by Jean Rhys
There’s no car, there’s a van and you can’t see through the windows. The third time it stop I get out with one other, a young girl, and it’s the same magistrates’ court as before.
The two of us wait in a small room, nobody else there, and after a while the girl say, ‘What the hell are they doing? I don’t want to spend all day here.’ She go to the bell and she keep her finger press on it. When I look at her she say, ‘Well, what are they for?’ That girl’s face is hard like a board – she could change faces with many and you wouldn’t know the difference. But she get results certainly. A policeman comes in, all smiling, and we go in the court. The same magistrate, the same frowning man sits below, and when I hear my fine is paid I want to ask who paid it, but he yells at me, ‘Silence.’
I think I will never understand the half of what happen, but they tell me I can go, and I understand that. The magistrate ask if I’m leaving the neighbourhood and I say yes, then I’m out in the streets again, and it’s the same fine weather, same feeling I’m dreaming.
When I get to the house I see two men talking in the garden. The front door and the door of the flat are both open. I go in, and the bedroom is empty, nothing but the glare streaming inside because they take the Venetian blinds away. As I’m wondering where my suitcase is, and the clothes I leave in the wardrobe, there’s a knock and it’s the old lady from upstairs carrying my case packed, and my coat is over her arm. She says she sees me come in. ‘I kept your things for you.’ I start to thank her but she turn her back and walk away. They like that here, and better not expect too much. Too besides, I bet they tell her I’m terrible person.
I go in the kitchen, but when I see they are cutting down the big tree at the back I don’t stay to watch.
At the station I’m waiting for the train and a woman asks if I feel well. ‘You look so tired,’ she says. ‘Have you come a long way?’ I want to answer, ‘I come so far I lose myself on that journey.’ But I tell her, ‘Yes, I am quite well. But I can’t stand the heat.’ She says she can’t stand it either, and we talk about the weather till the train come in.
I’m not frightened of them any more – after all what else can they do? I know what to say and everything go like a clock works.
I get a room near Victoria where the landlady accept one pound in advance, and next day I find a job in the kitchen of a private hotel close by. But I don’t stay there long. I hear of another job going in a big store – altering ladies’ dresses and I get that. I lie and tell them I work in very expensive New York shop. I speak bold and smooth faced, and they never check up on me. I make a friend there – Clarice – very light coloured, very smart, she have a lot to do with the customers and she laugh at some of them behind their backs. But I say it’s not their fault if the dress don’t fit. Special dress for one person only – that’s very expensive in London. So it’s take in, or let out all the time. Clarice have two rooms not far from the store. She furnish herself gradual and she gives parties sometimes Saturday nights. It’s there I start whistling the Holloway Song. A man comes up to me and says, ‘Let’s hear that again.’ So I whistle it again (I never sing now) and he tells me ‘Not bad’. Clarice have an old piano somebody give her to store and he plays the tune, jazzing it up. I say, ‘No, not like that’, but everybody else say the way he do it is first class. Well I think no more of this till I get a letter from him telling me he has sold the song and as I was quite a help he encloses five pounds with thanks.
I read the letter and I could cry. For after all, that song was all I had. I don’t belong nowhere really, and I haven’t money to buy my way to belonging. I don’t want to either.
But when that girl sing, she sing to me and she sing for me. I was there because I was meant to be there. It was meant I should hear it – this I know.
Now I’ve let them play it wrong, and it will go from me like all the other songs – like everything. Nothing left for me at all.
But then I tell myself all this is foolishness. Even if they played it on trumpets, even if they played it just right, like I wanted – no walls would fall so soon. ‘So let them call it jazz,’ I think, and let them play it wrong. That won’t make no difference to the song I heard.
I buy myself a dusty pink dress with the money.
Tigers Are Better-Looking
‘Mein lieb, Mon Cher, My Dear, Amigo,’ the letter began:
I’m off. I’ve been wanting to go for some time, as I’m sure you know, but was waiting for the moment when I had the courage to step out into the cold world again. Didn’t feel like a farewell scene.
Apart from much that it is better not to go into, you haven’t any idea how sick I am of all the phoney talk about Communism – and the phoney talk of the other lot too, if it comes to that. You people are exactly alike, whatever you call yourselves – Untouchable. Indispensable is the motto, and you’d pine to death if you hadn’t someone to look down on and insult. I got the feeling that I was surrounded by a pack of timid tigers waiting to spring the moment anybody is in trouble or hasn’t any money. But tigers are better-looking, aren’t they?
I’m taking the coach to Plymouth. I have my plans.
I came to London with high hopes, but all I got out of it was a broken leg and enough sneers to last me for the next thirty years if I live so long, which may God forbid.
Don’t think I’ll forget how kind you were after my accident – having me stay with you and all that. But assez means enough.
I’ve drunk the milk in the refrigerator. I was thirsty after that party last night, though if you call that a party I call it a wake. Besides, I know how you dislike the stuff (Freud! Bow-wow-wow!!). So you’ll have to have your tea straight, my dear.
Good-bye. I’ll write you again when times are better.
Hans
There was a postscript:
Mind you write a swell article today, you tame grey mare.
Mr Severn sighed. He had always known Hans would hop it sooner or later, so why this taste in his mouth, as if he had eaten dust?
A swell article.
The band in the Embankment Gardens played. It’s the same old song again. It’s the same old tender refrain. As the carriage came into sight some of the crowd cheered and a fat man said he couldn’t see and he was going to climb a lamp post. The figures in the carriages bowed from right to left – victims bowed to victimized. The bloodless sacrifice was being exhibited, the reminder that somewhere the sun was shining, even if it doesn’t shine on everybody.
‘’E looked just like a waxwork, didn’t ’e?’ a woman said with satisfaction . . .
No, that would never do.
He looked out of the window at the Lunch Edition placards outside the newspaper shop opposite. ‘JUBILEE PICTURES – PICTURES – PICTURES’ and ‘HEAT WAVE COMING’.
The flat over the shop was occupied by a raffish middle-aged woman. But today her lace-curtained windows, usually not unfriendly, added to his feeling of desolation. So did the words ‘PICTURES – PICTURES – PICTURES’.
By six o’clock the floor was covered with newspapers and crumpled, discarded starts of the article which he wrote every week for an Australian paper.
He couldn’t get the swing of it. The swing’s the thing, as everybody knows – otherwise the cadence of the sentence. Once into it, and he could go ahead like an old horse trotting, saying anything that anybody liked.
‘The tame grey mare,’ he thought. Then he took up one of the newspapers and, because he had the statistical mania, began to count the advertisements. Two remedies for constipation, three for wind and stomach pains, three face creams, one skin food, one cruise to Morocco. At the end of the personal column, in small print, ‘I will slay in the day of My wrath and spare not, saith the Lord God.’ Who pays to put these things in anyway, who pays?
‘This perpetual covert threat,’ he thought. ‘Everything’s based on it. Disgusting. What Will They Say? And down at the bottom of the page you see what will happen to you if you don’t toe the line. You w
ill be slain and not spared. Threats and mockery, mockery and threats . . .’ And desolation, desertion and crumpled newspapers in the room.
The only comfort allowed was the money which would buy the warm glow of drink before eating, the jubilee laughter afterwards. Jubilant – Jubilee – Joy . . . Words whirled round in his head, but he could not make them take shape.
‘If you won’t, you bloody well won’t,’ he said to his typewriter before he rushed down the stairs, counting the steps as he went.
After two double whiskies at his usual pub, Time, which had dragged so drearily all day, began to move faster, began to gallop.
At half-past eleven Mr Severn was walking up and down Wardour Street between two young women. The things one does on the rebound.
He knew one of them fairly well – the fatter one. She was often at the pub and he liked talking to her, and sometimes stood her drinks because she was good-natured and never made him feel nervous. That was her secret. If fair was fair, it would be her epitaph: ‘I have never made anybody feel nervous – on purpose.’ Doomed, of course, for that very reason. But pleasant to talk to and, usually, to look at. Her name was Maidie – Maidie Richards.
He had never seen the other girl before. She was very young and fresh, with a really glittering smile and an accent he didn’t quite recognize. She was called Heather Something-or-other. In the noisy pub he thought she said Hedda. ‘What an unusual name!’ he remarked. ‘I said Heather, not Hedda, Hedda! I wouldn’t be seen dead with a name like that.’ She was sharp, bright, self-confident – nothing flabby there. It was she who had suggested this final drink.
The girls argued. They each had an arm in one of Mr Severn’s, and they argued across him. They got to Shaftesbury Avenue, turned and walked back.
‘I tell you the place is in this street,’ Heather said. ‘The “Jim-Jam” – haven’t you ever heard of it?’
‘Are you sure?’ Mr Severn asked.
‘Of course I’m sure. It’s on the left-hand side. We’ve missed it somehow.’
‘Well, I’m sick of walking up and down looking for it,’ Maidie said. ‘It’s a lousy hole anyway. I don’t particularly want to go, do you?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Mr Severn.
‘There it is,’ Heather said. ‘We’ve passed it twice. It’s changed its name, that’s what.’
They went up a narrow stone staircase and on the first landing a man with a yellow face appeared from behind drawn curtains and glared at them. Heather smiled. ‘Good evening, Mr Johnson. I’ve brought two friends along.’
‘Three of you? That’ll be fifteen shillings.’
‘I thought it was half a crown entrance,’ Maidie said so aggrievedly that Mr Johnson looked at her with surprise and explained, ‘This is a special night.’
‘The orchestra’s playing rotten, anyway,’ Maidie remarked when they got into the room.
An elderly woman wearing steel-rimmed glasses was serving behind the bar. The mulatto who was playing the saxophone leaned forward and whooped.
‘They play so rotten,’ Maidie said, when the party was seated at a table against the wall, ‘that you’d think they were doing it on purpose.’
‘Oh stop grumbling,’ Heather said. ‘Other people don’t agree with you. The place is packed every night. Besides, why should they play well. What’s the difference?’
‘Ah-ha,’ Mr Severn said.
‘There isn’t any difference if you ask me. It’s all a lot of talk.’
‘Quite right. All an illusion,’ Mr Severn agreed. ‘A bottle of ginger ale,’ he said to the waiter.
Heather said, ‘We’ll have to have a bottle of whisky. You don’t mind, do you, dear?’
‘Don’t worry, child, don’t worry,’ Mr Severn said. ‘It was only my little joke . . . a bottle of whisky,’ he told the waiter.
‘Will you pay now, if you please?’ the waiter asked when he brought the bottle.
‘What a price!’ Maidie said, frowning boldly at the waiter. ‘Never mind, by the time I’ve had a few goes at this I ought to have forgotten my troubles.’
Heather pinched up her lips. ‘Very little for me.’
‘Well, it’s going to be drunk,’ Mr Severn said. ‘Play “Dinah”,’ he shouted at the orchestra.
The saxophonist glanced at him and tittered. Nobody else took any notice.
‘Sit down and have a drink, won’t you?’ Heather clutched at Mr Johnson’s sleeve as he passed the table, but he answered loftily, ‘Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t just now’, and passed on.
‘People are funny about drinking,’ Maidie remarked. ‘They get you to buy as much as they can and then afterwards they laugh at you behind your back for buying it. But on the other hand, if you try to get out of buying it, they’re damned rude. Damned rude, they can be. I went into a place the other night where they have music – the International Café, they call it. I had a whisky and I drank it a bit quick, because I was thirsty and feeling down and so on. Then I thought I’d like to listen to the music – they don’t play so badly there because they say they’re Hungarians – and a waiter came along, yelling “Last drinks.” “Can I have some water?” I said. “I’m not here to serve you with water,” he said. “This isn’t a place to drink water in,” he said, just like that. So loud! Everybody was staring at me.’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ Heather said. ‘Asking for water! You haven’t got any sense. No more for me, thank you.’ She put her hand over her glass.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ Mr Severn asked, leering.
‘I don’t trust anybody. For why? Because I don’t want to be let down, that’s why.’
‘Sophisticated, she is,’ said Maidie.
‘I’d rather be sophisticated than a damned pushover like you,’ Heather retorted. ‘You don’t mind if I go and talk to some friends over there, do you, dear?’
‘Admirable.’ Mr Severn watched her cross the room. ‘Admirable. Disdainful, debonair and with a touch of the tarbrush too, or I’m much mistaken. Just my type. One of my types. Why is it that she isn’t white – Now, why?’ He took a yellow pencil out of his pocket and began to draw on the tablecloth.
Pictures, pictures, pictures . . . Face, faces, faces . . . Like hyaenas, like swine, like goats, like apes, like parrots. But not tigers, because tigers are better-looking, aren’t they? as Hans says.
Maidie was saying, ‘They’ve got an awfully nice “Ladies” here. I’ve been having a chat with the woman; she’s a friend of mine. The window was open and the street looked so cool and peaceful. That’s why I’ve been so long.’
‘London is getting very odd, isn’t it?’ Mr Severn said in a thick voice. ‘Do you see that tall female over there, the one in the backless evening gown? Of course, I’ve got my own theory about backless evening gowns, but this isn’t the moment to tell you of it. Well, that sweetpie’s got to be at Brixton tomorrow morning at a quarter past nine to give a music lesson. And her greatest ambition is to get a job as stewardess on a line running to South Africa.’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ Maidie said.
‘Nothing – I just thought it was a bit mixed. Never mind. And do you see that couple over there at the bar? The lovely dark brown couple. Well, I went over to have a change of drinks and got into conversation with them. I rather palled up with the man, so I asked them to come and see me one day. When I gave them my address the girl said at once, “Is that in Mayfair?” “Good Lord, no; it’s in the darkest, dingiest Bloomsbury.” “I didn’t come to London to go to the slums,” she said with the most perfect British accent, high, sharp, clear and shattering. Then she turned her back on me and hauled the man off to the other end of the bar’
‘Girls always cotton on to things quicker,’ Maidie asserted.
‘The social climate of a place?’ said Mr Severn. ‘Yes, I suppose they do. But some men aren’t so slow either. Well, well, tigers are better-looking, aren’t they?’
‘You haven’t been doing too badly with the whisky,
dear, have you?’ Maidie said rather uneasily. ‘What’s all this about tigers?’
Mr Severn again addressed the orchestra in a loud voice. ‘Play “Dinah”. I hate that bloody tune you keep playing. It’s always the same one too. You can’t fool me. Play “Dinah, is there anyone finer?” That’s a good old tune.’
‘I shouldn’t shout so loud,’ Maidie said. ‘They don’t like it here if you shout. Don’t you see the way Johnson’s looking at you?’
‘Let him look.’
‘Oh, do shut up. He’s sending the waiter to us now.’
‘Obscene drawings on the tablecloth not allowed here,’ the waiter said as he approached.
‘Go to hell,’ Mr Severn said. ‘What obscene drawings?’
Maidie nudged him and shook her head violently.
The waiter removed the tablecloth and brought a clean one. He pursed his lips up as he spread it and looked severely at Mr Severn. ‘No drawings of any description on tablecloths are allowed here,’ he said.
‘I’ll draw as much as I like,’ Mr Severn said defiantly. And the next thing he knew two men had him by the collar and were pushing him towards the door.
‘You let him alone,’ said Maidie. ‘He hasn’t done anything. You are a lot of sugars.’
‘Gently, gently,’ said Mr Johnson, perspiring. ‘What do you want to be so rough for? I’m always telling you to do it quietly.’
As he was being hauled past the bar, Mr Severn saw Heather, her eyes beady with disapproval, her plump face lengthened into something twice the size of life. He made a hideous grimace at her.
‘My Lawd,’ she said, and averted her eyes. ‘My Lawd!’