For Love Alone (52 page)

He went downstairs with her. At the front door he let her pass out, drew back smiling casually, holding on to the door-handle, inside. She turned, expecting him to kiss her but he said: “Well, ta-ta, and good luck for work tomorrow”, but nothing about seeing her again and he did not offer to accompany her. As she walked away, the long slit of grimy light round the slowly closing door could
be seen from any point in the place, and in it, half a male figure. The policeman saw it from the other side of the crescent, where he stood in the murk, and noticed the female figure hurrying away. There was only the sound of her footsteps anywhere.

Jonathan watched this figure till the curve of the crescent hid it from sight. She did not live far away and could easily find her way. He must not be too attentive to her, or she would think she had him and would be unmanageable. There was a soft, cold look on his face. It gave him a bizarre pleasure to imagine her walking alone, perhaps a little frightened, through the streets and strange squares to her room. What was she thinking? That love was like the stars? He burst out laughing uneasily, as he shut the front door. “She doesn't see the Freudian symbolism,” he thought to himself as he climbed the stairs. “Jonathan's not love's fool. Well, that is that.”

But he was unhappy. What way out, what end? Sordid his nights were and empty the days. He looked around him mentally, with fright. After sitting for a while in the ghastly light of the bulb, he got out writing materials from the drawer of the ink-stained table and swiftly wrote to Tamar in Australia.

How unhappy I am! I never knew that I could be so miserable. I see no end to anything and no good in anything. Do you? If you do, write to me and put me right. Have I been studying too long—do you recommend me to get out of this and go into commerce? I might try and wag my behind a bit and get a job out of doors, anything is out of doors, compared with this life of landlady's bedrooms and the U. The grey-haired student! Remember that old codger used to sit on the front benches of my class? I'm a grey-haired student now. Give me advice, Tamar, and whatever you say, I'll take it. I've never been so miserable, not to speak of the misery of the weather and the dullness of the people. Do you remember Teresa Hawkins? I heard she is here and
looking for a job. I haven't seen her yet. Are you coming here, or is that just a rumour? Write to me, I'll answer.

He heard the maid coming upstairs, rose hastily, and flung his door to. He was in rebellion against her, afraid of her and her world because they had had too much of him and he was sluggish in their dusty embraces. But the maid, when she was half-undressed, came and knocked at his door, and when he saw her, standing in her untrimmed calico, her hair down, he was so excited by his misery that he went with her again, although the last week he had made up his mind to end this kind of life.

T
eresa went upstairs softly, entered the long single room which she was to live in and sat down near the window. She felt that she was a woman. How remote was the foolish, romantic girl who had got on the boat six weeks ago! Although it was her second night in the Old World and things had turned out so strangely, she did not look at her room, nor think of the city, but she thought of entering offices tomorrow looking for work, or of Johnny and his new fine room, and of finding the address of a language institute she could go to as soon as she got a job, to polish up her French. If Jonathan kept her waiting too long, she would go to the Continent. She thought for a while of Jonathan's mystery. How did she offend him? Why did he blow hot and cold in one sentence? Coolly, she recalled all the unspoken misunderstandings of the last two days. What joy was there in them, except one kiss? She had not the clue to the unwinding of his sorrows. As for the kiss, now she understood why The Kiss was so much written about, she had thought till now
that it was overdone in books and that in polite literature it was a euphemism for union; not now. She took the pen and ink she found in the bookcase, and wrote a letter to Crow, asking him where they stood, for she acknowledged all had not gone well between them that day or on the previous day. Either she had expected the wrong thing or she had not understood him, and she wanted to make it all clear. Was he fond of her? Did he look forward to any “association” between them? “I have put too much into this to be left in this state of bafflement,” she wrote. She went down and posted it, then looked at the room and arranged her things.

In the morning she went out to the agency, which was not far from there, the one pointed out by Jonathan (which she thought would bring good luck), and was offered a job in the City in a street off Leadenhall Street. But when she heard from Miss Portfoy, the strange, rough agency woman with lacquered hair, that she must pay in to the agency the whole of her first week's salary, she suspected a trick on the innocent and refused the job, going out again and spending the whole day walking from one part of the city to another, visiting agencies in streets as far apart as Sloane Street and Holland Road. When she got back at night, she had learned much. All agencies took the first week's salary; all the people crowding the agencies for jobs thought it fair because it encouraged the agent to get a better-paid job; the wage offered her at the very beginning was, by some fluke, the best in the whole city, the very highest, a freak, a rare chance and perhaps untrustworthy, a mistake. All other salaries for women in her position, that is women with experience and a language or two, were a pound or two lower. Some of the women waiting were impressive, good-looking, well-dressed, and had worked in the great cities of the Continent for years and knew much more than herself. She was very anxious and sorry that the office was closed when she got back. She would have to go to it straight away in the morning, at eight, if it opened then. She ate something in one of the teashops Johnny had shown her, much troubled that she had not gone for the job that day,
and now beginning to wonder what Jonathan had answered her; for by now there would be an answer, she supposed. She knew that mail was delivered in London at short intervals.

Under her door was his well-known envelope in his well-known writing, the very same that had appeared regularly on the mantelpiece at home for years, but now how strange it looked with her new address; tender, thoughtful, beautiful, just as if he had thought about her in her room as he wrote the address. It was as if a lamp had been lighted in London for her, and she felt that her home was here now. “Where he is, there is my country,” thought Teresa, putting the envelope on the table, taking off her things and putting water on to boil. She changed her shoes, brushed her hair, looking at herself in the mirror, all the time thinking of Jonathan's affection and keeping back the pleasure of opening his first London letter. Then she sat down, smiling, slit the envelope, saw that his new address, Malet Street, was on the paper; and read:

D
EAR
T
ESS
,

 

Yes, I think it is better to be frank too. Gene Burt turned up this morning, just when I was puzzling over your note and his opinion is like mine, tell the truth even if it hurts. Here it is then. I do not love you, I never did and I feel no affection for you. I am willing to be a friend, and if this suits you, it suits me, but if not, let's cry quits! There is nothing to understand in me, I am just a “plain ordinary” academic hack with his way to make and not much chance to make it, except in the rut. Believe me when I say this—there is nothing to admire in me.

As to where you “stand”—this is a strange expression and indicates that you have hoped for much more than I had ever imagined. As far as I am concerned, you do not “stand” anywhere and am afraid you have made a great mistake. Come and visit me if you wish—though not for
a few days, for I have moved with my landlady as you can see. It was only decided this morning when she agreed to take the servant Lucy with her, for the sake of the child. I stuck to my point and she gave in. She made the excuse that the reason she had not wanted to do so was the child, though what that shrimp could eat! But my rent is assured to her in any case and I have promised to get a fellow at the Union or elsewhere for any vacant rooms. She offers me a fine ground-floor room with a garden view in the back for only a guinea a week, dirt cheap, as you know, and I may as well take it. So, in a word, I am very comfortable, happy, you need not worry about me. In a few days, come and have tea with me; that is, if you can take me the way I am. If not, then not and so be it—Amen says,

J
ONATHAN
C
ROW
.

“Good,” said Teresa, putting the letter down gently. “Good. All right, I'll take it decently.” A little later, when she went out to get something to eat at the nearest teashop she was surprised to see her face so white in one of the olive-lighted mirrors. She felt as if she were walking on the points of her toes. She was suffering and yet she felt lightsome, she heard a faint little singing. The whole thing was a surprise. A face pale as death was no more a fiction than The Kiss; it was all true. For some reason, she now thought, “We should go through a bit, know what things are really like before we criticize artists.” She ate, noticed people looking at her and knew it was because she was so white. She went back, pulled a book from the bookcase (the room was sublet by an artist away in France) and found it was a book of alphabets. She took the pen and ink and began carefully practising the half-uncial alphabet. All the time she kept up a busy conversation with herself. “Well, I lost the gamble. That's the result of patting all your eggs in one basket. Everything is true. Cats like catnip, chickens fly the coop, dogs bark up the wrong tree, you should keep at least one egg in your hat. I made a holy show
of myself. He's perfectly correct. I'm a fool. Who could love me? Do I love myself? Then why should he? It's coming it a bit thick, it's shooting with the long bow, to expect other people to love me. I tried to impose on him with my ranting and travelling and romance. Poor boy! I hunted him with love and couldn't help him out of a hole. He's looking for a woman and I disappointed him. I can't help it. So much the worse for you, says nature. So much the worse for the woman who can't get a man. I don't care, says nature, die, then. There are lots of other women, plenty for my purpose. Too bad, eh? She put sixpence into the lottery and expected the great prize, she lost—now we must have tears. Not at all. I won't cry. I'll do what I have to do, I'll work. I'll get away to France. He won't see hair nor hide of me again. Heavens! We take a chance and if we lose, it's not fair! The usual thing. Well, Fate, you and I played a long game, you won, that's all. Someone has to win, isn't that funny, I never thought of that before. I'm a fool. A fool and her folly keep open house. Naturally, I will die. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?' The pretty creature stinted and cried: ‘Ay! Thou wilt fall backward.'”

Feeling the tears rush into her head, she pushed back the book and began to walk up and down the room, thinking quickly. Honourable suicide, thought Teresa, perfectly wideawake and more rational than usual during the night, is a brave death whereas impulsive bloody suicide is a coward's death. Here for years I've been thinking of myself. I'll work myself to death. In that way it will take me months and I'll be able to do something for people, I'll have the time. Her memory and reason raced at top gear, but she kept running over the much-masticated phrases of his letters of the past years, and their whole conversation of the past two days, scrutinizing every word, the ground they had covered, closer and closer, like someone who had lost a purse and goes back and back over the same ground, by morning light, at evening hours and late at night, hoping to see what was fallen and was lost. What phrase had she lost of his, what look of hers, that had changed the course of events? Something must explain this mysterious man. Melancholy, distrust, even hate
in him, she could understand, because thwarted and twisted love would explain it all, or lust, as he would put it; but why did he change from jolly to cold and from kind to cruel in a moment? Why did he advance and retreat, talking about sordid sexual affairs and then pitying humanity, in one breath? She searched through their talks, looking for the clue. Some things she rejected. She threw aside without looking into it the talk about Burton's rape, this was a schoolboy's scurrility; she threw aside some anecdotes about the old woman, Mrs Bagshawe, this was a mere bad habit of gossip he had got into, living in low company in Bloomsbury; and a quick, tart question of his, like “What's wrong with homosexuality, anyhow?” and “What's wrong with self-abuse?” remarks put in to shock her, silly, pointless things that any pert boy might say. What was wrong with their natural disaccord; each wanted the other for years and now he had rejected her, and at once. She must have displeased him. She knew that she was sad-looking, frail and sick, that she looked paler still because she used no lipstick or powder, but wasn't he always inveighing against girls made up and girls dressed up, wasn't he always miserably sorry for poor sick girls who had worked in shops? Nevertheless, she knew how poor she looked and she knew she ought to be rejected for this, if only their friendship had not been on another plane, the commerce of ideas and a mutual help in their lovelessness. She passed the night in wild excitement, as if in the wild dawn of an uninhabited planet.

In the morning she got up, dressed, had a little to eat in the teashop and went at once to Miss Portfoy's. By the one chance in a hundred, the job in the City was still open, three girls had been sent there and rejected. She hastened downtown at once, blundering into wrong buses since she did not know the way, and the little streets of the City are hard to find, but she reached the building, a large modern place built of Dutch tiles and steel and hidden away in a maze of streets, not far from London Bridge. In an hour she had reached there, was in, was out again, walking down the streets in a state of surprise. She had got the job and was free for a week to amuse
herself. She would start work on the following Tuesday morning. She telephoned Miss Portfoy and had the day before her. She knew no one. She went to Chalfont St Giles, Harrow-on-the-Hill, and Richmond in Surrey, on the three succeeding days, not sleeping at all on the two nights in between. In the days, forcing herself to observe the country, strange and antique as something on a tapestry, in the fresh air, she still, without forgetting Jonathan, seemed to live; in the evenings she walked round the streets and near-by squares of Bloomsbury in the thickening air, noting the direction of streets, learning the buses she must take to work, looking in more sordid streets for rooms to let, where she could cook for herself, walking to famous places like Piccadilly and Charing Cross; and towards the end of her walk, she would come back by Marchmont Street where Jonathan had lived until a few days ago, or by Malet Street, where Jonathan lived now in a new life unknown to her. She pictured him in the life he found comfortable and happy, reading, musing, with her quite forgotten, resigning himself for the time being to his solitude and of course with his eye and ear out for a woman who would love him. When she reached home, she read, practised her alphabets for no reason, and when she got into bed, the strange orchestra with fifes and tympani began to beat, which had been getting louder and more furious each night. Through the sounds and the open mouths of this orchestra whirled the broken and blurred images of Jonathan and herself in their eternal maddening conversation, that had lost its clue; whole paragraphs of his letters stood bodily in front of her eyes, repeated so often that they had become incarnated, and again she heard the story of Burton, of the policeman, and the happenings at the opera, his singing about “Lucia”, Lucy the maid shivering on a bench in the park somewhere, Jonathan going through London pitying beggars, buying meals for hungry women—one brilliant world of Jonathan blowing in a storm of sunshine and bitter fog—and the rigmarole of her buffoon Odyssey torn out of privations of which Jonathan knew nothing; this last thought she hastily put away, ashamed of all she had done,
because every hour of it was only a stronger proof that she was a detestable thing, an ugly, rejected woman, distorted and lost. She was lost. It was enough to know this once. No sooner had she settled this than the figures, the conversations, the tympani would whirl up again—and she would cry to herself: “But why? But why?”