A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

  “Like a what?”

  “This absurd coat.”

  “It keeps me warm. I know it’s not elegant.” The darkness had fastened tightly down onto the earth. There were no stars to be seen and although they knew their way to the bus-stop perfectly well, they edged forward very slowly through the blackness. Katherine slipped with a jar from the kerb to the gutter into the crusty snow. “Here, I thought you could see,” grumbled Miss Holloway. She pulled her own coat closer round her neck. “This is the weather to lay you under the ground.”

  They rounded the corner and found their way to the bus-stop. To judge from their footfalls the fog had almost completely dispersed, and the air smelt frosty. Round the discreetly-lit door of a fish-saloon children clustered, newspapers of chips congealing in their bare hands. From a public-house, which had the word “open” cut irregularly into its matchwood blackout, came the sound of singing, accompanied by a piano of such distorted tone that it sounded like a mandoline. When they reached the bus-stop, they stood in silence for a time, for neither had anything to say that was worth the trouble of saying.

  “I should like to ask your advice,” said Katherine suddenly at last. Because they could not see each other she found it easier to speak. “I had a row with Anstey this afternoon. I’m not sure whether to resign or not.”

  Yet she said it almost for something to say. At the moment the problem seemed distant, and its different solutions indistinguishable from each other. However, to speak of it with someone else made it more natural, and among her casual acquaintances Miss Holloway was the one she would choose for such discussion. She was well-informed and unemotional. She would give an opinion quite uninfluenced by the fact that she was speaking to a person concerned. And Katherine felt this was the time she could best hear what Miss Holloway thought, when her own interest in the practical circumstances of her life had ebbed nearly to extinction.

  “Surely you can please yourself?”

  “I’m not sure if I can. You see, I lost my temper and said some things that mean you either resign quietly or get the sack.” She waited a little, then said: “I said I’d resign, as a matter of fact, but I wish I hadn’t. I’ve nowhere else to go.”

  “Well, then, don’t resign. I wouldn’t move an inch without knowing of a place to go to.”

  “Then I might get sacked.”

  “I doubt it,” said Miss Holloway judicially. “Not unless you were really incompetent. You do your work all right, don’t you?”

  “Fairly well, though Anstey doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “Then T don’t think as things go at the moment that they’d ask you to go. Anstey has no powers of dismissal. They’re bound to conscript women sooner or later, too, and I doubt if we’ll be reserved—and I suppose you’d be exempt, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. I did make some enquiries once, but they weren’t very clear. I might be put in a factory.”

  “You see, you might be valuable in six months’ time, when there’s no-one but kids and old women, and I’ll tell you another thing. Anstey did try to get someone sacked just at the beginning of the war, but Polling-bourne wouldn’t have it: he just transferred her to another branch. That was rather a slap in the eye, wasn’t it?”

  “Mm.”

  “But I shouldn’t ask to be transferred, because they’d just sit on you. And I shouldn’t resign in the hope they’ll transfer you, because they might accept your resignation and then you would be in a hole. Let them make the first move. I think, if you don’t say anything, the whole affair will blow over.”

  “You don’t think Anstey will keep on at me until I do resign?”

  “No,” said Miss Holloway. “I don’t think I do. Anstey isn’t that bad, you know. He’s really quite decent. You see, he’s got where he wanted to get, now, because of the war, and he’s deadly afraid that afterwards he’ll be stood down again. That makes him suspicious of everything and everybody. And he longs to be efficient, but he just isn’t a big enough man for the job. I suppose he thinks if he can——”

  At this point two slightly-intoxicated soldiers bumped intentionally into them, and apologized lavishly.

  “That wasn’t very clever of you,” said Miss Holloway coldly, as the soldiers grabbed theatrically at them for support in the darkness.

  “Och, you don’t know me,” said one delightedly, in uncouth Scotch. “I’m a real clever chap.”

  “I’m sure. Wouldn’t you like to take yourself for a little walk?”

  He did not seem to grasp this, and, after a passing hiccough, added: “Ay, clever Jock, that’s my name.”

  The other, who sounded much younger, clung round Katherine dazedly, saying in a fresh, slurred voice: “Where have you been all my life?”

  The elder turned on him in apparent fury:

  “Aw, get your legs under you, where’s the guts Almighty God gave you——”

  The other staggered, and at a heave from Katherine fetched up against the bus-stop, beginning to sing in a voice whose purity ebbed and flowed like the focusing and unfocusing of a telescope.

  “Well now, it seems we’re going the same way as you two young ladies,” began the first soldier elaborately, but his grace bore no fruit because at that moment the double-decked bus loomed panting by the halt, lit from within by shrouded blue lights, and the younger soldier slid bemusedly down until he was sitting on the pavement with his back against the metal pole. The noise had gone out of him as from a slashed concertina. As they got onto the bus the first soldier called “Two bags!” in a clear, laconic voice, as if bidding at an auction.

  “There goes your night on the tiles,” said Katherine.

  Miss Holloway did not go more than half-way with her, and they parted after ten minutes. “I should sleep on it,” she said as she got up to go. “It will all seem different in the morning.”

  Katherine wondered if it would. She had half-dreaded to be alone, but now Miss Holloway had left her she found she was really too tired to feel it. Miss Holloway had been comforting: whether what she had said was true or not, it would relieve her of the trouble of doing anything. She wanted to avoid the fuss, it would be so meaningless. The bus rattled on. It was nearly empty. In front there were some girls and youths, talking noisily, who started to reiterate a song, a peculiar phrase that might prevent sleep at three in the morning. The blue light fell on their faces, the young men’s hair coiled in unhealthy slabs, taking the colour from the girls’ cosmetics, throwing ghastliness on their laughing faces. The floor was littered with tickets.

  She got out at Bank Street. There were a few people huddled in doorways, or walking from cinemas, but the wide central streets were deserted of traffic, and the buildings were great silent locked shells. Here and there soldiers were shouting. At this time all the town had drawn within itself. The doors and windows were shut and curtains had been arranged across them, to keep the light and the warmth indoors. Outside there was none. There was no moon to show how the frost encrusted everything: the dark soared up like a cathedral, a blindness; it covered the town and the frozen allotments when the houses began to scatter into fields, then the brittle grass, and the woods. Convoys of lorries could get along the main roads with chains on, but there was no other traffic. She thought of the darkness covering not only these miles of streets around her, but also of the shores, the beaches, and the acres of tossing sea that she had crossed, which divided her from her proper home. At least her birthplace and the street she walked in were sharing the same night, however many unfruitful miles were between them. And there too people would keep indoors, and not think of much beyond the fires that warmed them, for the same winter lay stiffly across the whole continent.

  It was a short walk back to Merion Street, and she knew it blindfold, therefore did not use a torch: only now and again she stretched out her hand to touch a wall or a street-sign. One of her gloves had a hole in it. Above all she felt tired, as if that day she had made a journey. When she got in, there would be her fire to p
ut on, and she could sit in front of it and smoke and perhaps read. She knew she had made some discovery about herself, but just at the moment she had forgotten what it was, and inclined to think she had been fancying it. It would be too much trouble to make a proper meal: she would eat bread and drink some coffee with no-one to bother her. Then pretty soon she would go to bed and forget whatever it was in sleep. Among the blowing wastes that shifted around her there was still that much that she could enjoy. Though the city was gripped by the cold, and the room she had was no more her own than a tree belongs to a bird that perches in it, she could still sleep when it grew too much to face. She wondered in passing where Mr. Anstey lived (there had been no address on his letter), and whether he lived alone. If he did, it was ironical to think of them both going back to their empty rooms.

  She knew Merion Street well, so that even though it was as dark as if the night had collapsed and was heaped all above it, she knew by counting her steps how far she had to go. At the twenty-fifth there was a grating where the heel of her shoe had once caught, and she avoided it. At the twenty-ninth, she opened her handbag for her latchkey, liking to open the door directly without lingering on the step. How tired she was. By that time she was passing the dentist’s door—what had his name been? Tullidge? Wilmidge?—and six paces further she was home.

  She swung up the steps. As usual she slid the key straight into the teeth of the lock, but as she did so she heard a breath intaken very close and near the ground, as if an animal were there. Then a voice said loudly:

  “I say, is that Katherine Lind?”

  It was Robin. He sounded rather drunk.

  6

  “You’d better come upstairs,” said Katherine. She turned to her keys that hung abandoned in the lock. “For God’s sake come quietly.”

  “Lucky I found this place by daylight,” Robin said without paying any attention. “Else it would have meant a taxi.” He was laughing.

  This was terrible. She led the way up the narrow stairs, hearing him clumping and breathing behind her. So far she had not seen his face, but she was all at sea. This was too much to be confronted with. He had hugged her boisterously, seeming dizzy with good-humour. If there had been any light, he would have kissed her straight off.

  He stumbled on the stairs. “Steady,” she said, turning at the top along to her door.

  “Well, you do hide yourself away,” he called out, chortling as if it were a great joke. “Here, can’t we have some light?”

  “In a moment!” She had to go in and draw the curtains first, and finding a box of matches in the dark lit the gas fire. Then she switched on the light. “All right,” she said.

  In he came, easing off his cap and unbuttoning his gloves. It shocked her, Heaven knows why, to see him in uniform. The broad shoulders of his coat were swaggering.

  The cap he threw onto the table, and the gloves into it, then he was after her again, seizing her by the shoulders and swinging her round under the light. She could not help laughing, it was all so farcical, and he was roaring out something like, “Well, let’s have a look at you” and “Well, it’s extraordinary, I should have known you anywhere” until finally he really did start kissing her, as if it were the only possible alternative to speech, and she had to back away and shake her head and shout: “All right, please, for Heaven’s sake!”

  He released her and grinned. He was not very drunk, she thought, not as much as he pretended.

  She shut the door. It was all quite unreal. He was a stranger to her. “Well, explain yourself,” she said. He was coming at her again, and she had to push him away, back towards the fire. “Explain yourself! You said you weren’t coming.”

  “Oh, did I?” He took off his coat unasked, smoothing his hair. “Today’s been the most complete shambles. No-one knew what stood and what didn’t. But I didn’t think you’d get my telegram.”

  “I got it all right, it’s practically lost me my job,” she interjected, beginning to laugh. She took off her own coat and hung it up.

  “But I sent it here,” he went on disregarding. “And the old girl downstairs said you wouldn’t be back till after seven.”

  “Oh, then they must have——Well, this is all very strange. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

  He threw himself into Miss Green’s chair. “Well, at any rate, here we are!”

  “I know. It’s extraordinary. I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “I’m solid enough,” he guffawed, aiming a slap at her, which she avoided. “I’m not a ghost. Whooo!” He wailed and waved his arms as if they were shrouded.

  She felt too weak to do anything but laugh. “Why are you so absurd? so drunk?” she asked.

  “Drunk be damned.” He sprawled in his chair, grinning up at her. “I only had a few while I was waiting.”

  “Well, it’s had a very adverse effect on your behaviour.” She held out a packet of cigarettes. He took one. She had no idea of what she ought to say to him. At present all this acted with her exhaustion to produce a sense of enfeebled absurdity.

  “All right, then” he said, exhaling the smoke with a great sigh. “We’ll be sober and serious. You start.”

  “I can’t.” She was heaving with silent laughter. “Stop making me laugh.”

  He made a weird noise.

  “Stop.”

  He made another weird noise. This suddenly did the trick, and she leant back on her stool, feeling perfectly serious and smoothing her hair into place.

  “Right,” she said. She looked at him and saw him as he was, young and haggard. He must be as old as she, but did not look it. His face was sharp-featured, his jaw harsh from shaving, his teeth very white; his dark hair was no longer soft but brushed savagely away from his temples. When he laughed, wrinkles appeared round his eyes and he lifted his brows like a professional story-teller. His nostrils had a stretched, hungry look. He was an inch shorter than she was. “Where have you come from, when did you arrive, what are you doing, and everything else?”

  He shut his eyes. “Military secret, half-past five, absolutely nothing, and same applies. I’m on thirty-six hours’ leave. Look here! You’ve been in England for years. Why didn’t you write sooner?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know you still lived there.”

  “Of course we do. How long have you been here?”

  “I came the autumn before last. I lived in London at first. I’ve been here about nine months.”

  “Why did you come to this hole, after London?”

  “I got a job here. I wanted a change.” She was answering almost at random. Robin was sitting there in her attic under the electric light, and it made no impression at all on her. What she had felt about him had long since worked itself out, and left nothing but blankness, and a certain irresponsibility.

  “Oh yes, your marvellous job. Very learned.”

  “I’m lucky to have it.”

  “Did you get to your university?”

  “Yes, oh yes. And you to Oxford?”

  “Cambridge. Oxford’s a little too near home.” He jumped up restlessly and began walking about the room. “Jolly place, this. Live here alone?”

  “I do.”

  “Like it? Being here, and your job, I mean?”

  She began remembering. “Well, it’s all right, but I may not have a job. All because of your telegram.”

  “What on earth has that to do with it?” he said, picking up a newspaper that lay on the table, glancing at it, then rolling it up to whack against his hand.

  “The people downstairs must have telephoned it on. I can’t explain, but it got me into a row.”

  “Well, they can’t sack you for that.”

  “I can’t explain, it’s too complicated.”

  “If they do, you’re well rid of the place, I should think. So this is your hide-out.” He was making a tour of inspection, as if thinking of buying it, glancing into the alcove where her bed was, reaching up needlessly to touch the sloping ceiling. “You know, I wondered what
happened to you, often.”

  “Well, I’m so glad.” The thought was slowly become soluble in her mind, the thought that Robin was with her. This, she told herself, was the Robin she had written to in peace and comfort when she was sixteen; despite his harsh uniform and starched khaki collar that seemed to hurt his neck, they had shared many hours between them, in a time now forgotten. This was the Robin that had taken her to Oxford, that had met her at Dover, that had come up to the terrace from the tennis court when they had finished playing. She ran through these and many more incidents like an incantation, and gradually he seemed more familiar. If her mind had not been tired so that it could be swept along unheeding, his sudden appearance might have moved her. As it was, it failed to connect. There were, she knew, things she should feel, things she should say; but whether through his fault or hers she had no command of them. She could only see their meeting in plain and uncoloured terms: a young man she had known once had come to see her this winter night, and now they were in a high-lighted room where there was a fire and what belongings she had, and below there was the street, the cold hunting through the darkness.

  He came back to the centre of the room and sat restlessly on the edge of the table, swinging his legs.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “Now?” He seemed both careless and nervy. “I’m going home, I think. There’s a train about midnight.”

  “You’ll be tired.”

  “Oh, sleep!” He flipped his hand vaguely. “One can do without sleep.”

  “No,” she said, wondering at his off-hand tone. “You shouldn’t do that. You look tired already.”

  “I’m all right.” He drew at his cigarette and his nostrils dilated slightly. “The healthy open-air life.”

  “How long have you been in the army?”

  “Around fourteen months.”

  “Do you dislike it very much?”

  “Dislike it!” He slipped off the table and wandered over to the side-table, looking at what books she had. “Don’t care much. Get as much fun as possible, that’s the only thing.”