James Hilton

“ Some demon had entered her soul at birth and dominated her ever selfishly, and try as she would she could not shake it off. She could not repress her own miserable jealousies, her own contemptible conceit, her own despicable selfishness. In her own heart she knew that Verreker despised her, and that he had a right to do so. All the joy of finding her love reciprocated was tinged with the melancholy of realizing the rottenness of her own soul. There were moments when she felt she was spiritually damned, that a canker was eating at her soul which would leave her unworthy to live. ”

“ And then off again into the scented twilight until Catherine, enchanted by the beauty of night, was too spell-bound to read the names on the stations, and so lost count of where she was.
And then the suburbs lost coherence and straggled vaguely into the countryside; clusters of light shone out from houses wreathed in trees; a chain of golden trams marked the course of a distant high road. And after a short respite of woods and meadows Bockley came cleanly into view—beautiful, poetic Bockley, with the High Road wreathed in a halo of soft, reddish light. ”

“ It was a Saturday night, and the streets were full. As they swerved round the corner of the George Hotel the huge acetylene beams lit up a sea of faces. Men and women passed them on the kerb as in a dream: girls with bright eyes and laughing faces, and men with the unmistakable Saturday night expression flitted past them shadow-like. It was ecstasy to be swirling past them all at a pace which, though not fast, had just a spice of danger in it. George, in his overalls and headgear, looked like a Viking steering his galley through heavy seas. ”

“ All my life I’ve been wanting what I can’t get. Dreams bigger than the world, ambitions beyond my own capabilities, visions higher than the stars—every idealist knows what that is. But I’m not merely an idealist. I like Debussy’s stuff, but I like Bach’s more, because Bach always knows what he’s talking about. As an economist, I dislike froth and sentiment, which always obscures truth, and that’s why I can’t stand a lot of the music that would send the average idealist into the seventh heaven. ”

“ As Catherine walked briskly down Gifford Road she passed the whelk-seller pushing his briny-flavoured handcart along the gutter. Further down the road the Sabbath carnival of the suburbs had already begun: a downstairs window was wide open at the bottom, and from within came the throaty gargling strains of a gramophone. At another house a piano was vamping to an antiquated music-hall ditty. The tar in the roadway was sweating in great oozing blots, and the wheels of the whelk cart had left conspicuous ruts in the soft tar-macadam near the kerb. ”

“ There was something in Helen.... Catherine missed those Sunday teas at “Highfield.” She missed Mrs. Trant’s anxious affability, Mr. Trant’s bluff hooliganism (which she detested) , and Helen’s smile, aloof yet full of serene understanding. She missed even those lingering homeward strolls with George, the comfortable feel of his arm linked in hers, and the faint tobacco aroma of his clothes. Undoubtedly she missed his companionship and his passing flashes of brilliance. Once she composed a letter to him....
We can’t be lovers, but why shouldn’t we be friends? Surely we’re capable of it. ”

“ Catherine was beginning to take a malicious dislike to Amelia. Mr. Hobbs was so scrupulously correct in his treatment of them both that Amelia’s jealousy became ludicrously trivial. In her youthful days Catherine would have tried to flirt extravagantly with him for the mere pleasure of torturing Amelia, but now her malice had become a thing of quieter if of deadlier potency. She would wait. She did not like him at all, but she did not blame him in the least for preferring herself to Amelia. It was inconceivable that any man should desire Amelia. ”

“ Her escape from home, her episodes of friendship with George Trant, all were evidences of her love of self. Her past was strewn with the wreckage of things that could not live in the atmosphere of her own spiritual avarice. And now her friendship with Verreker had broken under the strain placed upon it. If he were in love with Helen really and truly she could bear it. But if she thought that he saw in her own soul all the rottenness that she could see, the impulse to kill herself would be overmastering. ”

“ This was the preliminary to a slow creaking of one of the armchairs. A figure rose from the depths, and its back view was the first that Catherine saw of it. It was tall, attired in a light tweed jacket, grey flannel trousers, and carpet slippers of a self-congratulatory hue. Altogether, it was most disreputable for a Sabbath afternoon. It was difficult to recognize in this the spruce, well-groomed man of the world who had pushed his way into the Forest Hotel on the previous night. Yet Catherine did recognize him, and was rather astonished at her own perception in so doing. ”

“ Suburb after suburb slipped by, like episodes in a crowded dream, suburbs that Catherine had never visited, or had only vaguely heard of, places as foreign and unrecognizable as Paris or Yokohama. And each one seemed weighed heavy with romance as the night sank upon it; each one seemed strangely, passionately beautiful. Ever and anon the train would glide effortlessly to a standstill at some half-deserted station with lamps that creaked in the breeze like the tuning of a hundred violins. ”

“ In the Bockley High Street they passed a crowd round a street accident. A motor-bus had skidded into a tram-way standard, and there were mud-splashed, white-painted ambulances in attendance. Mr. Weston rubbed the vapour off the window with his hand. “Some poor devil,” he muttered, and there was a whole world of humanity in his voice. And Catherine felt that nothing in death itself was half so terrible as the dismal fuss that people make over it. ”

“ At Gifford Road, in the little bedroom, Catherine’s dissatisfaction reached culminating point. Life was monotonous. The humdrum passage of day after day mocked her in a way she could not exactly define. She wanted to be swept into the maelstrom of big events. Nothing had yet come her way that was big enough to satisfy her soul’s craving. Things that might have developed dramatically insisted on being merely common-place. ”

“ The massive, almost masculine jaws hung unsymmetrically: there was no beauty or calm in her last attitude. She looked as if she had died fighting. An aperture in the drawn Venetian blinds allowed a slit of pale light from the street lamp outside to cross her face diagonally, making it appear more grotesque than ever. Catherine could scarcely believe it was her mother. She had the old workaday blouse on, because she had gone out shopping in a mackintosh and had thought it would not show underneath. ”

“ She would undoubtedly have killed herself but for music. Music gave her courage. She felt that fame as a pianist would compensate for utter unhappiness and loneliness. She had always the feeling: If I am subject to some great trial, if I am miserable and unhappy, I can put my misery and unhappiness into my playing. If my heart is ever on the point of breaking, I shall play Chopin’s Nocturnes the better for it. ”

“ Catherine flushed Her hands commenced to play, but her whole being was tingling with anger. She was conscious that everybody in the room had noticed his ostentatious withdrawal and was drawing conclusions from it. Everybody knew she took lessons from him. His going out of the room at that moment was nothing less than a deliberate insult offered to her in front of everybody. In the half-shadows round the piano she could see the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Trant, both rather bewildered.... Her fingers were moving automatically; before she properly realized she was playing a solo they had stopped. ”

“ She did not go straight home, but wandered amongst the stream of [Pg 191] strollers along the High Road towards the Forest. She was amazed at the astonishing loveliness of this place, where she had been born and had lived and worked and dreamed. She was thrilled at the passionate beauty that was exuding from every house and building like some rare essence. She had always taken it for granted: Bockley is an ugly place. And now it seemed that Bockley was transfigured into a thing of wild, tumultuous beauty, as if the flesh had fallen away and revealed a soul of serene wonderment. Bockley! ”

“ A feeling of exquisite relief that she had not spoken came over her.
“She oughtn’t to play Chopin,” remarked Verreker.
“No,” agreed Razounov.
Catherine’s face reddened. It was the subtle innuendo of their remarks that hurt her. Also, by all the standards she had learnt at the Bockley High School for Girls there was something impolite in their criticizing her coolly in the third person as if she were not present. She resented it. She was not a stickler for etiquette, but she would not be insulted. “I don’t care who they are,” she thought rebelliously, “they’ve no right to treat me like that. ”

“ From a dim vista obscured by cigarette smoke there came the sound of something or other, indescribably vague and futile, a drawing-room ballad sung by a squeaky contralto, a violin solo by Dvořák, or a pompous Beethovian hum on the piano. However beautiful and forceful might be the music, it was always vague and futile to you, because you were watching your neighbour’s eyebrows act as a sponge to the down-trickling perspiration.... Always in these musical evenings there was banality. Always beauty was obscured by bathos. ”

“ Long lingering September evenings with the sun splashing over the roofs of Upton Rising; the soft scented dusk creeping through gravelled roads; tier upon tier of houses astride the hill, with every window like a crimson star.... In the high road the newsboys were calling, the trams swirled citywards like golden meteors flying through space.... In the quiet residential roads was always the chatter of the lawn-mower, the drowsy murmur of hedge-clipping.... In these delectable hours of twilight Catherine passed from Upton Rising into Bockley.... ”

“ She had done things that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her own, and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one concert to be precise) . A young man who, whatever his drawbacks, was undeniably clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her own father, pining of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his undying affection. And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first seemed merely a further rung on the ladder of fame. ”

“ At this time the crowds along the High Street were beginning to disperse; the trams and buses were full of returning excursionists. Neglectful of the time and with no very definite aim in view, Catherine turned into the Ridgeway. It was directly opposite to the quickest way home, but its shady avenues and flower-scented front gardens suited her mood better than the stark frowsiness of Hanson Street. ”

“ ONCE AGAIN § 1 ON the Monday morning exactly a week before the August Bank Holiday, Catherine unpacked the morning’s music with a quiet satisfaction that knew no bounds. She was by this time a changed woman. No longer impetuous and hasty, no longer fiery and passionate, no longer a creature of mood and fancy: she was quiet, restrained, dignified almost to the point of arrogance, immensely reliable, and becoming a little shrewd. She had earned the reputation of being an expert saleswoman. ”