The Woman Who Had Imagination (23 page)

When Christopher went into the shop two other men were inside, talking loudly. George, an elderly man with a heavy grey face and grey hair, was talking to a little cockney with a cherubic face, named Albert. George was deaf and Albert was shouting at him with a piercing cockney voice.

‘'Ow's yer wife?' shouted Albert.

‘I haven't read it,' said George, shaking his head.

‘I said 'ow's yer wife?'

‘I haven't read it, I said.'

‘Gawd!' said Albert. ‘I said, 'ow's your wife?'

‘Eh?'

‘'Ow's your wife, I said!' shouted Albert.

Karl came running in. Going straight to George he said quietly, ‘He wants to know how your wife is,' and George answered at once:

‘Oh! yes, yes, she's fine.'

Karl hurried out with a pile of books and Albert went on:

‘Bring her round some evening.'

‘Eh!' said George.

‘Bring her round some evening!'

‘I liked it. Did you?'

‘Gawd!' said Albert. ‘I asked you to bring her round some evening!'

‘Who?'

‘Your wife!'

‘What about her?'

‘Jesus wept,' said Albert. ‘And well he might!
Bring her round …' he began to shout. ‘Bring her round.…'

Christopher could endure it no longer. He walked out of the door. He stood for a moment looking at the books in the window. Karl vanished into the shop, taking no notice of him. Christopher wanted to ask him as a special favour if he would buy
The Meaning of God
, but first his pride and then the fear of refusal prevented him. Turning over the pages of the art-magazine he gazed at ‘La Source', thinking once more of Phoebe. Suddenly he went impulsively into the shop with the magazine in his hand.

‘Will you exchange this book for this magazine?' he said to Karl.

Karl took the book.

‘The Meaning of God?'
he said, faintly derisive. ‘What is the meaning of God?'

‘Take it, take it, please,' urged Christopher.

‘I don't want the bloody thing!'

‘Oh! don't you? Can't you just for this time?' he pleaded.

Karl's generosity triumphed.

‘All right,' he said. ‘I've got
The Meaning of God
all over the place now but I'll take it.'

‘Thank you,' said Christopher. ‘Thank you so much.'

As he turned to go out of the shop, carrying the magazine under his arm, Albert was shouting to George:

‘Jesus Christ! I said bring your wife round some evening!'

Christopher hurried away out of reach of the voice. There was a curious feeling of exultation in his heart and he walked quickly. What was coming over him? Crossing the street he went through a passage into Lincoln's Inn, his favourite spot in all London, and sat down and gazed at ‘La Source' again. Tears came into his eyes suddenly because of the great beauty of the picture. He felt ridiculously happy as he looked at the dark brimming eyes of the young girl, her beautiful breasts, the heavenly whiteness of her skin. The only woman he had ever seen undressed was Ada; her limbs were hard and her skin yellowish and her breasts had never blossomed, even for her children, and they too were hard and yellow. She only nauseated him. He had no desire to see Phoebe's body, content to feel in his imagination that she was like the young girl in ‘La Source'.

Great clouds were flocking over from the sea, like immense grey geese flying southward, and suddenly he shut the book and gazed at them, gazing in a state of dreamy stupidity, not knowing what to do with happiness now that it had come to him.

Presently, too excited to sit still any longer, he got up and wandered down to the Embankment and walked along by the river. The water was chopped to small fierce waves by the wind; the smoke from tugs was snatched up and torn to shreds; gulls planed and
swooped and breasted the grey waves, screaming mournfully. Young girls came hurrying along the pavement under the plane trees, leaving shops and offices. Trams lurched along and stopped and people clambered aboard and were wafted away. Over the Port of London itself a young moon rode along pale and transparent, appearing and vanishing again, whenever the clouds broke, like a far-off seagull lost among the geese of the clouds.

He stopped at a coffee-stall and bought himself a cup of tea and some biscuits. The stall-tender was a big fat man, in his shirt sleeves. A third man in dungarees came up and bought himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee. It was warm under the flap of the stall, with a smell of coffee and new meat pies, and the two men talked about the Government. ‘There ain't enough work to go round — not if you argue till Doomsday. It'll never come right again.'

Christopher wanted to shout at them exultantly.

‘What do I care about government? What does it matter? All my life I've never done anything better than mend watches and review books that nobody reads, and now I'm going to do something that is worth doing.'

He walked on again. The young girls hurrying away out of London all seemed like Phoebe. He looked at them wistfully and now and then he stopped and leaned on the stone parapet by the river and looked at ‘La Source' again, thinking in the morning he was to
take her to the station. She was to be snatched from his life. Her father, a big labouring man, had married a second time and there were eight other children, and probably he would belt her for going home, but he would keep her there simply because he could not raise the train-fare to send her back again.

He walked about till evening and then as darkness was falling he went back to Pope's Buildings.

He sat down as on the previous day and had tea with Phoebe and the children.

‘Any luck?' she asked.

‘Yes, I sold it,' he lied.

‘Oh! I am glad.'

When the children had gone to bed Phoebe found her bag and together they packed her belongings. ‘Oh! I shan't sleep,' she said. ‘I know I shan't.' He took the bag downstairs and left it with the caretaker, who had a room on the ground floor. They could call for it as they passed in the morning.

When he came back Phoebe was turning over the pages of the art-magazine, which he had thrown in a chair, and as he shut the door she came upon the picture of ‘La Source'. She stared at it, confused and embarrassed. Before she could shut the book he asked:

‘Do you like that?'

‘Oh! I don't know,' she said.

‘I think it's very wonderful,' he said.

‘It's just a girl.'

‘That's not all,' he said. ‘It's the significance of it — the meaning.'

‘Why she is spilling the water?'

He tried to explain it.

‘That's the whole meaning of it — the spring of life. She's overflowing with youth and life. She's careless — she doesn't know how precious her youth is. She just lets it spill.'

‘I don't see it. Why does she let it spill?'

‘That's the point of it — the spring of life spilling and wasting.'

‘Why couldn't she hold the vase upright and not spill the water?'

‘It wouldn't have meant anything.'

‘Why wouldn't it?'

He went on trying to explain but she could not understand. Neither did she see, as he did, that she herself was like the young girl.

Later, when the old woman came home, a little drunk and talkative, he took out the watch he had begun to clean the previous evening and laid out the works on a sheet of newspaper.

‘I saw Ada with a bloke,' said the old woman. ‘Serves you right; serves you damn well right.'

He said nothing. What did it matter? And he went on cleaning the watch-works, happy in his silence.

On Sunday mornings Ada and the old woman did not wake till twelve o'clock, and when they at last got up they shuffled from one room to the other, half-dressed, their hair frowzy and uncombed, the old woman's uncorseted body rolling from side to side grossly and flabbily as she searched for the hairpins her shaking fingers let fall in trying to pin up her hair. She always over-drank on Saturday nights and in the morning her drink-sodden face and her bleary leaden eyes were full of a sombre hatred for the world and for Christopher especially. Ada, without her rouge and powder, but with the remnants of both still on her cracked lips and sallow skin, lay huddled under the bed-clothes, half-asleep and muttering while Christopher and Phoebe got breakfast and sent the two children off at ten o'clock to a Salvation Army Sunday School at the end of the street.

The children always went into the bedroom to say ‘Good morning' to the old woman before departing. It was her wish. And they would lean over the gross mound of flesh in the untidy bed and bid her ‘Goodbye' and she would stir from her heavy-eyed stupor and say with a kind of bleary sanctimoniousness:

‘Gawd bless you. Be good children, sing nicely. That's right! Gawd bless you, my dears, Gawd bless you!'

Christopher woke early. The first thing he remembered was that Ada, somewhere in the middle of the night, had crawled over him as he lay in bed and had sunk down with an exhausted sigh into her place against the wall. It must have been two o'clock. Her coming not only woke him but set the bed-springs creaking with little sounds which sounded to him louder and more horrible than ever in the dead of night. By her clumsy movements and her grim and uncertain mutterings he realised that she too must be drunk. Sickened, he felt that another night in the same bed with her would drive him mad. Then he remembered Phoebe. He suddenly got out of bed and put on his jacket over his night-shirt. Everywhere was silent and he walked about the room in his bare feet and then he put on his stockings. Again and again he thought of the morning; he saw the train hissing on the platform at King's Cross and he saw it rushing northward through the flat country of eastern England. The thought of it all made him feel wretched and lonely, and suddenly he knelt down impulsively against the big leather arm-chair in the corner and prayed silently with his hands drawn over his face until he had exhausted his words and he could go on praying only through sheer desperation and unhappiness, his words no longer meaning anything. When he rose from his knees he felt chastened and his mind was clearer and he took off his stockings again, intending to get back into bed and try to sleep once
more, but suddenly he found himself opening the door of the other room, where Phoebe and the children and the old woman slept. He opened the door impulsively by doing it with a kind of defiance against himself. In the bedroom the green blinds were drawn and it was pitch dark, but he knew the room so well he walked straight to the bed where Phoebe was asleep with the two children. The air was heavy with the silence of sleep. Phoebe, a dark image against the pillow, was sleeping on the edge of the bed and the children were huddled against the wall. All the beds in the Bonners' two rooms were pushed against the wall. Christopher stood and listened a moment and then impulsively he stooped and kissed the girl. Except for their warmth her lips might have been dead; there was no response from them. He took one look at her pale face, hesitated and then left the room himself. He walked about the other room for a long time, the thought of getting back into the bed which he hated so much bringing all his unbalancedness back again. When he crept back into bed again he was shivering and his feet were icily cold. He could not get them warm again and they were still cold when he woke.

He woke at ten minutes past seven. The morning was cloudy, with a sickly yellow sunrise which was reflected in the windows, all with blinds still drawn, in the houses opposite. He put on the hands of the clock to half past seven and set the kettle to boil on
the gas-ring and washed himself at the sink. As he was washing he heard Phoebe moving about and then the children. The youngest child came out to fetch a jug of water for washing.

‘Don't make a noise,' he entreated her as he gave her the water.

The train departed at half-past ten. He had put on the hands of the clock by twenty minutes in order to send away the children early. Phoebe would take the children downstairs, wait for him and he would follow.

Phoebe came out of the bedroom with the children, and they all sat down to the breakfast table. The children chattered, but Phoebe and Christopher hardly spoke. Ada stirred uneasily in bed in the corner, fighting wakefulness.

At ten o'clock it all happened as they proposed it should. At the back of his mind Christopher cherished a weak hope that something unexpected would happen to prevent it all, but event followed event implacably and smoothly: Ada did not wake, the children asked no questions, and as the clocks were striking a quarter to ten over London he and Phoebe walked away from Pope's Buildings, meeting no one in the silent streets except milkmen and Sunday-paper men and children running to Sunday School. The streets of Clerkenwell were dim and frowzy and littered with orange peel and fried fish papers which floated sleepily along the pavements, the jaded relics
of humanity's Saturday night. The time seemed to pass quickly, seeming to record itself not in hours and minutes but in streets and houses, every street and every house exactly like its neighbour, drab and soulless; in the houses, which were the minutes, dwelt crowded people, which were seconds; the seconds were part of the minute and the minute part of the hour, and the hour merely a fraction of time and eternity.

Before Christopher was aware of it, and while he was still thinking gloomily of the streets, they arrived at King's Cross. Life was beginning to move there, and in the station with people hurrying and waiting on the platforms, and trains waiting to depart, he felt less depressed. There was some meaning in life again; people were going away; people were setting out on adventurous journeys; there was a sense of freedom and escape.

He looked up the train on the indicator. ‘Platform four.' He looked at Phoebe and smiled. ‘You wait at the barrier while I get your ticket,' he told her.