“My father’s in the Army.”
“I think mine was. I don’t know.”
“It’s awful to have fathers in the Army. People who haven’t got fathers in the Army don’t understand, do they? One is somehow quite different.”
“You do all right, though, don’t you?” Sandra said.
“It depends on what you mean by all right.”
“Oh, you get around.”
“Don’t you?”
“In a different way, I suppose.”
“I often think it doesn’t matter much which way you get around,” Dorcas said. “There are always good things and always bad things, and they usually even out.”
“I’m not complaining. Life’s all right when you get the hang of it. Got to take what comes to you.”
“Sandra’s a good gairl,” Rosie said. “A very good gairl, aren’t you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” Sandra said.
“I think Mr. Lamb’s very lucky to be liked by Sandra. You don’t care that much for everyone, do you, my dear?”
“Who said I cared for Johnnie?”
“You’re mad about him, anybody can see it.”
“I never get mad about people, not any more than I get mad at them. I’ve got too used to them. Johnnie’s got money, that’s the only thing.”
“Don’t take any notice of her, Johnnie. She’s crazy about you. She knows you haven’t got any money.”
“I haven’t got any money,” Lamb said.
“Maybe you can’t get gold,” Sandra said. She held up her wrist round which there was a bangle. “But so long as it glitters, who cares. Brass, any old thing, I don’t care.”
“Not so long as you’ve got that pretty face,” Rosie said.
“Oh hell, that’ll all go to pieces before long. Would you mind telling me what you do about your face?” she said to Dorcas. “Girls like you look practically the same at fifty.”
“That might be a backhanded compliment!”
“Oh, I meant it the right way. You’ll look twenty-five when you’re fifty, from across the room. I’d give up Johnnie and all his brass bangles to be like that.”
“That’s what you’d have to do, my dear,” Rosie said.
“Dorcas doesn’t have to give up her Mario, and she’s got a bangle too. You see, she won’t look like a jade at fifty. I’ll be an awful jade, if I’m not dead. But perhaps I shall be dead.”
“It’s not the bangle,” said Rosie. “It’s the soul. Dorcas has got a sweet soul.”
“Haven’t I got one?”
“You’ve got one all right now—a very sweet soul. But what counts is still having one when you’re fifty.”
“Have you still got a soul?”
“I’m not quite fifty.”
“Rosie’s got a soul all right,” Peter said. “She’s got an angelic soul and she’s quite certain to go to heaven.”
“I don’t think so,” Rosie said. “There are too many entries on the debit side. I’m going to be burnt, and the only thing I pray for is that it’ll be over quickly. I always think it will be. God won’t waste His time taking vengeance, He’ll just want to get rid of you.”
“I’m not afraid of hell fire,” Peter said. “This curry is like hell fire inside me, and I’m going on eating it. It’s so delicious that I don’t care how hot it is. Please pass me some more.’’
After dinner we went back to the hotel. We walked through the streets, talking loudly as though we had already had something to drink. I was perhaps talking more loudly than usual in order to make myself forget Sabby’s expression on the steps of the school (I said to myself, ‘to forget Sabby’s expression’—and then I remembered that I had not actually seen the expression on her face, but must have imagined it only from the tone of her voice and the movement of her head as she turned it away from me). At the hotel we found two or three bottles of whisky and a bottle of gin, and took them down to Rosie’s sitting-room. Sandra sat on Lamb’s knee, and Mario and Dorcas sat together on the sofa, trying to conceal the fact that they were very much in love. Mervyn flopped into an easy chair. There were heavy lines down the sides of his face and blue smudges under his eyes, and he kept a morose silence despite the drinks he had consumed. He had been becoming daily more neurotic, though we never knew how much of this was genuine and how much of it feigned. A month ago he had said, “You see, I shall be out of India in six months—things are going all right.” But now when I asked him flippantly, “How are the neuroses coming along, Mervyn?” he turned on me angrily and said, “That’s a pretty tactless thing to say, isn’t it?” He was still certain he would spend his next summer in Sloane Square.
“I must really get myself a girl,” Peter said to me, when the party had got going well enough for a little private conversation to become possible. “You’ve all got yourselves fixed up.”
“That’s a frightful expression,” I said. “Getting ‘fixed up’—as though it was a question of getting a bicycle or a furnished room.”
“Well, isn’t it like that? One has got to get fixed up with a roof over one’s head, and food, and a woman, and then one is complete. You can’t really do without these things and say you’re living.”
“You’ve never been in love,” I said.
“I don’t suppose I have. What’s that got to do with it?”
“You don’t usually go around talking about ‘getting fixed up’ then.”
“It’s very fatherly wisdom. Have you ever been in love?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought people always knew about these things.”
“Well, I have been in love,” I said.
“Who with?”
“Some woman in England.”
“You don’t sound as though you loved her very much.”
“That’s all she is now, some woman. I believe she’s got rather fat and produced a child, and has to do all the washing-up and cleaning of silver because she can’t get any help.”
“But did you love her very much?”
“I still love her in a way, but only because I can still think of her as I did when she was younger. The plump woman with the infant and the greasy crockery is someone else altogether—quite a stranger to me. Rather more of a stranger than someone that one meets for the first time, because somehow when this kind of thing happens there’s a chasm between you that can never be bridged. I don’t want to bridge it in the least, anyway. Only it’s curious that she can go on living in your mind as the person that she was.”
“Well,” Peter said, “who else have you been in love with?”
“A nasty, flashy little typist.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. I bought a sports car so that I could take her out into the country, and I hate sports cars.”
“You were just getting fixed up. There you are, you see, it’s exactly the same thing. You get fixed up just the same as anyone else, but you think it’s a little shameful to get fixed up without clouding the vulgar carnal act with a nice decorous haze of love. You think you’re not romantic, and you bandy about all these names like Freud and Havelock Ellis like a between-wars under-graduate, and it’s nauseating, because if you were honest you’d read Ouida. You’re a romantic, and you’d better admit it; otherwise you’ve no right to object to my saying ‘fixed up.’ Personally I think you’ve fixed yourself up excellently, and I suppose you’ve been able to do it by means of your smoke haze.”
“I’m not fixed up so well as you think,” I said. “It’s so easy to get lost in a smoke haze.”
“I hate talking in riddles. Anyway, the point is I’m not fixed up, and I’m very jealous, because Dorcas is without doubt the loveliest girl in India, and Mario will marry her, or at any rate he’ll be an idiot if he doesn’t. And also Sandra’s a beautiful girl, and Lamb is lucky to ha
ve her.”
“You accuse me of pretending,” I said. “But if anybody’s pretending, it’s you. You’re really bristling with principles.”
“I haven’t got any principles. Look at this book I’m writing. If I had principles, I wouldn’t write a book about a dead body and the unspeakably boring attempts to find out who made the bullet hole in the head. I’m writing it because I can’t write anything good, and because I haven’t got fixed up with a woman, and because I hope it’ll bring me at least a thousand pounds, excluding film rights.”
“I think we’re both getting a little drunk,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it, we’re getting drunk. I’ve been very rude, haven’t I?”
“You only said I ought to read Ouida.”
“Oh, then I’m not so very drunk. But you know, I’m only rude because you’re a great friend, and great friends are the only people you can be rude to without feeling bad about it.’’
“I’m very glad that’s how you feel.”
“As a matter of fact, I would like to be rude a little more. Would you mind very much?”
“Please go ahead,” I said.
“It’s only that I’m curious. I’ve wanted to ask you when I’m sober, but I haven’t had the courage. I think whisky is wonderful stuff; it can make you so personal. But I would hate you to mind.”
“I shan’t mind.”
“It’s about your charming Hanako. Please won’t you tell me if you were her first lover?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Thank you very much. It was rude of me, wasn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t rude at all.”
Suddenly there was Rosie’s voice:
“I think it was very rude.”
She smiled at us kindly. There was a lot of cigarette smoke in the room, and the wireless was playing softly. Lamb and Sandra were making love in their chair, and Mario and Dorcas were whispering and smiling and being happy.
“But then it was also rude of me to overhear you,” Rosie said. “I’ve been listening to all your conversation, because the young people are busy together and Mervyn is drinking too much whisky and won’t say sweet things to me. So I have heard about your ‘fixing things up.’ I am so amused.”
“There you are,” I said to Peter. “Why don’t you get fixed up with Rosie? There is nothing wrong with Rosie.”
“I wouldn’t dare try,” Peter said. “Oh, am I such a dragon?”
“No, you’re not a dragon, though you’re very exciting. You’re a little too exciting, and I’m a bit afraid of you. I think I’d better just be your lodger.”
“You see, he thinks I am too old to fix up. It’s a dreadful shame. Perhaps when he has drunk a little more he will no longer see my wrinkles.”
We could not drink much more because we had almost exhausted our stock. We were not really drunk. I went out of the room quite steadily, and when I returned Sandra and Lamb had gone. Dorcas was saying good-bye. I don’t know whether she had drunk less than us, or whether she had a good head, but she was perfectly composed. Mario went off with her to find a ghari and take her home. Mervyn murmured thanks and good nights and disappeared out of the front door, because he usually spent most of the night roaming the streets. Peter and I remained. We smoked a cigarette and looked at the empty glasses and bottles and the ashtrays full of squashed cigarette ends, and talked desultorily, and I wondered if Peter was waiting for me to go, because Rosie’s wrinkles were negligible, and her age was not more than thirty-five, and she reclined on the couch with a feminine litheness, a passive confidence like a tigress that knows itself all-powerful and waits for certain prey.
And then all of a sudden Peter rose.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Are you corning?”
I hesitated. I did not know what I was going to do; until I heard my own voice say:
“I will stay for a bit.”
“Good night,” Peter said. “It was a grand party. Good night.” He went.
“Well?” Rosie said. She smiled sleepily.
“Well?” I did not move from my chair. I finished my cigarette and stubbed out the end, and all the time we did not say anything, because there was nothing to say that was not said by the silent tension.
Then she shifted her leg a fraction of an inch, and I got up as though it was a signal and sat down where her body curved away from the edge of the sofa. I put the tips of my fingers on the white-brown flesh of her arm, and the effect of this touch ran like a flood through my body. I began to kiss her, and she was quite submissive, quite passive, and all the time the smile was on her face. She did not respond. I kissed her with more urgent passion, trying to draw out of her more kisses and more passion to mingle with mine. But her lips only smiled, and her body held its latent fire.
I did not understand. Without fuel, and insulted, my sudden passion diminished. I lay still. She was also still for a moment, as if to make sure this burst of energy was exhausted; and then perfectly gently she pushed me away from her so that I was once more sitting up.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“What is the matter with you?”
“You were asking for this,” I said.
She began to laugh.
“That is true.”
“Well?”
“I don’t care to have my throat cut.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, my dear, that already you have a nice girl friend. I have heard all about your Hanako. Peter has told me. He has not told anyone else, but he has told me.”
I got up from the sofa and found a cigarette. I had been smoking all evening and there was a dry fur in my mouth. Rosie extended her hand for a cigarette, too, so I gave her the one I had lighted and took another one for myself. I thought I had been made a fool of, and felt an angry shame.
“Go on,” I said.
“Michael dear, how may I talk to you when you are stamping about like a liverish schoolmaster. Please come and sit down once more.”
I went back to the sofa reluctantly. She lifted one of my hands and held it in her own.
“Please let me tell you that it is not often now that I have pleasure, and I would have liked you so much to make love to me. If it had been Peter I should have perhaps made love to him, too, because he is a nice boy and now it would be good for him. But for you it is not so good, and I don’t need fun so badly that I must make you unhappy.”
“Why did you lead me on like that?”
“I dare say it was a matter of my pride. I would like to think I may still make a nice boy lose his head for a minute over me. But you are also a silly boy. Your Hanako is a sweet and good girl. Peter has said so. Very sweet and beautiful, he said.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’d better go to bed.”
“Soon I shall let you.”
“I’m going now,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about Hanako.”
“If you don’t want to talk, it is because you are afraid.”
“You don’t know anything about it. Nor does Peter.”
“I think I know. You are afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“You are just afraid to face things.”
“There are many things that are not worth while facing.”
“Oh yes, it is always so easy to say that. It is easy to go through life and say nothing is worth while to face—but it is not a good life.”
I withdrew my hand from hers and got up again. My cigarette was not finished, but the end was greasy from the perspiration of my fingers. I threw it away and took another.
“You know,” Rosie said, “you could perhaps make someone very happy.”
“What did you say?”
“I said if only you were a little less selfish . . .”
“Good God!
” I said. “Why does everyone tell me that? It’s what the yogi said. I’m not a charitable institution.”
“But you have a charitable heart. Only it is not always that you remember it. It is for yourself that it is bad when you forget.”
“And it was uncharitable of me to make love to you?”
“Yes, my dear. It was uncharitable to yourself. It would have made you very unhappy.”
“It might have done a week ago. Circumstances change.”
“But not people. People don’t change, not as quickly as that.”
“Oh, stop all this,” I said irritably.
“You had better first of all tell me what is the matter.”
I pulled at my cigarette and began to walk about the room. I wanted to break off the conversation and leave; but to have done so would have been an admission of my own weakness.
“Something happened between me and Hanako.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“It is not like you to be so silly.”
“Well,” I said, “you know how atmospheres change.”
“Please do not say ‘atmosphere.’ That is not being honest. What was it?”
“I was jealous. I hate being jealous, and I’m not going to waste my time on it.”
“So you ran away.”
“Yes.”
“You ran away because you had a nasty little pain.”
“Before it got worse,” I said.
“And perhaps before you had looked into it carefully?”
“Yes.”
“Then it may be that it is all a mistake.”
“It may be.”
“Now we are beginning to find out interesting things. It may be a mistake, and you are not going to try to make sure. And all the time you are perhaps hurting someone a great deal. Don’t you think it sounds very funny?”
“Yes, and where does it get us?”
“I think it gets us to a reason for your all of a sudden wishing to kiss an old Eurasian housekeeper.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Yes, but it is true. You are afraid to be in love with a girl who is sweet and kind, and you take the first chance to run away. You pretend it is not yourself from whom you are running away; and you make words about atmospheres and circumstances changing, and you throw yourself at someone you don’t really care about so that you can blame yourself. That makes everything easier, because you don’t really want to blame the sweet Hanako.”
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