For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  She tried to overlook the rebuff, because she believed that Jonathan was reproving her in his clumsy way for her advances to him. In fact after this he tried to amuse her, took her to lunch in a place in Oxford Street where he showed her a waitress to whom he at times had given a few shillings “to help out” when she had been out of work. Separated from her husband, who was unemployed, she was obliged herself to keep her boy of eight or nine. He knew them all, Annie, Florrie, Dorothy, he told Teresa what hard times they saw and how many of them had to make up for it by semiprostitution. This very woman, the one with the child, had received men several times at her home, customers from the teashop. When the men came, she had to send the boy out to play in the street and was always afraid, while she was in commerce with the men, that the boy would get run over or get into mischief. “All she worries about,” said Jonathan, “is her boy—What future has he? She does not worry about herself at all.” She was overwhelmed by Jonathan’s goodness, his ceaseless pre-occupation with the miseries of poor people, her heart sank lower and lower when she compared her wretched selfish single-minded life with his elastic interests, large soul, boundless sympathy. This was how a human being should be! And how modest he was, too, never praising himself, always seeing himself as a worthless, unfortunate creature. Perhaps, thought Teresa to herself, he does it with unconscious purpose, so as to keep the common touch.

  Jonathan was now describing the room the woman lived in. Once he had missed her, the other girls said the boy was sick and Jonathan had gone there with some delicacy for him. In brief phrases, in a low tone, he recounted his trip. It was on one of London’s dismal Saturday afternoons, when a sea wind is blowing grey patches in the cloud overhead and grit and sharp breezes are in the streets. He had taken the bus out there to World’s End and looked about for the street, a side street with two rows of the dreariest little houses, that seemed one storey high but were really two, with the meanest little rooms and staircases, fire traps, death traps for the spirit. How glad the poor woman had been to see him. He had sat there on the bed talking to the boy for a long time and the woman had brooded over her troubles, told him everything. “They like to tell me their lives,” said Jonathan, in the same low tones. “Very few men have any sympathy for them.”

  Teresa involuntarily thought in secret of the times she had walked over to Golden Grove after work, to St Michael’s Street on Saturday afternoons, and pacing slowly past the ruined flourmill, the vine-covered cottages of weatherboard and the old graveyard, the Mont-de-Piece with the three golden balls of Lombardy, the sick man always sitting in his wheel chair, the occasional grey-haired drunk, the children running, screaming after the ice-cream man, the rapid horse and yellow trap in which the ice-cream rattled over the streets, spreading confusion and joy and sprawling children, some local milk-cart, red and yellow, in front of Jonathan’s house. In all the windows were cheap curtains, some yellow, some clotted with dirt and torn, none as clean as those of Jonathan’s house, stiff, white, starched. The fronts of the houses were much the same, a small square of dirt overgrown with grass, or littered with children’s rubbish and sparrows’ feathers, a stone urn in the middle; sometimes some thin heartsease in the border. Number Fourteen’s black-leaded doorstep and three white front steps, the swept brick path, and gate on its hinge, gave it an air of overpowering respectability. She had seen, one Saturday afternoon, a young man there. At first she had taken him for Johnny; but his eyes, not burning with self-contemplation and mystic pain, as Jonathan’s were, were merely small, petty, and sad. He appeared starved, just like Jonathan in the old days, but without the inner fibre. Teresa thought: “I don’t dare tell him I walked down his own street so much more recently than he did and saw his brother and his mother standing in the closing front door!” She felt a great pang. “Why is there so much I may not tell him? Love is hard; if we were condemned to it we would complain.”

  St Michael’s Street debouched into a proletarian thoroughfare, between a mercery and a bakery, high old shops with painted ceilings and black woodwork in the large windows. Trams rattled, buses and cars rushed along the way which was always filled with people in poor but bright clothes. While thinking of this, Teresa began to hum—

  “Still is the night, the streets are deserted,

  Within yonder threshold, dwelt my love, of old.”

  She noticed that Johnny was eating his food with a noncommittal expression exactly as if alone, and realized she had not answered him. She blushed for this solitary habit she had fallen into, this thinking and singing to herself. She said: “What you said, about going to World’s End to see the waitress’s son, reminded me of something else, and I wandered.” She laughed in embarrassment. “But I heard what you said.”

  “Well,” he grumbled, “you have no idea, you see, of the degradation of morals here in London. I am a lonely man and I sit around in teashops; there are no public places to sit because the local gardens are under lock and key, the property of some landlord and his tenants, all privilege and property. I talk to Anyone I see because I’m interested in the other fellow—” he showed his teeth pleasantly and his spectacles gleamed “—and the poor girls are delighted to have some fellow to talk to and sympathize—you know I am très sympathique.” He looked for approval, and when she laughed, told her a few stories he had heard from girls in parks and elsewhere, girls out of work. He always bought them a cup of tea and gave them a sixpence so that they would not have to walk home. “Some of them walk to and from work to save the penny or twopence of the fare, just like I did at home.” He sank his chin and looked gloomily into his cup remembering his old privations. “Somehow that gets me down. Did you know my mother was a waitress when she met my Dad? Well, she was.” He finished in a more sprightly tone, “Let’s take a toddle.”

  This was the cream of humour to her; she laughed delightedly. There was a steel-engraved sky after lunch, spacious, dry, windless. They walked round this part of London. He showed her again the employment agency and told her to go next morning and register, or at once if she wished to, but with a holiday air she said next morning would do.

  “Let’s take a bus and do London, see the sights.”

  They climbed up to the top and saw London; Piccadilly, Bond Street, and so forth, got out and walked in some of the little streets behind Piccadilly, saw some of the taverns, Jonathan showing where the rich and idle bachelors lived, displaying his knowledge of noble families when they passed old houses, looking down his nose at famous squares into which the loot of an empire had been poured, telling absorbing tales. They looked complacently at each other. She knew his theories, that “a man only cavorts in female company for ancient biological reasons,” and that “when a man and a woman spend time in one another’s company, it is only for one reason, not for logic or belles-lettres.”

  Jonathan had friends among Oxford and Cambridge aesthetes; one undergrad had a room painted in black with a row of silver skulls, one dabbled in all the vices and wanted to do “murder to understand everything”, one had purchased a tavern and others frequented taverns near the East India Docks; all went to low dives, which was considered the romantic thing to do. He asked her, passing one pub, whether she would take a gin and lime juice, for they could go in and take on in the company of men with painted cheeks and hair dyed yellow. At an elegant scent shop, he said: “Your little friend could perhaps get her Petite Fleur Bleue—what was it? What did she say?—Oh, yes, that no man could resist it, I should like to smell it,” he said with a grin, looking over his shoulder. “What was she like, your dipso?” He continued to make light remarks, to joke and give her information about the habits of the great, gay, vicious world, at the same time interspersing these remarks with sentences on corruption, depravity, thoughtlessness, waste and so forth. He was then “young Johnny” the snarling, prejudiced, morbid youth of the home study circles, but he did not look like that Johnny. In that Johnny’s place was a handsome, sardonic, and well-dressed man, who was at once closer and much more
indifferent. Teresa, from his rather naïve and loquacious letters, had not foreseen this change. She had read of the secret life of man, rather that life taboo in polite letters, which is the greater part of man’s life; his true sorrows, sufferings, his hidden loves and his loves’ crimes; the excuses of the wicked, their vanity, the poor things they struggle for; and that complete ideal life which everyone dreams of alike in his vices and virtues, and which she tried to get in Jonathan; love, learning, fervour, and the flush of success. Jonathan now not only knew of all this, but had experienced it or seen it in his friends.

  She had never met vice or crime in her life, or achievement either; he had. Jonathan spoke little of the stuff in books, that was all gone; now he was always illustrating his remarks with: “I saw in Paris—” “I know a chap who—” “Phil Noble told me that when he was in Heidelberg—” He was years ahead of her. Towards evening they sat down on the grass in the park near Marble Arch, side by side, while they interchanged remarks from time to time.

  They were tired and discouraged, for nothing had come up during the whole day about their personal relations, either in the past or to come. Jonathan, with a patient air, kept looking across the park, which is like an open uncropped field, towards the dreamlike architecture of Knightsbridge, full of turrets over trees and top corners like escutcheons in stone. His capacious white hand played idly on the grass between them. Teresa put her hand on his, and at that moment an unfortunate memory came to her of a walk round the bay, long ago, when he had repulsed her. As if remembering it too, with the same air, as if she were dirty or vulgar, he coolly withdrew his hand, placed it on his knee and then began brushing a small speck off his clothes. They continued the conversation as before, except that each felt indifferent to the other, and they were glad when it was time to suggest eating again.

  Hurrying through the falling night towards a restaurant, through the miry streets, through the turmoil on the pavements caused by working people rushing in all directions on foot, to get home, they pressed close to each other and felt humble and more friendly. Jonathan began to think of her little front room, that he had not seen, in Torrington Square, and of another little front room he had seen somewhere, probably like it, with half-drawn curtains, a lamp, the gas-fire going, a kettle on the gas-ring on the hearth, the shilling gas-meter and the rest of Bloomsbury one-room comforts, the cupboard, the bed with an Indian spread over it in the background, a pale-headed girl attentive to his confidences; and she could see, in the distance, at the end of the long broad street, as if in tomorrow, a splendid sunlit forest, birds trilling in black wooded hills, early afternoon and the two of them, with packs on their backs, coming down some glade. Still visible in the distance was the town in the hollow, where they would rest in the evening—some imaginary part of Wales.

  He felt, too, that he must give her time. She had just come off the boat. Every word she said and thing she did, the responses she missed, showed that she had had very little to do with men, and little to do with free love, and he thought that perhaps after all, it was because she had been thinking of him. He knew she loved him, but it amazed him that it was such a dumb love and inexpressive. In her letters it was not dumb and he had imagined he would be frankly wooed by her, a pleasant thing to think about in his quiet bachelor evenings, as he sat with a book and pipe in his arm-chair by his warm gas-fire. “You may think me a quiet fellow, not much of a Lothario, but one woman—” But her timid, stupid behaviour made him think of two letters he had received about her, from two friends. One, over a year back, was from an old high school friend who had never gone to the university, but who had always admired Crow in his successes. He had married some suburban girl, who knew one of Teresa’s married cousins. He wrote:

  Congratulations, Benedict, the married man. I hear that some cousin of Belle’s friend, Madeline, is going over to join you, so I suppose that means wedding bells. Why not? In the old days we used to worry about being tied down, but we didn’t know what it all meant. I’m happy enough.

  The second was from his old friend and admirer, Miss Haviland, who had broken a silence of two years with a casual note in which occurred, with her old-time whimsy, the remark that her friend Teresa, their friend Teresa, had yet another year to work before she would be able to sail and it reminded her of one of those princesses in Grimm or Andersen (which was it—perhaps both) who had to make twelve shirts out of nettles before she could be liberated, or else stayed thirty years in an oven and came out at the end to meet a prince, both still young and superlatively fair. With malice, she continued:

  There is quite a trend towards emigration here, but why? Tamar, Clara and her friends are going. Elaine was said to be going to London, too, but seems to have given up the plan. But here I stay like the penny-plain I am, and see dull sights—adventures to the adventurous. Well, young man, look to your laurels! Are you still accumulating them in your bottom drawer, or are they rusty? I expect, a year or two hence, returning migrants—at least some will return—to bring me news.

  He could answer, said Miss Haviland, but she would write no more, he had correspondents enough, this was just a flash in the pan; she was an old and tired woman and had nothing to say to a young fellow full of ginger like her old friend, comrade, and competitor, Johnny, who would soon be Dr Jonathan Crow. “Splendid old girl,” thought Jonathan tenderly, “but my withers are unwrung. I have not harmed man, beast, plant, government or woman.”

  “There’s a nice place called the Arcade where I’ve been once or twice, let’s try it.”

  They continued east along Oxford Street till they came near to Southampton Row, when he stopped outside a restaurant with a revolving glass door, and palms, bottles of wine, and napkins in the window. Teresa clutched his arm, saying anxiously: “Oh, not in there, Johnny, look at the wine—it must be very dear.” He laughed, pushed her through the revolving door.

  “I haven’t the money with me,” she said anxiously. “Or rather, I have, but it’s where I can’t get it.”

  He steered her to a table not far from the door and sat her down with her back to a long mirror. It was a long narrow restaurant with two rows of white-clothed tables. A waiter appeared with a cloth over his arm and a menu in his hand.

  “Oh,” cried Teresa, “Johnny, I have never been in a place like this. With you, I am really seeing the world.”

  Unsmiling, he raised his eyes to her, then looked up at the waiter and took the menu. “Hors d’œuvres,” he said, “we’ll choose the rest later.”

  “What are hors d’œuvres, really?” she asked.

  “You’ll find out,” said Johnny.

  “But what are they?”

  “Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” in his crustily humorous mood.

  She smiled timidly.

  People were coming into the restaurant. The waiter came back with two plates with a bit of fish, a bit of eschalot, a bit of sausage on them, and asked what they would drink. Teresa drank water and Jonathan ordered a beer for himself.

  A couple entered and sat down near them but nearer the door, the girl facing Teresa. The beer came, Jonathan lifted the glass, took a long drink and put the glass down. Then his face changed, broke up, and he leaned forward and said hurriedly: “Did you see the girl who came in, with the dark hair, and the beret?”

  “Yes. I can see her now, she’s facing me.”

  “Look, do you mind if we go now? We can eat at my digs or pick up a sandwich. I can’t stay. I’ll explain to you.”

  “Of course,” said Teresa, with a frightened face.

  He called the waiter, said that his lady friend did not feel well and pushed her rather gracelessly down the carpet strip to the door. Once through the door, he took her elbow, guiding her along the kerb, across the street, towards Bloomsbury. When they had crossed the street, out of the breathless silence, he said: “That girl with the dark hair—she’s so exactly like a girl I was in love with last year, I thought it was Gloria at first. I felt too upset, I couldn’t
stay. You didn’t mind, did you? I wanted her badly, madly, I felt as if I couldn’t do without her. I hadn’t seen anything like that before, I suppose that was it. She was a real good sort, a good pal too, and stunning, nifty, chic, what do you call it, chic, eh? She had it.” He sighed. “She was beautiful and modern, she smoked, took liquor, knew her way about, all without turning a hair. I was in love with her. I ought to say, I wanted her more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I wasn’t her speed, she had pots of money, or her old man did. She went back to the U.S.A., and she’s there now. She said she’d write to me but just one or two letters, you know. She had other fish to fry. I suppose I didn’t appeal, a poor student with no future, too much of a humdrum fellow. Well,” he sighed easily, and dropped the sorrowful tone. “I soon stopped fooling myself with that gilded dream. She’ll take someone with a yacht from Princeton or Harvard, or one of those six-foot fellows.”

  After a few steps, he added gently: “That girl was so like her, my heart flew into my boots. I just couldn’t swallow.”

  “It’s all right,” said Teresa.

  “She went back when she heard some fellow she was keen on was engaged, to wrest him from the other woman, I suppose.” He laughed. “You women!” He became gloomy. “I wasn’t good enough for her.”

  “Don’t say that, Jonathan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re good enough for any woman.”

  Jonathan spat. “You think she cared about qualities? Qualities are for the poor, what she cared about was money—if I’d had money—well, I haven’t. God, for a moment, I thought she must have come back.”

  “If she had, what then?”

  “Well,” he laughed boyishly, “I suppose it would have been the same as before, I would have run after her like a hungry cur. But it wasn’t. I’ll never get over it, I believe. Two letters, answering mine, then my third letter unanswered, my fourth unanswered, so I stopped.” He spat into the gutter thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders which had become bowed and laughed. “Have you ever seen three cats? One runs away, the other runs away after him, and the third thinks she is running away and runs after her! Not that Gloria ran after men, she didn’t have to. She had it.”