Hangover Square (6 page)

Mickey was about twenty-six, short, with a small moustache on a pasty face. The romance and glory of his life were behind him. The romance was still the warm East, where he had been a clerk in a rubber firm, and the glory had been the divine facility of living, women and drinking. Now he was unemployed, and wore an overcoat along the hard, frozen plains of Earl’s Court, where he lived on and with his mother. His mother was generous, and he was famous for his drunkenness locally, being particularly welcome in drinking circles, such as the one surrounding Netta, because, by his excesses, he put his companions in countenance, making their own excesses seem small in comparison. Your hangover was never so stupendous as Mickey’s, nor your deeds the night before so preposterous. The follies of each individual were forgotten, submerged in his supreme folly; by his own disgrace he brought grace to others. For this reason, if he tried to live soberly, and in the desperation of his self-inflicted illness he was sometimes forced to do this, his friends at once revealed their cold dislike of his change of front, and by combined chaffing and indirect bullying soon forced him to return to the character in which he was of such service to them.

George did not dislike Mickey as he disliked Peter. First of all, he had no uneasiness about him in regard to Netta. Mickey was oddly but quite plainly not interested in her as a girl; when near
her it was as though he lacked a sense, he did not respond or vibrate in any perceptible way. George also sometimes thought he could discern in Mickey something of his own private loathing of the life they were all leading, and the same occasional, hopeless aspiration to live otherwise. Finally, he felt there was nothing menacing about Mickey, as there was about Peter (and about Netta, too, if it came to that, in view of her power over him). Mickey and he had, in fact, something in common, if only as two weak characters against these two stronger ones. There was, however, no real liking or sense of friendship between the two: they never met or talked save in a communal way in the presence of others.

Mickey shouted through the bedroom door to Netta, and obtained her permission to help himself to the remains of the quart bottle of Watney. Then the three men talked in a gloomy, desultory way about the defunct Christmas, and the prospects of war in the spring, until Netta came back. She now had on brown shoes and a glorious dark navy blue overcoat, but no hat (she practically never wore a hat), and seemed ready to go out. A few minutes later the electric light and the gas-fire had been turned out, and their voices and footsteps were resounding in the stone passage outside.

Now, as always at this precise historical and geographical moment of the evening, he thought only of manoeuvring for the desired position – a position in which he was either behind or in front, alone with Netta, and so could walk along the pavement talking to her and no one else. He was usually successful enough in his tactics, so successful that he could afford sometimes to do the opposite and force Netta to walk behind or in front with someone else, so as to snub them if they imagined that any manoeuvring went on. But tonight he wanted to speak to her alone (he might not get the chance again when once they started drinking); and when they were out in the street he managed to get behind with her while Mickey and Peter went on ahead. Then, as they came to cross the road, he took advantage of an approaching car, to put his hand on her arm and hold her back, while the other two crossed the road and went ahead completely out of earshot.

A freshly risen wind, coming straight at them as they walked along the pavement on the other side, under the dull brightness of the high electric lamps, was piercingly cold, and he put up his overcoat collar. She did not seem to feel it. (She didn’t seem to feel anything.) They walked along in silence. They would walk in silence, he knew, until they reached the pub, unless he opened the conversation, for when they were alone she never spoke to him unless he spoke to her. It was, really, beneath her dignity to do so. Having disgraced himself, having put himself beyond the pale, by being distractedly in love with her without inspiring an atom of affection in return, he could no longer expect the normal amenities of intercourse. Only in an excess of amiability or generosity might she now treat him as an equal human being. And he knew that her character was devoid of amiability and generosity.

When he spoke he came straight to the point.

‘Will you come and have a meal with me sometime this week, Netta?’ he said.

‘How do you mean, exactly, “meal”?’ she said.

He looked at her and saw from her expression that she really knew what he meant, that she was purposely playing ‘village idiot’. By the word ‘meal’ he had intended to convey several things all of which she had apprehended instantly and clearly. He had meant first of all an evening meal: then he had meant a private meal, particularly excluding the two men walking on in front: then he had meant a high-grade meal eaten outside Earl’s Court. This meant that they would go to a good West End Restaurant (as they had done once or twice before when he had been able to afford it), and this in its turn meant that it would be a meal paid for by the money he had brought back from Hunstanton. All these things they both knew, but she was playing village idiot just to make sure, and also to ascertain to what restaurant he meant to invite her. He was aware that, if it was to be in the West End, she was not going to put up with something moderately cheap in Soho. He had tried that one before, and she had made it clear that it would not do. It either had to be the famous, crowded, and expensive Ragloni’s (where Peter sometimes took her) or else it had to be Perrier’s in Jermyn
Street. She had, actually, a passion for Perrier’s, he did not quite know why. He had made up his mind, in fact, to name this restaurant.

‘Oh, something in the West End,’ he answered. ‘What about tomorrow? Could you manage it?’

He was not going to give in all at once. It faintly amused him to set in motion and observe her determination and greed working behind her cool demeanour.

But she was not to be played about with, and she came straight to the point.

‘Where in the West End?’ she said.

‘Oh – I thought we might go to Perrier’s again. What about it? Can you manage tomorrow?’

He knew that she was going to accept, for she would not have asked so blatantly where she was to be taken, unless she had intended to do so.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that sounds all right to me – so far as I know.’

‘Oh – good,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow, shall I?’

‘Okay. You phone me tomorrow.’

Though it was not admitted by so much as a flicker of a facial muscle, there was a good deal more than met the eye in this decision that he should phone her. It was, in fact, an acknowledgement of a joint conspiracy – a secret kept from the other two men, from Peter of course, in particular. Otherwise why did they have to phone tomorrow? Why not appoint a time and meeting-place in due course later in the evening or in ordinary conversation tomorrow? The answer was that later in the evening or tomorrow they might have no opportunity of speaking alone – and this matter had to be arranged in private. She knew as well as he that it was part of the bargain that no one else should be allowed to butt in, that if she went to Perrier’s she went with him alone. She therefore, on her side, had to bear the burden of a certain amount of subterfuge: she had so to arrange matters that Peter or Mickey either did not know, or were presented with a
fait accompli
in such a way as precluded them from trying to join the party.

‘Fine,’ he said, and was filled momentarily with a malicious
exhilaration at the mere thought of working a deception on Peter, of being able to do something and laugh at him behind his back, above all, of having Netta working with him in such a deception. Such was the reward of his visit to his aunt at Hunstanton. Was there anything which money could not buy?

They were walking down Earl’s Court Road in the direction of the station. Instead of making for the ‘Black Hart’ Mickey and Peter were seen to turn capriciously into a pub on the left which they only used at infrequent intervals, and by the time he and Netta had joined them in its saloon bar they were already throwing darts and had ordered their beer. Netta sat down, and he went to the bar and obtained beer for himself and a large pink gin for her. He sat beside her and watched, in silence, the other two throwing darts in the last hours of the Christmas season, nineteen hundred and thirty-eight

The Second Part

PHONING

But now her looks are coy and cold
,

To mine they ne’er reply
,

And yet I cease not to behold

The love-light in her eye
:

Her very irowns are fairer lar

Than smiles of other maidens are
.

H. COLERIDGE

Excitation. –
N
. excitation of feeling; mental – , excitement; suscitation,
galvanism, stimulation, piquancy, provocation, inspiration,
calling forth, infection; animation, agitation, perturbation;
subjugation, fascination, intoxication; en-, ravishment; entrancement, high pressure.

Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend

Nor services to do, till you require
.

W. SHAKESPEARE

Chapter One

‘I suppose it’s because he’s so big that he’s so silly…’

Her words came back to him as he walked along in the cold grey morning to cash his cheque at the bank. He again decided that it was the best thing she had said for weeks. For months. Ever since the earliest days, before he was in disgrace. She was full of such intoxicating insinuations then. She thought he had a lot of money, of course.

She was with that theatrical gang, then. She was working on a film down at Denham. It had happened in the big bar of the ‘Rockingham’ opposite Earl’s Court station. They were very noisy, and they couldn’t pay for their drinks. The man who had been going to pay had left his money in a car, and somebody else had taken the car, or something like that. He had buttered in and paid. He was as tight as they were. He had paid again and again, amidst their laughing and incredulous applause. Then the man somehow got back his car and his money, and they stood him drinks, and they were all bosom pals. She was there with them, of course, but he didn’t think she was so terribly attractive at first. He just noticed that she was frightfully smart, striking, actressy. He didn’t really begin to notice her till closing time. Then, as they stood outside on the pavement with bottles of beer under their arms, it was decided that they should go up to her flat and play shove-halfpenny.

It was not until they were up in her flat that anything happened. The three actors were crowding over the board, garrulous and absorbed in their game: but he was sitting with her on the settee, quietly and reasonably talking. She was telling him about herself, the small part she was playing in the film. Then it happened. At one moment she was just something he was talking to and looking at; at the next she was something of
which he was physically sensible by some means other than that of sight or sound: she was sending out a ray, a wave, from herself, which seemed to affect his whole being, to go all through him like a faint vibration. It was as though she were a small amateur wireless station, and he alone was tuned in to her and listening. And the message she was tapping out was, of course, her loveliness. Not that he was tremendously moved by what was happening: he merely appreciated the fact that it was happening, and was slightly excited – excited, perhaps, as much by the novelty of the experience as by anything else. She continued talking, and he answered her clearheadedly, and all the time she was talking and all the time he was answering, he was ‘listening in’…

He knew now that those moments on the settee began it all, that he was head over heels in love with her as soon as he had a moment to be near her and look at her, but he had no idea at the time. The party broke up at about half past one. He chivalrously helped her break it up, because she had said she was short of sleep. It was only casually, almost fortuitously, that he arranged to see her again. ‘Well, don’t we meet again or something?’ he said as they all staggered in the doorway, and she said they certainly would if he frequented the ‘Rockingham’. ‘Well, I’ll be in there at twelve tomorrow. Why don’t you come along?’ – ‘Right,’ she said, ‘that’s a date.’ – ‘Right – twelve o’clock tomorrow,’ she said as he went down the stone stairs, and he didn’t believe either of them was serious.

But when he awoke next morning he remembered his novel listening-in experience of the night before, and trying, not quite successfully, to recapture it in his mind, developed a longing to recapture it in reality. He didn’t expect her to turn up at the ‘Rockingham’, but he decided he must see her again by some means or another. He went to the ‘Rockingham’ at twelve and to his amazement she arrived five minutes later. He at once saw that she was incredibly beautiful, and that he was wildly in love.