For Love Alone (50 page)

“Oh, she thinks I tease her too much, she says I'm too much of a tease, she says she wouldn't go to any house where I was. I've played a few tricks on her in my time, you see!” Teresa laughed with him. Exhilarated by the good humour, the goblet of beer, her best dress, she began to put on airs, to imitate the haughty accent of some people she had heard passing, a succession of groans, sighs, yawns and lispings, according to her; meanwhile Jonathan looked at her attentively, opened his eyes and remarked: “That is the first time I've heard you speak really well.” She stared. Going back to her seat she realized what he would have liked in herself—something like Gloria?—a well-born girl educated in a private school with an insolent accent, a high voice, superior to himself? Could he possibly want that? To her, then, she saw with a dawning cunning, Jonathan would offer his traditional coarseness, the sorrows and colour of his low origin, the strong, much-commented story of his origin, which he put about with such a jealous love. Now she understood why he had been angry when she said she had been a nurse on the boat, why he had been impatient with her stories about the stewards, the glory-hole, the night watchman and even the disappearance of her brother Leo, who never had been found and whom she often seemed to see in the streets, in a poor man's get-up. This strange love of the gutter in himself was his sign of potency. To him, rich women were potent. Very much astonished, she sat down beside him and looked at him cautiously through the dark. Her pulses leaped, how strange he was; complex, perverse, ignorant of himself! She drew in her breath sharply. He fascinated her.

At the same time, she revolted at the idea of making herself “a lady” for Jonathan. Besides, it was as if he had set her yet another task before she could win him. He was good, alluring, pathetic, suffering, but why so much struggle, why did he put such a value on his apathy? Despair, even anger, flashed in and out of her; did he intend it to be her fate to dangle after him? Why should she attempt so much when he was resigned to mediocrity, clung to it, in fact, with a fierce grasp? But she repeated one of her favourite
phrases to herself—“hug a bad bargain closer”—and she could not give up the fight, not after such a beginning. Who knew if it was not coyness, awkwardness, mere flirtatiousness, in a man who knew nothing of women? If he was a virgin with women, he was bound to be recalcitrant. He himself had said he had a long row to hoe before he could get over his neurosis.

At the same time, sitting next to him, smelling his clothes and his skin and hair, she involuntarily formed a new resolution. As soon as she got a job there, she would go at her languages again, get a French certificate, learn French stenography and cross the Channel, so as to not to be dependent on his favours. When she made enough money there she would go to the Sorbonne as she had planned, and Johnny must make up his mind about her and women. This was a freak of her nature. Disappointed by Johnny, she instantly sought yet another country. She turned her back on failure.

During the second act, she dropped her gloves to the floor. They both bent for them and her newly-washed hair fell over his face. She heard his gasp and felt him hold his face there, in the hair. When he straightened, he put out his hand and grasped hers. When he released it, she put out her hand and put it on his knee, where he held it. For so the affair went on; after all the coolness and despair, it went on in the expected way.

When they came out, they walked the mile or so towards their part of Bloomsbury. The theatre had been packed. They left behind them the soft rustle, the hush and the stirring, the scent, the joy of being packed in with thousands of other young creatures like themselves. It was heaven to walk along the roads with that rich and delicate memory in their heads. The young man liked the opera, had a good musical memory and kept singing fragments of the music. What plays had she seen, operas gone to? None. What books had she read? None but what she had written to him about, the classics, the old guard of library shelves. Had she seen the ballet? No. What had she been doing with herself for years? She laughed. “Nothing, just slept through them, I suppose.”

He shook his head, looking gaily at her. “Women are a sleepy crew, I believe they could spend their whole lives in an armchair.”

“You won't catch me doing that.”

“No? Then what
will
you do? In a typist's chair, eh? Is that it?”

“Heaven knows,” she muttered.

“Did you go to that Discussion Circle downtown?” he pursued.

“No, only once, I thought they were just trifling. It seemed to me they were there just to meet each other, the men and the women mean.”

“Ah,” he said, yawning, taking off his hat and scratching his poll. “Perhaps you're right there, there's a lot of he-ing and sheing in those study circles.” He grinned. “Well, why not? Male and female created he them and there's been the devil to pay ever since, as they say.” He began to chatter, as they bowled along, in a gay, interesting tone. He had gone last year or the year before, perhaps, to a play about summer camps and discussion groups. It had been a hit. Why? Because every audience was either tickled in the funny bone or jobbed in the hypocrisy. They raised the roof. He had been to see it three times, so had the boys. It got them in a soft spot, since most of them, men or women, were going to teach. Some irritated young teacher in the play said that men and women could never understand each other in argument, there was only one place they could meet satisfactorily—in bed. At these words, said Crow, a shudder, a groan, a cry ran through the audience, laughs downstairs and cries of “Shame!” from the middle rows, while the young people upstairs mostly sat silent and quivered. “Shame!” cried Jonathan lustily, in the Pentonville Road, imitating them. “Shame, shame, shame.” She heard him laugh shortly. “The hypocrites, shame, shame, listen to ‘em. Shame on them who won't allow what all of us have in our minds most of the time, and they, the ones who cried shame, are the ones who do it.”

She did not argue with him.

“Someone,” continued Jonathan, “says the relation between the sexes is based on food. Savages only have their women once or twice
a year. Their food is poor. All that about the love-life of the savages is balderdash for mammy-pappy consumption in the suburbs. Love is an illusion, love is food. Savages don't love. It's due to an overplus of calories, we eat more than we need, and what we admire in women is a seductive window-dressing of stored fat. Some of the superfluity goes to the brains, the nerves, and we get love, sighs, groans. Primitive love—raw fish, Cockney love—fish and chips, middle-class love—cottage pudding, the grand passion—roast duckling and port wine.” He flung away from her with his loud laugh and came back, slyly laughing, saying: “And how does that theory strike you?”

There was a clear sky overhead. The fresh wind had pushed away all the rain, the streets were cool but not sharp. It was pleasant again. There was a new warmth and a slight scent in the air.

“Spring,” said Teresa, nosing the air.

“Spring,” grumbled he, softly. “In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of—well, for me, it's beer and bread.”

“I got here in the spring,” she said, turning to him. “Do you know, I can hardly believe it, I meant to get here in the spring and I did!”

He kicked a stone, kicked it again, said: “And in the spring, what is your idea of fish and chips?”

“Love? For me, love is quite different.”

He approached and asked softly: “How is it, to you?”

“To me—” She found it hard to speak. She felt as if she were being blown out into the dark sky. She became grave. “You see, to me, it's quite different. It's like that sky, with the stars in it, dark, but longer than our lives and serene, distant, something that is there, even when we don't see it. But I do see it. I know it's there at all times. I am in love when I am not in love. I have been in love my whole life.”

He gave her a side glance, made a dissatisfied sound. “That's romance, but when you found out what it was really like—the dirt, the lust and carnality, the fish and chips?”

“What was different? I don't mean I really thought it was the sky, I always knew it was flesh and blood.”

“What is it,” he looked sideways at her, peering closer with teeth and eyes that flashed, “then what is it, but flesh—and blood. What is it? What else? What does Shaw say in
Candida
—‘we could not dwell on the mountain-tops for ever'.”

“Well, of course, it is flesh.”

“It is more than flesh, it is all they say it is, the bestiality, and yet we're tormented by the need for it. Spiritual beings!” He gritted his teeth with an odd ha-ha.

She was at a loss. He said: “As a girl of course you thought that, stars and all that, but later—when you found out—what was your feeling?”

She cried irritably: “When I found out? I know the flesh is life. We don't pray out the flesh like nuns.”

“No, but you don't admit we like it.” He went on hurriedly. “Women like self-delusion. But when—you read Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Havelock Ellis.” He came nearer and spoke in a confidential tone, but shamefacedly: “I remember you wrote in some letter—” He hurried on. “When you found out what it was really like?”

“When I—” but she fell silent, puzzled by his insistence. He kept murmuring like a boy asking for something and yet she had answered him.

“It was different then?”

“A letter?” she repeated.

He laughed shortly. “I expect because I was brought up on the streets and only saw the seamy side. We were a bunch of ragged kids, filthy, hard, we were lively enough, though,” he said cheerfully.

One of his strangest aspects to her was his changeable humour. In one speech he would be sardonic and naïve, cruel and gay, tender and cold. His voice, a fine one, altered all the time and was full of natural devices, slurring, drawling or sharp, keen notes, an irresistible burring of affection, soft laughs and pauses of self-blame. She loved his voice. She paused, listening to the last notes trailing away. She smiled to herself at the sound. “It doesn't prove your idea is right because you were a bunch of ragged kids.” She laughed outright.

“Or yours—” After a pause he looked at her amiably, and said: “Well, I stick to my guns, that the only way you can settle an argument between man and woman is in bed.”

She remained cool, but recoiled as if she had seen blood lying on the pavement.

He became cocksure, told her about his friend, a fat, jolly bumpkin named Bodkin, a Canadian student, now a journalist, last year at the university, who found his landlady with her hair down, in her nightdress, standing on the staircase with a candle in her hand, and watching the door of his room. “‘I thought I heard a noise and I was afraid of burglars,' said she, when Bodkin came, and she stepped down with a sly smile Bodkin gave her a slap on the bottom and sent her up to her room, telling her not to walk in her sleep.”

Crow declared that was the way they lived. They had little obscene books, went to low music-halls, and he had been along, as company, but when they went to other places, he deserted them. They had a good, rapacious, libertine, lusty, cordial yet low life and it did not please him. He was a good fellow but there were things that were not for him, not that he was a prude. Waitresses were a danger, though they could not help it, poor girls, and unlike coarse Bohemia, he could not cohabit with maidservant and landlady. Besides, he always paid his rent! And so he must suffer. To the poor student, society said: “Be vicious or suffer!”

Some time passed before another word was said. When they were near his room, he said: “I am very interested in migration problems. Bodkin was saying we are in one of the great migration ages. Now, perhaps, with the new intensities of nationalism, migration will cease for a time, but after the wars are over, mass migrations ordered by governments will doubtless take place. When we have a congress of nations, the era of migrations will begin for good, gone the little home and rent-paying. How will this affect landlords? Workmen pay rent. If they are moved from areas of unemployment to labour-scarcity areas, it will disturb the rental values.”

“Yes?”

“I'm studying it at present, for I haven't a decent subject for my thesis and I thought I might take up migration. It's a bit speculative, that's the drawback. It's interesting.” He was speaking hurriedly and without his usual tones. “One of the most interesting points is the free production of artificial restriction of population.”

“How?”

“Well,” he laughed nervously, “the prohibition or permission of birth-control for example. When migration is no longer possible out of England, they permit birth-control. See the point? For instance, does a higher wage produce more children? Or do the really poor people have more children, so that paying lower wages increases the population? See? Figures tend to show that with ease, parents become lazy and wish for their personal comfort as well as extending the childhood of their children. Poverty is perhaps better for the birth-rate. Pretty anomalous, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“No, I really don't.”

He startled her by asking with solicitude whether she had read any of the literature of birth-control. She said she had seen some pamphlets but that she couldn't bring herself to ask the man for them.

“Why not? That's silly.”

“I know.” She blushed.

He was silent and withdrew his arm. “You ought to know.”

After a time she said: “Can you get me one?”

“No,” he said sulkily, “no, I can't.”

In silence they passed King's Cross Station, crossed the road and stood in a paved drive-way between two small shops, a chemist's, which exhibited some of the very pamphlets in question, and a tobacconist's which had put out two racks of coarse penny postcards. The girl was afraid he was going to make her go into this chemist's, and in misery, wanted to run away. She began to tremble. A house was set back, behind the chemist's and was entered by a door under an arch some way down and a lamp shone there. It looked pleasant
and quiet. After hesitating, Jonathan put his arm through her arm again and asked her if she was going to be busy the next day looking for a job. He offered her his typewriter to type her applications. There was unemployment and many people were on the dole. She might have a hard time. If she needed help in getting to know people, she must call on him.