A Writer's Notebook (85 page)

His name was Paul. He was a Belgian, and he murdered his wife. He was tried and sentenced to death. He took his condemnation very hard. He was terribly hysterical. He couldn't sleep. He was pitiably afraid. Alan was told to visit him to see whether he couldn't comfort him a little, and if not console him at least help him to be resigned to his fate. Alan went to see him every day. One day he told me that he wanted to read a book which wasn't in the prison library and asked me if I would buy it. Of course I said I would, and asked what it was. The answer astounded me. I couldn't think why a man should want so much to read that particular book before he was hanged. It was Sterne's
Sentimental Journey
.

Hotel bedrooms. In one of them there is a man who looks upon an hotel bedroom as a symbol of liberty. He thinks of the adventures he has had in such rooms, the pleasant meditations; and his thoughts are so peaceful and happy that he feels the moment can never be excelled and so takes an overdose of sleeping-pills. In another room is a woman who has wandered for years from hotel to hotel. To her it is misery. She has no home. If she isn't living in an hotel it is because she has shamed friends into asking her to stay with them for a week or two. They take her out of pity, they see her go with relief. She feels she can't bear the wretchedness of her life any longer, and so she too takes an overdose of her sleeping-pills. To the hotel people and the Press the mystery is insoluble. They suspect a romance. They look for a connection between the two, but can discover nothing.

He was a successful lawyer, and it was a shock to his family and his friends when he committed suicide. He was a breezy, energetic, exuberant man and the last person you would have expected to do away with himself. He enjoyed life. His origins
were humble, but for his services in the war he had been granted a baronetcy. He adored his only son, who would succeed to his title, follow him in his business, go into Parliament and make a name for himself. No one could guess why he had killed himself. He had arranged it so that it should look like an accident, and so it would have been considered except for a small oversight on his part. It was true that his wife was causing him a certain amount of anxiety. She was at the menopause and it had affected her brain; she was not mad enough to be put in an asylum, but certainly not sane. She suffered from severe melancholia. They didn't tell her that her husband had committed suicide, but only that he had been killed in a motor accident. She took it better than was expected. It was her doctor who broke the news to her. “Thank God I told him when I did,” she said. “If I hadn't I should never have had another moment's peace in my life.” The doctor wanted to know what she meant. After a while she told him: she had confessed to her husband that the son he doted on, the son on whom all his hopes were set, was not his.

Bermondsey. A plumber went to the house of some retired tradespeople to do some repairs. They lived in a semi-detached house in Kennington. He was a good-looking youth and their daughter fell in love with him. They met at nights in the road. But he felt that she was deeply conscious of the distance between them and he got it into his head that she treated him as a servant. He made up his mind that he'd get even with her. He put her in the family way. Her parents turned her out. The plumber refused to marry her, but she went to live with him, and after the child was born she went to work in a biscuit factory. The baby was farmed out. At the factory one of the workers fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. She knew the plumber didn't care two pins for her, so she left him; the plumber was furious with her, and when he found out that she was going to marry the other man he went to him and told
him that he had had a child by her. The man then refused to have anything more to do with her.

Bermondsey. A man gassed in the war was living on a pension with his wife in two rooms on the ground floor of a three-storey house. They both belonged to a burial club. He had been ill for a long time and at last he realised he was dying and couldn't live more than a few days longer. He got his wife to consent to use the money she would get for his funeral on one last beano. They invited all their friends and had a grand supper with champagne. He died the night following. The money from the burial club was spent, but the friends clubbed together to give him a fine funeral; his widow wouldn't hear of it, and he was followed by all of them to his pauper's grave. Later in the day one of them went to see the widow and asked her to marry him. She was surprised, but after thinking it over for a little consented; but she felt it wouldn't be right to marry him before the year's mourning was out, so she suggested that until then he might come and live with her as a lodger.

Bermondsey. A man, an ex-soldier, and a girl working in a factory fall desperately in love with one another. He is unhappily married to a nagging, jealous wife. The pair elope and take lodgings in Stepney. By the papers the girl discovers to her horror that the man has killed his wife. He must inevitably be caught, but while they are hiding they give themselves over to their passion. She comes to understand that to avoid arrest he intends to kill himself and her too. She is frightened and wants to flee from him, but she loves him too much to tear herself away. She leaves it too late. The police come and he shoots her before shooting himself.

Bermondsey. Dan has been out of work for months. He is miserable and humiliated, and his brother Bert, who is in
work, bullies him. He throws it in Dan's face that he keeps him. To take it out of him he makes him do odd jobs for him. Dan is so wretched that he feels he'd like to make an end of himself, and it requires all his mother's persuasion to get him to wait till something turns up. The mother, Mrs. Bailey, is a charwoman who works in a Government office in Whitehall. She goes out at six in the morning and doesn't get back till six at night. One day Bert comes home and because Dan hasn't fetched his other shirt from the laundry and he wants to go out, he swears at him. They have a fight and Dan, smaller, weaker, ill fed, gets a thrashing. Mrs. Bailey comes in and stops the fight. She roundly abuses Bert. He says he's sick of it all and he's going to be married. They are horrified; without his week's money, with Dan earning nothing, it's impossible for Mrs. Bailey to support herself, Dan and the two younger children. It means starvation. They tell Bert he can't get married, at least not till Dan gets work; he says he must, his girl's going to have a baby. He flings out. They are all crying. Mrs. Bailey goes down on her knees and makes the others, Dan and the two children, do so too, and she prays God to have mercy on them and help them. They are still praying when Bert comes back with the shirt he has just fetched for himself. He looks at them angrily.

“Oh, all right, all right,” he shouts. “I'll give her ten bob to get rid of the little bastard.”

Mrs. Bailey. She was a tallish woman, with reddish, untidy, scanty hair, and when she opened her mouth you saw that two of her front teeth were missing. One of her ears was partly torn off by her husband, and there was a scar on her forehead which was the result of a cut when once he had thrown her out of a window. He was a big, strong, brutal fellow who had been badly wounded in the war, and Mrs. Bailey forgave him his violence because he was often in great pain. They had four children and they all went in terror of him. But Mrs. Bailey
had a strong sense of humour, the real Cockney humour, and when she wasn't in fear of her life was full of fun. She loved a good laugh. At last Bailey died. I went to see her after his death and she said to me: “He wasn't a bad man really. D'you know what he said to me? They was almost his last words. ‘I've given you hell, haven't I? You'll be glad to be rid of me.' ‘No, I won't, Ned,' I said to him, ‘you know I've always loved you.' He gave me a funny look, and d'you know what he said? ‘You old cow,' he said. That shows he loved me really, doesn't it?—calling me an old cow like that, I mean.”