by Jean Rhys
He did not answer her. He was utterly taken aback.
‘In any case, you interest me,’ she said. Then, seemingly possessed by a devastating wish to be frank, added: ‘As a type – not as a man.’
She considered him in a manner which stung his masculine pride to the quick and turned his uneasiness into definite revolt. He did not know which revolted him more, the idea of trailing about Seville, at the orders of this woman who was neither pretty nor chic, or the idea that she believed him capable – he, the conqueror of women – of playing such a role.
‘Non, merde alors! . . .’ he thought. He felt hot with rage and resentment and, forgetful of everything but his rage and his desire to triumph over her, he made a superb gesture.
‘Don’t let’s talk about it, Margaret. Tomorrow morning you will be on your way to Spain and I will be here in my bed and that is all. I to come away with you? I? But you would be so unhappy with me as you have never been in your life, my poor girl. Apaches! Apaches . . . And then? To write books is not what an Apache needs of a woman, I tell you that. You say you have a horror of this and a horror of that. I have a horror of a woman who talks and talks and never feels anything. It’s all literature, what you say.’
For the first time she dropped her eyes. ‘I’ve vexed you. I didn’t mean to.’
He stared at her sulkily, with dislike.
She stared back, then said, ‘I suppose I’d better go. I’ve enjoyed this evening. It’s a pity that . . . oh well, it doesn’t matter. Don’t come with me on any account. I can find my own way to the – métro.’ She put on her hat without looking in the glass, the unnatural creature.
He longed to do something violent to break down that air of cool friendliness, but the desire to live up to his smoking was too strong. He bowed stiffly and stood listening to the sound of her low heels descending the uncarpeted stairs. Nothing for it now but the midnight train to Brussels and a very thin time indeed.
The Insect World
Audrey began to read. Her book was called Nothing So Blue. It was set in the tropics. She started at the paragraph which described the habits of an insect called the jigger.
Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn’t go on if you didn’t hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away.
She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion. It was perhaps for this reason that she never forgot that books were one thing and that life was another.
When it came to life Audrey was practical. She accepted all she was told to accept. And there had been quite a lot of it. She had been in London for the last five years but for one short holiday. There had been the big blitz, then the uneasy lull, then the little blitz, now the fly bombs. But she still accepted all she was told to accept, tried to remember all she was told to remember. The trouble was that she could not always forget all she was told to forget. She could not forget, for instance, that on her next birthday she would be twenty-nine years of age. Not a Girl any longer. Not really. The war had already gobbled up several years and who knew how long it would go on. Audrey dreaded growing old. She disliked and avoided old people and thought with horror of herself as old. She had never told anyone her real and especial reason for loathing the war. She had never spoken of it – even to her friend Monica.
Monica, who was an optimist five years younger than Audrey, was sure that the war would end soon.
‘People always think that wars will end soon. But they don’t,’ said Audrey. ‘Why, one lasted for a hundred years. What about that?’
Monica said: ‘But that was centuries ago and quite different. Nothing to do with Now.’
But Audrey wasn’t at all sure that it was so very different.
‘It’s as if I’m twins,’ she said to Monica one day in an attempt to explain herself. ‘Do you ever feel like that?’ But it seemed that Monica never did feel like that or if she did she didn’t want to talk about it.
Yet there it was. Only one of the twins accepted. The other felt lost, betrayed, forsaken, a wanderer in a very dark wood. The other told her that all she accepted so meekly was quite mad, potty. And here even books let her down, for no book – at least no book that Audrey had ever read – even hinted at this essential wrongness or pottiness.
Only yesterday, for instance, she had come across it in Nothing So Blue. Nothing So Blue belonged to her, for she often bought books – most of them Penguins, but some from second-hand shops. She always wrote her name on the fly-leaf and tried to blot out any signs of previous ownership. But this book had been very difficult. It had taken her more than an hour to rub out the pencil marks that had been found all through it. They began harmlessly, ‘Read and enjoyed by Charles Edwin Roofe in this Year of our Salvation MCMXLII, which being interpreted is Thank You Very Much’, continued ‘Blue? Rather pink, I think’, and, throughout the whole of the book, the word ‘blue’ – which of course often occurred – was underlined and in the margin there would be a question mark, a note of exclamation, or ‘Ha, ha’. ‘Nauseating,’ he had written on the page which began ‘I looked her over and decided she would do’. Then came the real love affair with the beautiful English girl who smelt of daffodils and Mr Roofe had relapsed into ‘Ha, ha – sez you!’ But it was on page 166 that Audrey had a shock. He had written ‘Women are an unspeakable abomination’ with such force that the pencil had driven through the paper. She had torn the page out and thrown it into the fireplace. Fancy that! There was no fire, of course, so she was able to pick it up, smooth it out and stick it back.
‘Why should I spoil my book?’ she had thought. All the same she felt terribly down for some reason. And yet, she told herself, ‘I bet if you met that man he would be awfully ordinary, just like everybody else.’ It was something about his small, neat, precise handwriting that made her think so. But it was always the most ordinary things that suddenly turned round and showed you another face, a terrifying face. That was the hidden horror, the horror everybody pretended did not exist, the horror that was responsible for all the other horrors.
The book was not so cheering, either. It was about damp, moist heat, birds that did not sing, flowers that had no scent. Then there was this horrible girl whom the hero simply had to make love to, though he didn’t really want to, and when the lovely, cool English girl heard about it she turned him down.
The natives were surly. They always seemed to be jeering behind your back. And they were stupid. They believed everything they were told, so that they could be easily worked up against somebody. Then they became cruel – so horribly cruel, you wouldn’t believe . . .
And the insects. Not only the rats, snakes and poisonous spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millions of termites in their earth-coloured nests from which branched out yards of elaborately built communication lines leading sometimes to a smaller nest, sometimes to an untouched part of the tree on which they were feeding, while sometimes they just petered out, empty. It was no use poking at a nest with a stick. It seemed vulnerable, but the insects would swarm, whitely horrible, to its defence, and would rebuild it in a night. The only thing was to smoke them out. Burn them alive-oh. And even then some would escape and at once start building somewhere else.
Finally, there were the minute crawling unseen things that got at you as you walked along harmlessly. Most horrible of all these was the jigger.
Audrey stopped reading. She had a headache. Perhaps that was because she had not had anything to eat all day; unless you can count a cup of tea at eight in the morning as something to eat. But she did not often get a weekday off and when she did not a moment must be wasted. So from ten to two, regardless of sirens wailin
g, she went shopping in Oxford Street, and she skipped lunch. She bought stockings, a nightgown and a dress. It was buying the dress that had taken it out of her. The assistant had tried to sell her a print dress a size too big and, when she did not want it, had implied that it was unpatriotic to make so much fuss about what she wore. ‘But the colours are so glaring and it doesn’t fit. It’s much too short,’ Audrey said.
‘You could easily let it down.’
Audrey said: ‘But there’s nothing to let down. I’d like to try on that dress over there.’
‘It’s a very small size.’
‘Well, I’m thin enough,’ said Audrey defiantly. ‘How much thinner d’you want me to be?’
‘But that’s a dress for a girl,’ the assistant said.
And suddenly, what with the pain in her back and everything, Audrey had wanted to cry. She nearly said ‘I work just as hard as you’, but she was too dignified.
‘The grey one looks a pretty shape,’ she said. ‘Not so drear. Drear,’ she repeated, because that was a good word and if the assistant knew anything she would place her by it. But the woman, not at all impressed, stared over her head.
‘The dresses on that rail aren’t your size. You can try one on if you like but it wouldn’t be any use. You could easily let down the print one,’ she repeated maddeningly.
Audrey had felt like a wet rag after her defeat by the shop assistant, for she had ended by buying the print dress. It would not be enough to go and spruce up in the Ladies’ Room on the fifth floor – which would be milling full of Old Things – so she had gone home again, back to the flat she shared with Monica. There had not been time to eat anything, but she had put on the new dress and it looked even worse than it had looked in the shop. From the neck to the waist it was enormous, or shapeless. The skirt, on the other hand, was very short and skimpy and two buttons came off in her hand; she had to wait and sew them on again.
It had all made her very tired. And she would be late for tea at Roberta’s . . .
‘I wish I lived here,’ she thought when she came out of the Tube station. But she often thought that when she went to a different part of London. ‘It’s nicer here,’ she’d think, ‘I might be happier here.’
Her friend Roberta’s house was painted green and had a small garden. Audrey felt envious as she pressed the bell. And still more envious when Roberta came to the door wearing a flowered house coat, led the way into a pretty sitting-room and collapsed onto her sofa in a film-star attitude. Audrey’s immediate thought was ‘What right has a woman got to be lolling about like that in wartime, even if she is going to have a baby?’ But when she noticed Roberta’s deep-circled eyes, her huge, pathetic stomach, her spoilt hands, her broken nails, and realized that her house coat had been made out of a pair of old curtains (‘not half so pretty as she was. Looks much older’) she said the usual things, warmly and sincerely.
But she hoped that, although it was nearly six by the silver clock, Roberta would offer her some tea and cake. Even a plain slice of bread – she could have wolfed that down.
‘Why are you so late?’ Roberta asked. ‘I suppose you’ve had tea’, and hurried on before Audrey could open her mouth. ‘Have a chocolate biscuit.’
So Audrey ate a biscuit slowly. She felt she did not know Roberta well enough to say ‘I’m ravenous. I must have something to eat.’ Besides that was the funny thing. The more ravenous you grew, the more impossible it became to say ‘I’m ravenous!’
‘Is that a good book?’ Roberta asked.
‘I brought it to read on the Tube. It isn’t bad.’
Roberta flicked through the pages of Nothing So Blue without much interest. And she said ‘English people always mix up tropical places. My dear, I met a girl the other day who thought Moscow was the capital of India! Really, I think it’s dangerous to be as ignorant as that, don’t you?’
Roberta often talked about ‘English’ people in that way. She had acquired the habit, Audrey thought, when she was out of England for two years before the war. She had lived for six months in New York. Then she had been to Miami, Trinidad, Bermuda – all those places – and no expense spared, or so she said. She had brought back all sorts of big ideas. Much too big. Gadgets for the kitchen. An extensive wardrobe. Expensive make-up. Having her hair and nails looked after every week at the hairdresser’s. There was no end to it. Anyway, there was one good thing about the war. It had taken all that right off. Right off.
‘Read what he says about jiggers,’ Audrey said.
‘My dear,’ said Roberta, ‘he is piling it on.’
‘Do you mean that there aren’t such things as jiggers?’
‘Of course there are such things,’ Roberta said, ‘but they’re only sand fleas. It’s better not to go barefoot if you’re frightened of them.’
She explained about jiggers. They had nasty ways – the man wasn’t so far wrong. She talked about tropical insects for some time after that; she seemed to remember them more vividly than anything else. Then she read out bits of Nothing So Blue, laughing at it.
‘If you must read all the time, you needn’t believe everything you read.’
‘I don’t,’ said Audrey. ‘If you knew how little I really believe you’d be surprised. Perhaps he doesn’t see it the way you do. It all depends on how people see things. If someone wanted to write a horrible book about London, couldn’t he write a horrible book? I wish somebody would. I’d buy it.’
‘You dope!’ said Roberta affectionately.
When the time came to go Audrey walked back to the Tube station in a daze, and in a daze sat in the train until a jerk of the brain warned her that she had passed Leicester Square and now had to change at King’s Cross. She felt very bad when she got out, as if she could flop any minute. There were so many people pushing, you got bewildered.
She tried to think about Monica, about the end of the journey, above all about food – warm, lovely food – but something had happened inside her head and she couldn’t concentrate. She kept remembering the termites. Termites running along one of the covered ways that peter out and lead to nothing. When she came to the escalator she hesitated, afraid to get on it. The people clinging to the sides looked very like large insects. No, they didn’t look like large insects: they were insects.
She got onto the escalator and stood staidly on the right-hand side. No running up for her tonight. She pressed her arm against her side and felt the book. That started her thinking about jiggers again. Jiggers got in under your skin when you didn’t know it and laid eggs inside you. Just walking along, as you might be walking along the street to a Tube station, you caught a jigger as easily as you bought a newspaper or turned on the radio. And there you were – infected – and not knowing a thing about it.
In front of her stood an elderly woman with dank hair and mean-looking clothes. It was funny how she hated women like that. It was funny how she hated most women anyway. Elderly women ought to stay at home. They oughtn’t to walk about. Depressing people! Jutting out, that was what the woman was doing. Standing right in the middle, instead of in line. So that you could hardly blame the service girl, galloping up in a hurry, for giving her a good shove and saying under her breath ‘Oh get out of the way!’ But she must have shoved too hard for the old thing tottered. She was going to fall. Audrey’s heart jumped sickeningly into her mouth as she shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see what it would look like, didn’t want to hear the scream.
But no scream came and when Audrey opened her eyes she saw that the old woman had astonishingly saved herself. She had only stumbled down a couple of steps and clutched the rail again. She even managed to laugh and say ‘Now I know where all the beef goes to!’ Her face, though, was very white. So was Audrey’s. Perhaps her heart kept turning over. So did Audrey’s.
Even when she got out of the Tube the nightmare was not over. On the way home she had to walk up a little street which she hated and it was getting dark now. It was one of those streets which are nearly always empty. It
had been badly blitzed and Audrey was sure that it was haunted. Weeds and wild-looking flowers were growing over the skeleton houses, over the piles of rubble. There were front doorsteps which looked as though they were hanging by a thread, and near one of them lived a black cat with green eyes. She liked cats but not this one, not this one. She was sure it wasn’t a cat really.
Supposing the siren went? ‘If the siren goes up when I’m in this street it’ll mean that it’s all U.P. with me.’ Supposing a man with a strange blank face and no eyebrows – like that one who got into the Ladies at the cinema the other night and stood there grinning at them and nobody knew what to do so everybody pretended he wasn’t there. Perhaps he was not there, either – supposing a man like that were to come up softly behind her, touch her shoulder, speak to her, she wouldn’t be able to struggle, she would just lie down and die of fright, so much she hated that street. And she had to walk slowly because if she ran she would give whatever it was its opportunity and it would run after her. However, even walking slowly, it came to an end at last. Just round the corner in a placid ordinary street where all the damage had been tidied up was the third floor flat which she shared with Monica, also a typist in a government office.
The radio was on full tilt. The smell of cabbage drifted down the stairs. Monica, for once, was getting the meal ready. They ate out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, in on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Audrey usually did the housework and cooking and Monica took charge of the ration books, stood in long queues to shop and lugged the laundry back and forwards every week because the van didn’t call any longer.
‘Hullo,’ said Monica.
Audrey answered her feebly, ‘Hullo.’
Monica, a dark, pretty girl, put the food on the table and remarked at once, ‘You’re a bit green in the face. Have you been drinking mock gin?’