The Complete Novels Of George Orwell Part 48

'But what would would Socialism mean, according to your idea of it?' Socialism mean, according to your idea of it?'

'Oh! Some kind of Aldous Huxley Brave New World: Brave New World: only not so amusing. Four hours a day in a model factory, tightening up bolt number 6003. Rations served out in grease-proof paper at the communal kitchen. Community-hikes from Marx Hostel to Lenin Hostel and back. Free abortion-clinics on all the corners. All very well in its way, of course. Only we don't want it.' only not so amusing. Four hours a day in a model factory, tightening up bolt number 6003. Rations served out in grease-proof paper at the communal kitchen. Community-hikes from Marx Hostel to Lenin Hostel and back. Free abortion-clinics on all the corners. All very well in its way, of course. Only we don't want it.'

Ravelston sighed. Once a month, in Antichrist Antichrist, he repudiated this version of Socialism. 'Well, what do do we want, then?' we want, then?'

'G.o.d knows. All we know is what we don't want. That's what's wrong with us nowadays. We're stuck, like Buridan's donkey. Only there are three alternatives instead of two, and all three of them make us spew. Socialism's only one of them.'

'And what are the other two?'

'Oh, I suppose suicide and the Catholic Church.'

Ravelston smiled, anticlerically shocked. 'The Catholic Church! Do you consider that an alternative?'

'Well, it's a standing temptation to the intelligentsia, isn't it?'

'Not what I I should call the intelligentsia. Though there was Eliot, of course,' Ravelston admitted. should call the intelligentsia. Though there was Eliot, of course,' Ravelston admitted.

'And there'll be plenty more, you bet. I dare say it's fairly cosy under Mother Church's wing. A bit insanitary, of coursebut you'd feel safe there, anyway.'

Ravelston rubbed his nose reflectively. 'It seems to me that's only another form of suicide.'

'In a way. But so's Socialism. At least it's a counsel of despair. But I couldn't commit suicide, real suicide. It's too meek and mild. I'm not going to give up my share of earth to anyone else. I'd want to do in a few of my enemies first.'

Ravelston smiled again. 'And who are your enemies?'

'Oh, anyone with over five hundred a year.'

A momentary uncomfortable silence fell. Ravelston's income, after payment of income tax, was probably two thousand a year. This was the kind of thing Gordon was always saying. To cover the awkwardness of the moment, Ravelston took up his gla.s.s, steeled himself against the nauseous taste, and swallowed about two-thirds of his beerenough at any rate, to give the impression that he had finished it.

'Drink up!' he said with would-be heartiness. 'It's time we had the other half of that.'

Gordon emptied his gla.s.s and let Ravelston take it. He did not mind letting Ravelston pay for the drinks now. He had paid the first round and honour was satisfied. Ravelston walked self-consciously to the bar. People began staring at him again as soon as he stood up. The navvy, still leaning against the bar over his untouched pot of beer, gazed at him with quiet insolence. Ravelston resolved that he would drink no more of this filthy common ale.

'Two double whiskies, would you, please?' he said apologetically.

The grim landlady stared. 'What?' she said.

'Two double whiskies, please.'

'No whisky 'ere. We don't sell spirits. Beer 'ouse, we are.'

The navvy smiled flickering under his moustache. '- ignorant toff!' he was thinking. 'Asking for a whisky in a beer 'ouse!' Ravelston's pale face flushed slightly. He had not known till this moment that some of the poorer pubs cannot afford a spirit licence.

'Ba.s.s, then, would you? Two pint bottles of Ba.s.s.'

There were no pint bottles, they had to have four half pints. It was a very poor house. Gordon took a deep, satisfying swallow of Ba.s.s. More alcoholic than the draught beer, it fizzed and p.r.i.c.kled in his throat, and because he was hungry it went a little to his head. He felt at once more philosophic and more self-pitiful. He had made up his mind not to begin belly-aching about his poverty; but now he was going to begin after all. He said abruptly: 'This is all b-s that we've been talking.'

'What's all b-s?'

'All this about Socialism and Capitalism and the state of the modern world and G.o.d knows what. I don't give a for the state of the modern world. If the whole of England was starving except myself and the people I care about, I wouldn't give a d.a.m.n.'

'Don't you exaggerate just a little?'

'No. All this talk we make-we're only objectifying our own feelings. It's all dictated by what we've got in our pockets. I go up and down London saying it's a city of the dead, and our civilization's dying, and I wish war would break out, and G.o.d knows what; and all it means is that my wages are two quid a week and I wish they were five.'

Ravelston, once again reminded obliquely of his income, stroked his nose slowly with the knuckle of his left forefinger.

'Of course, I'm with you up to a point. After all, it's only what Marx said. Every ideology is a reflection of economic circ.u.mstances.'

'Ah, but you only understand it out of Marx! You don't know what it means to have to crawl along on two quid a week. It isn't a question of hardshipit's nothing so decent as hardship. It's the b.l.o.o.d.y, sneaking, squalid meaness of it. Living alone for weeks on end because when you've no money you've no friends. Calling yourself a writer and never even producing anything because you're always too washed out to write. It's a sort of filthy sub-world one lives in. A sort of spiritual sewer.'

He had started now. They were never together long without Gordon beginning to talk in this strain. It was the vilest manners. It embarra.s.sed Ravelston horribly. And yet somehow Gordon could not help it. He had got to retail his troubles to somebody, and Ravelston was the only person who understood. Poverty, like every other dirty wound, has got to be exposed occasionally. He began to talk in obscene detail of his life in Willowbed Road. He dilated on the smell of slops and cabbage, the clotted sauce-bottles in the dining-room, the vile food, the aspidistras. He described his furtive cups of tea and his trick of throwing used tea-leaves down the w.c. Ravelston, guilty and miserable, sat staring at his gla.s.s and revolving it slowly between his hands. Against his right breast he could feel, a square accusing shape, the pocket-book in which, as he knew, eight pound notes and two ten-bob notes nestled against his fat green cheque-book. How awful these details of poverty are! Not that what Gordon was describing was real poverty. It was at worst the fringe of poverty. But what of the real poor? What of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week? When there are people living like that, how dare one walk the world with pound notes and cheque-books in one's pocket?

'It's b.l.o.o.d.y,' he murmured several times, impotently. In his heart he wonderedit was his invariable reactionwhether Gordon would accept a tenner if you offered to lend it to him.

They had another drink, which Ravelston again paid for, and went out into the street. It was almost time to part. Gordon never spent more than an hour or two with Ravelston. One's contacts with rich people, like one's visits to high alt.i.tudes, must always be brief. It was a moonless, starless night, with a damp wind blowing. The night air, the beer, and the watery radiance of the lamps induced in Gordon a sort of dismal clarity. He perceived that it is quite impossible to explain to any rich person, even to anyone so decent as Ravelston, the essential bloodiness of poverty. For this reason it became all the more important to explain it. He said suddenly: 'Have you read Chaucer's Man of Lowe's Tale Man of Lowe's Tale?'

'The Man of Lowe's Tale? Man of Lowe's Tale? Not that I remember. What's it about?' Not that I remember. What's it about?'

'I forget. I was thinking of the first six stanzas. Where he talks about poverty. The way it gives everyone the right to stamp on you! The way everyone wants wants to stamp on you! It makes people to stamp on you! It makes people hate hate you, to know that you've no money. They insult you just for the pleasure of insulting you and knowing that you can't hit back.' you, to know that you've no money. They insult you just for the pleasure of insulting you and knowing that you can't hit back.'

Ravelston was pained. 'Oh, no, surely not! People aren't so bad as all that.'

'Ah, but you don't know the things that happen!'

Gordon did not want to be told that 'people aren't so bad'. He clung with a sort of painful joy to the notion that because he was poor everyone must want want to insult him. It fitted in with his philosophy of life. And suddenly, with the feeling that he could not stop himself, he was talking of the thing that had been rankling in his mind for two days pastthe snub he had had from the Dorings on Thursday. He poured the whole story out quite shamelessly. Ravelston was amazed. He could not understand what Gordon was making such a fuss about. To be disappointed at missing a beastly literary tea-party seemed to him absurd. He would not have gone to a literary tea-party if you had paid him. Like all rich people, he spent far more time in avoiding human society than in seeking it. He interrupted Gordon: to insult him. It fitted in with his philosophy of life. And suddenly, with the feeling that he could not stop himself, he was talking of the thing that had been rankling in his mind for two days pastthe snub he had had from the Dorings on Thursday. He poured the whole story out quite shamelessly. Ravelston was amazed. He could not understand what Gordon was making such a fuss about. To be disappointed at missing a beastly literary tea-party seemed to him absurd. He would not have gone to a literary tea-party if you had paid him. Like all rich people, he spent far more time in avoiding human society than in seeking it. He interrupted Gordon: 'Really, you know, you ought not to take offence so easily. After all, a thing like that doesn't really matter.'

'It isn't the thing itself that matters, it's the spirit behind it. The way they snub you as a matter of course, just because you've got no money.'

'But quite possibly it was all a mistake, or something. Why should anyone want to snub you?'

' "If thou be poure, thy brother hateth thee,"' quoted Gordon perversely.

Ravelston, deferential even to the opinions of the dead, rubbed his nose. 'Does Chaucer say that? Then I'm afraid I disagree with Chaucer. People don't hate you, exactly.'

'They do. And they're quite right to hate you. You are are hateful. It's like those ads for Listerine. "Why is he always alone? Halitosis is ruining his career." Poverty is spiritual halitosis.' hateful. It's like those ads for Listerine. "Why is he always alone? Halitosis is ruining his career." Poverty is spiritual halitosis.'

Ravelston sighed. Undoubtedly Gordon was perverse. They walked on, arguing, Gordon vehemently, Ravelston deprecatingly. Ravelston was helpless against Gordon in an argument of this kind. He felt that Gordon exaggerated, and yet he never liked to contradict him. How could he? He was rich and Gordon was poor. And how can you argue about poverty with someone who is genuinely poor?

'And then the way women treat you when you've no money!' Gordon went on. 'That's another thing about this accursed money businesswomen!'

Ravelston nodded rather gloomily. This sounded to him more reasonable than what Gordon had been saying before. He thought of Hermione Slater, his own girl. They had been lovers two years but had never bothered to get married. It was 'too much f.a.g', Hermione always said. She was rich, of course, or rather her people were. He thought of her shoulders, wide, smooth, and young, that seemed to rise out of her clothes like a mermaid rising from the sea; and her skin and hair, which were somehow warm and sleepy, like a wheatfield in the sun. Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist Antichrist. 'Don't talk to me about the lower cla.s.ses,' she used to say. 'I hate them. They smell.' smell.' And Ravelston adored her. And Ravelston adored her.

'Of course women are are a difficulty,' he admitted. a difficulty,' he admitted.

'They're more than a difficulty, they're a b.l.o.o.d.y curse. That is, if you've got no money. A woman hates the sight of you if you've got no money.'

'I think that's putting it a little too strongly. Things aren't so crude as all that.'

Gordon did not listen. 'What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a woman ever wants is money; money for a house of her own and two babies and Drage furniture and an aspidistra. The only sin they can imagine is not wanting to grab money. No woman ever judges a man by anything except his income. Of course she doesn't put it to herself like that. She says he's such a nice man such a nice manmeaning that he's got plenty of money. And if you haven't got money you aren't nice nice. You're dishonoured, somehow. You've sinned. Sinned against the aspidistra.'

'You talk a great deal about aspidistras,' said Ravelston.

'They're a dashed important subject,' said Gordon.

Ravelston rubbed his nose and looked away uncomfortably.

'Look here, Gordon, you don't mind my askinghave you got a girl of your own?'

'Oh, Christ! don't speak of her!'

He began, nevertheless, to talk about Rosemary. Ravelston had never met Rosemary. At this moment Gordon could not even remember what Rosemary was like. He could not remember how fond he was of her and she of him, how happy they always were together on the rare occasions when they could meet, how patiently she put up with his almost intolerable ways. He remembered nothing save that she would not sleep with him and that it was now a week since she had even written. In the dank night air, with beer inside him, he felt himself a forlorn, neglected creature. Rosemary was 'cruel' to himthat was how he saw it. Perversely, for the mere pleasure of tormenting himself and making Ravelston uncomfortable, be began to invent an imaginary character for Rosemary. He built up a picture of her as a callous creature who was amused by him and yet half despised him, who played with him and kept him at arm's length, and who would nevertheless fall into his arms if only he had a little more money. And Ravelston, who had never met Rosemary, did not altogether disbelieve him. He broke in: 'But I say, Gordon, look here. This girl, MissMiss Waterlow, did you say her name was?Rosemary; doesn't she care for you at all, really?'

Gordon's conscience p.r.i.c.ked him, though not very deeply. He could not say that Rosemary did not care for him.

'Oh, yes, she does care for me. In her own way, I dare say she cares for me quite a lot. But not enough, don't you see. She can't, while I've got no money. It's all money.'

'But surely money isn't so important as all that? After all, there are are other things.' other things.'

'What other things? Don't you see that a man's whole personality is bound up with his income? His personality is is his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you've got no money? You can't wear decent clothes, you can't take her out to dinner or to the theatre or away for week-ends, you can't carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about with you. And it's rot to say that kind of thing doesn't matter. It does. If you haven't got money there isn't even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women's hostel, and my b.i.t.c.h of a landlady won't allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet streetsthat's what Rosemary a.s.sociates me with. Don't you see how it takes the gilt off everything?' his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you've got no money? You can't wear decent clothes, you can't take her out to dinner or to the theatre or away for week-ends, you can't carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about with you. And it's rot to say that kind of thing doesn't matter. It does. If you haven't got money there isn't even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women's hostel, and my b.i.t.c.h of a landlady won't allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet streetsthat's what Rosemary a.s.sociates me with. Don't you see how it takes the gilt off everything?'

Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty b.l.o.o.d.y when you haven't even the money to take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and also with desire, he thought of Hermione's body, naked like a ripe warm fruit. With any luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. s.e.xual starvation is awful among the unemployed. They were nearing the flat. He glanced up at the windows. Yes, they were lighted up. Hermione must be there. She had her own latchkey.

As they approached the flat Gordon edged closer to Ravelston. Now the evening was ending, and he must part from Ravelston, whom he adored, and go back to his foul lonely bedroom. And all evenings ended in this way; the return through the dark streets to the lonely room, the womanless bed. 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.

They halted at the foot of the steps. Ravelston laid his gloved hand on one of the iron spearheads of the railing.

'Come up, won't you?' he said without conviction.

'No, thanks. It's time I was getting back.'

Ravelston's fingers tightened round the spearhead. He pulled as though to go up, but did not go. Uncomfortably, looking over Gordon's head into the distance, he said: 'I say, Gordon, look here. You won't be offended if I say something?'

'What?'

'I say, you know, I hate that business about you and your girl. Not being able to take her out, and all that. It's b.l.o.o.d.y, that kind of thing.'

'Oh, it's nothing really.'

As soon as he heard Ravelston say that it was 'b.l.o.o.d.y', he knew that he had been exaggerating. He wished that he had not talked in that silly self-pitiful way. One says these things, with the feeling that one cannot help saying them, and afterwards one is sorry.

'I dare say I exaggerate,' he said.

'I say, Gordon, look here. Let me lend you ten quid. Take the girl out to dinner a few times. Or away for the week-end, or something. It might make all the difference. I hate to think'

Gordon frowned bitterly, almost fiercely. He had stepped a pace back, as though from a threat or an insult. The terrible thing was that the temptation to say 'Yes' had almost overwhelmed him. There was so much that ten quid would do! He had a fleeting vision of Rosemary and himself at a restaurant tablea bowl of grapes and peaches, a bowing hovering waiter, a wine bottle dark and dusty in its wicker cradle.

'No fear!' he said.

'I do wish you would. I tell you I'd like like to lend it you.' to lend it you.'

'Thanks. But I prefer to keep my friends.'

'Isn't that ratherwell, rather a bourgeois kind of thing to say?'

'Do you think it would be borrowing borrowing if I took ten quid off you? I couldn't pay it back in ten years.' if I took ten quid off you? I couldn't pay it back in ten years.'

'Oh, well! It wouldn't matter so very much.' Ravelston looked away. Out it had got to comethe disgraceful, hateful admission that he found himself forced so curiously often to make! 'You know, I've got quite a lot of money.'

'I know you have. That's exactly why I won't borrow off you.'

'You know, Gordon, sometimes you're just a little bit-well, pigheaded.'

'I dare say. I can't help it.'

'Oh, well! Good night, then.'

'Good night.'

Ten minutes later Ravelston rode southwards in a taxi, with Hermione. She had been waiting for him, asleep or half asleep in one of the monstrous armchairs in front of the sitting-room fire. Whenever there was nothing particular to do, Hermione always fell asleep as promptly as an animal, and the more she slept the healthier she became. As he came across to her she woke and stretched herself with voluptuous, sleepy writhings, half smiling, half yawning up at him, one cheek and bare arm rosy in the firelight. Presently she mastered her yawns to greet him: 'Hullo, Philip! Where have you been all this time? I've been waiting ages.'

'Oh, I've been out with a fellow. Gordon Comstock. I don't expect you know him. The poet.'

'Poet! How much did he borrow off you?'

'Nothing. He's not that kind of person. He's rather a fool about money, as a matter of fact. But he's very gifted in his way.'

'You and your poets! You look tired, Philip. What time did you have dinner?'

'Wellas a matter of fact I didn't have any dinner.'

'Didn't have any dinner! Why?'

'Oh, well, you seeI don't know if you'll understand. It was a kind of accident. It was like this.'

He explained. Hermione burst out laughing and dragged herself into a more upright position.

'Philip! You are are a silly old a.s.s! Going without your dinner, just so as not to hurt that little beast's feelings! You must have some food at once. And of course your char's gone home. Why don't you keep some proper servants, Philip? I hate this hole-and-corner way you live. We'll go out and have supper at Modigliani's.' a silly old a.s.s! Going without your dinner, just so as not to hurt that little beast's feelings! You must have some food at once. And of course your char's gone home. Why don't you keep some proper servants, Philip? I hate this hole-and-corner way you live. We'll go out and have supper at Modigliani's.'

'But it's after ten. They'll be shut.'

'Nonsense! They're open till two. I'll ring up for a taxi. I'm not going to have you starving yourself.'

In the taxi she lay against him, still half asleep, her head pillowed on his breast. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week. But the girl's body was heavy against him, and Middlesbrough was very far away. Also he was d.a.m.nably hungry. He thought of his favourite corner table at Modigliani's, and of that vile pub with its hard benches, stale beer-stink, and bra.s.s spittoons. Hermione was sleepily lecturing him.

'Philip, why do you have to live in such a dreadful way?'

'But I don't live in a dreadful way.'