Jill

by Philip Larkin

The Green Leaf teashop was full, many people eating slowly or waiting amiably to be served, and John felt at a loss, feeling that it was incumbent upon him somehow to create an empty table. As they walked through the centre of the town he had half assumed the role of guide, pointing out the buildings he knew, and explaining that Carfax was a corruption of carre-four. It pleased him to imagine she was his own mother. She had listened pleasantly, occasionally asking questions.

  The café was a long low room, partitioned regularly into alcoves which seated four, and every one of these was full. Mrs. Warner gazed about her with a comic expression of helplessness on her face, which John had observed in Christopher and knew did not mean any such thing. He was uncomfortable as they stood conspicuously there, and suggested they took two places that were just being vacated.

  “But we want a three, don’t we?” Mrs. Warner turned to look at him, and then looked past him to the door. “Hallo, there’s Christopher. Yes, obviously he’s been playing some game. What a ragamuffin he looks.”

  Christopher, after a moment’s hesitation, came to them. His hair was ruffled and he was untidily dressed in sweater, blazer and flannels. John felt his own significance diminish rapidly.

  “Hallo, Mother.”

  “Well, my son. You look a mess.”

  “I didn’t stop to dress properly. I say, can’t we sit down?”

  As if in answer, four undergraduates got up and left a table free, one of them nodding to Christopher as he passed him, and waving a black cigarette holder. As Mrs. Warner led the way to the table, John thought uncomfortably that perhaps he ought to go now as his part in the afternoon was finished and they might want to talk privately. “I think …” he muttered, as they reached their seats. “Er—I think perhaps——”

  They paid no attention, so, his courage failing, he sat down by Christopher with Mrs. Warner opposite. As she put her bag and gloves on the seat beside her, he could see that she was in early middle age, though it was easy to see how she looked as a girl. Her broad, dark good looks and sturdy shoulders would have been more attractive in the long run than more brittle beauty. He looked again at her, and then at Christopher, and it seemed that their resemblance was so strong that the third party—his father and her husband—was eliminated entirely.

  Christopher said:

  “What time does your train go?”

  “Heavens, what a question.” She glanced laughingly at John, sharing the joke. “You don’t come to meet me, and the first thing you ask is, when am I going? Half-past six, if you must know. What would you like to eat?” she added, as one of the ladies in print overalls came and stood by them. “What is there, please?”

  “Bread and butter, cakes, scones, sandwiches, teacakes——”

  Her voice trembled slightly on the last word as if she were very fond of them. Mrs. Warner listened critically.

  “Teacakes sound nice,” she said. “Everything sounds nice. We’ll have everything. What are the sandwiches?”

  “Fish, lettuce, tomato——”

  “Tomato, then, and lettuce. And scones, bread and butter and jam, all for three.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “And the tea? Do you like China tea, John?”

  “Oh, yes,” said John, never having had any.

  “China tea, then, and cakes, of course.” The lady went and Mrs. Warner turned back to them. “This does remind of me when we used to motor down to Lamprey and take Christopher and his friends out to tea. Haven’t you always read, John, about schoolboy appetites? I used to order most lavish banquets. But do you know, they’d hardly eat anything. I had to coax them to the fruit salad, and as for the cream buns … Why was it, Christopher? Weren’t they hungry?”

  “Oh, they were just shy. I think you frightened them.”

  “Frightened them? Pooh!” She gave a little snort of laughter, directed mainly at John. But the effect of the memory had made Christopher look exactly like a small boy in John’s eyes; with his tousled hair and mingled jaunty-guilty expression, he looked remarkably like one. He welcomed the fancy that Christopher and himself were brothers, who were still at school, and who were being visited by their mother and taken out to tea.

  She had made everything sound appetizing when she ordered them, and when it all came she lent delicacy to the scene by the way she poured out and arranged the food on the table. The silver teapot she held with a small handkerchief, and she whipped the silver cover off the teacakes as if to reveal a rare dish. They were crisp, with scorched, broken tops.

  “Please help yourselves: I always drink my tea first.”

  She sipped it softly, without milk or sugar.

  “I’ve quite forgotten when you went to Derby,” said Christopher, his mouth full. “Did the Leylands invite you specially?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t you remember, we had them to stay last summer?”

  “I remember trying to teach that girl golf—Elspeth, was her name?” Christopher growled theatrically, cutting his teacake a second time. “Was she there?”

  “She was, as it happened—on leave. She’s in the Wrens, you know. We had a round on Sunday.”

  “Was she any better?”

  “Well, it’s not fair to judge anyone who hasn’t played for ages. Now for my teacake.” To John’s astonishment, she picked it up and bit it hugely, making as she did so a shy little gesture that further endeared her to him.

  By the end of the meal John would have concluded that Christopher’s schoolfriends had been too busy watching Mrs. Warner to eat much, if he had given the matter any thought.

  He himself ate, but did not talk, sitting not dumb with fright, but naturally silent as if watching an actress on the stage. Her least action was a pleasure to watch, as if at some time or another she had taken lessons in deportment. Erect, her shoulders square and commanding, she conducted the meal with alert friendliness. Every now and then she would say or do something (as when she bit the teacake) that scattered the image into a thousand places, only to re-gather it more brilliant than before.

  Christopher kept up the conversation, eating hungrily, and passing his cup silently for more tea. She filled it, adding milk and sugar as at home, and broke off in the middle of doing so to sneeze daintily. Sometimes she would halt the desultory conversation and put some formal little question to John, such as:

  “Does being a scholar mean you have to work harder?” or “Will you have a cigarette?”

  Hypnotized, he took one from her pearl-backed case.

  “That’s a new departure,” commented Christopher, holding his lighter out.

  “Oh, don’t you smoke as a rule? What a good influence you’ll be on Christopher—I know for a fact”, Mrs. Warner emphasized smilingly, “that he smokes a very, very great deal too much.” She stared at them both, as if the sight of them offered her much private amusement; John, watching her closely, thought the idea of having a grown-up son seemed comical to her, as if she had never got used to it. “Get the bill, darling.”

  She rose to go to the ladies’ room, shaking her skirt free of crumbs, and Christopher stared elaborately about for the waitress, not catching John’s eye. A triumphal march began in John’s head as he imagined that Christopher was loth to accept his fresh status in John’s view, now that there was nothing but common ground between them; he felt as if they had submitted some dispute to a higher authority and the decision had been in his favour.

  “I say, Chris, I think your mother’s awfully decent,” he said excitedly.

  “Can we have our bill, please?” said Christopher.

  He did not see her again before she left, and on Saturday night Christopher went out and got very drunk with the money she had given him. “What, you in to breakfast, sir?” exclaimed Jack, in soft irony. “You’ve mistook the time, sir. It’s ’a’-past eight, not ’a’-past eleven.”

  “Sure sign of trouble, Jack. The room’s uninhabitable.”

  And it was till Jack cleaned it up, for which Christopher gave him five shillings. Neve
rtheless, John’s sense of exhilaration persisted. On Monday morning he woke up, had a hot bath, called for a second cup of coffee at breakfast (he had never done this before), and went out afterwards into the gardens for a stroll. The morning was bright, and though everywhere was a tangle of dead stalks and leaves, the wet grass shone as in June. Shadows of great elms lay across the lawn. He sniffed the air: it had that strange, ashen smell of autumn, despite the glittering sheets of light. Now and again a bird called, and it was hard to believe that the garden was in the middle of a town.

  To avoid a gardener, he went indoors again and spent some time pretending to decide whether or not to attend a lecture at ten o’clock. Indeed, he came very near to missing it, as Christopher would have done (Christopher still lay in the blacked-out bedroom), but as he himself was up and not, after all, Christopher, he slipped on his big scholar’s gown and walked out of the College into the busy streets. For the lecture he decided to be Mr. Crouch, nodding his head wisely at intervals and making a few microscopic jottings, to be copied and expanded later; by eleven, he remembered, the public houses would be open, and he could be Christopher and stand drinking in a bar. He would buy himself a packet of cigarettes and enjoy smoking and drinking. How ashen the air smelt: a quenched smell of an extinct summer.

  The lecture room was full of young women in short gowns, carrying bulky handbags and enormous tattered bundles of notes; they smelt inimitably of face powder and (vaguely) Irish stew, and they were dressed in woollen clothes. He soon forgot them and the lecturer as well by thinking of Mrs. Warner. His mind dwelt pleasurably on her uprightness, her precision in handing a cup and saucer, the individuality that caused her to go hatless and show her fine dark hair, that was at once comely and mature. There was something about her that he had never met before, something that made him feel at once both happy and excited, something that made him want to see her again, to live where she lived. She affected him like an invigorating climate.

  After the lecture he went and stood in a bar. His high spirits were rising as the sun rose towards the zenith: indeed, he was almost surprised at his own jubilance.

  “A bitter, please, and twenty cigarettes.”

  “These are all we have.”

  “They’ll do nicely,” John agreed. He took a paper packet of matches from a holder on the counter and gave sixpence to the blind. Before the grate lay a tabby cat, stretched out as if dead, but something in its mouth and throat suggesting limitless ferocity.

  “Likes the fire.”

  “Hah! S’not the only one.”

  The woman went on knitting, for the bar was otherwise empty, and John leaned in the shade and blew smoke into the sunlight. Try as he would, he could not make it like Christopher did. By playing off the taste of the beer against the taste of the tobacco, he managed to find each fairly pleasant. The cat yawned and writhed up, stretching on its four feet: John rubbed it with his shoe, and it patiently moved away.

  “He’s not feeling friendly today.”

  “Ah, we only keep him for the mice. Don’t like cats myself. We only keep him ’cause of the mice.”

  “You’ve got mice, then?”

  “Any number, yes. These are old houses.”

  The cat settled down on the other side of the fire, out of his reach.

  “He’s a good mouser—he’ll sit two, three hours over a hole.” The woman shook her knitting. “Can’t get him away. Ah, these are old houses.”

  John looked at the cat again, finished his beer and went out into the light. From the stone façades pigeons fluttered down on to the pavements and waddled uneasily about, casting a wary eye at him, but he paid no attention to them. The wind blew and a whole wall of ivy danced in the sun, the leaves blowing back to show their white undersides. So in him a thousand restlessnesses yearned and shook. At the sight of the blue-and-white sky, the flashing windscreens of cars, the square new brick air-raid shelters daubed with white paint, a vigour filled him almost equal to his desire. He wondered whether to go back to the College, find Christopher and suggest they went out drinking.

  He was depressed by the sudden reflection of himself in a hat-shop window: he was ashamed of his emaciated suit. It was a blot on him, it did nothing to express his exhilaration, it made him look pinched and underfed. It would be splendid to go into a tailor’s and order a dozen new suits, in tweed, with fob pockets and leather buttons. The idea of spending money took hold of his mind, and he began considering what he could buy, something he could wear to show his good humour: a really smart tie, for instance. In fact, a bow-tie. He smiled and began walking quickly through the people.

  The inside of the outfitter’s was lofty and hushed, like a cathedral, and if a tall man resembling a solicitor had not immediately come towards him, he would have turned round and gone out again.

  “I want a bow-tie.”

  “One bow-tie.”

  This gave John a sudden vision of the bow-tie, lying in a pool of light at the bottom of a lift-shaft, very tiny and distinct. The man went behind the counter and began laying out drawerfuls of ties neatly and quickly, staring beyond John’s head into some far corner of the shop.

  John went through all the actions of a rich young man (Christopher), choosing a bow-tie in a shop. He would drag one out, then throw it down as if it had deceived him; he would flick them over like the pages of a book and turn from one drawerful to the next. One or two he picked out and twisted, as if to consider their appearance when tied, or carried them over to the door to inspect the colour in a better light. He liked doing this, but he did it quickly so as not to waste the man’s time. In the end he chose a pleasant, ordinary one, blue with white spots, and paid three-and-sixpence for it. The man put it into a little envelope, licked the flap and stuck it down.

  As soon as he got outside, he went down a public lavatory to put it on.

  He was so nervous when he emerged that for all practical purposes he was a walking bow-tie. If all the traffic had stopped dead, he would hardly have noticed it; he proceded with short, self-conscious steps along the dry, sunny pavement, avoiding the eyes of passers-by, his hands clenched in his pockets. He was so preoccupied that he did not see Elizabeth Dowling till she came right up to him: they were walking diagonally in roughly the same direction, and she had a small notebook as well as a handbag, as if she was going to work in a library. Her smart flared skirt and flowers pinned to her jacket made this seem incongruous.

  “Hallo, John. Oh, my dear! What—what—what——”

  She spluttered in pretended astonishment, and stopped with her golden head on one side, forcing him to stop too. He muttered a kind of greeting.

  “Oh, it’s a too-heavenly bow,” she cried. “But, my dear boy, why haven’t you tied it properly? My dear, it’s ruinous.”

  “Oh—er—isn’t it right?” He put his hands up to it uneasily. Certainly it had looked a bit odd in the lavatory. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Why, it’s all——” She shut her lips, biting back a squirt of laughter. “Here, hold these.” She gave him her book and handbag, and pulled the bow undone. Then, starting with an end in each hand, she rapidly retied it, her lips still firmly closed. It was an extraordinary scene, and he could not see any way of preventing it. People passing stared curiously, till he was scarlet, but Elizabeth herself was so unconcerned he could say nothing.

  “There, that’s more presentable.” She stepped back at last. “Not throttled, are you?”

  “No—no, thanks very much——”

  She took back her book and bag and walked with him for some way. Though they had not met since the afternoon of John’s arrival, she treated him as intimately as if they were friends of a year’s standing.

  “You look much smarter now,” she said, the sun showing the dazzling contrast between lips and teeth. Then she left him, running up the stone steps of a library, leaving him standing below in the attitude of a sightseer as he watched her white calves disappear into the inner dusk.

  He spent the af
ternoon asleep on the sofa, with the bow-tie tickling his chin. At dinner in Hall Whitbread grinned across at him in a friendly manner:

  “You look a regular dandy. My word, who’s been lashin’ out?”

  He put a whole potato in his mouth, holding his knife and fork like carpenter’s tools, and John began to eat quickly in order to finish before he did and to get away from him. A servant brought a plate of prunes and custard, and Whitbread caught his sleeve, asking for more cauliflower.

  “Like to come up for coffee?”

  John smiled regretfully.

  “I’m afraid I’m going out tonight.”

  So of course he had to go, lest Whitbread should see the light on in his room, or, worse, come to investigate. He put on his overcoat, admired himself in the mirror and walked aimlessly out into the blackness, listening to the hooded Army lorries thundering past at eight-second intervals. There was no traffic but this convoy and an occasional omnibus. Men and women stood silently along the walls of locked banks or collected in little groups that would suddenly explode a few paces backwards in laughter, and then re-form again. He stepped off the pavement to pass them.

  As he walked into a quieter part of the town by the river, where there were river-boat offices and shops that sold clay pipes and fishing-rods, his exhilaration, that had sunk into a glowing contentment, began curdling to helplessness. It took him some minutes to discover what it was he wanted and could not get: he conjured up Mrs. Warner and Christopher in turn, and only when he had dismissed them impatiently did he remember Elizabeth, and her friendliness. The soft fumbling of her hands under his chin had aroused a fugitive excitement in him. When could he see her again, as he wanted to?

  Christopher was lucky; he could see her whenever he wanted, and touch her, and perhaps kiss her whenever he wanted. He leaned over the stone wall of the bridge, hearing the water chuckling beneath and the shifting trees down the bank. Elizabeth filled his thoughts. Not only Elizabeth, but all that stretched beyond her—iridescent, tingling feelings that had not any obvious cause, shadowy wishes, and more shadowy dreams of fulfilment. As he looked down he could hear the water, but not see it. The day’s happiness had gone with the day, and he was left with an uneasy depression, expressed in the thought: where was she now? She was most likely with Christopher.