The couplet would have to go. ‘I don't know what to 'ave this week, that I don't,’ she mumbled through untidy lips. Better that, perhaps, than horrible freedom? In life he was a tough old scoundrel. The thought that he was merely objectifying his own inner misery hardly troubled him. Rosemary called him a soulless pig. Come here. In the little office at the back of Mr McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon — Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already — lounged across the table, pushing a four-penny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb. They must have been very hard up for a bit of news. He had told himself not to hope for a letter, and nevertheless had continued to hope. Even before he reached the door he was feeling for his matchbox, but his fingers were trembling so that in lighting the gas he chipped the mantle. Oh, Gordon. Its top edge was black with dust. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? Ravelston will lend me the money.’, ‘Never mind about Ravelston. That drunken night had marked a period in his life. Below those, saleable still and therefore placed within reach, was ‘religious’ literature — all sects and all creeds, lumped indiscriminately together. Besides, where could we put it? He had been in the clink, twelve hours. He had been in the shop before. You're a man. That was the business in which he had a chance of Making Good. But doubtless tonight, when darkness hid his blushes, he'd slink into one of the rubber-shops and buy High Jinks in a Parisian Convent, by Sadie Blackeyes. I suppose that cow of a Wisbeach woman went and sneaked to him?’, ‘No. He could feel the small breasts, firm and round, just beneath his own. Suddenly, as they came out on to the road again, the dew all down the hedge glittered with a diamond flash. You couldn't hear what they were saying, but you could guess. The streets were still locked in their Sunday sleep. Rather more composed, she drew away from him and felt for something to wipe her eyes. We'll go early and be out all day. Unwillingly, Ravelston assented. With an insistent gesture, angrily and yet demanding to be loved, she pressed her breast against him. Somehow I never feel sure of you till I've heard you say it.’, ‘Oh, well, you might have changed your mind. Mental deadness, spiritual squalor — they seem to descend upon you inescapably when your income drops below a certain point. ‘We can't possibly buy those,’ he said shortly. How queer it is! This gave him, in walking, a resemblance to a pair of scissors. A letter, a telephone message, and from this squalor he could step straight back into the money-world — back to four quid a week, back to effort and decency and slavery. It was so overwhelmingly, though unconsciously, upper-class. ‘How is your work getting on?’ said Ravelston presently. In the front window, where the people opposite can see it.’, ‘Gordon, you are joking — you must be joking!’, ‘No, I'm not. She felt dismayed, disappointed, and very cold. We can do with your sort here. It was agreed that he should go up to the shop, see Mr McKechnie, give him further details of Gordon's illness, and find out how the land lay. I think you're perfectly right in principle.’, ‘And you think principles are all right so long as one doesn't go putting them into practice.’, ‘No. Was this torment? He was quite sober when they got to Modigliani's. I'll raise the train fares somehow.’, ‘But you'll let me pay my own fare, won't you?’, ‘No, I'd rather I paid them, but we'll go, anyway.’, ‘And you really won't let me pay for your supper — just this once, just to show you trust me?’, ‘No, I can't. Keep The Aspidistra Flying (CSA Word Recording) [Orwell, George] on Amazon.com. ‘Oh, no, surely not! It would blow over, no doubt; it had happened several times before. He would have gone without beer even if he could have afforded it. Outside, all was bleak and wintry. You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But at any rate, he wasn't going into business, into the money-world. Simply he wanted to get away — away from the windy street, away from scenes and emotional demands, back in the frowzy solitude of his attic. It was several months before he saw Ravelston again. He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. Look at you and me. In general, it gave the impression of being edited by an ardent Nonconformist who had transferred his allegiance from God to Marx, and in doing so had got mixed up with a gang of vers libre poets. He started on twenty-five bob a week. The constable hastened to open the cell door. Gordon managed to turn his head round. Dora and Barbara,’ said Gordon. Demy octavo, white buckram covers. she would keep her implied promise, she would not draw back; but all the same she was frightened. Mrs Meakin, the landlady, theoretically ‘did out’ the rooms daily, but four days out of five she found the stairs too much for her. A dying prostitute! It hardly even occurred to him that he might have talents which could be turned to account. Gordon opened it. E-mail: [email protected] The ticking of the alarm clock on the mantelpiece became audible to Gordon again, bringing with it the consciousness of the sinister passage of time. Naked, she lay back, her hands behind her head, her eyes shut, smiling slightly, as though she had considered everything and were at peace in her mind. It was a curious fact — rather a shameful fact from a Socialist's point of view — that the thought of Gordon, who had brains and was of gentle birth, lurking in that vile place and that almost menial job, worried him more than the thought of ten thousand unemployed in Middlesbrough. They were arranged alphabetically. He opened one of the books and searched inexpertly through it. He had just a tiny twinge of caution. In a wet field on a Sunday afternoon — and in mid-winter at that! Yes, that is the reason. The pretence was still kept up that Gordon was a struggling poet — the conventional poet-in-garret. Symphony Concert, and then perhaps a spot of licit sexual intercourse if his wife ‘feels in the mood’! Perhaps she laughed and talked just a little too vivaciously as Gordon introduced them and they went inside. The cheapest thing on the list was cold beef and salad for one and sixpence. How remind Gordon of his poverty? She would do it — oh, yes! How it eats at them, that secret fear! But no! He would read King Lear and forget this filthy century. Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka!’. And it had hardly seemed to matter that time was passing and that Gordon's chance of earning a decent living was infinitely remote. They had accepted the money-code, and by that code they were failures. Gordon sat up and instantly felt very sick again. One always does look a fool when one rings the bell of an empty house. They had made the issue clearer and uglier than before. For himself he lived upon eight hundred a year or thereabouts. Take the girl out to dinner a few times. Who claims as tribute broken faith, We might sit down for a bit if we can find a place.’. Gordon and Julia gave up the flat. ‘My daughter she keeps on at me to 'ave a try at Deeping. The feeling that people — even Rosemary — must despise him for his poverty was too strong to be overcome. ‘None of us ever seems to make any money!’ was her perpetual lament. She waded through a bed of drifted beech leaves that rustled about her, knee-deep, like a weightless red-gold sea. Nothing accomplished, nothing done, has earned a night's repose. There seemed to be no taxis about, however. Ravelston wouldn't believe it. I couldn't help it. At last, after nearly ten minutes, he managed to fob her off with something which she said grudgingly she ‘didn't think she'd had before’. Socialism's only one of them.’, ‘Oh, I suppose suicide and the Catholic Church.’, Ravelston smiled, anticlerically shocked. There was a sharp pain in his breast. A moment ago he would have compromised on Burgundy. It's idiotic of me.’, ‘Then come somewhere where it's dark. That was fatal. He wondered whether she felt the same. Is she at home?’, ‘Hullo! This girl, Miss — Miss Waterlow, did you say her name was? And then suddenly he stopped short. ‘You're not angry with me, are you?’, ‘I didn't mean to be beastly to you. And the dark ribbons of the chimneys What are you talking about? He bade the taximan an affectionate farewell, and tipped him half a crown over his fare, whereat the commissionaire's eye looked a little less grim. Its short thick arms were very doglike, the hands being mere stumpy paws. Gordon was sinking effortless into grey, deadly failure. She was lying limp against him, her head on his breast. It was noticeable even then that they had lost all impulse to reproduce themselves. In Camden Town the pubs were full and noisy, though this was only Thursday. He began to kiss her face all over, clumsily but very hard. You have dinner with me.’ But Gordon overbore him. Not even now, when Gordon was openly on the rocks, could Ravelston say, ‘You haven't got any money.’ One can't say things like that. No one really worth meeting ever came to Doring's parties. It was good. He did not any longer want that war to happen. The oil in the lamp was giving out and it was getting beastly cold. And toori oori us!’. The situation was impossible. That too was money. It was like one of those moments in the night when suddenly from deep sleep you are broad awake and full of some dreadful realization — as that you are doomed to die, for instance, or that your life is a failure. I was only stating facts.’. As though women were to blame for everything!’, ‘They are to blame, finally. I tell you we've got to have an aspidistra.’, ‘It's the proper thing to have. You'll be going all Barrie in another moment. Money, money, all is money! He couldn't possibly take her out to supper, he reflected. A smell of slops and a fainter smell of stale linen. He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. It was written all over her that she was not going to remind herself or Gordon of their last disastrous encounter. They did not say euphemistically that Gordon was ‘right in principle’; they knew that to refuse a ‘good’ job can never be right. ... And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest ot these is money. However, there it was; and there was the cheque, which looked perfectly genuine however often he inspected it. ‘I must remember to take if off before I go to the studio tomorrow,’ said Rosemary reflectively. Mr Erskine was genuinely kind. But the thing had an unexpected sequel. Who rules us blood and hand and brain, And Ravelston would say ‘Come up, won't you?’ and Gordon, in duty bound, would say, ‘No.’ Never stay too long with those you love — another commandment of the moneyless. The shop bell. From what he said it was evident that Gordon could get the job if he applied for it; it was equally evident that there was some snag about the job. He picked up one of them at random and bore it off to another table. But they depressed him all the same. I dare say it's fairly cosy under Mother Church's wing. The evil time when he had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. He slipped in quietly, but, as usual, not quite so quietly that Mrs Wisbeach failed to hear him. He had lived thirty years and achieved nothing except misery. Ah! She lay under him, yielding rather than responding. But at the corner of the copse, on the far side, there was a great tangled patch of sloe or blackthorn bushes. Look at these awful old clothes you're wearing!’, ‘They're suited to my station. Even at the third-rate schools to which Gordon was sent nearly all the boys were richer than himself. His eyes sought Gordon's. People said that in her youth she had been no better than she ought, and probably it was true. And toori oori us!’. He looked like a Russian prince; probably he was an Englishman and had assumed a foreign accent because this was proper in a waiter. She pinched Gordon's elbow; this was a signal that she would like to pay her share. She wound her arm through his and pulled him out into the light. And yet he's so human with it.’. It was cheap and vulgar. ‘If you want to know, my wife's going to have a baby. Much of the time, when no customers came, he spent reading the yellow-jacketed trash that the library contained. But one's family, of course, ‘don't count’. had said), hurriedly slipped into the w.c., flung his tea-leaves down the waste-pipe, and pulled the plug. She clasped her hands behind his head and pulled it closer. They brought back the thought of money, which he had succeeded in putting out of his mind for half an hour past. He knew now that he could finish it when he chose. After all, she was too much for him. Supp. Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. His heart sickened while he did it. You look so unhappy.’, ‘I'm not unhappy. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do. She gathered the letters jealously to her breast, and then, holding them up one at a time, scanned their addresses. Until this visit he had not realized what kind of neighbourhood Gordon was living in. Its beauty startled him. Impossible. Money writes books, money sells them. After all, I was only trying to help you.’, ‘How does it help me to get the offer of a job I wouldn't touch with a stick?’. They never even found out that he wrote poetry — not that there was much to find out, for in six years he had less than twenty poems printed in the magazines. She still thought of herself as a very young girl, and so did everybody else. He had told Mother Wisbeach that he would be away all day. “Chuck away your decency and make more money” — that's what women say. He lay on his bed, his hands under his head, watching them with interest. Mother Meakin was not the type to interfere. He said in a non-committal tone that transferred the whole thing to the realm of abstraction: ‘Of course, it's not too bad in Richmond Park on Sundays. Rosemary and I never meet except in the streets or in picture galleries. 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