“Are you finished? What about some tea now?”
“No, I must go, I must catch a ’bus.”
“Where?”
“Round the corner.”
This was very near and John was suddenly filled with the dread of losing her. “Don’t go,” he said desperately.
“What?”
“I wanted to say … It’s really the strangest thing——”
A perambulator and some women parted them, and when they rejoined the edge of her open umbrella tapped him on the head twice.
“Before I met you—— You remember, the first time I asked you if we hadn’t met before——”
“Well, we hadn’t, surely——”
“No, but we did. And in a way we had. Excuse me.” They pushed through a gossiping crowd on the street corner. “I knew you, you see I knew you quite well——”
“What?” An immense Air Force transport lorry and trailer was taking the corner and every interstice of silence was filled with a complaining din. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite——”
“I mean, your face was familiar to me.” John looked at her, longing for some other medium than speech. “Long before I saw you I knew who you were——”
“Do you mean Elizabeth had——”
“What? I mean, I beg——”
“Had Elizabeth——”
“No—I mean, it’s hard to explain.” They looked all ways, crossing the road to the ’bus stop, staring round as if bewildered. “It seemed I knew you—I knew your name was Jill——”
“It’s not Jill!” During a lull in the traffic her voice rang out perhaps more sharply than she had intended, and she turned, for the first time a laugh broke over her face, drawing back her mouth, heightening her savage cheekbones. “I’m sorry, that’s just a thing with me. I told you yesterday—oh, no, you weren’t there. No, I won’t be called anything but Gillian, please.… But do go on. I feel I vaguely interrupted you.”
“It all sounds so silly—you see, I had a letter from my sister,” John was beginning when a big red ’bus came splashing up, causing the little crowd to stir and tighten. “A letter came,” he repeated as they moved. “Look, I must tell you all this properly. Come and have tea with me tomorrow.”
“I must go now. Good-bye.”
“Will you come and have tea with me tomorrow?”
“Yes, all right, good-bye.”
“Will you come about four?”
“What? Yes, all right.” She was on the step and did not look back. “Good-bye.”
He stood back, watching the ’bus load up and move away, dazzled by the sudden pyrotechnical ending to their meeting and her promise. He was so overcome he walked straight home, the noise and the wind and the hiss of tyres on the road bearing him up like martial music, walked home and sat in his empty room. But almost immediately he got up and went out again, too excited to sit still. He could not believe that she had given her word to come and see him. It was as if he had been walking at a brick wall, knowing it to be brick and impenetrable, and had suddenly found that he was wrong, finding that he could go straight through it, that it was only a pattern of light. He was through it! An almost physical sense of emergence possessed him.
Without knowing where he was going he made his way to the canal, that stands through the town nearly unnoticed past coal-yards, railway sidings, the backs of houses and gardens. He had never walked by it before, and its novelty coincided with his unfamiliar mood. The wet gravel stained his shoes. The rain had stopped, and the water was quite still, disfigured at times by scum, weed and rotten wood, all drifted to a standstill. A brightly painted coal barge was moored to a wharf on the other bank: on his side there was a hedge dividing him from allotments and the railway lines. The hedge was wet, smelling of damp wood and leaves, but the nettles under it were dry and soft-looking, with occasionally a single bead of water lodged between leaf and stem. A packet of chips lay half hidden in the ditch.
From this side, the west, the sun began to struggle through, a yellow light making every twig glisten. The air seemed to freshen at once and the only sound was the squelching of his shoes; ducks swam cautiously away from him and farther on a single swan drifted sulkily on the water. The dropped head, the neck’s magnificent curve and the webbed feet giving every now and then a stroke backwards expressed disdain and scornfulness. Because of the nearness of the coal yards and the telephone wires and dirty water, he did not think it beautiful at first. But something about it fascinated him. And as he watched, an express train hurtled past twenty yards off on the shining rails, and the long stretch of coaches racing away awakened nothing like regret in him, as they once would. He was glad to see them go; glad, simply, to be where he was, and to see them go.
Out of the fullness of his heart he invited Whitbread round for some beer when they had finished dinner in the half-empty hall (it was a meatless night, and many members of the College distrusted the chef’s experiments).
“Eh, that’s nice of you,” said Whitbread, clasping his own gown near each shoulder as they stood up. “If you don’t mind, though, I prefer coffee.”
“Coffee, then,” said John, laughing. They walked out together: the Head Scout watched them distantly.
Whitbread had never been in John’s rooms before and looked about him with interest, rubbing his hands before the fire and appraising everything. “Ay! this could be a real nice room. Expensive in the old days, I reckon. You wouldn’t have had this room in the old days.”
“No, I suppose not.” John laid out cups and saucers. “There’s having to share——”
“That’s a drawback, I know.” His eyes fell upon the crockery, and he made a pleased noise, changing the subject. “That’s a nice pattern. Yes, I like that. Yours, is it, or——?”
“It’s mine all right. Chris hasn’t got any.”
“Hasn’t he? What does he do, then?”
“Uses mine,” said John, with a grin, but also with a very slight trace of embarrassment.
Whitbread looked deeply indignant. “Eh, I wouldn’t stand for that; no, I wouldn’t!” he exclaimed. “Eh, I think that’s going a bit far! D’you mean to say he just—— Eh, I wouldn’t stand for that, not for a moment!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said John lightly. This was one of the moments when the thought of Jill came over him with a little ripple of renewed pleasure. “It doesn’t matter at all. Sugar?”
“Ay, if you can spare it.” He looked at John with honest, covetous eyes. “How are you off?”
“Go on, take what you like.”
He held the sugar bowl out to Whitbread, liking him for his quaint politeness, which was so different from Eddy’s “Where’s the sugar, Chris, you mean hound?”
Whitbread took four lumps.
“Here,” he said, leaning forward confidentially, stirring his coffee. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but have you a lock on your cupboard?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“No, nor have I. I’m thinking of having one put on. There’s thieves in this college.”
“Thieves?”
“Ay, thieves. Only t’other day I lost a cake from my room, only a third eaten. A lovely cake it was, too—from home. That’s no joke. To my mind, a lot of these fellows are pretty light-fingered, for all their cash.”
He slept at last: and woke at last in the morning, lying for perhaps five seconds wondering what there was to remember until he remembered it. It was as if the world lay silent as an orchestra under the conductor’s outstretched arms. Then the moment of remembrance set every nerve in his body trembling, as a movement by the conductor might send a hundred bows to work. For one curious transient second he thought he knew how a bride feels on the morning of her wedding.
He watched Christopher’s face very carefully as they got up. If Eddy and Patrick had spread the ribald news, he would sooner spend the day twenty miles away. But Christopher made no reference that could be construed in any way as bearing on Jill’s promised visit. H
e had certainly spent the night before with Eddy, but all he said was, sitting semi-disconsolately in his bath robe, with a towel around his shoulders as if he was at the barber’s, that they had met a very interesting man who repaired organs. So John dressed in his best clothes—his suit, that is, his bow, and a clean shirt. He put some oil on his hair to help part it, and immediately disliked the effect, so undressed and went to wash his head in the showers.
It was Saturday once more, busy, yet full of pleasure. The town was as gay as a landlocked swimming pool. Ancient buildings lay petted in the sun: roofs where the sun had not yet reached were white with frost. As John came out of the College at about ten o’clock to buy food for tea, it seemed impossible on such a day that anyone should be short of five minutes or five pounds, or be unable by entering the next café to find handfuls of his best friends. He inspected the crowded shops. He bought here and there a number of fruit tarts, a jam roll and a sponge cake filled with jam, and a fruit cake. He carried them most carefully and watched the clean new bags for any stain that would show that the jam was crawling out. As soon as he could, he took them back to his rooms and arranged them on plates. The daily pint of milk had just arrived and he set that with them at the back of the cupboard.
At this point he noticed that his hair since washing had become far too fluffy, and he spent some time in front of the bedroom mirror with a comb and hair oil, smearing drop after drop along the teeth of the comb in an effort to distribute it evenly. This made it look better, but he still was not satisfied, though there was nothing else he could do. He went out a second time to look for radishes and lettuces, for he had noticed them in the shops and it occurred to him that they would contrast pleasantly with all the sweet things he had just bought.
The market was the best place to buy them, a stone-paved maze of semi-permanent stalls covered with a glass roof right in the centre of the town. John had already visited it several times before: he had discovered that to step into it from the streets outside was to enter an unexpectedly different world, a world he found he liked. It smelt of chrysanthemums and vegetables; all around the butchers’ shops sawdust was scattered on the stone flags, naked electric bulbs shone on boxes of fruit, and always pools of water were slowly draining and drying away as if the place was sluiced down with a hosepipe every hour or so. At this time of the day there were lines of women queueing for meat, dressed in dull clothes and carrying baskets. They straddled round as they stood, talking patiently, exchanging traditional unquestioned comments on things that affected their daily lives. As he slipped past them he heard them say things their parents must have said, things that women like them said in every country, and looking at their fat or withered faces, their hair tucked into old hats, and the worn purses in their hands, they seemed to him the oldest thing in the city he had seen.
John, because of experience at home, could choose lettuces with sound fresh hearts, and radishes that were not fibrous; the newspaper parcel he carried away was light and damp. For a moment, attracted by the large vases of flowers, he was tempted to buy a dozen blooms to decorate the room, but turned aside instead to a tobacconist’s, where he selected a packet of semi-expensive cigarettes and was momentarily alarmed at the price of them. As he left the shop he noticed from his reflection in the window that his hair was just breaking prettily out of place, half-way between wildness and precision, and this pleased him.
When he he had hidden his purchases away in the cupboard and washed his hands, it was time for lunch. He was too nervous to eat and almost immediately after leaving Hall began to feel hunger.
He considered his nervousness gravely as he walked round the gardens in this suspension of time before two o’clock. It seemed to have no significance.
Christopher was lazily collecting his football clothes, for a match had been arranged for the College XV that afternoon and this would take him out of the way—so propitiously that John suspected himself of having known the fact beforehand without consciously recognizing it. Smoking a cigarette, Christopher packed up his little case full of jerseys, shorts and a towel and announced his intention of borrowing Semple’s bike for the afternoon. Since Semple had gone down, his bicycle had lain unused in the cycle sheds until Christopher had discovered it: he had since bought a padlock to keep it locked.
“Who are you playing?” John asked idly.
“An R.A.F. crowd.”
He glanced at John, making no comment on his appearance, and though John was relieved, a sense of depression also overtook him at the thought of how little he could alter even his outward semblance. When he was alone, he studied himself in the mirror, and after careful thought removed the fountain pen from his breast pocket, tucking a clean handkerchief there instead. Then he went to the bedroom to find Christopher’s nail scissors, and trimmed where his eyebrows met in the middle. His own nails he had thoroughly brushed that morning.
Now it was time to consider the food. The lettuce should be washed, he decided, turning it about on its dirty newspaper, and filled the crested washbowl for the purpose. Plunging it in, he pulled off the outside leaves one by one, shaking them and putting them on his towel, which he spread across the bed. But once he began to pull it to pieces, it seemed to grow larger, it was enormous, far too big for two. Here was enough for a hutchful of rabbits. In the end he threw away all but the centre, the succulent pale green heart: this he shook in a towel, as he had seen his mother do, to drain it.
The radishes should have been brushed, but he had to be content with rubbing the mud off by hand and snipping off the tails. He put them all in a saucer, ate two, and immediately was afflicted with a kind of nervous hiccups, which lasted while he was making fumbling attempts to cut thin bread and butter. Time and time again the knife came through with only half a slice wilting down on to the plate, and big buttery crumbs falling out of the middle. The failures he ate, and in time the hiccups stopped. When he had a successful plateful, he bundled the depleted bread and butter back into the cupboard.
He came aware that the room was not very tidy, and he put the food on to a side table while he rearranged what was lying about. A small phalanx of empty bottles belonging to Christopher he straightened, but did not remove, as he thought they might look impressive: the wine bottles he put at the front with their labels showing. He erected the books on the shelves. The gowns he hung up, also within sight, emptied the ashtrays, plumped the cushions and straightened the things on the desk. The hairy tablecloth was covered in crumbs and, failing to brush them off with his hands, he took it off bodily and gave it a shake. At each flap several loose sheets of notes went sailing into the hearth.
There were several improvements he could still make, he thought, and he set about improving the general effect rather than correcting isolated details. Christopher’s battered, tape-bound, but expensive and athletic-looking racquet he laid at a careless diagonal on the window seat. The wine list Christopher had stolen from one of the restaurants he propped up in a more prominent position on the mantelshelf. On the table he placed the two most scholarly books he had out at the moment from the College library and beside them a half-finished sheet of notes in his own writing, annotated and underlined in the way he had learnt from Mr. Crouch. The fire he stoked skilfully so that in about an hour there would be a bright comforting blaze. Then he shut his eyes, opened them, and tried to decide if the result impressed him in any definite way. It did not, but then perhaps he knew it too well.
When he had laid a tablecloth and the food, cups and saucers and knives on a small occasional table by the sofa, the whole looked daintier than he had imagined possible, and even appetizing, though he did not by this time feel hungry. But there was no salt. He had forgotten about this, clutching the salt-cellar in a desperate way, remembering that the kitchen was shut. There was nothing for it but to go out and buy a packet from the nearest grocer; it was far too large and cost more than seemed right, but he did not argue, recalling irrelevantly the gabelle—one of the causes of the French Revolution
.
And when he got back, panting, the afternoon post had come. There was nothing for him, and at this moment, with the hands of the College clock pointing at twenty to four, a definite unease began swerving about his bowels. She was going to come. Up till then he had not believed she would, or he could not have gone about the preparations in such a methodical way. All his actions had sprung from a kind of theoretical assumption, as a farmer might prepare against the winter, and he had been placidly expecting a note from her to say that she was very sorry, but the visit was impossible. Now this had not happened, and was not going to happen. In a half-hour she would probably be here. The last barrier had been taken away.
Salt in hand, he walked diffidently back round the cloisters, and he found the room looking so different because of his scene-shifting that it looked unfriendly, and a small hysteria seized him. He must get away before she came. He would leave a note pinned to the door. The idea of her standing there, taking her coat off, expecting to be entertained, sent him shuddering to the window to see if there were any signs of her. There were not. He could sport the oak and slip out the back way, through the gardens, and run no risk of meeting her. That was what he would do.
But with an effort of will he filled the salt-cellar, resigning himself to whatever should happen. For, after all, he did want her to come, he knew he did. Whatever happened, they would be together; even if they sat in miserable silence, out of this single circumstance some virtue could be distilled. Even the fact of meeting would be a point that with the passage of time might spread out fanwise behind her into a new country, somewhere free of himself. Though he knew he had been stupid in aiming dumbly in this direction with no regard for his incapacity to control any situation that might arise through doing so, he was still not really sorry. In a small outlandish way he was proud, seeing it as an act of bravery, like a soldier without weapons charging a machine-gun emplacement.
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