A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

  “What are you in?”

  “Artillery.”

  She covered a yawn. They might have been talking in a waiting-room.

  “But what’s your story?” he asked, turning back to her. “I don’t know anything about you.”

  Pulling herself together, she began to tell him of the events that had led up to her arrival in England for the second time. She chose to tell them in a way that freed them of much of their unpleasantness, and made them sound like a series of actions taken of her own will. As she related them they sounded unreal to her.

  He listened sympathetically, his forehead furrowed desperately. From the left breast-pocket of his tunic he took a long cigarette-case, and began to smoke again; she refused. As she spoke she considered dispassionately how he fitted her memories of him. His face was recognizable. But it had not achieved any maturity. Oddly enough she began to remember how Jane looked, which had been quite beyond her till now. But where had this jauntiness come from? and this restlessness, this perpetual unease? He reminded her of nothing so much as a boy in the presence of women.

  In the meanwhile he smoked his cigarette hungrily.

  “Filthy business,” he said when she had finished. “It’s pretty grim, isn’t it.”

  He clasped his hands awkwardly.

  “Would you like some supper?” she said, feeling more friendly towards him as he had heard her out respectfully. “I usually eat something about this time.”

  “Oh, but shouldn’t we go out?”

  “It wouldn’t be any trouble. I haven’t much, but there’s enough.”

  “Well, I don’t want to rob you.” He went to sit down, then remained standing as she got up. “I haven’t had anything since lunch, as a matter of fact,” he added with a laugh, jerking his shoulders as if to settle his clothes more comfortably.

  “If you want a proper meal we’d better go out,” she said. “I could give you sausages and coffee.”

  “That’d be first rate, if you’re sure you can spare it.”

  “Make yourself comfortable. I shan’t be very long.”

  But he followed her out. “No, I’m interested in this place of yours.”

  Along the dark landing and in the bare little room where she did her cooking the air was chilly. In the corner was a boiler wrapped in felt. The electric light made the sink and stove look peculiarly bleak.

  She filled the kettle and put it on the gas. As she crossed to a cupboard he caught hold of her again and drew her to him as he leant against the wall.

  “I’m sorry for you,” he said. “You’ve had a rotten time.”

  He smiled at her in a way that would have been charming but for the shadows round his eyes and nostrils.

  “You’re behaving very strangely,” she said, with amusement.

  She let him kiss her. He did it eagerly but without grace, like a boy learning to smoke. All this was so extraordinary that it hardly registered: or rather, there was nothing to register. His manner was so unlike her recollections that he was still nearly a chance acquaintance to her.

  “If you really want any supper you’d better let me go,” she said.

  He looked nonplussed. Then he laughed unconfidently and released her.

  “Can’t I help you?” he said.

  “I don’t think there’s very much you can do. You can lay the table if you like.”

  She told him where to find cutlery and a table-cloth, and in the meantime unwrapped a paper of sausages and pricked them before putting them in a frying pan. There was half an onion that had lain in a saucer for several weeks, and she added a few translucent rings; also there were two cold potatoes that could be sliced and fried as well. After a time he came back and hung about watching.

  “Why don’t you go by the fire?” she said, warming her hands round the gas ring. “It’s so cold out here.”

  “I’d sooner talk to you,” he said doggedly. His hair was coming out of place where he had passed his hand through it many times. “What sort of a time d’you have, apart from what you do? Do you know many decent people?”

  “No, I haven’t bothered.”

  “You’ve been here long enough to know someone.”

  “I know I have. Somehow I haven’t had the time. I don’t really want any friends till I go home again.”

  “But that may be a long time yet,” he said, as if eager to seize on something he could speak about with authority. “I honestly don’t think you’ll leave England for another five years.”

  “Five, oh, surely——”

  “I don’t see how it can possibly be any sooner.” He went into a long forecast of military strategy and events. “Which adds up to five years,” he finished, crossing his arms with a slight shiver.

  “Well, you are probably right.”

  They talked in this way for some time, remotely. Yet he looked at her in an intimate, hungry way, as if aware she only vaguely recognized him. And infected by his distrust, her mind kept running to her and saying: This is Robin! This is Robin you were expecting! He’s come. And soon he’ll go again, so you’d better make the most of it. But the words struck no spark. She could not intoxicate herself with his presence, so that all else was shut out: yes, he was there, so briskly brushed, and smart, and self-confident (but there were rings under his eyes), but the rest were there too, the town, the boiler wrapped in felt, Miss Green, Mr. Anstey, Miss Parbury, in their separate ugly worlds, and soon they would all be asleep. Further, he did not seem open and friendly to her. His gaiety was automatic, restless, pitiful, but his eyes played on her, as if he wanted to tell her some trouble.

  When the meal was ready, she made coffee and they carried the two plates along with a loaf of bread into the sitting-room. “This is the kind of meal I really enjoy,” he said, pulling up his chair, but he ate scrappily, not clearing up his plate, and pushing it away, before she had finished, to light a fresh cigarette. Katherine had thought he was hungry and had planned to offer him cheese, but he seemed satisfied as soon as the novelty of eating had worn off again. She poured him a second cup of coffee, hurt momentarily. She wondered if he thought it had not been worth his while to come.

  “Tell me something more about your family,” she said when they had both finished. “About Jane, for instance.”

  “She’s at home,” said Robin briefly, stretching his legs under the table.

  “And Jack?”

  “Still in India. They’re fairly stuck now.”

  “She did go to India, then?”

  It was Jane, after all, who had been the mainspring of this meeting.

  “Oh yes. She went back there with Jack. They lived there till war broke out. She was going to have this child then, and they thought it better she should come home, all things considered.” He threw these sentences out moodily, as if they reflected discredit on his family.

  “But why? India would have been safer, surely.”

  “I dare say it would.” He hitched in his seat to get one hand in his trouser-pocket. “But they didn’t think so at the time. It was all very confusing. You see, for one thing, children shouldn’t stay in India after a certain age, and there was no guarantee they’d be able to send her back to England once the war got well started. And some people said it was just the chance for a civil war, if England started getting the worst of it. And then Jack wanted his children to be brought up in England,” he added without irony.

  Katherine nodded, her chin on one hand. The washing-up could be left till tomorrow.

  “He’s still there, then?”

  “Yes, he’s trying to get back for a bit. It’s rotten all round.”

  “Will they go back?”

  “I suppose they’ll have to. Jane doesn’t seem very keen on the idea, though. I don’t think she liked the life out there much.”

  “Well, she knew what she was in for, I suppose,” said Katherine, rising. As she glanced in the mirror from force of habit she could see that Robin had made her hair untidy, and she began setting it to rights, using h
er brush from the bedroom. “All the same, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m surprised that you should have noticed it in the papers, about the kid.” He got up, and came as if magnetized to stand behind her as she attended to her appearance, smiling at her reflection in his professional way, yet looking as if he needed sleep. “I should have thought you’d have forgotten Jack’s name.”

  She went on brushing. “It was such a funny name.”

  He looked over her shoulder, smoking as if being photographed. “That looks a very valuable hairbrush.”

  “I shall pawn it when I’ve no money.”

  He started to put his arms round her again, and she no longer felt tolerant of his behaviour, only somewhat irritated. Had he come all this way simply to mess her about? “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “You’re not drunk any more.”

  A dark, wounded look came into his face, like the look of a child that has been refused something it believes its due. She saw that she had hurt him deeply, and it amazed her. Was she supposed to be flattered, that he had considered it worth while making a special journey on the off-chance of sleeping with her? For he would ask that if she made no protest. Queer, she thought, that he should have turned out like this. Someone must have given him the idea that he fascinated women.

  “And the child?” she asked. “What did it die of?”

  He had gone to sit down again, moving uneasily as if his pockets were full of unyielding objects.

  “Oh——” he tossed his head. “That was a miserable business. It just wasn’t strong enough. Born with a defective heart, the doctor said.”

  “How bad for her,” she said with a sigh. “Is she very depressed?”

  “She was pretty cut up. I couldn’t get down for the funeral.”

  Katherine put her brush back into the alcove, and returned to sit on her stool. “What will she do now?”

  As she said this, the gas-fire began to fail and grow blue, and she realized the meter needed another shilling. Robin looked up quickly as the heat on his legs lost its steadiness, and dug his hand painfully into his hip-pocket for money.

  “Don’t bother,” she said, rooting in her handbag. But she had no appropriate coins and had to accept the shilling he held out. When she came back from the dismal landing the subject of conversation had passed from their minds.

  She looked at her watch and saw it was nine o’clock, stifling a yawn and realizing that her weariness was being reinforced by boredom. Had they ever been at ease with each other? Or had her memory played her false? For there was nothing sympathetic in him. It seemed absurd that she should be obliged to sit and entertain him because they had met by chance when she was young; if she were introduced to him now she would not want to see him again. And this lack of contact was due to more than her temporary insensitivity. If it was only that, he could have amused her and gradually brought her friendliness into play again. But every word he had spoken fell short, leaving her untouched.

  “When did you say your train went?” she asked at length.

  Unintentionally this irritated him. “You aren’t going to throw me out yet, are you?” he retorted, spreading a laugh thinly over the edge of his voice, and uncrossing his legs. “It actually goes at a quarter to midnight. I’ll go if you want me to.”

  “Of course not. Would you like some more coffee?”

  “Oh, don’t trouble.”

  “No trouble.” She had not meant to offend him. “Only there may not be enough milk. All my visitors have come on the same day, you see.”

  She stood weighing the coffee-pot in her hand.

  “Well, if you’re going to make some, I don’t mind if it’s black,” he said ungraciously, as if cross that things were going the wrong way.

  She collected the cups and went out: this time he did not follow her, and she was alone in the tiny, brilliant kitchen. Perhaps black coffee would keep her awake, for it certainly seemed that even if she did not let him do as he pleased with her, he was intending to stick there until it was time for him to go to the station. She caught herself up on this last thought and, watching the kettle boil again, wondered if she were as callous as that sounded. He had every right to expect a friend to welcome him, particularly a friend that owed him hospitality and had not met him for so long. If she could see her conduct from the outside, it might well seem at fault by human standards. But that was just where human standards broke down. What happened if she felt no humanity?

  She did not think she was at fault; it was not as if she disliked him. What abstract kindliness she could command was at his service, but it was no more than she might show to a fellow-traveller in a railway-carriage or on board a steamer. Indeed, that was the strongest bond she felt between them, that they were journeying together, with the snow, the discomfort, the food they shared, the beds that were not warm enough. In this situation she need know nothing more about him: there was a fire, that he paid to keep burning; she had hot coffee she could give him; there was so much laconic mutual help, while outside lay the plains, the absence of the moon, the complete enmity of darkness.

  She switched the light off and carried in the tray. He had got up again and was standing in front of the fire, as if fearing it might go out again. One hand jingled money in his pockets.

  “Who are all these visitors you’re talking about?”

  She could tell by his voice that his irritation was very thinly hidden.

  “I was only joking. I did have one girl in at lunchtime, who works where I do. I don’t even know her Christian name. But she drank some of the milk.”

  “Then I come along and drink the rest.” He gave a laugh, not wholly amused. “You know,” he went on, swinging his weight first on one foot, then on the other, “you’ve changed a bit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, stirring the coffee she gave him. “I can see you in thirty years’ time, with a cat and a parrot——”

  He tried to sound bantering, but there was constraint in his voice that meant his words hurt himself as well as her.

  “I suppose you just don’t give a curse for anyone,” he ended rather bitterly.

  She found it odd, that this was Robin speaking to her. No doubt he had learned to talk in this way at Cambridge. She leant easily on the table.

  “Is this because I don’t want you to kiss me?”

  “No, it isn’t.” His denial was violent, disturbed: she had let the remark out casually, without realizing such an ordinary truth might offend him. Why, he was years younger than she was: it must be his English upbringing. “It’s because you’re about as friendly as a blasted block of ice.”

  He stood there foolishly, looking at the floor.

  She thought of telling him that he was mistaken if he expected her to be flattered by his estimate of her, a foreign girl who could be relied on for a bit of fun. But her resentment was not strong enough. He could say what he liked. No doubt he would end by apologizing.

  He stood there in silence till he had finished his coffee. Then he put the cup on the mantelpiece and threw himself petulantly into his chair again, his mouth resting against his hands. Katherine went over and reseated herself on the stool, taking up her box of cigarettes and finding there were only two left. She put one in her mouth, and threw the other into his lap.

  In a minute or two he picked it up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  She struck a match. “That’s all right. We do seem to have lost touch, rather.”

  They lit their cigarettes.

  “I suppose,” he said, “we aren’t really such very great friends. I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “I suppose not. We only knew each other by chance.”

  “That’s true. Tell me, why did you join that scheme? I always thought it wasn’t your kind of show at all.”

  She laughed. “I thought the same about you. I can’t remember why. I thought it would be fun.”

  �
�Oh, I was deadly serious about the language side of it. I read languages at Cambridge. I thought at one time of going into the Diplomatic.”

  “Can’t you still?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. Everything’s so uncertain.”

  “Well, at any rate,” she said, “I enjoyed the holiday I had with you. That was a success.”

  “Did you? I had the impression you were no end bored. I’m glad.”

  “I always meant to ask you back.”

  “Well, you did ask me. But I was ill, wasn’t I?”

  “I think you were.”

  “And by next year there were war-scares every minute.”

  “And we’d stopped writing.”

  “Yes, we had.”

  Smoke hung under the electric light.

  “A pity you didn’t come over,” said Katherine. “I should have liked both you and Jane to have come.”

  “Yes, it would have been grand.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “there will be time, after the war.”

  “I’m superstitious,” he said. “I’m making no plans. After the war doesn’t exist for me. I just look forward about a week.” But his eyes looked as if he could see years ahead.

  “Look, will you write to me?” he said later on. “I’m sorry I was rude just now.”

  “Write to you?” she said. Her eyes rested on his worried face. Did he really think, at this outpost of the conversation, that there was anything she could give him? “I will if you like.”

  “It’d be silly to lose touch. You don’t have to write pages of literary stuff. Just a couple of sides would do. It’s being in the army makes one feel like that, I suppose—being so cut off. It makes a letter seem awfully important.”

  He wrote in a small notebook, bound in soft leather, tore off what he had written, and handed it to her. It was a guarded military address.

  “I’ll do my best,” she said. “I don’t write much these days.”

  “I’d be no end grateful. And you must come to stay again as soon as you can. I’ll ask mother to write to you about it.”

  “Jane won’t want any visitors.”