On lui relin 'Klla' who Lar cn Tap
pan i the reduutii sspptasl
the
gmpp Sudert, wy decoy dhi
THE NIGHT OF THE ECLIPSE
Atrgila Bighdad
Maurice Rowdon
Pages 1 - 394
cli Ie
a. >ur. C ang kiulil lud,)
Brghdodis le knew, 2 li prout
tamu awy tn li ule andl
Ie cluild ttal war comip. Htue
ute key EthelAlem lholidad
epiods tevacekare, Aei Haidaake
Pip Squenke y
Wi) Idrel
mefe
ears
Alne, le udler Ccuds -Hoetegtegih
cclife
fmu timne. ngn mnvedie
ta cake a alonul, he
agrio
falto ie, gho Yheuld
pauuden
breelhis snde hecausi Itti 1 her
deshned blace. lus bresut 1
whel Lan alrads bee unitta theBna
hahu du ent unawaes, tte uwen elinvv.


CAKT
AUR lCuPSE
lu uue Jeule were
Sno
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We uwe ) l
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Hhen udrc
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Ituen newu i Vels L2g


ad Jusl 9 unr hey Gerlne ate le
u yuse elver, veuatial atrdle / hahuely
shve ure ueree Ll dewe Le dwely
Celnerdi


' - I Wi7lt
akcarr
START
OF THE
ECRIPSE
Ihe new Nyhe 2 Itre Celipse
Wher ke retan *Aire alme
khee
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Icigas tm borgch sid meligh al,
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Khalel Ke shodbove
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hie anel- all he dou ha hy bes
unilte in
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cd u vemert el md-ton
wmbeiel ttre
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Sudnen. The
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gives
Hre ruink Lo Loe
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Mehe anll 9
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No hearl
CLOSEST FRIBNS
thu Angni
unit ue It tih
Da halecuy
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Inman lis rand. Pip
lti
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aelw pp.
Shg geDices
i had
wune Itue sexul coelin
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J nidl an uun desrl
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Ye wn do ite uma
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hi churuen
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AS ult
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Py ly


lnd, hy himy L C undl unoy
Sxenza auuy
Jatt il wo Lttle
Exual
Lmel rlal
nel henlly
Crwe Iti
Sre me slys cfle cu
ryuin duh phica wlo offiate


BOOK I
Tue
fte u gle
rlre
CHAPTER
slay 2
2 ttce cclipr
ttre Iahans Yree
On the train from the coast he talked loudly and the other
passengers Aooked a bit intimidated under
direct fire of-hte-qucetions.
I L L L I - -
When-he-addrexmed them (they blinked and shifted tt all except a quiet,
oppunte
well-bred young woman on
ae gangway who was evidently
Smnlfhi -dnid
used
CMEA
to men shoutingt and a woman from Johannesburg, her face dry and lined
from the sun, who
s tableand looked at him with admiration e
the time because he seemed to her such a striking representative of the
Old Country, which she bad never visited before. When he told her that he
didn't think bolackst should necessarily live apart from Kahites-she
He fidecred
looked stunned and turned away for a moment. Buthe rent
acking-his
polite questions-ofher-and_the_others,turning-and-tristing in his seat as
if the buffet-car was too small for his energies.
hondon's
Do thes
They entered the still, grey outskirts of-London
F/deathly
ACt
shadow that-stole over the train withont-a-sound; so it seemed to him X & He rine
undernea th his energetic manner. But-hedidrt-turrand-leok-out of the
awas tuo Hue
Agro cili,
Lad sn.
window + becausehe-wanted-to-keep-it-at-bay alittle-longer; the jshadow
Sin euoueh
would steal over him,-toorassithad just done over the train,-and (it would
Prefercd (play Ap the
darken him, too,) bef fore many hoursV He idn glance
teft or right but-
went-on-talking-Itka robust Englishman
well, he was robust and he was
wank l 2
English! But it-was-deliberate, he was acting up all the time and there
was a note of danger in his voice, which perhaps was what made people glance
at him curiously, their eyes slightly narrowed.
He told the quiet young woman about his house in Basrah and the


irrigation scheme that was being planned by the government 'out there'.
Kow Hsually he would never think of using those words 'out there'oit-made
a_place_seem-impossibly-far,-and-thus-unreal, and-he'd-travelled-tee-much
to think-like-that. But it seemed more English to say out-therel and he
was being very assiduously the Englishman.
Not iany
wnld hov
Only-five years before he nd/ felt ashamed of being so "English?.
Everybody had told him, either as # compliment or criticism, "You're so
Tohin, ite wd
English!" And-held-always-taken as eriticiom- L meant stiff and
aloof, like a man with ice down his back. If you were 'English' and, says y m
m anhe
put your hand on another man's shoulder in a reassuring movement, the
movement wouldn't come offo the other man would look at you with a half-
Jurv zived
These wnpofuk. no 3 Re nad
frightened expression as if deat th had touehed himg Itmas ridiculous,but
And f al
that-was-what-He'd felt. He'd never felt stiff and aloof insides indeed,
aine np yreeu
Quite the opposite
bubbling overi in fact, too hot to speak, not knowing
elz.
where to put his hands and-so forth: But the sound of those words, "You're
8O English!" - or it might bel a glance a foreigner gave him, especially
a swarthy foreigner with undistarbed black eyes - always paralysed him and
fixed his body in a stiffness foreign to it. Try as he might to ease his
limbs, and look in front of him naturally, he couldn't, and got stiffer and
stiffer, seeing himself as the condescending Englishman used to being
served, especially by foreigners. He would try terribly hard sometimes,
smiling and gesticulating and say 'Yes' and 'No prematurely, and kicking
his feet about in a funny way, put it was no good, it only gave an
impression of strangeness. Now a gentleman, an English gentleman, a real
gave m
the a jus ane Thozu
ARue
one, behaved quite differently. Hè alwayshad easel He didn't condescend,
Pegie lihe
not if he was the genuine article. But othetwiee -and Granville wasan
Thas
otherwise
you had to fight your way te slowly. It didn't matter


incredibly fast, staring at the sky with his head pushed forward, his
long, pale hand clutching the stem of the microphone; and as abruptly he
stepped aside. The young man in the fountain was arrested and carried
shoulder-high through the crowd by two policemen, without his shoes and
socks; he kept calling to someone in the crowd by the fountain, craning
his neck round, "Bring 'em to the station, cock! Oy, cock! Bring 'em
to the station!" Then he looked down at one of the sweating policemen
underneath him and said, "Constable, you're hurting my leg, I'll screw
you when I get down!" The crowd was laughing, and some of them began
singing, 'Letis all go down the Strand, Have a banana!"
On the other side of the square there was something unpleasant.
A police-horse had swept somebody off his feet and he'd started to attack
the policeman, trying to pull hin down from the saddle. There was a
scuffle, and some angry cried, and the crowd in that area moved backwards
and forwards as if being pulled as a whole to and fro; some police vans
came round quickly, their bells going, and by the look of it a few people
were arrested.
Speakers assembled on the platform and an appeal was put out for
the Arab refugee fund. Then the speeches started, the usual political
stuff where the moral vehemence had its effect on the crowd like clockwork.
He walked away, down Whitehall. The voices echoed behind him, rising to
the point of moral climax and then falling again. It was all rotten
underneath! It was the same with Dick and Linger-Longer, the same with
the newspapers, with the solenn, measured, admonitory leading articles
that cashed in on every crisis to double and treble the sales - - robten!
And Whitehall was strangely silent and deserted and ancient, without even
buses, like a street malle suddenly into a church, with idiot-cries for


blood coming in from outside on the wind.
A woman spoke. He heard her call for a 'Middle East Charter'
to be signed by all the powers with interests in that area. What a
hope! The sound of the crowd, listening to her with rapt silence, then
making a subdued murmur of approval, made not a great political roar as
it had done with the other speakers, but a more intimate one of outraged
decency. Her voice sounded wild, but in a touching way, also nagging,
a bit shrewish; she seemed to be grappling with male sex, not just
politics - male sex was to blame at bottom. "I was told last week ---!"
Her voice drifted to and fro. "One of our boys " The crowd made
its roar and he heard her words, suddenly shouted above this roar, "I
wonder what his mother -!" And then there was, "Crying shame!"
Granville hurried along past Westminster Abbey, no longer within
earshot.


CHAPTER
: As quickly as the panic was off about Hanni's child it was on
again: the blue medicine hadn't worked, and she was already in the
'operating room' EOTRIRCeEHampton-COmtnas when he heard about it
from Pinkie. The operation was a success and Dick had to attend her
all night with hot water and swabs, after the doctor had left; again
Pip
Grenrte was supposed not to know, and Pinkie bound him to secrecy.
- Dick rang her up to say that Hanni was doing well: 'Tomb' was really
done for this time, ke Said,
Then Hanni was on her féet again. She coate werek
sffirgmaad began coming to the house nearly every day; she sat with him
in the kitchen and sometimes they went for walks together by the river,
regr-hordomatrixte e she said she didn't want to see anyone else, only
/caf
him and Pinkie; she'd had a bad 'stomach-upset', she 'told him, perhsps
from the wine; but at the same time she appeared to realise that he knew.
and was quite relieved that this was so.
The newspapers had promised correctly: the weather was now dark
and windy, with an unpleasant bitdin the air, and clouds lay in a thick
blinding mass over the roof-tops. Ond their walks he took Hanni's arm
protectively: the life was knocked out of her; she looked limp and
frozen; the comparison with Pinkie was extraordinary
between a
stem
withered flarer and a rich, swelling fruit. at a
there was a staleness round her, something cut short /caf


and stunned; she hadn't the confidence of her body and walked awkwardly;
she looked round her with a hesitat ting, blinking glance, trying to
marshal her old steadiness. But bit by bit the dignity returned to her
unuld
face; Pinkie said she "/burst into tears one evening and couldn't tell
why. Dick called for her every day; amtook es
tempLon
- he was quiet and serious, and brought her little presents. She
h vo,
Pip
se etar nck Lah was
told Grznt
during one of their walks that Clockwork,
whq
(parthy,
eat a 'Virginia Creepers' tesenge
amecte abongl-and
because he always told women he was a virgin) was in love with her, but
was 'homosexual at heart'o she said homosexuality was fashionable
Icap
hecanse
these days among soune-men it provided a cover under which to get women
without 'the direct male approach'; it was a good excuse if 'you couldn 't
make love properly'.
a on urder
rT 19 aimt UO-JTENTUOTATITENE WeX
meneaiede
She was fed up with every-
thing, she said, especially sex; she wanted a long holiday somewhere
sunny; she even wouldn't mind going back to Kurdistan for a bit; she could
Kad
go to see her mother in Beirut but hadn't the money; she a/come a long
way in life, it seemed, for a lot of Adirt' a -
coypt tonm
Aere-onemday a
-hi-tchenybatking-inaway-thartsounded-tike
anmapologt
immet sard-ene was Fringhbened-of- phement-men-inuand
Grookrosk.wacu tha oppesitemof-vetfeenty -which-wets perhepo-whgyweho--diikeg
wimpammoOranviteasked-why-shy s-frightered-
she-reptred-she- eit
theymwere-atweye
bo-semethingt,
thore Smwaswe pauser rdmoher
smokcedabwherecigarette - -pursedulip n
eyos anpowed ga 5 t a the
smoke/inhermcharacteristiomway-tha
become-for-him-a-pirgn-of-tong


There was no reply from Nevinson so far, and Dick gave no sign
that he knew anything about it. The letter must have arrived, as he'd
registered it. He thought it was strange but it fitted in with the
dreamy and broken quality of the rest of his life now. Pinkie looked
at him searchingly one evening when she came in and asked, "What about
your ticket back?" He ought to have been gone three or four days
before/o
"Oh, yes," he said, turning away from her, "I must see about thatfy
he added, to waylay her suspicions, "I might hang on BE for a week.
/cab
They wouldn't mind. I've got a lot of things to hammer out with
Nevinson before I go."
This seemed to satisfy her; she was the easiest person in the
world to lie tofo
"Won't you miss me?" he asked in a sudden gay mood.
"Of course I'll miss you," she said defensively, "but if you've
got to go back you've got to, haven't you?"
He laughed. "Well, that's true enough!"
He took long walks again, full of a sense of being unseen and
secreto ree
him
tob tooked
fescineting onas ey seforey bite
vest-ohadew-loomet the tarknese
sone "or
welke-were-t thewdead
r buees stepped
ts wal-ls-seemgd- totopple
dewa-ebundlos
ande et * you-stoed hander-them- 0 -Itfwes-hike
touching . hempast
the- shops-endmpeads-neapmby P a a -bhe-semphioghtey
disappearad, and er werg-rondy-the gient-medieefal-oluneletenehetending- store
e-noiree bondenewas-nothigg-towitysaetysmhe rsquane
rant
sually-desento when-he-welked-bhrougheity ghts
sh a H ning
weenat brees-dtke-bhose-of-asoldgant-gerden-auring-a-feter


quisbe-greyy-likewawsoftmpagchmertertatouchedsby-the-faintest-cotowrsyewhich
routos -blowr-eway-by breath wirone-of-thewchurch-booktets-ho-nead
a HaCCLN
a aJ a Vrctorian had-utorn-dowethhe soldewoodmerrd
SAO adent u U nor gen
One evening he walked into the bathroom and saw her standing in
front of the mirror naked down to her waist, powdéring her breasts.
"What on earth are. you doing?" he asked in surprise.
He was about to laugh but she said between her teeth without
looking round, "Get out!" Her nipples were hard and unusually dark,
protmuding from the massive whiteness of her breasts, but perhaps tha t
was an illusion due to the shadows of the bathroom; was. she painting
them with lipstick, of all things? He left the room meekly; she E hod
never spoken to him in such a rasping way. She was out of the house
until about eleven that evening, but such was his stâte of quiet, now he
could nurse the secret of his resignation, that he was numb to hurts.
One evening whem Dick and Hanni were there Pinkie told him that t
the pullover he wore Hoven
me-these-dags 'stank to high
heaven'. DE
i5 EFPN
Harlatgheds
ancheasked-Deckaifuthisg-wagwtpuegepwerd-thereswaewe-pac-pausersDickmconsidereds
istwand-sbhenwnodded-gbowtypewithoutrra-smirregand-Hanna-disdathongamen
laughing-quichilys
"For God's sake take it off and get another one!"
said.
She herk
There followed some talk about smells. - *R/ranged on Dick
wet
and said she' a noticed his breath stank when! he was nervous; she had


ix 381
smelled it standing on one side of the kitchen while he was on the
other. Dick bit his lip and murmured, looking down, "All right, old
girl. That's enough!" and he added, still looking down, trying to
smile, "Halitosis runs in the Pollocke family, didn't you know?"
AT Laant
ae edE
- -SKIT
martak,
About this time a new tablet came 2t
Te coloured
red, which atained
'was
remove pnittr odours.
EhEnto
There was suddenly a plethora of these tablets in the house, and the
four of them would suck them continuously; it stained the tongue and
lips a delicate pink, 'the spring-time colour for spring-time people';
the-adver
there were boxes of them, round and decorated
with rose-buds, all over the house,. on the bables and mantelpieces.)
tay Etendedate Bars etnm eactmather nor pouraas-tfecpnfitent-bhent
EMST The strange thing was,' Granville
noticed, that the more upset his life became, and the more lonely his
situation, the more conscious he was of smells, and of the possible
smells on his own person. And he wondered if the same applied to the
others. All of them had their mouths stained delicately now, which
gave them a peculiar puckish and sensual look. He noticed when Hanni
was ill that she sat taking her own scent, drawing her own breath into
her nose, pushing out her loyer lip ever so slightly. Dick did it when
he was in a thoughtful and inward mood, his index finger touching his
upper lip; it happened when he seemed to be regretting something, to be
nursing a lingering, backward-glancing sorrow in him. I And Granville
noticed that he himself did it when he was pent-up in his feelings and


hadn't touched Pinkie for some time; contact with' her would be like a
release of all his organs, back to their flowing state, and this morbid
self-awareness
that seemed an endemic part of their life
would
depart from him.
He had'noticed this self-smelling most strongly at T.I.M. when
he went to the office; people would sit at their desks making a little
twitch of their lips, or a movement of their finger under their noses;
one of the clerks he sometimes had to deal with in the exports-department
would actually stop in the middle of a sentence, and a tiny, melancholy
and yet fascinated gleam. - hardly noticeable
would come into his
eye as he took his own scent, as if discovering a new intimacy with
himself that was hidden to the outside world
his unique and solitary
He tegan K tkink iy was Le sign of poop le leading
possession.
wrong lives.
Sie
Edependtngxons ent ate
epnpiltsodfwbecause-of-Hapnins
tnever wb
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rerde aTheygo sotwbhemeedyes
defted-up-andmgebroff-dike nas coupdrewe dandiespwanspandweat Inthe nont-now
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-Ontyra-few-weekenagogzaboutounbhe-stime-zof-h
Baeg
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A little party developed at Chaworth Road one Sa turday afternoon
which included the hair-girl; Dick and Hanni suddenly appeared with her;
aganmefhomdurralg A 4
nDet
Cfewzatherspeopiescomip
it made a curious fascinating atmosphere, this sudden afternoon party in
the gloomy weather which every now and then let a quick, golden blaze of
sunshine through, before the racing clouds closed again. Pinkie wasn't
PYP
there and Granwalde was nervous all the time that she'd come in and
kimself:
A of Cerusse
assume he'd arranged it all
and this increased the
excitement for him.
The hair-girl was morose and pale at first, her shoulders hunched-
up, and she hardly glanced at him; burt she looked at ererything- se
inslead,
at all the furniturel H h
from under her eyebrows, and fingered
through the dance-records which had been accumulating lately; she was
wearing "bright-red, tight)slacks with a blacky shawl- ap; suddenly
she said to him, still without looking at him, only frowning at the
coffee-table, "Your wife's uncle's a lord?"; to which Hanni replied on
his behalf, "Yes,
fun, isn't it?" with an ironical smile. Miraculously
she and the hair-girl had become 'friends', So Dick said, and Hanni had
discovered that there was good to be found even in Arabs, though she
tot
qualified this by saying /the hair-girl had been brought up in London, a
her
Hanni had been to
flat and found it all neat and
'urban'; no 'night-club tattiness' at all; lace curtains and a nice


persian carpet in the sitting-room, and a real drinks-sideboard; her
wardrobe was quite large and didn't stink, in fact the place was cleaner
Ke chawartt Ronal konee.
than te
ametre Coneetot
Pfe
A dance-record was put on and Caan
brought two bottles of
wine out of the kitchen-cupboard which belonged to: Pinkie; he was out of
money again and looked forward to the superannuation he'd be getting;
he worked it out
two years of overseas-service at five pounds a
month, it made quite a tidy sum, enough to live on for a few more weeks,
until a further decision presented itself; Pinkie could look after the
bills for a bit; he resolved to ask her what the state of her finances
was now; perhaps Grove had paid her back; he found he assumed quite
naturally that she'd given all her savings to 'Grove Publicity Management
Ltd.' He took the two bottles out of the cupboard with a childish sense
of theft and realised how afraid of her he was.
The muscular-looking girl came along later with a friend of the
hair-girlis, a young man called Larry Vice. Vice wasn't his real name 9
it turned out. He was called Vice, Hanni said, because he was vice-
president of the Marquis, an honorary title; his real name was kept agdark
as the hair-girl's. She was all eyes the moment he came in; she forgot
everything else and kept asking him questions, "You all right, sweetheart?"
fraly
"Like this place?", "Don' 't want to.go, tee pe?", THA e * * te
"Like this wine?", "Want to play the piano, honey?"o
ern She didn't move from her
position on the divan and
never once replied to her questions, but
stayed leaning against the piano, nodding and smiling, and sipping his
wine. He was tall and wild-looking with a hanging jaw and clipped,


flaxen hair! and had his mouth perpetually open in a kind of silent
laugh; he never did laugh outright, only made a strange 'Hoo!' noise
when anything amused him, which almost everything did. He was someone
from show-business, a crooner and tap-dancer, Hanni said. All through
the afternoon there was a sustained pattero 'Hemember
aee
Hct
aLd
1 a ad
G0 Egaci
The muscular-looking girl said as little as she had done when
Pyp:
Grenville first met her; she only turned to him once and said in her
gentle Cockney voice, "That girl of yours is a peach. #
He didn't understand this, since she was looking straight at
Hannifo
"Who?" he asked.
"She looks a peach," she repeated, still looking at Hanni. And after
make. n
yon
a pause she added, MWhat a good couple es martet He glanced at Dick
who was sitting two feet away
but his face was telling no
either.
stories; Hanni also must have heard it, and she aso was saying nothing/
Later whén more wine was brought in
and the Raunting
'Creole Shake' te blaring through the house, the muscular-looking girl went
across to Hanni. and said; "I think your husband's sweet! What's it like
out there in Basrah?" To which Hanni replied without turning a hair,
"Oh, it gets a bit hot in the heat, but apart from that it suits us down
to the grounafo
A game started, while Hanni was upstairs getting sandwiches, in
which Dick lay on the floor pressing his, middle up So that he was balanced


fead
on his heels at one end and the back of his aer at the other; the idea
was to see how many times he could do it; he wasn't allowed to rest his
arms' on the floor. Then Joy Celeste ma
jumping up from the
divan, and said, "Half a mo! See if you can carry a passenger, Dick!";
whereupon she lowered herself over him s0 that her body was exactly resting
relaaded from tke otker sido of
on his while endless Hoo, hoosswere being/ eet dewed-eeros S /the room.
"This is awfully nice," Dick said quietly, his eyes alight, gazing
straight into hers, "just relax and we'll be all set for the joy-ride!"
"No, you don't, randy pants!" she cried, keeping her head up and laughing
from
with a deafening bellow which seemed impossible A her timy, thin figure.
"All right, then", Dick said, "here we go!" He lifted his middle slowly,
straining, and up she came as well, while the room was silent; then he
subsided so that his behind hit the floor sharply, and she was knocked
sharply against him; it was well-devised, and he repeated it, up slowly,
straining, then down with a wallop. "Hey!" she cried. "This is good!"
And she added with another bellowing laugh, "What d'yer keep
a stick, Dick?" With his eyes closed Dick murmured, "That's my field-
marshal's baton, amrectheast there's one in every corporal's knapsack!";
and he went on raising and lowering himself.
Hanni came back in the middle of it, bearing the sandwiches, and
sàid with a slightly abashed look, "What are you two up to?" And there
ske
the game ended; the hair-girl was sweating; and went and had a whispered,
confidential talk with Hanni while everyone else attacked the sandwich
plate. Vice played the piano, and Dick dancelfith the muscular-looking
girl, putting his cheek close to hers while she gazed ahead of her with a
was
perfectly vacant expression. When it heaame dark they didn't Bwitch the
lights on and the room was in a dim twilight from the street-lamp outside.


Pinkie came in about midnight and looked thoughtful at firsto
but she never put a damper on al party andoonce a drink was in her hand
lcof
she H joined in, dancing with Dick. When it was all over Hanni asked
Pip
Granvith wasn't it amusing that 'Alice the girl-with-the-snake-called-
Sidney' kff (the muscular-looking gir1)+f had thought she was Mrs. Granville?
She hadn't contradicted her because she'd seen a 'closed look' on Dick's
face and thought he was up to one of his 'little games'; So she'd kept
mum. Dick murmured to this, "Well, you never know, her little mistake
might come in useful one day." Pinkie was intrigued: "Who did she think
was your wife, then?" she asked Dick. He paused, gazing across at her in
a level way, and said, "You, #
apihesnerpndrenokertiorandeten
o D WRTA
Afterwards in the bedroom Pinkie said that Dick was showing her
'attentions' of late and she didn't know how seriously to take him; she
Pip
smilad
couldn't believe it, in fact/o Cramet langhed and said that anything
to E A that was believable coming from Dick. They slept happily; he was
glad she'd found a party in progress
she thought he was responsible
for it, and Hanni la let her think so. He tried to see if her nipples
whan
were in fact painted with lip-stick E she was undressing but as always
she turned away from him with a quick demure movement, slipping her night-
al te samemoment
dress. over her head/as she slipped her petticoat off. The image of her
standing in the bat throom painting herself returned to him in a quick,
voluptuous flash, and he 'burned with fascinated curiosity as to the love
she might have given someone else that evening; if he imagined her
submitting to love it brought a quick, stabbing pain of desire in him. He
could visualise himself pleading with her to continue her infidelity so
that he might have this stabbing desire like a white flame licking his


body and consuming him.
goord
He felt so
in his new life that thm-follawing-xonk he went
over to see the hair-girl in her flat; hehadnt
- ghbest -ommberracement
erdoing seed-askeed-hegmonmbho
prone-wiun rardeliberate-devi Tt eteke For
S € Pmmerre-sEnvirting pm--bowtunchy-shemeaddwohald wike Gox itmhe
oamemovegmebworrcegeebworrcer
Hept-bardh-ymerdofeltwhorsabley-onty-hisemiine
tmande compoeedemisibewi@eemaonleionleingesommrohmapartafromehirsebodyenthrese
dayen -
was hidden behind the Strand and he searched for it with
chill féelings; or rather the chill was in his guts and organs, separate
from him, not in his frame of mind. C à
neled C toor
sememboredpformne-geasonymMaorsmouty geniat sedteobisewwegrof-geving-at
bhingogonlwiat-demeverwhasremtharbatmhewarsked-himserfr eHe-part-higafingermon
hesdoorabel-lsgacther a
Fa CnyMBIde-streetachoseseborerrwrorbed e
msnkcadopmand The staircase was dingy and uncarpeted; but the door itself
was that of a luxury-apartment. Marmbaryte go
probatly-vame-witbhrebhe
yearoy-hembhroughty-fudamesowofwhoaamb areer E dwbewcomewadbenmewhabmos
presvatiengneirgnorergonemponpreededwisbruncanebwconebatwnowy as he waited, weE
/cap
E a
dretds 14 a he felt thin of heart, exposed,
ag frightfully young, foo young lo lwe.
she was there
a tiny, wan figure in a dark doorway
/cop
and after looking at him briefly she shouted "Hi!" and at once turned her
back and rushed into one of the rooms, leaving him to shuffle in and close
the door himself.
"Something's cookin '!" she cried from the kitchen, and he went in
after her.


Everything there gleamed, the pots and unstained saucepans and
new plates. He told her what a nice place she seemed to have but as
he said it in an uncertain voice, coughing at the same time, she only
glancèd at him and said nothing, assuming he hadn't spoken at all;
there was no paint on her lips; he was aware that she'd made no effort
for him at all, and again he asked himself whether he was infatuated
with her or noto bato B0 Wr RER S d
EEhREarthoughtnees-Hopscseemaige
pncemogatwacesataChaworthotoadyzohanging-hep-wli-otleyomerkingsherweges
sathmahanpensendwmoreweavirsheinsexeppressisoionpean-hezeehorigmblackergwhikerquwhiker
depasisvengadaderaofshersjerleynewatkymebymoubwatmthewsamewtimernshermohe-Temainedmbhe
samexmandwner-farscinationy-rtan 1e et
y a rtiy-inhere-werth
There
was no scent in the air. She clearly wasn't conscious of him as an
admirer; what was their relation, thèn?
tioe What had
happened during their visit to the zoo? Had they warmed to éach other?
He couldn't remember!
A p
1e - a TE CICITECHLELET?. Why had Dick congratulated him on
taking her to the zoo? Surely that indicated something? He tried to
keep Pinkie out of his mind; the stabbing pain of desire for her closed
his mind to everything and everyone else; he forced himself to show an
interest in the hair-girl and even took her hand while she was trying to
get a hot frying-pan off the fire, burning her slightly on the elbow and
nearly getting a cup-full of steaming fat down his trouserso "Hey, look hip.
kkan,
out!" she screamed, andk "Well, fuck that for a lark!"
He remembered 'dad' for the first time and wondered if that
deafening 'fuck' had travelled to his paternal ears. He tugd /sheepishly
at told her that water was good for a burn, 'contrary to usual belief',
to which she said, "Yak-er-ti-yak-yak-yak-!" and put her tongue out at him


while she grabbed a little pat of butter and rubbed it on her elbow.
tesn
She told him she'd caly-gat up half-an-hour Erore as she'd' had
a late night at the club; he glanced in at the bedroom and saw that the
bed was still unmade; the light outside depressed him; ist e low, dazzling
lay
clouds woesentessethsnen close to the roof-tops. Bheramwensalacomesmtesinn
aonoseubhe-wide-windeweofathewed-bbing-roomengsmHemnisshadmseidymand-even
acarpebsonmthewvert!behindebhrendisvem. He asked whether her father was
in' and she said, moving swiftly from the kitchen to the room where they
were going to eat, "Are you crazy?" He said, "Why haf he moved?" And
the reply was, "Do you know what you're talking about?"
Then she became charming; he felt. sick and giddy; she asked him
plaase
in a small voice if he'd/help' 'her carry the food in, there wasn't much but
if he didn't mihd a 'scrap lunch' there was enough. He gazed at her;
she was preoccupied and ruffled, the hair
round her face, uncombed;
aa there was ani anxious look in her eyes; they were screwed-up painfully.
She murmured, "I only see dad when he's asleep." She hurried out of the
room again, her hair lifting gently off her back.
There were a few potatoes, some scraps of tinned ham and cheese;
also she had to hurry up to be at/rehearsal. She ate fast and made her
deafening, clapping laugh once or twice when she remembered the party and
had
how she /lain on top of Dick; "How is old randy-pants?" she asked him.
He said, "Working hard," and nothing more; he found he was in an. itritable
sad
frame of mind. She made no effort to serve him and he forked his/way
through the tiny mealoë A
She said that Hanni had arranged the Saturday afternoon party
as a t 'rebuff' to Pinkie; his ears pricked up
at once
"What do you know about Pinkie?" he asked in a protective way.


But she was unaware of anything sharp in his voice. She said, "That
party was to show your wife where she got off!" Hanni was determined,
she added, to try and do something for Granville in his present
ignominious' life; he was astonished at how quickly and fluently she
spoke, like an educated woman; the words 'rebuff' and ignominious'
surprised himfo Then she fell into a quiet vein of talk; she'd become
friends with Hanni, she said, and now she knew better what his position'
was. He could. hear. Hanni's voice in hers; she was certain of her
information as if she'd lived through it herself, and she smoked her
cigarette a little like Hanni, narrowing her eyes. He wanted to ask her
what she knew about his 'position' but she went on talking, this time
about Hanni: Hanni had told Dick fnhe wasn't going to stand the sort of
treatment from him that Pinkie 'handed out' to Grenie
she had more
Patism
18ize
pride, and he'd better start revising his ways soon!
She suddenly jumped up from the table and dashed next door, where
he heard her telephoning someone.
honen Wkon-inowgatin a
fl pots o
EugE; the subject was a 'big man' in the night-club world who had to be
/eaf
treated nicely; he might get her out of the Kaaba company into a show all
her own
y and therefore would the
person she was talking to mind if 'we called it off for tonight8?
Rren she returned to the table preoccupied and closed to him, an
/cob
anxious frown on her face; her shoulders were hunched timidly as when she i
had
ak chaworth Road
/called witie - D athers on Saturday afternoon, making her look like a little
girl. There was a hissing sound in the kitchen and he started, thinking
it was 'dad', but it was the kettle boiling for coffee and she clattered
- out again. The moment coffee was over she jumped up again and grasped


hold of her hair, looking round for grips to tie it up with, and said
without looking at him that she was about an hour late and had to dasho
a petty mood swept over him and he shouted, "Damn! Why the hell couldn't
Intes
you let me know that before you invited me over?" He was quree surprised
at himself; E
ettiiig eadymina
and
pecsio-ptere-msl hano He expected her to turn round to him in surprise,
insulted, but she did nothing of the kind; she ran next door, five or
six. hair-grips between her teeth, and began humming; and from next door
she called out to.him, "Come in here, sweetheart, and watch me dress!"
He thought this VEUB a change of tune and went int
She
was combing, out her long hair, standing near a dressing table, bending
down to see herself; he sat
on the bed while she told him that this
'big man' was taking her out to tea followed by drinks and that she had
to look a lady, which was easier in the cool weather than the hot because
her arm-pits seemed to have 'automatic douches' inside them the way they
sweated/o And 'they' didn't like to see you sweat, unlessiit was between
your legs, and then, boy, they weren't so keen on you being a ladylo She
spoke as if she hated the 'big man' but at the same. time flinched from
him and would do anything for him.
na man Rimself
The idea entered his head that he ought to
la te
his visit was
shameful and empty episode,
not/a
S ner
Ebemmnnd
keingm
The flat felt lonely and desolate to him; while she combed
her hair the melancholy, dazzling light poured in through the window
behind her, and every object in the room looked cold and bare. He didn't
feel the slightest inclination to touch her but his mind persisted, and


when she
began slipping off her dressing gown he pulled her gently towards him
with ailaugh, to lighten the misery of it, and kissed her on the cheek;
she leaned towards him stiffly, not as surprised or anxious as he expected
her to be; then she tried to, push away from him by levering her arms
against his shoulders
"Hey, I'll be late, sweetheart! Now come on!"
But suddenly she laughed and kissed him full on the lips; he had a totally
different impression of her for an instant, as someone soft; the skin of
her mouth actually changed for a moment, yielding and warm where it had
been scaly before, pursed and withdrawn from him. "Why, you dirty old man!"
hutmined,
she cie But once again it was, "Hey, look at that time, you'll lose
me my job!" She said it in a jarring tone, her lips hard again, trying
to push herself away from him. She managed to break free and ran into
the bathroom, where she remained for a few minutes washing her face; he
glanced in and saw her wiping her armpits with a towel and spraying
something; he called out to her, "What are you spraying?" and she shouted,
her voice echoing in the tiled bathroom,
"Sweat-neutraliser, honey!" When she returned she wanted to make the
bed and told him, "Get up, gee-gee!", which he did; but as she pulled the
top sheet off he again made a sally towards her and this time pulled her over
with an awkward movement and they both came down in a sprawl on the bed.
"Hey, bé careful!" She paused: "Dad' 'l1 be in!" "What?" he said,
sauid,
lifting his head. E
"Yeah," she
ed "he comes in round
about now!" But he was less diffident of 'dad' now and remanned lying
on top of her; there was a sharp clang of the bed-springs under them and
she tried to struggle free; he laughed again, this time genuinely; she
tried to tickle him but he pinned her hands down; he was beginning to


enjoy it. To his surprise she had a rough pullover on under her dressing
gown, and its flimsy little strands were worrying his mostrils and mouth,
but he dared not move in case she wriggled free; she was quick and muscular.
She appealed to him,more quietly, "Now, then, sweetheart, fair's fair."
Her hair fell like a great black shadow over the sheet and she looked into
his eyes meditatively for the first time as if trying to find out who he
was from a great: distance; he had the sensation that it was the first
had
time she M looked at him; she had her head a little to one side, like an
animal puzzled. She moved sideways and he took this as a movement of
nona
desire, though he
felt nothing himself; the only pleasure he was
.aware of was from her hair, its endless black shadow and its deep smell;.
apart from that he was dead of heart, and lay there a dead weight on her,
and only stayed there for fear of being ridiculous if he got up.
Suddenly, getting angry, a dark shadow seeming to flit across
her face and twist its expression for a moment, she made another heave;
meanwhile
ad he plunged his, face towards her, trying to kiss her again, but with
such speed that their noses collided with a painful thud; they sat up
with a springing movement, nursing their faces. "Jesus!" she crooned;
behind his hand he asked if hers was bleeding and she shook her head and
then took the chance of getting off the bed.
She was again dressing, fixed the grips in her hair with an
extraordinary speed like a machine; she flung her dressing-gown into the
wardrobe, pulled off her sweater, stepped into some high-heeled shoes and
put a flowery, loose-sleeved dress on which made her look fraif and thin,
with her head and hands and legs peeping out of it; she asked him if it
was 'aristocratic" enough and he said it looked 'on the big side', but
she didn't wait to listen to him and ran next door to get her bag. He


eliev alty
remembered that her chest had felt
hard underneath him, -
and that her hips had been sharp, as if they had thin armour round them.
She had painted her lips, a bright, savage mark across her face; and
otherwise her face was drawn, flat and sallow, made more so by the red.
He happened to glance at the mantelpiece for the first time and
noticed a quaint cylindrical bottle with an object dimly shining inside,
float ting in liquid, like a piece of skin; he went closer and to his
astonishment saw thrt iwas the embryo of a tiny child, no bigger than a
man's fist, the umbilical chort floating away, waving lightly in the water
as the hair-girl thumped through the flat, disturbing it. The embryo was
a few months old from the womb, its tiny legs bent, and its hand held up
to its mouth, with the tiniest suggestion of a thumb. When she came in
he asked, pointing at it, "What's that?"
All her haste disappeared at once and she approached the mantel-
piece softly; yes, she said, it was hers; didn't he think it was like' her?
It was a 'little boy'; she knew he would have been a darling! It was
Larry Vice's! Couldn't he see Larry's face there; he only had to look
closely, put his face right up to the glass and he'd see?
He did so and, indeed, there was the shadow of Vice's hanging jaw,
and the shadow of his silent laugh, combined with the darkness of the
hair-girl's eyes. - He raised himself up again, not knowing what to say.
Conulane
She had to 'get rid' of him, she said, she ral
afford a
had
she had
operntion;
child, and
rehearsals all day; she /cried all night afterwards
every morning she came in and said hullo to him, and she never went to
bed at night without imagining he was at his prayers, bent up in that way.
They left the flat and he said good-bye toakers at a bus-stop in
the Strand; as she got on the bus she gave him a: little glance as if to


confirm what she'd told him and to underline the sadness; she made a
hardly perceptible nod, with a serious look in her eyes, as the bus sped
away. At night he thought of the. embryo again and imagined the knife
cutting the chord; Pinkie was at his side, already asleep; he put his arm
round her; her cheeks were flushed with health and her stomach was just
beginning to swell; -
he had a placid
sensation of thanksgiving, that the child was coming further and further
to the light, while her breasts swelled, waiting for the birth, without
fear of a knife; nothing else was important.
Next day Hanni congratulated him with a chuckle on penetrating'
to Joy's flat, which only Vice had done; Joy had phoned her and said that
Pip
she
mvilte certainly 'knew a trick or two'; a
CAE
had put
clean sheets on the bed that morning, and there'd be 'extra laundry' this
weeklo The inference was clear: they'd slept togéther, and Grmmr t sàid
nothing to contradict it.
wad
also
Dick ke
weer told, and he invited Gram
for a drink that
evening; he said he was 'relieved', with a little twinkle in his eye; ana
rip
a lot of fun was in store for them both! Granttz - asked Hanni afterwards
what Dick meant by saying he was relieved, and she said they were both
glad he was 'standing up for himself at last'; ridiculously, a tremor of
pity for Pinkie went through him when shesaid this, though he nodded with
a. laugh; he was getting into the habit of making an ineffectual little
laugh nowadays, and he wondered how long it would be before his mouth
looked like Vice's. There wasn't real amusement in the laugh but on the
other hand it wasn't hollow; it stated a general rippling attitude to life,
of detached. frivolity; particular amusement wasn't necessary, it seemed to


say.
Pinkie also got hint of the news; it came to her that the hair-
girl had .'fallen head over heels' for him and that he was/next in line
after Vice'. When they were alone. in the music-room she asked him, a
frown flickering painfully on her brow while she gazed at a point half-
way between them on the floor, her lips tight together, "How your
1tal
girlfriend, by the way?" He was confused and had the impulse to laugh
under her gaze; it was like being tickled,
mmetromechendouren WRE
dufradiedeabeut
He asked her who she meant by girlftiend'. "Oh, well,"
was : the reply, "if you don't know who your various girlfriends are, I'm
sure I don't!"
She stalked up to the kitchen; he felt an odd nausea. Wondering
if his own jealous rages had made her feel the same, he resolved not to
was available.
indulge them again even if the energy 2umm ae
a rime It was a grim
nausea at the pit of his stomach,
He wanted,
how
Rad
to do something immensely free; was that mhast
s )felt when she' En
Silzl
she'
Trr
suddenly dashed out of the house that morning straight from his bed?
rakiig te miks eut o Rar,
Red juess
He went upstairs and began) imi tating everything she 7 said to
in a burlesque way while she cooked the evening meal;
he thawed her out. quickly, and she laughed.
She said that Elizabeth had rung up about the annual ball,
ted
'the most fabulous and fashionable thing' that happened
Rad
for tkam all
in the year/o She
poany got the tickets/and it was to be a "Tail-and-


Hoof' ball; A5
You had to come wearing a tail leic.
of some kind
it. might be a donkey or a lion, an elephant, a horse
and hoofs. Granville asked if the hoofs were obligatory, supposing you
went as a lion or elephant, for instance; and she said she thought so, yes.
She added that she wanted him to go as a faun, with a little fluffy tail
and pointed ears; cef
though
she hadn't worked out the details yet.
What would she go as? She hadn't made up her mind but it would
/Bilal
be something that hid 'a huge belly'. "It isn't huge at all!" he said.
hip.
"You can hardly see it!" She felt enormous, she replied, but didn't mind h L
it if a nice-looking child came into the worldt he asked with a laugh
if she thought it was going to look like him. She blinked and said
quietly, "Well, one always hopes so, doesn't one?"
There was a problem of where they were to get their tails, for-tie
and Pinkie decided against trying to make them herself; she would
go to a theatrical costumers.. She then announced casually tast she broke
two eggs into a bowl that Grove was coming round for a drink the following
evening and he, trying to answer with the same casual air, aaid, "Oh, good!",
so loudly that he seemed to be crying out with pain; they had the light
on, because of the gloomy weather, and it glittered for a moment in her
eyes as she turned to glance at him quickly; but she seemed not to notice
anything unusual in his tone. There followed a burst of relief for him
emldde agtoralece
1h tkar cade
that Grove/ rsn
intimate with her, since
ae she 'clearly wouldn't invite him roundfo At the same time, together
Refelt
with this relief, there nas a little spasm of disappointment, touched with
his
the pain of yearning and desire, that she was still his own, inthe flesh,
and hadn't been transported into mystery by another man's touch; it made


her look dull for a moment, standing by the stove; her body ma lost its
glow for him; its secret light inside, of the forbidden sexual touch, had
gone; he was aware even of resentment
how could she stand in the
ba throom putting lipstick on her nipples for no purpose;
how could she snatch the mystery away like this? And
he was to have a child in the ordinary circumstances of family-life; how
disgusting! It would go on, year after year, the two (or three) of them
Rad
together in a tiny house, revolving round each other; and she ra/had
this remarkable offer from fate -+t from 'Grove' - which she'd turned
down, of a journey into the. jungles of voluptuous and forbidden touch!
And what were Dick's 'attentions' to her? Were they only polite and
frivolous?' Was he going to be robbed of them as well?
There was no wine in the house and he asked if she'd been to the
bank recently; she,said, no, she hadn't a sou/o So he was without wine,
without a job, without a womàn/o Just a faithful wife! It was the
flattest evening he could remember since his arrival; the trembling he'd
done in the last two or three months appeared to him ecstatic and desirable
now.
But the following afternoon he had his wish, and the familiar
trembling seized him as the hour of Grove's arrival drew nearer. He sat
quivering in the kitchen. Hanni and Dick were to come as well. Grove
arrived before them, smiling at the door. There was something so boyish
him,
and friendly about. Grone the moment he presented himself downstairs, that
Pit's
trembling went at once and he found to his surprise that the
other man was in a most peculiar way a solace to him; he felt no resprictions
on his own behaviour; nor was there any need to explain himself. It was
like having his own brother in the house; he at once thought of what they


w4oo.
were going to do together, not immediately that evening, but in general,
in the future, as their friendship developed. Grove gave off the
these Rung
promise of future activities
round him, like a fresh
scent. A party might develop, he might go off somewhere, he might get I
tickets for the theatre(someone he knew
just come back from a big
tour)
you didn't know what might not happen; but one thing was clear,
would
silant
that you /be included; his presence gave you thel assurance that you /ilal
wouldn't be left out/o He was available; even his fixed appointments,
when he talked about them, seemed to have something seftams pliable about
them. theywont
He was available for people
that was his
ryp
passion. All this Em HT was aware of in the first few seconds of
enesgies
seeing him again, and the EE that had lain dormant in him for the last
few jeeks flooded back solely under Grove's influence. And 'Grove' was
te name he'd been afràid of!
At the street-door Grove E said to him, "Hullo, there! We met
on the stairs once, remember? You look/ miserable!"
Granville stared at him for a moment, unable to collect himself:
"Did I?" he asked in a helpless way; and at once Grove was in the house,
as if he'd been there a twelve-month.
Hanni and Dick followed a few minutes later, and they all greeted
oed pala,
each other like fmit
mat and settled at once into chatter in
the music-room. He remembered Grove as deathly pale but couldn't imagine
Rad
how he /got the impression; he was quite brown in the face, with slightly
flushed cheeks, and his eyes had a keen, healthy light! He still had
Pyp'a
masses of shining, black hair, and Granttbats first impression of the back
of his neck, with soft, curly hair like a baby's, was true; and his nose


2 4ol.
was not unlike Pinkie's, small and fine, but sharper. He pulled off his
jacket at once; Hanni smiled and asked him why he always liked to show off
his 'wasp-waist', to which Grove only laughed in a good-natured way; it
was quite chilly in the room, and the electric fire was on; Hanni ragged
him gently, speaking between tight lips, and asked was it true that he
wore a corset? He said quickly, "Only on my transvestist nights!", and
turned at once to Pinkie, giving her a little smile. There was a certain
pallor in his black eyes; Granville noticed it again; it was in the nature
of his.gaze, which was always beyond people even when he looked at them in
an intimate fashion, as just now with Pinkie. It wasn't that his eyes
passed quickly over objects or were superficial in their attention, on the
contrary, he was in the habit'of gazing long at' things, but he seemed to
be looking at. a vague point behind and beyond people, even while he looked
at them fixedly; nor was it that he was reflecting about them; he hadn't
reflective eyes, and his attention rarely strayed from people; he seemed
to be looking at something universal behind people, where there was no
colour. Also his eyes were sad. He kept up a volley of jolly talk,
leaning against the mantelpiece; his fingernails were bitten and nervous,
Gramyt
noticed.
"When are you off again?" Grove asked him/ saningentatrin with his
universal charm.
Pinkie answered for him: "It should have been about a fortnight
But Grove didn't look at her, only gave him another polite glance
and said, "Oh," non-committally.
Pip
Pinkie's interjection quite took Granille aback; he really had
assumed that she, like Dick, had overlooked the expiry of his leave; he'd


thought life had become a dream for them as well!
Whenever Grove joked with. her she smiled in a tired and slightly
PH's
exasperat ted way, astwith a boisterous child; this, too, was to Eaonmi drets
satisfaction; it showed that they didn't share a real intimacy. Later
they all went along to the Jazz-club E TtCL Ea
all
Islington, and there Grnvtlie saw that, on the contrary, she was takptess
property
t Grove's eceeme ; the familiar contained trembling started in him,
which gave the evening a tone of forbidden excitement as strong as in the
pre-Meedham days. tnenm@rgyeaskE
a amE Sul a aseemedentoRaVeEHO
àn VeX a
-Men-TRET a
gdancadt
se A
But still he couldn't believe that
their relation approached the intimacy he Fn shared with her himself.
Whenever Grove made a movement towards the tiny dance-floor she got up in
obedience; the others were remote for her; he wat tched Hanni ask her a
question and get no reply.
There was a hopeless, flickering look in Pinkie's eyes; she was
Rer
floating in misery, it seemed
but this was a tragic mask, she was
dramatising E herself; there was happiness and thrill underneath. Grove,
on the other hand, paid equal attention to Hanni, not that the relation
between them was particularly good. She looked at him in a level way and
spoke to him disbelievingly; 'I know your game', , she seemed to say. This
hurt Grove's pride and he tried to joke all the more with her; but his
Pip
antics fell flat with her. Cae te and Dick laughed
though Dick
in a reserved way.
D.. ing
danaa
ACE
E an unusually slow member he /nf
saw Grove lean over and kiss her neck softly, whereupon an old giddiness


took hold of him, like the blood suddenly rushing up to his head, and he
keep Ria Cralancs,
had to grip himself tight in his chair to beaeme et
gerins
Pinkie
had her eyes closed in the tragic expression and her mouth was trembling;
she seemed to see herself under the gaze of numberless people who were
following her tragic development wit th sympathy. He found he felt an
irritated anger against her but not against Grove at all; about Grove there
was something so disarming and boyish that you couldn't take offence. His
kiss seemed universal like his charm; dancing with him was like dancing with
anyone, that was the impression
there were no narrow interests contained
in him; the dancing was a gesture beyond people, at the same time as it
Ris
contained and enveloped Pinkie; Grorets lips weren't personal, they' didn't
make a predatory assault. There was no interested, personal thrust behind
his actions.. When they sat down again Grove kept his arm round her, wi th
a glint of universal satisfaction, at the back of his eyes. Meanwhile
Grensille whistled to himself and made deliberate conversation with Dick
and Hanni, trying to. make the arm .on Pinkie's shoulder seem an ordinary
thing; there was only a telltale, livid flush on his face, and his lips
weré puffy and quivering. His eyes bulged out of his head. There was no
drink, only lemonade and Coca-Cola. He and Dick decided to slip out to
a pubot
"What the hell ate you up to?" Dick suddenly said to him in an
alarmed way as soon as they were outside.
Pijp
Rad
Gemmr HE knew what he meant at once
out about his
E/found
resignation!
But then Dick was surprisingly cool. There was eveh a twinkle in
his eye, perhaps of admiration. "Do you know what you're doing, you boob?
I hope you do!"


r4o4.
Pip
"I don't know what I'm doing, no!" Goensille told him with an
obstinate pout. "I haven't any idea!" And then when they were. standing
at the bar, after their beer was in front of them, he. said, "Buy me a
whisky."
When it arrived he tipped it into his beer with a reckless motion,
while Dick watched him.
"What are you going to live on?"
"Oh, there'll be enough for a couple of weeks or
said.
soteftan
"Then what?"
"Well, I admire your guts!" Dick said. with a little breathless
chuckle, giving him thresame look of intimacy combined with curious
interestoa
a ner
mhortmdaysy
He didn't deny that his resignation had taken guts'; he needed
all the good opinion he could scavenge. What. did Pinkie feel about it?,
Dick wanted to know.
"I haven't told her."
This impressed Dick; he laughed and said he'd like to see her face
when he broke the newslo
The drink put Crens
in it a devil-may-care mood for a
few
moments and when they were back in the hall he danced gaily with Hanni.
Grove began telling stories about his powers over women; that very
day, he said, he'd been sitting on a park bench and the 'most fabulous'
had
woman he /ever seen H passed him and thrpw.a note at his
asking
feet,
him to. come up to her hotel-room.
Dick intervened quickly, a sharp look on his face, and said,


"What humber?"
"What do you mean?" Grove asked with, a smile.
"The number ofrthe room, tell me quick!"
"Four hundred and ninety seven!"
They all laughed, including Grove.
"A large hotel!" said Hanni.
Pinkie smiled in a lazy fashion and without looking at Grove
extended her hand and murmured, "Where's the slip of paper?"
"In my other coat!".
She took him gently under the chin and pulled his face round
towards hers: "You bloody liar," she said slowly, with the same smile, and
then let his face go.
Another story was that he'd once had a job as an insurance agent
and a woman he'd called on had found him so attractive that she almost
fainted and had to sit down, all without saying a word.
"What did
do?" Dick asked.
you
/site
hat dul requinad!"
aont
Evegihins
CESISEM tiyl
"Yes," Pinkië said with a chuckle. "I can imagine you doing thatf
ETr
The impression was that these stories, invented or not, weren't
Hot
about him in any particular way; /they weren't real boasting; nor did
*ay uusete
they mean vanity; t - again a kind of universal gesture, with a vein of
dodnars,
sadness, e a perhaps ancient
- - sepe underneath.
Pip
On the way back Grove walked ahead of Granuttle with his arm round
Pinkie, kissing her hair now and then. Granvitte wanted to rush up and
tear them apart; he blinked and felt giddy, unable to walk properly.


Anger subsided; then it rose again, and went down again. All the while,
as they walked along, Hanni held him in conversation, talking quietly; it
was impossible to tell from her expression how much she saw of his feelings
at the moment
how much he hid them, as well.
las - -
E tho
GAm
HS facem ompostal
hen
TC r poa
ig torwardmand
imre
LHE as oniC A n aa ne-concent)
sEcady mangzs A TA iz
a otermarde Couldats AVSCu
ogain
When te-otherszhadmrones maud he was alone with Pinkie)he said Es
in a hissing way, "Are you sure that's my baby, you filthy bitch?"
She asked him what he meant by 'filthy bitch'; this was in a controlled
voice; the tragiç misery
which had been soft
had left her face,
and a set look, touched with hardness, replaced it. He asked her, couldn't
she 'behave' even when he was sitting in front of her, walking behind her
did: she have to turn the knife in the wound? Why didn't she made a clean
sweep, not keep him dangling in the middle of this ambiguous situation, one
man's wife and another man's mistress? He prevented himself raging at
had
her; he held himself back, remembering the nausea she /made him feel when
she a asked him about the hair-girls he-refused to be responsible for
never
creating nausea in her; he woulds/limit her freedomio
But at the same time that was exactly what he wanted to do. Free,
she was an insult to him; imprisoned
dull! He said to her, "Surely
can't be just an empty thing for you? I must have a heart like other /cof
people,, don't you think so? How can you bear to do that sort- of thing?"
He meant accepting Grove's embraces while in front of him. But she asked
with a pale face, her mouth open, "What sort of thing?" And now he found /iral


he couldn't bring himself to mention it; though he knew that she knew
he'd witnessed it, he had to treat it as a closed subject which might not
have taken place; he allowed it to fall into the dream-zone of so much
else that had happened in the last two or three months.
He hardly slept that night, aching for someone to talk to. Dick
had a talk with him next day, trying to persuade him to go back to the
firm, but Geonsille shrugged exery thin oe off. How did he like
Grove?,
Dick asked him. He said, Edea"I liked him!" Dick said N 'old
Grove' was an amusing fellow but he certainly carried a 'big load of corn'
around on his shoulders.
That evening after Dick had gone, Grsailte found some nude
Grove
photographs of Pinkie in one of his own drawers; he imagined Sy must have
kem. P
been taken i Groms One showed her wi th her breasts thrust out in a
gently challenging and yet submissive way; one of her nipples was pointed
straight into the camera, dark and round, and he wondered if that was why
she had painted them; another showed her from behind, low down, wtthhen
germng omxt
her flank round and whiteo mnof
As he looked from one to the other his legs
trembl so violently that he almost toppled over. But still his
mind was clear, working in its thin and satisfied way, apart from him, and
though he was troubled he was also intrigued
and thrilledg (but he took
this for granted now)--- and perhaps, slightly, with a fierce edge, amused;
this thin self went on So much in separation from him that he had to
concentrate hard suetimes before he knew what he felt.
had
When she came in he told her he E /offered his resignation and would
be staying on in London in view of the baby. She didn't take it very
seriously, contrary to Dick's expectation. The first thing she said was,


"Well, I hope to Christ we 'll have money enough to live on." Oh, he
replied, he'd find something soon. She even seemed happy that he was
staying; "That means we can have lots of fun this winter," she said.
"Don't you care about the Basrah office?" Dick asked him when they
were together again. To delay an answer Grani
asked what he meant.
Prn
"Well, do you mind leaving it like that," Dick went on, "without winding
it up properly? It must be in chaos! There's been nobody there. for a
would
couple or thrée months!" He added that it wasn't that he E expect of
Rad
Granville; he "/always known him/thorough and hard-working. Didn't it
offend EE his sense of tidiness to leave the job in this way, apart from
Ptp
throwing away
his years of training, and his references? Caetr ta
answered that he was worried, yes, but only about Mohammed; that was all.
Pif
Dick asked him who that was, unless he meant the Prophet himself? B
said, "My assistant out there."
"Why don't you fly out there and wind things up?" Dick asked him
suddenly.
It was a strange question and Glle gave him a look. After a
pause he said, "Why, is that what they want at the office?"
Dick turned away from him: "God knows. I haven't-spoken to anyone."
Pyp
But he left Emm a - with the impression that he had.
resignabe
art
a was qui e nord
sont
Granville
et bhought-Hovingon-would-haveytaken-more- -interest-in-hie
werle-therrene Jbub-bhengdlene-wewaddedy imaginewnucha-tna Atmetsnbetrued
two
Elizabeth sent te tickets for the Tail-and-Hoof ball, and he
hired a tail and a pair of cloven hoofs for thirty shillings; Pinkie decided


to go as a 'devil-ess' and wore/forked tail and a horn with pointed ears;
cloven hoofs were too much, she said, a went in high heels. All
legs would be uncovered, she'd heard; she wore a pair of tights, with a
blouse tucked into them, and her tail swished about behind her, attached
by a belt she usually used when she had the curse.
Most attention she concentrated on Em
when the night came. o
Ppso,
She said she wanted him as her own 'faun' tonight; and Hanni remarked that
if only he kept his mouth shut more and just Hiked round him in a mysterious
fashion he'd make a 'first-class faun' and all the girls would 'want to
rape - him. Pinkie nodded as if this was more than a light remark; she
busied herself smoothing his hair down at the sides so as to make it like
a faun's head; she made him wear a pair of her tights, darker than hers
and all over these she painted faun-like hair; his arms and neck had to be
bare; he must wear a shirt STE E ont
cunk-nhtchewes a roughly
faun colour, and she cut the collar off, then the sleeves; she painted
red lips all over him, on his arms, his chest and his stockinged legs;
and finally the cloven hoofs want on.
"I wish you. were like that every day," she said to him. And she
thent started on his face; by the use of mascara she gaveu.him long, faunlike,
eyes, and his lips a touch of red; the eyes interested Hanni most and she
helped by making them even longer, curling his eyelashes with' an instrument
she always carried in her cosmetics-bag. To their surprise she was coming
to the ball as well, but later; Clockwork was taking her; he never missed
anything fàshionable, she said. She hadn't started dressing yet; she
hated fancy dress, she said, and had to work herself up to it by drinking
a little bei forehand; Clockwork would be coming round to Chaworth Road with
a bottle of whisky and she would see what the mood brought her by way of


ideas. Pinkie looked delicate, her eyes small and glittering, as usual
: when she dressed up; she took no pains to hide her slightly swollen
stomach; she was a proud of it, she said. She stalked aroung on her
high heels, skirtless, her tail protuding Cromeer at the back; her
pointed ears kept coming off and Hanni clipped them on, Carchens after much
trial and error," with paper-clips and ear-ringso a C REEN WAERON St
mattoncmltigpeser atough-tie.hol06-i-inkinklelendaner Her eyes flickered
with nervousness and whenever she looked at him she chuckled or leaned
forward and kissed him; she said it would be her one night with a faun,
and she,meant to en'joy it.
certainhy
Har
themselves go
they/let
Implcap
with
with/vengeance. He danced with a young woman called Helen chowhat dark,
fruming Ras
greasy hair down to her shoulders, emel-a/deathlyepale face; her nickname,
trody
apparently, was Hell. Everyem called her that. She kept her eyes
closed all the time she-demmed and whirled round blindly, holding on to
him with LE one hand. Her head was lowered So that her hair fell in
entinely,
two long strands round her cheeks, sometimes hiding SHSMMOLEEOT her facek
and she made a moaning noise under her breath, smiling in the strangest
way; whenever the dance came to an end she woke up slowly and would smile
her thanks at him and drift off at once, then would appear in. front of
him again, her eyes already closed, the moment the music started again; once
C she dragged him off to the bar and shouted (to a group of people who showed
no sign of hearing
"It's Hester
Aldereste's
termt faun!lle she swung round as she said this,
in her
smiling
strange
way, and, having a glass of something in her hand swished most of it in
his face and over his bare neck. He decided not to notice. tis and, to


4ll.
save himself embarrassment, tried to behave in as blind a way as she,
maisn
drifting off back to the donsing room, dabbing a handkerchief over his face.
Occasionally someone bellowed at her while she danced, "Hell!" and she
waved her hand blindly; a once a young man with immense shoulders and
a red, moist mouth strode on to the dance floor and thrust his hand into
hers with, "Hell! It's Giles! You look wonderful! Where's Cerberus?"
and without getting a reply strode off again, a fixed expression on his
face; he was dressed for dinner and had no tail or hoofs.
Hell had drunk half a bottle of gin before coming; Pinkie, maeta
had
I a wa
iE said she "/'passed out' downstairs
but was always quick to recover; once she'd passed out with a full bottle
of brandy in her hand and when a young man tried to get it out of her grip
she woke up and swiped him across the face with it, then passed out again.
She had a boy-friend known as Cerberus because he was always 'at the gates
of Hell';
his pek
Wad
habit Ef going to the wrong house for a
party and staying there all night. : He had a mother universally called
'moms' who sent him a packet of fifty pound-notes every month E which
he was in the habit of 'handing. out to people' when he got them; 'moms'
appeared in London rarely but when she did she had a 'three-day drunk'; once
she'd vomited her false teeth down the lavatory and pulled the chain
that was in Belgravia on a Sunday morning, and by the time she E got in
Sanilary ro fish rkam ouk of He sewes
touch with the smag people/the teeth were just passing under Hyde Park
were guita
Corner; they S
K unharmed, and the joke Ft
Eutting into
circulated afterwards
that 'moms' had been putting
other
people's business again'.
Hell hd cpme as a nanny-goat with a little fluffy tail which was


isse 412-
only partly there now, and a: flimsy white beard was stuck under her chin
so that sometimes when she had her eyes closed she looked like an
Armenian priest. Theg/dancingonn wn a kind of banquetting hall at the
top of an imposing flight of stairs, where people say and drank; the long
ovet tta
windows opened md tent mt on to a balcony where
Mall; cont
the band was mounted high up on a
platform B
in tiers nearly to the ceiling; E there were
glowing lights all round the dance-floor;
many of
had been pulled over or their wires torn, and there were
evergulare.
broken glasses and forgotten hand-bags a
The bar was working at a ferocious speed, with all the drinks
prepared in rows; a number of rollers had been installed, operated by the
ready;
bar-waiters, on which A the drinks stoodf when you took a glass the
waiter gave the roller a slight turn and the gap you LE made
filled;
likewise, when empty glasses were to be returned they were put on a roller
that worked the other way, and the bar-man rolled them towards him to
wash them up. But after an hour or so this system had turned in on itself;
filled glasses were being taken haphazardly from anywhere on
the roller, so that the waiter had to lean, swearing quietly under his
breath, and put dE newly-filled glasses in the haphazard gaps; and then,
having taken a drop or two himself, he would move the roller a bit too
smartly towards. the customer and push a few of thè end ones over the side
of the bar; also a customer discovered that all the rollers worked both
ways and that there were interesting results if he gave one of them a
push or two towards the bar-man. This grew into a sport and a police-
officer had to be called up from the street; he took his helmet off and
was at once surrounded
who said he
have a tail and
IJital
by people
must
hoofs,
TTTT


and pinned hair and fur on to him from behind. He suggested paralysing
the action of' 1 the rollers in some way', to which the head barman said he'd
had
like to bloodywell paralyse the guests, one by one. The man who alhito on
the idea of revolving the rollers the wrong way said that the head barman,
Raving C
lost control of the steering wheel' and should have his
licence endorsed, 'the bastard.' He was a big, flushed, burly man with
immense dewlaps, and a deep county accent. It was surprising that the
policeman didn't touch him
but somebody in the crowd said that the
police didn't like arresting 'big' men, this man being something 'big'
in politics.
Suddenly a small, slim young man pushed through the crowd and,
clutching the policeman by one of his chest-buttons, shouted, "Arrest me 9
I'm quper!" And the policeman said, "Do you mind
jgst taking your hands off my button?"
"Listen to that
he made a
proposal!" the young man shouted back.
He - KHE E HEE E
Theré was a smiling throng round the bar, and glasses were being
smashed on the floor. The policeman was lost sight of, and a game of
tail-pulling started; nearly everyone's tail was off in a jiffylo
"I've got an elephant!" came a cry.
"Bag's a pony!"
Dear SE "I've got the sweetest little deer!" CR
But
In the body of the hall there were still many tec tails
buffalo-tails, donkey-tails, cow-tails and golden horse-tails; the hoofs
were of every colour and design
some meze wooden etog others high-
heeled, shoes adapted, others short rubber boots with hair painted on them;
one man had a great hairy hump on his back and a camel-cloth; a woman had


come dressed as a giraffe with two little a horns between her ears
and a blouse coloured orange with dark spots. Most of the women had
taken advantage of the required animal-element and were without skirts;
some had dyed or hair-covered knickers, ompwisthmstockingspzom others
wore tights of every colour like Pinkie's. Hanni suddenly appeared at
the top of the stairs in perhaps the most fantastic costume of the evening:
she was a zebra, striped all over, atandow
e in
such a thorough way that her black eyebrows meeting together over her
nose looked like another stripe; she had two vast ears and a long, thick
tail which she could operate and turn one way or the other without touching
it, directly. She came in supported by Clockwork who was also a faun, but
without the red kisses that had been painted all over Granville. A crowd
collected round them atmrnce cheering and lifting their glasses to Hanni;
she autinam laughed as if she'd had her full share of Clockwork's
whisky, P heziotcifiten while Clockwork softly and expertly pilotted her
through the drunks; a high-heéled shoe suddenly appeared and then a bottle
of champagne; Hanni 'was being invited to drink out of the shoe, but she
shook her head with a grimace; the champagne was poured into the shoe
unsteadily and then it spurted out of the toe in a fizzy spray, through a
hole. Stddenty AMI
reckapsherehimseTESLroMards"Hanny mdssatd=s
goanymiers 2 o - A
a - you ac kwehmabracary you-toveky-phecer? Clockwork took/all t with
a slight, easy smile, his eyes seeking out the people he knew; then
Granville saw him usher her to one of the tables where there was a
quiet group; people stood up and shook 'hands with her, none of them in
seemed to anhounce thar
uheme, Very
dress.
tay
fancy
Thay
in -heir eittla card-plaging ircle,
gecial people,
la Fke Poisfermumess all roun tam.


WONY 415.
Elizabeth looked superb, her hair done up in a kind of mantilla,
with long ear-rings; she wore a long black gown and had made no effort
at fancy dress apart from a flimsy horse-hair tail, also black, that
hung from a lace bow at the back. Pip whirled her round the floor
at a breathless spedd. The band looked down from their tiers in a
gingerly way, not showing the slightest amusement and seeming to go
higher and higher as the evening went ono
Pinkie said that Clockwork's set regarded fancy dress as an
'uncool' thing to do; they wore dinner jackets and their expressions
were tired and casual, as if (but only as if) from repletion of the
senses; she said that 'pallor' was 'the thing' now-- -you couldn't even
sunbathe when you found yourself in the south of France; you had to
look 'fainting'. Hell was more or less in: this set but she danced
too much; if she could just sit and 'sort of wilt' at a card table
for four or five hours in the evening she would qualify. Hanni's
brilliant zebra costume stood out in the dark card-room like a precious
carpet; Pinkiy said that this was quite all right because Hanni, being
'exotic', could do nothing 'uncool', shewas alnost pure decoration.


BOOK II
CHAPTER 8.
Philip Granville was born in Abbott's Road in West Ham, not far
from where he lived now; his parents had moved there from Bethnal Green
just before the 1914 war, when there were still traces of the old village,
though even then there were few. When they moved in there was an orchard
opposite their home but by the time he was born streets covered more or
less the whole district, formed into oblong blocks, one door after another
with a few feet of garden in front for evergreen bushes, then iron railings
and the pavement, stratching for miles, with nearly all the trees felled.
Abbott's Road houses were a better class than those of Bethnal
Green, where the front door opened straight out on to the pavement and the
streets were much longer and bleaker; also the houses of Bethnal Green
were smaller, with a tiny asphalt yard in the back instead of a garden.
Abbott's Road had quite nice back-gardens. Some of the old village trees
were still intact there, by an oversight or perhaps by the contractor's
mercy, standing in the middle of the narrow strips of garden, huge elms
casting their shade on the roofs and swaying slightly in the wind with a
grand, solemn movement that always seemed to give warning of storms.
There was always talk of pulling them down but it never came to anything.
He noticed as a child that sometimes people talked about them with
grudging dislike, as if they were human, a moral affront one didn't talk
about loudly. "Those damned trees," they would say. "Those blasted trees,
when are they going to pull them down?" But in the summer they would


lean out of the back-windows gazing at them, smoking, the men in their
shirt-sleeves.
The village had been called Abbott's Blenchley. It had straggled
along the banks of a delightful little river called the Abbott which was
dark and rank now, hardly more than a stream and completely hidden by
shops and houses, with the waste from' the Blenchley Road factories pouring
into it. But here and there a grassy bank remained, strangely quiet, like
someone peeping out from the past. An orphanage also remained, and the
original Green behind Abbott's Road, made square now with iron railings
round it, and the Common at the top of the hill near Tatlin Broadway.
The Common was rough, with untidy bushes and little ridges and hillocks,
and as a child he used to go to the centre so that he could look all round
him and see no buildings at' all, only trees and goarse grass.
Cattle still grazed in the orphanage grounds and it was possible
to standiin Tatlin Road, which ran by the side of it, and imagine oneself
in the country. Even Tatlin Road had a country-look at times; there
were only houses down one side and these were detached, standing in their
own gardens.
Tatlin' Broadway was a shacky, crowded shopping-centre where
éverything used to be squeezed into one narrow street - - trams, wheelbarrows,
Woolworths and Marks and Spencérs, cinemas and cake-shops and crowds of
peoplé. He was always excited when they went there on Saturday'afternoons
to do' * thé big shopping for the week. The lights blazed on both sides,
one bright shop-front after another; and people pressed together on the
pavement, talking and smiling, calling after their children in the
wonderful glow. There were long, roofed-in markets leading from dark
archways, like immense corridors with blazing gas-jets, and there one could


see everything, vegetables, toys, clothes, furniture, sweets and tall
boxes of biscuits and shining glassware all in a massive array, while the
market-men's voices rang out, exhorting the women to buy, "Now come on,
sweetheart, you won' 't get a chance like this again!"
One always came back from Tatlin Broadway loaded with bags;
everything would be put out on the table first, then checked with the
shopping list and put into the larder. His mother would mix a cake for
Sunday, while the fire shone white-hot in the grate, before they all went
down to the local Co-op for a dance or whist-drive; these usually took
place at a school at the end of the road, called Abbott's Road Junior
School, where he and his brothers went until they were eleven.
At the end of Abbott's Road there was still the village inn from
two hundred and fifty years before, with a cobbled yard in front of it.
The river ran behind, at the foot of the garden, where there were tables
and a bowling pitch in the summer. Even the stables were still there:
also the Smithie, in a small barn, shaded by a huge oak. He always heard
the hammering from his classroom in the junior school, which was exactly
opposite; and sometimes he would go across and watch the horses being
shoed. He was always astonished that they didn't cry out, having long
hails driven into their feet. They stood there pdacidly, old cart horses
with ifat bellies and lovely long manes; blinking and shaking the flies off,
their bright coats twitching, with one leg tucked up, while the trams
rocked and screeched outside. That was about ten years before the 1939 war.
Afterwards one saw few horses about, unless they were the huge brown dray-
horses that were still kept by some of the breweries for old times' sake.
The stables were torn down after an incendiary bomb caught one of hhe
timbers during an air-raid. Also the junior school was removed by a


land-mine in 1944. All the windows in the street were blown out when
that land-mine fell and the road was knee-deep in rubble for nearly a
week afterwards. The windows of the inn had been blown out, too, and
much of the roof destroyed. But the tiles were put back carefully and
it all looked much the same as before, except that it was cleaner, like
everything else in the district, without the old griminess, and the
cobbles in front were removed to make an ealier parking space for cars.
The walls in Abbott's Road before the war were more smoky and dingy, and
this had given them a more mysterious look:
Every house was divided into flats, one upstairs and one down,'
and his family used to live in an upper one. The back-rooms looked across
the gardens and were level with the thickest branches of the great elms.
They' were hot and tiny, and all the family-lifé went on in. them. Along
rails over the fireplace handkershiefs and socks were hung to dry, and in
front there was a brass fender where his father's slippers were left to
warm before he came in from work. In the middle of the room there was
a table big enough for eight people at a squeeze, with. a thick brown cover
over it, under a tasselled gas-light. And along one wall was a big
dresser. where all the crockery showed, and opposite this, set in the wall
over the back stairs, was the larder, where he and his brother hid when
they were playing hide-and-seek. In that larder there were bags of dried
fruit that his father brought home from the docks on Friday hights.
He and his brother did, their school-work in the back room,
spreading their books over the table and telling each other "Shut up!"
now and then or "Put a sock in it!" Next door, by the. larder, there was
a scullery with, a deep copper for boiling clothes, and a gas stove. His
mother had the boiler removed, to the distress of the landlord, but soon


after the war started the rest of the street followed-suit; she was often
quicker in her ideas than other people. She said the boiler was a
'blasted old-fashioned thing' and 'the only creatures who liked it were
the mice!'
Trams ran along at the end 'of the street and he could hear their
heavy clanging noise from where he slept. Opposite his window there was
a line of roof that stretched uninterrupted the whole length of the street.
Everything was regular and fixed like this. There were chimney-pots at
regular intervals and beyond them the empty sky. But even so the street
had a small, i intimate look sometimes and on' summer evenings when the sky
was angry and low it would seem to be indoors, éxciting, as if an enormous
glass roof had been constructed over it, like the Crystal Palace. And
when there was thick snow it looked like a tiny village-street. He hated
people to come out and shovel the snow into'the gutter, which they nearly
always did, making nasty black marks on the pavement; but then sometimes
the snow came again and made what they did ridiculous. One day the
Crystal Palace burst into flames and he went out into. the street and saw
the glow of its fire rising and falling in the sky, making the evening red.
The street was nearly always quiet, like the countryside. Now and
then, in the evening, especially in the winter, there came the sound of
a piano from behind. drawn curtains on the other side, hesitant and out of
tune, melancholy like someone crying, without an audience. He and his
sister, younger than he was, slept in the apare 'room overlooking the street,
while their two brothers shared a bigger room overlooking the side-yard,
where drains gurgled all day.
One of the family got to a university --d that was a great event;
it was his eldest brother, and all hopes were centred on him, as the


cleverest of the four. Granville tried to repeat the success but failed.
His other brother went into a stockbroker's office at the age of seventeen
and later became quite a successful business-man.
In: a way Granville had an easier time then either of his brothers.
They felt protectively towards him and were always trying to groom him
and prepare him for the world. Both he and his sister basked in grown-up
adoration. By the time they were tén and twelve his brothers were already
bringing money into the house. The first struggles were over and things
felt safer.
Through his brothers he met middle-class people when he was only
a child, so that he came to know sooner than they did that outside.
Abbott's Road there was a world quite different from his own. He was
bettèr prepared for the shocks than they were.
After the university his eldest brother was almost crushed. He
became a drunk and went down to Abbott's Road asking for money. He had
filled Granville with his dreams of what life could be like outside
Abbott's Road. It was to be so glorious! Then the dreams collapsed, or
rather they were worn slowly down, and he almost went to pieces. But then
as suddenly he mended and became quiet and sober. He started a family
and took up a job with a mining company in South Africa, in ma thematics.
His learning always intimidated Granville.. He had a natural grasp which
he, Granville, couldn't initate. As for his sister, she married and he
hardly saw her now. Sometimes he remembered her quiet face from his
childhood and wished he'd married a girl from Abbott's Road.
The family often used to go over to Bethnal Green when they were
children to see his father's family. At first they used to go every


Saturday night. Life was more in the open at Bethnal Green; there were
ragged children everywhere, in loud, scrambling groups. And the streets.
looked wider and more hollow, flattened out to the sky, with a raw, smoky
air that grimed everything and yet made it like a new lurid countryside,
iron-coloured and dusty, very still and solemn like a strange ghastly and
fascinating monument. The rooms there were dark and small, and in the
summer people sat in their doorways or on benches put out on the pavement,
the women suckling their babies. At night about ten o'clock old women
with laced-up boots used' to shuffle down to the off-licence for their jug
of stout. His grandmother used to pull the shawl roundi her shouldèrs and
set off with her flower-painted jug gripped tight in her hand, her lips
pursed mutely together and an obstinate look in her eyes. She was small
and pale, with an extraordinary iron obstinacy.
After the pubs closed there were usually fights, too. The police
kept out of the district on the whole, and it was a law to itself. Thére
was the smell of cooking from the faggots-and-peas-pudding shop round the
corner, and outside the pub where his uncle went there was always a man
with a horse-and-cart selling cockles and winkles; he used to call out,
"COCK-les end WINK-les!" in a sing-song voice like someone yodelling.
The trams rumbled past with their yellow lights, up on the big road, where
the darkness of these streets, that rose and fell in deep hills as if they'd
been poured on to the earth like lava, ceased for a time. The streets
were always dim at night with a wonderful mysteriousness, because the lamps
were few, much fewer than at Abbott's Road. It was still really the
Victorian world, whereas Abbott's Road belonged to the era of the first
war when people. wnated to end the old scrambling life. His mother's
ambition had always been to achieve the new order, of clean streets and


doors that remained closed. She said the words 'Bethnel Green' with a
touch of contempt, as she said 'King George's Dock', where his father worked.
She wanted an end to the ould rough life. And those were her words for
roughness.
In Bethnel Green there was a dusty, vagabondish, warm atmosphere. T
When he was a baby the women still wore wide hat ts and veils over their
faces, and gaitered boots which they used to do up with eye-hooks. The
men wore dark suits with high. collars and bowler hats.
Going over to Bethnel Green on Saturday nights was an unquestioned
habit at first, but his mother always seemed to want to draw her children
back from the life there, with a certain grim distaste. And he hated
going there more and more, as if in obedience to her. He and his sister
would be taken while the older brothers stayed at home. Even as a child
he felt his mother was giving him and his sister a silent directive about
Bethnel Green life. She joined in it, singing and laughing, but she seemed
to be telling them, as they kept close to her, that she was reserving
another future for them.
They all crowded into one tiny, stifling room
his cousins,
his grandmother, Aunt May who was his father's sister, and sundry husbands
and other sisters. The men were slow and blinking, except May's husband.
Granville went there with a divided fascination even as a child, beeling
the division in his mother.
Aunt May, next to his father in age in a family of eleven, was a
kind of queen to them all. She had golden hair which she did in braids,
and a soft, long, beautiful face. Sometimes he watched her take out
her braids until she stood there like a child with golden hair down to the
middle of her back. He adored her with that haunted physical passion of


childhood. He followed her wherever she went, listening to her voice,
that seemed to -be eternal. She shouted everything, her head lifted up,
with moist, red lips, but her voice never lost its gentleness; she sèemed
to be crying or singing. She swore with nearly every sentence, with a
deep, ribald look in her eyes. The name 'May' always had a special sound,
seeming to cover things deep in the past of the family, like a wonderful,
golden memory of something long ago, not a person at all. She and his
father were the closest in the family; he had a clean, wholesome look
which May admired, and when he appeared in the doorway she would shout,
"Well, bless my arse! There's Alfred! Come and give your sister a kiss,
duck!" Everything she said had a tone of rich, sad, understanding love.
Together she and his father used to smile at the rest of the family for
being 'doughy'. They were both quick, with the best looks as well.
Granville's father was spellbound by her like everybody else, though they'd
grown upitogether, and a dreaming look came into his eyes when he said
'old May'. She used to make lavish suppers, and once he heard his mother
ask as they were going back home, "Where the devil does old May get the
money to do all that?" His father said she'd always been the same. She'd
got the knack:
May would swing him up in the air when he was a baby s0 that he
caught his breath, then hold him above her and shout, "He belongs to May,
doesn 't he, the little bugger, eh? Eh?", her eyes flashing. Outside,
dark smoke would drift across the street from a shunting yard round the
corner. Men would pass in heavy boots, from work, with silver chokers
round their necks. Then she would turn and shout at one of his cousins,
"Now put that bloody iron down!" or "For Christ's sake leave off, I'll put
my hand round your mouth in a minute!" The irons were on the stove and


her two sons used to pick them up when they were feeling devilish, and menace
people with them. Yet her voice seemed to encourage them.
By,the kerb there were carts with their shafts up, and in the next
street there were stables for the horses. May's eldest son worked on a
cart when he was old enough and sold vegetables. His legs were weak when
he was a child and he had to wear iron struts. He was big-boned, with' a
bulbous nose and a rather adenoid way of speaking, and ne was always getting
into trouble. He was clumsy and lanky. His father used to take him into
the back-yard and give him a good hiding with his belt, and come back
smiling. - All the children had pale, sunken faces but clear and quick
eyes. The beatings had no effect on him and he slouched about insolently
when they were over. May used to say between her teeth, "That boy's a proper
little sod!"
The last time Granville saw May was when he was about sixteen, in
Abbott's Road. She'd come on a visit and he went downstairs with his
mother and father to see her off. The Saturday evening visits had stopped
by that.t time. It was a summer evening and she was wearing a light hat and
a print dress,, rather loose and flowery. He could still remember watching
her back as she walked slowly away from them down the street after saying
good-bye. She had an easy, soft walk. Only it was a little stiffer now,
compared with her young days. And as if she knew what they were thinking
she stopped and turned round to them with a smile, and and at the same time
jaunty. Her cheeks were smooth and. slightly flushed, as always. Her
eyes had a steady, dark gleam and there were wisps of light brown hair
over her brow. And she said, putting her hand lightly on her hip, "Not
too bad, is she?" Then she walked on and didn't turn round again.
Her favourite swear-word was 'bleed'n'. "Mind my bleed'n corns!"


she would cry if one of the children came too near. This word had a
vicious, forbidden sound to his ears. His mother forebade its use at
Abbott's Road and only said it herself, shyly, when she was with May.
She would try to loosen up in May's company. She would lean forward and
talk with narrowed eyes, using all the swear-words she could think of.
"I said to her, I said, now don't you come your sodding larks with me,"
she would murmur. She had a delicacy that was crushed when she used
these words deliberately. She needed to be angry, but in May it was an
understood manner of speech. It ran in. the family, perhaps, for his
father was the same. He was fond,of the words 'shit-house', applied to
people. "He's a real shit-house," he would say during one of his dockyard
stories, and his mother would lower her eyes and murmur reprovingly, "All
right, King George's dock " At other times she would say, "That's
enough, Bethnel Green!" His father would look at her with his mouth
open and his eyes bewildered, as if unconscious of what he'd said.
Sometimes May would talk about her husband. "I do love my Sid,"
she would say. "He's lovely! I don't know what I'd do without that.
bugger!" And, "Sid does me good!" They never seemed to quarrel. Sid
was a lean, handsome man, not unlike Granville's father to look at, and
on Saturday nights he set out to get às drunk as he could. They would
all start drinking at the pub, with the children waiting outside eating
potato-crisps and sipping ginger beer. Then at closing time everybody
would pour out, stumbling and singing. There would be froups of people
all along the road, rolling and bumping into each other. Sid would always
bring some more beer home with him, in bottles. The men would. fall about,
leaning over the women and shouting. Usually Sid looked for someone "to
take into the yard'. He always liked a fight with bare fists when he was


drunk and he. would choose one of the men who might be getting 'nasty'.
Together they would go out and there would be sounds of scuffling from
the yard, and dull blows. Granville and his sister would cling to their
mother, trembling. Then Uncle Sid would come back, smiling as he did
after beating his son, and say, "He's out!" He was always the victor and
once or twice left the other man quite anconscious in the yard. After a
time the other man would return with a bleeding nose or a black eye, sober.
May had a daughter called Eve, who was a little older than
Granville and was a special friend of his sister! May always called her
'young Eve', in the' same lingering way as she talked about hèr husband.
From the earliest times May and Eve went shopping and did the housework
together, and were allies in everything. There was the same softness in
Eve as in her mother, and one could even see in her, as a child, some of
the jauntiness as well. She protected her mother against the boys in the
family and hated Bethnel Green in the same spirit as Granville's mother did.
She had the same kind of delicacy in her, too. She never swore like the
others and had a gracious, quiet manner. On Saturday nights she would
kay. the supper. in the kitchen and see the youngest children to bed. Now
and then someone would ask, "Where's young Eve?" There was a great deal
of sadness in her eyes, and she gazed at things for a long time as if trying
to see : their méaning. She was a little ashamed of her lolling brothers,
who said 'bu'er' instead of 'butter'. Granville's mother used to imitate
them on . the way home from Bethnel Green sometimes: "'Bu'er, bu'er, wa'er,
wa'er!' Those boys are proper gentlemen, aren't they?"
Annt May had a special game for the boys- of the family, to chasé
them round the room and make a sudden dive for their trousers, to catch
their 'little winkles'. Then she would hold up her hand, showing them


her thumb sticking out between her fingers, and cry, "I got it! I got it!"
And the boys always looked down at their trousers, half-believing. This
game excited him. One evening, without any consciousness of what he was
doing, in the passage-way near the door, he suddenly stopped while she
was chasing him and turned round to face her as if to say, 'You needn't
chase me, it's yours for the asking!' She stopped, too, and raised
herself up slowly, gazing at him with a slowly dawning expression; then a
look of utter disgust came into her eyes, the only one he ever saw, and
she walked slowly away.
Eve was the only one of the family he'd seen since the war, She
lived near Wimbledon now, in a suburb like the U.K. Compound in Basrah,
with a husband and four children. Her cheeks were rosy now and she was
quite plump. Much of the sadness had gone out of her eyes but they still
had a' baffled, searching look: Aunt May had died some years before,
suddenly. Whenever Granville talked to Eve he saw flashes of her mother's
face in her and almost gasped. There was the old rich tone, and the
jauntiness. It was in the way she lifted up her head sometimes, smiling,
with bright eyes, when she made a joke or shouted at her children, seeming
to encourage them just as her mother did. Her children were quiet and
well cared for, with her rosy look. She'd coolly made it the ambition
of her life to get May and the rest of the family out of Bethnel Green,
and she'd succeeded. The 1939 war gave her the chance, when the bombing
got really bad. She levered them slowly out of the district they loved,
from the tiny dark house they belonged to. By that time she and her
father were earning decent money and she found the Wimbledon house. It
was a detached house and nobody could imagine May living there. But she
loved it and even started looking after the garden. After her death Sid


moved away and Eve was now alone with her own family. She had a: spotlessly
clean home, with nice furniture, not'at all suburban in taste.
Eve turned to him once when he went over for tea and said, "Do you
know, I can't' help feeling swindled' with life?
Do you "know what I mean?
I feel I've missed something - been swindled out of it! Perhaps I'm just
getting old!" May's shadow, jaunty and sad at the same time, came into
her face' for a moment. "Then I think it might have been the war. But I
don't know ---! I've got everything I want but I'm not satisfied and I
don't know what it is!"
Her husband said he thought it was the war. It had taken five
years off people's lives, he said. But she wasn't satisfied wit th this.
Granville thought he understood her:
But her husband denied it. They
had everything they wanted, he said, and they must be grateful; there were
other peoplé in the world, many of them, less fortunate than they were!
"But i wasn't thinking about other people," Eve said quietly. "I
was thinking about myself! And I'm sorry to say it I don't care' about
other people! We're always being told about other people, it seems."
And she gave her husband a sharp look.
At: Tatlin Broadway theré were- two cinemas, one of them like a huge,
gilt palace inside with thick twirling columns and an organ that came out
of the ground. Sometimes there was a stage show as well, and once even
a circus. He used to be taken there once a month or so, usually on
Saturday afternoons for the one o'clock performance. But sometimes his
mother would take him and his sister to the other less grandiose cinema on
a week-day; the fact that it wasn't huge and gilt like the other one seemed
to affect the film and made it less convincing for him.


Once when he was about thirteen his father came home helplessly
drunk, on a Friday night after he'd been paid. He had to crawl up. the
stairs and made a frightful clattering noise. It was two or three hours
after his usual time and Granville and his sister were already in bed.
They heard their mother rush down from the back-room and shout from the
top of the stairs, "God Christ almighty, look at this!" Then she said
in a scolding voice that sent a shiver down their spines, "Come on!
Come on!", and more quietly, "What the devil have you been up to?" They'd
never heard her speak to their father like this before - just as if he
were a child! And-so she went on while he made: a grotesque mumbling noise,
trying to keep his balance on the stairs and pulling the rods out. "Look
what you're doing!" she cried. "Why, you rotten drunken bugger!" But at
the same time her voice was mild, with pity and a touch of rapt interest.
- "You ought to be damned-well ashamed of yourself!" Then one of Granville's
brothers came out. and helped him up, saying quietly, "Come on, dad, that's
all right." He wasn't a bit alarmed and after that their mother said
little. She only murmured, "I don 't know, I don't know!" to herself while
their brother hurried up and down the corridor getting hot water and a
face-flannel, after they'd got him on to a bed. Neither Granville nor
his sister dared get up. They only sat quite still on their beds staring
before them, their mouths open, nudging each other when there was a new
sound. They heard their mother say briskly in the bedroom, "Turn over!
It serves you damned-well right!" and their brother murmured, "That's all
right, mum, leave him alone now."
Apparently; his face was covered wi th glood because his glasses had
been smashed. There were still tiny pieces of glass embedded'in his fore-
head. and their brother spent a long time getting them out, with his usual


patience, and kindly good will, while his father snored. "He's just had
a good time, that's all," they heard him tell their mother. The next day
they found out that he'd fallen down the whole length of the stairs at
Tatlin Road station; these thairs were very steep, and were edged with
little steel studs. He'd landed on the asphalt at the bottom and said
that as far as he could remember he'd slept there for some time. Anyway,
no one had helped him up and he'd had to crawl home on all fours -
"keeping to the wall of course," he said. He waited whenever he had a
road to cross, looking left and right as the safety-first posters advised.
His knees were cut and his trousers torn. "It was that damned cider
did it!" he said. The next morning, it being Saturday, he brought tea
round to everybody. Granville took his in silence and didn't say good
morning; this was about the time when his horror of Abbott's Road was
beginning. His sister asked quietly, "How do you feel, dad?" for there
were scars and a graze on the upper part of his face. Then Granville
regretted not saying hullo and laughed. But their father was ashamed,
like a child. He went about the house quietly and cooked a huge breakfast
of sausages, eggs, tomatoes, bacon and fried bread for them all. In a
way the episode was a fling into the old life, which he never repeated
again; or perhaps it was only the cider!
The visits to Bethnel Green gradually stopped. Now and then they
went back into the mystery of the old life. He remembered being taken
to a men's club and seeing music-hall turns on a tiny stage; the room was
tall and Victorian with a massive fire-place, and the ceiling had elaborate
plaster-work. all over it. Everybody joined in the songs that always
made,him feel say
"Holdyyour hand out, you naughty boy"", "My old man
2 "said foller the gan!" and "Who were you with, last night?" They were


rollicking and generous, withisuch unbéarable tenderness and sweetness
in them. The gas-lamps had gaudy tasselled shadès with beads, and the
room had a hot, dark, solid feeling.
Every night when they went to bed Grantille's mother took him and
his sister to her lap, standing by the bed while they kneeled on it,
leaning against her, and said the Lord's prayer in a soft voice, with
another little prayer that went, 'God bless mummy and daddy, uncles and
aunties, soldiers and sailors, tinkers and tailors, gran'mas and gran'dads.'
The God she spoke to seemed a different God from the one in church. This
God in her prayer was deep in the past, of enormous volume like the sun
or the wind or the dawn, with unlimited patience and pity, looking after
everything in a kindly way.
When his father talked about the docks, they also seemed far in the
past, though he might have been there only an hour before. He would talk
about the biting winds that came down the river past King George's wharf,
and. the grimy brick walls of Silvertown, and the swaying tram that took
him through Blackwell tunnel soon after dawn every day, while the sky was
heavy with smoke and river-mist. He would stand at the back door for a
moment after he got up in the morning, gazing into the blackness of the
garden that was like a great beast outside. His movements as he made tea
and put scalding water into his shaving bowl all had something devout
about them, with an extraordinary relish and glow. He would stand by the
kitchen table with his cup of tea, his eyés lost as he blew the steam
away before each sip, making a loud sucking noise of which he was unaware.
Then there was the brisk walk down to the trams and the swaying voyage
through the dim, mysterious streets of West Ham and Plaistow and Canning
Town, with people just stirring about, yawning and stamping their feet,


muffled up.
His mother always talked about the old days in a grudging numbed
way. "Some people talk about the good old days," she would say, "not
me!" But when she talked about her father, whose nickname had been the
gent', there was a sing-song richness in her voice that reminded him of
Aunt May.
She had a dream of what it was like to be rich. It was a
compound of all the ordinary things whose taste and touch were cosy
the table-cloth that went on for tea, the breat-and-cheese and pickles at
bed-time, the sound of the crowds at the Tatlin dog-track on Thursday
evenings like a vast sigh drifting across the back-gardens, the crackling
of Guy Fawkes fires on the Fifth of November, the fillets of plaice she
sometimes brought in for tea as a special treat, the front-room which was
used on Sundays when there were visitors with its deep armchairs and
settee and bowl of nuts on the table while the street lay silent outside
and the sound of the muffin-man with his bell came through the window
closer and closer." Richness was the accumulation of all those little
moments into one long pause without any more worrying or skimping. She
couldn't believe that rich people had any worries; some people had it
perfect! That was her dream and she stuck to it grimly. Money solved
everything.
In the old days, she said, people were - just. goods and chattels'.
You never dared to raise your voice against the 'higher-ups's she said.
You had to bow down to nearly everybody to your own parents, to. policemen;
to shop-keepers, even to well-dressed passers-by in the street! Evéry
little pleasure was a privilege in those days! A privilege to be employed
at half-a-crown a week! She'd been sent out to work at. the age of twelve,


working as a kitchen-scivvy, and her mother had waited at the corner
every Friday night to take her half-a-crown.
Granville was taken to see his maternal grandmother a short time
before she died, and remembered a tall, gloomy and yet awesome and
fascinating room full of knick-knacks and velvet curtains and lacework.
She wouldn't part with her money and died on it, they said. One of the
brothers called Charlie, a regular in the army, whom Granville's mother
called 'doughy' ', cut the money out of her mattress a few hours after she
died and went oversea back to his unit with it. Nobody knew how much
there was but it was said between fifty and a hundred pounds, quite a tidy
little sum for those days. Other people said that the old girl couldn't
have saved so much because 'the gent' liked his drop too much. Every
Friday' night when the noney was in his pocket the gent used to leave the
house in a top hat, with a smart cane in his hand, tall and impeccably
dressed, and would return after midnight 'as drunk as a fiddler's bitch';
the children would héar him pass their door in his socks. He never got
a speck of dirt on his evening clothes, it was said. Like Granville's
father he used to work at King George's Dock; when he was drunk he called
dockers 'a lot of bloody riff-raff and bugger the lot of them!' He was
greatly loved at his work and it was said that he could bring barges into
dock like a magician. At the end of his life he was a tug-man and the
rough work, which exposed, him to river-mists and gof, killed him.
Granvillb's mai ther was a slim, good-looking man with smooth, dark
hair. He loved the huge elms that swayed with the wind in the Abbott's
Road back-gardens, and said he'd like a forest full of them outside the
window; he used to lean on the window-sill gazing out on summer evenings.
Other peoplé's gardens were always mysterious; some were well cared-for and


others like tropical scrub; Some had an unknowable, dark look because
their owners were unknown. These gardens were most exciting on Guy Fawkes
night when tall bon-fires were lit and fireworks whizzed into the air,
lighting up the still trees, and sparks drifted about, and silver
St. Catherine's Wheels hissed ând whirled round and round while all the
windows glittered and there was the sound of children's voices and repeated
crashes and smart bangs and pops that were like a man frantically beating
on drums in the sky! Effigies of Guy Fawkes with a wide-brimmed black
hat, his jacket swollen out like a pumpkin, were raised up and then let
fall with a last reclining movement into the flames, which always made.
him catch his breath.
Granville's father only had to think about flowers at night to fall
asleep. Sometimes on the tram-journey to work he would start planning
next year's garden in his mind. "I think of all the colours," he would
say, "and I feel all right!" He was against picking flowers for the
house and said the garden was a place for flowers to life and breathe in.
Half-way up Tatlin Road, opposite the orphanage grounds, he had an
allotment for vegetables, one of many little narrow plots covering a whole
field that.always looked untidy and bleak. In the summer Granville and
his sister would go up and help him with the lettuces and radishes for
Sunday tea. They would bring everything back in a wheelbarrow. Sometimes
Granville lay in the sun with his eyes closed, at. the side of thé allotment
where there was a grassy path, listening to the oak-trées swaying in the
breeze on the other side of the road and imagining himself in hilly,
spacious country far from London with the sea glittering néar by. He
connected the countryside with summer weather and never thought of it
a otherwise.


There was a bitter scrape for money'at one time, during the
Depression; his father was laid off'at the docks. Strangely, his mother
stopped grumbling about money as she usually did, and was mute and pale
instead. She was rigid with an old fear that chilled her bones and
"plunged her in doom and shame. There was a superstitious horror of
unemployment in Abbott's Road, and while this period lasted they got no
visits from the neighbours at all. Unemployment was like smallpox or
fever.
Uncle Sid, May's husband, said that the Granvilles were fools to
keep their children at school so long. "I'd give them education!" he
said in a vehement way. "They won't thank you for it! They'll only
turn up their noses at you!" His parents were quièt and firm. They
listened, and his mother nodded her head in agreement. But in his father's
eyes there was a gleaming, distant look, almost smiling, impervious to Sid's
arguments.
But things got better just before the war; the old pinched feeling
went. His two brothers were now at work; and the whole district round
Abbott's Road seemed to share the bell-being. The district had a life quite
its own: the lending library glowed cosily in the evenings, and sometimes
the street-lamps gave the impression with their intimate twinkle of
numberless exciting things about to happen. Saturday evening was the
most exciting, before a dance: his father would hurry up and down the
corridor asking for his cuff-links or a new starched collar, while his
mother sat quietly in the bedroom before the mirror powdering herself with
only a petticoat on, queenly and still. And this -bustle gave everything
a luscious, thriving look, especially in the back-room where the fire
blazed white and the tasselled lamp-shade cast a shrouded-light over the


table. At the school where the dance was held there would be ham-
sandwiches, cakes and lemonade in one of the class-rooms, and someone
would be sprinkling french chalk on the floor when they arrived, and the
women in the cloak-room would be talking and laughing in undertones,
opening and closing their hand-bags with a sharp clicking noise in the
silence before the, band started. The hall would look bare and seem to
be holding. its breath, with chairs along each wall. Once his father was
Master of Ceremonies, and there was nearly chaos. He got the Paul Jones,
the 'spot' and Sir Roger de Coverley mixed up in some way, and in the
raffle the serial-numbers of the tickets in the hat were different from
those he'd Bold to the audience. But it was much more comic than an
ordinary evening and the band stood him three pints of best winter ale in
the pub opposite during the interval, and he could hardly keep to his
feet for the rest of the evening. He preferred to watch people, his
eyes glowing, with a smile from ear to ear, than arrange things:


CHAPTER 2.
Granville's horror of Abbott's Road grew like a ghost over his
life, from outside, independent of him. It happened after he left the
junior school at the bottom of the street; he stopped looking at
Abbott's Road as his natural home. In a few years he was quite torn out
of it and couldn't go back: his consciousness was changed for good.
It wasn't what he'd expected at all. When he was eleven he took
his scholarship to the secondary school eagerly, thinking it would be
much like the school at the bottom of the road, where you were always happy
more of less. He took the exam in a dream. He wrote an eseay about
snakes and what lovely colours they had, though he'd never seen one. And
a few weeks later, at prayers, in the hall with tall windows at one end
and.a parquet floor, the headmaster read out a list of those who had passed
and gave them permission to run home at once and tell their mothers. It
was a clear, wintry, sun-lit day and everything looked extraordinarily
wide-open to the sky. Sitting on the floor of the hall listening to the
names being read out slowly and clearly he had the impression of a great
flash when the letter G arrived and then, after two or three other names,
he heard 'Philip Granville'. The flash seemed to extend, in an instant,
across his whole future life, that was now quite changed.
When he got home with the news his mother had just finished
cleaning the stairs and the front door was open. He'd run all the way,
along the kerb with one foot on and one foot off, bouncing up and down


with happiness. He called up from the door, "Mum! I won a scholarship!"
She turned slowly at the top of the stairs and a long time passed while
she gazed doin at him in silence, and then she murmured almost in a whisper,
"Oh, my son, you-have : -
That's a good boy! Come upstairs and let me
give you a kiss." And he saw tears beginning to fall down her face.
Then, afterwards, he became aware of Abbott's Road as a locality
for the first time, apart from him. The glow went out. It became
physical: there were just roofs, tram-lines, pavements like a hard picture
in. front of him! A frightful emptiness and drought fell on his life.
The higher school was called a public day school', which meant it
wasn't a real public school but an imitation. And this was the whole
atmosphere, of imitation; conducted by people who didn't know the original,
either. A 'gentleman' was someone who never said anything spontaneous
or rash.
He was miserable as he'd never been before in his life and never
was again. A numbing wretchedness of spirit persisted from hour to hour
every day under the eyes of adults who rarely vouchsafed a glimpse of
their humanity, though there were one or two exceptions - - poor devils
who'd sold their lives to this little fake-castle of ignorance! It was
more an ignorance of the possible graciousness in life than lack of book-
learning, though this was mostly faked, too. Learning was dished-up in
the style of high-class goods not to be touched easily by the sons of
Bethnel Green, Mile End, Stepney and Walthamstow, of whom the school
consisted. The moment he got there he felt the shadow of a kind or
original sin: it was the street where he was born - a matter of
'background'. That word had an unpleasant ring, rather like syphilis.
And this gradually had to be wiped out and the manners associated with it


gradually replaced by an air of half-sneering irony. Those who got on
best' were the boys who locked everything inside them and spoke staccato
little sentences like pettets being spat out of their mouths; also they
had to play sports, though with ascetic grimness -ie muddy and hard-eyed;
even on the playing field relish wasn't allowed. Nothing 'soft': In
the summer there was a choice of two sports, rowing or cricket. Rowing
was frowned-on, perhaps because of the grace a boat had when it skimmed
through the water, like a delicate sheath of wood. The headmaster was
a quiet, charming man who gave the impression of smothering his real life
behind pale, fixed lips; he glanced about him nervously and sometimes
yelled at the top of his voice, between the same fixed lips, as he swept
through the corridors in the lunch-hour, pencil in hand, his, gown flowing
behind him. He had a hard job grooming the sons of working people into
class-habits that weren't even the best class-habits!
The headmaster always. wanted to 'raise the tone', as he called it..
Straw boaters were worn in the summer. There were Field Days, Old Boys'
Dinners and House meetings every Friday evening after school, and houses
called 'Mafeking' or Punjab'. There was a dining hall, a tuck shop, a
chapel with an organ, and once, before the 1914 war, there had even been a
few boarders. The grounds and the school itself, which was Victorian
gothic, red brick, with ivy over the front and mullioned windows, were
quite pleasant. Sometimes they had the air, especially in the evening,
with the tall trees and bright green lawns, of being in the country and of
being really. old. The foundation of the school reached back to Tudor
times'and this was made much of by the headmaster. In a. way, the boys had
to make up for the social disappointments of the teachers.
He lost his confidence. He saw his mother and father as some of


his teachers might see them. The back-room at Abbott's Road seemed tiny
and stifled him. He was bored. The old life was small and uneventful.
Nothing happened in the street; he was always waiting for something new to
happen; a nervous concept of life as on a rapidly moving belt of time was
being implanted in him. He couldn 't read a sentence in a book without his
mind wandering. He'd been given a mind, but it did none of the things
education required it to do. It spent most of its time thinking about
women. Enjoyment was suspect in any case 1 one really had to do better
than enjoying books!.
Abbott's Road was now a kind of prison-yard for him. 'Town' was
the centre of London where everything important want on. In his own
district nothing counted. What people said and what they did hadn't the
slightest influence. The newspapers decided everything; they came to
Abbott's Road from outside, like the radio. Everything came from outside,
informing one about the real state of things! But education had elected
him to a new position ww supposedly, at any rate: he was now among those
who could influence matters! Except that nobody, including himself, really
thought so.
He was always being criticised at school for his-accent. He was
asked how verse could be recited in such a voice. He started having
dreams that his real voice broke through his genteel voice and talked
"obscenities which showed everybody where he 'came from'. Everything was
now part of a map in his consciousness, even his own existence and his
own body. He watched life from outside, in stillness. There was no
further movement in his life. He was bleeding for the-touch of another
creature; there was no one he could speak to any more,after all. The"
language: rof his'motheroand father was foreign. Everybody in the district


was a foreigner. He started to fear going outside the door. The
district was like a huge monument with nothing growing in it - terribly
hard, made of concrete and slate, angular, without a soft curve anywhere.
His whole spirit sank down and everyday was like the opening of a severe
cross-examination. This was so in term-time; during the holidays there
were a few pleasant and even happy days as before. He had a growing
sense of unworthiness and wrong-doing. He felt he hadn't the slightest
human status. He blushed helplessly in front of people and stood
paralysed and speechless with fear, quite giddy, his eyes staring out of
his head. These were some of the glorious effects of education, which
the middle classes were holding up as a passport to health and joy!
Not. that there was any slave-driving at the school. It was quite
liberal, in fact. There was an up-to-date theatre with the best stage
equipment. Russian was taught, béfore most schools started it. The
caning was moderate, but energetic when it happened. One was 'taken to
the bathroom' for a caning. The master ran the length of the bathroom
to get a decent momentum. But this practice was dying out. Granville
had it only once, and went about with four cuts across his arse for a
week afterwards. On the whole, masters shrank from doing it. The
atmosphere was kindly; or rather, it was hesitant, as if nobody was quite
sure of his authority.
His mind was a complete mess. He had no idea what they were trying
to teach him! All he got was the names of things! In history there was
the divine right of kings, mercantilism, the rotten boroughs, the balance
of power, the rise of nationalism, electoral reform, the factory acts, the
Irish question, all in one big dirty heap! Not a face, not a human
creature to be seen! Well, Henry VIII and Mlizabeth were allowed faces


but that was from his first school. Now they were squashed under a Star
Chamber
he never knew what thè devil that was! He got all the
Jameses mixed up. And the word 'Jacobean'
that beat every other
word in the curriculum! It was so like Jacobin', which seemed to mean
something absolutely different, even French! There was also 'Jacobite'.
By association with the French word 'Jacobin', and because of an image
that persisted in his mind of James II escaping from England without his
trousers on, having just thrown the Great Seal (whatever that was) in the
river Thames, he thought bansculottes were the king's supporters, namely,
Jacobites
a bizarre mixture!
He even had the sansculottes fight a pitched battle without
their trousers of course, but perhaps they wore kilts - at Killiecrahkie
against William and Mary. There was another James called the Pretender
but that was best left alone. A sentence he found, 'the grace and
elegance of the Jacobean', had him baffled for over five years. He
couldn't see why bloodthirsty French radicals should be called graceful
and elegant.
But the name that introduced our epoch
ah, that. was something!
The Industrial Revolution! Like a huge cloud so vague and dark that you
could say what you liked about it and it was luck if you were right or not.
That name gave off thousands of others like a heap of rotten garbage
proliferating with white worms. Also there was a new master. He was
going to teach history the modern way! No more kings and queens and
prime ministers - the people had to be studied, the lives of ordinary
people! But that was even worse! They turned into even longer names,
such as Wage Levels, Mortality Rates, Sanitation and Living Conditions!
And, of course, the Industrial Revolution wasn't really a revolution.


But of course not? Did you think that in our high-class school we
actually said what we mean? Oh, no! It was a 'process'. That was
the nâme you used if you wanted to' be really superior adem and under it,
quite inexplicably, there was a little crowd of men', called Arkwright,
Watt, Murdock, Stephenson, jumbled up wi th' spinning jennies, the.Stockton-
Darlington line, a 'Rocket', and God knows what else: Then there were
the 'Factors'. These were the worst of all! When you heard that word you
knew there'd be a list a mile long. The 'Factors' were Speenhamland (but
of course! this was so obvious that he never knew what it was!), Cottage
Craftsmen, Turnpike Roads, Canals, Coal and the Steam Engine! As for the
spinning jenny he didn't even know it was connécted with yarn or cloth in
any way. It was just - well, the spinning jénny, you know! Years later,
by accident, he opened a child's encyclopedia and read that the'wife of a
poor weaver had one day dropped her spinning wheel on the floor and her
husband had noticed how it. spun round and round as it lay there, which
gave him the idea of the first spinning machine; and the wife's name was
Jenny! Simple! But not if you're a bit of a cut above everybody else,
of course you don't tell that sort of thing! And Arkwright had been a
hairdresser! When he heard this he asked himself with astonishment how
a hairdresser had been allowed in such an important-sounadng list of
Factors! A hairdresser - started the Industrial Revolution:
No wonder he felt he was floating above life all the time instead
of léarning about it. He began to get a sense of the world not as men
and women and trees and things like that but a system of names held high
above real life. First the system, then the things themselves! Even
his mother and father changed - they were now little uni its in a vast
'working class'.


It seemed that all life was only an example of something higher
that had no taste, no sound, no heart and no face. And a chill grew
in him.' It was living in a worldc.of ghosts. His mother and father
gradually began to seem a bit childish and innocent in his eyes, and they
felt this new attitude-in him. They lived so déeply and wholly in the
street where, he was born that he now seemed smi in his knowledge of all
the other streets that existed, and the map of names that covered them all--
far in advance -of them! His eyes had been opened! He could see the
whole map on which they were only a tiny mark! At the same time he saw.
that they were better people than himself; better than his teachers, too.
A. frightful neutral misery came into his life.
Hé had the impression éven at the time that he wasn't learning to
think at all, only how to think in a certain way; and hé had an inkling
that perhaps this wasn't the way people had thought in the past or a natural
way of thinking at any time. It was special in some way. He felt he'd
inherited one world through his birth and another one through his education;
and they were different from each other to the point of requiring entirely
new ways of perceiving, even of smelling, seeing and hearing.
There - was only one thing of interest at school a masturbation, 'It
was the great school sport. There was no need to take an examination in
it; everybody would have passed with honours, anyway. But it was still
competitive. A team was started once in which prizes were given for the
wuickest orgasm ma- self-abuse to start from the stop-watch. It was funny
to hear the headmaster talk about'raising the tone' to a stupendous male
whorehouse where a brisk and noisy trade went on all day. Occasionally
the staff issued a warning about "bull-fighting', a euphemism for 'ball-


fighting', in which a group of boys. would tear someone's trousers off
and toss him off, watching his struggles turn into grateful acquiesence.
One boy, a vast rugger-playing 'man', said there was nothing better than
a pound of liver nailed to the wall for the pleasures of a wife. He did
it every evening and went round to the butcher's évery week to get his
'pound of pleasure'.
Sex was the only pleasure school left intact. It was the only
little frail power and dignity left to you. Otherwise you were just a poor,
pale, wilted thing crammed with facts. You didn't have to learn it. It
was something you could actually do yourself, without having some pot-faced
misery telling you you needed more : style: You could do it with your own
hands!
There were a: few serious 'marriages' at school: a couple would
stay together and have an agreement about being faithful to each other.
These affairs sèemed to have more passion and tenderness than one saw
later in life. One famous 'marriage' took place while he was at school
between a good-looking boy nicknamed Strumpelpeter, because of his shock
of blond hair, and another called 'the Gordian knob' because his real
name was Knott and he was reticent and cifficult to fathom. These nick-
names ran through the school and lasted a certain time. One master, a
shy, worried-looking man, was nicknamed 'The Hand' because when he called
out a boy to his'desk to run through an essay he always put his hand up
his trousers and fondled his balls. Another, the geography man, was
called 'The Kipper' because he liked to arganise camping holidays and
would ask any boy he had his eye on to 'kip down' next to him at night.
Boys with real homosexual appetités often did well at their work.
They-didn't ache to get away home as the others did; they lingered in the


changing-rooms and the dining hall afterwards, watching their fellow-
voluptuaries walk by. They lived in an atmosphere of Latin primers and
glowing Victorian rooms with coloured shields on the mantelpiece, and
gas-fires at dusk when there was.extra study, and the smell of stale tea
in the evening from the ki tchens. They had everything they, wanted. But
Granville was among the ma jority whose sexual pleasures at school were only
vicarious, and usually solitary. Only when a local girl's school paid
a courtesy visit did he come to life: he poured a cup of hot tea down the
headmaster's wife's back in his nervousness and blushed 80 much that his
face tingled afterwards. His ears were still bright red when he woke up
next morning. He tripped over people's feet, grinned sheepishly and
gawped at the girls, completely. speechless.
His failing matriculation was the first real blow. There'd been
hopes that he might go to a university, but failing matric put the kibosh
on that! He was too shy even to walk along the street properly and he
spent hours trying to pluck up the courage just to leave the house. . He
blushed and faltered if a passer-by happened to throw him a glance. The
bus-rides to.school were a real torture. He spent five years at school
virtually listening for the bell at the end of each lesson.
His only other pleasure was rebellion. He was known at school
as a 'fire-eater' and 'against' almost everything. He hated England and
he hated the Church. Those were his two platforms. One term-report ended
with the words, 'Lack of patriotism is not enough.' It stung him because
it was true; the cut went home.
He turned 'to' music. He first listened to one or two records his
brothers brought home, then he started going to concerts. Music always
made him feel calm and resolved afterwards. He began to need it like


fresh air - to keep himalive!
He started having what he called giddy fits. He couldn't describe
them because they weren't physical. But they had physical effects. They
always started when he was along. . He might be sitting in a chair reading,
then slowly he would seem to lose connection with the things round him and
would go into a state where his self would actually seem to disappear and
his mind . float high above his body. He banged things furiously to bring
himself back. Or he shouted for the people downstairs. The sight of a
person would restore him to life again at once.
Even to his parents and his brothers and sister he seemed a
stranger now. They looked at him in a puzzled way. The fun he'd always
had with his sister stopped. He gave her' the same look of loneliness
that he gave everyone else.
He went to Cambridge to see his brother and this had a devastating
effect on him. For the first time he actually camé face to face with
that other world he'd dreamed about so much! So his vision of it was
true! It did abound with grace and love, just as his brother had always
promised.
He loved the narrow cobbled- side-streets and walked along King's
Parade again and. again. There was nothing to remind him of Abbott's Road.
Not one grimy wall! The lawns were neatly kept -- extraordinarily bright!
And the quadrangles: of the colleges, enclosed and utterly quiet with - some
of the windows glowing warmly and casting a light on to the cobbles below, were
like a dream :he'd always had but never been able to define! He lived in
one of these rooms on the second floor they were the guests' rooms
and spent hours sitting over+ the fire imagining himself an undergraduate.
While his brother went to lectures he walked'by the river behind the


colleges where everything was laid out like a superb garden and nothing
seemed to, move, even, from a: distance, the riverz shining like glass
between the lawns. The dons had quiet and reflective faces as he'd always
imagined the faces of those who belonged to the other world! Every time
he passed one of them he tried to make his own features as gentle and lost
às possible. He imagined them living magnificent lives with everything
they' said and thought subtle and quiet, their manners always perfect.
They understood all thoughts! No delicacy escaped them. It was as
much as he could do to speak if one of them addressed him!
His brother's college had a fountain in the middle of the front
quadranglé, and the trees near the river were just visible over the roofs.
The scout built him a big fire every evening when he came in, and he took
tea in his armchair, gazing across at the latticed window, a tremendous
luxury. The room, too, was a dream. It was small with a low ceiling
and heavy beams, at the top.of a very narrow wooden staircase. An arched
window overlooked the quadrangle, tiny and high in the wall s0 that little
light came through and the room wasnalways mysterious. By the door there
was a bookcase and near it an ink-stained desk. The carpet was worn but
thick, and there were two great armchairs and a settee. He could think
of nothing more wonderful and wanted to stay in the room all his life! It
was specially marvellous on the second morning when he woke up and found
bright sunlight streaming through the. window on to the carpet so - that
everything.@littered and the whole city outside seemed to exist inside a.
kind of sparkling eternity and to promise extraordinary happenings. during
the day. The traffic had a special sound in the distance and'he felt
sure, by a peculiar premonition, that a room like this vould one day be.
his.


He imagined sitting. in hall at dinner in the evening with a gown
over his. shoulders, and going. back to his room afterwards with a: friend
and sitting talking over the fire all through the night, surrounded by
books and papers, his legs stretched out; they would make tea or cocoa in
the. wooden corridor outside, where the gas-ring was, and make quiet jokes
while the rest of the college slept. He would think about books all day,
and the sun would come glittering through the window; there would never
be a painful thought in his life again!
There was a feeling in him he'd never be able to shake off,
perhaps
that.he couldn't understand things that came easily to other
people! He watched the other boys in hall and wondered how they could
behave s0 confidently, so much as if the world was comprehensible: He
had to work harder than anybody else, so he thought am because he could
understand less!
He was told by his history teacher at school that he must stop
'flying too high' in his essays. When he talked - when something.
interested him - he ran on hotly, in the manner of Abbott's Road. But
that wouldn't do for_school! You had to be neat and cool. So he tried
to write bluntly and to cut his feelings as short as possible.
achieve the history teacher's coolness, which. was only mediocrity,. he
distorted and damaged the thing that was best in him. At the same time
he knew this wasn't natural or good. He began to find that when he wrote
palely, wi th only a: small part.of his energies, he got good marks. So, he
went through all his essays afterwards cutting out the. strong and direct-
sounding words and putting hesitant ones in, like 'on the whole' and 'so
to speak'. and 'perhaps' and 'rather' and 'quite' and 'taking all in all'.
He imitated. what he thought was the necessary cool style. It felt like


blasphemy and self-betrayal.
But while he was sure something was wrong, he knew no other way
of learning. And. he was influenced by his school énough not to be able
to credit anyone he read about with a real life like his own. If he
learned the word accidie or. a phrase liké the night of the soul from a
potted history of the Middle Ages he would never connect them with - the
feelings of emptiness he himself had at Abbott's Road! So he barred
himself from real learning before he started. The moment he set foot
in the world outside Abbott's Road - by going to high school - a
mental world started in him in which his own flesh and experience, not only
his açcent, were flung out of service: both were infra dig!
The attitude grew up in him at this time that his parénts lacked
full moral responsibility for their own actions. Compared with the
people of the higher world, few of whom he 'd met and none of whom he knew,
they were blind to life and were moved along by it in an automatic way.
The people higher up carried about a conscious moral map of the world in
their heads and applied the principles deliberately, while his mother
and father were vague as. to what they stood for. They didn't approach.
other people with a deliberate air. They only did what seemed right to
them, apparently in, blindness, when the occasion arose: but: before and
after such an occasion their morality was hidden. And this didn't.seem
to him a real morality.
Definite perceptual differences began to grow up between. him and. -
them. He no longer. had any idea what it felt like to be them. He
couldn't imagine, for instance, what it was' like to do the same work every
day and live in the' samé street and not ache for something more. He knew


it was possible and he knew he'd felt the same in his early years: but he
couldn't rémember what it was like. How far did his parents have his
insight into things? Had they a deeper or a lesser insight? For while
he attributed a lesser moral consciousness to them, he also suspected
that in their silence there was something deeper he could no longer grasp.
They had a steadiness, both of them, which he knew he'd lost." He relied
on their goodness every day as a constant and unchangeable factor. Yet
he couldn't see it as full moral responsibility. They were 'blind'.
And he had no insight into this blind world' he had .once occupied; he could
only see his childhood like a wonderful landscape in the farthest distance.
The people from the other world looked at you clearly. That is,
their eyes showed a 'quick sensitivity to everything you did. This he
called having a delicate understanding. But in Abbott's Road there was
always a certain vagueness in people's eyes. His own eyes had it, too,
and he began to regret it while he was at school and to try to diminish it,
by pinching his look into wha t he thought was a down-to-earth look. And
there was this vagueness in his work, too,.he thought - - the same thing -
'flying high', as the history-teacher called it. One mustn't fly!
When he' stood in front of someone from the higher world he felt
acutèly and morbidly aware of himself. More than this, he felt that
hidden questions were being asked about him, in the silence of- the other
person's head. Deductions were being made from his appearance. These
questions concerned his true personality, underneath - - what was his
character like? was he clever? was he good? That was what he meant by
their approaching people deliberately, unlike his parents! He was dazzled
by this! It. was a curiosity about other people which he'd never found in
Abbott's Road. He thought of it as an acute appreciation of other people,


though at the same time he was disquieted by the process that took place
inside him when he was faced with it. One thing was clear: the moment he
stood in front of someone from the other world he knew, even without them
speaking, that they were from that world! They created a tense
psychological relation. It was even in the form. .of their eyes, which
had a more scrutinising quality than those he was used to. He was aware,
of middle-class people as creatures entirely distinct from himself whom
he recognised by the state of lowered energy,his best_self neutralised,
into which he at once fell. Their presence was like an invisible wave
paralysing his actions, which he attributed to his not being worthy of
their level of underatanding.
Whenever he met a middle-class person he softened himself unduly,
to the point of lisping. He hung back, smiling and nodding agreement.
He was never at full strength in their. company. Often, far from
attributing 'roughness' to him,as he thought, they put him down as soft in
the head. From about his twelfth year on it became his constant discipline
to curb his real self. - Only with intimate friends did he argue and shout
and' move about freely. But the moment someone from the other world
appeared he went quiet. And all the time he smiled and lisped -he thought
they were divining his real feelings perfectly. He included in that other
world everyone from the local priest to the conservative M.P.'who called
at the door at election-times. They were all 'nice'. There was. something
of. the same awe in his mother's voice when she said someone was 'a real
gentleman'. He was tongue-tied in their présence âs if under a great
beneficent light.
Once he saw a well-dressed man step out of a car with a young girl,
apparently his daughter. "Now are you all right for money, darling?"


the man asked. She, was about to go into a gateway that might have been
a' school or convent., "Yes, thank you," the girl said, "I think so!".
But the man looked into her eyes searchingly and then put his hand in his
pocket. "I think you'd better have a bit more," he said, "to be on the
safe side." It was such a safe world, so exclusive of the terrors. that
went on outside, and for a moment Granville felt included in the safety,
so strong was the atmosphere round the car, the man and the girl: 'She
can't feel naked to the world like I do,' he thought. What a marvellous
life it must be, with someone above you who could provide for everything:
How wonderful never 'to have to aspire beyond your own parents but think of
them as the leaders of your world! Tears came to his eyes as he stood
there. He always remembered the incident as a little image of the world
beyond Abbott's Road in its beneficence and strength. There was also a
touch of cruelty in its exclusiveness and it might well have been this
that brought the tears to his eyes; but he wasn't conscious of it at the
time.
His brother talked glowingly about everyone he knew at college.
It seemed to Granville that his brother was invested with the same bright-
ness as those other people. Granville couldn't inagine his brother being
defeated or thwarted in any way. All the world outside Abbott's Road
seemed to him a unity, of which his brother was now an, accepted part: He,
too, with luck would move into that world. It wasn't the world of a
better class for him; on the contrary, he was full of socialism at this
time. Just a world in which grace and love abounded!"
The visit to Cambridge made Abbott's Road even worse for him..
It was like the death of all the impulses. He was numb,. void of anything


like desires: there seemed no chance for them, no way out! The silence
over the streets was worse than éver before. The moment he, was back
everything became unreal for him, even the memory'of Cambridge. The
raw industrial light, glaring and yet never really sunny, made the streets
look dead and forlorn. He watched pieces of paper drift along the gutter.
He wandered about.for hours, his hands in his pockets. Cambridge was
now like all the other useless" daydreams he'd had. He tried to, read but
the activity now seemed absurd. How could he ever get out of these
streets now? 1 He had no money in his pocket! A friend of his brother's
at Cambridge had said to him, "Just leave! Just run away!" A nice
suggéstion with a couple of shillings in your pocket!
And getting a job would condemn him to the streets once and for
all. He knew no one outside these streets he could go to.
His mother and father were silent at this time. They had no
suggestions. They only knew their own world, not ways of getting into
the other, except through school and scholarships. The Bethnel Green
camp had won. Hisimother wanted him to get an office-job at least. But
Granville refused. He would-work with his hands, in the open air, or not
at all! So it looked like the docks, where he would start at a lower
wage even than his grandfather, who'd never known how to read or write!


CHAPTER 10.
War suddenly brought this to an end. Nothing s0 miraculous had
happened in his life! All the sixth-formers of the school were sent to
the country as potential officer-cadets, to act as lookouts in the hills
near the south coast ir case of German invaders. They would get classes
as at school but fewer of them, and they would look after themselves more
or'1 less. A contingent of twenty boys, of which he was one, travelled
down to a village in'West Sussex and were distributed among the houses,
about three to a house. It all happened so suddenly that he couldn 't
believe it!
It was. a tiny, silent village fitted shugly in to the - side of a
hill. All of a sudden it was full of life, like a city in which trees
and hills had been preserved so that coloured lights fell on the leaves
outside and homely voices could be heard across the fields! His life
changed at once as if he'd only been waiting for this moment all his life!
He sat in his room upstairs looking out of the window while he wound the
khaki putties round his leg. Ali at once he was a soldier as well. It
was marvellous! There was a slight mist below his window on the first
day, and beyond a narrow gravel path he could see apple trees, the earth
black between them. There were cheerful flowery curtains across the
window anda glowing Persian carpet. A fire had been lit. The house
had a sturdy, oaken look, with a wood-panelled bat throom, When he was in


his room he rarely heard a sound from the rest of the house except the
creaking of boards.
The house was at the edge of the village, where the road sloped
round the side of a'hill, and behind it were steep woods protecting it
from the bitter winds that came in, from the sea. The owner, whom they
were told to call Major, was retired from the Indian civil service and
lived quietly with his wife. They went for long walks every afternoon
dressed in tweeds, with stout walking sticks, followed by dogs. At meal-
times a great golden gong from India was beaten in the hall downstairs by a
pale, sturdy-armed maid, and the three cadets would sit down between the
Major at one end of the table and his wife at the other. By her foot was
an electric bell for the kitchen. Everything was done in a quiet and
formal way, and little was said at meals. They heard the swish of the
gardener's scythe outside, or the farm-tractor up the hill. The Major
was tall and grey-haired, with a stern yet kindly expression in his eyes.
He treated them with perfectly consistent respect as if they weré his own
age. It was the first time he'd come really near the coolness of the
other world and he wa's fascinated. The rooms seemed so spacious! For
nearly three days, apart from meals and his stints at the guardhouse, he
did little but sit at his window looking out.
The docks were bombed, and his father's job ended. It happened
on a beautiful, sun-lit Saturday afternoon, and the German planes, one
wave after the other in perfect formation, looked like tiny, silver fish
high in the blue sky. When his father went to work on Monday morning he
found the whole of his area cordoned off by the police. One of the
policemen asked him, "Did you work there, mate?", and when his father said
yes he told him grimly, "Well,. I reckon you can take a year's holiday


without pay, mate de there's a million or more money gone down the drain
there!" The yard where his father worked, and the whole of dockland
from Woolwich to Tilbury, was a mass of twisted girders and rubble, and
burning food. All the workers were laid off that day and his father
took a job in East Ham with a catering firm. connected with the army.
The guardhouse was in an.outbuilding belonging to a farm, and when
he was on night-duty he slept on the floor, doing two hours on and two hours
off. The job of the cadets was to guard an area of railway line about a
mile long. The farm stood among trees with a cobbled courtyard, and near
by there was a fenced bridle-path that ran straight across country, with
flat fields on either side. He looked at everything dreamily, seeing
only vague outlines.
At night, when he was on guard, he climbed to the top of a steaming
silo and sat there staring before him, sometimes imagining a movement in
the darkness below. A breeze would stir the leaves and sometimes a cow
would cough or low softly in the next field. A wonderful warmth came up
from underneath him and his cheeks were flushed with health. He always
looked forward to tlie huge breakfast of eggs and bacon and tomatoes soon
after dawn, and the slow walk home when the day-guard came on, along the
fenced bridle-path, past the mossy church at the edge of the village. The
maid would just be up when they got in, lighting the stove and shivering
a little. He felt strong and clear-headed.
One morning about six when the sky was already sunny and clear,
with the slightest mist lingering among the trees, he walked to the
railway line as part of his dawn inspection. He liked this spot especially.
A bridge ran across' the tracks, which were in a deep, grassy embankment.


He looked down on to these lines from the bridge as into a deep, endless
ravine going in a perfectly straight line north and south as far as -he
could see. And something in the nature. of a baptism into the countryside
took place on this bridge. It was all so immense, and the fields were
laid out s0 splendidly to the sky! He'd never known such spaciousness:
The bridge was only used by farm vehicles going from one field to another,
so that an intimacy hung about it. Its walls were of brick, mellowed by
the weather, golden and red in the early sun. And between - the bricks
grass and moss had grown in places. It wasn't a bit like a bridge in the
Abbott's Road district where the intimacy had been taken away and great
trucks roared through. He could hear birds singing in the near by trees.
And he had the impréssion that this immensity round him, unlike the
immensity of things in Abbott's Road with their iron struts and spans,
didn't exclude him. It was quite a discovery! Despite the massive early
light falling on everything like a shroud he had an intimate sense of
ownership. This bridge, too, had stout spans underneath, but they were
made of brick and the size didn't confuse or belittle him. Some of the
fields were yellow with corn not yet harvested, and. the morning breeze made
slight ripples across them. He could see the sea, a hazy blue in the
distance beyond the hills. There wasn't a sound except for the birds.
How strange that it could have been missed out of his life all this time, 1,
since early childhood!
He started taking long walks when he was off-duty. Then there
were club meetings in the village to which the cadets were invited. Films
were shown there, in a hall with huge beams that had once been a barn, and
lecturers came down from London. Once or twice a week - they went to the
nearest market-town,, where there was a bookshop with a low ceiling and


Tudor-style windows, and a snug room where you could have coffee. In
the village there were two pubs, one of them with deep black-leather
armchairs and settees where they sometimes sat in the evening, gazing into
the fire. The leaves were just starting to fall, and there was a touch
of winter chill on the air. Some teachers from the school had been
evacuated to the market-town, and they came to the village several times
a week to give lessons. But they weren't like real lessons. They were
held in ordinary rooms, usually in one of the cadet's billets, with a
blazing fire in the hearth, for only five or six cadets at a time. He
seemed not to belong to school any longer. The world was up to something
much bigger, and some of the teachers would be called up like the cadets
after a year, and- so there was an equality and freedom he hadnlt known
before.
One room where they took lessons had a great sycamore outside the
window with dark-green spreading arms, motionless like a monument. He
always sat with his back to the window, in an armchair, and the silence
was s0 great that turning over the leaves of his book made a sharp sound.
Nothing was too small for him to notice now. In London everything he'd
read about had become just ideas, floating over him in a dead and neutral
way! But here the leaves and the silence - which was quite unlike the
silence in Abbott's, Road, perhaps because of the birds and the rustling
sound in the trees whenever a slight wind blew -- made thinking and
reading seem natural, even necessary! He found he could really enjoy a
book for the first time, leaning back in his chair and letting his mind
go where it wanted to. He used his eyes more. The world outside was
closer: he could touch the leaves and in the morning he sniffed the air
deliberately like a farmer.


He started really reading and learning for the first time.'
Knowledge poured into him. He always took a book to bed with' him when
he wasn't on duty; books were like listening to people talk, but in the
silence, without time pressing down on you! And he listened for the
first time in his life. He really listened, all poised, and quiet, not
strained as he'd been in London. There hadn't been this leisure in
London, this rhythm of leisure, slow and pausing; there'd only been an
underground roar all the time, of the city, taken for granted like the
smoke. He thought he could even have got a Cambridge scholarship now if
he'd tried! It was remarkable for him to be able to read what he liked
without feeling higher on account of it!
The shadow began to lift from. his life. He made new friends.
There was a teacher at the local school called Philby and his wife, and
a few people his own age who came to the club, not cadets. The Philbys
had a small house at the far end of the village and he started going there
when he had a spare hour. They had two babies and a child of five.
Quite a crowd gathered there sometimes. Usually Philby. went up to bed
early and left them talking. Jean, his wife, would be curled up on some
cushions by the fire listening. She was the centre of the group and
said once that she felt cheated of her youth by having children too early;
yet she was only twenty-séven or so. Sometimes they talked all night,
four or five ofithem together, drinking one cup of tea after another; it
was a select group to' which only Granville, of all the cadets, was admitted.
Sometimes Philby would bâng his shoe on the floor in the middle of the
night if the talking was too loud, but he never came down, and Jean took
no notice.
Jean Philby had a soft, smiling face and uncannily pale eyes.


There was a hurt look in them that came and went. She always gave
Granville her special attention as if he were her charge. Once at table
she asked her husband, "Don't you think Philip looks very un-English?"
Being un-English implied romantic qualities. And Philby snapped, "No!
I think he looks like. an ordinary English schoolboy!" But she took no
notice as usual and replied to this, "Oh, I think he looks like somebody
who's just 'come fron abroad!" It was the first time anyone had shown
appreciation not of his qualities but of his being a- person in himself at
all: Really she brought him to life! When he was with her he never
felt the old lurking sense of unworthiness, for the first time..
He became friends with a girl in the group called Kit and they
fell in love. She lived in the village but her parents were usually in
London, due to her father being an archivist for the war-office. She was
usually at Jean Philby's for the all-night talking. But for weeks at the
beginning he and she hardly spoke to each other; they woyld only gaze at
each other sometimes.. -Then one hot night the following summer they
stayed talking until nearly dawn, alone - Jean had slipped up to. bed
with some excuse. - They. didn't put the lights on and he was aware of her
as a shadowy form, mysterious in a way that made him catch his breath.
It was nearly full moon and a vague silver light came from outside. Now
and then there was the hoot of an owl, straight and neat-sounding, followed
at once by the silence.: - Behind the house was a steep hill with woods at
the top, now a tall black shadow: And there was high grass outside that
came as far as the walls. I They left the house together and .kept a foot
or Bo apart, afraid to touch each other, and took a path across the fields,
going round the village to get to where he lived. They passed through
a copse of young trees with a stream running through it, and there they


suddenly kissed each other shyly and uncomfortably, and stood there until
they were chilled to the bone. "The dawn was just starting to come up; i
for the first time they really looked into each other's eyes, and Kit said
it made her feel giddy, like looking into a chasm that was marvellous and
inviting but yet at the"same time dangerous because one would never come
back if one fell into it. She was still a tom-boy, with a lively and
pretty face. She threw little stones at him and laughed. Before them
there was a gravel path which became more and more yellow as the light
grew, revealing bushes on the other side. The birds sang louder and
louder in the branches above them, startling in the morning silence. She
had black, glittering eyes and very white teeth that flashed when she smiled.
They ran home shivering as the sun appeared - to the Major's house,
because her mother was at home.. They tiptoéd through to the kitchen
where he wrapped an overcoat round her shoulders and put the kettle on for
tea. He prayed the maid wouldn't come down but at the same time didn't
care if she did: life was so different for him now siw a stupendous light
had spread over everything and he was in a state of trembling ecstasy which
he'd never even imagined before.
Kit was slower to say she was in love. He went through a week or
more of frightful apprehension, during which he hardly slept; but even
that was ecstatic, and at night when the warm air drifted across his room
from the fields he had the satisfaction of dreaming about her face and of
the way she walked. He always remembered the kitchen afterwards with its
scrubbed wooden table and. tiled floor and the perfect stillness of evérything
in it - the cups and willow-painted plates on the tall dresser, the
marble sink and the wooden ladles and spoons hanging by the stove 5 and
how the brightness growing outside made the copper pans glow with a


wonderful mellow warmth. That day, in the afternoon when there was hot
sunlight, and the drowsy clip-clipping sound of the gardener's shears
drifted in through the window, he wrote her a little note beginning,
'The beast has reared its ugly. head! I'm in love with you.' Hé didn't
know why he mentioned a beast. There was something fabulous about the
phrase, he felt; and it made it clear that he wasn't responsible for'his
love in case it inconvenienced her. The following day she came to the
house and stared at him for minutes on end, sitting on his bed while he
lay back on the pillows. She said she could feel nothing. But slowly
she came round and one afternoon looked at him with sudden' recoghition,
smiling brilliantly.
A year or so afterwards, when they were hardly. friends any more,
she working in a factory in Liverpool and he a soldier now, Jean Philby
told him that she'd always seen them as belonging together from the first;
and now she regretted having 'made it easy' for them! "Look at the
suffering you've both been through!" she said. But this annoyed Granville.
He felt the suffering was part of his love, the other side of it, so to
speak. But Jean Philby clung to an ideal view of lifek and saw it only
as a mistake.
He and Kit met at her house continually in the first mont ths,
sometimes staying the night on à narrow divan. When , they did so she went
up to bed early. The all-night talking became less. One morning Philby
came downstairs early when the heavy dew was dripping from the trees outside
and, leaning over the divan, gave them an intimate wink. Sometimes Kit
came to the Major's house and sat in his room with him. Usually no one
saw her because he had a key of his oun. But once the Major's wife passed
them on the stairs and looked right through her. She said nothing


afterwards but the Major gave him an embarassed glance 'at dinner that f
evening. Probably they didn 't care to pull him up because he'd be a
soldier soon; people expected another trench-war when all the young men
would be wiped out, as in 1914.
The Major's wife was friendlier to the other two cadets than to
him. They took the dogs out for long walks and in the evening joined
her and the Major for cocktails and bridge. The Major ofteri told anecdotes
about the 1914 war over dinner, describing plans of attack with the help of
playing cards, and addressed most of his remarks to the other two. His
wife described Granville as 'dreamy', with a trace of bitterness, though
she also smiled; the Major always showed disapproval of personal remarks
he would purse his lips and look down, quite stiff. She said once at'
table to the other cadets,. "Granville seems to have packed up his troubles
in his old Kit-bag, doesn't he?" And she laughed and sang, "Oh, smile,
smile, smile!" To her mind he took not nearly enough interest in the war
and so there was a double meaning here. There was also something
delicate and melancholy in her. She would gaze before her in her armchair
for minutes on end sometimes. She had no children; perhaps that was why.
One day he was astonished when Kit said to him, "You're always on
top of the world so, aren't you?" And once in London when they were
walking through the grounds of Kensington Palace a uniformed attendant
crossed their path, holding up his hand and said, "I'm sorry, there's no
way through here!" And for no reason at all Granville began blushing,
rooted helplessly to the spot as he'd been in Abbott's Road! Kit,and the
attendant stared at him, for a moment united in. a common human curiosity.
And afterwards when they were walking away she whispered to him, "Phil!
That's the first time I've seen you go red! I. didn't know you could!"


She seemed to think of him as an impregnable sort of person! He was
astonished and didn't correct her. He wanted to Beem uncaring and gay
all the time! And ironically, it' was the main reason why Kit left him
later on. He refused to be serious, she said - I for instance, about
politics.
He spent quite a lot of his time with a fellow-teacher of Philby's
called Walsh, who had a small, neat cottage near the church and was often at
the local film-shows and discussions. He was a dark, reticent young man
with a loping walk, and usually he had a pipe in his mouth. Something in
Granville intrigued him, though there was little real sympathy between
them. He was much more Kit's friend - - she was the one who introduced
them to each other.
Walsh would watch him in silence, sucking his pipe. He never
raised his voice, and spoke in a precise way, considering everything he
said and sometimés taking the pipe out of his mouth to scrutinise its bowl
while he thought something over, as if the idea he was after lay somewhere
in the dirty ashes. He was - the son of a big corn-merchant in the north
country and could have had a large private income if he'd wanted it, but
he preferred to teach at a small village-school and live on what he earned.
His rooms, three of them, plus a kitchen, were religiously simple. He
never took a first-class railway ticket - or a taxi, even late at night
when there was a mile and a half to walk from the railway-station. His
clothes were old but neat. He even refused to go into the saloon bar of
the local pub, and preferred drinking mild beer in the public. He
disapproved strongly if a friend of his took a short drink there - gin or
whisky. He would say in a cutting voice, "I always used to like this


place, you know, when it was a four-ale bar and no more!" And he tried
to blunt his accent into a common one. The farmhands and workers who
collected in the public bar were beyond criticism or reproach for him,
and when with them he would try to disown his own past. He seemed to be
ashamed of Granville if they went there together, and he would try. not to
notice fellow-teachers sitting in the saloon bar, which was visible through
a large hatch. He would call out, "A pint of old-and-mild, Tom!" to the
publican in the same style as the others. And his pipe would begin to
look like a clay pipe from the way he sucked at it there.
The Major's wife called Walsh 'the village-bolshie', and he described
himself as a 'militant socialist'. This was the cause of his intrigued
curiosity about Granville, as someone who had come from the 'right' class;
and it was the ground he shared with Kit, who was beginning to believe in
communism, partly under his influence. Philby said with a dry laugh that
Walsh wouldn't mind a bloody revolution if other people shed the blood and
didn't tell him about it beforehand! Of course, the Philby house was
looked on as a nest of thieves by the bigger houses. Russia's pact with
Germany was a big blow to Walsh and he lost face for a time. The Major's
wife made capital out of it and told Granville she wondered he had time
for a friend of the Naxis!
Granville never knew when he was going to say something of which
Walsh would disapprove. Sometimes Walsh would be silent for minutes on
end, sucking his pipe, his eyes fixed on a point in front of him, and
Granville, his stomach turning over with a quaint fear, would go back. over
the conversation in his mind trying to find out what he'd said wrong.
Walsh's silence made him feel sheepish and sometimes frightened but he
never thought of reproaching him, much less of getting up and leaving;


nor; for that matter, didhhe reproach himself or change any of his own
ideas! Walsh only showed inner anger: it made his eyes glaring and a
little smoky, with a terrible fixity. He never had an outburst. On
the contrary, his voice was quiètér when he was furious.
Walsh always seemed to have secret thoughts hovering behind his
set face. And the puffs he took at his pipe seemed to mark time to his
silent thoughts. He 'would gaze - at a point on the ground, shooting a
quick glance now and then at the other person. If Granville spoke without
preparing his words carefully beforehand, or in a precipitous way, with
conviction, leaning forward, he would recoil at once and appear strangely
exhausted, his eyes wandering away. So Granville tried to curb his
manner in his presence with the result that, just as Walsh sat with a fixed
expression, his thoughts going on in silence, so did he! This was, perhaps,
his first real contact with the psychology of the other world. And. he
even seemed to realise this, but only as a dim feeling, not at all
articulately. When they were together a third element was always present.
There wasn't just the two of them in direct talk, saying whatever passed
through their heads. There was this third ghost in the silence of the brain
that made Granville's occasional departures into direct speech - his
words getting the better of him - seem strange and unhinged. This ghost
followed them wherever they went; and he knew quite well that it was
started by Walsh, since he'd never expérienced it before and hadn't found
it in anyone else. The moment he was away from the man. this ghost was
gone also. He was in the true world again, his blood flowed properly and
his joints were no longer stiff!
Walsh planned every day neatly. That was another thing Granville
noticed: he always seemed to be sniffing life in order to form a plan for


the next step forward; he seldom just went to a place. If he had to go
to London, as he sometimes did on a teaching job for the Ministry of Food,
he reserved his seat well ahead. Before they went for a walk hé would
look up at the' sky in a careful' way, wondèring whether to take a macintosh.
He kept a large stock of medicines in his bathroom cupboard to cover any
exentuality. He knew where every hospi tal in the district was and what
means of transport was available in case of an air-raid. : Even whén they'
were actually out walking there had to be plan behind it, to see a' church
that had excellent stained-glass windows, or the ruins'of a Roman villa
that had just been unearthed. If hè had to stay at a hotel he would book-
up beforehand and discuss the price. in a firm way. Granville felt quite
ashamed of himself sometimes - he was so untidy by comparison, and he
did drift along so! Walsh had a neat way of dismissing all his practical
suggestions.
It was sometimes difficult to get Walsh's attention, because he
was so wrapped-up in his thoughts. Once they walked up a hill called the
Mountain locally i: Walsh, Kit and Granville - but Walsh talked and
sucked at his pipe all the time and looked perfectly astonished whèn Kit
pointed out the view of Chichester harbour in the farthest distance. It
was best to be in a réom with him, alone. Then a certain snugness was
possible. It brought all the world within the compass of the brain.
There were consolations in that. Once Granville asked him, "Don't you
think Kit's simply lovely?" and he looked away at once with, "Oh! I've
known her a long time, you know!"
Only after he was in the army and a long way from Sussex did
Granville know, through a letter he got from Jean Philby, that Walsh had
been in love. with Kit but had refused to let this interfere with his


liking for Granville, or what he thought was his liking. They never met
again. There was, something moving about Walsh which he always remembered
afterwards. He wasn't a happy person nor even was he good-willed, but
yet he had this moral preoccupation that made. him like a servant for others:
he allowed himself no tantrums and he never turned people away from his
door even half-way through the night. Morality was like a monster
sitting on his shoulders. He had no real, friends and spent hours alone
in his front room. Every visit to. him was a fresh beginning: Granville
was as shy of going into his cottage after a year as he had been the first
day.
Granville's nickname in the Philby group was 'the drifter', and
Walsh was always on about this.
"Are you a socialist or are you not a socialist?" he would ask.
"In our world you have. to decide!"
There would be a pause and Granville would say with a laugh, "Yes,
I suppose I am!"
Walsh talked a great deal about the revolution that would
inevitably come at the end of the war. He went through a list of social
schemes that would have to be effected to make the country happy.
Granville nodded earnestly when these schemes were discussed. But really
he was bored! He helped Walsh at the local political meetings and
sometimes went to Chichester wi th him to pick up propaganda-pamphlets from
the labour party headquarters. Kit was in her element in that sort of
work. She didn't believe the - revolution would be bloodless and said she
didn't care much if it wasn't. She also told him when they were alone
once that Walsh was a 'compromiser', one of those who would be used as a
'stepping-stone' to the dictatorskip-of-the-proletariat and dispensed with


afterwards.
She and Walsh rounded on Granville together for not being more
'class-conscious'. He had taken her up to Abbott's Road once and it was
this visit that caused her to introduce him to Walsh, as a new 'working-
class contact'.
Once when they were walking together across the fields to Philby's
house he suddenly said to Walsh with a yawn, "Gosh, I'm so tired! Let's
sit down for a' bit!" He'd been on guard part of the night and promptly
lay down with his eyes closed. Walsh was annoyed.
"What do you want to sit down for?" he asked. "There are things
to do!"
"What do you mean?" Granville laughed. "We're going to have tea
at Jean's, aren't we?"
Walsh was at a loss for words and after studying the bowl of his
pipe said, "It's your attitude !".
"What's wrong with my attitude?"
"Well, you can't just drift! You've, got to help the others you.
left behind in your class - you can't just drift off from them like that!"
"How can I help them?"
"By political action!"
He was perplexed. He didn't believe in political action but he
had no argument against it! I All he could do was shrug! And again
Walsh started talking about the future, his eyes fixed. It was,a wonderful
dream for him, the time when all Englishmen would be brothers and there
would 'no longer be classes. Sometimes when he talked Granville did catch
a glimpse. of this future and for a day or two afterwards hé concentrated
on political work. But it never lasted long.


He tried hard to become class-conscious. He read 'State and
Revolution'. But he soon forgot it. He took long walks alone and read
'other books such as Pepys's Diary and the letters of the duchess of
Devonshire, which he hid whenever Walsh came to his room. Kit was
amused by. the letters and drew no political conclusions, thankfully. He
felt a growing resistance in himself to the other two, though he was in
love with one of them: he wasn 't going to be swindlèd out of his new life.
He would.e enjoy the countryside:
Kit enchanted him with her, lively, dark, glittering manner, so
quick and soft at the same time. Her eyes always seemed to blaze goldenly,
from the moment she opened them in the morning. She strode along when
they were out together, bent forward a little and her chin pushed out with
determination. He loved the way the skin went across her nose, like a
little freckly bridge to her cheeks, so childish and delightful! Her skin
was dark and she went brown easily in the sun, her eyes more searching than
before. Her lips tasted of fruit, and indeed her whole face had something
scrumptious and fruity about it. They ragged each other like children.
But she became a young woman quickly, from a girl. Her body changed.
Her waist grew slimmer and her hips and breasts larger. Her face lost
its chubbiness and began to wear a more determined and aware look.
He was astonished to find himself a gay person. That seemed to
take place, in a moment, a. few days after he arrived at the village. He
romped across the field with Jean Philby's little girl and pulled faces
at her. 'Why aren't I shy. and ashamed?' he asked himself. But he wasn't
It was like standing back and giving way to something inside him which had
always been there. It.was the easiest thing in the world! He only had


to forget himself, and then-a self poured out which he'd never known
before! Also it had something to do with the air, cool and clear, some-
times smelling of the sea; it belonged to the wide fields and the steep,
wooded hill outside Jean Philby's window. Sometimes, for a moment or
two, the past would suddenly fall on him again like a black shadow and he
would stand paralysed with fright and embarrassment, wondering at his own
audacity, trying to stop a blush climbing up his neck from under 'his
collar, talking very fast to hide it, but unable to move or turn away.
These moments were unnoticed, luckily. He always managed to laugh,
calculating that his flush would be put down to merriment. There was
freedom, most of all, in the way Jean Philby looked at. him; nothing in her
gaze limited him. He watched his own nature unfold, with surprise. It
was like starting life all over again. He began to notice that other
people looked at him with attention when he' spoke. All his ideas that
had seemed outlandish and extravagant at school were now, apparently, sane,
and sometimes other people even shared them!
If, when he was alone, the old Abbott's Road nervousness threa tened
him, or a. hint of the 'giddy fit', he left his room at once and went for a
smart walk through the valley south of the village, and gradually the air
would fill him again, and strength would come back. His surroundings were
alive now, and that saved him; in Abbott's Road they'd been dead - hard,
bare, sharp! The 'giddy fits' ceased almost entirely. He never felt
lonely now, though he spent more time alone than ever before.
Sometimes when he was reading quietly in bed at night a ghostly
whisper would come into his mind, 'You can't, do it! You can't concentrate
on that book, you're not good' enough!" And for a moment he would shudder
and be dislodged. That voice would go on for years, he thought. If only


he could have a cool life, taking an easy relish in things like the Major
and his wife! Why did he have to be ravished and torn all the time?
It would take him years to learn that attitude of léaning back from the
world in cool thought, instead of straining forward all the time, driven
on my the mond!
Living so freely was like living without death; there were no
regrets and shames to hold you back and make you dream of a better life!
You were't turned inward, to reflect on life as a span of time. "Why do
people need idéals?" he asked Jean once. "We've got the ideal here!
Life is ideal!" And she looked up at him with a quick, questioning look,
then nodded with a smile, in silence.
Even with Walsh he felt free, essentially: he thought of him in a
context of his bachelor-cottage with the tiny fireplace, the oleander bush
touching the window outside, the air smoky from his pipe, and the books
on his shelves that were so colourful.
The silence, and the leisure in the dead of the night when he
leaned on his rifle gàzing into the darkness or watching the clouds move
across the sky in the moonlight, gave him a new support. His education
had given him no inkling of it! Had it been missed out deliberately?
It had put a design of names on the world; he realised that he'd
been taught at school as if no other design existed in life except this
design of names! Only men's names for things! The universe was 'space',
gravitation'. Animals were 'nerves'. and 'glands', It implied that. ri
life was really a system of ideas, at its root, at the font, of création.
And now he was beginning to find something behind that design, something.
that breathed.


His education had no words to describe this. It began to seem
to him that the power of speech 1 had been taken away from him, rather than
given him! An iron vice: had been fixed on to his head, and he .could no
longer turn freely this way and that. But he would be free!
The trouble was that he'd absorbed his education. He actually
did perceive life as if men's names for it were the only reality! The
sky Has 'empty space' forhhim. He'd got this impression in physics
a vast, empty universe governed by laws and full of bodies in' perpetual
motion like an infinitely subtle machine! This machine had never been
known to come into existence; it was just there. Yet it wasn' 't a mystery,
either - the scientists were supposed to know all about it.
The earth was supposed to be' whizzing round the sun at a terrific
rate, but he couldn't,really see how this was possible. Everything
round him was quite still, or at least moving soberly, so in what sense
was the earth whizzing round? It was only whizzing round in a sense.
Yet it was 'true'. It could be 'proved'. But how was it he couldn't 1
conceive it? Well, that 'whizzing' was only a wày of putting it. It
didn't mean real earthly whizzing such as he could see with his own éyes.
It meant the earth whizzed in relation to the sun provided you could stand
at a certain point in space millions of miles away, which he couldn't.
And all his education was like this
a way of putting things. But
never the thing itself - never what you saw and felt and smelt. So in
his childish way Granville had begun to doubt his own perceptions and to
feel that he. was being deceived in the most, elementary things of life.
So now, when he looked. up at the sky, its vastness didn't move
him to wonder but to a kind of intellectual bafflemént and fear much like
his state during on of the 'giddy fits' in Abbott's Road. It was also


like looking into death, where he would fall for ever one day, toppling
down into space and then further space. How painful it was to be alive -
what an absurd accident it seemed in a world, that was uniformly
represented as dead! And he realised it was a dead universe he'd been
taught to believe in.
He remembered this feeling even asa child, of being given
nothing. by this kind of knowledge.. It was: during a simple experiment
which had showed how metals expanded. The teacher took a black ring and
passed a little ball of iron through. it; then he heated this ball' over a
Bunsen burner and showed that it would not pass through the ring no longer.
Now Granville had understood it pérfectly. But there'd been an odd
silence in his mind which he remembéred vividly even now. What was the
teacher going to say next? But he: said nothing! That, apparently, was
the lesson! Granville was waiting. for the lesson to. be given meaning.
But it had no meaning! It was. like being told, 'A man hit a boy over
the head', just that: well, he understood it, but - what. next? The
trouble really was that nobody explained what these facts were for. That
was the missing link. In fact, nobody said they were for anything! And
this was what made the facts dead. They didn't lead anywhere. And more
and more at school he'd felt an antipathy to this kind of learning. He'd
even argued against it and said it waen't the truth. But he felt defeated
in the argument. Clearly it wàs the truth, or at least you couldn't say
it was wrong'.
Now, in the country, he asked himself seriously what had been
wrong. He felt he could solve it now, in the quiet of his new life.
And this new life made the question more urgent than before
because


he had a secret feeling that he was enjoying something under false
pretences now. The 'truth' he'd learned at school had never included
anything like this! Not this silence or. immensity: Was his new life
just private' then? This is what his education taught him to think!
But he had an obstinate conviction that there was a truth in his new life
that surpassed anything in his education, and that all this time he'd been
misled.
Almost every day he took a walk alone, usually to get to the
Philby's house. It meant climbing a hill, across meadows. He always
expected to come to the top of the hill at the first stile, but another
field stretched ahead, with grazing cattle. There was a copse of young
trees near by, slender and wispy, with a cool stream, and then, beyond it,
a deep wood of older trees, tall conifers and oaks, where he and Kit had
stood that first morning, in the growing dawn.
Sometimes he would stand there listening, especially on a sunny
day. Every sound - a dog in the distance, the cry of a child -
melted into the silence. He tried to grasp what it was that held him
there. His mouth tried to frame the question he wanted to ask. But he
couldn't get even as far as the question! Whenever he passed a lovely
spot it was the same. His tongue twitched, wanting to find the words of
a question. What was the message being given to him? What were the trees
saying, that he could listen to them always, without knowing what was said?
One hot morning he stopped at a disused quarry on the road to
Chichester, captured by the stillness of everything. And he seemed near
an answer. There was long grass at the edge of the road, and the quarry
was like a cliff, overgrown with stiff, dusty bushes nowa There wasn't
a soul near by. The road qas quite wide, but because it was war-time it was


hardly used. So it had a mysterious look. He walked down the middle.
It was like walking along a desert-road, parched and dusty, only with bushes
and trees close on either side. - Everything baked, and his eyes were
dazzled. There wasn't a sound except the shrill singing of the birds.
They swooped and flew over the road as if a car had. never passed there.
The road bent frequently, and this gave it an untouched air as if every
corner could lead to the most marvellous place in the world whére 'one could
stay for ever.
His hands were in his pockets and he was aware of a peace actually
in his body that he'd never known before. It seemed that the sunlight
was going right through him and he was part of the grass and trees,
indistinguishable from them. He felt hazy, too, as ifwalking along and
being in the open was part ofa great sleep. There was no fixed difference
between his own féelings and what was going on outside. He had the
impression that if he threw himself on the grass and stretched out, its
touch wouldn't be from the outside but only a further aspect of sleep. It
again struck him as most strange that no one had ever told him about this
kind of thing. Anid he had a sense of returning to something. It was a
feeling of reaching home again, and of recognising it as home by the ease
and satisfaction of his. body, not .by any sign that he remembered. His last
visit to this home could have been before his life began, s0 strong was.
his yearning! The silence round him seemed to be beyond his life, while
including it. His surroundings had taken him over entirely, their, drowsy
prisoner, and yet he was perfectly free, more so than he had ever been
before in his life. What was this strange design in things, already
there? It seemed close to having à voice. It bréathed!
The more he tried to think about it the more baffled he was. It


stole over him like a marvellous, natural drug, forcing his mind out of
action the more he tried to revive it. The moment he thought, 'What is
this spell I'm under?' he became conscious of himself standing there alone,
separate from the drowsy heat, and the spell. was gone. And then, when:
the mind gave way again, it returned to life.;
And he realised that this spell was precisely what his education
had left out. It had bëen the tone of all the school-learning - in
biology the rabbit, but the rabbit dead, in history people but people dead,
without their private lives, in physics the sky, but the sky dead, without
its awful presence over us!
Suppose he tried to see things in that way, missing out the spell
of life? And he did try, one morning, standing at the bridge. He tried
to see the fields and trees as a kind of mineral and vegetable collection,
the bridge as a mathematical problem of spans and stresses, the sky as -
empty space. And he realised that to do this : he had to withdraw himself.
He had to go cold. He had to take the life out of himself.- Just what:
they'd asked him to do at school - to qualify for middle-class life!
And it occurred to him as the slightest whisper, hardly caught
that this. was what the middle-class view of life was essentially: life with
the spell taken out! Was this all he'd learned - not knowledge ac all,
not real knowledge, but the middle-class attitude to life? Was this all
modern education was, in fact? Not leaming at all!
Instead of walking up and down the bridge naturally as he did.on
other mornings, he had stopped and was thinking - but this thinking wasn't
real thinking, with the whole of him, it was a kind of brain-thinking, cold,
peering at life from a distance, in a pale way, not in it any more. He


was pinning things down
like pinning butterflies down by their wings! -
that was what he was doing with the things all round)-him! Those things
breathed with a life much like his own - but he was miesing that out at
the moment
he was treating them as dead. And so, he was partly dead
as well.
And he suddenly realised by a person should want to do that, why
he should want to kill life. In order to make it work in a certain way!
If you wanted a person to work in a certain way you could do it by going
cold to them, by seeing them as just muscles to be manipulated: that is,
if you had the power over them. And we had power over all this breathing
countryside! It wasn't much of a power. But that was the only power
we had, a brain power. We could watch and calculate, rather like watching
a person to find out his habits and then put them to a clinical use; we
could make the earth work as we wanted it to, we could force it to work
for us. It did work for us, but to get it. to do so we had to be half-
dead ourselves! Q.E.D.'. You kill life to make it work, it will work,
but its spell over you has to cease first! -
Of course, it was the truth, you couldn't oppose it though you
might dislike it! It was the truth about life considered dead.
And now he began to see that the world he knew through himself
alone waan't necessarily false, nor private like a dream.
Also he was amazed to find an England he'd never known before.
It was the England that had gone before Abbott's Road - before these
gleaming railway tracks had begun. And to a surprising extent it lay
there still, untouched. And he felt strangely close to it in his own
person - in his flesh. and blood -- - so that for the first time in his


life he knew what it meant to be English! Before, it had meant nothing.
He'd just been a ghost a brain-ghost hovering in the streets, belonging
nowhere.
Was that what he'd suffered all those years - life with the
spell taken out? Was Abbott's Road just a world with the spell taken out?
Was it the work of people forrwhom life held no spell - was it just one
of their experiments, only with live people? Had they used live people
to function for them as they'd made the fields and earth and air? Was
that why it looked like a grey, silent camp where the guards were invisible
not the real world at all, not.a real place where things breathed? A place
without trees, without any visible grace at all - where the people were
- locked inside themselves and walked stiffly, keeping the flame of life
going only in their homes, in tiny, warm, brilliant rooms!
Had that been the terrible, hunger he'd suffered from - hunger for
the spell? A positive suffering would have been better - Bethnel Green
would have been better with its dark, smoky streets - like corridors
under the earth so terrible that they had a kind of new mystery
and the
children barefooted - the women sitting at the doors and the wild scenes
on Saturday night - that was why he'd hung back from Walsh's clean little
plans - he wasn't sure it was better to live clean, without the spell of
life all round' you, than to live dirty with all the colour and wildness
and passion still intact:
In them D in May' and Sid and 'all the people packed into that tiny
hut-like house in Bethnel Green -- - England had still been intact! People
pRa
had ônly tried to take the spell out of them, but they hadn't succeeded.
But in Abbott's Road they had succeeded. There, the last untidiness had
gone: there was just the stark working world, with the skeleton of factory-


schedule over everything! But in May and all those people there had
still been the flush of a peculiar kind of human triumph
in May's
cheeks you could see it, in the children, in the thick, sing-song voices!
And a touch of the old limitless aristocracy was still there - - the rash,
blazing quality which was now almost quenched!
He became aware of England's aristocracy. And he realised that
the marvel of England, breat thing like a wounded animal now, almost gone,
in terrible, fitful starts - had been laid by those people. They had
had the spell of life! You could feel it in the duchess of Devonshire's
letters. A terrible, blinding, self-destructivé spell: A' wonderful folly!
And he seemed to be looking for this again. But where was it?
How could it have a face? How could it be a thing at all? What was it?
His lips tried to frame, an answer. Was it in the little village churchyard?
Was it in the walk he took nearly every day? Was it in certain moments?
Was it in Kit? He only seemed to touch it unawares sometimes, and lose
it again!
All this was madness to Kit. Shé said she didn 't know what it
had to- do with the future! She thought he knew something she didn't -
from his childhood, perhaps. But in the end she gave up trying to find
out what it was. She began to think.it wasn't there.
He began to wonder if that spell wasn't 'God'. He began to look
at the village church with a new interest. Had it been the function of
his education' to exclude God?
He realised how much nearer he'd been to that. spell as a child.
He'd even had some religious understanding then! He remembered the church
in Abbott's Road, tall and gloomy and rather bare, but with an odd warm


fascination perhaps because of its tallness and spaciousness. That memory
was locked behind so many shadows now! He remembered the confirmation-
classes - he'd caught a glimpse of Christ, even, there!
But then the
image had faded. And then the word 'Christ' had become meaningless. Only
now did it awaken again, slightly, as a dim memory he mustn't talk about.
'Christ' seemed to mean something different at the Philbys' house. It
wasn't a serious word there. It felt silly using it, even in the silence
of his own thoughts. He kept quiet. Two images persisted in his mind:
the Christ he'd glimpsed as a child, saying, 'Come, little children', unto
me!', like someone who would never betray you as long as you lived; and
the Christ at Philby's house
weak, respectable, preaching, watery, an
empty, historical name.
The sense of a private mission - to think these things out
grew on him in Sussex. It helped him through the war, and then through
long weeks of training at the T.I.M. training school. It made him feel
beyond whatever he was doing. So it took the stress off things. Walsh
said to him once, 'What makes you think you've got to take the whole of
society in tow and bring it into. port?' It was the only time Walsh used
a shipping image and he. remembered it afterwards. In later years the
same thing annoyéd Pinkie as well. Who was he to give himself the airs
of a thinker?, It did seem absurd -- - he had no qualifications: Yet, also,
wasn 't that an excellent beginning, to have no qualifications? What had
the qualified thinkers done for him?
Sussex was also his first real taste of the 'higher world' he'd
always dreamed about. He began to judge a person to be of this 'higher
world' by the things he said, by his tone or expression, sometimes just


by the words he used. But he couldn't make this judgement articulate.
He couldn't say what the principles behind it were.. He was just aware of
a foreign consciousness. It might be in a certain use of the word
'democracy' to mean something moral, rather like the word 'decency' -
as if life, even political organisation, was a moral affair, but moral in
a small way, without passion or real concern, just conventional and
colourless. But he çouldn't see why this struck him as of the 'higher
world'.
It might be in the use of the word 'sensitivity' to mean artistic
temperament - the moment. a person said this word he seemed marked as
'higher world', without real powers of thought and experience, only
conventionality, but conventionality masquerading under néw. words. That
word was much in vogue at the time. It was fashionable to be 'sensitive',
as it was to be 'progressive'.
You felt it in phrases, too
'Everybody can't be a genius',
which seemed to slight the ordinary genius there is in every creature.
Or, 'Keep an open mind', 'Listen to both sides of the question'. They
were all signs of the 'higher world' mediocrity. Also a great respect
for being 'modern' - a fear of not being 'modern': that was.another sign.
They all wanted to march in a group of some sort, including Kit. Every-
thing wayward, lonely, hesitant in Granville frightened her. Really she
wanted somebody with a tidy exterior. And he knew this underneath. That
was her world, really and truly: Really she looked for the same things
as the Major's wife did - a 'solid' young man with a 'future', who
'worked' regular hours and had a 'purpose' and didn't 'spill over' all the
time; only for Kit he must be "progressive' ie he had to use different
words.


The Major's wife maintained that people should 'keep both feet
planted firmly on the ground' dns - this was another much-used phrase, but
only among the 'reactionaries', not among people like Philby and Walsh.
The word 'ground' here meant something like the facts Granville had learned
at school - life with the spell missing. As soon as you showed signs
of the spell you were 'flying high': You couldn't be relied on.
Both groups had the same scepticism, the same hardness that always
rejected the imagination. Walsh and Philby had this strongly and
consciously, much more so than the Major, in fact. Kit was afraid. Only
Jean Philby had a lingering, regretful sense that she was going the wrong
way - she seemed to be looking back all the time, as she drew further and
further into thât hard world,, always with her little smile, so full of
gentleness and a kind of dumb hurt.
Walsh was always saying, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
Behind every thought there had to be a plan of action, to make it valid.
And 'action' meant, not a change in your own life, but a social. act like
making a donation to the local progressive club. Everybody had to see it
or hear it to make it a real 'action'. The marvellous, infinite actions
of the hidden self didn't count. They didn't exist!.
The others Beemed too afraid to: consult their own feelings, even
Kit. Feelings were 'private' and 'subjective'. Whên they did give vent
to their feelings - not Kit, but certainly Walsh and Philby - - it was
like a tyre suddenly being let off, the effect was of something private and
chaotic, without real objective authority.. The féeling didn't well up in'
them naturally, in a straight flow, but- was interfered with and came out
in a cutting and dangerous way that chilled the heart, or in the form of
an outburst, which they themselves felt to be shame ful. Granville had


grown up among shouting, feeling safe and intimate, with nothing twisted
or interfered with inside him, and so he felt the difference strongly.
Everybody in the 'higher world' was in some way a cripple. He
didn't féel this of Jean or her husband -e - or of any particular parson.
It was just an impression, dimly present; as if providence were laying it
aside for. him, 'To be accounted for later': It was a dim impression that
he must live the rest of his life among cripples because of his education,
and ultimately become one himself!
'Higher world' people had all sorts of odd little nervous diseases
that came from the disordered heart. One person had bad breath; another
was locked in silence, like a permanent deficiency; another had trouble
in the lavatory, and was always asking for laxatives; another - where
the disorder was closer to the surface, so to speak Am always had his
head in a textbook of psychology, looking for clues; another was horrified
at any reference to sex; another had an ugly obsession with it. And none
of these things seemed remarkable in that world! They were taken as a
matter of everyday life! No wonder drugs were needed sind to stun and
paralyse the twisted nerves!
And, like Walsh, people always seemed to recoil when he began
really talking from himself. Rather as if he were a stink, and they had
to draw back! Whilé his mind was working, while he was in strict mental
control of his words, there was no recoil; but the moment he fell into
natural speech; talking unguardedly, the recoil came. About this
experience he was quite conscious and articulate. One day he said to Kit
that some people made him feel 'a distasteful sort of person', and she
replied with a laugh that she'd beén made to feel that since a little girl:
It planted a seed in him during the Sussex-days which was the


opposite of the seed of freedom planted by Jean, though from the same
world: this was an unnatural state of distress with people not his close
friends; and it- grew on him more' and more' as he penetrated into the
'higher world'.
There was something wistfully curious and divining in the Major's
wife. He would catch her dreaming sometimes, gazing before her, a
searching expression in her eyes, while her hands lay placidly in her lap.
But there was always the recoil. Always a distastéful subject that had
to be avoided! What was this secret inner stain?
Kit loved Abbott's Road but turned against it in the end. She
told Jean she'd expected more 'class-consciousness' among working people.
When they were talking about the district one day she cried,, "Oh, it's
wonderful all right, but why. are they all so bloody passive?" She said
it was 'a little heaven' i - but that was the trouble, you could live there
for ever without 'doing' anything.
There was a look in her face he'd never seen before. It was a
sort' of 'we've-got-to-get-things-done' look, closed and grim like the look
that sometimes came into Walsh's facée It was grudging and impatient.
It didn't really go with her . face. It was so different from her first
look in Sussex when she'd been open and boyish, always laughing at him.


CHAPTER 11.
He was conscripted into the army and there was almost no real
goodbye between them. Pathetically, to appease her and bring her back
he wrote her a letter from his barracks which he copied ôut carefully
from several rough drafts, like an official document, in which he told her
how he too looked forward to the socialist commonwealth and that she must
never take him to mean- anything contrary to that in his little jokes and
games. He read it over.and over to himself, marvelling at the neatness
and soundness of his expressions. At the end he said he would do anything
in his power while he was in the army to bring the wonderful day nearer
when they would all be united! The inference being that if mankind was
going to unite they might as well do the same, to make a job of it. He
never got a reply. He didn't see her again.
He lived in a deadiy soldier's world for several months, hollow
and degraded. He went with one or two skirts available near the camp and
in the end caught clap, a virulent type which the military doctor said
was 'Spanish*. It meant hospital for a few weeks and thén a return to
hospital because there was an inexplicable, painful relapse. He took it
as a moral punishment. Every time ! he felt desire and every time he dozed
off at night a stabbingzpain went through him like a reminder and' woke him
up with a start. : He didn't sleep with another woman for a year, until they
got to the organised brothels of Egypt and the Lebanon, which had first-aid
stations near by where permanganate-of-potash douches were available: he


showed the other officers how to do it, with the professional touch. It
meant inserting a narrow tube and then relaxing one's muscles until the red
liquid flowed down into the bladder. The doctor in England explained it
to him as 'having a pee backwards, if you see what I mean'.
But he was healthy and well-fed and too busy to think about the
past. During his training he grew stronger and filled out remarkably.
His muscles and nerves protected him: they hid everything. He was amazed
one day in France after his battalion's first operation near Caen when a
signaller remarked how calm he always seemed.
There was also the travelling. At Alexandria, where he was sent
first, he gazed at everything with his mouth open as the ship drew in to
harbour. He was fascinated by the dazzling sunlight, the sparkling blue
water and the clear sky, like discovering a new worlds The white houses
were blinding in the sun. He watched Arabs unloading dates on to the
harbour and was furious, with a mute rebellious rage, when he saw the
English sergeant inccharge of them shouting in a contemptuous way, "Come on,
you bastards!", standing over them with his arms folded, beefy and sunburned.
And the fellaheen nodded and scampered about obediently.
He realised in this new stark and brilliant world with the blinding
sun how unprepared he was for life
in his body, even his desires. Even
with,Kit there'd been no real body. They'd loved each other with an awe-
struck, imaginative wonder. And their bodies had only followed this
state of mind. They'd never created a tie it was impossible to break,
of the body. When he was away from her he yearned to look in her eyes
or kiss her; he yearned for the romping and affection, but seldom for the
act itself. That had seemed a trifle, almost, compared with their great
imaginative love.


One day on manoeuvres north of Damascus, near a dried-up, deserted
wadi, he saw an old signpost pointing north up a dusty track with 'Basrah'
written on it. It seemed unbelievable! Could he actually be near
Basrah? He didn't know why the name had such a thrilling and fabulous
sound for him. He stared at the post again and again. And- in his mind
there formed a thought half-way between a resolution and a prophecy, that
he would one day visit the place; and he had a sense of excitement as
though he'd actually started that wonderful journey.
During the fighting in the Ardennes he was. caught in the open at
dusk and had his leg nearly torn off by schrapnel. He was heading a
platoon-attack and the others had to fall back because of machine-gun
fire, leaving him there. He lay out all night in the middle of a field,
numbed with cold, sometimes crying like a child, but in a strange way
without grief as if only. his face was doing it. The enemy machine-gun
was on a fixed arc and every few. minutes bullets would come spraying over
hin, though luckily he was lying in a deep plough-rut and had some
protection. A bullet grazed a stud on one'of his boots and wnt whining
away. It was like lying there for a week. He was soaked to the. skin
and was too cold and numbed to move. After a time he began pleading with
the bullets in a soft voice, like a child, whenever they came close -
"No, please i please don't -m please!" But they had an extraordinary
relentlessness and seemed to shoot over his head on the back of an enormous
wind. The numbness grew from his' leg and he was avare of caked blood, on
his fingers. The attack was completed next morning and the machine-gun
knocked out. He was brought in on a stretcher and the doctor found there
was no gangrene, by a miracle, probably because of the cold. The - shock
gradually wore off. The wound left two raw mauvish patches on his leg


which troubled him in a mild way when it was damp.
He dreamed about the wonderful England he would find when it was
all over, and the friends he would see again, but when the war did ènd
he found they'd dispersed and that in àny case the old friendships were
dead. - Kit and her parents had left the village. Walsh had gone: Of
course, there wére no cadets. The Philbys were going to move: he had a.
much bettér job in the north'of England. Granville had nothing to say to
Jean. : i There was only an air of' sadness. She had suffered, too. She'd
lived two years without her husband. 1 Granville blushed incessantly and
faltered in his speech. He made a strange sight, hefty and fat in the
neck, flushed with: the outdoor life but with something unhealthy and
disquieting even in this flush, from unsatisfied energies. At the
slightest soft or friendly glance he would flinch away and go wooden, with
pursed lips. Even his feeling for the countryside had gone, it seemed.
He left the village almost at once. Loneliness that dwarfed even that of
his school-days fell on him. London was drab and people were short-
tempered and exhausted. Nobody wanted to listen to other people's
troubles and everything was devoted to getting private life going again
after yéars of grey public activity. He wandered about the helf-bombed
streets for hours to make himself tired. He woke yelling one night and
his mother rushed into his room saying, "For Christ's sake, son, you scared
me out of my wits!"
It felt as if a war-regime had settled into English life for good.
There were identity-cards and food-cards. Everything was registered.
When he went into the country he had the feeling that it was a huge dead
area only for the recreation of townspeople. The intimate side of life
had been pushed out. There was an air of surfeit and nausea everywhere.


It was difficult to get back to the peace-time rhythm, because the casual
element necessary to it was lacking. For five years all little enjoyments
had been relegated to a kind of relaxation-department in the war effort.
He'd escaped all that by being abroad. But the grey aftermath was there,
in the people who'd stayed. They were nearly finished. Everyone was
bewildered. The war had made them used to the hard pleasures, and peace
nieant subtlety again. The newspapers and radio now seemed to govern all
life; journalism had replaced society. People went on smoking and
drinking in the eleventh-hour style of war-time.
But: still Abbott's Road hadn't changed. There was only less food,
everyone was tired and the shops were rather empty. On the other hand,
there was more money than before; there was a job for everybody; the trade
unions had a whiphand.now; their fighting days were over.
His mother and father vere a. little grey, from the bombing. They'd
slept down in the shelter nearly every night for thrèe years. But still
they in themselves hadn't changed. Only the 'higher world' had collapsed.
He had no ideas for. his own future. He thought of going abroad
again but a familiar listless reluctancé to decide anything took hold of
him. He went down to Chichester instead, as the only town he knew apart
from London, and took a room there, planning to stay for aslong as his
annuity from the army lasted. He was there a year, alone in his room
nearly all the time, reading everything he could lay his hands on with a
remarkable hunger. Slowly he met people again. The 'higher world'
really was knocked sideways. People got drunk and there was a hard
promiscuity in sex. The middle-class was. dead. Just a flicker was kept
alive, enough. for the country not to sink in the sea.
When he met Dick Pollocke at the T.I.M. training school he. had a


peculiar sense of forbearance combined with relief. Would Dick be his
first real friend sincè the war? He had a -brief ecstatic impression that
the Sussex days would start again, in a new way-. It was something in
Dick's light-blue, transparent eyes, and in the way he looked at him when
they met in the canteen of an evening, as if they'd known each other
years. before.
But he was scared of a new relation. It was a fear of being
exposed. He félt or the edge of a frightful confession all the time
and short of this'he couldn't speak. Everything in his past was involved
in this confession - the war,' his life in Abbott's Road, the 'giddy fits'
when he'd knocked on the floor frantically, his separation from Kit and the
fact that he'd hit her round the face; it was covered in shame, in a dark,
cloudy. region. Why Pollocke should want to see him he couldn't imagine!
He was awkward, with this dangerous flush all the time. He was also afraid
of damaging Pollocke's first impression of him, presuming it had been a
good one. And this intrigued Pollocke: it gave him the idea that Granville
was rather exclusive - too busy perhaps to need new fields. This, in
turn, was something Granville was pleased to encourage. They began to meet
each other, but always in a hide-and-seek way. Sometimes they sent notes
to each other's rooms.. It reminded him of the famous public schools he'd
read about where the seniors had fags and studies of their own. Dick
Pollocke had been to Winchester, so the atmosphere was nothing new to him.
He wrote to Granville in a careful hand, putting in a witticism if he could,
like a school-boy. 'Dear Granny', he would write, 'I haven't séen your
stare for several days and wonder what new slush has passed under your'
bridges." Tney would sit drinking beer together in the canteen and try
to talk. But there was no common ground. They left with a sense of


having been locked-up together. Pollocke tried to be clever, Granville
was simply awkward and tongue-tied. They blinked in consternation when
they met, with a sense of the formlessness of their relation. The
friendship petered out quickly, leaving a polite respect.
There were parties and dances, at one of which he met Pinkie. And
Hanni came down for a week-end e about the time she and Dick were getting
to know each other. It was an unpleasant period. Nobody was quite sane.
He looked back on his lonely year at Chichester, among his books, with
pleasure. He no longer wanted to read much, and drank whenever he could.
Partly there was the wonder of getting back to something like : his old life
and being with people again minan having tea in cafes and talking endlessly,
that sort of thing; but he was always alone in feeling.
Pinkie dazzled him at: once, - the first evening they met. She was
tall, with a light, healthy face, her skin smooth and brown from the sun.
She. was vague, her eyes wandering about in their forlorn, loose way, and
he was awkward; they hardly shook hands. But they kept returning to each
other in the course of the evening. She'd just come back from a holiday
in the south of France with her parents, and her cheeks and nose were
peeling slightly. And her hair was bleached, a flaxen colour in the front.
She seemed to make a mistake about him at first: she trèated him like a
man-about-town; he was surprised but found the assumption useful -- it
helped him cover his real self up! After two or three drinks she was
reckless and swashbuckling, and talked at the top of her voice; the young
trainees looked cautious and tame next to her. He adored hér and stoked
himself up with the hideous punch Pollocke had provided - made' with red
wine, soda water and surgical spirits from the chemist. They danced
together wildly, and he noticed that some of the other people stepped


aside from them in a gingerly fashion, disapproving. There was a great
hauteur about her, sophisticated and self-assured. She chuckled at him,
and in the middle of laughing she suddenly kissed him on the neck as if
it was the easiest thing in the world! Panic seized him, but the drink
helped him pass it off. She couldn't have meant it! Did she? And
later he saw her do precisely the same thing to someone else! But he 1
put this out of his mind. Thus.in the first hour of their knowing each
other there was a hint of the later confusions. After that they were
friends. She stayed another week, at a nearby hotel, and they began meeting
every day. They each wondered. secretly * as they found out from each
other long afterwards on whether they shouldn't remain just friends.
But they were lonely, neither of them felt they had the powér of choice.
They thought they recognised the signal of love * they*d'been waiting for
it 'so impatiently, and they plunged ahead! They were infatuated with
each other. But underneath there was only the simplicity of fieldship.
And also there was something distressing, as they got to know each other
better. He went roùnd with his mouth open loosely and his eyes wandering,
in a peculiar imitation of Pinkie's facé, as he got more and more
infatuated with her. 'What a complete fool I must look!* he thought to
himself as he walked along the street sometimes. It didn't seem sane!.
But he could do nothing about it. It was like being under a sweet drug.
It wasn't the pure, direct ecstasy he'd known in Sussex; but he supposed
it was falling in love: Pinkie's gaze shifted all the time: and there
was something of a comfort in that for him. It meant he was never under
a direct, piercing stare that might uncover him. But he never really
trusted her from the first moment he knew her. Nor did he feel properly
himself with her. But there was the trust of friendship. He couldn't


have siad with confidence that she wasn't sleeping with somebody else at
any time - or even that she loved.him! But he knew as a friend that
she wasn't. She was blameless, yet
totally guilty!
She gave him a' sense of nightmarish and subtle desires he couldn't
hope to penetrate, because of her way of looking about her. Their first
two weeks together were their happiest. They went everywhere arm-in-arm.
That, too, had the golden quality of friendship. They were close together
like children. She always recalled these two weeks afterwards, as if she'd
only really loved him then.
There was. nothing unheal thy in her strangeness aa that was
remarkable.. The strangeness was, all to do with her mind. And that was
separate. In her body she was clean and fastidious; it could be seen in
her skin e a smooth, unblemished texture glowing underneath with health.
And this health had great resistant strength. She didn't smoke or drink,
but if she did a even if she took pep-tablets - - it seemed to make no
difference: she only slept a little longer afterwards, and the warm glow,
and her appetite, came back, The healthiest practice always seemed the
most natural to her. She would suddenly push a full glass of liquor away
from her at a party, then dance until she'd sweated it out.
He felt towards her strangeness a grotesque kind of worship
somè thing ecstatic and pained and full of awe. They were in the same
boat, really; they couldn't face each other's gaze, and at the same time
they needed what was healthy and simple in each other, behind the strange
looks and gestures.


panic-stricken movement, hurrying to pull on her things. He heard her high-
heeled shoes knock together. What was she doing? He was stiff with horror,
and he tried to stop his limbs trembling in case she realised he'd been awake
all the time. She slipped her shoes on. How strangel She didn't usually
dress for breakfast, but put on an old dressing-gown. Thbn She went towards
the door.' She couldn't be going out, not at this hour! Without breakfast?
It had never happened before! She wanted to do some early shopping, perhaps;
she would go upstairs and. get the bag! She closed the bedroom-door very
carefully 1 pausing outside so that he could hear her breathing for a moment,
as Kf between pursed lips; she held the door for a moment so that it wouldn tt
himierd
click, as he,did so often; it was quite unusual for her to do such a thing;
hitherto she'd never seemed aware of the door clicking. The monent it was
closed he leaned up, his whole body trembling and his heart making a great
Spoundingg (regular motion in his ehest; and he listened with all his strength,
as hot ro
wen
keeping his mouth open, sot that_henouldaitroven hearjhis own breathing:
She went to the lavatory and he heard the chain being pulled afteravames
trom tare,
The rush of water made it impossible for him to hear where she wentk Was it
upstairs? He could hear nothing. Some time passed.
Then he heard the
Out!
door downstairs close.
She'd gone out! A He almost collapsed back Anto
the bed. He heard the sharp sound of her high-heeled shoes on the pavement
below, going, he thought; towards the Commercial Roada Mopbctrertam
She was going out shopping! But she'd never done it before breakfast, ever;
n h
she wasn't interested in shoppingt! And this didn't account for her horror;
but then his eyes hadn't been open and he couldn't be sure of - - horror!
np, She didn't come back all morning. He waited in bed for another hour, quite
still, but there wasn't a sound in the house.
He sat over breakfast for a
Bueten
long time, until nearly noon, trembling all the time. L He felt indifferent
all of a sudden, as if his nerves had worn themselves out, and began sweeping
Ris
the music-room, and tidying the records. He made lunch and went for a walk.
She still hadn't returned when he.got back, and his trembling, which was like


stalida egain.
being cold all the way through,) He made himself some tea and when his lips
touched the cup he heard the door open downstairs; Apta it was followed by
done
the sound of her heels on the stairs, slower than before. She had) /some shop-
ping. She was wearing her beret; which gave her a girlish look; her lips
were small and moist, her eyes light and transparent, without a definite look
in them. Nothing was said about her having gone. She talked naturally.
He was astonished at her composure. - She said what a good boy he was to have
cleaned up the music-room, and gave him a kiss on iaig cheek. Also she'd
bought in some cakes, and he made another pot of tea; there was warm sunshine
outside, and all the windows were sopen; it was like being in the country,
having tea on the lawn; tea-time passed so naturally, and his nerves were calm
Thé evening drew on and no one Aphoned. She began to look preocaupied, though
or nly with the shadow of a thought; she sat by the hearth looking across at
the window vaguely, her blue eyes lost and flickering.
At about ten Dick Aphoned him up and asked him in a quiet voice if he
could join them---he was with the hair-girl and "Joyce', whom for the moment
Granville confused with the muscular-looking girl---for a drink at the Marquis,
downstairs, where one could also eat if one wanted to. There was a pause
and Dick almost whispered, "Is Pinkie there?" Granville replied, "Yes,"
to which Dick said, "Well, what about it, then?" There was intimate conspir-
acy in his voice which at once made Granville feel sorry for Pinkie, who was
witkin
lold Jick, "Yeslea,
only sitting in the next room, in ear shot; but he/s said hetaxoomey and put
the *phone down without waiting for a replyi He walked next door casually
and said he was going out for a drink with Dick and would probably be back
by midnight; she surprised him by looking up in a glum way,with her lonely
pout, and asking him what he expected her to. do in the meantimef Me was just
about to lose his temper and shout, "What the hell was I doing when you were
out?', but he was too tired and limp in nerve, and simply shrugged. At the
same time he was frightened that she fd retaliate by going out again, and he
said quickly, "Surely you can spend a bit of time alone, can't you? I don't


often see Dick alonelf She seemed satisfied and he was about to. go when
she said with her lips pursed, staring at the floor; "What's he got against
me, then? Doesn't he like my company or something?" He replied, "I don't
think he knew you were here!" She pushed out her legs and léaned further
back in her chair: "All right, then,you old sod, go and have your stag-party!
Tell him from ie hets an unfriendly bastard!" She was now in good humour and
he said as he went; "I'll tell himr"
It wasn't yet dark, but downcast and still very warm; there was an
in He ais
exciting closeness; but. he felt immune to it, still trembling a little in the
aftermath of the day. People were just coming home and the buses were full.
A bus drew to a stop and some tired-looking people got out. Then it moved
J88
away again, and a woman walked away with steps so regular, on high-heeled
shoes, that they might have been fixed by instruments; her head was bowed
slightly as she walked, and she glanced about qui ckly, her eyes never staying
on an object for more than a moment, as if newly intimidated each time. And
other people had a similarly humbled manner; they fixed their eyes on the
pavement, or hurried along; but above all they seemed to be trying to strip
offer
their faces of expression, as if to present blank conduct-sheets to the world
and avoid all verdicts; he did it himself; the habit had died a little in
the last two years; but he remembered walking along this very street and
trying to compose his face naturally as if for a photograph.
in *e Marquis;
Dick and the others were sitting downstairsh the place was quite crowd-
edd There was only a piano playing now, under a spotlight, and a few people
were dancing, respecgable-looking couples, while the others sat at the tables.
Joyce, the girl with the extraordinary pallor, had just finished at the bar
and had come down to eat before going home; the hair-girl sat with her chin
cupped in her hands saying littled She hardly greeted him. He asked him-
teally. tke e
self whether she had/been an image in his mind all this time, infatuating him,
but he couldn't tell. He could only think about Pinkie; it was a touch of
irony that Dick should have chosen just this day to invite him: Pinkie's


BOOK I1.
4 P
Chapter 6 e
Philif
Cramille
Gaf EeMaon was born in Abbott's Road in West Ham, not far from
l.c. where he lived now; out
o poorer-distriet His parents
had moved there from Bethnel Green just before the 1914 war, when
there were still traces of the old village, though even thén there
oppraite Heis
were few. When they moved in there was an orchard om-the-othor-side
Rome
ofthe-street but by the time Granville was born streets covered more
or less the whole district, formed into oblong blocks, one door after
another with a few feet of garden in front for evergreen bushes, then
the iron railgings and the pavement, stretching for miles, with nearly
all the trees felled. Abbott's Road houses were a better class than
those of Bethnel Green, where the front door opened straight out on
to the pavement and the streets were much longer and blea ker;
n Betnel Gncen
also the houses)were smaller, with a tiny asphalt yard in the back
instead of a garden. Abbott's Road had quite nice back-gardens.
Some of the old village trees were still intact there, by an over-
perhaps ty
sight or/the contractor's mercy, standing in the middle of the narrow
strips of garden, huge elms casting their shade on the roofs and away-
ing slightly in the wind sometimes wi th a grand, solemn movement
fette
a Az
alunyo
Iway
give waming that
- seemed to
There was
talk
*8 stamso
of pulling them down but it never came to anything. He noticed as a
child that sometimes people talked about them with grudging dislike,


as if they were humari, amd-represented-e moral affront one didn't
talk about loudlyo becawee-shey-wse
ttl a disgasting, "Those
say,
damned trees," they would murmur
"Those blasted trees, when are
they going to pull them down?" But in the summer they would lean out
of the back-windows gazing at them, smoking, the men in their shirt-
sleeves.
The village had been called Abbott's Blenchley. It had stra ggled
along the banks of a delightful little river called the Abbott, which
was dark and rank now, hardly more than a stream and completely hidden
by shops and houses, with the waste from the Blenchley Road factories
pouring into it. But here and there a grassy bank remained, strangely
quiet, like someone peeping out from the past. The orphanage also
and
remained, with the original Green behind Abbott's Road, made & square
now with iron railings round it, and the Common at the top of the hill
near Tatling Broadway. When-he-wasten he ac
commo
land that had existod twp or three hundred years before where
al 1 Aa rgf to
- pasture their cattle, and he would walk over ths-Common in the
Fiysing
evening, when he was allowed to go there alone,) imagir
menin
smocks with staffs in their hands, rather like Robin Hogd, from a
AU ale
print hetd see y/at schoel which had nothing/to do with common-land.
them
And he'd heard about the xild boar in. the old days; he would imagine/
rushing comxhaxhoctehocexhaxk outfrom the bushess He always had this.
hembed-senoe-of-tho-past The Common was rough, with untidy
as a clild
cenhe
bushes and little ridges and hillocks, andJhe used to go to the middle
so that he could look all round him and see no buildings at all,
only trees and coarse grass
Therorphanage was a grey, MUESEEAX ivy-ooxered.mansion that
stood im the mhddlenofopen perklandrrather like a manor-house
rerodo
4te
in kke orphanago
A a A districta Cattle still gra zed thege
hip.
ground
and it was possible to stand in Tatlin Road, which ran
the side


of it, and imagine oneself in the country. Even Tatlin Road had
a country-ldok at times;there were only houses down one side, appolaite
wreorpharege-gpaunden and these were detached, standing in their own
gardens. Rbaorphanage-parkstretenedtalucstas faras Tatlin
wos
AAGA
Broadway, a shacky, crowded shopping-centre where everything datdot
to be
Lsqueezed into one narrow stree t --trams, whealbarrows, Wool-
worths and Marks and Spencers, cinemas and cake-shops and drowds of
people. He was always excited when they went there on Saturday
big
for
afternoons to do the/shopping of the wee k. The lights blazed.i
Yot
agTes
on eithor sidegofthe road, one bright shop-front followed another;
and people pressed together on the pavement, talking and smiling,
calling after their children in the w@nderful glow. There were longt,
roofed-in markets leading from dark ar chways, like immense corridords,
wi th blazing gas-jets, and there one could see everything, vegetables,
toys, clothes, furniture, sweets and tall boxes of biscuits and
shining glassware all in a massive array, while the market-men's
voices rang out, exhorting the women to buy, "Now come on, sweetheart,
you won't get a chance like this againt",
Ona
1 C
mpi
They always came back (loaded with bags) from Tatlin Broadwayf 5
and everything would be put out on the table first, then checked with
the shopping list and put into the larder. And Kis mother would mix
a cake for Sunday, while the fire shone white-hot in the grate, before
Tor a
they all went down to the local Co-opjdance or whist-drive; these
Vook place a
te se usually hetdy at the school at the end of the road, galled
Abbott's Road Junior School, where he and his brothers went until
they were eleven.
Theré had onçé been an old Norman churth in the orphanage
grounds that used to serve Tétlin village. But it had been pulled
dowps like so much else that was old, at the beginning of the
century, when working péople like Granville's parents were 1ooking


Even-ke STables wese still Hure: also Le
Shaded
ca huge oak.
Smithie, in C mall Prarn
for clean, quite places to live, and miles of identical houses and
streefts were built An a frantic expansion that doubled the width
of Kondon. The original Tatlin manor-house had also been pulléd
the sth Cans ge
pown, and thismanciony
he orphanagey more oy/less an imitation
it P lacef
of the gld place, had been built in the-same apotr At first it had
looked hideous because of its red brick, ltke a scar pn the hiziside,
byt now it was mellowed with ivy.
At the end of Abbott's Road there was still the village inn
from two hundred and fifty years before, with a cobbled yard in front
of it: The river ran behind, at the foot of the garden, where there
Lvey be
were tables and a bowling pitch in the summer. V Ther
the dd stablesk
Ilc
hood,
a long
the
He always heard
the hammering debAAhad from his classroom in the junior school,
awl
wald
2.c. which was exactly oppsite; / Sometimes he used-to go across and
watch the horses being shoed? 'He was always astonished that they
didn't cry out, having long nails driven into their feet. They
stood there placidly, old cart horses with fat bellies and lovely
long manes, blinking and shaking the flies off, their bright coa ts
twitching, with one leg tucked up, while the trams rocked and screech-
ed outside. That was about ten years before the second war. After-
wards one saw few horses about, unless they were the huge brown
dray-horses that were still kept by some of the breweries, for old
times! sake. The stables were torn down after an incendiary bomb
caught one of the timbers during an air-raid. Also the junior
school was Fomfletery removed by a land-mine in 1944:, Strengely
enough ne rassrgom remained, standing alone now in an empty
seally
qyadrangre; and his was where be became/ conscious of music for the


SAANAAAA
st amagrepover -
All the windows in the steeet
were blown out when that land-mine fell and the road was knee-deep
in rubble for nearly a week afterwards. H - nobody vee 1
sehoolt On-the-provious svening about
usand children hadbeen-
bhosey-fer-ttwas sometimes-uced
foreveeuation-
parties. The-remadning classroom-wes 4
Msteneditathe
Kagg
smithie mest Anotlorowing whatit was he loved and even thenratthe
aafon
age of ben,yearned fors stood alonenow Nikea brick boxand
neponersebmed to Want to tear itndown
The windows of the inn had
been blown out, too, and much of the roof destroyed. But the tiles
were put back carefully and it all looked much the same as before,
except that it was cleaner, like everything else in the district,
without the old griminess, and the cobbles in front were removed to
make an easier parking space for thf cars. The walls in Abbott's
Radgtien
Road before the war were more smoky and dingy, and this g them a
more mysterious look:
Every house was divided into flats, one upstairs and one down,
lotd
and) they/lived in tha upper one. The back-room looked across a
Aese
the gardens and vas level with the thickest branches of the great
They wele r
lall taitke)
KAROA
in Hem.
was
Alons
elms.
hot and tiny, and/1 family-life went on
finplace
were rails over the grate whege handkerchiefs and socks were hung to
dry, and in front there was a brass fender where his father's slip-
Le Ca trot wotk
pers were left to warm before hen ARARAtA ada In the middle of
the room there was a table big enough for eight people at a squeeze,
with a thick brown cover over it, under a tasselled gas-light. And
along one wall was a big dresser where all the crockery showed,
and opp3oite this, set in the wall over the back stairs, was the
uhud
Lis
Kid wren
tey WA 1
larder, inte-whieh he and one bro thers could always
aen theywere
playins hde
seekg
In tkat larder Ibane wi lags
ahi Idren
The would
somotimesy-sating the preserved
0) dned fruits that his father brought home from the docks on Fridays nights?


/n Hhe lack Youm,
In t
om Ae and his bro thers did alt their H d
spreading
their books over the table and telling each other "Shut up!" avery
now and then or "Put a sock in it!" Next door, by the larder, there
was a scullery with a deep copper for boiling clothes, and a gas stove.
His mother had the boiler removed, to the distress of the landlerd,
yranad
but soon after the war begen the rest of the street followed suit;
she was often quicker in her ideas than other people. She said
the boiler was a 'blasted old-fashioned thing' and'the only creatures
who liked it were the mice!"
Tiams . ran along at the end of the street and he could hear
their heavy clanging noise from where he slept. Opposite his window
there was a line of roof that stretched uninterrupted the whole
this
length of the street. Everything was regular and fixed aike thats
There were chimney-pots at regular intervals and beyond them the
somelimes
empty sky. But even so the street had a small, intimate kook and
on summer evenings when the sky was angry and low it would seem to
be indoors, mather exciting, as if an enormous glass roof had been
constructed over it, like the Cysstal Palace, And when there was
thick snow it looked like a tiny village-street. He hated people
to come out and shovel the snow into the gutter, which they nearly
always did, making nasty black htark marks on the pavement; but then
sometimes the snow came again. and made what they did rédiculous:
One day the Crystal Palace burst into flames and he went out into
the street and saw the glow of its fire rising and falling in the
sed
sky, making the evening Hight.
The street was nearly always quiet, like the countrysided
Now and then, in the evening, especially in the winter; there came
the sound of a piano from behind drawn curtains on the other side,
hesitant and out of tune, a-little melancholy4 like someone crying,
without an audience. He and his sister, younger than he was,


slept in the spare room overlooking the street, while their two
brothers shared a bigger room overidoking the side-yard, where drains
gurgled all day.
One of the family got to a university---that was a great event;
it was his eldest brother, and all hopes were centred on him, as the
cleveredt of the four. Granville tried to repeat the success but
failed. His other brother went into a stockbroker's office at the
age of seventeen and later became quite a successful business-man.
In a way Granville had an easier time than either of his: brothers.
They felt protectively towards him and were always trying to groom
him
Kep
aNI and prepare him for the world. And-thayhahtonfnght their
MALintorthensorlhosbeld.de abet
Resdg-witepepeealhbehad ta do
RoE
Hasto follom thei
ampd
Both he and his sister
basked
in grown-up adoration. By the time they were ten and twelve tha his
beothers were already bringing money into the house" The first
struggles were over and things felt safer:
Throuph his enothar
A Also/he met middle-class people when he was only a child, So that,
through-his-brothere. Otherwise he wouzd Fhave had-to wait until
after-his-sehoel-yeol-years,as cheyle dene. Ho came to know sooner than
Hkey did
meyaa that outside Abbott's Road there was a world quite different
from his own. He was better prepared for the shocks than they were. à
After the university his eldest brother was almost crushed.
cate went
He became a drunkarp and went/down to Abbott's Road asking for money.
bnld be
He had filled Granville with his dreams of what life was like out-
To te
side Abbott's Road. It was)so glorious! Then the dreams collapsed,
Hey
or rather/ were worn slowly down, and he almost went to pieces. But
then as suddenly he mended and became quiet and sober. He started
witt a mining compauy
agnca,
a family and took up a job at - a - a-univereity in South America, in
mathematics. His learning always intimidated Granville. He had a
Gannlle
natural grasp which he couldn't imitate. But-en-the-other-hend-he


nsler, She
Rardly
Hie-sister married and he never saw her now. Sometimes he
remembered her quiet face from his childhood and wished he'd married
a gic
semeone from Abbott's Road.
Tred family
Uled to go over to
They) often vaeited Bethnel Green when they were children to see
his father's family. At first they used to go every Saturday night.
aN Betkuel Gren? thure usse
Life was more in the open/thmarateolornlo-Rondyonds ragged children
everywhere, in loud, scrambling groups. And the streets looked wider
m ote
and, hollow, stepinghy flattened out to the sky, with a raw, smoky air
that grimed everything and-yet made it like a new lurid countryside,
dusty,
solemn
iron-coloured and suky) very still and solmen like a strange ghastly
and fascinating monument.
The rooms there were dark and small, and
in the summer people sat at their doorways or on benches pit out on
the pavement, the women suckling their babies. At night about ten
usudl.
o'clock old women with laced-up boots/shuffleg down to the off-licence
for their jug/stout. His grandmother used to pull the shawl round her
shoulders and set off with her flower-painted jug gripped tight in
her hand, her lips pursed mutely together and an obstinate look in her
eyes. Shewas Small and pale, with an sxtraordinan iron obstinacy.
uonally
C 1o0
After the pubs closed there werel fights semetimess The police
) and
kept out of the district on the whole, so-tt it was a law to itself.
There was the smell of cooking from the faggots-and-peas-pudding shop
round the corner, and outside the pub where his uncle went there was
always a man with a horse-and-cart selling cockles and winkles; he
used to call out, #COCK-les end WINK-les!" in a sing-song voice like
someone yodelling. The trams rumbled past with their yellow lights,
up on the big road, where the darkness of these streets, that rose
and fell in deep hills as if they'd been


a steady, dark gleam and there were W isps of light brown hair over
her brow. And she said, putting her hand lightly on her hip, "Not
too badr is she?" Then she walked on and didn't turn round again.
Her favourite swear-word was *bleed'n'. "Mind my bleed'n
col rns!" she would cry if one of the children came too near.' This word
had a vicious, forbidden sound to his ears. His mother forebade its
use at Abbott's Road and only said it herself, shyly, when she was
with May. She would try to loosen up in May's company. She would
lean forward and talk with narrowed eyes,. using all the swear-words
she could think of. "I said to her, I said, now don't you come your
sodding larks with me," she would murmur. She had a delicacy that
was crushed when she used these words deliberately. She needed to be
angry, but in May it was an understood manner of speech. It ran in
the family, perhaps, for his father was the same d He was fond of the
words 'shit-house', applied to people.
"He's a real shit-house,"
he would say during one of his do ckyard stories, and his mother would
lower her eyes and murmur reprovingly, "All right, King Georgets
dock..." At other times she would say, "That's enough, Bethnel
Aitaitar
Green! He would look at her with his mouth open and his eyes
bewildered, as if 40407 unconscious of what hetd said.'
Sometimes May would talk about her husband. "I do love my
Sid," she would say. "He's lovely! I don't know what I'd do
without that bugger!" And, "Sid does me good!" They never seemed
to quarrel. Sid was a lean, handsome man, not unlike Granville's
father to look at, and on Saturday nights he set out to trink get as
drunk as he could. They would all start drinking at the pub, wi th
the children waiting outside eating potato-crisps and sipping texax
ginger beer. Then at closing time everybody would pour out, stumb-
ling and singing. There would be groups of people all along the road,
rolling and bumping into each other. Sid would always bring some


Aunt May had a special game for the boys of the family, to
chase them round the room and make a sudden dive for their trousers,
to catch their 'little winkles'. Then she would hold up her hand,
showing them her thumb sticking out between her fingers, and cry,
"I got itl I got it!" And the boys always looked down at their
trousers, half-believing. This game awas.excited him. One
evening, without any consciousness of what he was doing, in the
passage-way near the door, he suddenly stopped while she was chasing
him and turned round to face her as if to say, 'You needn't chase
mg, it's yours for the asking!, She stopped, too, and raised herself
up slowly, gazing at him with a slowly dawning expression; then a look
wter
of, disgust came into her eyes, the only one he ever saw, and she
walked slowly away.
Eve was the only one of the family he'd seen since the war.
She lived near Wimbledon now, in a suburb rather like the
an called
Baral,
check
the U.K. Compound in Mooul, with a husband and four children: Her l
were rosy now and she was quite plumpa Much of the sadness had gone
searching
out of her eyes but they still had a baffled, tmpatskkixe look.'
Whenewre Graninlle
Aunt May had died some years before, suddenly. k Ashe talked to
Eve he saw flashes of her mother's face in her and almost gasped.'
There was the old rich tone, and the jauntiness. It was in the way
she lifted up her head sometimes, smiling, with bright eyes, when
she made a joke or shouted at her children, seeming to encourage
them just as her mother did. Her children were quiet and well
cared-for, with her rosy look.>
ghe'
the
Eve ad coolly made it kEx ambition of her life to get May and
AMV She'ol
the rest of the family out of Bethnel Green, and NF succeeded?
The seeond war gave her the chance, when the bombing got really bad.
trou
She levered them slowly out of the district they loved, and the tiny,
belaged to.
datk house they lovad. By that time tp she and her father were