A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

  “But it is surely reasonable——”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t think of her among strangers. There’d be times when she’d wonder where I was, the same as she wonders where Daddy is now sometimes. She doesn’t understand, you see. And I should hate to feel I hadn’t done all I could, if anything … It can’t be for very long.”

  “But it seems so unfair that you should have to do it.”

  “There is no-one else. My brother is in Darlington, and he’s got a family of his own. No,” said Miss Parbury, as if gently rebuking her, “I’ve thought it all over. There’s no other way. I suppose it’s just bad luck, though it’s wrong of me to say so. One has to look after one’s parents when they’re old and need you.”

  And Miss Parbury’s manner, lacking both reticence and self-praise, seemed to take on a new grace, as if Katherine’s reproval had stirred something asleep in her nature that had now risen gently to its full height, and which it was no use attacking. Because she did not quite understand it, she was resentful, and so called it stupidity. She was simultaneously aware that almost any member of Anstey’s staff would have given a week’s pay to be in her present position. “And what of your friend, don’t you feel you owe something to him?” she countered, trading recklessly on what she had noticed, that people would tell her things they would not tell a fellow-countryman. “And yourself, too, supposing he will not wait.”

  Miss Parbury’s hesitation was only very slight, but it made Katherine afraid that she had remembered what letter had been in her bag. But her expression when she lifted her head was quite undirected, only myopic with what Katherine recognized with a shock as sorrow.

  “That’s as must be,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone except myself, but if I do, it’s not because I’m being selfish. I may not be right, but all one can do is go by one’s own judgement, isn’t it? I can’t understand,” said Miss Parbury, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve, “what people mean by a duty to oneself. It sounds so silly. I don’t think I could ever like a person who didn’t see what I meant, not in that way.”

  And to both their embarrassments she dropped a few tears, her shoulders being plucked lightly by the never-distant emotion of grief.

  Katherine sat wretchedly for the half-minute it took Miss Parbury to stifle her sobbing, finished her cold tea, and put the cup aside. At what seemed the correct moment she said she ought to be going, and Miss Parbury regained the last trace of self-control. “Well!” she said, rising and touching her sickly lemon necklace. “I’ve been talking, as usual, talking and making myself miserable. I’m sure you want to be getting off. Now, have you got your friend’s bag? It wouldn’t do to take the wrong one this time! I’m very obliged to you for bringing it back,” she added, as she held the door open and followed Katherine into the hall.

  “I’ve never been in this part of the town before.”

  “Are you sure you can find your way? I’m afraid it’s getting quite misty.”

  “Oh yes, I think I can find my way to the bus-stop, at least.”

  “It’s an easy part to get lost in,” said Miss Parbury, going to the front door. As she did so, there came a noise from upstairs that sounded unnaturally through the small house.

  It was as if someone were trying to crush a beetle by banging the end of a walking-stick on the floor. The blows were irregular, and unevenly loud.

  Miss Parbury said nothing, but opened the door with a smile, letting in the cold.

  As Katherine moved to go past her, the noise faltered, and was replaced by a voice. If it had been an ordinary voice, they could have heard what it said, for it was shouting. But it was not: there was only a series of distorted vowels, as might be uttered by a person without a tongue. It croaked and blurted, unexpectedly deep. After two outbursts it stopped. Then there was another thump. The sound of the tango orchestra continued undisturbed.

  “Good-bye,” said Miss Parbury. “And thank you again for all your trouble.”

  “Good-bye,” said Katherine.

  She hurried away.

  4

  Miss Parbury had been right about the mist. It had deepened until round the centre of the city it was nearly a fog. But it was not coiling or humid; simply a gauze, that might have been the accumulated breath frozen from many mouths, or a very incarnation of the cold. The buses she caught nosed through it cautiously, like fog-bound ships, their shaded lights helping them very little, and it was fourteen minutes past three when she got back to the Library again, scuttling up the steps on the heels of Saturday-afternoon borrowers.

  Quickly putting on her red overall, she went to the counter and started receiving books at once, her fingers flying over the tightly-packed files of tickets as if to make up for lost time. Miss Brooks was working there too, her hands defiantly mittened, but with the same watery good-humour. “Been on the spree?” she said. “Well, you haven’t missed anything here.”

  “I got delayed,” said Katherine.

  “What’s it like out now? Getting worse?”

  “It’s no better.”

  “I can feel it isn’t.” Miss Brooks put some money away and reached down for a book that had been reserved.

  Miss Feather, who had been doing Katherine’s work instead of her own, now returned from the shelves. Katherine could feel her approaching, and tried to busy herself, but just at that moment the influx of borrowers was slack. So she turned to face her.

  “Oh, there you are, dear. I was wondering what had become of you.”

  “The fog was rather bad,” said Katherine.

  “Yes, it is bad, isn’t it? We’ve been rather busy. Never mind.” Miss Feather glanced conspiratorially round her. “Mr. Anstey would like to see you: I think he’s in now. So would you go along and see him, dear? I’ll carry on for the moment.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, and just one other thing”—Miss Feather played with the ornamental and probably worthless old ring she wore on her left-hand little finger. “Just one teeny word of advice … It doesn’t do, you know, to tell that Green child anything.”

  Katherine was puzzled. “Tell her what?”

  “Well, anything, dear. It isn’t wise. She repeats everything she hears—simply everything. It’s best not to tell her anything at all.”

  “But I haven’t been telling her anything ——”

  Miss Feather wagged her head, as if distressed at this refusal to accept a word in season, murmured something else and turned to three borrowers congregated at the entrance wicket, bending on her ancient legs to answer a question. Katherine, who had not given Miss Green a thought for some time, hesitated a moment, then pushed through the opposite wicket and walked slowly along the dim passage to Mr. Anstey’s door.

  She could hear Mr. Anstey telephoning, so prepared to wait till he had finished, leaning against the wall. What a day this was being! Her good spirits, desperately resisting the weariness of her errand through the streets strewn with worn-out snow, and Miss Parbury, whom she wanted to forget, were now swerving downwards because she was back where she started. It was strange that even after all these months she could never enter this mausoleum of a building without a bitter feeling of voluntary degradation. And what was it now, what would Anstey be bothering about? She could hardly bear seeing him again. She felt tired and raw, and in need of rest.

  And everything was becoming so confused. It was three and a half hours after midday: Robin might have come and gone, because of her foolishness in leaving him no message. And what in the world had Miss Feather meant by saying that about Miss Green? She hadn’t been telling her anything and didn’t intend to. Why couldn’t they mind their own affairs and leave her alone?

  She wished she could throw everything up and go back to her room.

  Mr. Anstey’s voice was scraping away inside the door, and she winced at the thought of its being turned on her. He was so loathsome. Yet she realized with annoyance that she could not hate him as simply as she had done, now that she had come across this
part of him that had no bearing on her. For her conception of him as a hostile cartoon she had to substitute a person who had and could evoke feelings, who would undertake the support of an old woman, and on whose account she had seen another crying. Why had she been allowed to come across it all? It was repellent to her as an insanitary tangle of snakes in a crevice. It spoilt her dislike of him: when next she saw his mean face looking up at her, she would– if she were honest—be forced to juggle with rights and wrongs, instead of plainly wishing him dead.

  This irked her the more because it hinted at things Miss Parbury had shown her that she did not want to recognize. Having tried for so long to live for herself alone, having concluded that not even the maximum selfishness would secure the happiness she felt herself entitled to, it was disturbing to meet one who valued these things so lightly. It reminded her of a girl she had known who had given up a career to enter a convent. During the one conversation they had had on the subject, the girl had said that care for oneself seemed to her less wicked than stupid—like carrying an umbrella on a cloudless day. Katherine had never forgotten her own surprise at this. If she thought on such matters, it was that one should try to accept any misfortune with equanimity. But this other viewpoint, that flung away at the start all conception of fortune and misfortune, this she found herself reluctantly respecting, and she could recognize her present respect by her knowledge that she would probably tell no-one of what she had learned that day. Certainly she would have liked to feed her contempt with giggling, but she knew also that if she thought long enough about it, the affair would make her feel small. Therefore she would sooner forget it.

  When she heard the receiver being replaced, she knocked on the door.

  “Yes, who is it there, come in,” he shouted.

  She entered resentfully. He was writing at his desk, the cigarette in his mouth having burnt so near to his lips that he held his head awkwardly back, squinting through the very bottoms of his spectacles. But he soon laid his pen aside, looking at her in an ugly manner.

  “Yes, Miss Lind, I was wanting a few words with you. I’ve one or two little things I want to make clear.” He blotted his writing unnecessarily, and thrust his head forward on his scraggy neck. She looked at the parting of his hair, wondering if she could hear anything in the world about him that would make her like him. It was improbable. “You have been with us now some time, six months——”

  “Nearly nine.”

  He disregarded this, settling back for a harangue.

  “And of course it was not to be expected that you’d pick up the job and start pulling your weight in the very first week, for the simple reason that the profession we are engaged in here is not one that any Tom, Dick, and Harry can qualify himself for, can fit himself for, in a fortnight or three weeks. Furthermore”—he took the half-inch stub carefully from his mouth and replaced it by a fresh cigarette from a paper packet on his desk—“there were a number of other circumstances or factors in your particular case which, to put it bluntly, made it a bit of a gamble to appoint you.” He sucked the new cigarette alight. “I refer of course to the undoubted fact that in addition to your whatyoumaycall, the fact that you were fresh to this kind of work, you had by the nature of your birth and upbringing, more to learn than the average applicant about the kind of—literature, if we may so call it for the purposes of argument—with which, leaving aside for a moment other departments in which your talents and education would be a decided asset—you would have to deal. However, when I was consulted as to your appointment, I supported it notwithstanding these points, because I was of the opinion that a person of your education would have what is sometimes called the ordinary horse-sense to pick things up as you went along.”

  Katherine could not remember how many times he had said this. The first time was at their first interview. The last, for all she could recall, was probably that same morning. There was nothing in it she need pay attention to. She thought of Miss Parbury.

  “Now,” Mr. Anstey recommenced, “although I may not have said all this in so many words to you until today, I assumed, as I was I think entitled to assume, that these circumstances were as well known to you as they were to me.” As if noticing that she was watching him only vaguely, his voice grew harsher and more deliberate. “However, it is beginning to appear to me that whether they were or not, you are going about your work in a casual way, a way which I don’t hesitate for a moment in informing you to be a way I don’t like. To put the matter bluntly, as I am accustomed to do, if you think that on account of the education you have received you are entitled to work when it suits your book and expect us to be grateful for the honour, you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, Miss Lind, and the sooner you let go of it the better for everyone.”

  Katherine glared at him. He had certainly caught her attention.

  “What are you complaining about?”

  “I am complaining about your clearing off this morning, Miss Lind, without so much as a by-your-leave to anyone, and leaving the already-overworked staff to do your job as well as their own until such time in the afternoon as you think fit to honour us with your presence again.” He had raised his voice to say this. “That is one of the things I am complaining of, Miss Lind.”

  “But you gave me permission yourself, or Miss Feather did,” Katherine retorted. She hated his mean jaws looking up at her.

  He made a contemptuous gesture. “The facts were, if I am correct in saying so, that one of the juniors needed taking to a doctor or a dentist by some responsible person. I am not prepared to split hairs in arguing how long that particular job or errand would take anyone, but it is I think obvious to anyone possessed of any intelligence that at the very most, at the very outside, it should not take anyone more than one hour, and probably a sight less,” he added spitefully, with a look of such intensity that ash fell from the cigarette he had so far not removed from his mouth. She was going to say something, but he continued with an unfunny theatrical leer: “Naturally I didn’t come to you and say, Oh, Miss Lind, be sure and come straight back when you’ve finished, don’t stop at any sweet-shops or get carried off by the gipsies; that I thought would be unnecessary and uncalled-for, as I was speaking to a person of intelligence.”

  “What happened was this. Miss Green wanted to go home, so we took the bus to Bank Street. Then she felt ill, and I persuaded her to go to a dentist nearby. She had a bad time there and I took her to my room to rest. When she left to go home it was after twelve and I didn’t think it was worth while to come back, just until one o’clock.”

  “And I presume you didn’t think it worth while to have your lunch and then return straightway to make up for the work you hadn’t done? Why, hang it, to use a common expression, you didn’t even consider it worth while to be back at three o’clock, the normal time stipulated for your duties to recommence. And in any case,” he said, sniffing vindictively, “leaving aside the hours from twelve till three, what takes the lynch-pin out of your story, what blows down the whole pack of cards, is the fact that Miss Green, however badly you say she felt and all the rest of it, Miss Green at least had the decency and the sense of—the guts, to put it crudely, to come back here at half-past two, in order to do the job she is paid for, and it seems to me as clear as daylight that if such is the case, as it undoubtedly is, your side of the picture or whateveryoucall looks pretty thin; in fact, I may say, to me, Miss Lind, it looks downright shabby.”

  “I think she was very silly to come back,” said Katherine. So that was it. She was beginning to get angry. “I advised her not to for her own good.”

  Mr. Anstey lifted his chin. “Your position here hardly entitles you to tell members of the staff what to do. And another matter,” he went on harshly, over something she burst out with, “another thing I don’t want happening in future is to have your boy-friends ringing up whenever they please and sending messages and telegrams at all hours.” He said this coarsely. “It is not my policy——”

  “What d
o you mean?”

  “It is not my policy, Miss Lind, to take cognisance of what members of my staff do when they leave this building after their working hours. I don’t consider it is anything to do with me and frankly I do not give a twopenny damn, provided their work is done properly and they keep their affairs clear of mine—but when they don’t keep to their part of the bargain, I no longer feel it incumbent on me to keep mine, and I take this opportunity of telling you that I don’t want it to happen again.”

  “Who has been ringing me up?”

  Mr. Anstey shuffled among the papers on his desk, and drew out a half-sheet. “It was a telegram sent by telephone,” he said, sniffing. “Otherwise I should have refused to take it.” He stared contemptuously at the four words pencilled in his own finical hand, then flicked it across to her.

  She read it: “Sorry cancel meeting. Robin”.

  “Thank you,” she said, and put it in her pocket.

  He took the thin cigarette from his mouth and crushed it out. “Well, I have work to do, and so have you. The plain bones of the matter is just this: if you’re prepared to work at this job, we shall get on splendidly. But if you’re not, then all I can say is we shall get along without you very well. So if you consider yourself too good for us, well, you know what to do.” He wagged a pencil at her and laughed, with an almost inconceivable hint of jocularity.

  She snatched the pencil from him and stood panting a moment, as if going to fling it at his head or break it in two. He looked at her blankly with his shoulders hunched and bad teeth showing. Then she threw it down on the desk. “I will go,” she said breathlessly. “I will—I hate——” To control her anger she threw up her head, finding it hard to breathe. “I’ll leave now. How soon can I leave?”