Keep the Aspidistra Flying (30 page)

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Gordon said, without stirring.

‘No, thanks awfully—no,’ said Ravelston, a little too hastily.

He had seen the brown-stained cups in the fender and the repulsive common sink downstairs. Gordon knew quite well why Ravelston refused the tea. The whole atmosphere of this place had given Ravelston a kind of shock. That awful mixed smell of slops and haddock on the
stairs! He looked at Gordon, supine on the ragged bed. And, dash it, Gordon was a gentleman! At another time he would have repudiated that thought; but in this atmosphere pious humbug was impossible. All the class-instincts which he believed himself not to possess rose in revolt. It was dreadful to think of anyone with brains and refinement living in a place like this. He wanted to tell Gordon to get out of it, pull himself together, earn a decent income and live like a gentleman. But of course he didn’t say so. You can’t say things like that. Gordon was aware of what was going on inside Ravelston’s head. It amused him, rather. He felt no gratitude towards Ravelston for coming here and seeing him; on the other hand, he was not ashamed of his surroundings as he would once have been. There was a faint, amused malice in the way he spoke.

‘You think I’m a BF, of course,’ he remarked to the ceiling.

‘No, I don’t. Why should I?’

‘Yes, you do. You think I’m a BF to stay in this filthy place instead of getting a proper job. You think I ought to try for that job at the New Albion.’

‘No, dash it! I never thought that. I see your point absolutely. I told you that before. I think you’re perfectly right in principle.’

‘And you think principles are all right so long as one doesn’t go and put them into practice.’

‘No. But the question always is, when
is
one putting them into practice?’

‘It’s quite simple. I’ve made war on money. This is where it’s led me.’

Ravelston rubbed his nose, then shifted uneasily on his chair.

‘The mistake you make, don’t you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make
money? You’re trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can’t. One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can’t put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.’

Gordon waved a foot at the buggy ceiling.

‘Of course this
is
a hole-and-corner, I admit.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Ravelston, pained.

‘But let’s face facts. You think I ought to be looking about for a
good
job, don’t you?’

‘It depends on the job. I think you’re quite right not to sell yourself to that advertising agency. But it does seem rather a pity that you should stay in that wretched job you’re in at present. After all, you
have
got talents. You ought to be using them somehow.’

‘There are my poems,’ said Gordon, smiling at his private joke.

Ravelston looked abashed. This remark silenced him. Of course, there
were
Gordon’s poems. There was
London Pleasures
, for instance. Ravelston knew, and Gordon knew, and each knew that the other knew, that
London Pleasures
would never be finished. Never again, probably, would Gordon write a line of poetry; never, at least, while he remained in this vile place, this blind-alley job and this defeated mood. He had finished with all that. But this could not be said, as yet. The pretence was still kept up that Gordon was a struggling poet—the conventional poet-in-garret.

It was not long before Ravelston rose to go. This smelly place oppressed him, and it was increasingly obvious that Gordon did not want him here. He moved hesitantly towards the door, pulling on his gloves, then came back again, pulling off his left glove and nicking it against his leg.

‘Look here, Gordon, you won’t mind my saying it
this is a filthy place, you know. This house, this street—everything.’

‘I know. It’s a pigsty. It suits me.’

‘But do you
have
to live in a place like this?’

‘My dear chap, you know what my wages are. Thirty bob a week.’

‘Yes, but——! Surely there
are
better places? What rent are you paying?’

‘Eight bob.’

‘Eight bob? You could get a fairly decent unfurnished room for that. Something a bit better than this, anyway. Look here, why don’t you take an unfurnished place and let me lend you ten quid for furniture?’

‘“Lend” me ten quid! After all you’ve “lent” me already?
Give
me ten quid, you mean.’

Ravelston gazed unhappily at the wall. Dash it, what a thing to say! He said flatly:

‘All right, if you like to put it like that.
Give
you ten quid.’

‘But as it happens, you see, I don’t want it.’

‘But dash it all! You might as well have a decent place to live in.’

‘But I don’t want a decent place. I want an indecent place. This one, for instance.’

‘But why? Why?’

‘It’s suited to my station,’ said Gordon, turning his face to the wall.

A few days later Ravelston wrote him a long, diffident sort of letter. It reiterated most of what he had said in their conversation. Its general effect was that Ravelston saw Gordon’s point entirely, that there was a lot of truth in what Gordon said, that Gordon was absolutely right in principle, but——! It was the obvious, the inevitable ‘but’. Gordon did not answer. It was several months before he saw Ravelston again. Ravelston made various attempts to
get in touch with him. It was a curious fact—rather a shameful fact from a Socialist’s point of view—that the thought of Gordon, who had brains and was of gentle birth, lurking in that vile place and that almost menial job, worried him more than the thought of ten thousand unemployed in Middlesbrough. Several times, in hopes of cheering Gordon up, he wrote asking him to send contributions to
Antichrist
. Gordon never answered. Their friendship was at an end, it seemed to him. The evil time when he had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. Charity kills friendship.

And then there were Julia and Rosemary. They differed from Ravelston in this, that they had no shyness about speaking their minds. They did not say euphemistically that Gordon was ‘right in principle’; they knew that to refuse a ‘good’ job can never be right. Over and over again they besought him to go back to the New Albion. The worst was that he had both of them in pursuit of him together. Before this business they had never met, but now Rosemary had got to know Julia somehow. They were in feminine league against him. They used to get together and talk about the ‘maddening’ way in which Gordon was behaving. It was the only thing they had in common, their feminine rage against his ‘maddening’ behaviour. Simultaneously and one after the other, by letter and by word of mouth, they harried him. It was unbearable.

Thank God, neither of them had seen his room at Mother Meakin’s yet. Rosemary might have endured it, but the sight of that filthy attic would have been almost the death of Julia. They had been round to see him at the library, Rosemary a number of times, Julia once, when she could make a pretext to get away from the teashop. Even that was bad enough. It dismayed them to see what a mean, dreary little place the library was. The job at McKechnie’s, though wretchedly paid, had not been the kind of job that
you need actually be ashamed of. It brought Gordon into touch with cultivated people; seeing that he was a ‘writer’ himself, it might conceivably ‘lead to something’. But here, in a street that was almost a slum, serving out yellow-jacketed trash at thirty bob a week—what hope was there in a job like that? It was just a derelict’s job, a blind-alley job. Evening after evening, walking up and down the dreary misty street after the library was shut, Gordon and Rosemary argued about it and about. She kept on and on at him.
Would
he go back to the New Albion?
Why
wouldn’t he go back to the New Albion? He always told her that the New Albion wouldn’t take him back. After all, he hadn’t applied for the job and there was no knowing whether he could get it; he preferred to keep it uncertain. There was something about him now that dismayed and frightened her. He seemed to have changed and deteriorated so suddenly. She divined, though he did not speak to her about it, that desire of his to escape from all effort and all decency, to sink down, down into the ultimate mud. It was not only from money but from life itself that he was turning away. They did not argue now as they had argued in the old days before Gordon had lost his job. In those days she had not paid much attention to his preposterous theories. His tirades against the money-morality had been a kind of joke between them. And it had hardly seemed to matter that time was passing and that Gordon’s chance of earning a decent living was infinitely remote. She had still thought of herself as a young girl and of the future as limitless. She had watched him fling away two years of his life—two years of
her
life, for that matter; and she would have felt it ungenerous to protest.

But now she was growing frightened. Time’s wingèd chariot was hurrying near. When Gordon lost his job she had suddenly realised, with the sense of making a startling discovery, that after all she was no longer very young.
Gordon’s thirtieth birthday was past; her own was not far distant. And what lay ahead of them? Gordon was sinking effortless into grey, deadly failure. He seemed to
want
to sink. What hope was there that they could ever get married now? Gordon knew that she was right. The situation was impossible. And so the thought, unspoken as yet, grew gradually in both their minds that they would have to part—for good.

One night they were to meet under the railway arches. It was a horrible January night; no mist, for once, only a vile wind that screeched round corners and flung dust and torn paper into your face. He waited for her, a small slouching figure, shabby almost to raggedness, his hair blown about by the wind. She was punctual, as usual. She ran towards him, pulled his face down and kissed his cold cheek.

‘Gordon, dear, how cold you are! Why did you come out without an overcoat?’

‘My overcoat’s up the spout. I thought you knew.’

‘Oh, dear! Yes.’

She looked up at him, a small frown between her black brows. He looked so haggard, so despondent, there in the ill-lit archway, his face full of shadows. She wound her arm through his and pulled him out into the light.

‘Let’s keep walking. It’s too cold to stand about. I’ve got something serious I want to say to you.’

‘What?’

‘I expect you’ll be very angry with me.’

‘What is it?’

‘This afternoon I went and saw Mr Erskine. I asked leave to speak to him for a few minutes.’

He knew what was coming. He tried to free his arm from hers, but she held on to it.

‘Well?’ he said sulkily.

‘I spoke to him about you. I asked him if he’d take you back. Of course he said trade was bad and they couldn’t
afford to take on new staff and all that. But I reminded him of what he’d said to you, and he said, Yes, he’d always thought you were very promising. And in the end he said he’d be quite ready to find a job for you if you’d come back. So you see I
was
right. They
will
give you the job.’

He did not answer. She squeezed his arm. ‘So
now
what do you think about it?’ she said.

‘You know what I think,’ he said coldly.

Secretly he was alarmed and angry. This was what he had been fearing. He had known all along that she would do it sooner or later. It made the issue more definite and his own blame clearer. He slouched on, his hands still in his coat pockets, letting her cling to his arm but not looking towards her.

‘You’re angry with me?’ she said.

‘No, I’m not. But I don’t see why you had to do it—behind my back.’

That wounded her. She had had to plead very hard before she had managed to extort that promise from Mr Erskine. And it had needed all her courage to beard the managing director in his den. She had been in deadly fear that she might be sacked for doing it. But she wasn’t going to tell Gordon anything of that.

‘I don’t think you ought to say
behind your back
. After all, I was only trying to help you.’

‘How does it help me to get me the offer of a job I wouldn’t touch with a stick?’

‘You mean you won’t go back, even now?’

‘Never.’

‘Why?’

‘
Must
we go into it again?’ he said wearily.

She squeezed his arm with all her strength and pulled him round, making him face her. There was a kind of desperation in the way she clung to him. She had made her
last effort and it had failed. It was as though she could feel him receding, fading away from her like a ghost.

‘You’ll break my heart if you go on like this,’ she said.

‘I wish you wouldn’t trouble about me. It would be so much simpler if you didn’t.’

‘But why do you have to throw your life away?’

‘I tell you I can’t help it. I’ve got to stick to my guns.’

‘You know what this will mean?’

With a chill at his heart, and yet with a feeling of resignation, even of relief, he said: ‘You mean we shall have to part—not see each other again?’

They had walked on, and now they emerged into the Westminster Bridge Road. The wind met them with a scream, whirling at them a cloud of dust that made both of them duck their heads. They halted again. Her small face was full of lines, and the cold wind and the cold lamplight did not improve it.

‘You want to get rid of me,’ he said.

‘No. No. It’s not exactly that.’

‘But you feel we ought to part.’

‘How can we go on like this?’ she said desolately.

‘It’s difficult, I admit.’

‘It’s all so miserable, so hopeless! What can it ever lead to?’

‘So you don’t love me after all?’ he said.

‘I do, I do! You know I do.’

‘In a way, perhaps. But not enough to go on loving me when it’s certain I’ll never have the money to keep you. You’ll have me as a husband, but not as a lover. It’s still a question of money, you see.’