Jill

by Philip Larkin

  John did not reply, and presently Mr. Crouch asked what else he had done, apart from working. The answers he received were not definite. John did not seem to have joined any societies or made any friends, and to be turning the conversation different ways in order to avoid admitting this. Mr. Crouch studied his face across the artificial flowers. After a time he said:

  “Of course, I expect you’re only just beginning to find your feet here. It’s a slow business.” He lit a cigarette in a preoccupied manner. “But if I might be so bold as to give you a bit of advice—and it may be the last bit for some time, if not for always—I would advise you to get out of the idea that the only thing that matters here is work.”

  John nodded vaguely.

  “That isn’t so at all. A very tiny percentage—very tiny—of the people up at the moment will become dons of one kind or another. But unless you’re thinking of that—and if you are, remember the competition is very keen, because they’re very, very plush-lined jobs—you must look at your time here from the point of view of what is going to happen to you when you leave.” He settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “You can look at this place as a big railway terminus. Thousands of people. Trains starting in every direction. What you’ve got to decide is, where are you going? And having decided, get in with your fellow passengers. They’ll be useful to you. I dare say it sounds a very well-worn piece of cynicism to you when I say you can get a better job for ten minutes’ social climbing than from ten years’ hard work.”

  John shrugged his shoulders.

  “Unfortunately that is how things are. What you must remember is that in normal times you find here a couple of thousand of the people who are going to be at the top of things in twenty years’ time—or perhaps less. You are privileged to knock about with them while you’re up here on more or less the same social footing—make the most of it. The more contacts you can get, the better. That’s why I should advise you to join plenty of clubs, societies and what-not, even if you despise them or feel out of it there. You can’t afford to despise them—and you can’t afford to go through life feeling out of it. For better or for worse, you’re in the swim now, for three years. Whether or not you stay in the swim depends entirely on how far you take your chances up here.”

  John nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “I see what you mean.”

  “So don’t become too much of a cloistered monk,” said Mr. Crouch, as they rose to go. “It doesn’t pay. And talking of paying …” He leered round for the waiter.

  He believed he had given the boy helpful advice.

  When they were outside, John said:

  “But what will happen to the school now?”

  “The school?” Mr. Crouch held his gloves in his right hand and smacked them against his left. “That I can’t say. In any case, I was leaving at Christmas.”

  “Were you really, sir? Why?”

  “I am going to join the Royal Air Force in some capacity or other.” Mr. Crouch’s face split into a smile at John’s incredulous look, and his utterance grew more precise and formal. “I had pretty well decided, and this business has made it certain.”

  “Will they take you?”

  “Perhaps not in any very lethal arm of the service. I may be able to get into the educational side of things. Does it seem so very surprising to you?”

  “Well, yes, sir, it does rather.”

  “I don’t think it is.” Mr. Crouch shuffled quickly along, glancing through the gates of the various colleges they passed, nearly treading on a cat. “A record of war service will be very useful in gaining employment when peace is declared, and it will look better to have volunteered than to have been called up.”

  John had grown depressed when they parted about the middle of the afternoon. He walked back to his rooms in a bitter mood. There was a cold humidity in the air: the streets were wet though no rain had fallen that day. He felt that he had failed to conceal the fact from Mr. Crouch that he was making a mess of things, that he had broken the bargain that they had tacitly contracted. The advice (which Mr. Crouch had stressed on parting) seemed reasonable and well meant, but by some strange impotence of his own it was rendered entirely irrelevant. Everything seemed wrong.

  He boiled the kettle and made himself some tea. Any self-reproaching or self-promises were out of the question now: he had fought himself to a standstill.

  After doing the black-out, he went on no particular impulse of friendliness up to Whitbread’s room. It was empty and the fire had not been lit. John remembered seeing Whitbread at breakfast wearing, the academic dress necessary for taking an examination. One of the question papers lay on the table: John glanced through it. It was meaningless to him. The realization that Whitbread was taking an examination when his own tutor apparently thought so little of him that the matter had not even been mentioned made him peculiarly angry. He opened the cupboard door, and, taking out the jam pot, put a large spoonful of jam on each of the open books lying on the desk. Then he snapped them shut. The rest of the jam he ladled on to the back of the fire, scraping out the pot thoroughly and licking the spoon. There was a nearly new pat of butter in the cupboard, too, and this he unwrapped from its paper and cut in half, putting each half into the toes of Whitbread’s slippers. Then he filled the pockets of the jackets hanging in the bedroom with sugar and tea. In one of them there was a pound note with a slip of paper bearing its number pinned to it, and he put that in his own pocket book. As an afterthought, he poured Whitbread’s milk into the coal scuttle and lit the fire.

  A great cheerfulness came over him now and he sauntered out through the cloisters into the dark. There was a letter from his parents in the Lodge, but he did not even trouble to pick it up. When six o’clock struck, he went to the nearest public house and sat alone in the bar, the first customer of the evening. The landlady polished a glass or two behind the counter, humming a tune, then went into the back room. John drank steadily. The beer tasted so unpleasant that he asked a little timidly for whisky, and sipped it undiluted. This made him thirsty and his next order was for beer to cool his throat: not till after several swallows did he notice that he could no longer taste it. On this condition it seemed quite nice, and he drank it swiftly. Then he bought a packet of cigarettes and smoked, lighting one from the other.

  He wondered in what exact spot at that exact time Jill was. He had not seen her at all since returning from Huddlesford, though he gathered that she was back in Oxford. The thought was at first quite theoretical and evoked nothing. He lingered over her memory, remembering her as a false light he had stopped following through strength of will. How right he had been. Then he began to reconstruct her face, as one might restring a set of beads together, until it rose in his mind like an apparition over a cauldron. He ordered more to drink. The clock ticked cheerfully, the bar filled up with men talking in low, serious voices, and all the struggle in him had sunk down out of sight. He stared at the fire and at the mirror and at his own glass.

  But the time! He was horrified to see that it was half-past seven. He jumped up so suddenly he knocked his glass on to the floor, where it smashed. Everyone looked round as the landlady came out from behind the bar to sweep up the bits, and John tried to pay for the damage. He got her to accept the shilling he was holding. Crimson, he hurried out of the place, banging his shoulder on the doorpost, thinking furiously that they must think he was drunk, which he wasn’t.

  The darkness was appalling after the bright room. He bumped into three people and scratched his bare hand on some railings, so that he cursed out loud. This made him chuckle. In the cold air he became conscious of a slight dizziness.

  Somewhere a clock chimed the half-hour and this recalled him to his fear that he would be too late to get into Hall for dinner. Nevertheless, he hurried back to the College and found his gown. From the kitchens came a warm breath of food and there was a subdued chattering from the Hall itself.

  As he expected, the steward would not admit him.

  “No, sir, you�
��re too late, sir.”

  John was much too afraid of him to argue, and, blushing deeply, walked away again, muttering some excuse about having been delayed. Hurrying, the cold air and the cigarettes all made him cough, and he coughed till he thought he would be sick, slipping off his gown as he walked. When he got back to his room he found he had left the light on. There was an open note lying on the table addressed to Christopher, and he began to read it, squatting in front of the fire and shielding his face from the heat. It ran:

  Dear Chris, I suppose it will be all right if I bring Gillian tonight? It’s her last evening here and I’ve got saddled with her as usual—and Eddy said vaguely that he was amalgamating with someone who was holding a kind of social with sandwiches—I mean do you think I could leave her there, somewhere people won’t be too drunk. I’m afraid we shall have to leave early, too, but I do want to come. Can you ring me up between four and five? …

  There were a few lines more, but he did not bother to read them, scratching his head and reading the first part again. The page trembled as he held it. Then he got to his feet and leaned against the fireplace, his head against his wrists, then he lifted his head and stared at his own reflected eyes. His face had gone very pale. Folding the note up, he threw it back on to the table, and walked up to the door and back several times. He wiped his hands on his trousers. The clock on the mantelpiece had stopped at twenty to five.

  Pushing back his hair, he made his way through the darkness back to the Buttery.

  “I wanted two bottles of sherry,” he said, looking confusedly at the wine list. “That kind,” he pointed out, indicating the most expensive. The steward took a key from a nail and fetched them, wiping each bottle carefully with a duster when he brought them back. “Will you sign for them, please, sir,” he said. John wrote his name awkwardly on a slip of paper printed for the purpose, then went back with the bottles towards his own room. Half-way there he dropped one and it smashed instantly on the flagstones: he hesitated a moment, then hurried on, carrying the remaining bottle with both hands.

  When he set it down it glowed in the light like a column of amber: the label was spotted with age. He did his hair in the bedroom, then put on his overcoat again, turned up the collar, and, picking up the bottle, made for the door. There he paused. He put the bottle back on the table and going to a drawer pulled out the folder that held all he had written about Jill. He lit a cigarette, leant against the mantelpiece, and turned the pages over one by one, slowly, quickly.

  Awful at breakfast this morning. We were just starting the porridge when I remarked that it was significant that both schools and prisons began their meals the same way—with skilly—when old B. was passing and heard. “I don’t think that’s a nice thing to say,” she said, so mild and pained that I really felt it wasn’t, and was quite deflated. Odd.…

  And:

  I mean I know things will get worse, but I don’t mind because they’ll get better and better, too. I wouldn’t go back, not for millions.

  With a sudden shrugging movement he pitched the handful of written sheets into the fire, where they burst alight. He watched them a moment. Then he went out, slipping the sherry bottle into his pocket and leaving the light on and his cigarette burning on the mantelpiece where he had laid it.

  As he walked through the archway he trod on broken glass and wondered what it was.

  It was so cold outside that he went into a public house and asked for whisky. They only had gin, which he swallowed at a gulp. It had no perceptible effect on the coldness of his hands, so at the next bar he asked for whisky again and this time got it, though he thought as he drank it down that he would have done better to stick to gin. He then asked for a pint of beer to quench his thirst.

  Eddy’s college was at the other end of the town, some five minutes’ walk, and the sag of the heavy bottle was making his left shoulder ache. There was a trampling of soldiers’ boots in the darkness: then enormous, minatory, the bell from Eddy’s college tolled the quarter-hour, filling every crevice of the night. A very fine rain had begun to fall. Alarmed by the huge noise of the bell, he stood irresolutely at the gates looking in, seeing a little light from the Lodge, and the porter in a bowler hat. Two young men came out, and he stepped aside to let them pass. Then he looked in again. There were bicycles leaning against the wall.

  This was the very peak of indecision. Somewhere in that vast ramble of buildings was Jill, unattended, most likely bored, waiting to be rescued and taken away. He had his bottle as a passport, yet he dare not go in. Elizabeth’s note had sent him staggering back into his old longings: the realization of another last chance gripped him, making him long to act. He forced himself towards the event, towards the last chance he would ever have. Yet he dared not go in. He was afraid that he would be turned out, or that he would find her happy with someone else. He had no idea of what he would do, only that he wanted to be with her. Oh, Jill, he thought despairingly, shivering. He longed for her so intensely that surely she could feel his longing. He put his forehead against the wall: his misery was imprisoned in him and he was imprisoned in his misery.

  There was an alehouse over the road. Perhaps it would be better to wait till they had got warmed up, so that they wouldn’t be so likely to resent his presence. And he need not actually go in for another three-quarters of an hour, till nine, when the gates were shut. He would let them get started first.

  The landlord looked at him suspiciously as he came up to the bar and asked for a pint.

  “Are you eighteen?”

  John blinked: he had to collect the words in his brain to answer.

  “I am eighteen. I am a member of the University.”

  The man turned away, saying something that John could not catch, and drew the beer. To cover his embarrassment John lit a cigarette at the tiny gas jet that burnt in one corner of the room, looking round him. It was an old-fashioned place, with sawdust on the floor and ornamental casks labelled brandy rum and gin along the shelves. At a table a party of workmen were playing dominoes and the landlord leant over to watch them, drinking occasionally at a pint.

  “’Arold, ’Arold,” he interjected once, “is that the best you can do?”

  But if he left it too late, Jill might go home. He remembered in the note that Elizabeth had said they were going to leave early, and in any case they had to be out of the College at some time, probably half-past nine or ten. He would have to act quickly if he was going to do any good. He took the burning cigarette from his mouth and dropped it by accident on to the floor, where he abandoned it after a slight preliminary groping. While he stood at the counter, a ragged man picked it up, pinched it out, and put it behind his ear. He was sitting by John’s seat when the latter returned with another pint to drink.

  “Just finished my day’s work, locking the gates of the cemetery,” he said to John affably. “Stop ’em all gettin’ out. Well, ’ere’s more lead in yer pencil.” He finished off his half-pint, wiping his mouth with relish. John looked nervously at him, noticing that he had a glass eye. The man lit John’s discarded cigarette at the gas jet and broke into confidential speech.

  “Ah, I got a marble at Dunkirk. Yer know what I mean, don’t yer?” He tapped his eye. “I was there all right. Ah, I got it there. A wonder I’m ’ere to say so.”

  He began talking so quickly and so intimately that John could not understand all he said, except that he gathered that he was telling the story of his Army life. At one point he took out a great bundle of papers, tattered military forms and certificates pinned together, and spread them on the table. He gave John first one, then another. John realized he was begging.

  “’Ere, sir, perhaps you can give me an ’and. I ain’t no beggar. I ’ad a trade, same as anyone, I ’ad a skilled trade. I’ll tell you what it was, it was carpentry, that’s what it was. Now won’t you give me an ’and, sir, I ain’t no blasted moocher, I was at Dunkirk. I’m a discharged ex-Serviceman, and they won’t give me no work or pension. Don’t you think I ain�
�t tried for work, I ain’t work-shy, mister. Ha, ha, ha! I tried. I’ve stood two, three—four hours I’ve stood outside that damn Labour Exchange. It ain’t right, I tell yer. Won’t you give me an ’and, sir. I was at Dunkirk, I ain’t ’ad an easy time like you ’ave, sir. I ain’t a young fellow like you any more. They gets yer in the Army, mucks yer up, and then says you ain’t no good to them. God’s truth you ain’t: you ain’t no damn good to nobody.”

  John wished he would go, wished so heartily that he gave him half a crown and looked away. The man jumped up and departed as if he had been sent on an errand. The door banged behind him and John covered his face with his hands. As he did so, the circular movement in his head, that was kept at bay as long as he held his eyes open, rushed in upon him. In the darkness he felt as if his chair were sinking slowly sideways to the left. He uncovered his face and the room slowly pulled itself upright, then started to tug at his eyes, wanting to start moving round to the left. It was painful to struggle against this, and he closed his eyes again. Once more his chair began to sink sideways.

  It seemed necessary that he should get some fresh air and find a lavatory, so he finished his beer and went out, the fine rain being instantly laid across his face like a piece of wet muslin. Not knowing where the lavatory was and being afraid of finding the man from Dunkirk there, he crossed the road and went into Eddy’s college. He stumbled over the gate and the porter looked round, though without saying anything.

  All at once it seemed very cold. The stars marched frostily across the sky. He buttoned up his overcoat and, feeling the bottle of sherry, recalled Eddy’s party, where there would be a fire and a corkscrew and more to drink. He must go there. Eddy’s indecent remark about Jill also re-entered his mind, and he went off into a cackle of laughter, stretching out his arms before him as if literally pushing the darkness back. It would be sensible, he thought, to ask the way. But just at the moment all the walls were blank and the doors were great locked ones leading into kitchens and storerooms. He stumbled and swore and ran into a tree. At this he paused and told the tree what he was looking for. While he was talking he noticed a staircase quite near, lit by a blue light, and he went in and knocked at the first door he found.