The Slaves of Solitude (24 page)

Most of them, he thought, were pretty ordinary boarding-house specimens. Mr. Prest he could not quite make out, but Miss Steele and Mrs. Barratt were easily recognisable types. The loud,
nasal-voiced, foolish man was of a type too, though much more foolish than was usual. The two younger women also, he supposed, were of a type.

He studied these two – one of whom, he observed, was a foreigner. Plain women, both of them, though the darker one had a ‘nice’ face. Not likely to marry, either of them
– the spinster type – not likely to marry unless a bit of luck came their way – which might not be impossible with all these Americans about. What puzzled him was the way the
awful atmosphere of the place seemed to have got these two women down as well. They were comparatively young – young enough to talk and laugh, to exhibit some sign of vivacity, of response to
life. But no – instead of this they seemed to be, in some way, duller, dumber, more deadly quiet and lifeless than all the others.

It was not for Albert Brent to know the actual state of affairs. It was not for the piano-tuner to know that in this still, grey, winter-gripped dining-room, this apparent mortuary of desire and
passion (in which the lift rumbled and knives and forks scraped upon plates), waves were flowing forward and backward, and through and through, of hellish revulsion and unquenchable hatred!

It was not for him to know that between these two women there existed a feud almost unparalleled in boarding-house, or indeed feminine, history – that one of them walked against the wind
in De La Rue sunsets with evil, all but murderous thoughts, yet remained blameless in character.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1

J
UST
as the guests of the Rosamund Tea Rooms were occasionally observed and appraised from outside, so the
relationship existing between Mr. Thwaites, Miss Kugelmann, and Miss Roach was watched from within.

Oddly enough, Mrs. Barratt, who sat at the same table with these three, observed least of all. Perhaps she was too near. In any case, Mrs. Barratt existed in a sort of dream at meal-times, and
indeed at most other times. She certainly had no notion of any sort of friction, or cause for friction, between Miss Roach and her German friend. She thought it must be ‘pleasant’ for
them to be together.

She was aware, on the other hand, that Mr. Thwaites, whom she indistinctly recognised as a type of bully, but one who seldom bothered her personally, had his knife into Miss Roach. For this
reason, when she saw Mr. Thwaites going too far, she made a point of coming to Miss Roach’s assistance.

But frequently, when in fact Mr. Thwaites was going much too far, she did not take in what was happening, and so, out of ignorance, withheld her support.

Miss Steele saw more. She saw clearly what sort of man Mr. Thwaites was. She saw, also, that he had chosen Miss Roach as the victim of his singular persecution, and she as well tried, when
possible, to come to Miss Roach’s aid. But as she sat at a separate table this was not so easy to do, and although, for this reason, what she did succeed in doing was doubly commendable, she
in effect did very little.

In addition to this, not being personally molested by Mr. Thwaites, she did not believe that anyone, least of all the intelligent and comparatively youthful Miss Roach, could take so ridiculous
an old man seriously, could be seriously hurt or tormented by what he said and did.

In other ways, too, she noticed a good deal more than Mrs. Barratt. She noticed, as soon as it began, the unwholesome, elderly interest Mr. Thwaites was showing towards Vicki. She noticed that
along with this interest there had arisen an increased and parallel persecution of Miss Roach. She could not account for this, but she noticed it.

She was not sure of her opinion of the German girl. She had at first liked her, while realising that she was a little over-bright, facetious, and talkative in a typically un-English way, and she
had genuinely thought that she would be a good influence as ‘livening things up’. But, in a funny way, instead of livening things up, she had, very shortly after her arrival, somehow
contrived to deaden things down. She was no longer over-bright and facetious in the dining-room, and, in evoking what she had evoked from Mr. Thwaites, she had introduced into the boarding-house,
in addition to its dullness, something rather ugly which had not been there before.

She was not certain, either, whether the German girl and Miss Roach were quite as good friends as they were supposed to be. She watched them at meal-times, noticed that they did not talk to each
other unless it was absolutely necessary, and seemed to avoid looking at each other altogether. And Vicki, while not exactly encouraging, and not exactly discouraging, Mr. Thwaites’ clumsy
verbal innuendoes and advances towards herself, made no attempt to help her friend out when he turned his attention to Miss Roach and began to attack her. It was all rather queer – nothing
definite, but rather queer.

Miss Steele, of course, knew nothing of what took place when the three were alone together, and if she had been told that in front of her eyes and under her nose there was taking place a feud
between two women almost unparalleled in boarding-house history, she would have been surprised exceedingly, and incredulous.

Mr. Prest, alone in his corner, sent to Coventry, and apparently mentally deaf to all that took place in the boarding-house, in fact observed and understood more than any other spectator.

Mr. Prest thought that the old man was a noisy, nattering, messy piece of work who ought to be in a mental home. He liked and pitied Miss Roach. He thought that the German woman was about as
frightful a bitch as you were likely to find anywhere, and that something pretty nasty was going on, at that table, and between those three, one way and another.

2

Miss Roach had her work to do, and this she did in her bedroom, in front of the gas-fire, mostly in the mornings, but sometimes in the afternoons or evenings. But there
was not enough to occupy her in any sense fully or satisfactorily, and she often wished that she was going up to London and back again each day by train.

Miss Roach disliked, too, having to wait for her room to be done before she could go into it and work, and more still, when it was done, having to light the fire and settle down to tasks by
herself, without the stimulus of external demands from fellow-workers. In fact, before long Miss Roach found herself taking a sort of aversion to her work, even dodging it as much as possible, and,
on the pretext of shopping, wandering more or less aimlessly about the streets of Thames Lockdon instead.

The war, in its character of petty pilferer, had been as busy in this little town as in London, and, for a woman’s personal needs, the shops had little save frustration, irritation, or
delay to offer in almost every department. There were no stockings, there was no shampoo, there was no scent, there were no hairpins, no nail-varnish, no nail-varnish-remover, no ribbon, no
watch-glasses, no watches to lend you while you waited for watch-glasses which might or might not come, no glycerine, no batteries for your torch, no scissors, no darning wool, no olive oil. . . .
The pilferer, who for some reason had no taste for cocoa (which you could buy and bathe in if you had the money), had been here, there, and everywhere. . . .

The pilferer was an insatiable reader, too, and Miss Roach spent a good deal of time at the library failing to find anything she wanted to take out. Here she more than once ran into Mr.
Thwaites, who went almost daily to change his book in an angry and disdainful way.

Miss Roach, listening to the remarks of Mr. Thwaites, as well as those of other subscribers, found the library one of the most peculiarly depressing features of the town. ‘Is this book
Good?’ she would hear the assistant being asked. Or ‘Can you recommend a good Book?’ Or ‘I want a good Historical Book.’ Or ‘I want a book for my Nephew,
who’s just taken his degree in Mathematics.’ Or ‘Is this book Interesting?’ And, sometimes, bitterly, ‘That book wasn’t at
all
good,’ as much as to
say tha a practically fraudulent assistant had better do better next time or get into trouble . . .

This depressed Miss Roach because it made her wonder whether the cultural level of the subscribers was, on the whole, very many degrees higher than that of Mr. Thwaites. She was aware, also,
that a large amount of these subscribers came from boarding-houses round about in Thames Lockdon, and that Thames Lockdon was only one small town amongst the thousands of its sort spread out and
hidden away from the world war all over the land.

She was not, she saw, really cut out for small-town, boarding-house life during a world war.

3

A duty had been bequeathed to Miss Roach by a widowed dressmaker – a Mrs. Poulton – with whom Miss Roach had been very friendly when she had first come to the
town, but who had since left. This duty was to maintain an interest in, and occasionally take out to tea, the dressmaker’s seventeen-year-old son, who was in due course going into the
R.A.F.

The boy – John Poulton – interested Miss Roach because he had a decided gift, for his age, for painting water-colours, and because he did not desire to go into the estate agent
business to which his family connections were pointing the way. (He did not, of course, desire to go into the R.A.F., but that was beside the point.) He wanted, after the war, to make his living as
a painter of water-colours, and had confided as much to Miss Roach.

Miss Roach, as well as she could, supported him in this ambition – not because she really believed that his gift for painting water-colours was decided enough for him to make a living at
it, but because she thought that the ambition was, in a general way, laudable, and better than an ambition to go into the estate agent business.

He was a good-looking boy, pale, and with a slight tendency to spots appropriate to his age.

One afternoon during this period they went for a walk, and, sitting on a felled tree in a field high above the town, he became more and more naïvely confiding to Miss Roach, and
enlarged,   earnestly and modestly, upon what he wanted to do and the opposition which he was encountering on all sides.

‘Well, you do what you
want
to do – that’s the only thing in life,’ said Miss Roach. And looking at the unhappy, bewildered boy, and remembering her own
disappointed youth, with her grave, exhilarating theories about ‘education’, and realising that he would soon be in the R.A.F. and not likely to get out of it again for years, she felt
a warm, happy, simple, sad, maternal feeling towards him.

After this she had tea with him in the town. Coming out of the shop they bumped into Vicki, who had come in to buy some cakes.

‘Oh – hullo!’ said Miss Roach, and managed to force a smile. Vicki returned her ‘Hullo’ and also managed a sort of smile in return.

Then she looked at Miss Roach and the boy in a fleeting but searching way.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
BOUT
certain things, and about the war in particular, Miss Roach was an ostrich, and purposely and determinedly so. In
many respects she believed the ostrich to be a bird wiser than the owl. If you could do nothing to alleviate a situation, what sense was there in thinking about it, talking about it, taking any
interest in it?

There were, she knew, many total non-combatants who thought about, talked about, and took an intense interest in the war. There was, furthermore, still quite a large percentage of non-combatants
who were enormously enjoying the war. Mr. Thwaites, for instance, if it had not been for the shortage of food and the personal bother he was having with the Russians, would have been adoring the
war. Even in spite of the food and the Russians he was still liking it quite a lot. It is difficult to keep a good war-liker down.

In her revulsion against this attitude Miss Roach went to the opposite extreme. So little could she bear to think about the war that she refused to apply her mind either to its details or
general shape, and if she had been forced to enter for a general knowledge test on the subject would have probably scored less marks than anyone else in the country. So miserable was she made by
the mere aspect of the national uniforms generally that she could not bring herself to look closely enough to differentiate between the ranks and regiments and kinds of any of these save those of
the most obvious sort. She could not, off-hand, observe the difference between a lieutenant and a captain, let alone that between a squadron-leader and a wing-commander – and she particularly
disliked non-combatant people who gloated over these differentiations. All badges, medals, and bars were a mystery to her, and if asked such questions as what the word ‘Wren’ actually
meant, or ‘Waaf’ or ‘Naafi’ or ‘Ensa’, she would have been in most cases unable to supply an answer. She had never even properly questioned the Lieutenant about
what he was doing now, or what part he was likely to play when the second front began. In pity and horror she didn’t want to hear. She hid her head in the sand, and didn’t want to have
anything to do with it.

Similarly she would hardly read the war-news in the newspapers apart from the headlines. She would just ascertain whether the right side was going forward or going back or staying where it was,
and leave it at that. As for listening in morning, noon, and night to the wireless (particularly in the test match spirit which Mr. Thwaites brought to this pastime), she hated it, and she would
always, if possible, leave the room.

Thus hiding her head (or trying quite unsuccessfully to hide her head) from the war, she had also lately been hiding her head from another reality – the approach of Christmas. There was a
period, six or seven weeks before Christmas, in which people began to talk about doing things before Christmas, or doing things after Christmas, and against this attitude Miss Roach took a resolute
and ostrich-like stand. She refused to think of, mention, or even fully believe in, the approach of Christmas. It couldn’t happen again, she felt. They couldn’t, in the present
circumstances, be so silly as to do it again.