I DID not go out with Rosie again for more than a week. She was going
down to Haversham to spend a night with her mother. She had various
engagements in London. Then she asked me if I would go to the Haymarket
Theatre with her. The play was a success and free seats were not to be
had so we made up our minds to go in the pit. We had a steak and a glass
of beer at the Café Monico and then stood with the crowd. In those days
there was no orderly queue and when the doors were opened there was a
mad rush and scramble to get in. We were hot and breathless and somewhat
battered when at last we pushed our way into our seats.
We walked back through St. James’s Park. The night was so lovely that we
sat down on a bench. In the starlight Rosie’s face and her fair hair
glowed softly. She was suffused, as it were (I express it awkwardly, but
I do not know how to describe the emotion she gave me) with a
friendliness at once candid and tender. She was like a silvery flower of
the night that only gave its perfume to the moonbeams. I slipped my arm
round her waist and she turned her face to mine. This time it was I who
kissed. She did not move; her soft red lips submitted to the pressure of
mine with a calm, intense passivity as the water of a lake accepts the
light of the moon. I don’t know how long we stayed there.
“I’m awfully hungry,” she said suddenly.
“So am I,” I laughed.
“Couldn’t we go and have some fish and chips somewhere?”
“Rather.”
In those days I knew my way very well about Westminster, not yet a
fashionable quarter for parliamentary and otherwise cultured persons,
but slummy and down-at-heel; and after we had come out of the park,
crossing Victoria Street, I led Rosie to a fried fish shop in Horseferry
Row. It was late and the only other person there was the driver of a
four-wheeler waiting outside. We ordered our fish and chips and a bottle
of beer. A poor woman came in and bought two penn’orth of mixed and took
it away with her in a piece of paper. We ate with appetite.
Our way back to Rosie’s led through Vincent Square and as we passed my
house I asked her:
“Won’t you come in for a minute? You’ve never seen my rooms.”
“What about your landlady? I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
“Oh, she sleeps like a rock.”
“I’ll come in for a little.”
I slipped my key into the lock and because the passage was dark took
Rosie’s hand to lead her in. I lit the gas in my sitting room. She took
off her hat and vigorously scratched her head. Then she looked for a
glass, but I was very artistic and had taken down the mirror that was
over the chimney-piece and there was no means in the room for anyone to
see what he looked like.
“Come into my bedroom,” I said. “There’s a glass there.”
I opened the door and lit the candle. Rosie followed me in and I held it
up so that she should be able to see herself. I looked at her in the
glass as she arranged her hair. She took two or three pins out, which
she put in her mouth, and taking one of my brushes, brushed her hair up
from the nape of the neck. She twisted it, patted it, and put back the
pins, and as she was intent on this her eyes caught mine in the glass
and she smiled at me. When she had replaced the last pin she turned and
faced me; she did not say anything; she looked at me tranquilly, still
with that little friendly smile in her blue eyes. I put down the candle.
The room was very small and the dressing table was by the bed. She
raised her hand and softly stroked my cheek.
I wish now that I had not started to write this book in the first person
singular. It is all very well when you can show yourself in an amiable
or touching light; and nothing can be more effective than the modest
heroic or pathetic humorous which in this mode is much cultivated; it is
charming to write about yourself when you see on the reader’s eyelash
the glittering tear and on his lips the tender smile; but it is not so
nice when you have to exhibit yourself as a plain damned fool.
A little while ago I read in the _Evening Standard_ an article by Mr.
Evelyn Waugh in the course of which he remarked that to write novels in
the first person was a contemptible practice. I wish he had explained
why, but he merely threw out the statement with just the same
take-it-or-leave-it casualness as Euclid used when he made his
celebrated observation about parallel straight lines. I was much
concerned and forthwith asked Alroy Kear (who reads everything, even the
books he writes prefaces for) to recommend to me some works on the art
of fiction. On his advice I read _The Craft of Fiction_ by Mr. Percy
Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like
Henry James; after that I read _Aspects of the Novel_ by Mr. E. M.
Forster, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like
Mr. E. M. Forster; then I read _The Structure of the Novel_ by Mr. Edwin
Muir, from which I learned nothing at all. In none of them could I
discover anything to the point at issue. All the same I can find one
reason why certain novelists, such as Defoe, Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens,
Emily Brontë, and Proust, well known in their day but now doubtless
forgotten, have used the method that Mr. Evelyn Waugh reprehends. As we
grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and
unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that
offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer, whose thoughts should more
properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial
concerns of imaginary people. For if the proper study of mankind is man
it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent,
substantial, and significant creatures of fiction than with the
irrational and shadowy figures of real life. Sometimes the novelist
feels himself like God and is prepared to tell you everything about his
characters; sometimes, however, he does not; and then he tells you not
everything that is to be known about them but the little he knows
himself; and since as we grow older we feel ourselves less and less like
God I should not be surprised to learn that with advancing years the
novelist grows less and less inclined to describe more than his own
experience has given him. The first person singular is a very useful
device for this limited purpose.
Rosie raised her hand and softly stroked my face. I do not know why I
should have behaved as I then did; it was not at all how I had seen
myself behaving on such an occasion. A sob broke from my tight throat. I
do not know whether it was because I was shy and lonely (not lonely in
the body, for I spent all day at the hospital with all kinds of people,
but lonely in the spirit) or because my desire was so great, but I began
to cry. I felt terribly ashamed of myself; I tried to control myself, I
couldn’t; the tears welled up in my eyes and poured down my cheeks.
Rosie saw them and gave a little gasp.
“Oh, honey, what is it? What’s the matter? Don’t. Don’t!”
She put her arms round my neck and began to cry too, and she kissed my
lips and my eyes and my wet cheeks. She undid her bodice and lowered my
head till it rested on her bosom. She stroked my smooth face. She rocked
me back and forth as though I were a child in her arms. I kissed her
breasts and I kissed the white column of her neck; and she slipped out
of her bodice and out of her skirt and her petticoats and I held her for
a moment by her corseted waist; then she undid it, holding her breath
for an instant to enable her to do so, and stood before me in her shift.
When I put my hands on her sides I could feel the ribbing of the skin
from the pressure of the corsets.
“Blow out the candle,” she whispered.
It was she who awoke me when the dawn peering through the curtains
revealed the shape of the bed and of the wardrobe against the darkness
of the lingering night. She woke me by kissing me on the mouth and her
hair falling over my face tickled me.
“I must get up,” she said. “I don’t want your landlady to see me.”
“There’s plenty of time.”
Her breasts when she leaned over me were heavy on my chest. In a little
while she got out of bed. I lit the candle. She turned to the glass and
tied up her hair and then she looked for a moment at her naked body. Her
waist was naturally small; though so well developed she was very
slender; her breasts were straight and firm and they stood out from the
chest as though carved in marble. It was a body made for the act of
love. In the light of the candle, struggling now with the increasing
day, it was all silvery gold; and the only colour was the rosy pink of
the hard nipples.
We dressed in silence. She did not put on her corsets again, but rolled
them up and I wrapped them in a piece of newspaper. We tiptoed along the
passage and when I opened the door and we stepped out into the street
the dawn ran to meet us like a cat leaping up the steps. The square was
empty; already the sun was shining on the eastern windows. I felt as
young as the day. We walked arm in arm till we came to the corner of
Limpus Road.
“Leave me here,” said Rosie. “One never knows.”
I kissed her and I watched her walk away. She walked rather slowly, with
the firm tread of the country woman who likes to feel the good earth
under her feet, and held herself erect. I could not go back to bed. I
strolled on till I came to the Embankment. The river had the bright hues
of the early morning. A brown barge came down stream and passed under
Vauxhall Bridge. In a dinghy two men were rowing close to the side. I
was hungry.