Keep the Aspidistra Flying (21 page)

They scarcely spoke again till they had gone several miles. Rosemary was embarrassed and miserable. A number of times she edged closer to him, meaning to take his arm, but he edged away from her; and so they walked abreast with almost the width of the road between them. She imagined that she had offended him mortally. She supposed that it was because of his disappointment—because she had pushed him away at the critical moment—that he was angry with her; she would have apologised if he had given her a quarter of a chance. But as a matter of fact he was scarcely thinking of this any longer. His mind had turned away from that side of things. It was the money-business that was troubling him now—the fact that he had only eightpence in his pocket. In a very little while he would have to confess it. There would be the bus fares from Farnham to Slough, and tea in Slough, and cigarettes, and more bus fares and perhaps another meal when they got back to London; and just eightpence to cover the lot! He would have to borrow from Rosemary after all. And that was so damned humiliating. It is hateful to have to borrow money off someone you have just been quarrelling with. What nonsense it made of all his fine attitudes! There was he, lecturing her, putting on superior airs, pretending to be shocked because she took contraception for granted; and the next moment turning round and asking her for money! But there you are, you see, that’s what money can do. There is no attitude that money or the lack of it cannot puncture.

By half past four it was almost completely dark. They tramped along misty roads where there was no illumination save the cracks of cottage windows and the yellow beam of an occasional car. It was getting beastly cold, too, but they had walked four miles and the exercise had warmed them. It was impossible to go on being unsociable any longer. They began to talk more easily, and by degrees
they edged closer together. Rosemary took Gordon’s arm. Presently she stopped him and swung him round to face her.

‘Gordon,
why
are you so beastly to me?’

‘How am I beastly to you?’

‘Coming all this way without speaking a word!’

‘Oh, well!’

‘Are you still angry with me because of what happened just now?’

‘No. I was never angry with you.
You’re
not to blame.’

She looked up at him, trying to divine the expression of his face in the almost pitch darkness. He drew her against him, and, as she seemed to expect it, tilted her face back and kissed her. She clung to him eagerly; her body melted against his. She had been waiting for this, it seemed.

‘Gordon, you do love me, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Things went wrong somehow. I couldn’t help it. I got frightened suddenly.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Another time it’ll be all right.’

She was lying limp against him, her head on his breast. He could feel her heart beating. It seemed to flutter violently, as though she were taking some decision.

‘I don’t care,’ she said indistinctly, her face buried in his coat.

‘Don’t care about what?’

‘The baby. I’ll risk it. You can do what you like with me.’

At these surrendering words a weak desire raised itself in him and died away at once. He knew why she had said it. It was not because, at this moment, she really wanted to be made love to. It was from a mere generous impulse to let him know that she loved him and would take a dreaded risk rather than disappoint him.

‘Now?’ he said.

‘Yes, if you like.’

He considered. He so wanted to be sure that she was his! But the cold night air flowed over them. Behind the hedges the long grass would be wet and chill. This was not the time or the place. Besides, that business of the eight-pence had usurped his mind. He was not in the mood any longer.

‘I can’t,’ he said finally.

‘You can’t! But, Gordon! I thought——’

‘I know. But it’s all different now.’

‘You’re still upset?’

‘Yes. In a way.’

‘Why?’

He pushed her a little away from him. As well have the explanation now as later. Nevertheless he was so ashamed that he mumbled rather than said:

‘I’ve got a beastly thing to say to you. It’s been worrying me all the way along.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s this. Can you lend me some money? I’m absolutely cleaned out. I had just enough for today, but that beastly hotel bill upset everything. I’ve only eightpence left.’

Rosemary was amazed. She broke right out of his arms in her amazement.

‘Only eightpence left! What
are
you talking about? What does it matter if you’ve only eightpence left?’

‘Don’t I tell you I shall have to borrow money off you in another minute? You’ll have to pay for your own bus fares, and my bus fares, and your tea and Lord knows what. And I asked you to come out with me! You’re supposed to be my guest. It’s bloody.’

‘Your
guest!
Oh, Gordon! Is
that
what’s been worrying you all this time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gordon, you
are
a baby! How can you let yourself be worried by a thing like that? As though I minded lending
you money! Aren’t I always telling you I want to pay my share when we go out together?’

‘Yes, and you know how I hate your paying. We had that out the other night.’

‘Oh, how absurd, how absurd you are! Do you think there’s anything to be ashamed of in having no money?’

‘Of course there is! It’s the only thing in the world there
is
to be ashamed of.’

‘But what’s it got to do with you and me making love, anyway? I don’t understand you. First you want to and then you don’t want to. What’s money got to do with it?’

‘Everything.’

He wound her arm in his and started down the road. She would never understand. Nevertheless he had got to explain.

‘Don’t you understand that one isn’t a full human being—that one doesn’t
feel
a human being—unless one’s got money in one’s pocket?’

‘No. I think that’s just silly.’

‘It isn’t that I don’t want to make love to you. I do. But I tell you I can’t make love to you when I’ve only eightpence in my pocket. At least when you know I’ve only eight-pence. I just can’t do it. It’s physically impossible.’

‘But why? Why?’

‘You’ll find it in Lemprière,’ he said obscurely.

That settled it. They talked no more about it. For the second time he had behaved grossly badly and yet had made her feel as if it were she who was in the wrong. They walked on. She did not understand him; on the other hand, she forgave him everything. Presently they reached Farnham Common, and, after a wait at the cross road, got a bus to Slough. In the darkness, as the bus loomed near, Rosemary found Gordon’s hand and slipped half a crown into it, so that he might pay the fares and not be shamed in public by letting a woman pay for him.

For his own part Gordon would sooner have walked to Slough and saved the bus fares, but he knew Rosemary would refuse. In Slough, also, he was for taking the train straight back to London, but Rosemary said indignantly that she wasn’t going to go without her tea, so they went to a large, dreary, draughty hotel near the station. Tea, with little wilting sandwiches and rock cakes like balls of putty, was two shillings a head. It was torment to Gordon to let her pay for his food. He sulked, ate nothing, and, after a whispered argument, insisted on contributing his eight-pence towards the cost of the tea.

It was seven o’clock when they took the train back to London. The train was full of tired hikers in khaki shorts. Rosemary and Gordon did not talk much. They sat close together, Rosemary with her arm twined through his, playing with his hand, Gordon looking out of the window. People in the carriage eyed them, wondering what they had quarrelled about. Gordon watched the lamp-starred darkness streaming past. So the day to which he had looked forward was ended. And now back to Willowbed Road, with a penniless week ahead. For a whole week, unless some miracle happened, he wouldn’t even be able to buy himself a cigarette. What a bloody fool he had been! Rosemary was not angry with him. By the pressure of her hand she tried to make it clear to him that she loved him. His pale discontented face, turned half away from her, his shabby coat and his unkempt mouse-coloured hair that wanted cutting more than ever, filled her with profound pity. She felt more tenderly towards him than she would have done if everything had gone well, because in her feminine way she grasped that he was unhappy and that life was difficult for him.

‘See me home, will you?’ she said as they got out at Paddington.

‘If you don’t mind walking. I haven’t got the fare.’

‘But let
me
pay the fare. Oh, dear! I suppose you won’t. But how are you going to get home yourself?’

‘Oh, I’ll walk. I know the way. It’s not so very far.’

‘I hate to think of your walking all that way. You look so tired. Be a dear and let me pay your fare home.
Do!
’

‘No. You’ve paid quite enough for me already.’

‘Oh, dear! You are so silly!’

They had halted at the entrance to the Underground. He took her hand. ‘I suppose we must say good-bye for the present,’ he said.

‘Good-bye, Gordon dear. Thanks ever so much for taking me out. It was such fun this morning.’

‘Ah, this morning! It was different then.’ His mind went back to the morning hours, when they had been alone on the road together and there was still money in his pocket. Compunction seized him. On the whole he had behaved badly. He pressed her hand a little tighter. ‘You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘No, silly, of course not.’

‘I didn’t mean to be beastly to you. It was the money. It’s always the money.’

‘Never mind, it’ll be better next time. We’ll go to some better place. We’ll go down to Brighton for the week-end, or something.’

‘Perhaps, when I’ve got the money. You will write soon, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your letters are the only things that keep me going. Tell me when you’ll write, so that I can have your letter to look forward to.’

‘I’ll write tomorrow night and post it on Tuesday. Then you’ll get it last post on Tuesday night.’

‘Then good-bye, Rosemary dear.’

‘Good-bye, Gordon darling.’

He left her at the booking-office. When he had gone
twenty yards he felt a hand laid on his arm. He turned sharply. It was Rosemary. She thrust a packet of twenty Gold Flake, which she had bought at the tobacco kiosk, into his coat pocket and ran back to the Underground before he could protest.

He trailed homeward through the wastes of Maryle-bone and Regent’s Park. It was the fag-end of the day. The streets were dark and desolate, with that strange listless feeling of Sunday night when people are more tired after a day of idleness than after a day of work. It was vilely cold, too. The wind had risen when the night fell.
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
. Gordon was footsore, having walked a dozen or fifteen miles, and also hungry. He had had little food all day. In the morning he had hurried off without a proper breakfast, and the lunch at the Ravenscroft Hotel wasn’t the kind of meal that did you much good; since then he had had no solid food. However, there was no hope of getting anything when he got home. He had told Mother Wisbeach that he would be away all day.

When he reached the Hampstead Road he had to wait on the kerb to let a stream of cars go past. Even here everything seemed dark and gloomy, in spite of the glaring lamps and the cold glitter of the jewellers’ windows. The raw wind pierced his thin clothes, making him shiver.
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare
. He had finished that poem, all except the last two lines. He thought again of those hours this morning—the empty misty roads, the feeling of freedom and adventure, of having the whole day and the whole country before you in which to wander at will. It was having money that did it, of course. Seven and elevenpence he had had in his pocket this morning. It had been a brief victory over the money-god; a morning’s apostasy, a holiday in the groves of Ashtaroth. But such things never last. Your money goes and your freedom with it. Circumcise ye your
foreskins, saith the Lord. And back we creep, duly snivelling.

Another shoal of cars swam past. One in particular caught his eye, a long slender thing, elegant as a swallow, all gleaming blue and silver; a thousand guineas it would have cost, he thought. A blue-clad chauffeur sat at the wheel, upright, immobile, like some scornful statue. At the back, in the pink-lit interior, four elegant young people, two youths and two girls, were smoking cigarettes and laughing. He had a glimpse of sleek bunny-faces; faces of ravishing pinkness and smoothness, lit by that peculiar inner glow that can never be counterfeited, the soft warm radiance of money.

He crossed the road. No food tonight. However, there was still oil in the lamp, thank God; he would have a secret cup of tea when he got back. At this moment he saw himself and his life without saving disguises. Every night the same—back to the cold lonely bedroom and the grimy, littered sheets of the poem that never got any further. It was a blind alley. He would never finish
London Pleasures
, he would never marry Rosemary, he would never set his life in order. He would only drift and sink, drift and sink, like the others of his family; but worse than them—down, down into some dreadful sub-world that as yet he could only dimly imagine. It was what he had chosen when he declared war on money. Serve the money-god or go under; there is no other rule.

Something deep below made the stone street shiver. The Tube-train, sliding through middle earth. He had a vision of London, of the western world; he saw a thousand million slaves toiling and grovelling about the throne of money. The earth is ploughed, ships sail, miners sweat in dripping tunnels underground, clerks hurry for the eight-fifteen with the fear of the boss eating at their vitals. And even in bed with their wives they tremble and obey. Obey whom?
The money-priesthood, the pink-faced masters of the world. The Upper Crust. A welter of sleek young rabbits in thousand-guinea motor cars, of golfing stockbrokers and cosmopolitan financiers, of Chancery lawyers and fashionable Nancy boys, of bankers, newspaper peers, novelists of all four sexes, American pugilists, lady aviators, film stars, bishops, titled poets and Chicago gorillas.