Rosie Hogarth

by Alexander Baron

  Only an hour after their discussion about the wedding, while Jack was sitting in the parlour reminding himself what a splendid girl she was, she came scurrying into the room, turned her face up to him with a trustful and pathetic smile, sniffed loudly and said, “Blow my nose, dear, my hands are all wet.” A few days before he would have obeyed without thought, but now disgust overcame him at her clumsiness and ugliness. The image of another was alive in his mind, mockingly inviting comparison. A twinge of pity prompted him to put his handkerchief to her nose, and she thanked him with a coarse, innocent giggle.

  The next day, at work, he fell into a daydream. It was about his meeting with Rose. He did not conduct himself in the dream as he had in the real encounter. Nor did he find the tongue to tell Rose that he had worshipped her for years. Instead he treated her with violence and contempt, as he imagined a man of the world would treat a whore. He insulted her, attacked her, loved her brutally, exacting murmurs of wonderment and an abandoned response, pulled out a bulging wallet that showed her what a successful man he had become, and flung a bundle of notes at her feet. When he left her she was sobbing with adoration, pleading with him to forgive her for never having discovered in the past the kind of man he really was, and begging him to come back soon.

  The dream provided a little oasis of revenge and satisfaction in the desert of his days, but the memory of it made his real life all the more desolate, and he resorted to it again and again, inventing different versions. Sometimes it was his strength that astounded her, sometimes his bitter eloquence. This recurring fantasy was not connected with any conscious desire to see her again; but, inevitably, the repeated invocation of his first encounter with her led to a second series of dreams which were based on the idea of another accidental meeting. This miraculous second chance took many forms. He would jump on to a passing bus and find her in the next seat; walk past her block of flats and meet her coming down the steps; call at Nancy’s place and find her playing with the baby; dive into the river to save an unknown woman and discover that it was her. And in each dream he seized the fleeting chance, acted recklessly and successfully, and enjoyed his triumph.

  Still unaware of any conscious intent, he became so dominated in his daily life by these dreams that expressed his real will, that he began to look out for Rose wherever he went. He was determined not to seek her out, but he had become the victim of an unacknowledged conviction that fate, which must have had some unfathomable purpose in bringing them together once, would transform his life at this eleventh hour by bringing them together again. He watched for her in the streets. Sometimes he thought he had glimpsed her and followed some hurrying woman, sick with eagerness, until he was undeceived. An evening at the cinema would be ruined by the fantastic notion that she was sitting behind him in the darkness. One evening, at home with the Wakerells, the obsession grew on him that she was spending that evening with Nancy. He made foolish excuses, hurried to Nancy’s place, trembled as he rang the bell, uttered more unintelligible excuses to Nancy and pushed into the flat, overwhelmed with expectation. Of course, Rose was not there; but he was as crushed by her absence as if she had failed to keep a promised rendezvous.

  All this was so ridiculous in the light of conscious consideration that he refused to admit to himself that it was happening; yet it went on governing his life. It was only natural that, after hoping for fate to bring them together, he went on to do what he could to lend fate a hand. Every working day — refusing ever to acknowledge that the action was intentional — he strolled in his lunch hour — past Rose’s block of flats. Sometimes he found his way there in the evening and loitered among the deserted lawns in the square, watching the doorway. Once he saw her coming out, accompanied by a man whose tallness, well-dressed appearance and smooth deference of manner filled Jack with shame at his own loutishness.

  After this he kept away from Russell Square for three days, during which he lived in a state of stunned misery, imagining the man making love to Rose, crushed by the thought of all the other sleek and prosperous men that she must know, and seeing himself as he thought that Rose must see him beside these men, dumb, pitiful and poor.

  On the evening of the fourth day he was again drawn by the obscure compulsion that dominated him, to resume his patrol opposite her street door. This time he found himself, as helpless as in a dream, walking up the steps, climbing the staircase and ringing her doorbell. There was no reply. He rang again, still wondering how his legs had come to carry him to this spot. There was silence from behind the closed door. He was weak with terror: he longed for the door to open, and at the same time he prayed that it would not. He resisted the temptation to rush off and rang a third time. He waited for five minutes, then walked away, dazed by the conflict of disappointment and relief. His legs were shaking.

  On his way home he managed to regain his wits, and realised to what a condition he had been reduced. He derided himself, and swore that he would put an end to this nonsense. In the days that followed he struggled to master himself, and succeeded in keeping away from Russell Square. He could not rid himself of the conflicting feelings which had been driving him, but he was able to bring them into a state of perilous equilibrium which left him, free but apprehensive, in a fit state to carry on his normal life with the Wakerells.

  One evening he and Joyce took their cheque books and bank paying-in book and went into the parlour to ascertain the state of their finances.

  “Three hundred and eighty-four quid I paid in,” muttered Jack, “and ninety-one quid of yours. That makes —” he scribbled a reckoning on a scrap of paper — “four hundred and seventy-five quid. Now, give me that cheque book.” He thumbed through the stubs. “Blimey, we’ve got through a bit. Quite a few o’ these you’ve signed, eh?”

  “I’ve always let you know. I’ve bought curtains, crockery, cutlery, sheets — oh, there’s three cupboards full of the stuff, and a lot in the back room. It’s as well to buy now. They say all the prices are going up. It’s as good as money in the bank, anyway. It’s all for our home.”

  “That’s all right, duck. Now let’s see.” He copied a list of figures from the cheque stubs, muttering and pulling studious faces. “Whoof!” he grimaced. “Hundred and sixty-one quid. Goes quick enough on the q.t., don’ it?”

  “A hundred and sixty-one?” she echoed incredulously. “Whatever have we spent all that on?”

  “Twenty quid I drew to live on before I started work. Seventeen for a new best suit. Ten more for shirts and shoes and whatnot. Here we are, June the eighteenth, another five quid for the same, five quid on June the twenty-fourth for my sports jacket and slacks. That’s forty quid, and twenty makes sixty, just for a bloody outfit. Then, subs for myself, three fives and a ten —”

  “Subs?” she queried in a nervous voice.

  “Taking you out, and all that, and your birthday present. No use being stingy when you’re courting, is it?”

  She frowned. “You never told me.”

  “Told you! Here, whose bloody money is it?”

  She blinked at him in alarm, and opened her mouth to answer. He felt ashamed, and before she could speak, he said gruffly, “All right, all right, I never meant nothing. I won’t do it in future without telling you.”

  “Telling me?”

  “Well, I mean, asking you.”

  “And another thing, I think it’s time we started to economise. You know what they say, look after the pennies.”

  “Oh, Gawd, naggin’ a-bloody-gain.”

  “Well it’s my home we’re talking about,” she said, with a sudden gleam of firmness in her eyes, “and I’ll be the one that has to manage on the wages, so we might as well start now. It’ll be no use my tramping round the shops trying to save a few pence on a pair of socks if we’re going to throw pounds away before we start.”

  “You leave the worrying to me,” he muttered. “I’m the one who’s wearing the bloody pants round here.” He could not face her determined look, and busied himself with calculations a
gain. “Anyway, that makes eighty-five. And all the rest —” more muttering — “seventy-six quid you and your mum spent on pots and sheets and all that other carry-on. You got to be a bloody millionaire to get married these days, I reckon.”

  “Never mind, there’s plenty left.”

  “There won’t be for bloody long, I can tell you. Wait till we start furnishing. There’s the bedroom suite. That’s forty-six pounds —”

  “Nineteen-and-fourpence.”

  “And the dining-room suite. Thirty-four pounds.”

  “Sixteen and twopence.”

  “Oh, you and your sixteen and twopences. I’m going to have a fine old time with you, I can see. Sweep up the crumbs every night for bloody bread pudding, an’ stand on your bloody head all day to save shoe leather. Two armchairs, table and four chairs for the kitchen. Fourteen quid. Twenty quid for a radio. Here, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We can’t pay all this lot out at once. Do far better to get it on the never-never, few quid a week, I mean, you don’t miss it.”

  “No.”

  “That’s what everybody does, ain’t it?”

  “No.”

  “They do, you know.”

  “Well, we’re not. For one thing, we save sixteen pounds all round, paying outright. For another thing, I don’t want to be in anybody’s debt so long as we’ve got the money. When we walk into that home, it’s going to be our own, every tiny little bit of it. There isn’t another girl in Lamb Street that’s ever been able to say that on her wedding day. There’s enough girls in this street got married in front of me, had their little laugh at me on the quiet. Now it’s going to be my turn to laugh.” She was very firm and serene, and somehow he could not argue.

  “Well, anyway,” he said, “the money’ll be there when we want it.”

  “I should hope so. Now, take off the cost of the wedding, and my dress, and the honeymoon, and we’ll see what we’ve got left in the kitty.”

  “I reckon on twenty quid for the do, what with the church, and beer, and a car for the day, and whatnot. Can’t grumble at that. This honeymoon lark, though, it’s gonna knock us back twenty-five quid easy, for the week. Bloody queer idea, I call it, in December.”

  “It’s not the time, it’s the principle of the thing.” She had put on her glasses. Their blind glimmer, and the stubborn set of her mouth, made her appear for a moment almost malignantly defiant.

  “You and your principles! A minute ago it was ‘look after the pennies’. Now where’s all your economy, and common sense, and being practical, poncin’ up an’ down the front at Eastbourne for a week in the freezing cold?”

  She moved her head, and her glasses flashed angrily. “Jack Agass, we’ve been over this a dozen times. I hope you’re not going back on your word.”

  “I ain’t going back on nothing, ducks. You want it, you’ll get it. That’s me. Nothing too good for my Joycie. You got me a bit mogadored, that’s all, first blowing one way, then the other.”

  She took off her glasses, moved her head voluptuously and smiled secretively at the floor. “It’s got nothing to do with economy, or showing up the other girls, or anything like that.”

  “What then?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Yes I would. Honest. No sense in being shy. Not with me. Is there, girl?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. Things like that, you can’t think about money.”

  “What? You mean, falling in love ?”

  She uttered a little laugh of denial that contradicted her, “I suppose so.” After a pause she said, “It’s what I said. You can’t explain to a man.”

  He let her brood. She said, “Well, there’s just that one day. It’s like a dream. You’re wearing that wonderful white dress —”

  “Another twenty quid,” he murmured.

  She did not seem to hear him. “— clouds and clouds of tulle, and lovely flowers, and all those thousands of sequins all white and yet they flash every colour when you stand in the light, and you walk down the aisle, and everyone’s looking at you, and it’s not like the way they usually look at you, no-one’s laughing at you, no-one’s saying bitchy things about you, no-one’s hating you. You can hear them all murmuring and crying, and you feel like crying yourself.” The words were gushing up out of her, and she seemed to be listening to them in wonderment. She was unable to stop herself even long enough to catch her breath. “It’s all a dream. It’s a funny kind of dream, because you’ve dreamed about it for thousands and thousands of nights, for years and years, ever since you were a tiny little girl. And now it’s really happening. For once it’s not a dream. And yet it is a dream, more than ever. It used to seem more real when you lay in bed imagining it. And then you go off on a honeymoon. A honeymoon! In December, when everyone else is at work. Like on the pictures. You’re a real lady, new clothes, no work, nothing to worry about, everyone’s nice to you, they treat you like a princess, and all the time you can remember the way people looked after you when you drove off in a car to the station, all shouting and calling out nice things, and all the girls still talking about your wedding dress, saying to each other what a dream you looked.” She gulped, became aware of Jack, and went on in a dogged voice as if she were determined to go through with it. “And then you come back to your home, and it’s all your own. You can do what you like there. You’re It. You’re someone. Fancy being someone! I mean, you’re not just someone who works for somebody, or somebody’s lodger, you’re not just Mrs. Wakerell’s youngest, you’re someone. And everybody talks to you differently after that.” She pondered, working out the train of thought to its conclusion. “Well, I mean, all your life after that you’ve got something to look back on.”

  At any other time Jack might have been impressed. Such an unexpected torrent of words falling from Joyce’s lips might have given him his first bewildered glimpse of the woman who dwelt, stifled, within the heavy and unresponsive body he was accustomed to fondle. He was, however, shut up within his own preoccupations. He said, “Like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”

  Joyce had got over the embarrassment of hearing herself speak from the heart, and she sat back, her face soft and elated with achievement, listening with slightly parted lips and warm, remote eyes to the inward echo of her own voice. Then she laughed. It was a soft and broken laughter, whose import other women had taught him to recognize, a simultaneous exhalation of concupiscence and faint mockery. He believed firmly in the existence of two kinds of women, and it was a fixed idea to him that Joyce was not ‘that kind’. She was his chosen household vassal and brood mare, the one person in the world upon whose meekness, dependence and acknowledged inferiority he could always nourish his self-respect. Therefore he ignored the stirring of his instincts and refused to recognize the overtones of her laughter. “That’s right, duck,” he said, “have a good laugh. That’s one thing that don’t cost nothing. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Oh, you,” she said in tender derision, “You men don’t know what time it is. Don’t you feel just a little bit excited?”

  “Eh? What for?”

  She took his hand and placed it over her left breast. “Here.” She pressed the flat of her hand down on his. “Feel my heart. Can’t you feel it going thump, thump, thump? Don’t you ever feel like that when you think?” He was not thinking of her heartbeats, but of the fleshy firmness of her breast. His legs began to tremble and he drew his hand away hastily.

  “Proper teaser you are. Get more than you bargain for, muck about with me like that.”

  “Will I?” She smiled at him again.

  “Yes. I know you.” He put his hands in his trousers pockets and pressed the fingertips into his thighs to check the quivering of his muscles. “First of all it’s chase me Charlie, then all of a sudden it’s keep off the grass.”

  “Is it?” She was still smiling.

  “Yes.” He saw only mockery in her attitude. To make another grab at her, to
find himself mistaken and again to be repulsed, was a blow to his self-respect which he dared not risk. He strove to master his resentment and, hoping to mollify her, he added, “ ’S all right. That’s what I like about you.”

  Her smile died, though the smiling set of her lips remained “Is it?”

  He said, trying to inject a tone of sincerity into the lie, “You bet. Had enough of the other kind, I have. There’s some dirty bitches around, I can tell you. Seen a bit of the world, I have. You wouldn’t know, thank God. I know a good girl when I see one. So don’t think I don’t appreciate it, because I do. See?”

  “That’s plain enough.” She sat down limply. After a few moments she brightened up and flashed a determined little smile at him.

  “Jack,” she said, “am I pretty?”

  “Eh? Course you are. Why?”

  “You’ve never told me.”

  “Yes I have. Lots of times.”

  “No you haven’t. We’ve sat in here in the dark, and, you know, all that sort of thing. But you’ve never once, not in all those six months, said — oh, you know, all those lovely things they do say.”

  “Eh? Don’t be daft. I ain’t Charles bleeding Boyer, am I?” He was beginning to feel irritated. A quiet room, a woman — what did she think he was made of, rousing him like this?

  “Have I got a good figure?” She pulled her dress back to show the outlines of her body and pivoted seductively to and fro.

  He frowned, clenching his teeth. “Pack it up, Joyce. I’m telling you.”

  She continued to show herself off, smiling at him. “Isn’t it quiet in the house, with Mum and Dad out?”

  He could not stand her presence any longer. “I’m goin’ out,” he muttered, “buy some fags.” He had to get away, to cool off. She couldn’t know, surely, what effect her behaviour was having, on him? — not a respectable girl like Joyce? Oh, these respectable girls! No wonder a man had to turn to — well, to women like — well, like Rose! Trying to retain the semblance of composure, he said, at the door, “Well, there’s one thing. After all that reckoning, we’ll still have a hundred and thirty quid in the bank. When we’re wed, I mean, and everything’s paid.”