A Girl in Winter (19 page)

She snatched the pencil from him and stood panting a moment, as if going to fling it at his head or break it in two. He looked at her blankly with his shoulders hunched and bad teeth showing. Then she threw it down on the desk. “I will go,” she said breathlessly. “I will—I hate——” To control her anger she threw up her head, finding it hard to breathe. “I’ll leave now. How soon can I leave?”

“Your appointment was subject to a month’s notice,” he said colourlessly, as if considering something they were not talking about. “Notice of resignation should be addressed in writing to the City Librarian.”

“Give me some paper. I’ll write it now.”

It was odd, if she had thought about it, that her
outrageous
behaviour had rather taken him aback without making him angry. “You can do as you please,” he said, scratching his ear sourly. “But if you want my opinion you’ll think twice before doing anything like that.”

“I don’t want it at all!”

“You could be a sight worse off, let me tell you, a sight worse off.” He thrust his head at her again, but absently. “You’re not going to find any job where you can do as you please, especially as you’re situated now. You’d better by far stick at what you’re doing, and be thankful, even though it may be unfamiliar to you. My advice——”

She would have liked to squash him with a great stone where he sat. “Oh, shut up with your advice, shut up. I don’t want it, you bore me stiff with such things.” She drew a deep breath to stop herself panting. “Keep it. Keep it for your Miss Greens and Miss Feathers and your silly Veronica Parbury,” drawling out the last three words with an exaggerated foreign accent she had learned annoyed people.

She hardly knew she had said it till she saw its effect on him. It had exploded like a depth-charge. He sat in his chair as stiffly as a corporal who has been told to remain seated by a field-marshal.

That’s finished him, she thought.

He began to speak as she left the room.

By four o’clock, all the lights had been switched on, and shortly afterwards the long black curtains were clashed together, each with the noise of a scythe-stroke, to shut out the pallid end of the day. Under the hanging lights the building seemed suddenly empty, and indeed fewer borrowers were coming in to shuffle their suspicious way round the shelves. They were going home for tea, or if they had not left home a glance from the window at the fog discouraged them from doing so. Katherine and Miss Brooks could therefore shelve the overflowing “returned” racks without interruption. They slapped books together, put them in alphabetical or numerical order, and bore armfuls of them off, to be nosed and slammed back onto the shelves.

For Katherine had gone back to work, hardly knowing what she was doing. And once back, she shrank from
leaving
conspicuously. It was easy, too, to join in the pallid duties as usual, it composed her trembling hands, and it prevented her thoughts from settling into colourless
stillness
, like stirring a teaspoon in a glass of cold water. So she worked on, handling the sombre leather-bound books like so many blocks of soft wood, making herself listen to the borrowers who came hurrying in from the cold and, as far as possible, finding them what they wanted. Their
voices, and the hushed noises as the staff worked, did not press on her; they were indeed barely audible, as if this was the first half-hour after a loud explosion that had partly affected her hearing.

When every few minutes she turned to face what was in her mind, and the thought that Robin was not coming met her, her grief would break in a little shivering wave, and then reform. She need not have worried and
reproached
herself; he had not even started. How silly she had been, pretending to be at last turned outward to the people round her, trying to express her rediscovered
gratitude
to that sickening girl. Even more of a fool, because there had been other, unexpressed fancies: the way she would be swept off to their home, like a long-lost cousin, dropping an airy resignation to the City Librarian, to make herself useful about that fascinating house until Mr. Fennel could find her a remunerative job which she could do while still continuing to live with them; and then of course the slow ripening of her friendship with Robin into love, a love firmer and reciprocal, yet still bearing the fervour of their first acquaintance—or, if this last was too much to swallow, then at least some male friend of the family who would eventually hold out to her love, security, happiness, and a British passport. But disregarding such emetics, the plain news that he was not coming was enough to obscure her mind. Finding herself shut out into her own life again, all her nature beat upon his refusal, begging to be readmitted to the easy happiness she had been remembering. She was forsaken among the broken spars of the day. And because there was a trace of superstition in her, it crossed her mind that it was her fault for leaving him no word. She should not have been so proud and hesitant. She should have expected him, and then he would have come.

But nothing could argue away the loss. He
had been the power that had set this extraordinary day moving, that
increased its speed until she and a few other chance things and people were drawn up in a kind of whirling tower of air, their faces meeting, their hands touching, seemingly the only things left in the world. And now, like the
switching-off
of a current, he said he was not coming, and they were all left there, spinning in the emptiness, till the impetus should be exhausted and they were tumbled back on the floor.

Already she was falling. She had seen them as
extraordinary
, this Anstey, this Miss Parbury, this Miss Green, as if their faces were phosphorescent with a significance she did not grasp, linked with whatever had sent her to them. This was fading. And she had an unpleasant sense that she was going to fall farther than she had risen. She was gradually getting her recollections of her scene with Anstey under control, like a heath-fire, and viewed in the wintry light her behaviour had been serious. She had said and done things for which she might be called to account. But he should not have made her angry! She threw up her head as the sentences blazed again, scorching her. How vile he was, how deliberately he had told her about Miss Green and the telegram from Robin, treading her down, how glad she was if she had hurt him! Glad because there was no denying she had behaved badly, like a housemaid being ticked off and replying with
personal
insults. But at present she was too distracted to say more than, If that is how I react, if that is what I
instinctively
say, then it’s my nature and I must abide by it.

This recalled Miss Green to her, and Katherine
remembered
that she still had her handbag. It had better be returned before Miss Green left work at five, though she would as readily have thrown it in the canal, but once it was given back there would be no more contact. That would be a good thing, at any rate. So Miss Feather had warned her that it didn’t do to tell that Green child
anything
? That meant she had come back, ill as she was, full
of tales about the silent Miss Lind, how she lived alone, and how after six years she was meeting a strange love of her childhood. Katherine felt as if she had suffered a slug to crawl across her. And beyond that, weariness,
oceans-long
.

“These old things, they’d lose their heads if they were loose,” said Miss Brooks in an undertone, for an old woman was insisting she had lost her purse. The old woman held her mouth very tightly and suspiciously, hardly moving her head, accusing no one but detailing the facts of the loss over and over again.

Katherine went out to the cloakroom, took the
handbag
from her coat-pocket, and went round to the Junior Library. It would be as well to get it over. When she saw Miss Green serving the shabby, clumping urchins she was not very angry. Her anger had spent itself earlier. She only wondered at her own blindness. As soon as Miss Green saw Katherine, she seemed to stiffen up and
become
busier, so Katherine had to wait a minute or two. How sly she looked, thin and cross. And the room was poky; it had been a storeroom till it had been converted, and it smelt inimitably of poor children. Katherine looked at the stock—disordered, upside down, lying on their sides —all beaten by use into a uniform dirty brown. Here and there were prettily-designed cards noticing certain kinds of books: but somehow these had got thumbed or even ripped, though there was no reason why anyone should touch them.

When Miss Green was free she went up to her.

“Here’s your bag. I got it back all right.”

“Thank you——” Miss Green seemed almost too
confused
to speak. “—good of you.” She held her head back as if rearing from something unpleasant.

Katherine laid it on the counter. She felt it was no use saying much.

“So you came back,” she said.

“Yes—I … after I’d laid down, I didn’t feel so bad … take my mind off it——” Miss Green tittered inaudibly. “Er … who’d taken it?”

“A silly woman. She apologized.”

There was a pause.

“Mother is washing and ironing the hanky you lent me,” said Miss Green suddenly, as if this was a sentence she had prepared. “And——”

She took a twist of paper from her pocket and spilled five half-crowns onto the wooden counter.

“Here is what I owe you, thank you very much, it was very kind of you, I’ll give you the hanky on Monday.”

“Thank you,” said Katherine. She took up the money and after saying a few more words went back to work.

In winter the library closed at seven o’clock, and usually the last hour was busy. This night there was enough to keep the assistants occupied, but because of the weather hardly as many people came as on a middle-week night. Those that did were people who did not mind the weather and had nowhere else to go; young mechanics, with oil engrained in their palms, one or two sixth-form children, couples of young married women who had slipped over from a nearby housing estate, coming in pairs because they were afraid of the darkness.

Time usually went quickly between six and seven, but with the unusual slackness it seemed to drag, and the day’s business was petering out instead of rising to a sharp climax. Katherine hardly noticed it. On this night, as on a hundred other nights, she went about her work, dressed neatly in her red overall, under the electric lights that shone pallidly on her dark hair and composed, sullen mouth: except that she was a little slow when spoken to, it could not be guessed that her thoughts were astray. Like the work she was helping to do, they were slowing,
sweeping
round in long circles that fell a little each time, touching
this, touching that, but always dropping further away from the exaltation that had faded with the daylight. The memory of the shelter by the icy fountain, where she had wished to help Miss Green more than even herself, was distant and despicable, and she avoided, too, thinking of Miss Parbury, for that was all ugly (making her ashamed). Instead she preferred to recall the look on his face—as if he had broken a tooth—when she had left him. Yes, there had been revenge there, and if she hadn’t been so tired she would have warmed her hands at it, shutting out for the moment the uncertain state of things, whether she had resigned, whether she would have to leave. This was no doubt very important: it would knock away her security, that she had won so hardly, and set her once more on the move. She would hate that.

But did she really care what she did in England? There would be other things for her to do, and whatever it was she would do it unwillingly, obstinately, as if she were working in a field; what she did would be emptied away like a painfully-filled basket, and her time would be spilled away with it. There would be sleep, simply to freshen her again for work; there would be other Miss Greens, Miss Parburys, Mr. Ansteys; all this was inescapable, and it did not matter if she accepted it or not. It accepted her.

Only, there would be no more Robins. And as her thoughts came down finally to rest on his name, she knew what he meant to her. He was in the forefront of a time when she had come to this same strange country, and had been welcomed by strangers and taken in among them. She had moved into a world that might have been a country dance, when, dressed in white, she had
momentarily
joined hands with the one in yellow, the one in green, the lavender and the sprigged-rose. She saw herself attached first to one, then another, with emotions that could be snipped off like flowers, only to make the next crop more luxuriant. And she thought in some way he
might lead her back to it. What a pretty thought it was, and how untrue. She had known it was untrue. It had kept her from writing to them as soon as she arrived, and when she had at last written to Jane it had been
desperately
, almost drunkenly; she had seized the slightest chance of escaping the desolation that was pressing upon her. It had lain at the bottom of her hesitation even that afternoon, when she could not think why she did not take every precaution against missing him.

Now she had missed him, she saw this clearly. Better sooner than later. And, with what strength she had left after this day, she had to face what remained. She did not bother to formulate it clearly; she knew well enough what it was. Life would be happy insofar as she was happy, sad insofar as she was sad. The happiness would depend on her youth and health, and would help no-one. When she was ill, it would drop away, like the flame of a wick being turned down; when she grew old, it would be thin and infrequent. And in these times no other thing or person would be able to help her, though they might try sincerely, and she might try equally sincerely to be helped. But they would not be able to touch any more than people
standing
ten yards apart can take each others’ hands. Truly she had done more than come to England; in these past eighteen months she had broken ground she never dreamed existed, so that at first it had seemed an unreality. Now it had shrunken slightly into the truth.

The time came at last when work for the evening was nearly over. Miss Feather switched off lights over
individual
cases, as a hint to the few borrowers that remained, then, returning to the entrance, put out the first row of lights that hung at the far end of the hail. Katherine leaned against the counter and watched her do it.

Shadows appeared on the floor as they were
extinguished
. The hand of the clock moved precisely onto the hour, and the second row of lights went off. To watch
them go out was like seeing the death of something. A woman dressed in black hurried to the counter, had her book stamped, and went quickly out, the wicket swinging back with a thud. The far end of the room was now quite dark.

“Another day gone,” said Miss Brooks, with thin
cheerfulness
, coming to stand by her.

“And another week.”

“Going away?”

“Are you?”

“Oh, I expect I shall go to my married sister’s on Sunday. Usually do. Working on a Saturday doesn’t give you much time, though, does it? You’ve no chance.”

“Certainly you haven’t.”

They were silent.

“Saw you trapesing along to see Anstey again this afternoon,” said Miss Brooks. “Had enough of him today, haven’t you?”

“Too much. We had a real exchange of personalities.”

“Oh dear. Well, I’m not surprised.”

“I’ve a good mind to resign.”

“What would you do?”

“I don’t know. If I did I wouldn’t wait.”

“Not getting married or anything?”

“Getting married? Of course not. Where did that idea come from?” Miss Brooks looked rather ashamed. “Has our Miss Green been spreading romantic stories about me?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t listen to anything
she
said.”

Another row of lights went off.

“No harm if you did,” said Katherine. “I only want to know what everyone thinks.” As Miss Brooks kept stiffly silent she laughed and said: “I am not offended. I only want to know.”