The Slaves of Solitude (21 page)

It was all very confusing, and she fumbled in the purring dark for another aspirin with her next sip of water.

5

So you were living in the same boarding-house with a fully-fledged unrepentant Nazi woman, who talked about ‘you’ English, and ‘English
Misses’.

What did you do now? Leave the boarding-house? And go where? Back to London? No – she was still too scared of the bombs. They had left London alone a long while now, but you never knew
when they would be back.

Go to some other country town, then? Pack up and leave Thames Lockdon behind – Church Street, Mrs. Payne, Mr. Thwaites, all of it – including the Lieutenant?

The Lieutenant! How odd that was! In all the passion and profundity of her thoughts in the dark tonight (this morning) the Lieutenant had hardly entered her head.

Why was this? And why, in view of his disgraceful, his outrageous behaviour last night, did she bear no grudge against the Lieutenant?

Was it because by now she was utterly indifferent to him? Almost certainly this was so. The poor man was a plain damned fool. Any man who could go on behaving as he did, any man who could
persist in thinking Vicki Kugelmann ‘cute’, was too immeasurably stupid to take seriously any more.

There was no evil in the man, as there was in the one he thought so cute. She did not even have any bitterness against him for the insult he had offered her on the seat by the river.

He spoke naturally and sincerely: he did not talk about being ‘sporty’. Tomorrow morning (or rather later today) he would, if he met her, be red-eyed and ostensibly repentant, but
fundamentally unrepentant and inconsequent still, and start all over again the next evening. There was just no doing anything with the man: you had to rule him out.

And had she always been indifferent to him like this? No – she saw now that she had not. She had laughed to herself about the Laundry: but she had thought about it as well. She had never
quite dismissed the Laundry from the realm of practical politics. She had never shown any signs of really ‘loving’ the Lieutenant (why did she still have to put the word in inverted
commas?), but she had never altogether put from her mind the notion of ‘coming’ to love him (inverted commas again!).

But now all that was over. He did not belong to her any more: he was no longer ‘her’ American in Thames Lockdon. Whose was he, then? Vicki Kugelmann’s? Presumably, since he
thought her so wonderfully cute, and kissed Vicki Kugelmann instead of Enid Roach in the darkness by the river. Well – he was welcome to her if he wanted her; and she said that without a
trace of venom.

It was queer how all her venom was directed against Vicki, and not against the Lieutenant. This was not, was it, because in the remote recesses of her unconscious mind she ‘loved’ or
wanted to marry the Lieutenant, and was wild with fury at Vicki for coming between them and spoiling the whole thing?

She thought about this, and was able in answer to furnish an easy and profoundly confident negative. But what might an outsider think? What might the Lieutenant think? What might Vicki
think?

What, in fact,
did
Vicki think? Was it not clear that she was already thinking, or in a very short while would be thinking, that the English Miss was consumed with jealousy? Was not this
the obvious line such a woman would take? Had she not already surreptitiously taken this line with her ‘Miss Prim’ and ‘Miss Prude’ – the suggestion that she (Miss
Roach) was too afraid of losing a man to allow him to be friendly with or in drunken gaiety kiss another woman? And was this to be tolerated?

No, this was not to be tolerated. Somehow, she must have this out with Vicki. She must have this out at once. She must go to her and tell her that she did not care two pins about the Lieutenant
– that Vicki could have the Lieutenant – that Vicki was a million times welcome to the Lieutenant.

But what would Vicki answer? Would she not reply, in her filthy slightly foreign accent, that she also was totally disinterested in the Lieutenant? And would she not, replying thus, hint that it
was only Miss Roach’s consuming jealousy which was making Miss Roach go to the point of avowing disinterest in the Lieutenant? And would not this be more intolerable than ever?

Miss Roach had now reached the point (she saw) at which she was inventing conversations with Vicki, inventing Vicki’s answers, and then getting white with anger at these invented answers.
This was the point at which she must stop, or go clean off her head.

The planes were still purring in the sky, miles and miles high, it seemed, and miles and miles around . . .

And then there was the second front to come, which couldn’t possibly succeed (well, be sensible,
could
it?), and then the Lieutenant would be killed, and then the war would go on
and on, like the planes in the sky . . .

She knew she would never get a wink now, and she might as well make up her mind to it. Knowing this she felt better.

What a thing this sleeplessness was! . . . If sleep, she thought, could be compared to a gentle lake in a dark place, then sleeplessness was a roaring ocean, a raging, wind-buffeted voyage, lit
with mad rocket-lights, pursued by wild phantoms from behind, plunging upon fearful rocks ahead, a mad tempest of the past and present and future all in one. Through all this the pale, strenuous
mariner must somehow steer a way, until at last the weary dawn, not of sleep, but of resignation to sleeplessness, comes to calm the waters of the mind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1

T
HAT
next morning there was just one split second when Miss Roach thought that there might yet be some sort of means
of living in the future in the Rosamund Tea Rooms with Vicki Kugelmann on some sort of terms of mutual toleration or even ostensible amity. That was when she first met Vicki, accidentally, in the
passage outside her room, and Vicki faintly returned her faint smile. But the second was only a split one, and another of its kind never put in an appearance.

As she dressed that morning Miss Roach had given a good deal of thought as to how she was to address Vicki, and indeed look at her, when they met. Meetings of this sort, between two people who
had quarrelled and not made it up, were embarrassing enough in any case. They were doubly embarrassing, however, when the two parties engaged had not openly quarrelled before, and had not, as in
this case, even shown any recognisable signs of ever being likely to quarrel.

Moving about in the daylight, washing and dressing in her bedroom, Miss Roach was willing to agree with the supposition that she had exaggerated everything out of all proportion in her sleepless
night, and, although she now knew she hated Vicki in the recesses of her soul, she hoped that the hatred need not be active, malignant, and incessant, but could be alleviated and rendered
supportable by mutual civility. And as mutual civility was the thing required, she herself had better take the initiative in being civil. She decided to smile at Vicki, and greet her in a friendly
way.

She somehow saw this happening at the breakfast table in front of the others: and, without being conscious of it, to make this vision come true she actually waited in her room two or three
minutes after the gong had been hit, so that Vicki might go down first and she might make her mentally prepared entrance. This was not to be, however. As she left her room she ran straight into
Vicki, who was coming out of hers.

‘Hullo!’ said Miss Roach cheerfully. ‘How are you this morning?’

And, in spite of the surprise of meeting her thus in the passage, the smile came, and somehow held.

Then came the moment when she thought that she might in future live on some sort of terms of mutual toleration with Vicki, for a flicker of a returning smile appeared on her face.

‘Oh, very well, thank you,’ said Vicki. ‘A slight head, but otherwise all right. And how are you?’

It was that ‘And how are you?’ which finished it. For with it the flicker of a smile had gone, and was replaced with an expression of complacence, defiance, indifference, and subtle
scorn which Miss Roach was to see a thousand times on Vicki’s face afterwards, and which told her, on this, its first appearance, all the story of all that was to come.

Also Vicki, after keeping this look on her face just so long that it could not be mistaken, and instead of politely giving Miss Roach an opportunity of going first down the stairs, herself went
ahead in complete silence, causing Miss Roach to follow her, like a lamb, all the way down.

Then it was that Miss Roach knew that such a moment of hopefulness would never reappear. Then it was that she knew that it was war to the death – malignant, venomous, abominable,
incessant, irreversible.

It was as though she was having in silence to follow her own ugly fate, her own ugly future, meekly down the stairs.

2

Mr. Thwaites was, of course, in his place, and all the others were there as well.

Mr. Thwaites naturally had to have a good look at both of them before he started on them about yesterday evening, and this took so much time that Miss Steele came in in front of him.

‘And how did you two get on last night?’ she said, raising her voice because speaking from another table, and so that everyone in the room could hear. ‘Did you enjoy
yourselves?’

It was not usual for Miss Steele to begin a conversation from her own table: in fact, it was almost against Mr. Thwaites’ dining-room rules. One was allowed to join in a conversation which
Mr. Thwaites had started from his own table, but one was not expected to start one from a separate table of one’s own.

This itself showed the importance of the occasion, revealed the fact that by going to the Dragon Miss Roach and Vicki had created a perhaps alarming, but certainly exciting precedent, and that
the Rosamund Tea Rooms, in its
ennui
, intended, whatever it thought of the moral side of the matter, to take advantage of the accomplished fact, and share vicariously in the excitement. This
arose from the same causes as those which made the guests, when Miss Roach had been going daily to town, look forward each evening to her return.

‘Yes, it was very nice,’ said Miss Roach, and Vicki said, ‘Yes. We enjoyed ourselves very much.’

‘I wish I’d been with you,’ said Miss Steele, as usual advertising, a trifle absurdly, her anti-fogey attitude to life. ‘I’d have enjoyed it myself.’

‘Yes, I wish you had,’ said Miss Roach, and wondered how much Miss Steele actually would have enjoyed it. There was a short silence, and Mr. Thwaites began.

‘And didst thou dance, and dally, and trip the lightsome toe,’ he asked, ’e’en unto the small hours of the morn?’

‘Oh no,’ said Vicki, ‘we were in before twelve.’

‘Like Cinderella?’ said Miss Steele, from her table, and, Vicki not answering, Miss Roach said, ‘Yes. That’s right. Like Cinderella.’

It was characteristic of Vicki to have left Miss Roach to answer Miss Steele. Now that Vicki was established in the boarding-house, it was becoming more and more clear that she took hardly any
notice of, had hardly a word for, anyone but Mr. Thwaites.

‘And didst thou imbibe mighty potions from the fruit of the grape,’ Mr. Thwaites went on, ‘pursuing God Bacchus in his unholy revels?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Roach, ‘we had a certain amount to drink.’ As Mr. Thwaites was Trothing, it looked as though, on the whole, he was going to be fairly lenient.

‘And hast thou one Ache, this morning,’ asked Mr. Thwaites, ‘appertaining unto Head, and much repentance in thy soul, forsooth?’

‘Oh – not so bad,’ said Vicki. ‘It might be worse.’

‘And what did you dance?’ asked Mr. Thwaites, de-Trothing in a sudden access of bitterness, ‘
Jazz
– I suppose!’

There was a pause.

‘Oh, it’s not jazz now,’ said Miss Steele. ‘You’re old-fashioned, Mr. Thwaites. It’s Boogy-woogy now, isn’t it?’

Vicki, of course, did not answer this, and this time Miss Roach did not answer either – being too ashamed both of Mr. Thwaites and Miss Steele to do so.

‘I didn’t know that you could dance at the Dragon,’ said Miss Steele, again advertising her knowledge and tolerance of these matters. ‘Have they got a band there
now?’

‘No,’ said Miss Roach. ‘But we did dance a little – in a place on the way.’ And she remembered the horrible exhibition Vicki had made of herself in the small
public-house.

‘I suppose
she
,’ said Mr. Thwaites, looking at Miss Roach but obviously addressing Vicki, ‘did a Russian dance, didn’t she?’

As Vicki was not being looked at she did not answer, and Miss Roach did not answer either.

‘I said I suppose
you
,’ said Mr. Thwaites, ‘did a Russian dance – didn’t you?’

‘No, Mr. Thwaites,’ said Miss Roach. ‘I didn’t do a Russian dance.’

‘Oh. Didn’t you? Why not?’

He was at it again.

‘Why should I?’ said Miss Roach.

‘Why shouldn’t you? You like the Russians – don’t you?’

What was so awful was that you had to find answers to these questions, and the answers were of necessity as puerile as the questions.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I did a Russian dance.’

What
else
could she have said!

‘Oh – doesn’t it?’

‘No. It doesn’t.’

‘Oh well – I’m glad to know that,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘We’re not on the steppes now, you know.’

‘No. I know we’re not,’ said Miss Roach.

‘At least not at
present,
anyway,’ said Mr. Thwaites, as if it was quite clear that we very soon would be, if things went on as they were.

‘I expect
you
can do a Russian dance, can’t you?’ said Mr. Thwaites, now talking to Vicki, ‘if I know anything about it?’

And now, miraculously, because he was talking to Vicki instead of Miss Roach, a Russian dance, instead of being a bad thing to do, had become a highly estimable and delightful sort of thing.

‘Oh yes, I can do a Russian dance,’ said Vicki. ‘I can do all sorts of dances.’

‘Ah – then you must give Our Lady of the Roach some lessons,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘It’ll come in useful for her. You must give her some wrinkles.’