Begin again, p.3
Begin Again, page 3
Fortunately she would be seeing Jane and Florence before the party next Saturday. She was having supper with them on Wednesday, after a day’s shopping in town. It was the one incident she was looking forward to in a week that promised nothing more intellectually stimulating than a meeting of the fête committee (probably she would be asked to take the Hoop-la stall again) and a picnic with the Clarkes’ children. Of course, even if Jane and Florence knew nothing of the situation, their very presence at the party would be a moral support. Still, she would take the opportunity of telling them about her plans on Wednesday. It would be interesting for them to know.
For oh! thought Leslie, as another surge of impatience shook her, if only I could be sure that everything was going to be settled properly. If only this week would come and go more quickly, if only the party would be a complete success, if only I could really look forward definitely to beginning again. Beginning again! The very idea caused Leslie to wriggle in her chair with excitement and impatience. At the thought, the whole of her past life paled into insignificance. At last, reflected Leslie, dismissing her childhood, her school-days, and nearly five years of her subsequent life at home, at last I shall be able to begin properly. At last I shall be able to do what I want. At last I shall be living a life that is really—how could she describe it? Really—
“Leslie! Are you ready, dear? You know I promised to give old Mrs. Jones a lift, so I think we ought to be—”
“Coming, mummy.”
Worth-while! That was the word that she was looking for. Worth-while! Leslie left the deck-chair for somebody else to put away and ran hurriedly to her room to change her shoes. Mrs. Fisher got into the car and waited patiently.
Chapter I
Alarm clocks and frying pans and divan beds were not, to Jane and Florence, romantic symbols of escape and independence. They were simply things which you had to have in a flat. Necessary, of course, but a nuisance. According to their kind they needed perpetual winding, cleaning, or remaking.
On this particular Saturday morning, at about the same time as Leslie was changing her shoes, Jane’s alarm clock went off with such energy that it whirred itself right over the edge of the painted chest-of-drawers and clattered on to the floor. The shrill metallic ringing changed to a croaking rasp. Then silence. The clock lay on its back with its ugly moon face staring at the ceiling, ticking in an offensive and deliberate manner. Beyond pulling the bed-clothes of the divan bed a little further over her head Jane took absolutely no notice. The clock, its three tin legs sticking out sharply, continued to tick. It had the sulky and obstinate air of one who performs a duty, however unpleasant, with extreme thoroughness. It was a cheap clock (five-and-sixpence, bargain basement, and You can depend on the alarm to wake you up, madam) and it had fallen on to the trailing sleeve of a new and expensive squirrel fur coat which was sprawling half off and half on the bed, just where Jane had flung it down on returning to her flat late the night before.
The cheapness of the clock, the expensiveness of the coat, and the fact that their owner continued to sleep on were all typical of Jane.
It was Saturday anyway, and she and Florence had both got the morning off from the office. The alarm had only been set in order to be luxuriously neglected. Jane was not awake enough actually to formulate this thought, but a dreamy sense of satisfaction slowly stole across her mind. No hurry—beautifully warm. A blurred and velvet oblivion re-engulfed her. A lorry clattering by below jarred the window-frame. Some one in the flat above turned on the bath-water. A little breeze blew in at the window, and though it was a London breeze it yet carried with it a sweet damp earthy smell, an early summer smell of wet ground growing warm again and flowers opening to the sun. Jane slept on and on, not composedly and serenely as people sleep in pictures illustrating patent food or nerve-restorers, but defiantly, hoggishly, with little wuffling noises and an occasional snort, nose screwed into the pillow, bed-clothes a tumbled heap. She opened her eyes only once and then, seeing the disorder of the room—evening dress cast off anyhow, two pairs of shoes kicked into one corner, chest-of-drawers loaded with bottles, gloves, handkerchiefs, odd jewellery—seeing all this disorder she murmured “My God” and hastily shut her eyes again. All these things cast so wildly about the room reminded her of the night before, and from the thought of the night before she shied away. She did not want to think about Henry and Henry’s accusations and Henry’s demands and the unpleasant squabbling evening they had spent with Claud and Sylvia. Poor Claud and Sylvia! It could not have been much fun for them to have Henry and her snapping at each other all the time. Well, let it be a warning to them not to get engaged. Although, as a matter of fact, she didn’t think there was any idea of an engagement between them. As a matter of fact—The words modern and sensible and why not? drifted into Jane’s mind. If I were twenty years older, thought Jane, for she was now awake enough to think (although not to think yet about getting up), supposing I were twenty years older and had a daughter, I should any to her, I should say, “I don’t care what you do, my dear, as long as you make up your own mind, and as long so you get some pleasure out of it and don’t make other people miserable and don’t come and say you wish you hadn’t afterwards.” I should tell her it’s never any good regretting anything because—because it isn’t. I should say, “Do what you like, my dear. Every one has to make up his own mind about everything in the end.” And if she said, “But won’t you advise me?” I should say, “No, I won’t advise you at all. . . .” (It was pleasant to dwell on this original portrait of herself as a mother, kindly refusing advice to a more dimly-conceived daughter. It kept her thoughts off the present and Henry and the sad muddle of her engagement to him that had already lasted three years and looked like lasting another thirty.)
Presently sounds began to come from the other room in the flat, the only other room besides the small bathroom and the still smaller kitchen. Sounds of a kettle being filled, gas lighting with a pop, crockery rattling. It was Florence getting her breakfast. A hiss from the kettle. A clank from the lid of the bin. A dull clatter from the bread-board falling over. Jane turned over, wriggling her toes luxuriously in the warm sheets. Presently the telephone rang, and immediately the kettle boiled over. Florence’s voice.
“Yes. . . . Oh, hullo, Henry!” (How awake Florence sounded!) “Yes, she’s asleep still. I’ll wake her up. What? No, I don’t suppose she’ll mind it, it’s nearly ten. Did you have a good party last night? Oh—er—good. I’ll call her.”
Brisk footsteps. The door opened.
“All right, don’t tell me,” said Jane hurriedly, “I heard.” She yawned, and made a half-hearted attempt at putting on her dressing-gown without getting out of bed. Florence, a little quenched, stumbled over a shoe, and then picked it up and gazed at it thoughtfully. Jane got out of bed and trod on the alarm clock. At the other end of the line Henry waited patiently.
“Damn,” said Jane, “how did that get there?” She showed no inclination to answer the telephone, but picked up a comb and began to run it thoughtfully through her short fair hair.
“I wish you’d said I’d already gone out, Florence.”
Florence looked worried. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to go out with Henry this week-end. I honestly don’t. I suppose I’d better answer that blasted phone.”
“Sorry, Jane. I didn’t know you didn’t want to speak to him.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good if you had. He’d have rung up later. Fidelity! Spaniels aren’t in it! Henry would have made a beautiful spaniel, wouldn’t he, Florence?” Jane giggled. Her spirits were beginning to rise. “A nice golden-brown colour and ever so willing to say he was sorry.”
“You are a funny girl,” said Florence. Jane’s resilience, her buoyancy of spirit, her extraordinary capacity for evading unpleasantness by flippancy never failed to astonish her.
Jane was answering the telephone as Florence went into the bathroom, conscientiously turning on both taps so that she could not hear much of the conversation.
“Hullo, Henry.”
“Hullo, darling.” Henry’s voice was tender and full of solicitude. “Darling, I’m terribly sorry about last night. It was all my fault.”
“What?”
Henry raised his voice.
“I said it was all my fault about last night.”
“I’m sorry, Henry. I simply can’t hear a thing. It’s because Florence is running the bath-water. I’ll go and turn it off.”
A pause, and then, “That’s better,” from Jane.
For the third time Henry braced himself for a manly apology.
“Listen, darling. I want to apologize about last night. I really am frightfully sorry—” He stopped suddenly. Jane appeared to be laughing into the telephone. Some very odd noises were gurgling in his receiver. Or could it be—ah, could it really be—that she was crying? Henry’s heart gave a bound. Perhaps she was miserable because of all the dreadful things he had said to her. Perhaps she had been lying awake all night worrying, as he had. Ah, but he would comfort her. What a brute he was to make her cry!
Jane’s clear little voice sounded again in his ear.
“Sorry, Henry darling. It’s horrid of me to laugh. But you did shout so! It nearly broke my ear-drum.”
“Sorry,” said Henry flatly. It was no good. He could never make Jane really care. He could never make her suffer a tenth of what he himself suffered whenever they quarrelled. She was so dear to him, so painfully dear. And so sweet to him too, except when they quarrelled, and said bitter things to each other; and even then there was no malice in what she said, none of the pent-up resentment that drove him to wound himself savagely in saying cruel things to her.
“It’s just that I’m not your type really, Henry,” Jane had said yesterday, calmly, pleasantly even, in the tone she might have said it was raining or asked for the marmalade.
“I could never love any one but you,” said Henry desperately. If only he could make her feel something of the rapturous torment that shook him! But Jane was persistently agreeable. When Henry apologized she would protest that there was nothing to forgive. It was true that she remembered very few of the bitter things Henry said to her when they quarrelled. There was nothing to forgive because all was so quickly forgotten. She was even rather sorry for Henry because he said such funny things when he was cross.
“Listen, darling. I hope I didn’t wake you up?”
“Not exactly.”
“You were such a long time coming I was beginning to think you must be asleep.”
“Only sort of.”
“I must see you, Jane dear. Can you meet me for lunch?”
“Oh—not for lunch, darling. I mean it’s awfully late already, and I’ve got such a lot I must do.”
“Why, what time do you make it? Perhaps my watch is slow?” Henry was always so ready to believe himself mistaken.
“I don’t know. I trod on the clock.”
“Darling, you are sweet.”
“Darling, you are a nuisance. I honestly can’t meet you this morning. I’ve such a lot to do.”
“What?”
“Oh, sort of stockings and coffee and tinned beans and blue frock and scent-spray.”
“I can’t imagine what all that means, but will it really take all the morning?”
“Yes. Besides I must wash my hair.”
Henry did a rapid calculation. If he fetched her in a taxi and then went to Victoria himself afterwards in a taxi—
“Listen, Jane. I must catch the 2.35 from Victoria. I forgot to tell you yesterday that I’m going to Aunt Alice’s for the week-end. I’ll fetch you in a taxi, and we’ll have a quick lunch. Do. Please.”
So Henry was going to Aunt Alice’s for the week-end! Splendid! She wouldn’t have to bother about him tomorrow then! All right, she would meet him for lunch. Poor darling, he sounded so desperately faithful. . . .
“It doesn’t matter really about doing those things,” said Jane. “You needn’t fetch me in a taxi. I’ll come by bus.”
Florence, soaping her neck in the bath, felt a pang of disappointment. She would have liked to see Henry that morning, even if it had only been for a moment. She was very fond of Henry, and she was always touched by his cordial greeting of her whenever he came to the flat. As if it were somehow a delightful surprise to find her there, whereas, she thought humbly, I should have thought I would have been rather in the way. Florence had a fixed idea that engaged couples preferred to be left entirely alone, but somehow this did not seem to apply to Henry and Jane. Henry often tried to detain her when she would have made her escape into the other room, and once, when Jane was unexpectedly out, he had stayed and talked to her a long time. That evening remained very clear in Florence’s mind.
“Henry is a dear,” she had told Jane the next morning. “He was awfully nice to me last night, and I thought he’d be so sick at finding you out.”
“Henry,” said Jane, rather unkindly, “is the sort of man who’s awfully good at looking at other people’s snap-shots.”
“Well, it would be very nice of him if he did,” said Florence rather crossly.
After washing herself very thoroughly, she put on a clean vest, pinned a broken shoulder-strap with a small gold safety-pin, tied her dressing-gown round her, and went into the sitting-room to have breakfast. Jane and she took it in turns to sleep on a divan in this room. It was not so nice as sleeping in the bedroom, especially if there had been sausages or kippers for supper, and Florence, who suffered from a positively ferocious sense of “fairness” saw to it that the change-over was strictly observed. When you were sharing a flat with some one, thought Florence, it was necessary for neither to be under the slightest obligation to the other, and accordingly Jane and Florence, like most young women who have agreed to live together, took care to preserve a rigid independence of action. Jane liked china tea, toast (hard) and an orange for breakfast. Every morning she prepared this slightly anaemic meal for herself, while Florence firmly cooked an egg and made more toast (soft). This unswerving adherence to personal tastes governed every moment of Jane and Florence’s domestic life together. Each was convinced that any compromise would have immediately imperilled the success of their friendship. The thought of a debt of gratitude was utterly abhorrent to both. Gratitude, it must be realized, was destroying to one’s self-respect—hence, thought Florence, the extreme difficulty of getting on with one’s parents, to whom one was continually obliged to feel this nauseating sentiment. Jane and Florence, when deciding to take the flat, had agreed that a communal life based on unselfishness and a measure of self-sacrifice was not to be tolerated for an instant.
“That’s why most marriages are such ghastly failures,” said Florence.
“Luckily we’re neither of us unselfish, so we ought to get on all right,” agreed Jane. In practice this so necessary independence of spirit worked out in terms of buying different tins of soup for supper, using two sorts of marmalade, and, to prevent any sort of obligation, engaging a woman to come in to do all the cleaning. Florence, however, nursed a shameful secret. She might religiously refrain from inquiring whether Jane would be in to supper; she might restrain her twitching fingers from rescuing an evening frock of Jane’s from the cupboard floor; she would never, never wash Jane’s hair-brush—but in her heart of hearts she could not help confessing to herself that she was desperately fond of Jane, far fonder, alas, than Jane was of her. There was nothing to be done about this sorry truth but to conceal it. The rush of warm affection that would flow through her at the sight of Jane’s yellow head, the nagging anxiety that occasionally assailed her when Jane seemed in a mood to be particularly reckless of her neck or reputation (as the time when Jane insisted on trying out somebody’s new Bentley after a particularly merry cocktail party, or the occasion of the mixed sleeping-out party on the roof)—both of these feelings were equally false and despicable. Jane, thought Florence, enviously and truly, never worried for an instant about other people. This was the high ideal at which she herself must aim. Although her efforts met with considerable non-success, Florence must at any rate be congratulated on the way in which she hid her lapses. There was nothing in her attitude this particular morning to suggest that Jane’s quarrels with Henry induced in her a single moment of melancholy misgiving.
Nor, indeed, did Jane, who was now making toast by the gas-fire, look at all depressed. On the contrary she appeared to be in the highest of spirits. She wore a pair of expensive pink satin pyjamas of cunning and sophisticated cut. (A Christmas present from an indulgent brother.) Her feet were thrust into Woolworth slippers (6d. each, 1/- the pair. Jane had been indignant on discovering this artful evasion). Over the pyjamas she wore an old white sports sweater of Henry’s. The pink stripe in it, as Jane carefully pointed out, exactly matched the pink of her pyjamas. As usual, by some lucky trick of her own, she contrived to make this odd ensemble appear attractive. Florence in pyjamas at breakfast would look simply as if she had just got up; but Jane, Jane would manage to look ravishing in a high-necked jersey, put on with a swagger, a pair of grey-flannel trousers, an old scarlet blazer, or (if it was very hot) a handkerchief and shorts. Florence, who was accustomed to choose her clothes with a dull sense of knowing her limitations, sometimes wondered whether it was Jane’s figure or her personality that caused skirts to hang so blithely down her long, slim legs, coats to fit so snugly and yet so jauntily on the shoulders, hats to perch with such a gay self-confidence on her yellow head. There was about her a suggestion of bright colours, of banners waving, of preparations for merrymaking in the air—or so thought Florence, wandering round the room while her egg was boiling, and tripping over the book she had been reading in bed the night before, which had tumbled onto the floor as she fell asleep. Jane had made three bits of toast at once, and was now lying on her back reading the Daily Telegraph, Woolworth slippers waving in the air, fair hair flopping into a pool of sunlight that lay across the stained boards. Florence looked at her and one of those unbidden secret thoughts popped into her head. How horrid it would be to live with any one else. She did not of course say this. It was a recognized thing that they were bound to each other by ties of convenience, not of affection. Instead she remarked, “Damn, neither of us has put the milk-bottles out for weeks,” and wandered back into the kitchen to discover that her egg had annoyingly cracked in the boiling.
