Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (19 page)

‘I got a lot to talk about,’ he continued, in lower tones. ‘You an’ I’ve got to come to an understanding. As things are, they’re
funny
.’

‘What’s funny?’

‘Well, it’s funny enough me making love to you at all. But it’s funnier still the way you go on.’

‘So I’m funny, am I?’

‘No. Not you. But things are.’

He looked at her. There was a long pause. . . .

‘I suppose you think I love you,’ she said, at last, ‘just ’cos I got soft with you up on Hampstead Heath. That it?’

He was smitten dumb. The brutality, the low-down servant-girl meanness of her. He would never forgive her. She had betrayed and humiliated him. He thought of leaving her on the spot. His look was far from pleasant, and she relented.

‘Well – I’m sorry I said that. But you get me angry sometimes.’

‘So it didn’t mean nothing up there, then?’

‘Yes, it did. I said I’m sorry, ain’t I? What was you wantin’ to say?’

‘Oh – nothing.’

‘No. Go on. What was you goin’ to say? I’m listenin’.’

‘No. I’m too fed up to go on now.’

There was a silence.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I ain’t got all the evening to waste, you know.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what I want to say, if you must hear it.’

‘What?’

‘It’s just this. I’m willin’ to go on with you, but if you can’t bother to keep your dates, I’m not goin’ to go trailin’ round after prostitutes. That’s all.’

‘Oh – so I’m a prostitute, am I?’ She snapped her bag to, and began to drink her drink hurriedly.

The little idiot wasn’t going to leave him, was she? He was not going to let her scare him, anyway.

‘Well – what do you think you are?’

She finished her drink and put it down.

‘Oh, that’s quite all right. I just wanted to know, that’s all. That’s very satisfactory. Good-bye.’

She rose and went out without looking back.

The thing had happened. She had ‘walked out’ on him, as the saying went. This was a Scene. Everybody in the room, he believed, had observed it. By the blessed grace of providence there was a newspaper under the table. He picked it up and opened it. . . .

What now? He was through with her. That was one thing. But it was only seven o’clock. He was beautifully calm, but his evening was spoiled. He couldn’t go to the pictures after this. It would have been much better to have kept the peace and gone to the pictures with her.

He was through. He was never going to see her again. He shouldn’t, of course, have called her that. She had always naïvely admitted to it; and it was cruel of him. Perhaps she was genuinely hurt. . . .

His imagination worked apace. . . . A little, lonely, ill-used wanton, told what she was and walking out with her last poor shreds of pride. . . . Walking out on to the streets – the cold streets she knew so well. . . .

Oh God. He ought to apologize to her. After all, he
had
been nagging at her ever since they had met (he, who was supposed to love her). And his own infamy had exceeded her own – that remark about Hampstead for which she had apologized.

Did she love him, or did she not? She had no earthly reason for saying she did, if she didn’t. If only he knew, he would be satisfied. If he could find her and apologize, he might find out.

At any rate, this was not the point at which he could break with her. He had been too much in the wrong for that. He would have to choose a time when she had been in the wrong.

Ten minutes later he was out on Wardour Street. He was in luck’s way. There she was, coming down. Probably looking for him – poor little wretch. He stopped to light a cigarette, and walked towards her.

‘Hullo Jenny,’ he said, with a silly smile, and raised his hat.

She passed him by, quickening her pace.

He turned round and followed her, touching her arm. She shook his hand off.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Jenny. Don’t be angry. I want to apologize.’

‘You leave me alone.’

‘Don’t be silly, Jenny.’ He was hurrying along by her side like a mendicant. ‘I been fairly good to you. You might forgive me now.’

He tried to take her arm again. Again she shook it off. People were observing them in passing. He was humiliating himself unspeakably: he did not know why he went on. But he was dizzy with a strange incredulousness. Abasing himself like this, it was not in human nature for her to turn him down.

‘Please, Jenny. Don’t be angry.’

And he touched her arm again.

She stopped.

‘I’ll tell you what’ll happen to
you
,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘If you go on Annoyin’ me, you’ll get put in
charge
.’

‘Oh, very well. Good evening.’

‘Good evening.’

In charge! Annoying her!
He walked up the street, his giddy and blazing humiliation carrying him along.

And to him! Her deliverer! The man who proposed to make his mark upon the world accused of accosting in Wardour Street!

It was his own fault. Fancy, at his age, imagining there was a resemblance between a harlot and a human being! He had deserved all he had got. . . .

There were many of her kind about. . . . ‘Hullo, dear,’ said one of them. . . .

What a filthy crew. They were all the same. But retribution fell on them.

Yes, they got what was coming to them. There was, after all, a God. They rotted in their own sins and diseases. God
was just and good. He loved God. He was on the side of God. They rotted in their own sins and diseases.

In the meanwhile, it would be best to get drunk.

He did so.

A
T HALF-PAST THREE
next morning Bob awoke in the darkness of his little room. He had only slept two hours. He had come in, reeling drunk, at half-past one, and fallen straight into a whirling oblivion. Now he was awake. His head was like a midnight mill, grinding out his problems. About him and around him the night was awfully still. He knew this drunkard’s interlude. He would be sick and heavy in the morning; now he was giddy but horribly lucid. Sleep was out of the question. He lit a cigarette.

He had got drunk again. The truth was that he was letting himself go. He was becoming debauched. This girl was playing hell with him. Fiction informed you that girls could do that, but he had never credited fiction.

The fact was that he
wanted
that little devil. He had better admit it. And he wanted no other little devil.

It was no good telling him that there were other fish in the sea – no good telling him that he might win a better and prettier and decent ‘girl’ for his own. It wasn’t true. He knew nobody. He had no money. He had no friends. She was the loveliest thing he had ever met, and the only girl he
knew
.

He
wanted
her.

Half-past three! . . . She was now probably sleeping in Bloomsbury – only a few miles away on the plains of London. . . . There, the living organism which he desired so completely, was sleeping and untouched. . . . A little vulgar soul with a little white body, that walked about the West End and sold itself. . . . But he wanted her. She was all the mystery and beauty of woman, and he wanted her.

Moreover, because she affected him so strangely, she robbed all mystery and beauty from every other woman. He wanted no one else, for the simple reason that no one else was her. He was, in fact, in love with her.

Furthermore, on her own terms, she was accessible. She was keeping nothing from him. Only his rudeness had alienated her. He must now regard this in a more practical way.

Already he had a plan. He could not, of course, humiliate himself any further, but he would have a gamble. He did not know what had come over him lately – he had been getting wild. Let him have one last fling, and then succumb. He would have a gamble – something which would settle things one way or another – which, if it failed, would force him back into the familiar paths of righteousness.

To-morrow he would go and get five more pounds out of the bank. He would send a wire to her, asking for forgiveness. He would name a time and place, asking her to meet him. It would be her last chance. If she did not meet him, that was the end. In this way the matter would be taken out of his hands. That was all he wanted.

If she met him, he would treat her differently. He would not reproach, he would not nag at her. He would give her a good time! – take her to dance – something like that. Surely, after all his goodness, she must develop some sort of feeling towards him.

He could not get that day at Hampstead out of his mind – the day when he had believed that all that loveliness, with all its accessories, was his very own. If he wooed her rightly, might it not be his own again? Or if it never had been his own, might it not become so? She couldn’t hold out against his goodness much longer.

A gamble. That was the thing. To-morrow. He would go to the Governor and get the evening off. He would say his stepmother was ill. Stepmother was absurd, but they knew he had no mother or father; grandmothers consorted ridiculously with cup-finals and office boys, and Ella had used up the aunts. He would get to-morrow evening off. The prospect of
this – the thought that he was, in a manner, reprieved – was the only thing to get him off to sleep now. He had better try to. . . .

How hungry he was! The false hunger of the drunkard. He could eat and eat. Turkish Delight. He could eat pounds and pounds of Turkish Delight. A blind soul, surrounded by the darkness of the infinity of the cosmos, lay throbbing with orgiastic desire for Turkish Delight! What a life!

Or bread and cheese. A white loaf, crust, butter, cheese. He couldn’t go to sleep unless he ate. Why not creep downstairs and find some? He would.

He sprung out of bed and put on his overcoat. He took his matches and crept downstairs in the darkness. He passed the Governor’s room with excessive caution. He found all he wanted in a cupboard in the bar. It cost him six matches. He began to creep upstairs again.

He heard a creak outside the Governor’s door. He hesitated. There was a footstep, and a torch was flashed in his face.

In the pallid light behind the torch the Governor glared at him with fright and surprise.

‘All right, Governor. Only me.’

‘Oh – is that you, Bob?’

The Governor could not remove his eyes from him. Bob returned the stare. It was three o’clock in the morning, and he was glaring into the eyes of the man to whom, to-morrow morning, he would invent fictions regarding his stepmother. . . . Life grew ever more and more involved.

‘I didn’t have no dinner to-night,’ said Bob. ‘And I got so hungry I thought I’d come down for bread and cheese.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, Bob. You gave me quite a fright.’

The Governor returned to his doorway. Bob observed that the Mrs. was up, in an atmosphere of candles and perturbation.

‘Good night, Governor.’

‘Good night, Bob.’

Bob returned to his room. He was sorry for the episode. It was a queer thing to do – to wander about the place at night
like that. The Governor must have seen he had been drinking. And to-morrow he was going to ask for an afternoon off. He would be losing his reputation, as well as his money, over this little fiend, if he wasn’t careful. He gobbled at his bread and cheese, and went to sleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
he was even more ill than he had supposed he was going to be. He was too ill and tired to think, and he proposed to fulfil his resolution of last night as an instruction from a source he was too weak to appraise. He had lost interest in everything.

He was clever with the Governor. He apologized for the night before, explained that he had been distressed and sleepless, and so led on gracefully to Stepmother.

The Governor was cordial. He also mentioned Bob’s holiday. Bob was owed six days, and it would be better if he took them after Christmas – beginning on Boxing Day.

Bob had never thought of his holiday in connection with his present preoccupation. He now saw that there were astonishing potentialities in the idea. At eleven o’clock he sent his wire: ‘
Sincerely sorry do please forgive and meet five o
’
clock same place this evening
.’ It was his last throw, thank God.

In the afternoon he went to the bank, and drew another five pounds. He still had seventy left.

Between three and five he had nothing to do. He went for a walk, and, not to his surprise, found himself in Bloomsbury. He looked for Doughty Street, and found it.

Doughty Street! It dawned on him! This was where Dickens lived – where the Museum was.

And her house (which he found) only about two hundred yards away! Quite a decent house, in its dilapidated way. Probably she had a top room. Jenny and Dickens! The
association was grotesque – and yet how like London. Dickens – with his blacking factory, and his waistcoats, and his Miss Beadnell, and his Pickwick. . . . Jenny, who sold her body upon the streets. . . . It was a wicked old town.

And yet he felt, somehow, that something auspicious had occurred. In chasing an ill-omened phantom he had arrived at Dickens’ house – at the abode of the greatest exemplar of what industry might create from nothing. Surely it was a sign. He needed so badly a sign.

Anyway, he would take it as one. He didn’t think the girl would turn up this evening, and he was through now. Hereafter he would concentrate upon his future. It had been an experience.

He was honestly anxious that she should not turn up. He had tea at a Lyons in Theobald’s Road and walked down to Piccadilly with refreshed spirit. He was going to start all over again.

As he entered the Haymarket he saw that he was three minutes before his time.

She was standing there, waiting for him.

IT WAS SUCH
an extraordinary thing, to see her waiting there – so out of character, as it were – that it seemed possible that she loved him.

‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘I’m not late, am I?’

‘No. It’s me that’s early.’

He took her arm and they walked in the same direction as the night before.