The Slaves of Solitude

by Patrick Hamilton

  ‘NO!’ they cried.

  Mr. Prest, pursuing this cruel conspiracy, now tripped the other comedian up.

  ‘I didn’t do it, children, did I?’ asked Mr. Prest.

  ‘NO – O – O!’ was the answer, as if such a suggestion, concerning this second assault, was pure wickedness, whereas there might have been some doubt about the first one.

  And thereafter it was ‘I didn’t do it, children, did I?’ ‘NO – O – O!’, and ‘I didn’t do it, children, did I?’ ‘NO – O – O!’

  And as Mr. Prest continued to seek and obtain repudiation of his guilt in a wild crescendo of yells, Miss Roach looked at the children – laughing, writhing, clapping, all at once standing up and looking at the stage with silent and ferocious intensity, all at once sitting down and appealing to their parents with their eyes to understand the superb piquancy of the situation, and rubbing their hands and bouncing about, and crying ‘NO – O – O!’ . . . ‘NO – O – O!’ . . . ‘NO – O – O!’ . . .

  In the middle of this a quiet, spectacled, stoutish man in a dark-blue suit came quietly up to her seat at the side and asked her if she was Miss Roach. She said yes, that was right, and then he explained that Mr. Prest had asked him to come round and ask her to go behind, and to escort her there. Would she like to go now, or did she want to wait till the end? Not knowing what she was wanted to say, she said she would go now, and the man made a sign to her to follow him.

  He took her through the Exit curtains near the orchestra, and then up a few stairs and through a door marked Private, and then up some stone stairs, and through a huge door made of iron and on to the stage. She had never before been to the back of a theatre, and she was impressed by an enormous air of tension and quiet amidst noise.

  ‘NO – O – O!’ she heard the children crying, but it was altogether a different sort of sound from here. And she heard great bumping sounds coming from the stage, and Mr. Prest’s voice. And she stood in the dim light, peering, along with the man in the dark-blue suit, through a small space, at Mr. Prest, who was only visible when he came forward to the front of the stage. And she was aware of the near presence of painted and powdered chorus-girls waiting to go on for the finale – madly painted, they seemed from here, and exuding a sort of crude, oppressive glamour and vitality and fleshiness which added to the general mystery and novelty of the atmosphere . . .

  Then Mr. Prest for the last time asked, ‘I didn’t do it, children – did I?’ and the children yelled for the last time ‘NO – O – O!’ and the next moment Mr. Prest was rushing off the stage, and, having seen her, coming up to her.

  Mr. Prest was madly painted too; and sweat was pouring down all over his elderly, pugilistic face.

  He was so excited that he did not so much as greet her properly.

  ‘Aren’t they grand?’ he said, looking into her eyes and taking her by the arms. ‘Aren’t they lovely? Isn’t it grand to hear ’em? Aren’t they lovely kids?’

  And looking into Mr. Prest’s excited eyes Miss Roach believed that she positively discerned tears of joy and triumph. It might, of course, have been the sweat which seemed momentarily to blind him – but she believed that it was otherwise. And, if these were indeed tears, she fancied that they arose from something else besides mere joy and triumph. There was an extraordinary look of purification about the man – a suggestion of reciprocal purification – as if he had just at that moment with his humour purified the excited children, and they, all as one, had purified him.

  And, observing the purification of Mr. Prest, Miss Roach herself felt purified. She would have been surprised, a few months ago, if someone had told her that she was one day going to be purified by Mr. Prest – that that forlorn, silent man in the corner, that morose wearer of plus-fours, that slinker to his room, that stroller to the station, that idler and hanger-about in bars, had within him the love of small children and the gift of public purification!

  3

  ‘How are you, my dear?’ said Mr. Prest, pulling himself together. ‘I’ve got to rush and change now. Charlie’ll look after you, and then we’ll have some tea.’ He fled.

  She would have been surprised also to learn, a few months back, that Mr. Prest would one day be calling her ‘my dear’. Charlie, apparently, was the quiet man in the dark-blue suit.

  With Charlie, who talked to her, expatiating quietly on the remarkable success of her friend Mr. Prest in this pantomime, she had glimpses of the finale, and then was taken through another iron door and along passages to Mr. Prest’s dressing-room.

  Mr. Prest returning to this, she went outside while he changed, and then was called in, and watched him taking off his make-up with cream. This he did with tremendous between-the-matinee-and-evening-show haste and vigour, and talked to her the while.

  ‘Well, how are you, darling?’ he asked. ‘And how are all the folks down at home?’

  (‘Darling’!)

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ve left there – I got fed up. I came up today.’

  ‘My God,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘So did I! And are you staying in London? Where are you staying?’

  For some absurd reason she could not tell a man like Mr. Prest that she was staying at Claridge’s – it would sound too silly!

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure at the moment,’ she said. ‘But they’re fixing it up for me. I’ll know this evening.’ She changed the subject. ‘I thought you were absolutely wonderful this afternoon, Mr. Prest.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ said Mr. Prest, suddenly shy. ‘Those kids are wonderful. They just do it for you.’

  People kept on knocking at the door and coming in and going out, and Mr. Prest’s dresser came and went busily.

  After a while there entered a tall, middle-aged woman, in whom Miss Roach, on being introduced, recognised the glittering fairy who had defied the monster with such serenity and assurance. She evidently knew Mr. Prest well, and for a little while they talked about matters which Miss Roach did not understand.

  ‘You were doing pretty well for yourself this afternoon, Archie,’ the middle-aged woman then said, ‘if I may say so.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘It was going over big, wasn’t it? Those kids are grand. They’ve never been better.’

  ‘Yes, he was wonderful, wasn’t he?’ said Miss Roach, and the middle-aged woman, while assenting to this view, looked with sardonic affection at Mr. Prest.

  Then Mr. Prest and the middle-aged woman became in their talk a little more vulgar than Miss Roach was used too, and then, when Mr. Prest was dressed, they were joined by a plump, pretty chorus-girl in plain clothes, and all of them went out to the stage door and into the blackness of the world at war.

  Mr. Prest took Miss Roach’s arm, the two women went ahead, and a minute later all had arrived safely at a crowded tea-and-coffee bar in which there were marble-topped tables all along the wall. In spite of the crowd there was a table kept in the corner for Mr. Prest, who was evidently, for the time being, a public character in this part of the world.

  They were given tea, and horrible sausages on nice chips, and slices of bread and margarine. Mr. Prest talked mostly to the proprietor, and other acquaintances who accosted him, and Miss Roach talked cordially about coupons, and points, and rationing with the middle-aged fairy and the plump, pretty chorus-girl.

  If they could only see me at the Rosamund Tea Rooms now, thought Miss Roach, if they could only see me!

  Soon enough they had to race back to the theatre for the evening show, and they raced Miss Roach back with them. Just inside the stage door the two women said goodbye to her and flew away, and Mr. Prest asked if she could find her way all right in the dark. She said that she could do this easily, and thanked him eagerly for the afternoon.

  ‘Not a bit of it, darling,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘And look us up some time. Let’s know where you are.’

  ‘Oh yes, I will,’ said Miss Roach, with the same eagerness, but with a feeling that it was not likely that she would ever see Mr. Prest again. ‘
And thank you so much. Goodbye!’

  ‘Goodbye, dear,’ said Mr. Prest, and, as he shook her hand, she had a final look at the coarse, battered, pugilistic face of the low comedian – the purifying and purified being – and went in to the darkness again, astonished and haunted by the mystery of all things under the sun – or rather under the black-out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  1

  HAVING to collect her suitcase at Paddington, she was only just able to reach Claridge’s by six-thirty, and this only because she had managed to get a taxi at the station.

  On her arrival at the famous hotel a porter with a torch opened the door of the taxi, and her luggage was somewhat alarmingly snatched away from her in the darkness. As she was fumbling in her bag to pay the fare she heard, with relief, Mr. Lindsell’s voice at her side.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ he said.

  Having Mr. Lindsell with her, the business of entering Claridge’s, so far from being the ordeal which she had been dreading during the last half-hour, was an adventure and delight.

  She was taken to a bright reception room where she was registered under the polite surveillance of a young man in a frock-coat who knew Mr. Lindsell, and the whole atmosphere and suggestion was that there was nothing fantastic or absurd about Miss Roach staying at Claridge’s at all.

  Then Mr. Lindsell said that she was to have a drink before she did anything else, and she was taken into the big bright main lounge.

  They found a table in a corner, and Mr. Lindsell, persuading her to take whisky, ordered two large ones. Before long she was talking volubly with Mr. Lindsell and looking around her with a feeling of having already settled down.

  She did not recognise anyone approximating to her notion of princes. Instead she saw one or two old ladies very much of the type of Miss Steele or Mrs. Barratt (only with an air of being bored to distraction in much greater luxury, space, and comfort), and there were many men in uniforms, English and American.

  These uniforms reminded her that she was back in the centre of things, the world and the war. She was glad to be back, in spite of the danger of bombs. You had to square up to the war. The horror and despondence of the Rosamund Tea Rooms resided in just the fact that it was not squaring up to it. The Rosamund Tea Rooms was hidden away in the country, dodging the war, in its petty boarding-house lassitude almost insensible of it, more absorbed in the local library. And this was not a war to be taken in a local-library way.

  2

  Mr. Lindsell persuaded her to have two large whiskies, and took three himself. Then, getting excited by a discussion with her in regard to technical publishing matters, he decided to have dinner with her, and took her into the restaurant. Here they had wine.

  That was a happy, excited meal she had with her scanty-haired, harassed-looking, hard-working, nice employer. Afterwards he insisted upon having a final brandy in the lounge (where she herself took coffee), and then he saw that it was nearly nine, and said that he had to fly away.

  He did not say where he had to fly away to, and she was pretty certain that it was a woman – that our dear old friend ‘love’ was at the back of it. ‘Love’, like drink, under the influence of the war, was exerting a new sort of pressure everywhere, affecting people it would not have affected before, and in an entirely fresh way.

  She escorted him into the black-out, where a horrible war-argument and panic was going on about taxis, and Mr. Lindsell, after having repeatedly and in a panic admonished her to go in and not bother, at last got a place in a taxi with five other people.

  ‘Goodbye!’ he yelled. ‘See you tomorrow. Goodbye!’ And she yelled back ‘Goodbye!’ and went in.

  3

  And, in spite of the taxi-panic, still that feeling of happiness, and of serenity, and of purification, persisted in her soul. Because of this feeling she decided that before going to bed she would go by herself into the lounge and have a final drink. She was too happy and serene to mind the people, or to bother about being alone in it.

  She decided to have a whisky, and here, needless to say, the war got in a little good-night crack at her – the whisky was Off. This did not disturb her, and she ordered a large pink gin instead.

  An orchestra was now playing in the lounge, and, sitting having that last drink, almost heedless of what was going on around her, something else was added to Miss Roach’s frame of mind. In addition to her sense of serenity and purification there came a sort of clarification of mind, in which she could see in their correct proportions all the things which had occurred to her in the last few months.

  She saw Mr. Thwaites in his right proportions. Why had she ever let him anger and torment her? The trouble with that man was that he had never stepped beyond the mental age of eleven or twelve, nature having arrested him, and preserved him, at a certain ugly phase – the phase of the loquacious little braggart at school so often met with at that age. If he had grown up, he would have grown out of it.

  She saw the Lieutenant in his right proportions. Not strong of mind, easily affected by drink, in a foreign land, agitated by a mood of sexual excitation, in fear of the future and over-anxious to live to the full while he could, the poor man had gone about in drink making love to the girls and asking them to marry him. He had probably blindly imitated all that marriage-offering business from some soldier friend: he was, really, too good-natured and scrupulous, too lacking in initiative, to have thought of it himself. Oddly enough, she believed that the Lieutenant probably liked her better than all the others, and she could probably have had the Laundry if she had really tried. Anyway, if he was not killed, he would almost certainly one day settle down with a wife and his Laundry and be sensible again.

  She saw Vicki in her right proportions. A wretched woman that – more wretched than evil. Sex-obsessed, of course (but weren’t we all?), and savagely egoistic. And, in her sex-obsession, vain. And, in her vanity, cruel. And, with that dreadful maladroitness of manner, speech, and soul, a fiend from hell to live with, if you had incurred her dislike. No – on second thoughts Vicki was possibly as evil as she was wretched. It was hard to say.

  She probably wasn’t really the concentration-camp, stadium-yelling, rich, fruity, German Nazi which Miss Roach had at times thought her (and yet she also very possibly was!), and Miss Roach now found it easy to forgive her.

  But how she (Miss Roach) had gone on about it all, and how fearfully she had suffered! Those nights at Thames Lockdon, arriving in the blackness . . . Those dinners, in the pin-dropping silences around Mr. Thwaites . . . The rumbling of the lift behind the screen . . . The bedroom with the red chequered curtains and the counterpane which slithered off . . . Coffee in the Lounge . . . The arrival of the German, the comb in the bedroom, the patience-playing with Mr. Thwaites . . . The English Miss, Miss Prim, Miss Prude . . . ‘Really, you are rather A dear.’ . . . The walk against the wind in the sunset, the walks in the dark! . . . The breakfasts, lunches, teas, dinners . . . The Push! . . . The weird interview with the doctor . . .

  Well, well, she supposed that was all part of boarding-house life, that something of the same sort was going on in places of that sort all over the country – all over the world. It was just that she was not cut out for boarding-house life.

  And here she was at Claridge’s – from the Rosamund Tea Rooms to Claridge’s – and now she must go to bed.

  4

  Leaving the crowd, and exchanging the cheerful sound of the orchestra for the sudden seriousness and silence of the luxuriously mirrored lift with its blue-uniformed attendant, Miss Roach felt her mood of exhilaration and clarification slipping away from her, and she realised that she was very tired.

  She had not seen her room, into which Mr. Lindsell had arranged to have her bag sent up, and, in spite of the instructions of the lift-man, for a long while she could not find it, wandering about dimly lit, hushed, and thickly carpeted corridors for three or four minutes.

  She was somewhat dismayed, on entering, to observe that it was a double room, but
there was her suitcase (looking very forlorn, on a sort of trestle), and so there was no mistake, and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Presumably a double room was all they had, but what was going to happen if her aunt didn’t die and she didn’t get that five hundred pounds she didn’t know, for although she had four hundred odd pounds of her own saved in the bank, that was for old age and illness, and she was not the sort of person to go in for double rooms at places like Claridge’s.

  The luxury of the room itself also dismayed her for the same reason, and when she found that a door led off to a private bathroom only one half of her was delighted while the other half was intimidated.

  She found the room too hot, and turned off the heat, and opened the windows as well as she could without causing offence to the black-out authorities, and began to unpack.

  Well, this was something better than her bedroom at Mrs. Payne’s! Or was it? Was she really able to adjust herself to such a change in a single night? Wouldn’t she, for a bedroom simply as a bedroom, rather have Mrs. Payne’s? Was this really her line of country?

  Why was she always complaining about everything she got?

  ‘Waiter. Chambermaid. Valet’ she saw printed under some buttons to press by the side of her bed. She was horrified by the idea of ringing any of them, and hoped that she might spend the night, and escape from this hotel next morning, unmolested by waiter, chambermaid, or valet . . .

  She must have a Private bath. She must have one tonight, and another tomorrow morning, and linger in both of them. She must privately bathe some of the money back.

  As she went into the bathroom, and tried to find out how to work all its wonderful gadgets (which she was not clever enough to do readily), it struck her that it would be funny if the sirens suddenly went and the blitz came back to London the night she returned to it. That would be just her luck, and no doubt it had to come back some time. Or was she getting morbid again?

  Then Miss Roach, knowing nothing of the future, knowing nothing of the February blitz shortly to descend on London, knowing nothing of flying bombs, knowing nothing of rockets, of Normandy, of Arnhem, of the Ardennes bulge, of Berlin, of the Atom Bomb, knowing nothing and caring very little, got into her bath and lingered in it a long while.