Keep The Aspidistra Flying

1-3

Gordon thought of Ravelston, his charming, rich friend, editor of Antichrist, of whom he was extravagantly fond, and whom he did not see so often as once in a fortnight; and of Rosemary, his girl, who loved him—adored him, so she said—and who, all the same, had never slept with him. Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters. And how right they are, after all! For, moneyless, you are unlovable. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. But then, if I haven't money, I DON'T speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

He looked again at the ad–posters. He really hated them this time. That Vitamalt one, for instance! 'Hike all day on a slab of Vitamalt!' A youthful couple, boy and girl, in clean–minded hiking kit, their hair picturesquely tousled by the wind, climbing a stile against a Sussex landscape. That girl's face! The awful bright tomboy cheeriness of it! The kind of girl who goes in for Plenty of Clean Fun. Windswept. Tight khaki shorts but that doesn't mean you can pinch her backside. And next to them—Corner Table. 'Corner Table enjoys his meal with Bovex'. Gordon examined the thing with the intimacy of hatred. The idiotic grinning face, like the face of a self–satisfied rat, the slick black hair, the silly spectacles. Corner Table, heir of the ages; victor of Waterloo, Corner Table, Modern man as his master want him to be. A docile little porker, sitting in the money–sty, drinking Bovex.

Faces passed, wind–yellowed. A tram boomed across the square, and the clock over the Prince of Wales struck three. A couple of old creatures, a tramp or a beggar and his wife, in long greasy overcoats that reached almost to the ground, were shuffling towards the shop. Book–pinchers, by the look of them. Better keep an eye on the boxes outside. The old man halted on the kerb a few yards away while his wife came to the door. She pushed it open and looked up at Gordon, between grey strings of hair, with a sort of hopeful malevolence.

'Ju buy books?' she demanded hoarsely.

'Sometimes. It depends what books they are.'

'I gossome LOVELY books 'ere.'

She came in, shutting the door with a clang. The Nancy glanced over his shoulder distastefully and moved a step or two away, into the corner. The old woman had produced a greasy little sack from under her overcoat. She moved confidentially nearer to Gordon. She smelt of very, very old breadcrusts.

'Will you 'ave 'em?' she said, clasping the neck of the sack. 'Only 'alf a crown the lot.'

'What are they? Let me see them, please.'

'LOVELY books, they are,' she breathed, bending over to open the sack and emitting a sudden very powerful whiff of breadcrusts.

''Ere!' she said, and thrust an armful of filthy–looking books almost into Gordon's face.

They were an 1884 edition of Charlotte M. Yonge's novels, and had the appearance of having been slept on for many years. Gordon stepped back, suddenly revolted.

'We can't possibly buy those,' he said shortly.

'Can't buy 'em? WHY can't yer buy 'em?'

'Because they're no use to us. We can't sell that kind of thing.'

'Wotcher make me take 'em out o' me bag for, then?' demanded the old woman ferociously.

Gordon made a detour round her, to avoid the smell, and held the door open, silently. No use arguing. You had people of this type coming into the shop all day long. The old woman made off, mumbling, with malevolence in the hump of her shoulders, and joined her husband. He paused on the kerb to cough, so fruitily that you could hear him through the door. A clot of phlegm, like a little white tongue, came slowly out between his lips and was ejected into the gutter. Then the two old creatures shuffled away, beetle–like in the long greasy overcoats that hid everything except their feet.

Gordon watched them go. They were just by–products. The throw– outs of the money–god. All over London, by tens of thousands, draggled old beasts of that description; creeping like unclean beetles to the grave.

He gazed out at the graceless street. At this moment it seemed to him that in a street like this, in a town like this, every life that is lived must be meaningless and intolerable. The sense of disintegration, of decay, that is endemic in our time, was strong upon him. Somehow it was mixed up with the ad–posters opposite. He looked now with more seeing eyes at those grinning yard–wide faces. After all, there was more there than mere silliness, greed, and vulgarity. Corner Table grins at you, seemingly optimistic, with a flash of false teeth. But what is behind the grin? Desolation, emptiness, prophecies of doom. For can you not see, if you know how to look, that behind that slick self–satisfaction, that tittering fat–bellied triviality, there is nothing but a frightful emptiness, a secret despair? The great death–wish of the modern world. Suicide pacts. Heads stuck in gas–ovens in lonely maisonettes. French letters and Amen Pills. And the reverberations of future wars. Enemy aeroplanes flying over London; the deep threatening hum of the propellers, the shattering thunder of the bombs. It is all written in Corner Table's face.

More customers coming. Gordon stood back, gentlemanly–servile.

The door–bell clanged. Two upper–middle–class ladies sailed noisily in. One pink and fruity, thirty–fivish, with voluptuous bosom burgeoning from her coat of squirrel–skin, emitting a super– feminine scent of Parma violets: the other middle–aged, tough, and curried—India, presumably. Close behind them a dark, grubby, shy young man slipped through the doorway as apologetically as a cat. He was one of the shop's best customers—a flitting, solitary creature who was almost too shy to speak and who by some strange manipulation kept himself always a day away from a shave.

Gordon repeated his formula:

'Good afternoon. Can I do anything for you? Are you looking for any particular book?'

Fruity–face overwhelmed him with a smile, but curry–face decided to treat the question as an impertinence. Ignoring Gordon, she drew fruity–face across to the shelves next to the new books where the dog–books and cat–books were kept. The two of them immediately began taking books out of the shelves and talking loudly. Curry– face had the voice of a drill–sergeant. She was no doubt a colonel's wife, or widow. The Nancy, still deep in the big book on the Russian ballet, edged delicately away. His face said that he would leave the shop if his privacy were disturbed again. The shy young man had already found his way to the poetry shelves. The two ladies were fairly frequent visitors to the shop. They always wanted to see books about cats and dogs, but never actually bought anything. There were two whole shelves of dog–books and cat–books. 'Ladies' Corner,' old McKechnie called it.

Another customer arrived, for the library. An ugly girl of twenty, hatless, in a white overall, with a sallow, blithering, honest face and powerful spectacles that distorted her eyes. She was an assistant at a chemist's shop. Gordon put on his homey library manner. She smiled at him, and with a gait as clumsy as a bear's followed him into the library.

'What kind of book would you like this time, Miss Weeks?'

'Well'—she clutched the front of her overall. Her distorted, black–treacle eyes beamed trustfully into his. 'Well, what I'd REALLY like's a good hot–stuff love story. You know—something MODERN.'

'Something modern? Something by Barbara Bedworthy for instance? Have you read Almost a Virgin?'

'Oh no, not her. She's too Deep. I can't bear Deep books. But I want something—well, YOU know—MODERN. s*x–problems and divorce and all that. YOU know.'

'Modern, but not Deep,' said Gordon, as lowbrow to lowbrow.

He ranged among the hot–stuff modern love–stories. There were not less than three hundred of them in the library. From the front room came the voices of the two upper–middle–class ladies, the one fruity, the other curried, disputing about dogs. They had taken out one of the dog–books and were examining the photographs. Fruity–voice enthused over the photograph of a Peke, the ickle angel pet, wiv his gweat big Soulful eyes and his ickle black nosie—oh, so ducky–duck! But curry–voice—yes, undoubtedly a colonel's widow—said Pekes were soppy. Give her dogs with guts— dogs that would fight, she said; she hated these soppy lapdogs, she said. 'You have no Soul, Bedelia, no Soul,' said fruity–voice plaintively. The door–bell pinged again. Gordon handed the chemist's girl Seven Scarlet Nights and booked it on her ticket. She took a shabby leather purse out of her overall pocket and paid him twopence.

He went back to the front room. The Nancy had put his book back in the wrong shelf and vanished. A lean, straight–nosed, brisk woman, with sensible clothes and gold–rimmed pince–nez—schoolmarm possibly, feminist certainly—came in and demanded Mrs Wharton– Beverley's history of the suffrage movement. With secret joy Gordon told her that they hadn't got it. She stabbed his male incompetence with gimlet eyes and went out again. The thin young man stood apologetically in the corner, his face buried in D. H. Lawrence's Collected Poems, like some long–legged bird with its head buried under its wing.

Gordon waited by the door. Outside, a shabby–genteel old man with a strawberry nose and a khaki muffler round his throat was picking over the books in the sixpenny box. The two upper–middle–class ladies suddenly departed, leaving a litter of open books on the table. Fruity–face cast reluctant backward glances at the dog– books, but curry–face drew her away, resolute not to buy anything. Gordon held the door open. The two ladies sailed noisily out, ignoring him.

He watched their fur–coated upper–middle–class backs go down the street. The old strawberry–nosed man was talking to himself as he pawed over the books. A bit wrong in the head, presumably. He would pinch something if he wasn't watched. The wind blew colder, drying the slime of the street. Time to light up presently. Caught by a swirl of air, the torn strip of paper on the Q. T. Sauce advertisement fluttered sharply, like a piece of washing on the line. Ah!

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward; flicked by whips of air Torn posters flutter.

Not bad, not bad at all. But he had no wish to go on—could not go on, indeed. He fingered the money in his pocket, not c******g it, lest the shy young man should hear. Twopence–halfpenny. No tobacco all tomorrow. His bones ached.

A light sprang up in the Prince of Wales. They would be swabbing out the bar. The old strawberry–nosed man was reading an Edgar Wallace out of the twopenny box. A tram boomed in the distance. In the room upstairs Mr McKechnie, who seldom came down to the shop, drowsed by the gas–fire, white–haired and white–bearded, with snuff–box handy, over his calf–bound folio of Middleton's Travels in the Levant.

The thin young man suddenly realized that he was alone and looked up guiltily. He was a habitue of bookshops, yet never stayed longer than ten minutes in any one shop. A passionate hunger for books, and the fear of being a nuisance, were constantly at war in him. After ten minutes in any shop he would grow uneasy, feel himself de trop, and take to flight, having bought something out of sheer nervousness. Without speaking he held out the copy of Lawrence's poems and awkwardly extracted three florins from his pocket. In handing them to Gordon he dropped one. Both dived for it simultaneously; their heads bumped against one another. The young man stood back, blushing sallowly.

'I'll wrap it up for you,' said Gordon.

But the shy young man shook his head—he stammered so badly that he never spoke when it was avoidable. He clutched his book to him and slipped out with the air of having committed some disgraceful action.

Gordon was alone. He wandered back to the door. The strawberry– nosed man glanced over his shoulder, caught Gordon's eye, and moved off, foiled. He had been on the point of slipping Edgar Wallace into his pocket. The clock over the Prince of Wales struck a quarter past three.

Ding Dong! A quarter past three. Light up at half past. Four and three–quarter hours till closing time. Five and a quarter hours till supper. Twopence halfpenny in pocket. No tobacco tomorrow.

Suddenly a ravishing, irresistible desire to smoke came over Gordon. He had made up his mind not to smoke this afternoon. He had only four cigarettes left. They must be saved for tonight, when he intended to 'write'; for he could no more 'write' without tobacco than without air. Nevertheless, he had got to have a smoke. He took out his packet of Player's Weights and extracted one of the dwarfish cigarettes. It was sheer stupid indulgence; it meant half an hour off tonight's 'writing' time. But there was no resisting it. With a sort of shameful joy he sucked the soothing smoke into his lungs.

The reflection of his own face looked back at him from the greyish pane. Gordon Comstock, author of MICE; en l'an trentiesme de son eage, and moth–eaten already. Only twenty–six teeth left. However, Villon at the same age was poxed on his own showing. Let's be thankful for small mercies.

He watched the ribbon of torn paper whirling, fluttering on the Q. T. Sauce advertisement. Our civilization is dying. It MUST be dying. But it isn't going to die in its bed. Presently the aeroplanes are coming. Zoom—whizz—crash! The whole western world going up in a roar of high explosives.

He looked at the darkening street, at the greyish reflection of his face in the pane, at the shabby figures shuffling past. Almost involuntarily he repeated:

'C'est l'Ennui—l'oeil charge d'un pleur involontaire, Il reve d'echafauds en fumant son houka!'

Money, money! Corner Table! The humming of the aeroplanes and the crash of the bombs.

Gordon squinted up at the leaden sky. Those aeroplanes are coming. In imagination he saw them coming now; squadron after squadron, innumerable, darkening the sky like clouds of gnats. With his tongue not quite against his teeth he made a buzzing, bluebottle– on–the–window–pane sound to represent the humming of the aeroplanes. It was a sound which, at that moment, he ardently desired to hear.