The Slaves of Solitude

by Patrick Hamilton

  This was bad, but twenty minutes later things were a good deal worse.

  By then the Lieutenant was drunk, calling Miss Roach Roachy, Vicki Vick, and Mr. Thwaites Thwaitey, or ‘Old-timer’, and eagerly encouraging him to make a fool of himself.

  Miss Steele coming in, the Lieutenant insisted on her having a drink, and because there was no glass for her, went downstairs himself to fetch it. What Mrs. Payne was thinking about all this, heaven alone knew.

  The Lieutenant had announced that they were going to dine at the River Sun. A sudden hope came into Miss Roach’s mind that, because it was Christmas Eve, there would be no table for them at the River Sun, and that for this reason the outing might have to be abandoned. She mentioned this matter to the Lieutenant, but he said that that was all right, he had booked a table for eight o’clock.

  Miss Steele accepted and drank her drink manfully, but was rather frightened. When the Lieutenant began to press her to join the party she grew more frightened still, and at last, in a panic, made an excuse laughingly to leave the room.

  ‘What’s the matter with the old girl?’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Why won’t she come?’ And he went over to Mr. Thwaites to refill his glass.

  Here Miss Roach had enough strength of character to intervene.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t. He’s had enough. You really mustn’t!’

  ‘Oh gosh,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Let the old guy have a good time for once, won’t you? It’s only Christmas once, isn’t it? Let the old guy have a good time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vicki, ‘let the silly old bean enjoy himself!’ And Mr. Thwaites’ glass was refilled.

  Only Miss Roach noticed that Mrs. Barratt put her head into the room, retiring at once in terror. Mrs. Payne would be up next, and then there was going to be trouble.

  Half-past seven came, and by this time Mr. Thwaites, after another noisy period in response to his replenished whisky, had sunk into a quiet stupor. By this time, also, the bottle was not full enough for the Lieutenant’s liking, and he suggested they should go round to the River Sun and have some there before dinner.

  Mr. Thwaites rose, and swayed as he went to the mantelpiece to put down his glass. It seemed to Miss Roach that he almost fell.

  At this a sort of panic arose. ‘I’m sure he oughtn’t to go,’ said Miss Roach aside to the Lieutenant. ‘Let him have a meal here and go quietly to bed,’ and ‘Oh – let the old guy come and enjoy himself!’ said the Lieutenant, now almost irritable, and Vicki again supported him. ‘Coming? Of course I’m coming,’ said Mr. Thwaites.

  There was then another panic because Mr. Thwaites, having gone to his room, in a mysterious way failed to come out again, and, on being applied for, was found to have his overcoat on, but unable to find his cap. He was bent upon wearing a cap. A hat (of which he had two) would by no means do.

  A search took place all over the room, and when at last it was found, the Lieutenant, coming out on the landing, wanted to know which was the Old Girl’s room, as he desired to renew his invitation to her to join them. ‘Oh, come on! Let’s get round there,’ said Miss Roach, now very much more anxious to go than to stay, and for once Vicki supported her.

  Mr. Thwaites seemed to recover somewhat in the fresh air, and supporting himself between Vicki and the Lieutenant in the blackness, went on about Vicki being a Tease.

  ‘She’s a Tease all right,’ he said. ‘Yes. She’s a tease all right! And doesn’t she just know it – doesn’t she just love it!’

  And then, having repeated this several times, in several different ways, ‘I don’t know whether to give her a jolly good kiss,’ he said, ‘or to put her across my knee and spank her.’

  And, thinking aloud, he contemplated these two alternatives in a lascivious way all the way round to the public-house.

  This was the war, Miss Roach again reminded herself in the blackness, this was the war! Allowances had to be made – it was all the war. Only the war could have brought a drunken American into a quiet riverside boarding-house in such a way as to cause so wild and uncomely a scene. The war was on their nerves, on the Lieutenant’s nerves, probably even on Mr. Thwaites’ nerves – causing this state of excitement and (abominable as his behaviour was normally) a mode of behaviour totally alien to him. The war was on her own nerves, on Vicki’s nerves, she dared say, if such a woman had any nerves.

  3

  On their reaching the saloon bar of the River Sun, and luckily finding a table in a corner, an angry, contemplative, and contemptuous expression came over Mr. Thwaites’ face, and he became silent. For although, in the excitement caused by his outing with Vicki and the whisky, he had been lured to come here, public-houses were not really things which were supposed to take place at all, and he wasn’t going to give in now, and let people think, by his expression, that they were. Mr. Thwaites was a man who maintained his standards.

  Also he was hungry by now, and showed very little interest in the drink that was brought him.

  It was not, in fact, until they were up in the dining-room (into which the reluctant Lieutenant was compelled, by a nagging waiter, at last to escort them) that Mr. Thwaites returned to life. The food, indeed, seemed to go to his head more than the drink, and as soon as the soup appeared he began Trothing right and left for all the room to hear.

  ‘A goodly soup, i’troth,’ he said, and he Trothed at the chicken, and Trothed at the waiter, and Trothed at both the waitresses (even the one who was not serving at the table at which they were sitting), and Trothed at the cheese, and Trothed at the furnishing of the dining-room (which met with his approval), and Trothed and Trothed and Trothed. He very nearly Trothed, in the most agreeable way, at the other diners in the room, but the Lieutenant managed to talk him down.

  A sudden silence descending, Mr. Thwaites then slowly began hiccoughing (this with the intensest seriousness and mental concentration), and the Lieutenant saw that it was time to take him home. ‘Come on, we’re going home now,’ he said, and helped Mr. Thwaites to rise. ‘You were quite right,’ he said aside to Miss Roach. ‘We oughtn’t to have brought the old guy out.’

  (That was the trouble with the Lieutenant. He had a sort of niceness. It cropped up every now and again and made you almost wholly forgive him.)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1

  A FEW minutes later they were out in the black street, and Mr. Thwaites, having swayed up against a wall, did not seem easy to move.

  ‘Methinks it behoveth me,’ said Mr. Thwaites, ‘to taketh me unto my mansion. Doth it not? Peradventure? Perchance?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Come along then. Get a move on.’

  ‘What?’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Peradventure? Perhaps? No? Whereanent? Howbeit?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Come along now. Here’s my arm. Got my arm? Got it?’

  ‘Come along, Mr. Thwaites,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Ah – the Beauteous Dame,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘The beauteous damsel that keepeth me on Tenterhooks.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Take my arm.’

  ‘Hooks. Tenter. One,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘See Inventory.’

  ‘Aw, come on, will you?’ said the Lieutenant.

  ‘Damsel. Beauteous. One,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Hooks. Tenter. Two. Yea. Verily.’

  ‘Now then,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Take my arm.’

  ‘The Arm of the Law,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Law. Arm. One. One. Two. Three. One, two, three, March!’

  But Mr. Thwaites, in spite of saying this, did not himself march.

  ‘Can I help?’ said a stranger in the darkness, and ‘No – it’s all right, thank you very much,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘I think I can manage him.’

  ‘April, too,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Thirty days hath November.’

  At this he lurched forward, the Lieutenant caught him, and with Miss Roach taking his arm the other side, they all began the journey homewards.

  ‘Hooks. Tenter,’ said Mr. Thwai
tes. ‘See Inventory. Pitch your tents.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘We will.’

  ‘Arabs,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Fold ’em up.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the Lieutenant, soothingly. ‘Arabs.’

  Mr. Thwaites now took a new line, saw things in a fresh light.

  ‘Some people do,’ he said, ‘and some people don’t.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said the Lieutenant.

  ‘Not that they do,’ said Mr. Thwaites misanthropically, and, as if in despair of mankind, was silent for nearly a minute.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get him upstairs?’ said Miss Roach.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘He’s not so bad on his legs. We’ll manage.’

  ‘Touché!’ cried Mr. Thwaites, out of the blue. ‘I’troth! A Parry!’

  ‘Make it a bit quieter, Mr. Thwaites,’ said the Lieutenant, for they were approaching the Rosamund Tea Rooms.

  ‘By the Lord Hal,’ said Mr. Thwaites, more quietly and earnestly. ‘A Veritable Thrust!’

  ‘Now then, quiet,’ said the Lieutenant as they reached the door of the Rosamund Tea Rooms, and Mr. Thwaites, in some miraculous way, seemed to be able to discern the seriousness of the situation, and remained quiet as Vicki opened the door with her key and he was led indoors. Indeed, apart from murmuring ‘Distinguished Solicitors’ four or five times on the stairs, and ‘Distinguished Solicitors and Collaborators’ on reaching his room, he accomplished the journey with dignity and in silence.

  2

  Vicki had somehow vanished. Miss Roach switched on the light, and the Lieutenant got him on to his bed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Leave him to me,’ and Miss Roach went up to her room.

  On arriving here she found that she was clutching Mr. Thwaites’ cap under her arm, and wondered whether she ought to restore this.

  She went on to the landing, listened, went into her room again, came out and listened, and at last, after four or five minutes had passed, went downstairs and listened outside Mr. Thwaites’ door.

  Hearing no sound, she knocked gently, and the Lieutenant came to the door. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘He’s better now.’

  The Lieutenant had made quick work of Mr. Thwaites, who was already in his pyjamas and sitting on his bed. The Lieutenant had his dressing-gown in his hand, and was persuading him to put it on. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Dressing-gown.’

  ‘Ah – ha,’ said Mr. Thwaites, who, without being by any means sober, was clearly a good deal more sober than he had been. ‘Dame Roach! Come in, Dame Roach!’

  ‘Come on,’ said the Lieutenant, forcing one of Mr. Thwaites’ arms into the dressing-gown. ‘Get it on.’

  ‘Enter Dame Roach!’ said Mr. Thwaites, allowing the Lieutenant to proceed peacefully with his manœuvres. ‘Dame Roach – the English Miss! Miss Prim. Dame Roach – the Prude . . . The jealous Miss Roach.’

  At this moment Vicki entered. Whether or not she had heard what Mr. Thwaites had just said Miss Roach did not know – did not ever know.

  ‘How is he?’ said Vicki.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Come on. In you get.’ And he threw back the bedclothes, thrust Mr. Thwaites into bed, and covered him again with the bedclothes.

  ‘Well, I’m going,’ said Miss Roach.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the Lieutenant, tucking Mr. Thwaites in. ‘This is just where we go and have a drink. It’s only a quarter past nine.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I really must go.’ Miss Roach was at the door.

  ‘Aw – quit being plain silly,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘It’s only a quarter past nine, isn’t it?’

  Then Vicki did an unexpected thing.

  ‘Yes. Let her go. If she wants to,’ she said in a flat tone, and, without looking at Miss Roach, she went over to the bed. ‘How are you, dear old Thwaitey?’ she said. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Aw—’ the Lieutenant began, looking at Miss Roach, but Miss Roach cut in on him.

  ‘No. Please don’t try and persuade me,’ she said, and there was anger in her voice. ‘I want to go to bed. I’m tired. Thanks for the dinner. Good night.’

  And she fled upstairs to her room.

  A few minutes later, and after she had heard the Lieutenant and Vicki leaving the house together, she came out of her bedroom and went into the bathroom, where she was violently sick.

  This woman, she observed, affected her physically as well as mentally.

  3

  Her leather illuminated clock told her it was a quarter to one.

  After her sickness she had slept lightly, but now she was wide awake. Vicki and the Lieutenant had not yet returned. She would have heard that.

  It was queer – how her instincts were always right. From the moment she had arrived home that evening, and found the Lieutenant there with his bottle and glasses, she had known that disaster was to follow. And here it was!

  It wasn’t the mere disgusting disgrace of the whole evening – the sordidness of Mr. Thwaites’ excitement and his behaviour towards Vicki – the subsequent exhibition he had made of himself in the hotel dining-room, and, after that, in the walk home. All that, conceivably, might be conceded to ‘Christmas’. It was the revelation, made at the last moment, which had made her physically sick.

  ‘Dame Roach – the English Miss. Miss Prim. The Prude. The jealous Miss Roach.’

  The planes were roaring over again . . . How they roared and filled the sky for miles around . . .

  The identical words . . . There was no question of Mr. Thwaites having thought them up himself. Those words were given to him by Vicki – those ideas were put into his head by her. The old man would almost certainly never have disclosed this unless he had had too much to drink – a thing he would not have ordinarily been likely to do – but now the cat was nicely out of the bag.

  And so that was the way they talked about her when they were alone. So that was the poison that woman had seen fit to spread forth, or rather venomously inject.

  To gain the knowledge that she had been talked about at all by two people was shock enough for Miss Roach (such knowledge is always a shock of a kind to any human being, unless it is at once followed and compensated for by the news that the talk is of a highly favourable nature): but to learn that two people of this sort had been talking about her, and in this way – she believed it was more than she could stand.

  And she betted your life they had talked! If she knew anything about them, they had talked and talked and talked.

  Really, she had thought she had gained experience of the lowest depths of this woman: she had thought she knew where she was and could just stand it. But now these depths had collapsed, opening up shifting, endless depths. She would have to get out of this place: she would have to leave, go somewhere.

  But why should she be made to go? And where? And at Christmas?

  ‘The jealous Miss Roach.’ Again, how right her instincts had been. She had foreseen, at the earliest possible date, that this was the evil course the woman was going to take. Lying awake in the dark, as she was now, she had guessed that Vicki was somehow going to contort the situation into one in which it appeared that she was jealous. She had tried to combat this. She had first of all refused to go to the telephone when the Lieutenant had called: then she had had the courage to go and have it out with the woman. And all she had got for her pains was ‘Really, you are rather A dear!’ – and now this poison behind her back with a semi-idiotic old man.

  Now it was easy enough to account for all that extra bullying, by Mr. Thwaites of herself, which had seemed strangely to run parallel with his mounting infatuation for Vicki. The old man obviously could not resist such a temptation. Led on, inspired by the woman, inspired by their private talks, he had really been able to let himself go: it had been a sort of game between the two of them.

  Why should she be set on like this? It reminded her of her schooldays – her schooldays both as a pupil and as a schoolmistress – in which there wou
ld occur, for no apparent reason, sinister developments of this sort – gradually and mysteriously emerging plots, spites, malicious alignments against an individual, sendings to Coventry, at last open hatred and torture. Had she got to go back to school at the age of thirty-nine?

  ‘No. Let her go if she wants to,’ Vicki had said. And that flat tone in which she had said it – what did this mean? Obviously that she could no longer be bothered. She had suffered, humoured the jealous English Miss long enough: now she must stew in the juice of her own jealousy.

  And if she had talked in that way to Mr. Thwaites, had she not done the same thing to the Lieutenant? No – for she had not as yet had an opportunity. She had that tonight. She would be telling the Lieutenant some fine stories tonight. And would the Lieutenant believe them? Yes – almost certainly. But somehow she did not mind so much what the foolish Lieutenant was told or believed about her. He had a niceness. He wasn’t in league against her, like Mr. Thwaites. He wasn’t in the private plot – the school plot.

  It was time they were back, was it not? Where were they now? Probably on the seat by the river. Vicki triumphant. Vicki with the Laundry in the bag!

  The planes were still going over . . .

  She heard quiet voices below, and then, she fancied, the key in the lock, and the front door being closed.

  Then, amidst the sound of the planes, she heard Vicki come up the stairs to the landing, and closing the door of her room.

  This was the conclusion of the proceedings. Within ten yards of her, amidst the purring of the planes, Vicki was undressing . . . Such had been, such was, her jolly, jolly Christmas Eve.

  No – by now Christmas Day!

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1

  MISS ROACH assumed that, elsewhere, somewhere, there was a good deal of cheerfulness and goodness about the Christmas season, even in war-time: but this did not fall within the range of her experience. To her it had for many years only been associated with a species of dullness and even evil, of stupidity or even madness, connected with eating and drinking, which weighed insufferably upon her spirits, and from which it was hopeless to try to escape until Boxing Day and the whole holiday was over. Its colour was dirty grey: its noise was the noise made by shut shops: its odour was the odour of turkey and stuffing experienced after one had eaten turkey and stuffing.