Lieutenant, still holding her arm, rose. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vicki, who had also risen. ‘Come and sit down. Be sporty – old thing! Be sporty!’

  And now a sort of panic seized Miss Roach, and they were all talking, or rather shouting, together, and in a sort of tussle. ‘Listen. I want to go home. I’m serious,’ said Miss Roach. ‘Come on. Be sporty! Be sporty!’ cried Vicki. ‘Come on. Come and sit down,’ said the Lieutenant.

  Somehow she freed herself from the Lieutenant’s grasp. She calmed down.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. You stay – but I want to go home, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Vicki, also calmer, and approaching her. ‘Be sporty – can’t you? You don’t want to spoil the sport, do you. Can’t you be a sport?’

  ‘No, I’m very sorry. I want to go home. Goodbye.’

  And all at once, after looking at them both, she was running away.

  And, except when she walked for a moment or two, to recover her breath, she did not stop running all the way back to the Rosamund Tea Rooms. She did not know why: she had to run all the way back: nothing else would do.

  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

  SHE 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 o
ld 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!