Jill (26 page)

A flower-seller offered him a flower on his way back, but he pretended not to see.

Yet, if Christopher had been in to luncheon, John would probably have passed the message on out of sheer servility. But he was not and John ate his curried rice with that resigned queasiness he always felt when external circumstances determined his actions for him. Whitbread, bitterly complaining, left most of his meal: it was the first he had not finished since coming into residence.

As he lay down on the sofa to wait until the time came for him to go out, the fire smothered under a load of fresh coal, he pulled his writing pad on to his lap, thinking it was time he sent his long-overdue letter to Mr. Crouch. “Dear Mr. Crouch,” he wrote, “I am sorry I haven’t written to you since I arrived, but I have had a good deal to do.” The two lies lay quietly on the page waiting for him to add to them, but he could not. Crouch and the world of his boyhood lay tidily behind him: all the sense of continuity that made days, weeks, months, slip away like the perspective of a street, had broken up, and all seemed a crowd of gulls, circling, crying, re-circling, suspended, between the sky and the shore.

He was dreading this afternoon of definite action like a visit to the dentist’s. The drink he had had still confused his mind. It
was strange, everywhere there were young men like himself planning their afternoons, their evenings, all they would do now and for ever more: no one felt this lapsing, lifting, turning and returning motion like a crowd of gulls. Knowing their desires they went straight for them. And although he knew his, going straight for them was like firing a gun in a dream: things locked and jammed, every possible bewildering mistake interfered.

When it was time for him to set out he tore the sheet of notepaper from the pad and burnt it before leaving the room. He was starting early because he dare not run the risk of missing her, and he had to slow down his nervous steps deliberately. The wind could hold off the rain no longer: drops fell, then a fine unified rain came down, whole blocks of it blowing about like the sudden turning of swallows. It swept against windows, blew horizontally up the street, diagonally across the lawns; from every tree, bush and wall of ivy there came a faint hissing. The streets began to reflect the grey sky. Once more the old buildings dripped. And John, rejecting two half-formed inclinations—one to walk down to the river and the other to walk anywhere as long as it was far away—stood for three minutes to shelter on the steps of All Saints’ Church by the ’bus stop, looking at the lights in the upper windows of the shops opposite.

He wished he was rich enough to give a party, a party for Jill, with the furniture pushed back, a white cloth on the table and barrels and clean glasses making the room like a bar. A fire of logs roared. There was gin the colour of morning mist and whisky like fairy gold. He wore a ten-guinea suit and smoked with an amber cigarette-holder. Everyone came: Christopher hung his pork-pie hat on a stag’s antler, cracking jokes; John punohed Eddy in the ribs and raced him through the first pint; danced with Elizabeth and felt her breasts pushed against him. Bottles were recorked and sent floating down the river with messages inside them. The radiogram played without being attended to. And the dancers became fewer, one by one they dropped out, till in the end only Jill stood where she had stood all the evening, dressed in white, in
a corner, turning and turning one tiny unemptied glass in her two hands.

Descending the steps with two discontented skips, he pushed through the people, elaborating and economizing the story, so intent on it that even when Jill herself came out of a shop ten yards away his stride carried him up to her before he realized she was there.

His surprise articulated itself into a greeting and she looked round quickly, her face wary and without expectancy. “Oh, hello!” She just about recognized him. Dressed in a fawn raincoat of military cut (with a belt and flaps to the pocket) she wrinkled her nose at the rain and held an umbrella ready for opening with both hands, a trifle gingerly. “Gosh, isn’t the weather foul,” she said, with a kind of undirected petulance.

Slowly, exasperatingly slowly, he thought of something to say:

“What have you been buying?”

“Christmas cards.” Her voice was surprised. “This is a good place.”

“Is it?” He continued looking at her. “Isn’t it—rather early, isn’t it?”

She instantly checked a movement to look at her wrist watch, answering:

“Well, it’s only a month till Christmas.”

“Is that all.” He laughed. “Look, as a matter of fact I was looking for you. Elizabeth is ill or something. She can’t come.”

“Ill, is she? Oh, dear. What, really ill?”

“Oh, I don’t think so—she just sent a message saying she was sorry——”

“She did have a headache last night, I remember.… Thank you very much for telling me.”

John looked at her intently, collecting the half-dozen shuddering words together:

“Will you have tea with
me
?”

“Oh——” She was caught off her balance, almost literally, for she took a step down on to the pavement away from him. “Oh, I don’t think I will, thanks. I must go back if Elizabeth’s not well.”

“Oh, do. It’s only half-past three.” Beyond her head he could see a clock showing twenty to four. Now it was happening and her real quick body was edging away from him, the precariousness of it all made him speak urgently. In theory he wanted to take hold of her.

“Oh, I don’t think I’d better, thanks. Thanks very much all the same. I’d better go back.”

He took a step after her. “This the way you’re going?”

“Yes.…” She gave him a doubtful look. “I’ve got another errand.”

It did not seem bad-mannered to fall in beside her as she set off up the street again, the way he had come, because there was nothing else to do short of the impossibility of leaving her there and then. She had opened her brown, small-sized umbrella and the spread of it kept him a foot or so from her. Her Wellingtons made a lolloping sound as she walked. Now that he was not talking, he had less excuse to look at her, but when he did his admiration was unhindered; he blushed quickly as if on the point of tears. She raised her left hand and drew back a wet strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear.

“This is my shop. I want some braid.”

He followed her through the swing doors, to the thick carpets, hanging dresses and the stacked-up material that filled the air with silence. There was a smell of cloth. A young girl dressed in black, with a white collar, came to serve her; they were of the same age and height and John compared them as he stood back by a table of handbags and leather belts. The girl’s mouth fell open as she listened, and she went to a drawer behind the counter: Jill followed, twisting the umbrella nervously. Because of her fair hair and her pale raincoat contrasting with the dark dresses of all the assistants, the light seemed to be drawn down to her, to single her out. The girl stretched her hands apart and between them was bright brick-red braid. Jill bent forward, touched it: John heard her ask a question. It amused him to see her finger the stuff so seriously. Then lengths of it were carelessly stretched against the brass yard-measurement at the edge of the counter, snipped off and wrapped in a twist of brown paper. In the meantime she paid the bill and dropped
her umbrella. The presence of John standing in the front of the shop with his shabby blue overcoat and feet planted apart, seemed to unsettle her.

“Are you finished? What about some tea now?”

“No, I must go, I must catch a ’bus.”

“Where?”

“Round the corner.”

This was very near and John was suddenly filled with the dread of losing her. “Don’t go,” he said desperately.

“What?”

“I wanted to say … It’s really the strangest thing——”

A perambulator and some women parted them, and when they rejoined the edge of her open umbrella tapped him on the head twice.

“Before I met you—— You remember, the first time I asked you if we hadn’t met before——”

“Well, we hadn’t, surely——”

“No, but we did. And in a way we had. Excuse me.” They pushed through a gossiping crowd on the street corner. “I knew you, you see I knew you quite well——”

“What?” An immense Air Force transport lorry and trailer was taking the corner and every interstice of silence was filled with a complaining din. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite——”

“I mean, your face was familiar to me.” John looked at her, longing for some other medium than speech. “Long before I saw you I knew who you were——”

“Do you mean Elizabeth had——”

“What? I mean, I beg——”

“Had Elizabeth——”

“No—I mean, it’s hard to explain.” They looked all ways, crossing the road to the ’bus stop, staring round as if bewildered. “It seemed I knew you—I knew your name was Jill——”

“It’s not Jill!” During a lull in the traffic her voice rang out perhaps more sharply than she had intended, and she turned, for the first time a laugh broke over her face, drawing back her mouth, heightening her savage cheekbones. “I’m sorry, that’s just a thing with me. I told you yesterday—oh, no, you weren’t
there. No, I won’t be called anything but Gillian, please.… But do go on. I feel I vaguely interrupted you.”

“It all sounds so silly—you see, I had a letter from my sister,” John was beginning when a big red ’bus came splashing up, causing the little crowd to stir and tighten. “A letter came,” he repeated as they moved. “Look, I must tell you all this properly. Come and have tea with me tomorrow.”

“I must go now. Good-bye.”

“Will you come and have tea with me tomorrow?”

“Yes, all right, good-bye.”

“Will you come about four?”

“What? Yes, all right.” She was on the step and did not look back. “Good-bye.”

He stood back, watching the ’bus load up and move away, dazzled by the sudden pyrotechnical ending to their meeting and her promise. He was so overcome he walked straight home, the noise and the wind and the hiss of tyres on the road bearing him up like martial music, walked home and sat in his empty room. But almost immediately he got up and went out again, too excited to sit still. He could not believe that she had given her word to come and see him. It was as if he had been walking at a brick wall, knowing it to be brick and impenetrable, and had suddenly found that he was wrong, finding that he could go straight through it, that it was only a pattern of light. He was through it! An almost physical sense of emergence possessed him.

Without knowing where he was going he made his way to the canal, that stands through the town nearly unnoticed past coal-yards, railway sidings, the backs of houses and gardens. He had never walked by it before, and its novelty coincided with his unfamiliar mood. The wet gravel stained his shoes. The rain had stopped, and the water was quite still, disfigured at times by scum, weed and rotten wood, all drifted to a standstill. A brightly painted coal barge was moored to a wharf on the other bank: on his side there was a hedge dividing him from allotments and the railway lines. The hedge was wet, smelling of damp wood and leaves, but the nettles under it were dry and soft-looking, with occasionally a single bead of water
lodged between leaf and stem. A packet of chips lay half hidden in the ditch.

From this side, the west, the sun began to struggle through, a yellow light making every twig glisten. The air seemed to freshen at once and the only sound was the squelching of his shoes; ducks swam cautiously away from him and farther on a single swan drifted sulkily on the water. The dropped head, the neck’s magnificent curve and the webbed feet giving every now and then a stroke backwards expressed disdain and scornfulness. Because of the nearness of the coal yards and the telephone wires and dirty water, he did not think it beautiful at first. But something about it fascinated him. And as he watched, an express train hurtled past twenty yards off on the shining rails, and the long stretch of coaches racing away awakened nothing like regret in him, as they once would. He was glad to see them go; glad, simply, to be where he was, and to see them go.

Out of the fullness of his heart he invited Whitbread round for some beer when they had finished dinner in the half-empty hall (it was a meatless night, and many members of the College distrusted the chef’s experiments).

“Eh, that’s nice of you,” said Whitbread, clasping his own gown near each shoulder as they stood up. “If you don’t mind, though, I prefer coffee.”

“Coffee, then,” said John, laughing. They walked out together: the Head Scout watched them distantly.

Whitbread had never been in John’s rooms before and looked about him with interest, rubbing his hands before the fire and appraising everything. “Ay! this could be a real nice room. Expensive in the old days, I reckon. You wouldn’t have had this room in the old days.”

“No, I suppose not.” John laid out cups and saucers. “There’s having to share——”

“That’s a drawback, I know.” His eyes fell upon the crockery, and he made a pleased noise, changing the subject. “That’s a nice pattern. Yes, I like that. Yours, is it, or——?”

“It’s mine all right. Chris hasn’t got any.”

“Hasn’t he? What does he do, then?”

“Uses mine,” said John, with a grin, but also with a very slight trace of embarrassment.

Whitbread looked deeply indignant. “Eh, I wouldn’t stand for that; no, I wouldn’t!” he exclaimed. “Eh, I think that’s going a bit far! D’you mean to say he just—— Eh, I wouldn’t stand for that, not for a moment!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said John lightly. This was one of the moments when the thought of Jill came over him with a little ripple of renewed pleasure. “It doesn’t matter at all. Sugar?”

“Ay, if you can spare it.” He looked at John with honest, covetous eyes. “How are you off?”

“Go on, take what you like.”

He held the sugar bowl out to Whitbread, liking him for his quaint politeness, which was so different from Eddy’s “Where’s the sugar, Chris, you mean hound?”

Whitbread took four lumps.

“Here,” he said, leaning forward confidentially, stirring his coffee. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but have you a lock on your cupboard?”