She paused in the doorway of the small Soho restaurant. A fur Russian-style cap fitted tightly to her head; a gloved hand, raised against her throat, kept in place the woollen scarf that was flung round her shoulders. She was barely twenty. She was not beautiful, but she had the prettiness of all young girls whose figures are slim and graceful, the charm of the green leaf and the bud.
A man rose to welcome her, very much the ex-officer, ex-Public Schoolboy type. He was tall, thin, on the edge of thirty; he had a small dark moustache and showed signs of baldness.
I could not hear how they greeted each other, but in the way in which he helped her off with her coat, I detected a slight uneasiness. ‘They do not know each other very well,’ I thought. I was dining alone and I foresaw that I was going to indulge my storyteller’s instinct to concoct imaginary plots about the people round me. I shifted my chair so that I could watch them without turning.
The suggestion of uneasiness was repeated as he leant across the table with the menu. ‘A little too eager,’ I decided, ‘anxious to make a success of it and overacting.’ He ordered a flask of red Chianti and drank his first glass quickly, in three gulps. Then he began to talk; amusingly, I gathered, for she smiled quite often. Once she burst out laughing; a fresh, clear laugh that, coming half-way through the meal, stressed what I had already noticed, that while he was fretted with self-consciousness, she was solely concerned with the natural enjoyment of a good dinner in pleasant company. This dinner was clearly a special occasion for him but not for her. I wondered why.
And why should he be nervous and she not? He had something on his mind.
There was no suggestion that they were lovers. They had not once looked into each other’s eyes. He might be in love with her, not she with him; not yet; but that was not a cause for shyness. Surely he could not be planning a premature proposal. It is disastrous to anticipate a climax. A man of thirty must know that. Yet perhaps he was contemplating this very folly. Why?
I began to frame a story. He has been ordered abroad unexpectedly. He had gone up to Oxford after the war hoping to pass into the Home Civil, but he had failed to make up for the years he had lost during the war and passed instead into the Indian Civil. In a few days he will be sailing, leaving behind this girl with whom he has fallen suddenly in love. He has asked her out this evening resolved to bring things to a head before he sails. But of all this she is unaware, having in her inexperience mistaken his love for comradeship.
It was a situation that might be developed into what the magazines describe as a ‘long-short’. It would have a topical appeal. The man’s failure to pass into the Home Civil would stress the plight of the ex-officer who is passed over in favour of some one who has not seen service. He had prepared for a long slow courtship. He feels he is not the type of man to sweep a young woman off her feet. But now he has to compress into a few days the campaign of several months.
The story shaped itself in scenes: the meeting at a tennis tournament; the news of his failure in the exam; this dinner in the restaurant. I could picture them in the taxi afterwards. She is chatting casually and cheerfully. Suddenly he interrupts, leans forward, grabs her hand. She draw back, startled. As he had overacted in the restaurant, so does he now, greedily clutching her in his arms, kissing her awkwardly, stammering ‘I love you’. It is a grisly failure. It might have been her first kiss and she would have her own romantic conception of what a first kiss should be. ‘You’ve spoilt it all,’ she cries, for at such moments it is the ridiculous that first occurs to us and she would speak out of her recollection of magazine heroines.
‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Can’t you see that you’ve spoilt everything?’
When they reached her home, she would jump out of the taxi and run straight up the steps without turning to say good-bye. And he would sit back, reflecting dismally that in three days he would sail for India; he would not see her for perhaps five years.
And then …?
But it should not be difficult to find an ending to this kind of story. While he was away he would write and ask forgiveness, protesting that he loved her, had always loved her, that he was sorry for his stupidity. When he came back, might he not hope? A trite enough letter, but if it were not trite he would be a writer of some talent, and that I did not propose to make him. No; he would write her an ordinary love-letter, and she, being an ordinary woman, would be moved by it. With the distance hiding her shyness, she would reply that she had been young and silly. He would find her more sensible when he returned. During the first year’s separation they would build up letter by letter an illusion of each other out of the enchantment of things remote. When at last they met she would be faced by a prosaic Empire-builder with thinning hair, while he would find that a girl had become a woman whose prettiness had shrivelled.
Would they marry?
Probably, from a lack of the courage that looks itself in the glass and says: ‘You have failed, my friend.’ It should be truer to make them marry, and perhaps she might be happy in her children, while he found pleasure in the society of another woman. But, either way, a dream would have passed and that would be the object of my story; to tell simply how everything changes, how all things are in flux; not a new philosophy and one that occurred to Heraclitus, but true nevertheless.
And looking across at the couple in the corner, I thought of their fate with sympathy. They were preparing to leave; the waiter had brought the bill neatly folded upon a plate; the girl had turned toward a large photograph of the Royal Family, and was endeavouring to arrange her hair in its blurred reflection.
She was smiling and happy, ignorant of the disaster that awaited her. Within five minutes she would have been embraced clumsily, would have assured her lover that ‘he had spoiled everything’, and the curtain would have descended on the first act of tragedy. Could nothing be done to save her? I was indulging my pet weakness to the top of its bent when suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was the witness of a dramatic incident.
When the girl turned to arrange her hair in the blurred reflection of the sheet of glass that protected the Royal Family from dust, and, to brush a little powder from her chin, she had taken her pocket-handkerchief from her bag. The bag lay open on the table, its mouth pointing to her companion; to my amazement, I saw him lean forward, glance round the room, then quickly take from the bag a couple of pound notes; these he placed on the plate under the bill, adding another of his own.
I suppose I should have risen from my seat and called the girl’s attention to the theft, but it is hard for one who has chosen for himself the role of onlooker to decide on violent and sudden action. Besides, I have learnt that interference is invariably unwise; I cannot expect others to mind their own business unless I mind mine. At any rate, whatever was the right thing to do, I did what it was natural for me to do under the circumstances; I sat where I was.
The reason for the man’s embarrassment was now clear; all the evening he had been waiting an opportunity to steal his companion’s money. And to think that for half an hour I had been concocting an absurd story after the manner of Turgenev, about an Indian Civil Servant and ‘the girl he left behind him’! Impatiently I called for my bill, and walked out into Dean Street.
The cool air restored my confidence. It was a mistake, I told myself, that anyone might have made. We do not expect to meet thieves in actual life. And it was quite a good story that I had invented—a debt to Turgenev perhaps, but then every short story that is written today owes something to Turgenev or Maupassant or Chekov. And I had, besides, the material for another story. The young girl prattling away and the man getting more and more worried. ‘Will she never powder her nose?’ he asks himself, and tries to hide his anxiousness beneath a series of amusing anecdotes.
I could make them discuss the modern girl, she will say that she hates the girl who powders and paints; he will have to agree with her, seeing that her complexion is her own, although he is, for the first time in his life, hating the fresh bloom of her cheeks, wishing that she were another sort of girl. And then, at last, when all seems lost, I could make her lean forward and smell the flowers on the table, and a speck of yellow pollen would attach itself to her chin. He would, in relief, call her attention to it.
‘Really?’ and opening her bag she would take out her handkerchief, turn to the photograph beside them, giving him his chance.
Up to that point it would be straightforward narrative. But beyond it a lot of thought would be required. So good a motive must not be flung away, and all the way down the Charing Cross Road I turned the incident over in my mind.
Fifteen years ago I could have made him an agent in the White Slave Traffic. It was a popular theme then; every girl who came up to London looked round at Paddington Station apprehensively for the kindly old lady who would ask her if she was new to these parts. But during the last fifteen years, Villiers Street has been placarded with shilling descriptions of ‘why girls go wrong’, and the Bishop of London has preached a great many sermons. The White Slave Traffic had become vieux jeu. But even so might there not be something in the seduction motif.
Another story started to take shape.
Her brother has motored her up from Brighton. She plans to return by train. She has been invited to dinner by a friend of long standing who knew her as a child. She thinks of him as she always has, as a kind of uncle. But his feelings now that she is grown up have changed.
I pictured them at the station booking office. She fumbles in her bag, searching every pocket. She turns to him in alarm.
‘I’ve lost my money.’
‘You can’t have. Look again.’
Another long, careful search, in vain.
‘What am I to do?’
In her tone of voice, is the implied suggestion that he should lend her the few shillings that she needs. He shakes his head. Alas, he has not enough. But if she will come back to his flat? ‘Into a taxi, quick.’ But when they arrive at the flat, which would be at the top of four flights of stairs, with the flat below unoccupied, he would discover that he had no money either, that the porter had gone, and that there was no one from whom he could borrow; she would sink down on the sofa, her hands clapsed before her knees, while he stood behind her wondering at what exact point …
But no. I warned myself. That would not do. What did it matter what he said next, or at what exact point she … for whatever he did, and whatever she did, the story as I had elected to tell it could only end one way—a row of dots, and a short concluding paragraph: ‘Next morning, her dark hair scattered across the pillow, she woke in a strange room …‘
That has been done so often. In how many novels has not that dark hair been scattered over that pillow. It was theatrical, vulgar, the sort of plot that occurs to one in the coffee-room of one’s club after a heavy lunch and half a litre of red wine.
In a dejected mood I caught at Leicester Square the tube that would carry me to Earls Court. But warmth revives us and as the train rattled westwards, I began to think that though I must discard the seduction motif, there might be possibilities in the last train to Brighton. Suppose that the man had for a long time besieged the girl unsuccessfully, and that on the refusal of his third proposal he had decided that he would never secure the hand of his beloved unless he managed to compromise her honour?
That might work out. He would steal her money at the restaurant; they would reach the booking-office where the scene I have already described would be enacted. There would be the return to the flat, the discovery that the porter was out, and that he had forgotten to cash the cheque he had written out that morning.
‘What am I to do?’ she’d ask.
With well-simulated confusion, he would assure her that he would not mind a ‘shake-down’ on the sofa, and that if she would take his room …
‘But I couldn’t! How could I? What would my mother say?’
A little touch that would place the mother before the reader’s eye—a plump, heavy woman with a small unsatisfactory husband.
A woman of strong passions, that unrelieved had focused themselves on a rigid observance of the properties.
‘But what else can you do?’ the young man would ask. In the end she would consent to pass the night there, and next morning they would arrive at Brighton together with the milk, to be received by the mother in a cold, melancholy room with the fire smoking dismally. Her hands would be on her hips, she would say one word, ‘Well!—then listen while the young man stammered his explanations. Of course she would not believe him; he had never expected that she would, and would have been miserably disappointed if she had. He would listen to her threats and tirades, then, at the right moment, he would draw himself up to his full height.
‘Madam, your accusations are untrue; the door of the room in which your daughter slept was locked all night. I slept on the sofa. But to prove my honour, and to vindicate hers, I am prepared—and shall be proud—to marry your daughter.’
A slow smile would spread across the mother’s face. Honour saved, a daughter off her hands; and at last the daughter, moved by his chilvary, might even fall in love with her knight-errant.
I considered this solution during the short walk from Earls Court station to my flat. It was original. I had never seen it done before. Such a situation is common enough in modern fiction. But the mistake is usually genuine, and that scene in the dismal parlour is the prelude to long years of married misery. Occasionally the affair is arranged by the girl, if she can trust her lover’s lack of enterprise. But for a man to plan such an escapade—that would indeed be new. And I went to sleep contented, thinking that the next day would pass pleasantly in congenial work.
But a poem by a poetess, now little read, contains the lines:
Colours seen by candlelight
Do not look the same by day
and when the sun shone next morning through my bedroom window my plot seemed less original. It was only a conceit, after all. It said ‘black’ to someone else’s ‘white’; it turned an old coat inside out, and though it would no doubt cause some surprise if I were to walk down Kensington High Street with my coat inside out, it would be the same coat.
That is not the way to write a good story—to tack an old situation on a new one. I should have to find a different ending. But the days passed and no solution came until a friend, to whom I related the incident, made a pertinent remark.
‘If the girl could see her face reflected in the photograph, why did she not see the young man take the money from her purse?’
I sat in surprised silence. Why had I not thought of that before?
‘But if she saw, why didn’t she say something?’ I said.
‘It’s your job to discover that.’
And for the next few days I searched for reasons for her silence.
At last I began to see the glimmering of a tale, the fifth, that I had constructed about this romantic couple. This is what I saw: a shy young man from the provinces comes to London with an introduction to some wealthy friends. There is an attractive daughter with whom he feels that he could very easily fall in love. He suggests timidly that it would be nice if she would show him ‘round the sights’, for he wants to see London, and has no other friends in it. As her parents have advanced views, or perhaps because the daughter has succeeded in impressing her views upon them, his suggestion is accepted: the result is a lunch at the Criterion, a theatre, and tea afterwards. The afternoon passes so pleasantly that he suggests a dinner. He would like to see Soho.
‘But I must go back and ask my mother first,’ she says.
‘Really?’
‘Of course; it’s very nice of her to let me out at all.’
He admires this sense of duty, which is probably only an excuse for a change of frock. And so she returns home to tell her mother how well everything is progressing, while he goes to the little Soho restaurant to engage a table. While he is waiting for her, he makes a horrible discovery. He has only a pound left; what is he to do? He picks up the menu and sees that it will be impossible to dine in anything like the way he wishes for less than thirty shillings. He is a stranger; the restaurant will not give him credit. There is no one to whom he can go for a loan; he cannot ask the girl on their first day together to lend him money. And so, all through the dinner there hangs over his head the menace of that piece of folded paper. What will happen? He remembers seeing once in Manchester the proprietor pitch an impecunious client headlong into the street. They could hardly do that to him. He would be too big, but he will be disgraced in the girl’s eyes. He has not the presence to carry off such a scene with honour. He will stammer and mumble, and try to explain and look foolish; probably in the end he will leave his watch in bail, while the girl will stand, ashamed of him and contemptuous.
He tries to make the meal last as long as possible; they have two coffees and a liqueur and many cigarettes. But the moment comes at last when she begins to collect her things. ‘I must go now. It has been a lovely evening. Thank you so very much.’
He looks in misery at the piece of folded paper. Then, just as he is preparing to request an interview with the patron, the temptation comes; her bag lies open facing him; she is looking the other way. He sees money. Here is the way out; perhaps she will not notice she has lost it. She is rich. At any rate, he must run the risk. And, as she tidies her hair in the glass, she sees him take her money.
She is shocked, terribly, but it is easy to understand her silence; her curiosity is whetted, she is interested in the young man, and guesses that one day it may very well be that she will feel more than interest for him. Money is of no great concern to her.
I could see the scene clearly enough; it would provide me with excellent opportunities for dramatic dialogue; the growing uneasiness of the man with the girl’s gradual appreciation of it and wonder at the cause of it, the hope, perhaps, that is the beginning of love. A good scene, but it would be impossible not to write a good scene round such an episode. But, even as I saw it, I knew that it would be useless. To what climax could it work other than the old cliché—‘I knew it all along’. It would be kept as a surprise; the reader would not be told that the girl had seen the theft reflected in the looking-glass. The story would describe the progress of their courtship; the heart searchings of the young man. ‘If I tell her, will she despise me?’ How the machinery would creak, how often it has been done before; and at last the stage would be set for the confession.
‘I have something I must tell you, dear’. And she would smile and stroke his hair.
‘Silly, I knew it all along!’
How trite, how banal! And the fact that it might be true would not redeem it. We are plagiarists in life as we are in books, and there are certain motives that are now impossible in a story, although they occur in life. They have been used too often. What a weariness overcomes us when we discover in a novel of matrimonial dispute that the wife is about to become a mother, so that in consequence the hero cannot run off with his secretary.
No doubt it is an affair of frequent occurrence; impending maternity frustrates an impending honeymoon. Autumn lays waste the spring. But no self-respecting novelist would allow ‘the little stranger’ to extricate him from a difficulty. In the same way, no self-respecting novelist would allow a heroine ‘to know it all along’. It is a motif that has served its purpose. When a coin has passed through many hands the signs and figures on it are worn away; it is valueless and is returned to the mint; which is the proper place for the ‘little stranger’ and ‘I knew it all along’.
That is one of the chief problems for the contemporary storyteller. Real events cannot necessarily be translated into fiction.
Turgenev is always obvious. He employs none of the devices of surprise and of suspended interest on which the writer of talent depends for his effects. The waters of Turgenev’s narratives are so smooth, so clear, and bring the river-bed so close to us that we hardly realize how deep they are. It is not till we see the blunders which others make with the Turgenev technique that we realize to what an extent he is supreme. And it is such a simple technique. The passage of youth; the waning power of love; the recompenses of middle age; memory and regret, and a serene twilight that harmonizes and consoles. It is of these things that Turgenev speaks—simple things, and he speaks of them simply, through a technique that is miraculously adequate and sure. A man in the middle years finds under two layers of cotton a little garnet cross; three men sitting round a table talk of love; a young man, betrothed and happy, returns at night to his hotel to recapture, in a room filled with the overpowering scent of heliotrope, the buried anguish of an earlier love; a man sits in a garden, and remembers. It looks so easy; and yet, in mediocre work, how the machinery creaks. How artificial becomes the excuses for recollection. A violin playing in a certain restaurant, after many years, a tune to which the hero danced when young. A narrative that closes where it began, in the same place, on the same note, with the same sentence. What is pattern in Turgenev becomes in lesser writers a series of devices.
Now having attempted five different stories, all of them unsatisfactory, I know it is my duty to provide a conclusion that shall be unexpected and that shall ridicule my previous conjectures. I know that I ought to meet in the restaurant at a later date the hero or heroine, or both of them together, and learn the true story. There should be—I know it—a punch in the last paragraph; but that is exactly what I cannot give, for I do not know the real end of the story and have been unable to invent one.
Unsatisfactory, but intriguing too. In a world where so much is ordered by the inviolable laws of mathematics, it is pleasant to find something that is incomplete. For the first time in my life I was the witness of a dramatic episode, the sort of thing that one would not see again in a thousand years. It was a fragment in the lives of two people, and it must remain a fragment, a baffling, fascinating fragment. I am glad to have it so. Such another moment will not come to me. When the voice of the lecturer begins to fade, when the sun beats down upon the mound at Lord’s and the cricket becomes slow: at all times when the mind detaches itself from its surroundings I shall return in memory to that evening at the restaurant. It will be a treasure for all time, a book in which I shall read forever without weariness. Perhaps one day I shall hit upon the meaning of it; but I hope not. I prefer to keep it an enigma, to be able to shut my eyes and watch the growing embarrassment of a young man who is planning an unnatural theft, to see a young girl stand in the doorway of a restaurant, a fur cap fitting tightly over her head, a gloved hand raised across her throat.
1921