The Girls of Slender Means

Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions.

Jane went back to her brain-work and shut the door with a definite click. She was rather tyrannous about her brain-work, and made a fuss about other people’s wirelesses on the landing, and about the petty-mindedness of these haggling bouts that took place with Anne when the taffeta dress was wanted to support the rising wave of long-dress parties.

‘And again,’ said Joanna. ‘We’ve just got time before supper. I’ll read the first stanza, then you follow on.’

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in an autumn night.

Every communist has a fascist frown; every fascist has a communist smile.

‘Ha!’ said Rudi.

‘I thought that was a very profound bit,’ Jane said, as it was the only bit she could remember.

‘That is why he writes it in, he counts that the bloody book has got to have a public, so he puts in some little bits of aphorism, very clever, that a girl like you likes to hear, by the way. It means nothing, this, where is the meaning?’ Most or Rudi’s words were louder-sounding than he had intended, as the girl at the piano had pause for rest.

‘I ask you a question,’ Rudi said. ‘It is a simple question. He wants monarchy, he wants anarchism. What does he want? These are two enemies in all of history. Simple answer is, he is a mess.’

The twittering movements at other points in the room, Joanna’s singular vice, the beautiful aspects of poverty and charm amongst these girls in the brown-papered drawing-room, Selina, furled like a long soft sash, in her chair, came to Nicholas in a gratuitous flow. Months of boredom had subdued him to intoxication by an experience which, at another time, might itself have bored him.

Some days later [Nicholas] took Jane to a party to meet the people she longed to meet, young male poets in corduroy trousers and young female poets with waist-length hair, or at least females who typed the poetry and slept with the poets, it was nearly the same thing.

It was in fact a misunderstanding of Nicholas—[Jane] vaguely thought of him as a more attractive Rudi Bittesch—to imagine he would receive more pleasure and reassurance from a literary girl than simply a girl. It was the girl in Jane that had moved him to kiss her at the party; she might have gone further with Nicholas without her literary leanings. That was a mistake she continued to make in her relations with men, inferring from her own preference for men of books and literature their preference for women of the same business. And it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.

A girl in a long evening dress slid in the doorway, furtively. Her hair fell round her shoulders in a brown curl. Through the bemused mind of the loitering, listening man went the fact of a girl slipping furtively into the hall; she had a meaning, even if she had no meaningful intention.

He said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gorgeous dress.’

‘Schiaparelli,’ she said.

He said, ‘Is it the one you swap amongst yourselves?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘You look beautiful,’ he replied.

She picked up the rustling skirt and floated away up the staircase.

Oh, girls of slender means!

She said, ‘How can you bear to live here?’

He said, ‘It does till one finds a flat.’

In fact he was quite content with his austere bed-sitting room. With the reckless ambition of a visionary, he pushed his passion for Selina into a desire that she, too, should accept and exploit the outlines of poverty in her life. He loved her as he loved his native country. He wanted Selina to be an ideal society personified amongst her bones, he wanted her beautiful limbs to obey her mind and heart like intelligent men and women, and for these to possess the same grace and beauty as her body. Whereas Selina’s desires were comparatively humble, she only wanted, at that particular moment, a packet of hair-grips which had just then disappeared from the shops for a few weeks.

Tilly said, ‘I always love the May of Teck. It’s like being back at school.’ Tilly always said that, it was infuriating.

‘Greggie’s bomb,’ Jane said, grinning at Tilly. ‘Greggie was right,’ she said. This was a hilarious statement, but Tilly did not laugh, she closed her eyes and lay back. Tilly was only half-dressed and looked very funny indeed. Jane then laughed loudly at Nicholas, but he too had no sense of humour.

When she landed on the roof-top she said, ‘Is it safe out here?’ and at the same time was inspecting the condition of her salvaged item. Poise is perfect balance. It was the Schiaparelli dress. The coat-hanger dangled from the dress like a headless neck and shoulders.

‘Is it safe out here?’ said Selina.

‘Nowhere’s safe,’ said Nicholas.

‘You should fear him,’ Rudi said. ‘He makes ladies scream by the way. Selina got a fright from him today.’

‘I got a fright from her last time.’

‘Have you found her then?’ said Jane.

‘Yes, but she’s suffering from shock. I must have brought all the horrors back to her mind.’

‘It was hell,’ Jane said.

‘I know.’

Here, another seaman, observed only by Nicholas, slid a knife silently between the ribs of a woman who was with him. The lights went up on the balcony, and a hush anticipated the Royal appearance. The stabbed woman did not scream, but sagged immediately. Someone else screamed through the hush, a woman, many yards away, some other victim. Or perhaps that screamer had only had her toes trodden upon. The crowd began to roar again. All their eyes were at this moment fixed on the Palace balcony, where the royal family had appeared in due order. Rudi and Jane were busy yelling their cheers.