Jill

by Philip Larkin

  Without meaning to, he followed her to the arch of the staircase, then, realizing that after all that there were several sets of rooms she might have entered, yet not caring, too agitated to consider things reasonably, driven forward by an emotional compound of fear, curiosity, a desire to save her and the pure desperation which when he was most at a loss seemed to push him into action, he knocked on his own door and opened it.

  “John!” said Elizabeth, in a surprised voice. They all looked round again.

  “Hallo, old man, didn’t expect you in,” said Christopher, with false joviality. John smiled suddenly.

  “How do you all do?” he said.

  “Will you put that kettle on,” said Patrick, in the concentrated voice of one who has stood as much as he is going to stand. Christopher stuck the kettle on the fire without answering. “Oh, you don’t know these people,” he said casually to John, indicating the dark girl and Jill. “This is my better half, John Kemp. This is Evelyn and this is Gillian, who has the misfortune to be a cousin of Elizabeth”—Elizabeth made as if to throw her cigarette at him—“and Patrick.”

  He could do nothing for a moment but look at the six people in the room, noticing what they were doing. Christopher sat on the fender seat shaking the teapot with a dubious smile; Patrick and a dark Jewish-looking girl faced each other in two armchairs; Eddy sat on a plain wooden chair tipped perilously back against the desk; Elizabeth and Jill sat on the sofa. Tea was just finishing and dirty plates and cups littered the hearthrug. In a corner was a pile of coats, Jill’s on top. Slightly bowed she sat, with her hands in her lap and her hair falling forward, the shape of her small shoulder-blades showing through her jacket.

  “Oh?” John smiled still, the smile buckling under the weight of his astonishment. Evelyn nodded to him and Jill gave him one swift glance, hardly letting her eyes meet him. “Pleased to——”

  “There’ll be tea in a moment, if you can find a cup,” Christopher went on. “Is there another one? I think I took the last one for Gillian. You’ve both come at the unfortunate time between kettles.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Jill repeated softly, twining her fingers together, and John found he remembered her voice.

  To cover his confusion he went to the cupboard and found the cup without a handle Christopher had used for shaving and put unwashed out of sight. He took it outside to the tap, and as he was going Christopher replied, “Oh, that’s all right, only there doesn’t seem a frightful lot to eat. Not anything, as a matter of fact,” so when he had washed out the rim of small hairs he ran over to Whitbread’s room, which was empty. Books lay open on the table. Pulling open the cupboard, he found half a cake and stole it, running back to staircase fourteen with it under his jacket. “Here, where did this come from?” said Christopher, finding it with surprise a moment later. “Why, John, you old pirate. Good stuff. Now Gillian can be fed.” He looked round for a clean plate and whacked a large slab on to it.

  “Oh, that’s far too big—I suppose I’d better not ask where it came from!” she said, biting and laughing. Imagining she spoke directly to him, John caught his breath. Gillian, she was Gillian, her name was Jill.

  “Well, as a matter of academic interest, where did it come from?” said Christopher, arching an eyebrow at John, who was happy at being included in the conspiracy.

  “From Whitbread.”

  “Who? Never ’eard of ’im,” and Christopher went off into a roar of laughter.

  “Give me some of it,” said Patrick, leaning forward with an eager expression on his face.

  “Oh, he’s an awful man,” said John, joining in. “Have all you want.”

  “Is it good?” Patrick asked Jill. She had a mouthful and could only nod for a moment. “Yes, lovely, but you’ve given me far too much. I’ve had one tea already. She doesn’t know I’m having tea here.” She blinked round shyly.

  “Why shouldn’t you be here?” demanded Eddy, as if scenting a personal insult.

  “Well, don’t talk as if she was going to vanish away into thin air at any moment!” Elizabeth protested, slipping one protective arm around Jill and pulling her against her. “Aunt Charlotte is only a bit strict. She thinks her two devoted cousins are going to the theatre alone. If she knew all you louts were coming along, she’d have kittens.”

  “How did you escape?” said Evelyn, speaking for the first time since John had come. “By a rope of sheets from your bedroom window?”

  “Or a file in a loaf?”

  “She has to sit reading East Lynne to the old girl,” said Elizabeth, looking round. “Just think, in this day and age.”

  “Oh, it isn’t as bad as that,” exclaimed Jill, putting her cup down. “Only Sorrell and Son.” She gave a hard little laugh as if at the sound of her own voice.

  “Who?” said Eddy. “I say, let’s go and give the old girl a jolly-up. Pity Guy Fawkes night and all that’s over. But we could give her a few carols——”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Elizabeth crossly.

  While they talked, Jill finished her small tea. She paid attention to everything that was said, transferring her look from speaker to speaker, turning her head so that delicate tendons showed in her neck. It was the knowledge that she would look so at him if he spoke that kept him from saying anything. All the joy he should be feeling at having her contented in a room where he was had been neutralized by the fact that he had only run her to earth in the very centre of the place he most wished to avoid—neutralized into a kind of wondering bewilderment. He helped Christopher put the black-out up.

  “Alas, we must fare forth,” sighed Elizabeth at last. “Get Gillian’s coat, Christopher. You might behave like a gentleman, even if you aren’t one.”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” roared Eddy, tying his muffler. Patrick and Evelyn broke off a private conversation they had been holding and looked round amicably. John went to the door, sensing that when Jill had been helped into her coat by Christopher, she would drift in that direction, and struggled in vain against the rising distress he felt at their going. She did, shying away a trifle and looking at him uncertainly. John’s face became extraordinarily tense.

  “I hope you enjoy it,” he said.

  “Yes—oh, yes, I expect we shall. Do you know what it’s like?”

  “No. I wish I was coming with you.”

  “Aren’t you?” she said, as Elizabeth and the rest came up and swept her from the room, clattered out and down the steps. He was left alone, with the diminishing sound of their footsteps. After a second’s pause he crossed to the sofa and drank the cold dregs from Jill’s cup, putting his mouth where hers had been.

  So many different things dismayed him. When he had followed them to the theatre and lacking the courage to go inside leant against the wall in the dusk, he occupied himself with stacking them in order of importance in his mind like a pack of playing cards. The most important was that Jill and Elizabeth were cousins. Even after an hour’s steady effort he could not bring himself to anything more than a theoretical belief in this. And yet with even a theoretical belief came a dreadful sliding fear that perhaps they were much more similar in character than they looked, and certainly the knowledge came that Jill was absolutely under Elizabeth’s control. Then there was the refusal on her part to recognize any relationship between them. This was uncanny, as uncanny as if he had approached a mirror, raising his hand in salute and the reflection had made no answering sign. Then there was his recollection of his decision made that afternoon that it would be all right if he could keep her away from Christopher.

  He crossed the street and paid for a cheap seat at the cinema, close up to the screen. The enormous shadows gesticulated before him and he sat with his eyes shut, hearing only the intermittent remarks of the characters and the sounds of the action. It was curious how little speech there was. A squalling childish voice said something and everyone laughed: this was followed by a long interval of banging, scraping and rending, interspersed by studiedly familiar noises—the tink
ling of glass against decanter, the slamming of a car door. He opened his eyes for a moment, saw a man and a girl driving through the country, and shut them again. When he thought of Jill being so near, only across the street, with people he knew, yet where he was not with her and could not see her, his breath came faster and a curious physical unease affected him and he wanted to stretch. He looked at the film again: the man and the girl had gone, and in their place a different man sat at a desk answering a telephone. It was obvious that he was intended to be funny. Shortly another telephone rang and he held it to the other ear. Replies intended for one caller were misinterpreted by the other, and the man, becoming more flustered, entangled the two flexes till he was practically bound to the chair. The audience was rocking with laughter. John became interested in the film for short spurts, but remembering every now and then that he must not forget the time and let them get away from the theatre unobserved. To avoid this he left a quarter of an hour too soon before the film had finished and went out still without knowing its title. A queue of people eyed him as he emerged.

  The street was lightless, full of soldiers and airmen in search of eating-houses and bars. Shouts echoed up and down. When the first house began to pour out of the theatre, John found it was impossible to keep proper watch without half-entering the foyer, and when he had got so far he noticed a second exit he could not hope to cover. In his anxiety and eagerness he craned his neck into the light and received a blow in the ribs from an unexpected quarter. Christopher, Patrick and Eddy, their overcoats loose, were grinning at his elbow.

  “Hallo, old boy, come to meet us?”

  “No—no! I——” He started back in terror. “No, I just wondered … I wondered if I could get in for the second house——”

  “Good idea! Good idea! It’s well worth while, eh, Eddy?”

  “Damned good show,” affirmed Eddy, hiccoughing. He tried to repeat a joke that occurred during the performance and covered his failure with immoderate laughter.

  “But there’s no time to lose,” said Patrick.

  “No, I should get your seat now, old man.… There’s bound to be something left.… Here, come and see.”

  They whirled John away to the brilliantly-lit square of glass that was hung around with prices. As Christopher bent before it, the light showed the unnatural smoothness of his chin, recalling to John that he had shaved that afternoon.

  “Where’s Elizabeth and the others?” he asked Patrick in an undertone. Patrick stared at him without replying with a contemptuous grin.

  “Yes, you’re all right, old boy! Stalls left, seven and six. Forward seven and six! You’re lucky. First house was pretty near packed out, eh, Eddy?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Where are the others, Chris?” John asked desperately, handing over a ten-shilling note as if paying for information. They all reeled away from the window, John clutching a blue ticket and half a crown.

  “Here, let’s go for a drink,” said Eddy. “Damned if I want any supper. We can eat after they close.”

  “But somewhere quiet.”

  “Lord, Pat,” said Christopher with contempt, “can’t you ever forget the progs?”

  “Bugger the Proctors!” screeched Eddy, and a lot of people looked round. John noticed the commissionaire coming towards them. He was a big man with an unpleasant scarred face.

  “Are you comin’ in or goin’ out?”

  “Eh?” said Christopher, turning in genuine astonishment.

  “Because, if yer comin’ in, yer’d better keep yer mouths shut. Yer make a row and yer’ll be in the street before yer know where you are.”

  He stooped his shoulders and put his face close.

  “You mind your own damned business!” said Eddy indignantly, throwing back his head so that the weak, shaded light made deep hollows round his eyes and nostrils.

  “What’s that you say? Eh? What did yer say?”

  “I said, mind your own damned business,” repeated Eddy, deliberately and with insolence.

  “And piss off,” added Christopher, edging forward. His voice was commanding and he made no attempt to moderate it. The man gave no signs of increased anger.

  “Now you go on and get out. Go on, get out. We don’t want your sort ’ere. Get out, if you can’t be’ave.”

  John, fearing a fight, managed to slip away and in desperation gave his ticket to a uniformed girl, going into the auditorium, which was slowly filling, though still three-quarters empty. Immediately regretting this, he put his folded overcoat on his seat, and, smoothing his soft hair, returned to the foyer, hoping that the girls would have reappeared. But now there was no trace of them and the commissionaire stood talking amiably to the usherette who took the tickets. He ran out on to the dark steps and heard the hoots of cars that crawled past, the halloo-ings and clatter of the town at night. They were nowhere. Turning back to the auditorium, he felt hollow with grief, as if there were a great well of aloneness inside him that could never be filled up. The lights were going down: one by one they went out and the imprisoning darkness returned.

  He sat through the play. There was nothing else to do. When he came out the moon had risen and the railings round the little churchyard cast a grilled shadow on the grass and graves. There were huge masses of shadow, cumbrous, swallowing, but here and there façades, whole sides of streets would rise up in the pale light, their detail picked out, quietly showing their gracefulness. The wind swelled and subsided through the arches and many intricate spires. His knocking at the gate was the only sound in the street. Then the clocks began to strike a quarter to eleven.

  Apart from the fact that the fire had gone out, the room was exactly as he had left it: Christopher was not there, nor by the look of things had he been back. John relit the fire with a firelighter fetched from the servant’s cupboard, and, having washed his hands, sat down on the sofa with Christopher’s months-old American magazine to read. Surely, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he would be in by midnight. Where could they all be? The thought of the six of them laughing and enjoying themselves together caused him acute suffering as tangible as toothache. He put his head on his hands, the palms pressing the eyes, and thought how utterly tired he was of waiting. He could hear the ticking of the clock and the new flames flickering. Always he had known himself to be ineffectual, but never before had he seemed quite helpless, paralysed, outpointed. He got up and poked around the bookshelves for a book connected with all the work he had left undone, noticing as he did so the file he had bought for Christopher. He did not bother to see if it were still empty.

  The clock said five to twelve. Until ten past he sat expecting the sound of footsteps, for the gates were finally locked at midnight, but none came. He lay back and closed his eyes.

  When he awoke Christopher was walking about and the clock showed a quarter to one. The bright light bewildered him so that he had forgotten the reason he was sitting up. The expression on Christopher’s face was an angry one, and, sitting down, dropped his shoes off with a clatter.

  “Just lost eighteen bob,” he said.

  All John could think of was that he had laid a bet that he would seduce Jill and had failed.

  “Lost a bet?” he said stupidly.

  Christopher scowled. “Three hours of poker with Robin Scott and Max and that fool Patrick. My God, I wonder sometimes why we put up with that man. D’you know, the swine won eighteen bob and then started crabbing about giving me a cigarette?” He threw the stub of it into the fire. “The lousy rat.”

  Having said this with extreme vehemence, Christopher put on his slippers and went into the bedroom: in a few moments he was swearing at the top of his voice, having broken his tooth glass. John hurried in, his mind growing clearer.

  “Then you’ve been in College all night?”

  “Ever since they closed, yes. Mind, there’s a bit under there.”

  “But the girls, what happened to them?”

  “Oh, Elizabeth rushed off with her kid and Evelyn hadn’t g
ot a late pass.… I’m getting sick of Elizabeth.” Christopher slapped his belly vigorously and rubbed the front of his thighs, then put on his pyjama jacket and crawled into bed. He lay, exhaling heavily. John began to undress.

  “And what happened this afternoon?”

  “That’s right. Lord, what a day. Oh, that was all mucked up by that blasted little cousin of theirs.”

  “How was that?”

  “Oh——” Christopher stretched out his arms in weariness at having to remember it all again, his gesture being caught up in a yawn. “Oh, well, you see, Elizabeth had a couple of free seats we were going to use, she got them ages ago. Then this old bitch of an aunt gets to know that she’s got them and makes her take Gillian. Then Gillian, the silly little fool, tells Patrick, and Patrick wanted to come and bring Evelyn, so of course the whole thing turned into a family party, properly bitched up.”

  “And you didn’t get a chance to, well, pop the question?”

  “No, but I’ll tell you something, Elizabeth’s turned all standoffish again, I’ve noticed it all night. She’s gone all motherly and protective and pure over this little fool Gillian. What do you think about that? I’m getting a bit tired of it. Christ, perhaps I won’t knock it out of her when we get back to London.…” He gave a laugh and turned over on his side with a great rustling. “Well, anyway, I shan’t have to shave tomorrow. Oh, God. Put the light out, can you? I can’t be bothered.”

  For some reason this conversation gave John a sense of reprieve, and when he awoke in the morning he felt not despair, but happiness, his mood having changed overnight as the wind might swing completely round. It was only half light when he took his towel and went for a bath, and a few stars were still shining among the towers. Smoke from newly-lit fires poured from chimneys and was whipped away. Wind, warm and blustering, tore along under the overcast sky: in half an hour it would be an ordinary dull morning. But John did not see it like that; this half-light, this standing as it were on a prow coming over the edge of a new day, all seemed to represent the imminence of something new. And what could that be but Jill? The wet green grass in the quadrangle, the brooding of the cloisters, the trees with their dripping twigs, and, above all, the wind—these felt like the agents of some great force that was on his side. He felt sure that he was going to succeed. Emerging flushed from his bath, he felt sure that if once they met again, something as strong as the wind would blow away every suspicion, every unsatisfaction he had ever suffered. He could not think why he had ever doubted the fact. They had only to meet.