Jill

by Philip Larkin

  What did it matter, after all, if she was Elizabeth’s cousin? Whitbread had been suspicious of John simply because he shared rooms with Christopher; she was as he was: herself, no more. Everything which had contributed to his character had slipped away like an eroding cliff. When he discovered a letter from his sister in the College lodge asking why he had not answered her last one he felt too great a weariness to read beyond the first page. Bird-calls from the gardens soothed him as he dressed. His face watched him from the mirror.

  At midday, after a morning of coffee-drinking, he looked into the Bull and Butcher and found Eddy Makepeace sitting alone with a glass of beer at his side. He had unfolded a newspaper and was reading the racing forecasts with an attentive look on his face. As John came in he coughed and lifted his glass to his mouth.

  “Good morning,” said John.

  “How do.” Eddy returned to his paper, but John came and sat beside him, breaking open a packet of cigarettes. “Have one?” he said.

  “Ah.” Eddy produced his lighter, taking one. An item of news in the column that he was reading caught his eye and his mouth opened slightly. “Great God on a bicycle,” he commented to himself, extending the flame.

  “Good show last night.”

  “Eh? Oh, the show, yes. Yes, damned good show.”

  “Some good lines.”

  “Oh, yes, some damned good lines.” Eddy tried once more to reproduce the joke that had pleased him, and wheezed gently with laughter, in which John joined. He could see the back of Eddy’s head reflected in a mirror.

  “Where did Elizabeth get to, by the way?”

  “Eh? Oh, Elizabeth. When, d’you mean?”

  “After the show.”

  “Why, she went home. That’s right, she nipped out quite early, before ‘The King’. Don’t like people to do that,” said Eddy, wagging his head.

  “She had that other girl with her, I suppose?”

  “Who, Evelyn? Not on your life. They loathe each other. Or d’you mean that kid, that Gillian kid? Yes, she had.”

  “She’s Elizabeth’s cousin, isn’t she?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “She can’t be very old.”

  “Just left school.” Eddy changed the position of his legs and folded his newspaper away into his pocket. Then he blinked several times. “Don’t feel very well this morning,” he said.

  “Hang-over?” inquired John knowingly. Eddy started to given an incoherent and boring account of a party he had returned to on the night before. “Here, where is everybody? Is Christopher coming in this morning?”

  “I expect he’ll be along.”

  “But you ought to hear Jack tell the story. There he was, going across the lawn with a glass and bottle, when he sees the Dean coming along with a torch. What do you think the silly sod did? Lay down for cover, like playing at soldiers. Up comes the Dean and shines his torch on him—lying there, you know, with a bottle in one hand and a glass …”

  John laughed.

  “Lord, I wish I’d seen it. Here, where is everyone? Here, Charley, has Mr. Warner been in here this morning?” Eddy called.

  Charley said that he had not. Eddy drank off his beer and John bought him another.

  “And how long is she staying?” he asked as he brought them back.

  “How long is who staying?”

  “This kid—this Gillian—— What’s her second name?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her. Her mother’s convalescent or something, and she’s staying with an aunt. The kid, I mean. I wanted to go and give her a jolly-up, but Elizabeth crapped on it pretty sharp.”

  “Why, where do they live?”

  “Banbury Road way somewhere. Here!” Eddy stared at John, turning his cigarette between his fingers. It had gone out and, noticing this, he groped again for his lighter. “Here, you’re not thinking of starting anything, are you? Don’t be a silly fool. Elizabeth’d eat you.”

  “What’s it got to do with her? Anyway, I wasn’t,” laughed John nervously, the muscles of his mouth contracting as if he has tasted something sour. Remembering a favourite retort among Whitbread’s friends, he added: “You’ve got a crude mind.”

  Eddy blew out fresh smoke and drank a little beer.

  “Don’t be a silly fool,” he repeated, and John understood he meant not only that John was stupid for trying to attract Jill to him, but stupid to be attracted to her in the first place.

  “Well, damn it, what’s it got to do——”

  “Try, and find out.” Eddy looked at his watch, an expensive one: his father was an official in India. “Damn baby snatcher.” He added a comment of exceptional indecency, which made John flush and sit very still. “Hell, where is everyone?”

  As if in answer, at that moment Patrick came in, first putting his head round the door. He wore a dark overcoat and carried a walking stick, coming up to them with a foxy grin. “Who’s buying the next round?” he inquired.

  “Hallo, Pat,” said Eddy. “Three milds, that’s the order.”

  “There you are, John, you heard what the gentleman said.” Patrick hooked his stick round a chair and drew it towards him, then sat down. “Well, go on, boy! Don’t sit there as if you were stuffed.”

  John took Eddy’s outstretched glass, going to the bar.

  “And you might tell Charley to put a gin in mine,” called Patrick. John pretended not to hear. Eddy grinned.

  When he returned, they were talking about the previous night. “No, really, Chris is a shocking loser,” Patrick was saying. “We were having a hand of poker with some second-year men and Chris went down badly. And didn’t he show it. He’s just a kid, you know, when it comes to taking the rap. Are you seeing him, by the way?” he added, turning to John. “I shan’t be in for lunch. Elizabeth sent me a message for him.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it was to me really, but Christopher would do as well.” He flicked his cigarette. “Will he go and tell cousin Gillian that Elizabeth can’t meet her for tea? She’s ill or something.”

  “Like her bloody cheek!” said Eddy emphatically. “Why the hell can’t she run her own damned errands? That’s the trouble with her, she thinks nobody’s got anything better to do than run about for her all the time.”

  “Well, they aren’t on the ’phone or she’d have rung them up,” Patrick explained. “They were going to the Green Leaf. Elizabeth had lost a watch strap there and was going to fetch it.”

  “Well, there’s a chance for you,” said Eddy, grinning broadly at John, who felt what was coming like the imminence of seasickness. “Here, know the latest? This man’s got a letch on your kid cousin.”

  Patrick’s grin spread wider, and he tilted his chair back, laughing up at the ceiling, disregarding John’s amorphous denials and gestures. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” he was saying. “He’s got a crude mind. I’m not a damn baby snatcher.”

  “Well, I wish you luck,” said Patrick, his amusement dropping down at last. “Here’s your chance, then. All you’ve got to do is take it.”

  “Chance to get clean through on the rails.”

  “Strike while the iron maintains a reasonable temperature.”

  “Lord, it’s cut and dried, isn’t it? Cut and dried,” said Eddy, belching.

  They poked him in the ribs with their laughter, slapping him on alternate shoulders to keep the joke going, buying him another drink. “Here, give him a gin in it,” said Patrick again. “Give him a bit of Dutch. Go on, Charley put a gin in that last one.” And he drew a new pound note from his wallet with his first two fingers.

  “Now drink it down,” said Eddy, bearing it brimful back.

  “You are a couple of—— Look here, don’t play the fool,” said John indignantly. “I never said anything——”

  “Lord, the man was giving her the once-over at tea yesterday all right. Eh, Pat?” Eddy winked.

  “Foam dripping from his jaws,” nodded Patrick. “Slavering at the chops.” Conf
ronted by their two false faces, John was without words. “There you see, he knows what we’re talking about all right. Well, I’m damned. And here’s the chance of a lifetime served up on a golden bloody plate. Now what you want to do——”

  “Have you got the doings?” interrupted Eddy, leaning his bulging eyes forward. “That’s what you’d better think about.”

  “Yes, you must get it all clear in your mind,” said Patrick, also leaning forward, with his stick between his knees. One on each side of him, John cautiously responded to the rhythm of their laughter, for his true feelings had shrunk away and he had seen them safely locked up. “Whose room can I have,” he laughed.

  “You can have mine,” said Eddy. “With pleasure, old man, and here, listen, here’s an inside tip—let her get in first, there’s a sod of a bump near the wall.”

  “Now let’s get it all straight,” said Patrick, wagging his right forfinger in the air before them. “What you do is call for her——”

  “No, damn it, Pat, that’s no good; surely he picks her up at the Green Leaf where she can’t get away. What he does is come along and say: ‘Sorry, Elizabeth unavoidably detained but here’s unworthy self in her place——’”

  “All right, then. Then at tea you put in the groundwork. Then after that suggest walking round to see Eddy——”

  “Say you’ve left your cigar-piercer on my grand piano,” cackled Eddy, scratching himself.

  “And then you can get to work—sport the oak—put the black-out up——”

  They were standing by this time, buttoning up their overcoats, bending over him to pat him on the shoulder again. “You’ll feel like a million dollars tonight,” Eddy assured him. Their breath clouding the cold air, their feet clattering on the paving stones, they proceeded up the yard towards the gentlemen’s lavatory, over which stood a leafless tree.

  He seriously could not connect what they said with any desire of his own, yet he knew it was a chance for all that, a chance like a piece of bread thrown among a weaving crowd of gulls and one sleek-headed, quick-beaked bird swooping it off with a slight deflection from its course. And he must be that bird, because the news was out, the hunt was up. It was incredible to him that the secret he had guarded should be parted in fifteen minutes between Eddy and Patrick, who in their turn would reveal it to Christopher and Elizabeth, from whom it would fork out in a delta of casual acquaintances. The news was screaming silently across the heavens, he realized with a feeling of panic, and he must reach Jill before it did. For this reason he must take the chance. The door to the different world had been left half ajar and swiftly, lightly, coolly, calmly, he must slip through it and be for ever safe.

  A flower-seller offered him a flower on his way back, but he pretended not to see.

  Yet, if Christopher had been in to luncheon, John would probably have passed the message on out of sheer servility. But he was not and John ate his curried rice with that resigned queasiness he always felt when external circumstances determined his actions for him. Whitbread, bitterly complaining, left most of his meal: it was the first he had not finished since coming into residence.

  As he lay down on the sofa to wait until the time came for him to go out, the fire smothered under a load of fresh coal, he pulled his writing pad on to his lap, thinking it was time he sent his long-overdue letter to Mr. Crouch. “Dear Mr. Crouch,” he wrote, “I am sorry I haven’t written to you since I arrived, but I have had a good deal to do.” The two lies lay quietly on the page waiting for him to add to them, but he could not. Crouch and the world of his boyhood lay tidily behind him: all the sense of continuity that made days, weeks, months, slip away like the perspective of a street, had broken up, and all seemed a crowd of gulls, circling, crying, re-circling, suspended, between the sky and the shore.

  He was dreading this afternoon of definite action like a visit to the dentist’s. The drink he had had still confused his mind. It was strange, everywhere there were young men like himself planning their afternoons, their evenings, all they would do now and for ever more: no one felt this lapsing, lifting, turning and returning motion like a crowd of gulls. Knowing their desires they went straight for them. And although he knew his, going straight for them was like firing a gun in a dream: things locked and jammed, every possible bewildering mistake interfered.

  When it was time for him to set out he tore the sheet of notepaper from the pad and burnt it before leaving the room. He was starting early because he dare not run the risk of missing her, and he had to slow down his nervous steps deliberately. The wind could hold off the rain no longer: drops fell, then a fine unified rain came down, whole blocks of it blowing about like the sudden turning of swallows. It swept against windows, blew horizontally up the street, diagonally across the lawns; from every tree, bush and wall of ivy there came a faint hissing. The streets began to reflect the grey sky. Once more the old buildings dripped. And John, rejecting two half-formed inclinations—one to walk down to the river and the other to walk anywhere as long as it was far away—stood for three minutes to shelter on the steps of All Saints’ Church by the ’bus stop, looking at the lights in the upper windows of the shops opposite.

  He wished he was rich enough to give a party, a party for Jill, with the furniture pushed back, a white cloth on the table and barrels and clean glasses making the room like a bar. A fire of logs roared. There was gin the colour of morning mist and whisky like fairy gold. He wore a ten-guinea suit and smoked with an amber cigarette-holder. Everyone came: Christopher hung his pork-pie hat on a stag’s antler, cracking jokes; John punohed Eddy in the ribs and raced him through the first pint; danced with Elizabeth and felt her breasts pushed against him. Bottles were recorked and sent floating down the river with messages inside them. The radiogram played without being attended to. And the dancers became fewer, one by one they dropped out, till in the end only Jill stood where she had stood all the evening, dressed in white, in a corner, turning and turning one tiny unemptied glass in her two hands.

  Descending the steps with two discontented skips, he pushed through the people, elaborating and economizing the story, so intent on it that even when Jill herself came out of a shop ten yards away his stride carried him up to her before he realized she was there.

  His surprise articulated itself into a greeting and she looked round quickly, her face wary and without expectancy. “Oh, hello!” She just about recognized him. Dressed in a fawn raincoat of military cut (with a belt and flaps to the pocket) she wrinkled her nose at the rain and held an umbrella ready for opening with both hands, a trifle gingerly. “Gosh, isn’t the weather foul,” she said, with a kind of undirected petulance.

  Slowly, exasperatingly slowly, he thought of something to say:

  “What have you been buying?”

  “Christmas cards.” Her voice was surprised. “This is a good place.”

  “Is it?” He continued looking at her. “Isn’t it—rather early, isn’t it?”

  She instantly checked a movement to look at her wrist watch, answering:

  “Well, it’s only a month till Christmas.”

  “Is that all.” He laughed. “Look, as a matter of fact I was looking for you. Elizabeth is ill or something. She can’t come.”

  “Ill, is she? Oh, dear. What, really ill?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so—she just sent a message saying she was sorry——”

  “She did have a headache last night, I remember.… Thank you very much for telling me.”

  John looked at her intently, collecting the half-dozen shuddering words together:

  “Will you have tea with me?”

  “Oh——” She was caught off her balance, almost literally, for she took a step down on to the pavement away from him. “Oh, I don’t think I will, thanks. I must go back if Elizabeth’s not well.”

  “Oh, do. It’s only half-past three.” Beyond her head he could see a clock showing twenty to four. Now it was happening and her real quick body was edging away from him, the precariousnes
s of it all made him speak urgently. In theory he wanted to take hold of her.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’d better, thanks. Thanks very much all the same. I’d better go back.”

  He took a step after her. “This the way you’re going?”

  “Yes.…” She gave him a doubtful look. “I’ve got another errand.”

  It did not seem bad-mannered to fall in beside her as she set off up the street again, the way he had come, because there was nothing else to do short of the impossibility of leaving her there and then. She had opened her brown, small-sized umbrella and the spread of it kept him a foot or so from her. Her Wellingtons made a lolloping sound as she walked. Now that he was not talking, he had less excuse to look at her, but when he did his admiration was unhindered; he blushed quickly as if on the point of tears. She raised her left hand and drew back a wet strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear.

  “This is my shop. I want some braid.”

  He followed her through the swing doors, to the thick carpets, hanging dresses and the stacked-up material that filled the air with silence. There was a smell of cloth. A young girl dressed in black, with a white collar, came to serve her; they were of the same age and height and John compared them as he stood back by a table of handbags and leather belts. The girl’s mouth fell open as she listened, and she went to a drawer behind the counter: Jill followed, twisting the umbrella nervously. Because of her fair hair and her pale raincoat contrasting with the dark dresses of all the assistants, the light seemed to be drawn down to her, to single her out. The girl stretched her hands apart and between them was bright brick-red braid. Jill bent forward, touched it: John heard her ask a question. It amused him to see her finger the stuff so seriously. Then lengths of it were carelessly stretched against the brass yard-measurement at the edge of the counter, snipped off and wrapped in a twist of brown paper. In the meantime she paid the bill and dropped her umbrella. The presence of John standing in the front of the shop with his shabby blue overcoat and feet planted apart, seemed to unsettle her.