Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

Looking down then on thousands of Smiths, thousands of Alberts, hundreds of Marys, woven tight as any office carpet or, more elegantly made, the holy Kaaba soon to set out for Mecca, with some kind of design made out of bookstalls and kiosks seen from above and through one part of that crowd having turned towards those who were singing, thus lightening the dark mass with their pale lozenged faces; observing how this design moved and was alive where in a few lanes or areas people swayed forward or back like a pattern writhing; coughing as fog caught their two throats or perhaps it was smoke from those below who had put on cigarettes or pipes, because tobacco smoke was coming up in drifts; leaning out then, so secure, from their window up above and left by their argument on terms of companionship unalloyed, Julia and Max could not but feel infinitely remote, although at the same time Julia could not fail to be remotely excited at themselves.

When earlier on she had asked him to go down when she had heard someone scream, the crowd was now too great, indeed it was so thick it was plain they could never get out of their hotel to go home if they wanted and she was glad, everything she felt now would come right between them if only it was not hurried, and that promise of the birds which had flown under the arch she stood on would be fulfilled if only, as seemed likely, she could see sea-gulls that night on their crossing. What that promise could be she had no idea, and she did not let herself think of what she wanted, her feeling was just what she had when in a hot bath so exactly right she could not bear to wonder even. In fact she did not want anything different from how things were now this instant. She certainly did not want him to go down and get in the crowd, although its thousands of troubles and its discomfort put new heart into her.

‘You’re not to go down there, even if I ask you,’ she said rather loud to him. ‘No one’s to go down there, I tell you.’

‘What about your servant?’

‘Oh, him! Bother him!’

For where she had at one time been nervous and had clutched at straws to fuss over, she now wanted things to stay as they were and, if put to it, she would have insisted she had asked Robert to ring the station master only so as to tease him. Also whatever there is in crowds had reached into her, for these thousands below were now working up a kind of boisterous good humour. If they had been angry individually at first at the delay, and at not being able to get in or out, they were now like sheep with golden tenor voices, so she was thinking, happily singing their troubles away and being good companions. What she could not tell was that those who were singing were Welshmen up for a match, and what they sang in Welsh was of the rape of a Druid’s silly daughter under one of Snowdon’s wilder mountains. She thought only they knew what it meant, but it sounded light-hearted.

Also she felt encouraged and felt safe because they could not by any chance get up from below; she had seen those doors bolted, and through being above them by reason of Max having bought their room and by having money, she saw in what lay below her an example of her own way of living because they were underneath and kept there.

‘Aren’t you glad you aren’t down there?’ she said, and he replied he wondered how it was going to be possible to get them out.

‘Have you ever been in a great crowd?’ she said, because she had this feeling she must exchange and share with him.

Down below Amabel broke into their silence by saying:

‘Well, and what about my bath, if you please?’

Alex said: ‘Good Lord, yes, haven’t they done anything about it yet?’ apologized, and telephoned down while Angela dutifully made comments on how impossible it was to get things done in hotels. Alex was told there was a bath to their room, it was through the bedroom and he passed this news on, and also that her maid was coming.

When she came in she said at once, as though she was alone with Amabel: ‘Oh, Madam, I had such a time, you would hardly credit it, Madam, but we got here in the car although one man did get up on the running-boards. Oh, Moddom, you can’t have any idea of what it’s like. Do you think it’s the revolution, Madam, and I have your bath-salts unpacked and your bath is ready for you now.’

‘Shall I come with you and watch you have it?’ Angela asked her, but Amabel was not having that.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘look, I’ve something I must say to Alex.’

As they went out and Angela was left, wishing once more her Adams was back with her again, she wondered if Amabel was going to let him see her in her bath. But surely not in front of her maid, she thought, without noticing how this would make it better in one sense, even if it could not make it right. After all, she knew them so little, she only knew Amabel as being very smart, but she had not bargained to let Alex see her in her own bath, or any other young man like that, or any man at all, and she hoped she would not have to, not for Max or anyone; it could not be expected of her. And how could Alex make compliments on how Amabel looked in a bath with her maid standing by handing her sponges, or would he make no compliments because it had happened so often before and was so ordinary? She made up her mind she would show what she thought by not going in when Amabel sent for her, and in any case she felt she never would be able to if Alex was there; she could not be by the bath in front of Alex, looking into his eyes it would be as if they had done murder, or so it seemed to her it would be to look into his eyes laid upon the woman’s nakedness.

Actually most elaborate precautions were taken, and of this Angela knew nothing because she could not bring herself to go and see. Alex had to stand far away when her maid came out, which she did so continually that Amabel might have been in the way of being brought to bed. He saw nothing of her and did not even hear her well.

Amabel giggled. ‘She thinks we are in here together,’ she said, as if she could dream of it, with Alex of all men.

‘I know,’ he said back through her door. And he for his part imagined her where she lay, pink with warmth and wrapped round with steam so comfortable she would be more animated now, more cheerful. Aromatic steam as well from her bath salts so that if her maid had been a negress then Amabel’s eyes might have shone like two humming birds in the tropic airs she glistened in.

‘Oh, Toddy,’ she said to her maid, ‘you have brought the right bath-salts.’

‘What’s that?’ he shouted.

She kicked her legs and splashed and sent fountains of water up among the wreaths of sweet steam, and her hands with rings still on her fingers were water-lilies done in rubies.

‘Do you take your rings off,’ he shouted, ‘when you have your bath?’

‘Why?’ she said.

‘I was wondering what you looked like.’

‘Sweet of you,’ she shouted back, and she would have been offended if he had not said something of that kind. She did not think it sweet of him at all.

‘Did they make you wear a nightdress in your bath when you were at school?’

She laughed and said he must not shout so loud or Angela would know he was not in with her. Her maid, stifling, wondered if it would not bring her asthma on again.

Auntie May’s room was next door and Claire said to Evelyn, Amabel was keeping Alex hanging on. Even those who went to bed with her never were allowed to see her with no clothes on, because someone quite early in her life had carved his initials low on her back with an electric-light wire, or so Embassy Richard had told her.

‘D’you think Angela Crevy ever’s met him?’

‘No I don’t,’ Evelyn said to her. ‘She’s trying to be one of us.’