Jill (13 page)

And it was till Jack cleaned it up, for which Christopher gave him five shillings. Nevertheless, John’s sense of exhilaration persisted. On Monday morning he woke up, had a hot bath, called for a second cup of coffee at breakfast (he had never done this before), and went out afterwards into the gardens for a stroll. The morning was bright, and though everywhere was a tangle of dead stalks and leaves, the wet grass shone as in June. Shadows of great elms lay across the lawn. He sniffed the air: it had that strange, ashen smell of autumn, despite the glittering sheets of light. Now and again a bird called, and it was hard to believe that the garden was in the middle of a town.

To avoid a gardener, he went indoors again and spent some time pretending to decide whether or not to attend a lecture at ten
o’clock. Indeed, he came very near to missing it, as Christopher would have done (Christopher still lay in the blacked-out bedroom), but as he himself was up and not, after all, Christopher, he slipped on his big scholar’s gown and walked out of the College into the busy streets. For the lecture he decided to be Mr. Crouch, nodding his head wisely at intervals and making a few microscopic jottings, to be copied and expanded later; by eleven, he remembered, the public houses would be open, and he could be Christopher and stand drinking in a bar. He would buy himself a packet of cigarettes and enjoy smoking and drinking. How ashen the air smelt: a quenched smell of an extinct summer.

The lecture room was full of young women in short gowns, carrying bulky handbags and enormous tattered bundles of notes; they smelt inimitably of face powder and (vaguely) Irish stew, and they were dressed in woollen clothes. He soon forgot them and the lecturer as well by thinking of Mrs. Warner. His mind dwelt pleasurably on her uprightness, her precision in handing a cup and saucer, the individuality that caused her to go hatless and show her fine dark hair, that was at once comely and mature. There was something about her that he had never met before, something that made him feel at once both happy and excited, something that made him want to see her again, to live where she lived. She affected him like an invigorating climate.

After the lecture he went and stood in a bar. His high spirits were rising as the sun rose towards the zenith: indeed, he was almost surprised at his own jubilance.

“A bitter, please, and twenty cigarettes.”

“These are all we have.”

“They’ll do nicely,” John agreed. He took a paper packet of matches from a holder on the counter and gave sixpence to the blind. Before the grate lay a tabby cat, stretched out as if dead, but something in its mouth and throat suggesting limitless ferocity.

“Likes the fire.”

“Hah! S’not the only one.”

The woman went on knitting, for the bar was otherwise
empty, and John leaned in the shade and blew smoke into the sunlight. Try as he would, he could not make it like Christopher did. By playing off the taste of the beer against the taste of the tobacco, he managed to find each fairly pleasant. The cat yawned and writhed up, stretching on its four feet: John rubbed it with his shoe, and it patiently moved away.

“He’s not feeling friendly today.”

“Ah, we only keep him for the mice. Don’t like cats myself. We only keep him ’cause of the mice.”

“You’ve got mice, then?”

“Any number, yes. These are old houses.”

The cat settled down on the other side of the fire, out of his reach.

“He’s a good mouser—he’ll sit two, three hours over a hole.” The woman shook her knitting. “Can’t get him away. Ah, these are old houses.”

John looked at the cat again, finished his beer and went out into the light. From the stone façades pigeons fluttered down on to the pavements and waddled uneasily about, casting a wary eye at him, but he paid no attention to them. The wind blew and a whole wall of ivy danced in the sun, the leaves blowing back to show their white undersides. So in him a thousand restlessnesses yearned and shook. At the sight of the blue-and-white sky, the flashing windscreens of cars, the square new brick air-raid shelters daubed with white paint, a vigour filled him almost equal to his desire. He wondered whether to go back to the College, find Christopher and suggest they went out drinking.

He was depressed by the sudden reflection of himself in a hat-shop window: he was ashamed of his emaciated suit. It was a blot on him, it did nothing to express his exhilaration, it made him look pinched and underfed. It would be splendid to go into a tailor’s and order a dozen new suits, in tweed, with fob pockets and leather buttons. The idea of spending money took hold of his mind, and he began considering what he could buy, something he could wear to show his good humour: a really smart tie, for instance. In fact, a bow-tie. He smiled and began walking quickly through the people.

The inside of the outfitter’s was lofty and hushed, like a cathedral, and if a tall man resembling a solicitor had not immediately come towards him, he would have turned round and gone out again.

“I want a bow-tie.”

“One bow-tie.”

This gave John a sudden vision of the bow-tie, lying in a pool of light at the bottom of a lift-shaft, very tiny and distinct. The man went behind the counter and began laying out drawerfuls of ties neatly and quickly, staring beyond John’s head into some far corner of the shop.

John went through all the actions of a rich young man (Christopher), choosing a bow-tie in a shop. He would drag one out, then throw it down as if it had deceived him; he would flick them over like the pages of a book and turn from one drawerful to the next. One or two he picked out and twisted, as if to consider their appearance when tied, or carried them over to the door to inspect the colour in a better light. He liked doing this, but he did it quickly so as not to waste the man’s time. In the end he chose a pleasant, ordinary one, blue with white spots, and paid three-and-sixpence for it. The man put it into a little envelope, licked the flap and stuck it down.

As soon as he got outside, he went down a public lavatory to put it on.

He was so nervous when he emerged that for all practical purposes he was a walking bow-tie. If all the traffic had stopped dead, he would hardly have noticed it; he proceded with short, self-conscious steps along the dry, sunny pavement, avoiding the eyes of passers-by, his hands clenched in his pockets. He was so preoccupied that he did not see Elizabeth Dowling till she came right up to him: they were walking diagonally in roughly the same direction, and she had a small notebook as well as a handbag, as if she was going to work in a library. Her smart flared skirt and flowers pinned to her jacket made this seem incongruous.

“Hallo, John. Oh, my dear! What—what—what——”

She spluttered in pretended astonishment, and stopped with
her golden head on one side, forcing him to stop too. He muttered a kind of greeting.

“Oh, it’s a
too
-heavenly bow,” she cried. “But, my dear boy, why haven’t you
tied
it properly? My dear, it’s
ruinous
.”

“Oh—er—isn’t it right?” He put his hands up to it uneasily. Certainly it had looked a bit odd in the lavatory. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Why, it’s all——” She shut her lips, biting back a squirt of laughter. “Here, hold these.” She gave him her book and handbag, and pulled the bow undone. Then, starting with an end in each hand, she rapidly retied it, her lips still firmly closed. It was an extraordinary scene, and he could not see any way of preventing it. People passing stared curiously, till he was scarlet, but Elizabeth herself was so unconcerned he could say nothing.

“There, that’s more presentable.” She stepped back at last. “Not throttled, are you?”

“No—no, thanks very much——”

She took back her book and bag and walked with him for some way. Though they had not met since the afternoon of John’s arrival, she treated him as intimately as if they were friends of a year’s standing.

“You look much smarter now,” she said, the sun showing the dazzling contrast between lips and teeth. Then she left him, running up the stone steps of a library, leaving him standing below in the attitude of a sightseer as he watched her white calves disappear into the inner dusk.

He spent the afternoon asleep on the sofa, with the bow-tie tickling his chin. At dinner in Hall Whitbread grinned across at him in a friendly manner:

“You look a regular dandy. My word, who’s been lashin’ out?”

He put a whole potato in his mouth, holding his knife and fork like carpenter’s tools, and John began to eat quickly in order to finish before he did and to get away from him. A servant brought a plate of prunes and custard, and Whitbread caught his sleeve, asking for more cauliflower.

“Like to come up for coffee?”

John smiled regretfully.

“I’m afraid I’m going out tonight.”

So of course he had to go, lest Whitbread should see the light on in his room, or, worse, come to investigate. He put on his overcoat, admired himself in the mirror and walked aimlessly out into the blackness, listening to the hooded Army lorries thundering past at eight-second intervals. There was no traffic but this convoy and an occasional omnibus. Men and women stood silently along the walls of locked banks or collected in little groups that would suddenly explode a few paces backwards in laughter, and then re-form again. He stepped off the pavement to pass them.

As he walked into a quieter part of the town by the river, where there were river-boat offices and shops that sold clay pipes and fishing-rods, his exhilaration, that had sunk into a glowing contentment, began curdling to helplessness. It took him some minutes to discover what it was he wanted and could not get: he conjured up Mrs. Warner and Christopher in turn, and only when he had dismissed them impatiently did he remember Elizabeth, and her friendliness. The soft fumbling of her hands under his chin had aroused a fugitive excitement in him. When could he see her again, as he wanted to?

Christopher was lucky; he could see her whenever he wanted, and touch her, and perhaps kiss her whenever he wanted. He leaned over the stone wall of the bridge, hearing the water chuckling beneath and the shifting trees down the bank. Elizabeth filled his thoughts. Not only Elizabeth, but all that stretched beyond her—iridescent, tingling feelings that had not any obvious cause, shadowy wishes, and more shadowy dreams of fulfilment. As he looked down he could hear the water, but not see it. The day’s happiness had gone with the day, and he was left with an uneasy depression, expressed in the thought: where was she now? She was most likely with Christopher.

He wondered where they both were.

About fifteen minutes later he heaved himself upright and began strolling back towards the College, and it was then that quite by accident he met Christopher. As he was passing a tiny
street that was practically an alley-way, there came a flurry of feet and a mutter of drunken laughter. Then someone crashed into him, sending him reeling sideways into a lamp-post, which was very painful.

“Oh, God,” said a voice. “Sorry, you.”

“Bugger the Proctors!” screeched another voice—Eddy’s. John called:

“Christopher?”

“Christ, who’s ’at?”

“John.”

“John? Oh, Kemp. ’Struth, John, ole boy, we’ve just been nearly progged. What a squeak.” Christopher, smelling of spirits, gripped his arm very tightly. “Come an’ have a drink. Here, Eddy, where’s everyone?”

“Wha’? God knows.”

“Come an’ have a drink, ole boy. Must do. Where’s the nearest, Eddy? The Fox?”

Just then another set of feet pattered down the alley-way, and Patrick Dowling’s voice came out of the darkness.

“You there, Chris? You pair of swine. Those progs got us.”

“No! What bloody luck. I
am
sorry. I thought we all——”

“Bullers all round us. That’s ten shillings down the drain. It’s a regular cow.”

“Have you got Eddy there?” came Hugh Stanning-Smith’s voice. “We heard the bastard yelling.”

Eddy was leaning against a lamp-post, singing.

“Now come on, men,” urged Christopher persuasively. “We’re wasting good drinking time. What about the Fox?”

“Oh, scrub that.” Patrick Dowling’s voice sounded disagreeably sober. “Scrub that, Christopher. We’ve been had once tonight, even if you haven’t. I’m through for tonight.”

A violent sound of vomiting came from the black alley-way.

“Eddy, you sot! Pull yourself together—your Cambridge man’s turned himself up.”

“Eh?” Eddy stumbled across to the entry, where he could be heard comforting the vomiter. “Let it come up, ol’ man. That’s right. Christ, not over me, you fool.”

“Now, Pat, don’t crab everything. Come on, man.”
Christopher returned to the attack. “Just a couple of whiskies at the Fox to round off. Come on, man! The progs’ll be in bed by now.”

John listened with interest, wondering what excuse Patrick would find to give in; it was curious to hear the full weight of Christopher’s personality turned against somebody else. “Christ, lightning never strikes twice in the same place! The Fox is only just round the corner.”

“Yes, and so are the progs.” John could imagine his lips curling under his long nose.

“Well, you yellow pig. John’ll come, won’t you, old boy? There, you see, a man who’s hardly been in a pub before he came up’s got more guts than you. You’re coming, Hugh?”

“It’s close on closing time, old boy. I’ve had enough for tonight.”

John could hardly believe his ears. Their firm refusals sounded as casual as if the matter was of no matter, instead of a test of loyalty. Their independence excited him and also the fact that instead of being sixth in the group, he had suddenly jumped up to fourth—or even third, for surely the Cambridge man did not count.

“All right, then.” Plainly, Christopher had lost his temper. “Come on, Eddy. Can that man walk?”

“Sure,” came a husky voice.

“These swine are crying off. It’s only across the road. Come on, John.”

Eddy followed, singing and stamping his feet, and John followed, too, humming the refrain under his breath. In a moment all his happiness had come bounding back: Christopher’s compliments and the fact he had not, after all, been with Elizabeth, combined to send his spirits dizzily high. Perhaps the best of the day was still to come.