‘Balls!’ I said.
‘No, don’t you see … Look, we can act a bit tough with him to show him we can’t be mucked about. But we tell him, just tell him, all about the downright lies Sister has told us. That should scare him off.’
‘Why? Has it scared you off, Spaldine?’
He looked away from me, let his gaze travel jerkily over the bar.
‘I’ll have to do it myself, then.’ He took a meditative sip of his beer. ‘You’re about as much good as a wet fish, Stubbs,’ he said. He drained the rest of his glass, set it down on the table and wiped his lips. ‘And I don’t want to see you round by hers again,’ he said. He stood up, nodded severely, and marched out through the door.
I sat there, finishing my beer more slowly, and went out into the streets; if I hurried I could get back to my pie-and-peas shop before it closed. There would be time enough to suffer when my stomach was less empty.
In fact, my stomach began to suffer directly it was full of pie-and-peas. My entrails, all my insides, had undergone awful contortions of coldness during the episode with Spaldine. Leaving the pie-and-peas shop, I had to make for the nearest public lavatory at the double.
It was one of those subterranean London affairs, and as I sank down on the seat in my stall, the subterranean nature of my life was borne in on me. My coming to the bloody capital was meant as a great gesture of love; but so submerged was everyone in the animal hurly-burly of their lives that nobody had noticed it. Nobody. Only my stomach, as it emptied, gave indications that the gesture had ever been made.
All round me were other declarations of abortive love. Beside, the usual boastings about length and frequency of climax and pleas for assignation with eighteen-year-old R.A.F. boys, several case histories were scrawled on the door and walls. One was about a fellow luring a news-girl into his kitchen on a Sunday morning and sucking her off on the table. One began, ‘My older brother is in the Merchant Navy and when he comes home he has to share my bed with me.’
I read them with detached interest as I wiped myself. Written large by my right-hand side was a pencilled notice: ‘Why Shit Here When There Are Better Stories in the Next Cubicle?’
The story of my life, I thought.
My ‘Virginia Journal’ had travelled south with me. Sitting on my bed and laying it on my rickety little bedside table, I spent some hours writing it up, trying to make sense of what was happening.
There is some happiness now in seeing that even then I was generous to Virginia, although I believed that society imposed a sort of obligation on me to judge her harshly and to hate her for her way of life: but that was a hangover from the kind of judgements exercised by a previous generation. Naïve though my sentiments were, they ended with a sentence that now pleases me a lot: ‘I never gave Virginia a single present (more poverty than meanness), and she never gave me one, but yet she gave me more than I can say.’
That was meant to be the last word.
I decided that Virginia wanted to see me no more than she did Spaldine; so I would fade out of her life. If that was her point of view, I had sympathy with it; we were in London now, not Branwells, and she no more wanted me in her bed than I wanted young Brown in mine; circumstances had altered cases. All this was pusillanimous, perhaps; it was not unnatural to feel down-hearted in the circumstances. I had no hatred of her – any hatred was directed towards the odious Spaldine.
Feeling extremely low, I brought out my comforter and commenced to rub it, gazing at it affectionately and thinking how ably it had worked to Virginia’s and my mutual pleasure in that little nest of hers which she had never allowed me to see. It stood to attention at the thought. I began to grow enthusiastic myself. After the spasm of pleasure raked through my body I climbed into bed and went to sleep.
For the next day or two I went about pretending that a new phase in my life had begun. I cultivated a Miss Tregonin, a Cornish girl with a mass of freckles who was younger than I and also worked at the trestle table in the department. I had no intention of going home with my tail between my legs.
On Saturday came a letter from Virginia, written on her violet notepaper, saying that she was in trouble but would like to meet me at the National Gallery at noon that day. We could have lunch together.
‘… in trouble but would like to see you …’ Not ‘… in trouble and would like to meet you …’ What was the distinction there, and was it one she had intended to make? What, for God’s sake, was the trouble?
And the business about meeting her at noon. The department did not close until noon, so I could not hope to be at the National Gallery before 12.15. I pictured that frail little elusive figure among the columns; would it wait for me? Could it? What were the hidden pressures of its life that kept it moving all the while? I remembered what I knew intuitively: somehow, Virginia had been hurt.
So I slipped away from the department at 11.40, hoping nobody spotted me, and Virginia turned up at the Gallery at 12.30.
It happened that the Gallery was shut that day for what were euphemistically called ‘Alterations’. Most of the pictures were being crated up and taken into the country. Trafalgar Square was a sober sight, with sandbags everywhere, and a great water tank, and other evidence of warlike preparedness. Like almost everyone else, Virginia and I carried our gas-masks in little square boxes.
We went and ate in a humble restaurant near Charing Cross Station. There were net curtains at the window, through which a wintry sun attempted to shine. We smiled at each other, hardly knowing what to say.
She made no attempt to apologize for the dreariness of our last meeting. Was she aware how miserable I had felt then? Rather sharply, I asked what sort of trouble she was in.
‘You haven’t the experience, Horry, to know how complicated life can be,’ she began.
‘I have more experience than you may believe, Virginia. I am no longer a kid, as I told you the other night.’ Only a long while after did I realize that that declaration might not have the effect on her I intended. I was conscious then of my youth and of the fact that if she was in trouble then it was a man she needed; later I perceived that she could only achieve satisfactory relationships with boys – children, in fact, on whom her gentle, almost non-existent character could have some weight, and who might repose in her a trust she could not give herself.
She looked at me doubtfully, her head on one side. I was being judged in ways I could not know. ‘I am sorry we are having to meet one another in London. It’s all more complex than Branwells … My life just is terribly complex. You can see how I have come down in the world, through no fault of my own. I’m such a silly about money matters, among other things. Now there’s the war to make everything more difficult. I’m lucky to have such a good friend in Josie …’
I took her hand and said, ‘Virginia, darling, you also have a good friend in me. I’m not just another chap who screws you and disappears – I love you, I want to help you!’
‘You mustn’t use that ugly word, pet. You are a dear boy, but you can’t help me.’
‘How do you know? Tell me what sort of trouble you’re in! I’m down here all on my own – I’m free to help in any way I can. I came to London just to help you. Of course, I’m a bit hard up …’
The waitress arrived and we had to be quiet. We sat and looked at each other as the soup plates arrived. Then she said, ‘I’m being watched night and day at Josie’s place. It’s her cousin – the one you saw. I know he is connected with the divorce in some way. They have got a man watching me, the solicitors. I believe he has a gun in his pocket.’
‘Did