The Slaves of Solitude (16 page)

Why, in that case, had she not consulted Vicki? Why, now, was she saying nothing about it and not intending to say anything about it? Why, above all, when the Lieutenant had been talking to her,
had she found herself saying to herself that she would be
damned
if she would take Vicki round with her to meet him?

Was she jealous? She dismissed the idea with an easy conscience as grotesque. But what was this strange woman doing to her? She was doing something.

4

Miss Roach had rather hoped that circumstances, to save her from being further pained and embarrassed, might somehow cause Miss Kugelmann to forget her promise to make Mr.
Thwaites smoke one of her special brand of cigarettes after dinner, and to teach him her special brand of patience. But not at all. Almost as soon as the coffee had come in Miss Kugelmann had
exclaimed ‘Ah!’ reminiscently, left the room, and returned a few moments later with an extremely smart cigarette-case in a chamois-leather cover. This cigarette-case was a late
nineteen-twenty model, and exhibited within, in addition to cigarettes, the half-revealed snapshot of a man, and metal clips which had pinched the cigarettes in the middle and made them look as
though they had been wearing stays which were too tight for them – this after they had already been crushed flat by the pressure of the two sides of the case when closed. It was handed round
to all, but all made polite excuses with the exception of Mr. Thwaites, who was committed.

Miss Kugelmann then lit Mr. Thwaites’ cigarette for him in a charming and girlish way, and afterwards took out one for herself and sat down on the settee and smoked it with all the grace
and elaboration she alone knew how to bring to this normally unstudied pastime – seductively crossing her legs, vigorously tapping the cigarette on the case, putting the cigarette with
delicacy and precision into a holder (and the holder with equal delicacy and precision into her lips), lighting up with finesse, at once blowing out sophisticated smoke through her nose, throwing
back her head, emitting thin smoke-streams into the air with the mouth of a whistler, or clever smoke-rings with the mouth of a fish, neatly tapping away ash, finding minute or imaginary specks of
tobacco on her lips and daintily removing them with her third finger and thumb, etc., etc., etc. Mr. Thwaites, himself smoking awkwardly, watched her, charmed. Miss Roach watched her,
fascinated.

Even more charming and fascinating was Mr. Thwaites’ subsequent initiation into Miss Kugelmann’s game of patience – charming the way in which she overrode Mr. Thwaites’
original shyness and reluctance – his ‘laziness’ as she called it – and overcame all material difficulties, she herself going downstairs to find some cards from Mrs. Payne,
herself getting the card-table from the corner and placing it under a suitable standard-lamp, herself arranging two chairs each side of it and primly commanding Mr. Thwaites to sit on one of them
while she sat on the other.

Charming the way, too, with two packs of cards, she set up two games, one for Mr. Thwaites, which she could supervise upside down, and one for herself. Charming the meticulous care with which
she expounded the rules, and the patience with which she bore Mr. Thwaites’ initial mistakes. Charming the difficulties caused by this upside-down way of teaching him, the laughable errors
which, because of this, she herself made as well as he.

Charming the way, in her efforts to get a proper visual angle on his cards, her hair would sometimes fall right down over her face, only to be tossed back into place with an unconsciously
impetuous jerk of her head – or the way, when she was doubtful exactly where to place a card, she would let it hang hesitantly in the air, or place the tip of it on the tip of her lower
teeth, looking admonishingly and shrewdly at the cards in front of her.

Charming, when Mr. Thwaites began to get the hang of the game, the words of encouragement, the challenges, the reproaches, the commiserations, the sighs, the little cries of happiness –
all this in an uninterrupted little stream of sound, forming a burbling background or foreground to the consciousness of the guests who sat over by the fire and read or knitted.

‘I think our newcomer’s charming,’ Mrs. Barratt murmured to Miss Roach when this had been going on for about half an hour. She said this as if to please Miss Roach, and so Miss
Roach was compelled not only to smile but to look pleased. Mrs. Barratt had evidently got the point which Miss Kugelmann had been making.

Miss Steele was the first to go to bed. ‘Well – good night,’ she said, singling out and smiling at Vicki. ‘I see you’re going to liven us up.’

Just for a second Miss Roach thought that she detected a note of sarcasm or faint revulsion in this remark, and her spirits rose in the dim hope of having conceivably found one who might, since
dinner, have been seeing eye to eye with herself. But the next moment the hope departed.

‘It’s just what we old fogies are wanting,’ said Miss Steele, with conviction and delight, and left the room.

5

How long she had had to stand it after that she did not know. The burbling from the card-players had continued, but had grown slowly quieter and more self-absorbed: the
heat in the room grew heavier and heavier, and gas-fire drunkenness supervened for what seemed hours.

At last Mrs. Barratt rose, and began to collect her things, and Miss Roach rose too, went to the mantelpiece, and looked over at Vicki. Vicki saw her, understood her glance, yawned prettily
while looking at Mr. Thwaites (she brought even to yawning the same sort of preciosity as she brought to smoking), and signified that they had both had enough. Five minutes later they had said
good-night to Mr. Thwaites, and were on the stairs on the way to bed.

‘Come in and see my room,’ said Vicki, when they were on the top landing, and Miss Roach went in.

There was, actually, little to be seen in Vicki’s room, which was even drearier and darker under the dim electric light than Miss Roach’s own, but the first things which Miss Roach
actually saw were two portraits of men on the dressing-table – one large silver-framed one of an extremely good-looking young man of blond and German appearance, and one smaller one of what
appeared to be a middle-aged English naval officer – and she at once got a distinct impression that in asking her to come in and see her room Vicki had in reality been asking her to come in
and see these. She got this impression because Vicki, after lighting her gas-fire, immediately went over to the dressing-table and began to comb her hair in the close vicinity of these photographs,
almost pointing at each of them with dripping hair and brisk comb, while she talked in a rather self-conscious voice of other matters. But as, at any rate, it wasn’t Miss Roach’s comb,
or Miss Roach’s dressing-table, Miss Roach didn’t mind.

It was soon found that Vicki’s gas-fire was not working properly, and Vicki, who had now taken off her dress and put on a large, comfortable blue dressing-gown (actually a man’s
dressing-gown, edged with cord, which might have been borrowed from a man), suggested that they should have a final cigarette in Miss Roach’s room. This they did, speaking
sotto voce
as they crossed the landing and closed the door.

Naturally the subject of Mr. Thwaites arose, and Vicki gave her verdict.

‘Oh,’ she said, flopping the whole weight of her dressing-gowned body down on to Miss Roach’s bed once again, ‘he’s all right, poor old bean: the old gent only
wants a little handling.’

If this woman (thought Miss Roach, as she sat on the wickerchair and seemed placidly to smoke the last cigarette of the day with her friend) goes on talking about ‘beans’ and
‘gents’: if she makes any further mention of ‘handling’ people or taking people ‘in hand’: if she combs her hair over any more people’s photographs, or
flops her body on to any more people’s beds, or, as she was now doing, flicks her cigarette-ash over any more people’s bedside tables, then she, Miss Roach, was at some time in the
distant future, or even in the very immediate present, going to start to scream or going to start to hit. But she showed nothing of this, save for a faintly absent-minded look in an otherwise
cheerful and cordial countenance, and their cigarettes at last came to an end.

‘Well – a very successful evening,’ whispered Vicki, as she said good-night at the door. ‘I am going to like it here – a lot.’ And Miss Roach agreed that
things could not have gone better.

That was hours ago now, and still she could not sleep. She must calm down. She was exaggerating things. She always exaggerated things at this time of night – at this time of morning. There
was no harm in the woman. She was just a little old-fashioned, skittish, that was all – perhaps rather absurdly old-fashioned and skittish at times. The Lieutenant had thought she was kind of
cute. She was madly exaggerating things. She was a born exaggerator. This was her fault in life . . .

‘A very successful evening.’ Yes, indeed, a very successful evening. You might almost say a knock-out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1

T
O
the endless snubbing and nagging of war, its lecturing and admonitions, Miss Roach was subjected from the moment
she left the Rosamund Tea Rooms in the morning to the moment she returned at night, and these things were at last telling upon her nerves and general attitude.

Immediately she stepped forth into Thames Lockdon (which itself was not even permitted to be Thames Lockdon, all mention of the town having been blacked out from shopfronts and elsewhere for
reasons of security) the snubbing began with:

in the window of the tobacconist opposite.

And such was Miss Roach’s mood nowadays that she regarded this less as a sorrowful admission than as a sly piece of spite. The ‘sorry’, she felt certain, had not been thrown in
for the sake of politeness or pity. It was a sarcastic, nasty, rude ‘sorry’. It sneered, as a common woman might, as if to say ‘Sorry, I’m sure’, or ‘Sorry, but
there you are’, or ‘Sorry, but what do you expect nowadays?’

There were other instances of this sort of thing on the way to the station, where, on boardings, the lecturing and nagging began in earnest. She was not to waste bread, she was not to use
unnecessary fuel, she was not to leave litter about, she was not to telephone otherwise than briefly, she was not to take the journey she was taking unless it was really necessary, she was not to
keep the money she earned through taking such journeys where she could spend it, but to put it into savings, and to keep on putting it into savings. She was not even to talk carelessly, lest she
endangered the lives of others.

Depressing, also, to Miss Roach, were the unadvertised enforcements of these prohibitions – the way that the war, while packing the public places tighter and tighter, was slowly, cleverly,
month by month, week by week, day by day, emptying the shelves of the shops – sneaking cigarettes from the tobacconists, sweets from the confectioners, paper, pens, and envelopes from the
stationers, fittings from the hardware stores, wool from the drapers, glycerine from the chemists, spirits and beer from the public-houses, and so on endlessly – while at the same time
gradually removing crockery from the refreshment bars, railings from familiar places, means of transport from the streets, accommodation from the hotels, and sitting or even standing room from the
trains. It was, actually, the gradualness and unobtrusiveness of this process which served to make it so hateful. The war, which had begun by making dramatic and drastic demands, which had held up
the public in style like a highwayman, had now developed into a petty pilferer, incessantly pilfering. You never knew where you were with it, and you could not look round without finding something
else gone or going.

2

Having thus timidly run, on her way to the office, a sort of gauntlet of ‘No’s’ and ‘Don’ts’ thumped down on her from every side, Miss
Roach looked forward to finding in her work something at least positive in which she could temporarily submerge herself. But here, in the publishing firm of Reeves and Lindsell, slowly but surely
another enormous and menacing No was creeping forward – no paper. This, even if it had not as yet shown any signs of bringing about the final calamity of no publishing at all, had already
caused Reeves and Lindsell (with practically no staff) to publish upside down and inside out (like card-players playing a
misère
hand), and a very funny atmosphere prevailed in the
office, in half of which there was no glass, and consequently no daylight, owing to its having been affected by enemy action in the vicinity.

Mr. Lindsell, the partner with whom Miss Roach had most dealings, now only came to the office three days a week, and when he came (Miss Roach instinctively felt this, without being able to grasp
anything definite) he did not stay exactly as long as he used to, or observe quite the same punctuality and rituals as he had before the war.

Also she was becoming increasingly aware, when she went into his room, of the occult yet permanent presence of a bottle of sherry, and some small glasses, lodged in his cupboard and untouched
until twelve o’clock, but after that hour more often than not brought forth for the entertainment of one of his many visitors. It occurred to her that Mr. Lindsell, under the stress and
strain of the war, had changed very much as she had changed, and found in sherry at midday exactly what she found in gin and french at the River Sun in the evening. It was the same everywhere:
everyone, in the same way, was different: this was the war, the war, the war . . .

3

One morning Mr. Lindsell, a thin, pale, spectacled, exhausted-looking man with sandy hair going thin, whom Miss Roach liked very much, invited her into his room and
offered her sherry. As he did not usually do this except at Christmas, she was at first a little alarmed. All he had to tell her, however, was that he was making certain new arrangements and that,
in view of the present situation, if she wished, she need only come to the office once, or perhaps twice, a week. The rest of her work, along with the reading of manuscripts, which she did already
and more of which he wanted her to take over, she could do at home. She accepted gladly, and the prospect of freedom from the daily journey seemed, in the light of two sherries, indeed golden and
glorious.