The Collected Short Stories

by Jean Rhys

  Somebody opened the door stealthily, hesitated for a moment, then walked past and stood over one of the basins at the far end. It was a sullen girl, the one with the long plaits. She was wearing a blue kimono.

  ‘She does look fed up,’ Inez thought.

  The girl leant over the basin with both hands on its edge. Was she going to be sick? Then she gave a long, shivering sigh and opened her sponge bag.

  Inez turned away without speaking and began to clean her teeth.

  The door opened again and a nurse came in and glanced round the washroom. It was curious to see the expression on her plump, pink face change in a few moments from indifference to inquisitiveness, to astonishment, to shocked anger.

  Then she ran across the room, shouting ‘Stop that. Come along Mrs Murphy. Give it up.’

  Inez watched them struggling. Something metallic fell to the floor. Mrs Murphy was twisting like a snake.

  ‘Come on, help me, can’t you? Hold her arms,’ the nurse said breathlessly.

  ‘Oh, leave me alone, leave me alone,’ Mrs Murphy wailed. ‘Do for God’s sake leave me alone. What do you know about it anyway?’

  ‘Go and call the sister. She’s in the ward.’

  ‘She’s speaking to me,’ Inez thought.

  ‘Oh, leave me alone, leave me alone. Oh, please, please, please, please, please,’ Mrs Murphy sobbed.

  ‘What’s she done?’ Inez said. ‘Why don’t you leave her alone?’

  As she spoke two other nurses rushed in at the door and flung themselves on Mrs Murphy, who began to scream loudly, with her mouth open and her head back.

  Inez held on to the basins, one by one, and got to the door. Then she held on to the door post, then to the wall of the passage. She reached her bed and lay down shaking.

  ‘What’s up? What’s the matter?’ Pat asked excitedly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it Murphy? You’re all right, aren’t you? We were wondering if it was Murphy, or . . .’

  ‘“Or you”, she means,’ Inez thought. ‘“Or you . . .”’

  All that evening Pat and the fair woman, Mrs Wilson, who had been very friendly, talked excitedly. It seemed that they knew all about Mrs Murphy. They knew that she had tried the same thing on before. Suddenly, by magic, they seemed to know all about her. And what a thing to do, to try to kill yourself! If it had been a man, now, you might have been a bit sorry. You might have said, ‘Perhaps the poor devil has had a rotten time.’ But a woman!

  ‘A married woman with two sweet little kiddies.’

  ‘The fool,’ said Pat. ‘My God, what would you do with a fool like that?’

  Mrs Wilson, who had been in the clinic for some time, explained that there was a medicine cupboard just outside the ward.

  ‘It must have been open,’ she said. ‘In which case, somebody will get into a row. Perhaps Murphy got hold of the key. That’s where she might get the morphine tablets.’

  But Pat was of the opinion – she said she knew it for a fact, a nurse had told her – that Mrs Murphy had had the hypodermic syringe and the tablets hidden for weeks, ever since she had been in the clinic.

  ‘She’s one of these idiotic neurasthenics, neurotics, or whatever you call them. She says she’s frightened of life, I ask you. That’s why she’s here. Under observation. And it only shows you how cunning they are, that she managed to hide the things . . .’

  ‘I’m so awfully sorry for her husband,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘And her children. So sorry. The poor kiddies, the poor sweet little kiddies . . . Oughtn’t a woman like that to be hung?’

  Even after the lights had been put out they still talked.

  ‘What’s she got to be neurasthenic and neurotic about, anyway?’ Pat demanded. ‘If she has a perfectly good husband and kiddies, what’s she got to be neurasthenic and neurotic about?’

  Stone and iron, their voices were. One was stone and one was iron . . .

  Inez interrupted the duet in a tremulous voice. ‘Oh, she’s neurasthenic, and they’ve sent her to a place like this to be cured? That was a swell idea. What a place for a cure for neurasthenia! Who thought that up? The perfectly good, kind husband, I suppose.’

  Pat said, ‘For God’s sake! You get on my nerves. Stop always trying to be different from everybody else.’

  ‘Who’s everybody else?’

  Nobody answered her.

  ‘What a herd of swine they are!’ she thought, but no heat of rage came to warm or comfort her. Sized her up, Pat had. Why should you care about a girl like that? She’s as stupid as a foot. But not when it comes to sizing people up, not when it comes to knowing who is done for. I’m cold, I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m cold.

  The next morning Mrs Murphy appeared in time to help make the beds. As usual she walked with her head down and her eyes down and her shoulders stooped. She went very slowly along the opposite side of the ward, and everybody stared at her with hard, inquisitive eyes.

  ‘What are you muttering about, Inez?’ Pat said sharply.

  Mrs Murphy and the nurse reached the end of the row opposite. Then they began the other row. Slowly they were coming nearer.

  ‘Shut up, it’s nothing to do with you,’ Inez told herself, but her cold hands were clenched under the sheet.

  The nurse said, ‘Pat, you’re well enough to give a hand, aren’t you? I won’t be a moment.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Inez thought. ‘She oughtn’t to have gone away. But they never know what’s happening. But yes, they know. The machine works smoothly, that’s all.’

  In silence Pat and Mrs Murphy started pulling and stretching and patting the sheets and pillows.

  ‘Hullo, Pat,’ Mrs Murphy said at last in a low voice.

  Pat closed her lips with a righteously disgusted expression. They turned the sheet under at the bottom. They smoothed it down at the top. They began to shake the pillows.

  Mrs Murphy’s face broke up and she started to cry. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘they won’t let me get out. They won’t.’

  Pat said, ‘Don’t snivel over my pillow. People like you make me sick’, and Mrs Wilson laughed like a horse neighing.

  The voice and the laughter were so much alike that they might have belonged to the same person. Greasy and cold, silly and raw, coarse and thin; everything unutterably horrible.

  ‘Well, here’s bad luck to you,’ Inez burst out, ‘you pair of bitches. Behaving like that to a sad woman! What do you know about her? . . . You hold your head up and curse them back, Mrs Murphy. It’ll do you a lot of good.’

  Mrs Murphy rushed out of the room sobbing.

  ‘Who was speaking to you?’ Pat said.

  Inez heard words coming round and full and satisfying out of her mouth – exactly what she thought about them, exactly what they were, exactly what she hoped would happen to them.

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘I told you so,’ she added triumphantly. ‘I knew it, I knew the sort she was from the first.’

  At this moment the door opened and the doctor came in accompanied, not as usual by the matron, but by the tall ward sister.

  Once more, for a gesture, Inez shouted, ‘This and that to the lot of you!’ – ‘Not the nurse,’ she whispered to the pillow, ‘I don’t mean her.’

  Mrs Wilson announced in a loud, clear voice, ‘I think that people who use filthy language oughtn’t to be allowed to associate with decent people. I think it’s a shame that some women are allowed to associate with ladies at all – a shame. It oughtn’t to be allowed.’

  The doctor blinked, but the sister’s long, narrow face was expressionless. The two were round the beds glancing at the temperature charts here, saying a few words there. Best, Inez . . .

  The doctor asked, ‘Does this hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When I press here does it hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  They were very tall, thin and far away. They turned their heads a little and she could not hear what they said. And when she began, ‘I wanted to
. . .’ she saw that they could not hear her either, and stopped.

  5

  ‘You can dress in the washroom after lunch,’ the sister said next morning.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  There was nothing to be surprised about. So much time had been paid for and now the time was up and she would have to go. There was nothing to be surprised about.

  Inez said, ‘Would it be possible to stay two or three days longer? I wanted to make some arrangements. It would be more convenient. I was idiotic not to speak about it before.’

  The sister’s raised eyebrows were very thin – like two thin new moons.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s not possible. Why didn’t you ask before? I told the doctor yesterday that I don’t think you are very strong yet. But we are expecting four patients this evening and several others tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately we are going to be very full up and he thinks you are well enough to go. You must rest when you get back home. Move as little as possible.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Inez said; but she thought, ‘No, this time I won’t be able to pull it off, this time I’m done.’ ‘We wondered if it was Murphy – or you . . .’ Well, it’s both of us.

  Then her body relaxed and she lay and did not think of anything, for there is peace in despair in exactly the same way as there is despair in peace. Everything in her body relaxed. She did not make any more plans, she just lay there.

  They had their midday dinner – roast beef, potatoes and beans, and then a milk pudding. Just like England. Inez ate and enjoyed it, and then lay back with her arm over her eyes. She knew that Pat was watching her but she lay peaceful, and thought of nothing.

  ‘Here are your things,’ the nurse said. ‘Will you get dressed now?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not feeling up to much. Well, you’ll have some tea before you go, won’t you? And you must go straight to bed as soon as you get back.’

  ‘Get back where?’ Inez thought. ‘Why should you always take it for granted that everybody has somewhere to get back to?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I will.’

  And all the time she dressed she saw the street, the ’buses and taxis charging at her, the people jostling her. She heard their voices, saw their eyes . . . When you fall you don’t ever get up; they take care of that . . .

  She leant against the wall thinking of Mrs Murphy’s voice when she said, ‘Please, please, please, please, please . . .’

  After a while she wiped the tears off her face. She did not put any powder on, and when she got into the ward she could only see the bed she was going to lie on and wait till they came with the tongs to throw her out.

  ‘Will you come over here for a moment?’

  There was a chair at the head of each bed. She sat down and looked at the fan-shaped wrinkles under Madame Tavernier’s small, dark, melancholy eyes, the swollen blue veins on her hands and the pattern of the gold ring – two roses, the petals touching each other. She read a sentence of the open book lying on the bed: ‘De lá-haut le paysage qu’on découvre est d’une indiscriptible beauté . . .’

  Madame Tavernier said, ‘That’s a charming dress, and you look very nice – very nice indeed.’

  ‘My God!’ Inez said. ‘That’s funny.’

  Madame Tavernier whispered, ‘S-sh, listen! Turn the chair round. I want to talk to you.’

  Inez turned the chair so that her back was towards the rest of the room.

  Madame Tavernier took a handkerchief from under her pillow – a white, old-fashioned handkerchief, not small, of very fine linen trimmed with lace. She put it into Inez’ hands. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘S-sh . . . here!’

  Inez took the handkerchief. It smelled of vanilla. She felt the notes inside it.

  ‘Take care. Don’t let the others see. Don’t let them notice you crying . . .’ She whispered, ‘You mustn’t mind these people; they don’t know anything about life. You mustn’t mind them. So many people don’t know anything about life . . . so many of them . . . and sometimes I wonder if it isn’t getting worse instead of better.’ She sighed. ‘You hadn’t any money, had you?’

  Inez shook her head.

  ‘I thought you hadn’t. There’s enough there for a week or perhaps two. If you are careful.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Inez said. ‘Now I’ll be quite all right.’

  She stopped crying. She felt tired, rested and rather degraded. She had never taken money from a woman before. She did not like women, she had always told herself, or trust them.

  Madame Tavernier went on talking. ‘That is quite a lot of money if you use it carefully,’ she meant. But that was not what she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Inez said, ‘oh, thank you.’

  ‘You’d like some tea before you go, wouldn’t you?’ the nurse said.

  Inez drank the tea, went into the washroom and made up her face. She went back to the old lady’s bed.

  ‘Will you give me a kiss?’ Madame Tavernier said.

  Her powdered skin was soft and flabby as used elastic; it smelt, like her handkerchief, of vanilla. When Inez said, ‘I’ll never forget your kindness, it’s made such a difference to me’, she closed her eyes in a way that meant, ‘All right, all right, all right.’

  ‘I’ll have a taxi to the station,’ Inez decided.

  But in the taxi she could only wonder what Madame Tavernier would say if she were suddenly asked what it is like to be old – perhaps she would answer, ‘Sometimes it’s peaceful’ – and remember the gold ring carved into two roses, and above all wish she were back in her bed in the ward with the sheets drawn over her head. Because you can’t die and come to life again for a few hundred francs. It takes more than that. It takes more, perhaps, than anybody is ever willing to give.

  The Lotus

  ‘Garland says she’s a tart.’

  ‘A tart! My dear Christine, have you seen her? After all, there are limits.’

  ‘What, round about the Portobello Road? I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Ronnie said. ‘She’s writing a novel. Yes, dearie –’ he opened his eyes very wide and turned the corners of his mouth down – ‘all about a girl who gets seduced –’

  ‘Well, well.’

  ‘On a haystack.’ Ronnie roared with laughter.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll have a bit of luck; she may get tight earlier than usual tonight and not turn up.’

  ‘Not turn up? You bet she will.’

  Christine said, ‘I can’t imagine why you asked her here at all.’

  ‘Well, she borrowed a book the other day, and she said she was coming up to return it. What was I to do?’

  While they were still arguing there was a knock on the door and he called, ‘Come in . . . Christine, this is Mrs Heath, Lotus Heath.’

  ‘Good evening,’ Lotus said in a hoarse voice. ‘How are you? Quite well, I hope . . . Good evening, Mr Miles. I’ve brought your book. Most enjoyable.’

  She was a middle-aged woman, short and stout. Her plump arms were bare, the finger nails varnished bright red. She had rouged her mouth unskilfully to match her nails, but her face was very pale. The front of her black dress was grey with powder.

  ‘The way these windows rattle!’ Christine said. ‘Hysterical, I call it.’ She wedged a piece of newspaper into the sash, then sat down on the divan. Lotus immediately moved over to her side and leaned forward.

  ‘You do like me, dear, don’t you? Say you like me.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I think it’s so nice of you to ask me up here,’ Lotus said. Her sad eyes, set very wide apart, rolled vaguely round the room, which was distempered yellow and decorated with steamship posters – ‘Morocco, Land of Sunshine’, ‘Come to Beautiful Bali’. ‘I get fed up, I can tell you, sitting by myself in that basement night after night. And day after day if it comes to that.’

  Christine remarked primly, ‘This is a horribly depressing part of London, I always think.’

  Her nost
rils dilated. Then she pressed her arms close against her sides, edged away and lit a cigarette, breathing the smoke in deeply.

  ‘But you’ve got it very nice up here, haven’t you? Is that a photograph of your father on the mantelpiece? You are like him.’

  Ronnie glanced at his wife and coughed. ‘Well, how’s the poetry going?’ he asked, smiling slyly as he said the word ‘poetry’ as if at an improper joke. ‘And the novel, how’s that getting on?’

  ‘Not too fast,’ Lotus said, looking at the whisky decanter. Ronnie got up hospitably.

  She took the glass he handed to her, screwed up her eyes, emptied it at a gulp and watched him refill it with an absent-minded expression.

  ‘But it’s wonderful the way it comes to me,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a long book. I’m going to get everything in – the whole damn thing. I’m going to write a book like nobody’s ever written before.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Mrs Heath, make it a long book,’ Ronnie advised.

  His politely interested expression annoyed Christine. ‘Is he trying to be funny?’ she thought, and felt prickles of irritation all over her body. She got up, murmuring, ‘I’ll see if there’s any more whisky. It’s sure to be needed.’

  ‘The awful thing,’ Lotus said as she was going out, ‘is not knowing the words. That’s the torture – knowing the thing and not knowing the words.’

  In the bedroom next door Christine could still hear her monotonous, sing-song voice, the voice of a woman who often talked to herself. ‘Springing this ghastly old creature on me!’ she thought. ‘Ronnie must be mad.’

  ‘This place is getting me down,’ she thought. The front door was painted a bland blue. There were four small brass plates and bell-pushes on the right-hand side – Mr and Mrs Garland, Mr and Mrs Miles, Mrs Spencer, Miss Reid, and a dirty visiting-card tacked underneath – Mrs Lotus Heath. A painted finger pointed downwards.

  Christine powdered her face and made up her mouth carefully. What could the fool be talking about?

  ‘Is it as hopeless as all that?’ she said, when she opened the sitting-room door. Lotus was in tears.

  ‘Very good.’ Ronnie looked bashful and shuffled his feet. ‘Very good indeed, but a bit sad. Really, a bit on the sad side, don’t you think?’