Hangover Square

by Patrick Hamilton

  George imagined that she had a permanent relationship with Peter, something with a past and a future, but he was mistaken. She gave herself to him only occasionally, when she had drunk to excess and he forced it upon her – spasmodically and lovelessly. On the whole she disliked and despised Peter if only as part of her disliked and despised surroundings.

  If she had any strong feeling for any man at the moment, it was, oddly enough, for Eddie Carstairs, of Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, with whom she was unable to make any sort of satisfactory contact.

  She had met him at one or two parties a year or so ago, and she had been attracted towards him for a variety of reasons. She had been attracted by him physically, by his sophistication, his clothes, his personality; she had been attracted by his aloof, offhand air, which was friendly in a slightly mocking way: and above all, of course, she had been attracted by his prosperity and power, the people he mixed with, the places he frequented, the firm of which he was a partner. To go about with Eddie Carstairs was to go about with the high-ups: infinite possibilities were open to you: dispensing with all tiresome preliminaries you might crash straight from Earl’s Court into success, opulence or stardom. He had made no advances to her whatever, but on the few brief occasions when she had been alone with him, or when she had been at his flat and only a few other people were there, he had, she fancied, more than once given her a curious, humorous, fleeting look. She had been unable to interpret the exact meaning of that look, but it had at once suggested to her mind the possibility of becoming his mistress, and no sooner had that idea arisen, with its enormous potentialities, than it had been formulated as a secret practical ambition. From then on, whenever Eddie Carstairs’ name was mentioned by her gang, a little light, a faintly absentminded look denoting an interruption in thought, could be seen on Netta Longdon’s face, and she would be inclined to change the subject, as though her personal affairs were being discussed.

  That she had made no headway in this matter, that since she had been out of a job she had had no practical means of making any further contact with this man, had not failed to add to her general dissatisfaction with her life, and it was for this reason that George, as he himself had surmised, was occasionally given the privilege of taking her to Perrier’s (the upstairs room), which she knew he frequented and where she hoped to meet him by accident.

  But Mr Carstairs did not respond, it seemed, to accidental meetings, and in the absence of any advance in this direction Netta, on the whole, was drifting more and more to Peter. Wanting no other man save the one she could not get, any other man, the nearest at hand, served her purpose. And although she disliked and despised Peter, he yet had certain qualities which appealed subtly and more or less unconsciously to something in her own nature – a coldness, cruelty and strength, perhaps, which matched her own.

  She liked Peter, for instance, because of her knowledge, possessed by few others, of his past – the fact that he had twice been in jail. He had been in jail on one occasion for assaulting and wounding a man at a political meeting, and on another for killing a pedestrian with his car while drunk, and this she liked, this stimulated her. She liked the whole atmosphere: she liked the deeds themselves, and she liked the jail. Both provided something bloody, brutal, and unusual which gave him a halo of originality.

  Then there were other aspects of the man, too, to which Netta responded, which made him interesting and passable, which enabled her to ‘stand’ him, whereas she could not ‘stand’ the average man who forced his attentions upon her. She knew him inside out, and she knew of his intense, smouldering, revengeful social snobbery. She knew how, behind that pallid, sullen, Philip-the-Fourth-like face, his soul winced when people of the moneyed class, when titled or rich people, were merely mentioned. She knew of the horror, the diseased fury, he harboured in his heart against his own upbringing, the fact that he had not been to a mentionable public school. She knew with what a passion, behind a studied manner of indifference, he clung to each of his few contacts with what were to him the right sort of people. She knew how his political activities, his practical ‘fascism’ in the past, were derived from this sickly envy and passion. Banished, by reason of his birth and lack of money, from the class of which he had so fanatical a secret desire to be a member, he had not turned in anger against that class, or thrown in his lot with any other. That would have been an admission of defeat. On the contrary he sought to glorify it, to buttress it, to romanticize it, to make it more itself than it was already – hoping thereby, in his ambitious, twisted brain, to gain some reward from it at last, have some place or even leadership in it under the intensified conditions he foresaw for it. Netta knew all this and instead of repelling her it had a decided appeal for her. This was because, in her fish-like way, she had much the same social ambitions and snobbery as he did.

  For in spite of her sluttish manner of life, her avowed and somewhat self-conscious ‘unconventionality’, Netta had quite another portrait of herself at the back of her mind. Her true heart was not in the second-hand sports car, the road house, the snack bar and the darts board in the Earl’s Court public-house; it was, rather, somewhere haunting the society columns, the illustrated pages of The Sketch, The Tatler or Vogue. She would not have admitted this, even to herself, but this was where her inner aesthetic fancy lay. She had not the fanatical anguished social snobbery and aspirations of Peter, but she was all the same, and on the quiet, at one with him in spirit.

  And to this was added something else – a feeling for something which was abroad in the modern world, something hardly realized and difficult to describe, but which she knew Peter could discern as well as herself.

  This something, which she could not describe, which was probably indescribable, was something to do with those society columns and something to do with blood, cruelty, and fascism – a blend of the two. It had the same stimulus and subtle appeal for her as the fact of Peter having been in jail. It was not the avowed ideology of fascism; she was supposed to laugh at all people who had any strong opinions of any sort. On the other hand it was, in all probability, one aspect of the ideology of fascism. She was supposed to dislike fascism, to laugh at it, but actually she liked it enormously. In secret she liked pictures of marching, regimented men, in secret she was physically attracted by Hitler: she did not really think that Mussolini looked like a funny burglar. She liked the uniforms, the guns, the breeches, the boots, the swastikas, the shirts. She was, probably, sexually stimulated by these things in the same way as she might have been sexually stimulated by a bull-fight. And somehow she was dimly aware of the class content of all this: she connected it with her own secret social aspirations and she would have liked to have seen something of the same sort of thing in this country. She was bored to distraction by the idea of a war, of course, and hence arose her glorious joy (perceived by George) at the time of Munich, when, at one stroke, war was averted and the thing which she was supposed to dislike and laugh at, but to which she was so drawn in reality, was allowed to proceed with renewed power upon its way.

  It might be said that this feeling for violence and brutality, for the pageant and panorama of fascism on the Continent, formed her principal disinterested aesthetic pleasure. She had few others. She read practically nothing: she did not respond to music or pictures: she never went to the theatre and very seldom to the movies: and although she had an instinctive ability to dress well and effectively when she desired, she did not even like pretty things. She only liked what affected her personally and physically and immediately – sleep, warmth, a certain amount of company and talk, drinks, getting drunk, good food, taxis, ease. She was not even responsive to adulation, save when, coming from a man, it promised to further these necessities. She was atrophied. She looked like a Byron beauty, but she was a fish.

  Towards George’s adulation and adoration, however, she was something other than merely unresponsive, she was hostile. This was not only because of his ineffectuality, his dumbness, his naivety and his haunting persistenc
e, all of which would have annoyed her in any case. It was also because he was not totally ineffectual, in that, unlike herself (and unlike Peter and Mickey and the rest), he had a curious but ineraseable streak of providence, and possessed a certain sum of money in his bank. The mere existence of this anomalous hoard irritated her beyond measure, the more so inasmuch as she was continually being compelled to make use of it, either in the form of entertainment in public-houses, taxis, or restaurants, or in direct loans. His persistence and stupidity, exasperating and humiliating as they both were to her, were both necessary, and therefore the more exasperating and humiliating.

  It was for these reasons, of course, that she was seldom able to be polite to him, and enjoyed whatever opportunities arose for watching his humiliation in front of others or in private. The conception of George as the stooge, the silly hanger-on, the errand-boy of her set, had actually been originated by her, and was by her perpetuated.

  There were occasions, however, when it was necessary to make the effort to be extremely polite and this morning as she lay in bed and realized that she had taken the unusual procedure of asking him to come round and see her, she saw that one of these times had come. In drink last night he had promised to give her the necessary money to take her to Brighton. That she could twist this into getting some money and being taken to Brighton as well she had seen at the time. She had even considered it possible that she might get the money without having to go to Brighton. But actually she was not averse to Brighton if this little man (Littlejohn or whatever his name was) was there as well, with his connection with the firm in which she was so interested. But now George had rung up and said that he could not come. How, then, was she to get the money? She wanted as much as fifteen pounds and she certainly had to have ten for urgent payments of rent and to her charwoman.

  She did not exactly know, and as she had her bath, and made some tea, and dressed, she did not bother. Living in a vacuum, with practically no vision of the future, and practically no awareness of the past, she bothered very little about anything – least of all about George, who, oddly enough, and unknown to both of them, at certain seasons directed his mind exclusively to the problem of killing her by violence.

  The Sixth Part

  BRIGHTON

  Omadness! to think use oi strongest wines

  And strongest drinks our chiel support oi health. .

  J. MILTON Samson Agonistes

  I among these alool obscurely stood.

  The least and noon grew high, and sacrifice

  Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and wine,

  When to their sports they turned.

  J. MILTON Samson Agonistes

  drunk, tipsy; intoxicated; inebrious, -ate, ated; in one’s cups;

  in a state of intoxication &c. n; temulent, -ive; fuddled, mellow,

  cut, boosy, fou, fresh, merry, elevated; flush, -ed; flustered, disguised,

  groggy, beery; topheavy; potvaliant, glorious; potulent;

  over-come, -taken; whittled, screwed, tight, primed, corned,

  raddled, sewed up, lushy, nappy, muddled, muzzy, obfuscated,

  maudlin; crapulous, dead drunk.

  Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

  Chapter One

  Suddenly, as they streamed through Haywards Heath station in the sunny, sticky, streaming afternoon, he became gloomy.

  He was in a Pullman car. He sat on the right facing Brighton, and there was no one else at his table. There were only a few other people in the car. Lunch was over, but the lunch-spotted white cloths were still on the tables. He was drinking beer and he all at once became gloomy and saw that he had probably made a fool of himself again, after all.

  Until that precise moment his heart had been lifted up with joy and beer and the warmth and splendour of the summer’s afternoon. He had been drinking beer since twelve o’clock, ever since Netta had sent him out to get the A.B.C. He had got happier and happier and happier. He had been supremely, gloriously happy when he had got on to the train, and instead of having lunch he had ordered beer. But now, as the train flashed through Haywards Heath, it occurred to him that he was making his usual fool of himself.

  It had all seemed so wonderful and simple. He had gone round there at a quarter to twelve and there had been a funny atmosphere from the beginning.

  The front door had been open and having rattled the knocker he had walked into the sitting-room and had heard her voice from her bedroom immediately. ‘Is that you, George?’ she had cried. ‘Sit down for a bit, and I’ll be out!’

  He had at once sensed something of friendliness in her tone, and, of course, at once presumed that he had made a mistake. Then, ‘There’s some beer in the cupboard if you can find it,’ she had cried, and he had said, ‘Thanks, Netta,’ and poured himself out a flat half-tumblerful remaining in an old quart Watney. He still, of course, didn’t believe there was anything behind this odd cordiality he sensed in her tone, but all the same he couldn’t help feeling a bit cheered.

  Then she came out of the bedroom, and through the sitting-room, on the way to get something from the bathroom. She was fully dressed except for her skirt. That is to say, she wore a jumper, shoes, stockings and underclothes, but no skirt. Thus you could see, if you cared to look, her legs above the knee and her underclothes up to the waist. She frequently walked about like this in her flat when Peter and Mickey were there, and it never failed slightly to shock, embarrass and irritate him. He knew that he must not show by the flicker of an eyelid that he was embarrassed; he knew that it was assumed in her set that it would be conventional and genteel to a degree, libidinous even, to show any consciousness of her not being fully dressed. But he was secretly of the opinion that this was an affectation, and he was displeased both by the affectation itself and by his being forced to share in it. Also he hated to look at her underclothes, because, of course, they had the same murderous loveliness of everything else that she wore and he was seeing for the first time.

  Then it had occurred to him that she had never before come through into the sitting-room in this way while he alone was there: always there had been others present as well – a crowd as it were, to deprive this affectation of negligence of any personal or intimate significance. He noticed this; and taking it in conjunction with the cordiality, or at any rate lack of rudeness, in her voice, he again felt cheered, dared to believe, almost, that something was afoot.

  Then she came back into the sitting-room, and instead of going back into the bedroom she came to the mantelpiece, took a cigarette, lit it, and flopped down in the settee.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s troubling you?’

  He told her about Johnnie, and how he had phoned that morning and said he couldn’t make Brighton after all. And then they had talked for a little. And then, somehow, he didn’t remember how, she had said, ‘Of course, I’m in an awful spot, anyhow.’

  ‘Spot?’ he said. ‘How do you mean, Netta? What sort of spot?’

  ‘Oh, just money and things generally,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have made Brighton anyhow.’

  ‘Oh, but I was going to treat you to Brighton,’ he said.

  ‘Were you?’ she said. ‘Well, even that wouldn’t have seen me out. I’m in a real mess. Of course, you’re so astonishingly provident you don’t get into these troubles.’

  The atmosphere was most odd – he couldn’t make it out at all. Her quiet, confidential tone: her smoking a cigarette and sitting in front of him in her underclothes: the mere fact that she had invited him round in the morning: it was all puzzling. Was it conceivable that she was ‘making up’ to him, that she had a favour to ask of him? No – with Netta it was inconceivable – the harsh, proud, independent Netta he knew. All the same a sudden inspiration prompted him to take advantage of the situation, to exploit this weird new atmosphere which he could not understand, and he said, hardly knowing why, or what answer he expected:

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t come to Brighton with me?’


  To his amazement he saw her pause before replying (as though she was considering it!), and then as she flicked the ash from her cigarette and looked at the floor, she said, ‘How do you mean exactly, George? When?’

  ‘I mean now, and not bother about Johnnie,’ he said, and then added laughingly shyly, ‘I don’t mean living in sin!… Just going…’

  Again, to his utter astonishment, she paused, still looking at the floor and smiling faintly yet not ill-naturedly at his crack about living in sin. Then she rose, and, apparently with the object of putting out her cigarette in the ash-tray, joined him at the fireplace. She was only two feet away and he was within the awful halo. But he was so interested in what she was going to say next that he could hardly respond to the halo. At last she spoke.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If you’ll pay some of my bills, I wouldn’t mind going away for a bit.’

  From that moment, of course, he had gone mad with joy.

  ‘Pay your bills!’ he had said. ‘Why, of course I’ll pay your bills. Why, Netta, this is wonderful. Of course I’ll pay your bills! Why, this is grand!’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they’re pretty stiff,’ but he just wouldn’t listen to her. He found out later that he had to give her fifteen pounds, but by that time he was so worked up he would have scarcely cared if it had been fifty.

  After a little more talk she said she couldn’t actually go today, because she had certain things to do, but that she would go tomorrow; and finally it was decided that he should go down first and find a hotel, and she would join him. This pleased him beyond all measure. What a task! To go down to Brighton and find a hotel in preparation for Netta’s arrival!