Jill (14 page)

They had to force their way into the Fox and Grapes, which was crowded, bright and noisy, with the sound of singing and a piano raggedly audible from another room. Workmen looked resentfully as they entered, but soon forgot them, as it was nearly ten o’clock. John studied his companions in the light: Christopher looked as he did when he came in late at night,
pale and determined, but Eddy’s mouth was agape and his spotty face flushed and excited. The Cambridge man was a stocky football player, with fair hair, wearing a military raincoat that was splashed with sick at the bottom. He was very white and his eyes were incurious.

“I’ll get the drinks,” said John quickly. “What are you having?”

He returned from the bar with four tiny glasses, in each of which danced an inch of golden liquid. The bar was so crowded he had to force his way like an explorer through dense undergrowth. The others had been standing silent, letting their attention drift buoyed-up on the chatter and laughter around them.

“That’s the stuff,” said Christopher, eagerly stretching out a hand. John handed them carefully out, secretly alarmed at the price, and at the prospect of drinking one.

“Not for me, thanks,” whispered the young man.

“Oh, hell, it’ll warm you up,” said Christopher, putting it roughly into his hand. “Take a grip on yourself.”

John looked cautiously at his glass. Whisky? Would it make him drunk, would he stagger about and see pink elephants, walk home crookedly and perhaps be sick? If he were sick in front of Christopher he would die of shame.

“Here’s to good old whisky,” said Eddy loudly, and swallowed what he had, which made John feel affectionate towards him: he seemed so reckless, so aggressively unprotected. John himself carefully sipped a little: Lord! His eyes filled with tears and he gulped furiously: it did not feel as if he had actually swallowed anything, but as if the liquid had soaked into his throat as spilt water soaks into sand. The agony caused him to look impersonally ahead, listening seriously to the sound of singing.

“I like whisky,” said Christopher, grinning suspiciously at John as if he guessed his thoughts. “You can feel it doing you harm.” His good humour had quite returned. “Jesus, look at the man,” he added, reaching out swiftly and giving the bow-tie a rough pull. John had forgotten it for the moment, and Christopher burst into a roar of not unflattering laughter at the
expression on his face. “I’ve been wondering why he looked different. Thought I was tight. Pretty smart, eh?”

Eddy looked at John and then at Christopher. “Cute thing,” he said.

John swelled with pride and the noise of the pub drummed in his ears. “You’ve undone it. God, Chris, you are a swine.” He began to laugh happily, feeling the collapsed ends with his hands. “You swine. I can’t possibly do it up again.” Laughter slowly gathered all his body and began to contract, so that he bent, one hand on his knee. “I—I don’t know how.”

“You don’t?” Christopher was starting to laugh as well. “Then you’ll always have to wear it like that—oh, owch, owch, owch.” He exploded uncontrollably. “Oh, my God. Owch—owch—owch.”

Eddy banged him in the ribs. “Here, shut up, what’s the matter? Eh?” He pushed his face close. “You want a fight,” he diagnosed.

“Shut up, Eddy. It’s that fool John. He can’t tie his tie again, now I’ve wrecked it—oh, owch—owch—owch——” He went off again. John, gripped by silent laughter, nodded dumbly, while Eddy stared at each of them in turn, a puzzled look on his face. He licked his lips and belched. At last he said:

“Then how—here, listen to me—
how?
—di’ do it in the first place?”

Christopher stopped laughing. “Eh?”

But John’s laughter became more wild and delighted as he hugged the secret to himself. He fought his way to the bar and got four more whiskeys, handing them out like gifts to the other three. It was his moment. He felt extraordinary power over them all, thinking that although he was not the best of them, he was the only one who realized their collective excellence. Both of them gripped him by one arm.

“Yes, you bastard, who tied it to start with?”

John put his whisky down on a side table, too weak to laugh any more. “Elizabeth,” he said weakly.

“Who?”

“Elizabeth. You know.”

“What the hell d’you mean, Elizabeth?” demanded
Christopher, his black eyebrows pulling together in the middle. “What the hell are you talking about?”

John picked his whisky up and tossed it off. His feet straddled. “The merest coincidence,” he said, and began to tell of the morning’s incident. Half-way through, a crow of amusement half-choked him, and he started to giggle; by the time he finished the end of the story Christopher, tapping his square-faced ring against his glass, was laughing too. They were not laughing at the same things, but that did not matter. Good humour was restored. The Cambridge man said he felt a lot better, and where could they get something to eat? Eddy was whistling. The landlord called time and his wife came out from behind the bar to collect glasses. As she passed Eddy she pushed him aside like a piece of furniture, but he did not notice. John stood smiling, listening to the talk, the loose ends of his bow-tie hanging foolishly down.

John did not feel so happy the next morning as he thought he would. When he had pulled the bedclothes over himself the night before he had thought he would never be depressed again, and went to sleep looking forward to the five more weeks that remained of the term. When Jack called them in the morning, he sat up dubiously. There was a peculiar taste in his mouth. When he blinked, his eyes felt tired. In fact, he felt tired all over. The window-pane was blurred and wet: it had been raining since dawn.

Moreover, when he had forced himself up and had spent the morning attending lectures in chilly rooms, he found he was not free of the worries he had imagined were illusory. After lunch he sat at the desk, trying to make himself work, but continually the thought returned to his mind that one of his shoes had let the water in, that the fire was not burning properly, that he had spent much more money than he should have done. He scribbled a little sum on his blotting paper and found to his
dismay that he had about five shillings pocket-money a week left him, after deducting money for a ticket home and a tip for Jack. Then he did a second sum to find out the price of whisky per glass. Half-way through he abandoned it in despair.

He wondered when Christopher would pay him back the pound he owed. He lacked the courage to ask for it.

He was not wearing the bow-tie now, having looked gravely at it that morning and then put it away in his drawer, feeling surprised that he was not more pleased to see it again. The sight of it produced slight shame in him. Now it was three in the afternoon and the taste of the College lunch of sausages and mashed potatoes and cabbage still lingered in his mouth: the rain continued to fall heavily outside without having ceased for a second through the day. An open book lay in front of him, and he held his fountain pen ready above the blank page of an exercise-book; he ran his eye down the page of print as so often before, meaning to gather the main points and note them down. He blinked, shook his head, and read the page again, but the trick would not work. Laboriously he began to read every word, starting at the top of the page, but in a couple of seconds he had lost track of the meaning. He realized that he was due for one of the spells he had been having during the last week when his brain simply refused to assimilate new knowledge; he could hardly read a newspaper intelligently. They caused him a gnawing of alarm. Was he, perhaps, going mad, or stupid?

But it was silly to worry. Christopher never did any work. John got up and wandered to the bookcase, where the file he had bought for Christopher lay under a few newspapers and magazines. He pulled it out and opened it. It was empty, with the price still scrawled in pencil on the first blank sheet. He pushed it back into its place with a sigh. Christopher was out at the moment, to buy some cakes for tea: Elizabeth was coming, and as John remembered this he remembered, too, Christopher’s injunction to keep a good fire in, and scuttled over to the hearth. The fire smouldered blackly and John spent a few minutes to draw it up with a newspaper, but the big fireplace was too wide to be properly covered by the war-time newspaper sheets, and he only set light to the thing and had to
cram it into the grate hurriedly with the poker. As it burnt it made the fire worse.

Kneeling down gave him a slight headache.

But Elizabeth would be coming, and he gave himself up to wondering how she would look and what she would say and what she really thought behind her square, cosmetic-tended face. He wondered if he could make her like him. Looking at his face in the mirror, he took the comb from his breast pocket and combed his hair different ways, trying to decide which way suited him the best: none of them, he regretfully decided, was conspicuously better than another. Then he sat at the desk again, remembering something Mr. Crouch had once said: “Get into the habit of forgetting everything except the page in front of you. Sit for a moment, concentrating, and pretend you’re wiping an ice-cold sponge across your mind, leaving everything quite clear and free. Forget yesterday, forget tomorrow, forget who you are and what you’re going to do next. Then start.” He frowned. He had always found it rather difficult, and now it seemed impossible: he could not forget yesterday, nor what he was going to do next. The rain poured down outside with a soft hissing as it pattered on dead boughs and leaves.

He was startled when there came a light tap on the door, and Elizabeth looked in.

“Oh, dear, am I
too
early?”

“Oh, er, come in, Elizabeth.”

He put his pen down on his exercise-book, which shut of its own accord, and rose to welcome her, as if she were his guest.

“I mustn’t disturb you.… Are you sure it doesn’t matter?”

“No, do come in—let me. Er—can I take your coat? Isn’t it wet?”

She let it fall into his hands and he carried it into the bedroom, laying it with cheap insolence across his own bed. In the meantime she studied herself in the glass and sat down on the sofa. She wore a soft brown dress, with a gold chain round her neck, brown shoes and lustrous stockings, and the colours brought out every shade of her dark-gold hair. It fascinated John, who imagined her brushing it, beating it up on both sides
till it stood up of its own accord like whipped white of egg.

He found his packet of cigarettes, and she took one.

“I’m afraid they got a bit squashed last night.”

“Dear, dear, were you there, too? Patrick is very annoyed about last night.” She tilted her eyelids towards the flame. “It seems they’ll fine him ten shillings, and it was Eddy’s fault for shouting like a
mad
man.”

“Yes, perhaps. I wasn’t there then.”

“I’m surprised you were there at all.” She gave him an impudent glance, exhaling smoke. “I thought you were a
sober
person.”

“Did you?” He smiled, and kicked the coals nervously. “Sorry the fire’s so.…”

“And you’re not wearing that
lovely
bow, either. I think you should. Where is it?”

“I can’t tie it.”

“You are mad, you know. Fancy buying a bow when you can’t tie it. Bring it here, and I’ll show you.”

“Bring it——?”

“Yes, I’ll show you.” She sat up, stretching out an imperious hand, holding the cigarette away from her. He looked into her face and fancied he saw an amused, challenging expression.

“All right.” He fetched it from the bedroom and Elizabeth brushed some ash from her skirt, humming a tune quietly to herself. “Here it is.”

“Good. Now take your tie off.” She twisted it in her hands, holding it away to inspect it critically, her chin doubling slightly. Her rose-coloured finger-nails made the blue silk seem intense in colouring. John awkwardly fumbled with his collar, remembering too late that it was one that had been turned by his mother because it had grown so worn on one side. She approached him, bearing the tie.

“Now then. First, the right end should be longer than the left.” She made a movement like putting her arms round his neck, encircling his collar with the bow, and tugging the ends to their correct lengths. “That’s right. Now, it’s just like tying a shoe-lace—and you do that every day——”

He shifted a trifle. She was very close to him. He could smell scented warmth and tobacco on her breath as she talked.

“First an ordinary knot—can you see what I’m doing?”

She put her hands on his shoulders and moved round till he could see her hands reflected in the mirror. Looking at them gave him a queer sensation. Her clear voice might have issued from a gaily-painted loudspeaker in a nursery.

“Now the bow. Fold … over … double this end.…”

As they stood close together, her body seemed bigger than his. He wanted to raise his hands, that hung embarrassed at his sides, and put them on her hips, and pull her against him. A flaring theoretical lust began making it seem more and more likely that he would do this. He wondered what there was to prevent him, and there seemed nothing, and his elbows were beginning to crook when he suddenly caught the expression on her face. He saw in a second that she expected him to do this, that she was waiting for it. His hands dropped. A horrible embarrassment tingled and shuddered inside him, that what he had imagined to be his most secret feeling was almost cynically common. It shocked him deeply. He instinctively moved his head uncomfortably, like an animal at bay.

“Keep still,” she said. “There, now it’s done.” With a lingering, backward gesture at the mirror, “Look at yourself.”

He resembled a dog groomed for a show.

“Very nice,” he said, covering his confusion. “I must employ you to do it permanently.”

She looked amusedly at him and sat down again.

“It’s easy.”

Through the silence they heard the rain and the sound of approaching footsteps and whistling that John recognized instantly as Christopher’s. A quick fear made him stuff his tie into his pocket, guiltily. Elizabeth took up her cigarette again, raising her eyebrows: