A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

  Philip Larkin

  A Girl in Winter

  To

  BRUCE MONTGOMERY

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Part Two

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Part Three

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1

  There had been no more snow during the night, but because the frost continued so that the drifts lay where they had fallen, people told each other there was more to come. And when it grew lighter, it seemed that they were right, for there was no sun, only one vast shell of cloud over the fields and woods. In contrast to the snow the sky looked brown. Indeed, without the snow the morning would have resembled a January nightfall, for what light there was seemed to rise up from it.

  It lay in ditches and in hollows in the fields, where only birds walked. In some lanes the wind had swept it up faultlessly to the very tops of the hedges. Villages were cut off until gangs of men could clear a passage on the roads; the labourers could not go out to work, and on the aerodromes near these villages all flying remained cancelled. People who lay ill in bed could see the shine off the ceilings of their rooms, and a puppy confronted with it for the first time howled and crept under the water-butt. The outhouses were roughly powdered down the windward side, the fences were half-submerged like breakwaters; the whole landscape was so white and still it might have been a formal painting. People were unwilling to get up. To look at the snow too long had a hypnotic effect, drawing away all power of concentration, and the cold seemed to cramp the bones, making work harder and unpleasant. Nevertheless, the candles had to be lit, and the ice in the jugs smashed, and the milk unfrozen; the men had to be given their breakfasts and got off to work in the yards. Life had to be carried on, in no matter what circumscribed way; even though one went no further than the window-seat, there was plenty to be done indoors, saved for such time as this.

  But through cuttings and along embankments ran the railway lines, and although they were empty they led on northwards and southwards till they began to join, passing factories that had worked all night, and the backs of houses where light showed round the curtains, reaching the cities where the snow was disregarded, and which the frost could only besiege for a few days, bitterly.

  2

  “What are you singing about?” said Miss Brooks, sniffing. “I’m perished.”

  “Well, the pipes aren’t hot,” said Katherine. “They never are.”

  “It’s a plague. I could say a few choice words to that caretaker.”

  “The whole system is too old to be any use, I suppose.”

  “They should do something about it. And look at the room we have to use. Two basins! And only one mirror.”

  “And that has spots on it.”

  “My married sister works in an office,” said Miss Brooks, with melancholy envy. “They’ve got a gas fire.”

  “I wish we had any sort of fire.”

  “Yes, and that isn’t all. On a cold morning like this you can have a cup of tea there if you want. And another in the middle of the morning. Well, that puts a bit of heart in you, doesn’t it? Look at us.”

  “Anstey has a gas fire. I suppose that’s all that matters.”

  “Talk of the devil,” said Miss Brooks gloomily.

  They stood for a moment by the loaded book-trolley, looking up the long avenue that opened between the oblique shelves up to the counter. Both of them wore red overalls. The high windows were frosted over, and the double row of hanging electric lights were all switched on, although it was only twenty to ten. Individual lights over shelves were left until the doors were opened to the public.

  Mr. Anstey had come banging through the entrance wicket, and was leaning over the counter, holding a sheet of paper and talking at Miss Feather, hitting the sheet with his pipe-stem. Miss Feather’s untidy grey head was bent in respectful attention. He had not lowered his voice, but the rebounding echoes prevented them from hearing what he said.

  “I’ll tell you something,” Miss Brooks went on. “Once I got Feather to ask him about tea—before your time.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, you know what he is.” Miss Brooks dragged a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “Where was it going to be made, who was going to make it, where was it going to be drunk, were assistants to have time off to drink it—making as much of everything as he possibly could. He said ‘he couldn’t see his way to granting our request’.”

  “I can just hear him saying it,” said Katherine. “Why does he have to talk in that silly way? I think that annoys me as much as anything about him.”

  “Oh, he probably swallowed a dictionary at an early age,” said Miss Brooks with vague facetiousness. “Or he was made like it.”

  Katherine finished sorting a row of books on top of the trolley and glanced at Miss Brooks. “I really don’t believe you mind him at all.”

  “Well, minding people doesn’t do any good. I don’t let him worry me.”

  “I wonder what he’s bothering about now.”

  Mr. Anstey’s ratchet-like voice was arguing away, Miss Feather’s dancing before it like a leaf in a storm. They mingled with the echoes awoken by the least sound—the shuffle of feet, the clack of a ruler, the thuds as the assistants smartly pushed back books onto the shelves. Katherine and Miss Brooks separated, each moving along the particular section of shelving that it was their business to keep in order. Soon everything was ready for the day’s work—the books in smooth, unbroken lines, the date-stamps adjusted, the files of tickets at the counter pushed into tight columns. They met again by a special display shelf on Japan.

  “What about your mittens? Aren’t you going to wear them?”

  “I would for two pins. D’you think anyone’d laugh?”

  “Of course they wouldn’t.”

  “Another ten minutes and we’ll have those doors opening and shutting.”

  “Well, it’s Saturday,” said Katherine. “Be thankful. The end of the week.”

  “I wondered what you were singing about,” said Miss Brooks, departing.

  On the way back to the counter, Miss Feather, released from Mr. Anstey, came up to Katherine as if uncertain who she was.

  “Oh, Miss Lind——”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, Miss Lind— You remember you were doing the Bureau work, when Miss Holloway was ill? When was it, now?”

  “About a week ago, I think.”

  “Yes…. Well, the university say they haven’t had that book on Uganda back yet, by Fielding. Mr. Anstey was just asking about it.”

  Miss Feather was over forty. She had a withered, sly face, and a conspiratorial way of glancing on all sides as she spoke and rarely looking anyone in the face.

  Katherine frowned.

  “Uganda by Fielding? I don’t remember. Is it marked as returned in the book?”

  “Yes, it’s marked as returned, but they say they haven’t had it,” Miss Feather repeated, as one who has found it necessary for years to repeat everything. She slipped a pencil into the pocket of her overall.

  “If it’s marked as returned, it must have gone, surely,” said Katherine, without conviction.

  “Well, they say they haven’t had it, so would you look round, dear, and see if you can find it? It may have been put on
the shelves by mistake. And tell Mr. Anstey if you find it. These little things take up so much time.”

  “Yes, I will if I find it.”

  Katherine turned back and went to the Africa section, her right hand raised, her right elbow in her left palm. Although her eye was casual it was nearly the first book she saw, slipped neatly into place in the row of drab leather spines. A glance inside the cover showed her the label of the university library. She turned it moodily in her hands, then tucked it under her arm and returned to Miss Feather, who looked at her with a degraded wisdom.

  “Here it is, Miss Feather.”

  “Ah, I’m so glad. Would you put it on Miss Holloway’s table, then? And you might just tell Mr. Anstey it’s been found, and that we’ll send it off straightway.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  Miss Holloway was not in her room—which was really a combined store for new books, and a book-service room as well as where Miss Holloway did her cataloguing—so Katherine left the book on the table and went along to Mr. Anstey’s office. This was in a dark passage ending in a twisting iron staircase that led up to the back of the reference department. She knocked on the door, and after a pause the familiar voice told her to enter.

  There was little expression on her face as she closed the door behind her. Indeed, there rarely was: her pale, shield-shaped face, dark eyes and eyebrows, and high cheekbones, were not mobile or eloquent. Nor, more curiously, was her mouth, which was too wide and too full-lipped for beauty. Yet because it was alert and sensitive it should have been most expressive. Almost she looked as if her lips were bruised and she had to keep them unfamiliarly closed. Yet at other times a faint look of amusement stole into her face, as if with pleasure at the completeness with which she could cover her thoughts. And when she spoke it was with a foreign accent.

  The room was prodigiously warm, with a vehement gas fire turned up to the fullest extent so that the tips of flame licked the air. A china bowl of water stood in front of this, where a disintegrating cigarette-end floated. Everything was very untidy: around the walls between bookcases and filing cabinets were stacked books and box-files that had not been referred to for months. Then there was an inner ring of similar papers that had been unattended for weeks: at the centre of this was a large roll-top desk, covered with letters and typed sheets and catalogues, where Mr. Anstey sat. A telephone stood by a large tin of cigarette-lighter fluid.

  He was giving his usual performance of being too engrossed in matters of importance to notice her entry, and held a flimsy typewritten list which he checked with a pencil, his pipe gripped by his teeth with a snarling grimace. Every now and then he gave a liquid, energetic sniff. He was a thin, wizened man of about forty, with a narrow, lined face and delicate spectacles. His suit was grimy, she disliked his tie, and he wore a pullover whose sleeves came down below his cuffs. His hair was carefully oiled, and occasionally his face twitched: he resembled a clerk at a railway station who had suffered from shell-shock.

  Within his reach there was a shelf where a used cup and saucer stood.

  She waited in front of him, looking with distaste at his bent head. As though she were not there, he got up and rummaged in a file, looking cross. The smoke from his pipe smelt sweetish. Not till he was settled back at his desk did he say in an affectedly-preoccupied voice:

  “Well, Miss Lind?”

  “The book on Uganda has been found, and will be sent off at once.”

  He gave no sign of having heard. In a minute or two he said in the same voice:

  “Where was it?”

  “It had been put on the shelves.”

  Mr. Anstey made a final note on the list, folded it and placed it in an envelope, scribbled something on a memorandum pad and duplicated it on a dog-eared calendar, saying at length:

  “What was it doing there?”

  He removed his pipe, took up a pencil, and began prodding the ash down, looking at her in a wooden, distant way.

  “It was a mistake, I’m afraid.”

  “There are two mistakes there, Miss Lind, pardon me,” Mr. Anstey said in a suddenly loud and quarrelsome voice. “The volume should not have been marked as returned. That’s the first one. Then, it should not have been placed on the open shelves. There are two mistakes there, Miss Lind, do you follow me?”

  “Yes.” She said this neutrally, to avoid calling attention to her own refusal to give him any sort of title. Inwardly she summoned patience to meet what he was going to say, for he always said much the same things.

  “And neither of them, if I may say so, should have been made by anyone with an ounce of what we English call savvy or gumption or … nous.” He sidled in front of the gas fire, holding a paper spill to the glowing bars. “Certainly not by anyone possessed of the superior education you have received…. Perhaps the youngest junior, who ever she is, with her head full of jazz-tunes or boy-friends or the latest ‘movie’, or whatever they call them, she might do it, but I don’t look for it from you, because I have been led to believe that you have been taught to think and this sort of thing is, to put it crudely, just downright damn-foolishness.” The flame grew near his fingers, and he gave a few frantic sucks at his pipe before dropping the charred butt into the bowl of water. Then he resumed speaking in the voice that was natural to him, drained of all humour or friendliness, a voice that might be used on the stage as typically insulting. “I’ve every sympathy with the mistakes a man or woman makes due to inexperience or insufficient whatyoumaycall. There are certain things in this profession that can only be mastered after long—just by doing them until you can foresee any eventuality that may arise in the course of the … business.” He thrust forward his jaw nastily, as if she had provoked him in some way. “I’m not one of your university fellows, Cambridge or Oxford, who comes along and says, ‘Oh yes, I can learn all about this how-d’you-do in five minutes’. I’ve seen these johnnies, and you can take it from me they’re precious little use when it comes to a little serious work. No, I came into this profession from the bottom”—he gazed at her once more with the wooden, distant expression that seemed to pinch his nostrils together—“and what small degree of eminence I have attained has been gained simply by knowing my job inside out, backwards and forwards, and however you please.” He put his pipe back into his narrow jaws, but it had gone out: this time he felt for matches, sniffing.

  “Now, of course,” he recommenced, sucking greedily at the bitten stem, “I don’t know what you are intending to do with your life, whether you are intending to follow this profession or not. I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t want to know, for that is a question that every person has a right to settle and to decide for him-or herself, but I am telling you this: that if you decide, yes, I will follow this profession, I will study and devote my energy to the attainment of this … career, you will find”—he stressed the three words with his pipe—“that an ounce of good business sense, such as you need to run any factory or … business, that’ll be worth all your Shakespeare and Doctor Samuel Johnson and whateveryoucall. Of course”—he changed his tone to one of indulgent explanation—“I’m not saying anything so foolish as that such knowledge is not of inestimable value, but what I am trying to explain is that once a year a fellow may come in and say, ‘Oh, Mr. Anstey, look here, I want to know all about Elizabethan Drama’, or some obscure branch of phonology or morphology or whatever it is that you happen to be familiar with—well, there you are then, out trots your education. But nine-tenths of the time, ninety-nine-HUNDREDTHS of the time, you are simply having to fill the position of an ordinary office boss who happens to be dealing with books instead of houses or perambulators and so on and so forth.” Mr. Anstey prodded his pencil into his again-extinct pipe, and produced this time an inexpensive lighter with a large flame. “Now you’ve started on this job with a very good, valuable education, better by a very long chalk than I ever had, and none the less valuable for being obtained in another country, as human knowledge is the same in England, France, Germany
or anywhere on God’s earth.” Here he gave a short laugh. “But if, as I am saying or rather suggesting to you, you should in the fullness of time achieve a position comparable to mine, you will find that three-quarters of your time is taken up by looking out for and clearing up after some crackheaded girl who thinks she’s wrapped up a book and sent it to Wigan or Timbuctoo, when all she’s actually done is to put it on the shelves where it oughtn’t to be.” He laughed again, and pulled at his pipe, surrounding his head with blue, sweetish smoke.

  Katherine looked at him as if he were an insect she would relish treading on. “I apologize for the mistake,” she said furiously, “but I don’t think that——”

  “Well, well, Miss Lind, that’s how we have to spend our time,” Mr. Anstey interrupted halfway through what she had said. He sat in an ugly position and slapped his thigh ruefully, grinning at her with his face distorted sideways. “Worrying about fiddling little details that won’t matter in six weeks to you or me or anyone else, while the really important things go hang.” He made a theatrical gesture of resignation. This was another of his performances, that of the man forced to spend his time on things that were beneath his intelligence. “I’ve had work in this drawer now four years, original and it may even be valuable work on classification, waiting till I can spare a week or so…. Well, it doesn’t do to stop and think. That way madness lies, as whatyoucall says. All I can do, and all you can do, is to get on with the job in hand. That——”

  There was a tap on the door, and Miss Feather entered, glancing round as if she suspected there were more than two people in the room. Mr. Anstey at once put on his distant expression, saying in a preoccupied voice:

  “Yes, what is it, Miss Feather?”

  “I’m afraid one of the juniors is feeling badly, Mr. Anstey. She isn’t fit for work.”