The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (146 page)

‘Really and truly free?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know what that means? Supposing I decided to leave you and the baby in the lurch?’

‘Well–if you really wanted to. You’re free–quite free.’

After a little while she went away. Later in the evening or tomorrow he would let her know what he decided. Of course it was not absolutely certain that the New Albion would give him a job even if he asked them; but presumably they would, considering what Mr Erskine had said. Gordon tried to think and could not. There seemed to be more customers than usual this afternoon. It maddened him to have to bounce out of his chair every time he had sat down and deal with some fresh influx of fools demanding crime-stories and sex-stories and
ro
mances. Suddenly, about six o’clock, he turned out the lights, locked up the library, and went out. He had got to be alone. The library was not due to shut for two hours yet. God knew what Mr Cheeseman would say when he found out. He might even give Gordon the sack. Gordon did not care.

He turned westward, up Lambeth Cut. It was a dull sort of evening, not cold. There was muck underfoot, white lights, and hawkers screaming. He had got to think this thing out, and he could think better walking. But it was so hard, so hard! Back to the New Albion, or leave Rosemary in the lurch; there was no other alternative. It was no use thinking, for instance, that he might find some ‘good’ job which would offend his sense of decency a bit less. There aren’t so many ‘good’ jobs waiting for moth-eaten people of thirty. The New Albion was the only chance he had or ever would have.

At the corner, on the Westminster Bridge Road, he paused a moment. There
were some posters opposite, livid in the lamplight. A monstrous one, ten feet high at least, advertised Bovex. The Bovex people had dropped Corner Table and got on to a new tack. They were running a series of four-line poems–Bovex Ballads, they were called. There was a picture of a horribly eupeptic family, with grinning ham-pink faces, sitting at breakfast; underneath, in blatant lettering:

Why should
you
be thin and white?
And have that washed-out feeling?
Just take hot Bovex every night–
Invigorating–healing!

Gordon gazed at the thing. He drank in its puling silliness. God, what trash!‘Invigorating–healing!’ The weak incompetence of it! It hadn’t even the vigorous badness of the slogans that really stick. Just soppy, lifeless drivel. It would have been almost pathetic in its feebleness if one hadn’t reflected that all over London and all over every town in England that poster was plastered, rotting the minds of men. He looked up and down the graceless street. Yes, war is coming soon. You can’t doubt it when you see the Bovex ads. The electric drills in our streets presage the rattle of the machine-guns. Only a little while before the aeroplanes come. Zoom–bang! A few tons of T.N.T. to send our civilization back to hell where it belongs.

He crossed the road and walked on, southward. A curious thought had struck him. He did not any longer want that war to happen. It was the first time in months–years, perhaps–that he had thought of it and not wanted it.

If he went back to the New Albion, in a month’s time he might be writing Bovex Ballads himself. To go back to
that!
Any ‘good’ job was bad enough; but to be mixed up in
that
! Christ! Of course he oughtn’t to go back. It was just a question of having the guts to stand firm. But what about Rosemary? He thought of the kind of life she would live at home, in her parents’ house, with a baby and no money; and of the news running through that monstrous family that Rosemary had married some awful rotter who couldn’t even keep her. She would have the whole lot of them nagging at her together. Besides, there was the baby to think about. The money-god is so cunning. If he only baited his traps with yachts and race-horses, tarts and champagne, how easy it would be to dodge them. It is when he gets at you through your sense of decency that he finds you helpless.

The Bovex Ballad jungled in Gordon’s head. He ought to stand firm. He had made war on money–he ought to stick it out. After all, hitherto he
had
stuck it out, after a fashion. He looked back over his life. No use deceiving himself. It had been a dreadful life–lonely, squalid, futile. He had lived thirty years and achieved nothing except misery. But that was what he had chosen. It was what he
wanted
, even now. He wanted to sink down, down into the muck where money does not rule. But this baby-business had upset everything. It was a pretty banal predicament, after all. Private vices, public virtues–the dilemma is as old as the world.

He looked up and saw that he was passing a public library. A thought struck
him. That baby. What did it mean, anyway, having a baby? What was it that was actually happening to Rosemary at this moment? He had only vague and general ideas of what pregnancy meant. No doubt they would have books in there that would tell him about it. He went in. The lending library was on the left. It was there that you had to ask for works of reference.

The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one–at least, no male person–ever consulted works of reference except in search of pornography. As soon as you approached she pierced you through and through with a flash of her pince-nez and let you know that your dirty secret was no secret from
her
. After all, all works of reference are pornographical, except perhaps Whitaker’s
Almanack
. You can put even the Oxford Dictionary to evil purposes by looking up words like — and —

Gordon knew her type at a glance, but he was too preoccupied to care.

‘Have you any book on gynaecology?’ he said.

‘Any
what
?’ demanded the young woman with a pince-nez flash of unmistakable triumph. As usual! Another male in search of dirt!

‘Well, any books on midwifery? About babies being born, and so forth.’

‘We don’t issue books of that description to the general public,’ said the young woman frostily.

‘I’m sorry–there’s a point I particularly want to look up.’

‘Are you a medical student?’

‘No.’

‘Then I don’t
quite
see what you want with books on midwifery.’

Curse the woman! Gordon thought. At another time he would have been afraid of her; at present, however, she merely bored him.

‘If you want to know, my wife’s going to have a baby. We neither of us know much about it. I want to see whether I can find out anything useful.’

The young woman did not believe him. He looked too shabby and worn, she decided, to be a newly married man. However, it was her job to lend out books, and she seldom actually refused them, except to children. You always got your book in the end, after you had been made to feel yourself a dirty swine. With an aseptic air she led Gordon to a small table in the middle of the library and presented him with two fat books in brown covers. Thereafter she left him alone, but kept an eye on him from whatever part of the library she happened to be in. He could feel her pince-nez probing the back of his neck at long range, trying to decide from his demeanour whether he was really searching for information or merely picking out the dirty bits.

He opened one of the books and searched inexpertly through it. There were acres of close-printed text full of Latin words. That was no use. He wanted something simple–pictures, for choice. How long had this thing been going on? Six weeks–nine weeks, perhaps. Ah! This must be it.

He came on a print of a nine weeks’ foetus. It gave him a shock to see it, for he had not expected it to look in the least like that. It was a deformed, gnomelike thing, a sort of clumsy caricature of a human being, with a huge domed head as big as the rest of its body. In the middle of the great blank
expanse of head there was a tiny button of an ear. The thing was in profile; its boneless arm was bent, and one hand, crude as a seal’s flipper, covered its face–fortunately, perhaps. Below were little skinny legs, twisted like a monkey’s with the toes turned in. It was a monstrous thing, and yet strangely human. It surprised him that they should begin looking human so soon. He had pictured something much more rudimentary; a mere blob of nucleus, like a bubble of frog-spawn. But it must be very tiny, of course. He looked at the dimensions marked below. Length 30 millimetres. About the size of a large gooseberry.

But perhaps it had not been going on quite so long as that. He turned back a page or two and found a print of a six weeks’ foetus. A really dreadful thing this time–a thing he could hardly even bear to look at. Strange that our beginnings and endings are so ugly–the unborn as ugly as the dead. This thing looked as if it were dead already. Its huge head, as though too heavy to hold upright, was bent over at right angles at the place where its neck ought to have been. There was nothing you could call a face, only a wrinkle representing the eye–or was it the mouth? It had no human resemblance this time; it was more like a dead puppy-dog. Its short thick arms were very doglike, the hands being mere stumpy paws. 15–5 millimetres long–no bigger than a hazel nut.

He pored for a long time over the two pictures. Their ugliness made them more credible and therefore more moving. His baby had seemed real to him from the moment when Rosemary spoke of abortion; but it had been a reality without visual shape–something that happened in the dark and was only important after it had happened. But here was the actual process taking place. Here was the poor ugly thing, no bigger than a gooseberry, that he had created by his heedless act. Its future, its continued existence perhaps, depended on him. Besides, it was a bit of himself–it
was
himself. Dare one dodge such a responsibility as that?

But what about the alternative? He got up, handed over his books to the disagreeable young woman, and went out; then, on an impulse, turned back and went into the other part of the library, where the periodicals were kept. The usual crowd of mangy-looking people were dozing over the papers. There was one table set apart for women’s papers. He picked up one of them at random and bore it off to another table.

It was an American paper of the more domestic kind, mainly adverts with a few stories lurking apologetically among them. And
what
adverts! Quickly he flicked over the shiny pages. Lingerie, jewellery, cosmetics, fur coats, silk stockings flicked up and down like the figures in a child’s peepshow. Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks, undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-section of the money-world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness, whoredom, and disease.

And
that
was the world they wanted him to re-enter.
That
was the business in which he had a chance of Making Good. He flicked over the pages more slowly. Flick, flick. Adorable–until she smiles. The food that is shot out of a gun. Do you let foot-fag affect your personality? Get back that peach-bloom on
a Beautyrest Mattress. Only a
penetrating
face-cream will reach that undersurface dirt. Pink toothbrush is
her
trouble. How to alkalize your stomach almost instantly. Roughage for husky kids. Are you one of the four out of five? The world-famed Culturequick Scrapbook. Only a drummer and yet he quoted Dante.

Christ, what muck!

But of course it was an American paper. The Americans always go one better on any kinds of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering, or theosophy. He went over to the women’s table and picked up another paper. An English one this time. Perhaps the ads in an English paper wouldn’t be quite so bad–a little less brutally offensive?

He opened the paper. Flick, flick. Britons never shall be slaves!

Flick, flick. Get that waist-line back to normal! She
said
‘Thanks awfully for the lift,’ but she
thought
, ‘Poor boy, why doesn’t somebody tell him?’ How a woman of thirty-two stole her young man from a girl of twenty. Prompt relief for feeble kidneys. Silkyseam–the smooth-sliding bathroom tissue. Asthma was choking her! Are
you
ashamed of your undies? Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps. Now I’m a schoolgirl complexion all over. Hike all day on a slab of Vitamalt!

To be mixed up in
that
! To be in it and of it–part and parcel of it! God, God, God!

Presently he went out. The dreadful thing was that he knew already what he was going to do. His mind was made up–had been made up for a long time past. When this problem appeared it had brought its solution with it; all his hesitation had been a kind of make-believe. He felt as though some force outside himself were pushing him. There was a telephone booth near by. Rosemary’s hostel was on the phone–she ought to be at home by now He went into the booth, feeling in his pocket. Yes, exactly two pennies. He dropped them into the slot, swung the dial.

A refaned, adenoidal feminine voice answered him: ‘Who’s thyah, please?’

He pressed Button A. So the die was cast.

‘Is Miss Waterlow in?’

‘Who’s
thyah
, please?’

‘Say it’s Mr Comstock. She’ll know. Is she at home?’

‘Ay’ll see. Hold the lane, please.’

A pause.

‘Hullo! Is that you, Gordon?’

‘Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Rosemary? I just wanted to tell you. I’ve thought it over–I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Oh!’ There was another pause. With difficulty mastering her voice, she added: ‘Well, what did you decide?’

‘It’s all right. I’ll take the job–if they’ll give it me, that is.’

‘Oh, Gordon, I’m so glad! You’re not angry with me? You don’t feel I’ve sort of bullied you into it?’

‘No, it’s all right. It’s the only thing I can do. I’ve thought everything out. I’ll go up to the office and see them tomorrow.’

‘I
am
so glad!’

‘Of course, I’m assuming they’ll give me the job. But I suppose they will, after what old Erskine said.’

‘I’m sure they will. But, Gordon, there’s just one thing. You will go there nicely dressed, won’t you? It might make a lot of difference.’