It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat, cold: light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy.
Sometimes it was as if I were back there and as if England were a dream. At other times England was the real thing and out there was the dream, but I could never fit them together.
After a while I got used to England and I liked it all right; I got used to everything except the cold and that the towns we went to always looked so exactly alike.
We paired off. Maudie went on ahead with the tall man. The other looked at me sideways once or twice—very quickly up and down, in that way they have—and then asked where we were going.
‘I was going to this shop to buy a pair of stockings,’ I said.
They all came into the shop with me. I said I wanted two pairs—lisle thread with clocks up the sides—and took a long time choosing them. The man I had been walking with offered to pay for them and I let him.
‘She’s always cold,’ Maudie said. ‘She can’t help it. She was born in a hot place. She was born in the West Indies or somewhere, weren’t you, kid? The girls call her the Hottentot. Isn’t it a shame?”
There was a door behind the sofa, but I hadn’t noticed it before because a curtain hung over it. I turned the handle. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘it’s a bedroom.’ My voice went high.
‘So it is,’ he said. He laughed. I laughed too, because I felt that that was what I ought to do. You can now and you can see what it’s like, and why not?
My arms hung straight down by my sides awkwardly. He kissed me again, and his mouth was hard, and I remembered him smelling the glass of wine and I couldn’t think of anything but that, and I hated him.
Soon he’ll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He’ll be different and so I’ll be different. It’ll be different. I thought, ‘It’ll be different, different. It must be different.’
About clothes, it’s awful. Everything makes you want pretty clothes like hell. People laugh at girls who are badly dressed. […] As if it isn’t enough that you want to be beautiful, that you want to have pretty clothes, that you want it like hell. As if that isn’t enough.
I took the money from under my pillow and put it into my handbag. I was accustomed to it already. It was as if I had always had it. Money ought to be everybody’s. It ought to be like water. You can tell that because you get accustomed to it so quickly.
I wanted to be black, I always wanted to be black. […] Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.
‘Only, don’t get soppy about him,’ she said. ‘That’s fatal. The thing with men is to get everything you can out of them and not care a damn. You ask any girl in London—or any girl in the whole world if it comes to that—who really knows, and she’ll tell you the same thing.’ ‘I’ve heard all that a million times,’ I said. ‘I’m sick of hearing it.’ ‘Oh, I needn’t talk,’ Maudie said, ‘the fool I made myself over Viv! Though it was a bit different with me, you understand. We were going to be married!’
‘Unfortunate propensities,’ she said. ‘Unfortunate propensities which were obvious to me from the first. But considering everything you probably can’t help them. I always pitied you. I always thought that considering everything you were much to be pitied.’
I said, ‘How do you mean, “considering everything”?’
‘You know exactly what I mean, so don’t pretend.’
‘You’re trying to make out that my mother was coloured,’ I said. ‘You always did try to make that out. And she wasn’t.’
‘My conscience is quite clear. I always did my best for you and I never got any thanks for it. I tried to teach you to talk like a lady and behave like a lady and not like a nigger and of course I couldn’t do it. Impossible to get you away from the servants. That awful sing-song voice you had! Exactly like a nigger you talked—and still do. […]’
Walter is still very fond of you but he doesn’t love you like that any more, and after all you must always have known that the thing could not go on for ever and you must remember too that he is nearly twenty years older than you are. I’m sure that you are a nice girl and that you will think it over calmly and see that there is nothing to be tragic or unhappy or anything like that about.
‘I hate men,’ Ethel said. ‘Men are devils, aren’t they? But of course I don’t really care a damn about them. Why should I? I can earn my own living. I’m a masseuse—I’m a Swedish masseuse. And, mind you, when I say I’m a masseuse I don’t mean like some of these dirty foreigners. Don’t you hate foreigners?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I do; but, you see, I don’t know many.’
‘What?’ Ethel said, looking surprised and suspicious, ‘you don’t hate them?’
‘Well, I don’t need to be here either,’ I said. ‘I can get as much money as I like any time I like.’ I stretched, and watched my swollen shadow on the wall stretching too.
She said, ‘Well, I should say so—a lovely girl like you. And well under twenty, I should say. I’ve got a spare bedroom in my flat. Why don’t you come along and live with me for a bit? I’m looking for somebody to share with me. As a matter of fact I’d almost fixed it up with a pal of mine. She’ll put in twenty-five pounds and do the manicure and we’ll start a little business.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said.
‘Well, just between ourselves, I shan’t mind if I don’t fix it up with her. She’s a bit of a Nosey Parker. Why don’t you think it over? I’ve got a lovely spare room.’
‘D’you know,’ she said, ‘I never pay for a meal for myself—it’s the rarest thing. For instance, these two—I said to them quite casually, like that, ‘When you come over to London, let me know. I’ll show you round a bit,’ and if you please about three weeks ago they turned up. I’ve been showing them round, I can tell you….I get along with men. I can do what I like with them. Sometimes I’m surprised myself. I expect it’s because they feel I really like it and no kidding. […]’
She came over and helped me to undo it. She seemed very tall and her face enormous. I could see all the lines in it, and the powder, trying to fill up the lines, and just where her lipstick stopped and her lips began. It looked like a clown’s face, so that I wanted to laugh at it. She was pretty, but her hands were short and fat with wide, flat, very red nails.
Joe lit a cigarette and crossed his legs and watched us. He was like somebody sitting in the stalls, waiting for the curtain to go up.
‘How old is she?’ Joe said.
‘She’s only a kid,’ Laurie said. She coughed and then she said, “She’s not seventeen.’
‘Yes—and the rest,’ Joe said.
‘Well, she’s not a day older than nineteen, anyway,’ Laurie said. ‘Where do you see the wrinkles? Don’t you like her?’
‘She’s all right,’ Joe said, ‘but I liked that other kid—the dark one.’
‘Who? Renée?’ Laurie said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to her. I haven’t seen her since that evening.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you must be a bit nice to them.’
‘Why not ten bob?’ she said. ‘That’s all right. Everybody’s got their living to earn and if people do things thinking that they’re going to get something that they don’t get, what’s it matter to you or me or anybody else? You let them talk. You can take it from me that when it comes to it they’re all so damned afraid of a scene that they’re off like a streak of lightning at the slightest…’
‘Did you have a good time? I bet you did. Redman’s a nice man. He knows his way about, you can tell that. Oh, I bet he knows his way about. You know, kid, I’ve been thinking you’ll want to go out more with your friends and not feel you’ve got to be in all day. I don’t mind, but we may have to talk it over a bit about the rent.’
She was sure she could get him to marry her if she could smarten herself up a bit.
She said, ‘Isn’t it awful losing a chance like that because you haven’t got a little money? Because it is a chance. Sometimes you’re sure, aren’t you? But I’m so damned shabby and, you know, when you’re shabby you can’t do anything, you don’t believe in yourself. And he notices clothes—he notices things like that. Fred, his name is. He said to me the other day, “If there’s anything I notice about a girl it’s her legs and her shoes.” Well, my legs are all right, but look at my shoes. He’s always saying things like that and it makes me feel awful. He’s a bit strait-laced but that doesn’t stop them from being particular. Viv was like that, too. Isn’t it rotten when a thing like that falls through just because you haven’t got a little cash? Oh God, I wish it could happen. I want it so to happen.”
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I sold my fur coat, I could give her ten quid.’
‘It’s not enough,’ Laurie said. ‘She won’t do it for that. My dear, she’ll want about fifty. Don’t you know anybody who’ll lend it to you? What about that man you talked about who used to give you money. Won’t he help you? […]’
‘Poor little Anna,’ making his voice very kind. ‘I’m damned sorry you’ve been having a bad time.’ Making his voice very kind, but the look in his eyes was like a high, smooth, unclimbable wall. No communication possible. You have to be three-quarters mad even to attempt it.
‘You’ll be all right. And then you must pull yourself together and try to forget about the whole business and start fresh. Just make up your mind, and you’ll forget all about it.’
I went and got the letters. I didn’t look at them, except the one on the top, which was, ‘Will you be in a taxi at the corner of Hay Hill and Dover Street at eleven tonight? Just wait there and I’ll pick you up. Shy Anna, I love you so much. Always, Walter.’
