A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

  She had left Miss Green to herself: they were sharing a double-seat downstairs. Miss Green was nearest the gangway, and the bus had become so crowded that a shopping basket swayed above her head, from which hung the end of a leek. At every movement of the owner it tapped Miss Green’s hair. But she had looked mutely in front of her and said nothing.

  Now she leaned against Katherine.

  Katherine accordingly gave her more room. But Miss Green said:

  “I don’t feel well. I’m sorry. I must get out.”

  Katherine glanced at her. She looked ghastly.

  “All right.”

  She signalled to the conductress, and got Miss Green to the platform at the back of the bus. At the next stop it swerved alongside the pavement and put them down. Miss Green went and sat on a low wall from which the railings had been removed, her head low. Katherine stood by her.

  “Do you feel faint or sick?” she asked helplessly.

  “Sick,” said Miss Green after a while. She tilted back her head as if the cold air were wet muslin laid across her forehead.

  They had not reached Bank Street, but it would have been the next stop. This was a large square, the formal centre of the city, two sides of which were taken up by the Town Hall and Municipal Departments, under which the bus had dropped them. In the middle of the square was a small green, with flowerbeds and seats; over the branches of the leafless trees on the third side was the high-pillared façade of the Central City Library, and on the last side were low reticent shop windows, tailors and jewellers. The green was covered with snow.

  Katherine was uncertain what to do. She had had no experience of English invalids: if she went quickly to a chemist’s she would not know what to buy. If Miss Green asked for anything, she would do all she could to get it, but in the meantime she did nothing, looking at the thin neck bowed within the chiffon scarf. Pain was so remote from what she herself was feeling that she felt helpless. Possibly Miss Green would not have thanked her for any offer of comfort.

  So she waited. At last Miss Green raised her head.

  “Buses seem to upset me sometimes,” she said, in little more than a whisper.

  “How are you feeling? What would you like to do?”

  “I don’t want anything. Just rest for a bit.”

  Katherine looked round her.

  “There’s a shelter place in the middle of this green. There’d be a proper seat there. You shouldn’t sit on the cold stone.”

  Miss Green gave no sign that she had heard. But after a minute she looked up.

  “Where?”

  “Over there. Do you think you could walk it?”

  “I can try.”

  Katherine stooped and took her thin arm. Together they crossed to the green and went up the path to the shelter, crushing a light layer of frozen snow. The benches were dusty with frost and the laurel-bushes rustled. She got Miss Green up the steps into the dingy interior, and sat her on a wooden seat. The place was bitterly cold, but built substantially: it had a drinking-fountain let into the wall, and a plaque saying it was to commemorate a coronation. There seemed nothing for the moment Katherine could do, so she leant in the doorway with her back to Miss Green, to give her time to recover herself, and stared out at the grey tracing of branches and the dark buildings beyond, their upper storeys sprinkled with lighted windows. It looked as if after all she would have to take Miss Green home. Then there would be no time to go to her room before returning to work: indeed, if they went on at this present pace it was doubtful whether it would be worth going back to work before lunch at all. She was working eight hours a day this week, from nine till one and three till seven, when the Library closed. In any case she could call at her rooms at lunchtime: it wouldn’t make more than an hour’s difference. The longer she put off making sure there was a letter or not, the longer she had something to look forward to. In the meantime she lolled in the doorway as if on guard, surprised at finding herself in this strange place, while behind her Miss Green pressed her hands to her eyes, letting her spectacles lie on the smooth wooden bench. There was one-way traffic round the square, and she watched the taxis and saloon cars go by at a distance, the noise of them sharpened on the cold air like a knife on a whetstone.

  After a while she glanced round.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  Miss Green rubbed her forehead. She had taken off her gloves.

  “A bit better, I think.”

  She blinked at Katherine: without her spectacles she did not look nearly so disagreeable. Her lips were childish and pouting.

  “Is there anything you’d like to do? Would you like to have something hot to drink somewhere?”

  “Oh, no, that would make me feel worse.”

  “Brandy would do you good.”

  “No.”

  “Well, rest a bit longer, then. There’s plenty of time.”

  “A drink of water, perhaps,” said Miss Green, timidly, after a pause.

  “Water!” Katherine looked round. “Well, there is a drinking-fountain here.”

  “Oh, but they’re filthy,” said Miss Green, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, it may be frozen.” She pressed the button experimentally, and an uneven trickle of water came out of the lion’s mouth. She passed her hand through it, and was amazed at its coldness. It might have been a stream drained from plateau after plateau of ice, running down tracks of stones still above cloud level. She withdrew her hand quickly.

  “It works, but it’s terribly cold.”

  “Oh, but it’s not healthy. All sorts of people use them—old tramps and——”

  Katherine looked at the chained iron cup. “Well, if there are any germs the frost will have killed them.” She ran the water again momentarily, to test it once more. It numbed her hand, like a distillation of the winter. “But you needn’t use the cup—you could drink from your hands.”

  Miss Green got up very gingerly and came over to stand by her as if walking barefoot on ice.

  “I don’t like to,” she said, with a deliberate expression.

  “Why not? Make a cup of your hands. I’ll keep the water running.”

  Miss Green ducked her narrow shoulders, cupping her palms together. She gave a gasp as the water touched them but sipped at it. Then she dabbed her forehead with wet fingers.

  “It’s so cold it almost stops my tooth hurting.”

  She bent to drink again, and Katherine saw as she raised her head afterwards that she was gasping at the chill of the water and half-smiling, the tiny hairs around her mouth wet. Katherine, who ever since she had got up that morning had been thinking of the Fennels and herself with increasing excitement, was suddenly startled to sympathy for her. Till then she had seen only her ugliness, her petulance, her young pretensions. Now this faded to unimportance and she grasped for the first time that she really needed care, that she was frail and in a remote way beautiful. It was so long since she had felt this about anyone that it came with unexpected force: its urgency made her own affairs, concerned with what might or might not happen, bloodless and fanciful. This was what she had not had for ages, a person dependent on her: there were streets around that she must help her to cross, buses she must help her on and afterwards buy the tickets, for the pain the girl was suffering had half-obliterated her notice of the world. In the dull suburb was her home, and she must help her to reach it safely, and hand her over to whoever would take care of her next. It was so unusual that she knew it to be linked with the thankfulness she had been feeling for the last few days: it was the unconsidered generosity that follows a rare gambling-win; for the first time in months she had happiness to spare, and now that her passive, pregnant expectation had suddenly found its outlet, it was all the more eager for having come so casually and unexpectedly, leading her to this shelter she never knew existed in the very centre of the city.

  She gently took her arm.

  “Would you like to rest a little longer? But we shall be cold if we stay long.”

  Th
ey sat together on the seat under the scrolled plaque, Miss Green huddled into herself, and Katherine glancing first at her then out through the doorway; there was a path outside where chance heelmarks seemed eternally printed in the frost. Through the light mist she could see the ornamental front of the Town Hall under the flat shield of the sky, dark and ledged with snow. But all the white-grey patches were not snow, for as she watched they revealed themselves as pigeons, a score of them launching off into the air and hanging with a great clapping of wings. Then the whole flight dropped, rose over the intervening trees across the traffic, and landed on a stretch of snow not fifteen yards from where the two of them sat, coming up as if they expected to be fed.

  4

  They remained silent for a few minutes, while Miss Green finally composed herself, putting on her spectacles and looking at her face in a handmirror. After this she powdered her nose and chin, making herself no less unattractive. The bones of her wrists were prominent and her hair, done to resemble the fashion, seemed lifeless. Katherine looked at her anxiously.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “Yes, a bit.” Miss Green swallowed. “This tooth has always been a trouble.” Her voice had no volume, and sometimes rose to a whine to make itself heard.

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Well, there was a time when I didn’t go to a dentist for nearly two years. Then it got very bad, and I had to go, and he filled it so that it was nearly all filling. Then some time ago all the filling came out and it started to hurt. He filled it again, but it went on hurting, so he gave me some stuff to put on it, and that stopped it hurting. But now it’s started again.” She looked at Katherine with weak, self-pitying eyes. “Last night was terrible. I didn’t get to sleep till four, and then I woke up before seven. It was awful. All my face—the whole of my head seemed to be aching.”

  “A headache? The one starts the other.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, but I do get terrible headaches in any case. And when I’ve got one, I just can’t do anything. Mother knows there’s nothing for it but to keep me in bed with aspirins in hot milk. And very often I’m sick too.”

  “But do you have them at work?”

  “They don’t come on during the day as a rule. At night sometimes. Most often I wake up with them. Then I don’t go to work, I just stay in bed.”

  “Perhaps you should have stayed in bed this morning.”

  Miss Green replaced her gloves with a genteel gesture. “Mother did suggest it. But it wasn’t hurting so much when I got up, and it doesn’t do to stay at home too often, does it? Mr. Anstey can be very rude.”

  “He gets worse every day. He’s got the manners of a dustman.”

  “How funny you should say that,” said Miss Green with a faint giggle, “because his father was only a Corporation workman. They used to live in Gas Street.”

  “Is he married? I wouldn’t be his wife.”

  “His wife died over five years ago.”

  “I’m sorry for her,” said Katherine. “She must have had a dog’s life. He’s so stupid. We don’t get on at all.”

  Again Miss Green gave the ghost of a giggle, as if she were watching another person break a rule.

  “Of course,” she said, a trifle more animated, “he’s only temporarily in the job at all. Mr. Rylands was the real head, you remember. Or did you never see him?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “He was a very different kind of person altogether. Young and very well-educated. He had a university degree. But when the war started he had to go into the army, unfortunately.”

  “Then they appointed Anstey, did they?”

  “Yes, he’d started as a junior assistant as soon as he left school and had been there ever since. He was senior assistant when Mr. Rylands left. I suppose they felt they had to appoint him.”

  “I can’t think why.”

  “He knows the work, I suppose.”

  “Well, perhaps he does. But he doesn’t know how to behave. He shouldn’t have any sort of authority.”

  Miss Green looked at her stealthily.

  “Have you been having a row with him?” she asked.

  “Not so far. Just one of his little lectures, this morning. One day, though, oh, one day——!”

  She gazed out of the shelter at the motionless branches: Miss Green studied her for a moment or two. Near at hand a sparrow was pecking for crumbs at a paper bag, and beyond it in the middle distance a tramp was looking into a salvage bin. The traffic circulated under the porticoes of the high buildings, the cars sounding their horns like ships lost at sea. She was glad to see that Miss Green had a little more colour.

  “Do you feel well enough to go on now?” she asked, turning back to her.

  Miss Green nodded and rose, but as she did so a sombre look came over her face. She put her hand up to her cheek. Katherine hesitated.

  “Is it hurting?”

  “Yes, it——” Miss Green looked at her fearfully. “I think it’s coming on again.”

  “Oh, surely not.”

  “Yes, it is. Oh, dear. It must have been the water, drinking.”

  Katherine’s heart sank. “Is it bad?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  There was a silence. Miss Green pressed harder against her cheek.

  Katherine shivered slightly in the cold. “Wouldn’t it be better to go to a dentist straightaway?”

  “Oh no. I’d sooner go home.”

  “But it would be just as bad at home.”

  “Yes, I know, but——”

  “I should go to a dentist now,” said Katherine. Miss Green did not answer, but looked so miserable that Katherine made up her mind to put an end to it for her. “Really I should. Then it would all be over.”

  “I daren’t,” Miss Green said brokenly.

  “But you wouldn’t have any more pain. Then you could go home. You’d have the whole week-end to get over it.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Miss Green, dryly tearful. “It would hurt so.”

  “You could have gas.”

  “It’s so expensive.”

  “But you wouldn’t feel a thing. It would be over before you knew it.”

  “This is much worse than it was before,” gasped Miss Green in a kind of sob. “I’m——”

  She turned away, hiding her face. Katherine realized that she was in no state of mind to make decisions, and determined to act.

  “I’ll tell you what. There’s a dentist near where I live, only three minutes away. In Merion Street. We’ll go there.”

  “Oh, no!—who is he? I want my own dentist.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the next street from us. I’d better go home——”

  “It would be much better to get it over first. You can’t stand any more of this. Come along now—you won’t feel anything.”

  “But what’s he like? Have you tried him?” cried Miss Green, shrinking as if asked to jump from a window into a sheet sixty feet below.

  “It’ll be all right. Really it will.” Katherine pulled Miss Green’s arm: the girl resisted a little, then finally gave way. “It’ll be much the best thing. Don’t be afraid.”

  So Miss Green, looking dazed at the pain rooted in her head, allowed herself to be led across the snow and across the street, avoiding the traffic, and a brewer’s wagon drawn by two dray-horses that tossed plumes of breath into the cold air amid a jingling of medallions. Merion Street was a narrow connection between one of the streets leading from this square and Bank Street, where they had been going. On one side of it were dark offices, the premises of an oculist, a chemist’s shop. On the other were the back entrances to some large stores, and the warehouse of a wine and spirit merchant. The two of them passed un-remarked along the wide pavements, for everyone out that day seemed contracted by the cold, having no attention to spare for others. A warm breath came from the swing doors of a club just before they turned into the narrow entrance of Merion Street, which bore its name hi
gh up on the wall in elaborate and out-moded letters.

  “It’s just along here,” said Katherine. They reached an entrance with a plate bearing the name of A. G. Talmadge. Miss Green looked apprehensively up the dark steps, like a dog knowing it has been brought to be destroyed.

  “I think——” she began, in a whisper. “Is this it?”

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Katherine, wishing that in some way she could put more strength into Miss Green’s thin body. Her wristwatch said five to eleven. They mounted the steps, and climbed the stairs to the first landing.

  There was a sour smell here, as if the floors swabbed by the cleaner were never properly dry, and the woodwork was varnished a dark brown. The landing should have been lit by an inaccessible window, but this had been painted over with streaky black paint, and they had difficulty in seeing more than the outlines of things: the banisters, a bucket of sand on the linoleum. Then they noticed a small board directing them into a poky corridor. They could hardly see. There were four doors in this corridor, with glass upper panels: two of them were blank. The others said “waiting room” and “surgery”.

  Katherine tried the first one. It was locked.

  “Perhaps,” said Miss Green, whispering, “there’s nobody here.”

  “Surely there must be,” said Katherine. She was somewhat puzzled.

  Then a shadow rose slowly up against the glass panels of the surgery door, and hung there for a moment, making the passage even more obscure. It was broad and humped, as if bent in thought. They watched it silently. At last the door began to open, and a man stood on the threshold, his hand groping in his jacket pocket. He looked at them, fingers still busy.