A Girl in Winter

by Philip Larkin

“Jane won’t want anything. She wouldn’t eat if someone else didn’t get the meals.”

  “Perhaps in the summer!” she said, with a flicker of irony.

  “I’m pretty certain to have left England by then. But you must go in any case.”

  The irritability had left his voice, the distress remained. He ran his fingers several times through his hair, and sighed once or twice. Their conversation was as barren as a field by the sea’s edge, the grass littered with pebbles until at last the margin is all pebbles, dropping down steeply to where the clear water rises and falls against the stones. She felt very keenly that they were alone at the top of this building, and at this thought her spirits began to revive strangely, meaninglessly, like a rag caught upon a nail that flaps in the wind. She had been pushed so far that day into exhaustion that she had reached the boundary of a completely new land, where a wind seemed to blow and make her flutter like the last leaf on a tree, where all things tossed and shook in a kind of lonely exultance, irrelevantly, simply because they were alive.

  And what of him? He sat with a dark face, shoulders hunched, his feet turned inwards. Something oppressed him continually, making him come to her or any woman, disguised by a jaunty philandering. He had lost the self-possession he had moved with when a boy, and was given over to the restlessness of his body. That was driving him, and because he could not control it he pretended he enjoyed it, to the extent of telling himself he was having a jolly good time and even if necessary that he loved her, which would not be true. It had driven him to play the gay officer, and in due course would cause him to play the forsaken boy, but it would be unkind to tell him so, because he had to do it and would be happier without the knowledge. But she felt superior to him, for she wanted nothing of him, but when he left her he would do so bitterly.

  The silence was too long, and he seemed to feel it, getting up and pressing out his cigarette. “I think perhaps I’d better go now,” he said, casting a look round the room. “You’re probably tired out.”

  His voice was drab, and he gave his tie a jerk, tightening it as if to hearten himself. In the light the lines of his face were drawn.

  She was moved to feel sorry for him. It seemed a poor end to their meeting.

  “There’s no hurry,” she said. “You’ll have a terribly long wait.”

  “I expect you want to go to sleep,” he said. “And I shall be giving you a bad name if I stay much longer.”

  It struck her that he did not really mean to go, that he had only suggested going to test her reactions again; she saw it with a clairvoyance that had somehow broken from personal interest. It was unlike anything she had felt before.

  “Please yourself,” she said, for some sort of answer.

  He made a step towards her, and quietly took her hands as if to say good-bye. Neither spoke. Then he said:

  “Shall I stay with you?”

  “I don’t think you’d better.”

  He changed his grip and held her, waited till her automatic movement away from him had spent itself, then kissed her, returning to kiss her a second time more fully. She wondered if this was supposed to make her change her mind. Afterwards he pressed his eyes against her shoulder.

  “Let me stay with you,” he said. “I wish you would.”

  She wondered how he could bring himself to keep on asking.

  “There’d be no point in it.”

  He held her more lightly. “Why not?”

  “Well, do you see any?”

  He did not answer.

  “It wouldn’t mean anything,” she pointed out.

  “Damn it!” he said desperately. “What does that matter? I don’t see that anything means very much. I spend all my time doing things that don’t matter two-pence. So do you.” He had drawn himself up to say this, and now slackened in a kind of disgust. “Oh, well. I don’t want to argue about it.”

  “I’m not arguing,” she said. Truly she did not care one way or the other, being neither insulted or flattered. She could easily refuse, yet refusal would be dulling, an assent to all the wilderness that surrounded them. If she did not refuse, he would go back to his camp and boast about it, to cover the humiliation he suffered in making her accept. She did not mind. Her spirits were rising higher. He could not touch her. It would be no more than doing him an unimportant kindness, that would be overtaken by oblivion in a few days.

  “It would mean a great deal to me,” he said automatically, looking at her humbly.

  “Well, all right.” She named a condition that he accepted. “Stay if you like.”

  He released her, as if his desire had suddenly died out. She could almost see him wondering whether to accept her lack of enthusiasm: it was galling to him, and seemed all wrong.

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind,” he said hesitantly; this sounded so absurd she could not help laughing, and at this he seemed satisfied and kissed her again.

  “There’s no need to wait, is there?” he said, his eyebrows arching momentarily.

  “I suppose not. Oh, Robin, there’s just one thing——”

  “What?”

  “I think you should pretend to go. I don’t want any trouble about this.”

  “Seems a bit unnecessary,” he said stiffly, almost as if suspecting a trap.

  “I’d feel much happier if you would.”

  He seemed impatient but submissive. “What do you want me to do, then?”

  “Just go downstairs, open the street door, and shut it again. Then come back quietly. I don’t suppose they’ll be listening, but they might be.”

  “I’m not sure I know the way.”

  “The door is right in front of you at the bottom of the stairs. Be careful, there may be a bicycle in the passageway. Oh—Robin!”

  “Yes?” They were whispering already.

  “The sixth stair from the bottom creaks. Be careful when you’re coming back.”

  “Oh, my God.” He went.

  Perhaps she should not have been alone so soon, for there came a slight backwash of shame at what she had agreed to, at letting it all end so badly. But it spent itself before it reached her. She picked up the saucerful of cigarette-ends and emptied it into the waste-paper basket, then went to the table to put their plates together. The door banged below. There was nothing to fear. If this was what he wanted, he might as well have it. In the past she might have been wrong, might have guessed or wondered, but that time was over. Now she could go through with her decision, and be sure that nothing would come of it.

  She was laying his coat and cap over the chair Miss Green had sat in when he appeared noiselessly in the doorway. “It’s snowing outside,” he said. “I knew it would.”

  “Is it?”

  He closed the door quietly, smoothing his hair. A snowflake had clung to his shoulder but quickly melted. “A rotten night.”

  “You’d better put all your things in the same place,” she said, indicating what she had done. “It’ll be easier for you.”

  He nodded. “What’s underneath here?”

  “A workroom, I think. There’ll be no-one there now.”

  “Will anyone hear us talking?”

  “I don’t think so. We had better not shout.” She looked at her watch. “And what about your train? When ought you to go?”

  “Well, I needn’t catch the midnight one. There’s another back to camp about five. I’m not far away, to tell you the truth.”

  “But I thought you were on leave?”

  He gave a slight frown, as if annoyed at being detected. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. We had embarkation leave ten days ago.”

  “But surely you shouldn’t be——”

  “Oh, it’s all right.” He gestured impatiently. “There’s a man will cover up for me. I don’t have to put in an appearance till eleven on Sundays.”

  There was another silence. At last she began to undo the cuffs of her dress. “Please put the light out,” she said. He did so, and then turned out the gas fire.

  7

/>   “I suppose it’s not very late,” he said.

  “A quarter past ten.”

  “Are you wearing a watch?”

  “Yes, I’d forgotten it. I’ll put it under the pillow.”

  He laughed. “That’s rather funny.”

  “Well, I always wear it. Otherwise it keeps me awake.”

  “Well, keep it on, then.”

  “I’ll put it on your side. It won’t bother me.”

  *

  “Do you know where you’re going?” she asked.

  “Eh?”

  “I said, do you know where you’re going? When you——”

  “Oh, well, not officially. They tell us on board. We can guess pretty well.”

  “I don’t suppose you like the idea.”

  “Can’t say I do.” He was flippant. “But everyone’s in the same boat.”

  He seemed restless and unsatisfied, as she knew he would be, and later on he began to talk again. “You will write to me, won’t you? I mean, I can rely on it?”

  “Yes, of course, if you want me to.”

  “I’d be glad so if you would. I don’t get many letters. From home, of course … But one grows out of one’s parents.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t mean it—you know—it’s nothing to be proud of. But my last leave wasn’t up to much, pretty ghastly really. They tried to be so good and yet we just hadn’t anything to say to each other. I mean, we were quite friendly and all that, but … I can’t explain it quite, only I don’t feel I want to see them again. Probably shan’t, anyway. I say, do you mind if I put your watch somewhere else? It does make a row.”

  “There’s a side-table by the bed, if you can find it.”

  *

  In the darkness they heard some of the city clocks strike after a while.

  “By the way, you’d better forget what I said about embarkation leave, it’s supposed to be secret.”

  “Oh, I will, don’t worry.”

  “I suppose we ought to go to sleep. I’m tired enough to sleep for a week, but I just don’t feel like it. This war, it’s mucked everything up. All happened so naturally, but my God it’s made a mess of things.” He paused. “Broken the sequence, so to speak. I mean, I knew pretty well what I was going to do, my career and so forth. All gone to blazes. Of course, if I come through, I suppose I can go on—but the funny thing is, I don’t much care now. Awfully difficult to explain to one’s parents.”

  *

  “I say, I’m sorry, but this watch of yours still worries me.”

  “What?”

  “Can I put your watch somewhere else?”

  “Do what you like. I’ll put it on again.”

  “No, don’t. I don’t want to hear it. Put it right away somewhere.”

  “Give it me. Go to sleep.”

  “But if one doesn’t! … I mean, there aren’t two ways about it. One’s got to have some sort of aim in life, or you might as well be dead. Listen who’s talking. My chances aren’t worth much. But take these blokes who are getting married, there was one only last week; I think it’s silly of them, downright silly. What’s the point of it? You leave the girl, and get yourself wiped out … I don’t only mean it from a practical point of view——”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “I mean who’s got anything to offer anyone these days? Badly put. I say, I’m sorry to burble like this. But it’s not worth while. Obviously it’s the only worth-while thing, a career and getting a family, increasing and multiplying, whatever that means. But when you don’t feel it—I mean, if I asked you, for instance, to marry me, you’d refuse, wouldn’t you … wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, there you are, then.”

  *

  “Bit of a lark it would be, though.”

  “Aren’t you asleep yet?”

  “I was only thinking it would be funny. Lose one Katherine, gain another.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “My niece. How pompous that sounds. Jane’s daughter. She was called Katherine.”

  “She wasn’t, she was called Lucy.”

  “Lucy was only her first name. Jack called her that after his mother, who died—oh, it must be fifteen years ago. Before you met him. Her second name was Katherine —Jane chose that.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “So you see you are almost one of the family. There’d be no——”

  “Robin, I do want to go to sleep. Don’t say any more. I’m too tired.”

  *

  There was the snow, and her watch ticking. So many snowflakes, so many seconds. As time passed they seemed to mingle in their minds, heaping up into a vast shape that might be a burial mound, or the cliff of an iceberg whose summit is out of sight. Into its shadow dreams crowded, full of conceptions and stirrings of cold, as if icefloes were moving down a lightless channel of water. They were going in orderly slow procession, moving from darkness further into darkness, allowing no suggestion that their order should be broken, or that one day, however many years distant, the darkness would begin to give place to light.

  Yet their passage was not saddening. Unsatisfied dreams rose and fell about them, crying out against their implacability, but in the end glad that such order, such destiny, existed. Against this knowledge, the heart, the will, and all that made for protest, could at last sleep.

  About the Author

  Philip Larkin was born in Coventry in 1922 and was educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry, and St John’s College, Oxford. As well as his volumes of poems, which include The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, he wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and two books of collected journalism: All What Jazz: A Record Library, and Required Writing: Miscellaneous Prose. He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985. He was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and the WH Smith Award.

  By the Same Author

  poetry

  THE NORTH SHIP

  XX POEMS

  THE FANTASY POETS NO. 21

  THE LESS DECEIVED (The Marvell Press)

  THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS

  HIGH WINDOWS

  COLLECTED POEMS

  SELECTED LETTERS OF PHILIP LARKIN 1940–85

  (edited by Anthony Thwaite)

  THE OXFORD BOOK OF TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH VERSE (ed.)

  fiction

  JILL

  A GIRL IN WINTER

  TROUBLE AT WILLOW GABLES AND OTHER FICTIONS

  (edited by James Booth)

  non-fiction

  ALL WHAT JAZZ: A Record Diary 1961–71

  REQUIRED WRITING: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–82

  FURTHER REQUIREMENTS:

  Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Reviews 1952–85

  (edited by Anthony Thwaite)

  Copyright

  First published in 1947

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved

  © The Estate of Philip Larkin, 1947

  The right of Philip Larkin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–26810–8

  A Girl in Winter