Hangover Square (7 page)

He had money, then, of course, and he was spending it. It was just after he had had that mad streak of luck with his Pools, and had made two hundred pounds in a single week. He had that
blue suit, too, and those shirts from Jermyn Street. He must have looked prosperous, and behaved prosperously. Perhaps she thought he would back her in a show or something. Why else should she have turned up that morning? Why, else, should she have acted the part she did, have gone about with him?

And how she piled it on, in her quiet way. So polite, so ravishing, so available! So apparently friendless, or mildly bored by her friends. So serious and hardworking! That week he took to getting up at six in the morning and motoring her down to Denham in a hired car.

He once called her, jokingly yet fondly, a ‘glamour’ girl. ‘Oh, no, a
fireside
girl,’ she answered in her own crisp, fascinating way. ‘A fireside girl, definitely.’ And he, poor fool, took it to mean that if she was offered a fireside by himself, she might accept the offer. There were even moments when he was afraid of committing himself!

How, in that first week, was he to be blamed for falling as he did? Was it his fault that he had caught her at a freak period, when she was working, when her usual friends and background were absent, when she believed he had a lot of money and was pleased to tolerate him, to attempt to attract him, even?

Yes – he ought to have known, he ought to have acted in accordance with the premonition which he sometimes definitely had that this sudden delight in his life was too good to be true, that she was as hard as nails, that she had a virulent, competent life of her own, about which he knew nothing, and in which he could play not even a remotely effective part. On one occasion, on the fourth day of knowing her, he came up to her flat, and found her phoning. There was something in her voice, in her manner at the telephone, in the man’s voice at the other end, which warned him of everything. But by then he could not act upon his premonition, because by then he was crazy about her, and the premonition itself, the premonition of her real character and inaccessibility, only served, suddenly and violently, to intensify his longing for her.

Then, even if he ever had a chance, how he had bungled it! That night! He had lost his nerve by then, of course, good and proper. He had told her he hadn’t any real money. He wasn’t
sleeping because of her. When he lay on his bed her face, her colouring, the blend of cruelty and mischief on her mouth, the blend of heavenly kindness and mockery in her brown eyes, stood on guard between him and unconsciousness. Without consulting his will, his whole being had of itself decided to engage itself, to employ and strain all its faculties, in loving her, and now there was no other woman, no other colouring or texture, no other blend of heavenly kindness and cruelty on any other woman’s mouth or eyes that would do. He was hers for ever and ever.

It was because he hadn’t slept that he made such a mess of it that night in her flat. He had drunk a lot, but he was more exhausted than drunk when he tried to make love to her, tried to kiss her. His mind was in a mist. He had to concentrate to think, to stand properly on his legs. She remained quite cool, and turned him out of the flat, of course. He went like a lamb: he had enough sense to do that. Then, as he stood in the doorway, protesting, apologizing, she said ‘All right. Good night,’ and slammed the door in his face.

Slam. Just like that. Snap. Finished. From that moment his charming friend, his new acquaintance, his polite companion, the solitary and friendless actress of his imagination, the ‘fireside girl’, became Netta, the Netta he knew. There were no half measures: he was given no period in which to acclimatize himself. When he rang her up next morning her voice and manner proclaimed their new relationship (their permanent relationship – the one existing until this day) with sharp and efficient clarity. It was not that she was tangibly rude in anything she said: she accepted his apologies gracefully: she even let him come along and see her that morning. It was the sudden
familiarity
of her tone which was so insulting and wounding. She had dropped her pretence of reserve, of reticence, of interest in himself like a hot brick. She was completely at ease with him, ‘matey’, natural, outspoken, good-tempered or bad-tempered at will. Whereas yesterday they behaved and talked like two charmed, tentative strangers, today they might have been old friends for years. (‘Can I come round and see you?’ ‘Certainly.’) The brief episode of the night before, the fact that
his unreciprocated desire for her was formally acknowledged, enabled one like herself to make this transition without a qualm, directly and mercilessly. In her mind he was put instantly into a class of men – the class of men who desired her, who sought her favours, and to whom she intended to give no favours.

The coolness and quickness with which she made the change, the arrogance of spirit which her sudden familiar manner over the phone implied, made him hate her more than he could ever have hated her if she had avoided him, or not allowed him to see her again. He still remembered it and hated her for it.

But that was merely the beginning. His peremptory dismissal from the fool’s paradise in which he had been living was not to be atoned for merely by bitter disillusionment about this girl and her intentions towards him. He had asked for all he got there: but there was plenty more to come. The blows fell thick and fast. Peter came back (he had been in Scotland for three weeks: there was an awful man called Bermann hanging about (thank God he at any rate had faded out now): he met for the first time her atrocious masculine woman-friend, Enid Staines-Close: her actor friends turned up again. Mickey appeared on the scene. As though under the direction of the evil genius which had made him make love to her that night, in the course of two or three days the whole scene, her entire background, was transformed. He was no longer the sole escort of a delightful girl: he was an interloper in a strange gang, her gang, her crowd, an outsider, a curious hanger-on. He had appeared from nowhere: he was looked at frigidly. He didn’t even know their language, their idiom. He would never forget the way Peter looked at him and behaved when they first met around at the ‘Black Hart’. Netta, of course, made no attempt to introduce him. She seemed to take a sort of cold delight in his humiliation. He didn’t know to this day how he had stuck on: he had only made the grade because he just couldn’t stop himself from seeing Netta, and because he had money at that time. If he hadn’t had money they would have frozen him out: but money talks. You put up with a hanger-on, an interloper, if he is paying. He kept on the hired car, and that talked too. His money
and the hired car talked for him, while he remained dumb, absolutely silly and dumb; it was not as though he had then, or even would have, any social graces with which to make himself liked.

His money, his fluke Pool money, was gone soon enough, but by then he had established himself with her crowd, created ; negative personality and found a place of sorts. He was ‘George’ or sometimes ‘our friend George’, or ‘poor old George’ famous for his stupidity generally, and in particular for his occassional ‘dumb’ moods (which was their name for what he called hi ‘dead’ moods). Not that Netta called him ‘poor old George’ she never called him anything. She remained completely silent about him, both when she was alone with him and when then were others present. Slowly, too, the bitterest aspect of his humiliation as an interloper in a strange crowd, that is, his manifest, dog-like infatuation for Netta, became an accepted thing, stale joke, something no longer uppermost or even present ii their minds.

All that was years ago – a year and a half to be exact. He had stuck on grimly, slowly, patiently, tortoise to their hare, and he had stuck a lot of them out by now. They had either fallen our or gone away. At the moment Peter and Mickey were the only effective survivors from those days, though you never knew who would come back, or who would turn up.

Chapter Two

By now he had reached the bank, and he pushed through its oiled door into the hushed, pervading post-officy warmth of polished wood and pound notes.

He meant to cash his cheque over the counter. No niggling no putting it into his account and drawing out. This ten pound was ten pounds of concrete, clearly visualized pleasure, with ; beginning and an end – ten pounds’ worth of Netta’s company He was going to keep it in a separate pocket, and see when it had gone.

‘A very cold day, I fancy, Mr Bone,’ said the bank clerk in his emphatic, good-natured way, as he took the money from the drawer. ‘A very
cold
–
nasty
–
day
.’ This man, who was little older than himself, had, seemingly, a surfeit of good humour, and he never failed to call him ‘Mr Bone’ or to make a cordial observation of some sort.

They now had a little conversation about the recent holiday, and then he went out into the day again, with the bank clerk’s laughter, and richly friendly ‘
Good
morning, Mr Bone!’ ringing in his ears.

He walked up Earl’s Court Road northwards feeling lighter, more resilient in spirit. This was because of the kindness and cordiality of the bank clerk, who had called him Mr Bone (as though Mr Bone were somebody), and treated him as an equal. The bank clerk, of course, knew nothing about Netta, his disgrace, the fact that he was not treated as an equal by her, or by any of her friends, or by people generally. And yet he did not believe that it was because the bank clerk did not know these things that he acted thus. He believed that this bank clerk was one of those few, warm-hearted, indiscriminate, easy-going people, who were naturally unaware of any superiority or inferiority in individuals, or who, even if they were aware of such things, were not impressed by, or at all interested in them. He had known a few people like that – but they were so few. Bob Barton had been like that, of course. He was like that at school. Although you were a fool and a butt to everybody else, he would suddenly come up behind you in break and take your arm and walk round with you, talking like mad about something which happened to interest him at the moment. He had no sense of his being himself, and you being yourself, no envious discrimination, no condescension. And he carried that through into life. When they were together later, when they were ‘partners’ in that awful fiasco of trying to sell wireless parts in Camden Town (‘
Barton & Bone!
’), Bob Barton was just the same – kindly, considerate, talkative, too busy mentally in what he was doing to be conscious of his own superior, or your own inferior, intelligence and quickness. If you made a howler, he never made you feel it. He just looked a bit shocked for a
moment and then a little later he took your arm, as he did in break back at school, and you went round and had a beer, and nothing more was said or thought.

Those were the days all right – the happiest in his life. He had a bit of money: Bob Barton was his friend, and life was opening out and wasn’t school any more. It had taken him four or five years away from school to awaken fully to this truth, and it was this period with Bob which had given him the strength and vision to make the mental leap. So long as he was with Bob he was as good as anybody, ready to make friends with barmaids and tell anybody beastly to go to hell. No lessons, no disgraces, no restrictions, no being laughed at, no being snubbed and sent to Coventry. Just beer and fun and phoney projects with your own money.
Barton
&
Bone!

But all that was gone. He hadn’t seen Bob Barton for five years, hadn’t heard from him for three. He was in America (Philadelphia) doing well – or was when he last wrote. If Bob came back now, it might be a different story. He might wake up again: throw off his illness: get away from Netta, feel unsnubbed and be able to tell people to go to hell again. Bui Bob, of course, had gone for good, and he would never feel like that again. Instead of Bob, he had to make do with a friendly bank clerk to remind him that he was a man amongst men.

Bob had genuinely liked him, that was the whole point. There must have been something in his own personality which, whatever its shortcomings (perhaps because of its shortcomings), Bob understood and liked. No one else had actively liked him, so far as he could remember. Except, of course, his sister, Ellen. (He just couldn’t bear to think about Ellen, nowadays.) Or was there anyone? What about Johnnie Littlejohn? That dated back from school again. Yes, Johnnie had seemed to like him. And he liked Johnnie. But then he was all part of the Bob Barton period. He had nearly come in on that wireless racket: he had had enough sense to keep out of it! He wondered where Johnnie was now He wished he could see him again. If only he had some friends to go back to, to have as a background, to show off every now and again, he could keep up his end so much better. It was this
complete loneliness and absorption in Netta’s orbit which was getting him down.

Yes. Johnnie was one of them – so far as he remembered – one of the non-snubbers, the non-sneerers, the people who were too cheerfully interested in things to think about themselves, or others in relation to themselves, to make comparisons, to watch, to suspect, to wound, to hate. The bank clerk was another. You could tell them at sight.

By now he had crossed Cromwell Road, and her window was in sight. Every morning, after breakfast, wet or fine, cold or warm, he made this trip up the Earl’s Court Road to look at the house in which she lived. After he had passed it he walked on for about fifty yards, and then he turned and looked at it again as he came back. He had never seen her at this time of the morning, and he had very little hope of doing so: but the habit was now formed, and it never occurred to him to try and break it. He was prompted, perhaps, by the same sort of obsessed motivation which might make a miser ever and anon go and look at the outside of the box which contained the gold which was the cause of all his unhappiness. Then there was the miserable pleasure of mere proximity. For that appalling halo around Netta, that field of intense influence emanating from her in a room to a distance of about two feet, was only the inner, the most concentrated halo. It, in its turn, gave forth another halo – one which came out of her room, and out of the house and into the open street to as far as fifty or even a hundred yards – as far as any point, in fact, from which the house in which she lived might be espied by her lover. This second halo was infinitely weaker, of course, than the inner one which gave it birth, if only because it was more spread-out and in the fresh air, but nevertheless it pervaded the whole, trembling atmosphere amidst the roar of passing traffic, and cast its enthralling, uncanny influence upon every fixed object or passing person in the neighbourhood.