The Slaves of Solitude (6 page)

‘Well,’ said Miss Steele, ‘there’s a lot to be said on both sides, really, isn’t there, Mr. Thwaites?’

‘What?’ said Mr. Thwaites, and was so surprised by this second attack from outside that for the moment he could say nothing. Then he added: ‘Oh yes, there is. On
all
sides.’

‘After all,’ said Miss Steele, ‘it’s the younger generation that’s got to decide, isn’t it? It always was that way, and it always will be, won’t
it?’

Thus, with a clever mixture of the spirit of modernity and the wisdom of history, Miss Steele brought down two birds with one stone, and Mr. Thwaites was practically knocked out.

‘Ah well, we shall see,’ was all he could manage.

But Miss Roach again guessed that he had not done yet, and she was again right.

All at once she saw his eyes shoot over to the other side of the room in the direction of the two American Lieutenants, who had so far been too shy to speak a word, even to each other.

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘what our Friends across the Water think about it all. What?’

And he fixed them with a horrible sort of ogling and encouraging eye.

This was too hideous – Miss Roach felt she would rather be attacked herself. Not content with disgracing the Rosamund Tea Rooms, he was now going to disgrace his country as well.

‘I wonder,’ said Mr. Thwaites, having had no answer, ‘what our Democratic friends from across the Atlantic think about it all – our redoubtable friends from across the
Pond – the Lil Ole Pond – eh?’

There was yet another ghastly pause – the ghastliest yet. Always, with Mr. Thwaites, the pauses got ghastlier and ghastlier. Then one of the Americans, the bigger of the two, could just be
heard murmuring that he reckoned he agreed with the lady, there was a whole lot to be said both ways . . .

‘What?’ said Mr. Thwaites, who had not heard what was said. But the big American would not repeat himself.

‘The Whale of a Problem,’ said Mr. Thwaites, considerately assuming what he assumed to be the idiom of those to whom he was addressing himself. ‘What?’

But the American still would not speak, and at this point things were made easier by Sheila beginning to remove the empty plates of spam and mashed potatoes, and replacing them with plates of
steamed pudding and custard.

He will certainly, in a moment, say ‘Say, Bo’ or ‘Waal, Bo’, thought Miss Roach, for he hardly ever failed to do this when imitating American speech, or talking about
Americans. But this time he did not do exactly what she feared. Instead, he paused a long while, and then came out with something which even she could not have foreseen.

‘
The Almighty Dollar
,’ said Mr. Thwaites, weightily, out of the blue, and in a measured tone . . . That, and nothing else.

It was not easy to see exactly what Mr. Thwaites intended to establish by this – not easy, that is to say, for one who was not acquainted with the workings of his wild and circuitous
mentality. To one so acquainted, however, his meaning was fairly clear. He meant Americans in general. He had been put into the presence of Americans: it therefore seemed to him his business, as
master and spokesman of the boarding-house, to sum up and characterise America, and in this way he summed it up and characterised it.

And here it seemed that he was conscious of having found perfect expression for the perfect thought, for he said no more.

And because Mr. Thwaites said no more, the atmosphere in which pins could be heard dropping returned to the room, and no one else dared to say any more. Ruminatively, dully, around the heavy
thoughts set in motion by Mr. Thwaites, the heavy steamed pudding was eaten.

Miss Steele was the first to rise and leave, stealing from the room with her
Life of Katherine Parr
under her arm.

Coffee was served in the Lounge upstairs. The others followed Miss Steele one by one, their chairs squeaking on the parquet oilcloth as they rose, and squeaking again as they were
self-consciously replaced under the tables.

6

She couldn’t stand it, she decided on the stairs. Tonight she simply couldn’t and wouldn’t stand it any more. All the same she would go into the Lounge
for coffee. Why should she be done out of her coffee? She wondered whether the Americans, whom she had left behind in the dining-room, would be coming up into the Lounge. She could talk about
America. She knew quite a lot about America, from what she had read, and from what her brother had told her. Perhaps, if she talked to them, she could eradicate or compensate for the stupidity and
rudeness of Mr. Thwaites. Perhaps they were lonely in a foreign country, as lonely as she was in her own.

The Lounge was the same shape and size as the dining-room, but here Mrs. Payne, abandoning pink, had struck out whole-heartedly into brown, and made something of a hit. The wall-paper was of
mottled brown, with a frieze of autumn leaves above the picture-rail: the carpet was brown: the lamps were shaded with mottled parchment of a brown tinge: and the large settee and two large
armchairs were upholstered in brown leather. Cunningly slung over the arms of the armchairs were ash-trays attached to brown leather straps fringed at the ends. The room was heated by a big,
bright, hot gas-fire.

Here, for two hours or more every evening, the guests of the Rosamund Tea Rooms sat in each other’s company until they were giddy – giddy with the heat, the stillness, the desultory
conversation, the silent noises – the rattling of re-read newspapers, the page-turning of the book-reader, the clicking of the knitter, the puffing of the pipe-smoker, the indefatigable
scratching of the letter-writer, the sounds of breathing, of restless shifting, of yawning – as the chromium-plated clock ticked out the tardy minutes. Finally they went to their bedrooms in
a state of almost complete stupefaction, of gas-fire drunkenness – reeling, as it were, after an orgy of
ennui.

Mr. Thwaites was, of course, noisy to begin with, but in due course the atmosphere went even to his head, and silenced his tongue.

As Miss Roach came in he was settling down in his armchair with a book and taking out his reading-spectacles from a case. Mrs. Barratt, getting her knitting ready, asked him what he was
reading.

‘This?’ said Mr. Thwaites in a slightly shamefaced way. ‘Oh – only something I picked up at the library. What is known, in vulgar parlance, as a “thriller” or
“blood-curdler”, I believe. It serves pour passer le temps.’

Miss Roach went over to warm herself at the fire, and Mr. Thwaites went on.

‘It may not be Dickens or Thackeray,’ said Mr. Thwaites, puffing at his spectacles and wiping them with his silk handkerchief, ‘mas il serve pour passer le temps.’ (Mr.
Thwaites frequently adopted, among his many other roles, that of the linguist.)

Sheila now entered with the coffee-tray, but there was no sign of the Americans. Mr. Thwaites took it through again.

‘I’m not going to say it’s Dickens,’ said Mr. Thwaites, ‘and I’m not going to say it’s Thackeray. I’m not even going to say it’s Sir Walter
Scott. But we’ve got to pass the time somehow.’

The Americans clearly were not coming up, and tonight she couldn’t stand it another minute. She left the room, strolling out with the casual air of one who leaves it for a moment. Mr.
Thwaites glanced at her suspiciously, but had no idea what she was doing. She ran upstairs to her room, hastily put on her hat and coat, grabbed her torch, and came down the stairs again to the
front door and went out into the black Thames Lockdon.

7

But what did she think she was doing and where did she think she was going now?

The black street resounded with the gloomy, scraping tramp of the boots of conscripted British soldiers far from their homes. There were some Americans about, too, further still from their
homes. At this time of the evening they passed through Church Street on their way towards or returning from the public-houses over the bridge. Sometimes they shouted or sang, but for the most part
they said nothing, giving expression to their slow sorrow and helplessness in their boots.

Where did she think she was going, amidst all these boots? She found herself in the narrow High Street, walking in the direction of the Station.

She had better walk as far as the Station, and then walk back and go in again. She had better try to look upon herself as one who had come out in a sane way for a short walk, not as what she
really was, one who had rushed out on to the black streets of a small riverside town in a sort of panic.

Two Americans, lurking at a corner, spoke out to her invitingly, calling her ‘sister’. She walked on, conscious of having let them off – of having spared them the chill
embarrassment which would have fallen upon them had they realised their ambition to talk to her and see her –  conscious, therefore, of a blackness within the blackness of this fleeting
street episode of which they, in common with other soldiers who accosted her under similar conditions, remained unaware.

Blackness. Cockroaches were black. ‘Miss Roach.’ ‘Old Cockroach.’ As the schoolmistress at Hove that had been her nickname – she had heard them using it more than
once – so little fear did they have of her that they had almost used it to her face. She could never even keep proper discipline in class. And she had set out with such ideas, such
enthusiasm, such grave, exhilarating theories in regard to ‘youth’ and ‘modern education’. She had thought she had found her gift and place in life. They had
‘liked’ her, however, though she couldn’t even keep proper discipline, and had abandoned her exhilarating theories within three weeks.

She passed the Station and went on towards the riverfront. She was now moving back towards the Rosamund Tea Rooms by the route she had used earlier in the evening.

Mr. Thwaites would be missing her by now, wondering what she was up to. Though he didn’t do much talking and bullying after dinner, he liked you to be there. He didn’t like anyone to
be out. It filled him with angry curiosity and jealousy. He was never out, off duty, himself. He looked upon the Rosamund Tea Rooms as a sort of compulsory indoor game, in which he perpetually held
the bank and dealt the cards.

She turned into Church Street again, and was again amongst the boots. What now? Go in and submit to Mr. Thwaites after all? Never. Or go to her room and try somehow to read and go to bed? No,
no. Or stay out amongst the boots? Or go by herself to the Cinema? She had no desire to do so – in fact she hated the idea – but it was either that or the boots on the dark streets, and she had
better go round and see if she could get in.

8

The quite recently built Odeon Cinema was in the narrow High Street. She pushed back the heavy door, and was dazzled by the light in the foyer, and smitten suddenly by the
air of tension pervading the house – a tension which comes into being in the foyer of a crowded theatre anywhere, which centres around the inimical box-office, which repels the newcomer, and
gives rise to a feeling of awe, of having to lower one’s voice and walk practically on tiptoe in deference to what is taking place inside.

She could only get the most expensive sort of seat – three and sixpence upstairs – and she was lucky to get this. That was the war. In the old days you could have strolled in at any
time of the evening for ninepence. In the war everywhere was crowded all the time. The war seemed to have conjured into being, from nowhere, magically, a huge population of its own – one
which flowed into and filled every channel and crevice of the country – the towns, the villages, the streets, the trains, the buses, the shops, the hotels, the inns, the restaurants, the
movies.

She was given a seat in the gangway, and was no longer awed, because she was now herself taking part in the rites which had seemed so momentous from the foyer. The ‘News’ was on
– war pictures, naturally – war, war, war . . . The war shone on to the lurid, packed, smoke-hazed, rustling audience, the greater part of which was dressed for war. The familiar, steady
voice of the announcer threaded its way through the pictures – a curiously menacing voice, threatening to the enemy, yet admonitory to the patriot, and on one tireless note. Through pictures
of aeroplanes falling, guns firing, ships sinking, bombs exploding, this voice maintained its polite but hollow and forbidding character.

One studying Miss Roach’s face in the white darkness would soon have become aware that she had not given up her three shillings and sixpence for that for which most of those surrounding
her had given up their money – that is, for entertainment. Such a student might well, indeed, have been at a loss to read correctly the feelings betrayed by her expression. From its
tenseness, its unhappy and half-frowning absorption he might have guessed bewilderment, sorrow, commiseration for others, loneliness – and he would have been right in suspecting the presence,
in some degree, of all these. But the emotion he would primarily have been watching was, in fact, nothing more complicated than the simple emotion of fear. Miss Roach stared at the screen with
plain fear on her face – fear of life, of herself, of Mr. Thwaites, of the times and things into which she had been born, and which boomed about her and encircled her everywhere.

CHAPTER TWO

1

I
T
was a quarter past five in the afternoon, and she sat in the white darkness of the Odeon Cinema at Thames
Lockdon.

It was Saturday. Three weeks had passed since she had rushed out from Mr. Thwaites and hidden herself in here, and this afternoon there was no expression of fear upon her face. She was still,
however, looking at the screen without seeing what she was looking at. Beside her the American – ‘her’ American – Lieutenant Dayton Pike – sat silently.

‘Her’ American? . . . Yes, she believed she could, in an obscure way, claim him as ‘hers’. In the last astonishing three weeks it seemed that she had actually acquired
her own American – just as every shop-girl, girl-typist, girl-clerk, girl-assistant, girl-anything in fact, in the town, had acquired her own.

The Americans had stormed the town. Those two shy Lieutenants who had been in to dinner that night at the Rosamund Tea Rooms had been two mere timid scouts sent on ahead of the reverberating,
twanging, banging invasion. Of those two Lieutenant Dayton Pike had been one, and he was no longer timid. He was, indeed, very far from being timid.