Keep the Aspidistra Flying Read online

  ‘Of course, I’m with you up to a point. After all, it’s only what Marx said. Every ideology is a reflection of economic circumstances.’

  ‘Ah, but you only understand it out of Marx! You don’t know what it means to have to crawl along on two quid a week. It isn’t a question of hardship—it’s nothing so decent as hardship. It’s the bloody, sneaking, squalid meanness of it. Living alone for weeks on end because when you’ve no money you’ve no friends. Calling yourself a writer and never even producing anything because you’re always too washed out to write. It’s a sort of filthy sub-world one lives in. A sort of spiritual sewer.’

  He had started now. They were never together long without Gordon beginning to talk in this strain. It was the vilest manners. It embarrassed Ravelston horribly. And yet somehow Gordon could not help it. He had got to retail his troubles to somebody, and Ravelston was the only person who understood. Poverty, like every other dirty wound, has got to be exposed occasionally. He began to talk in obscene detail of his life in Willowbed Road. He dilated on the smell of slops and cabbage, the clotted sauce-bottles in the dining-room, the vile food, the aspidistras. He described his furtive cups of tea and his trick of throwing the used tea-leaves down the WC. Ravelston, guilty and miserable, sat staring at his glass and revolving it slowly between his hands. Against his right breast he could feel, a square accusing shape, the pocket-book in which, as he knew, eight pound notes and two ten-bob notes nestled against his fat green cheque-book. How awful these details of poverty are! Not that what Gordon was describing was real poverty. It was at worst the fringe of poverty. But what of the real poor? What of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week? When there are people living like that, how dare one walk the world with pound notes and cheque-books in one’s pocket?

  ‘It’s bloody,’ he murmured several times, impotently. In his heart he wondered—it was his invariable reaction—whether Gordon would accept a tenner if you offered to lend it to him.

  They had another drink, which Ravelston again paid for, and went out into the street. It was almost time to part. Gordon never spent more than an hour or two with Ravelston. One’s contacts with rich people, like one’s visits to high altitudes, must always be brief. It was a moonless, starless night, with a damp wind blowing. The night air, the beer and the watery radiance of the lamps induced in Gordon a sort of dismal clarity. He perceived that it is quite impossible to explain to any rich person, even to anyone so decent as Ravelston, the essential bloodiness of poverty. For this reason it became all the more important to explain it. He said suddenly:

  ‘Have you read Chaucer’s Man of Lawe’s Tale?’

  ‘The Man of Lawe’s Tale? Not that I remember. What’s it about?’

  ‘I forget. I was thinking of the first six stanzas. Where he talks about poverty. The way it gives everyone the right to stamp on you! The way everyone wants to stamp on you! It makes people hate you, to know that you’ve no money. They insult you just for the pleasure of insulting you and knowing that you can’t hit back.’

  Ravelston was pained. ‘Oh, no, surely not! People aren’t so bad as all that.’

  ‘Ah, but you don’t know the things that happen!’

  Gordon did not want to be told that ‘people aren’t so bad’. He clung with a sort of painful joy to the notion that because he was poor everyone must want to insult him. It fitted in with his philosophy of life. And suddenly, with the feeling that he could not stop himself, he was talking of the thing that had been rankling in his mind for two days past—the snub he had had from the Dorings on Thursday. He poured the whole story out quite shamelessly. Ravelston was amazed. He could not understand what Gordon was making such a fuss about. To be disappointed at missing a beastly literary tea-party seemed to him absurd. He would not have gone to a literary tea-party if you had paid him. Like all rich people, he spent far more time in avoiding human society than in seeking it. He interrupted Gordon:

  ‘Really, you know, you ought not to take offence so easily. After all, a thing like that doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘It isn’t the thing itself that matters, it’s the spirit behind it. The way they snub you as a matter of course, just because you’ve got no money.’

  ‘But quite possibly it was all a mistake, or something. Why should anyone want to snub you?’

  ‘ “If thou be poure, thy brother hateth thee,” ’ quoted Gordon perversely.

  Ravelston, deferential even to the opinions of the dead, rubbed his nose. ‘Does Chaucer say that? Then I’m afraid I disagree with Chaucer. People don’t hate you, exactly.’

  ‘They do. And they’re quite right to hate you. You are hateful. It’s like those ads for Listerine. “Why is he always alone? Halitosis is ruining his career.” Poverty is spiritual halitosis.’

  Ravelston sighed. Undoubtedly Gordon was perverse. They walked on, arguing, Gordon vehemently, Ravelston deprecatingly. Ravelston was helpless against Gordon in an argument of this kind. He felt that Gordon exaggerated, and yet he never liked to contradict him. How could he? He was rich and Gordon was poor. And how can you argue about poverty with someone who is genuinely poor?

  ‘And then the way women treat you when you’ve no money!’ Gordon went on. ‘That’s another thing about this accursed money-business—women!’

  Ravelston nodded rather gloomily. This sounded to him more reasonable than what Gordon had been saying before. He thought of Hermione Slater, his own girl. They had been lovers two years but had never bothered to get married. It was ‘too much fag’, Hermione always said. She was rich, of course, or rather her people were. He thought of her shoulders, wide, smooth and young, that seemed to rise out of her clothes like a mermaid rising from the sea; and her skin and hair, which were somehow warm and sleepy, like a wheatfield in the sun. Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist. ‘Don’t talk to me about the lower classes,’ she used to say. ‘I hate them. They smell.’ And Ravelston adored her.

  ‘Of course women are a difficulty,’ he admitted.

  ‘They’re more than a difficulty, they’re a bloody curse. That is, if you’ve got no money. A woman hates the sight of you if you’ve got no money.’

  ‘I think that’s putting it a little too strongly. Things aren’t so crude as all that.’

  Gordon did not listen. ‘What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a woman ever wants is money; money for a house of her own and two babies and Drage furniture and an aspidistra. The only sin they can imagine is not wanting to grab money. No woman ever judges a man by anything except his income. Of course she doesn’t put it to herself like that. She says he’s such a nice man—meaning that he’s got plenty of money. And if you haven’t got money you aren’t nice. You’re dishonoured, somehow. You’ve sinned. Sinned against the aspidistra.’

  ‘You talk a great deal about aspidistras,’ said Ravelston.

  ‘They’re a dashed important subject,’ said Gordon.

  Ravelston rubbed his nose and looked away uncomfortably.

  ‘Look here, Gordon, you don’t mind my asking—have you got a girl of your own?’

  ‘Oh, Christ! Don’t speak of her!’

  He began, nevertheless, to talk about Rosemary. Ravelston had never met Rosemary. At this moment Gordon could not even remember what Rosemary was like. He could not remember how fond he was of her and she of him, how happy they always were together on the rare occasions when they could meet, how patiently she put up with his almost intolerable ways. He remembered nothing save that she would not sleep with him and that it was now a week since she had even written. In the dank night air, with beer inside him, he felt himself a forlorn, neglected creature. Rosemary was ‘cruel’ to him—that was how he saw it. Perversely, for the mere pleasure of tormenting himself and making Ravelston uncomfortable, he began to invent an imaginary character for Rosemary. He built up a picture of her as a callous creature who was amused
by him and yet half despised him, who played with him and kept him at arm’s length, and who would nevertheless fall into his arms if only he had a little more money. And Ravelston, who had never met Rosemary, did not altogether disbelieve him. He broke in:

  ‘But I say, Gordon, look here. This girl, Miss—Miss Waterlow, did you say her name was?—Rosemary; doesn’t she care for you at all, really?’

  Gordon’s conscience pricked him, though not very deeply. He could not say that Rosemary did not care for him.

  ‘Oh, yes, she does care for me. In her own way, I dare say she cares for me quite a lot. But not enough, don’t you see. She can’t, while I’ve got no money. It’s all money.’

  ‘But surely money isn’t so important as all that? After all, there are other things.’

  ‘What other things? Don’t you see that a man’s whole personality is bound up with his income? His personality is his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you’ve got no money? You can’t wear decent clothes, you can’t take her out to dinner or to the theatre or away for week-ends, you can’t carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about with you. And it’s rot to say that kind of thing doesn’t matter. It does. If you haven’t got money there isn’t even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women’s hostel, and my bitch of a landlady won’t allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet streets—that’s what Rosemary associates me with. Don’t you see how it takes the gilt off everything?’

  Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty bloody when you haven’t even the money to take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and also with desire, he thought of Hermione’s body, naked, like a ripe warm fruit. With any luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. Sexual starvation is awful among the unemployed. They were nearing the flat. He glanced up at the windows. Yes, they were lighted up. Hermione must be there. She had her own latchkey.

  As they approached the flat Gordon edged closer to Ravelston. Now the evening was ending, and he must part from Ravelston, whom he adored, and go back to his foul lonely bedroom. And all evenings ended in this way; the return through dark streets to the lonely room, the woman-less bed. And Ravelston would say ‘Come up, won’t you?’ and Gordon, in duty bound, would say, ‘No.’ Never stay too long with those you love—another commandment of the moneyless.

  They halted at the foot of the steps. Ravelston laid his gloved hand on one of the iron spearheads of the railing.

  ‘Come up, won’t you!’ he said without conviction.

  ‘No, thanks. It’s time I was getting back.’

  Ravelston’s fingers tightened round the spearhead. He pulled as though to go up, but did not go. Uncomfortably, looking over Gordon’s head into the distance, he said:

  ‘I say, Gordon, look here. You won’t be offended if I say something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I say, you know. I hate that business about you and your girl. Not being able to take her out, and all that. It’s bloody, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, really.’

  As soon as he heard Ravelston say that it was ‘bloody’, he knew that he had been exaggerating. He wished that he had not talked in that silly self-pitiful way. One says these things, with the feeling that one cannot help saying them, and afterwards one is sorry.

  ‘I dare say I exaggerate,’ he said.

  ‘I say, Gordon, look here. Let me lend you ten quid. Take the girl out to dinner a few times. Or away for the week-end, or something. It might make all the difference. I hate to think——’

  Gordon frowned bitterly, almost fiercely. He had stepped a pace back, as though from a threat or an insult. The terrible thing was that the temptation to say ‘Yes’ had almost overwhelmed him. There was so much that ten quid would do! He had a fleeting vision of Rosemary and himself at a restaurant table—a bowl of grapes and peaches, a bowing hovering waiter, a wine bottle dark and dusty in its wicker cradle.

  ‘No fear!’ he said.

  ‘I do wish you would. I tell you I’d like to lend it you.’

  ‘Thanks. But I prefer to keep my friends.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather—well, rather a bourgeois kind of thing to say?’

  ‘Do you think it would be borrowing if I took ten quid off you! I couldn’t pay it back in ten years.’

  ‘Oh, well! It wouldn’t matter so very much.’ Ravelston looked away. Out it had got to come—the disgraceful, hateful admission that he found himself forced so curiously often to make! ‘You know, I’ve got quite a lot of money.’

  ‘I know you have. That’s exactly why I won’t borrow off you.’

  ‘You know, Gordon, sometimes you’re just a little bit—well, pig-headed.’

  ‘I dare say. I can’t help it.’

  ‘Oh, well! Good night, then.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Ten minutes later Ravelston rode southward in a taxi, with Hermione. She had been waiting for him, asleep or half asleep in one of the monstrous armchairs in front of the sitting-room fire. Whenever there was nothing particular to do, Hermione always fell asleep as promptly as an animal, and the more she slept the healthier she became. As he came across to her she woke and stretched herself with voluptuous, sleepy writhings, half smiling, half yawning up at him, one cheek and bare arm rosy in the firelight. Presently she mastered her yawns to greet him:

  ‘Hullo, Philip! Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting ages.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been out with a fellow. Gordon Comstock. I don’t expect you know him. The poet.’

  ‘Poet! How much did he borrow off you?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s not that kind of person. He’s rather a fool about money, as a matter of fact. But he’s very gifted in his way.’

  ‘You and your poets! You look tired, Philip. What time did you have dinner?’

  ‘Well—as a matter of fact I didn’t have any dinner.’

  ‘Didn’t have any dinner! Why?’

  ‘Oh, well, you see—I don’t know if you’ll understand. It was a kind of accident. It was like this.’

  He explained. Hermione burst out laughing and dragged herself into a more upright position.

  ‘Philip! You are a silly old ass! Going without your dinner, just so as not to hurt that little beast’s feelings! You must have some food at once. And of course your char’s gone home. Why don’t you keep some proper servants, Philip? I hate this hole-and-corner way you live. We’ll go out and have supper at Modigliani’s.’

  ‘But it’s after ten. They’ll be shut.’

  ‘Nonsense! They’re open till two. I’ll ring up for a taxi. I’m not going to have you starving yourself.’

  In the taxi she lay against him, still half asleep, her head pillowed on his breast. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week. But the girl’s body was heavy against him, and Middlesbrough was very far away. Also he was damnably hungry. He thought of his favourite corner table at Modigliani’s, and of that vile pub with its hard benches, stale beer-stink and brass spittoons. Hermione was sleepily lecturing him.

  ‘Philip, why do you have to live in such a dreadful way?’

  ‘But I don’t live in a dreadful way.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Pretending you’re poor when you’re not, and living in that poky flat with no servants, and going about with all these beastly people.’

  ‘What beastly people?’

  ‘Oh, people like this poet friend of yours. All those people who write for your paper. They only do it to cadge from you. Of course I know you’re a Socialist. So am I. I mean we’re all Socialists nowadays. But I don’t see why you have to give all your money away and make friends with the lower classes. You can be a Socialist and have a good time, that’s what I say.’

  ‘Hermione, dear, please don’t
call them the lower classes!’

  ‘Why not? They are the lower classes, aren’t they?’

  ‘It’s such a hateful expression. Call them the working class, can’t you?’

  ‘The working class, if you like, then. But they smell just the same.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to say that kind of thing,’ he protested weakly.

  ‘Do you know, Philip, sometimes I think you like the lower classes.’

  ‘Of course I like them.’

  ‘How disgusting. How absolutely disgusting.’

  She lay quiet, content to argue no longer, her arms round him, like a sleepy siren. The woman-scent breathed out of her, a powerful wordless propaganda against all altruism and all justice. Outside Modigliani’s they had paid off the taxi and were moving for the door when a big, lank wreck of a man seemed to spring up from the paving-stones in front of them. He stood across their path like some fawning beast, with dreadful eagerness and yet timorously, as though afraid that Ravelston would strike him. His face came close up to Ravelston’s—a dreadful face, fish-white and scrubby-bearded to the eyes. The words ‘A cup of tea, guv’nor!’ were breathed through carious teeth. Ravelston shrank from him in disgust. He could not help it. His hand moved automatically to his pocket. But in the same instant Hermione caught him by the arm and hauled him inside the restaurant.

  ‘You’d give away every penny you’ve got if I let you,’ she said.

  They went to their favourite table in the corner. Hermione played with some grapes, but Ravelston was very hungry. He ordered the grilled rumpsteak he had been thinking of, and half a bottle of Beaujolais. The fat, white-haired Italian waiter, an old friend of Ravelston’s brought the smoking steak. Ravelston cut it open. Lovely, its red-blue heart! In Middlesbrough the unemployed huddle in frowzy beds, bread and marg. and milkless tea in their bellies. He settled down to his steak with all the shameful joy of a dog with a stolen leg of mutton.

  Gordon walked rapidly homewards. It was cold. The fifth of December—real winter now. Circumcise ye your foreskins, saith the Lord. The damp wind blew spitefully through the naked trees. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. The poem he had begun on Wednesday, of which six stanzas were now finished, came back into his mind. He did not dislike it at this moment. It was queer how talking with Ravelston always bucked him up. The mere contact with Ravelston seemed to reassure him somehow. Even when their talk had been unsatisfactory, he came away with the feeling that, after all, he wasn’t quite a failure. Half aloud he repeated the six finished stanzas. They were not bad, not bad at all.