As he sat elaborating his futile design, his mutinous brain, refusing stubbornly to perform the functions which had once been its delight and relief, persisted in exploring, for the hundredth-thousandth time, the emotion of nauseated distrust and apprehension which the room now evoked in him whenever he entered it or even looked into it. No aim directed this vague, depressed analysis; no satisfaction or hope of remedy resulted from it. It proceeded always, however, he had observed—for it had long ago become a subconscious activity, so persistent as to attract his uneasy attention—along the same line.
It began always with the furtive, secret dinginess and decay that underlay the room’s superficial brightness and freshness—began, oddly, always with the same window-curtain.
Pretty curtains. But they had been up for two years now. When you shook them you found that they were thick with dust. They had faded a lot. There was a small tear in the left-hand one, at the bottom. Bogey-Bogey’s work.
The windows. It must be two months at least since the windows of the flat had been cleaned. Seven-and-six … but they must be done. A nuisance, the window-cleaner, in and out of the rooms with his bucket and his sour-smelling cloths and his curious watching eyes. And then there was that broken sash-cord. And the cracked pane.
The roll-top desk. Lord, what a litter it was in! All those pigeon-holes … full of dust and rubbish. What an uncomfortable brute of a thing it was to sit at. Much too high and too narrow. And your legs were always cramped. He had paid fourteen pounds for it, and had never succeeded in writing a sentence at it …
The chintz covers. They had faded badly, too. All of them wanted cleaning, especially those of the armchairs, which were perfectly filthy …
A leg of that arm-chair wanted repairing.
The rain last winter found its way through the wall up there, above the fireplace, cracked the plaster, and stained the paper. That watercolour below the stain had begun to mildew and blotch …
The fireplace would have to be seen to before the autumn; its back had burnt out, and a lot of the tiles had cracked. The chimney must be swept, too, before the autumn. That would mean that the whole room would have to be turned topsy-turvy in preparation for the sweep and cleaned right out when he had finished. A woman would have to be got in to do that job. Ten shillings. And the room unusable for the whole day.
The carpet. All right until you looked closely. Then you saw that it was dotted all over with little stains and thickly covered with Bogey-Bogey’s hairs. It would have to come up and go to the cleaners, also. And one couldn’t use the room without a carpet.
The Crown Derby set on the Welsh dresser. Thick with dust. A two hours’ job to collect it, piece by piece, and carry it out to the kitchen and wash and dry it and carry it back and arrange it on the dresser again. He had smashed a cup last time he had done that job, three or four—no, it must be six months ago—before last Christmas—and spoiled the set. Clumsy brute, always smashing things. It had worried him ever since, whenever he had looked at it, to think that the set was a cup short.
The portable … God, how he hated the wireless now—the fatuous voices of the announcers—the maudlin, insatiable music … Music … God—
All those infernal dusty, stale, useless old books. Three or four hundred pounds worth of rubbish—one probably wouldn’t get five pounds for the lot if one tried to sell them and get rid of them. Neither he nor Elsa had opened one of them for years. And what a business it had been moving them about. What a business it would be when they would have to be moved again. And they would have to be moved again.
The settee. Ruined by the dog’s paws. That must be re-covered—for the dog’s paws to filthy again.
The rugs. All faded, all soiled and stained and ragged at the fringes. More work for the cleaners.
That armchair. The springs gone and a castor off. He had been intending to fix that castor for over a year.
Expense—disturbance—trouble. And all for nothing. Everything was wearing out—going. Nothing would stop its going. In a few months, after all that fuss and upset, everything would be dirty and dingy again—older—shabbier. Hopeless to try to keep things decent with clouds of dust coming in from the road all day long and a dog messing about from morning to night and no servant. Hopeless—mere waste of time. Time—God, how the time flew away. The sitting-room alone took a couple of hours to do—even scamping the job. And next morning it looked as if it hadn’t been done for weeks.
And yet one couldn’t live in a piggery—one couldn’t allow Elsa to. All those confounded things must be cleaned. All those confounded small jobs must be done and paid for.
For that matter, the room would have to be done up very soon—ceiling, wallpaper, and paintwork. All of them were in a bad way, and would be definitely shabby if they were let go until the spring. If the sitting-room was done, the passage and the bathroom would have to be done at the same time. One job must be made of the lot—one upset. More argument and discussion and difficulty with that surly, tricky brute of a landlord—more worry. Probably he would refuse again to do the work. Even if he did consent to do it, it would mean all sorts of nuisance—the greater part of the flat out of action—workmen about it all day long—noise, smells, mess. Elsa and he would have to sleep and meal at an hotel or somewhere. More expense. And one or other of them would have to be about the flat while the workmen were in it. Lord, what a nuisance.
How pretty the room had looked when they had settled down in the flat two years ago. How sure he had felt, that first afternoon in April, 1929, when he had seated himself at the just-delivered roll-top desk, that, in that friendly, comfortable, peaceful work-room, his brain would come back again, tranquilly and obediently, to the playing of its old tricks.
That damnable, cheerful-faced clock on the mantel-piece. How many hours of bitter defeat and impotent self-reproach it had hurried away, eagerly, irrevocably. For two years of hours, each a little swifter than the last, each a little nearer to panic-speed, it had hustled him and bustled him and mocked his flurry and his failure. Cursed, smug thing … Extraordinary how loud its faint tick had grown—how long he had failed to detect its power to irritate and distract him—how instant had been the relief when, one afternoon six weeks or so back, a sudden impulse had caused him to jump up from his table and stop it. On that afternoon he had written nearly a whole chapter—the chapter which for over three months had refused to begin itself. In the following three weeks he had succeeded in writing four more chapters, turning out four thousand words a day, still with some difficulty, but regularly. The spell had seemed broken at last. For that brief space the sitting-room had worn again the guise of its old encouraging friendliness. He had taken to hurrying in there after lunch, leaving Elsa to wash up unaided.
And then this damnable, idiotic, maddening trouble with the Prossips had begun—just when there had seemed at last, a hope …
He turned his head towards the door of the room. A thick portière was drawn across it and, actually, the sound of the gramophone was a faint and remote whining. No portière, however, could shut out its real torture, the malice of its persistency; for Whalley’s ears that faint, distant whine was a savage, raucous clamour, hammering at their drums. For a little space he remained, half-turned in his chair, listening to it with rigid intentness. Then, as a heavy thump shook the ceiling above his head he flung down his pen furiously, sprang to his feet, and stood with both hands clenched before his face, glaring upwards.
The paroxysm of anger passed almost instantly—before a second thump followed the first. But he remained for a space surprised by its violence and by its sudden complete obliteration of his self-control. It had produced in him for a moment an absolutely novel