Джордж Оруэлл - Keep the Aspidistra Flying

He had not seen Rosemary for weeks past. She had written a number of times and then, for some reason, abruptly stopped writing. Ravelston had written once, asking him to contribute an article on twopenny libraries to Antichrist. Julia had sent a desolate little letter, giving family news. Aunt Angela had had bad colds all the winter, and Uncle Walter was complaining of bladder trouble. Gordon did not answer any of their letters. He would have forgotten their existence if he could. They and their affection were only an encumbrance. He would not be free, free to sink down into the ultimate mud, till he had cut his links with all of them, even with Rosemary.

One afternoon he was choosing a book for a tow–headed factory girl, when someone he only saw out of the corner of his eye came into the library and hesitated just inside the door.

'What kind of book did you want?' he asked the factory girl.

'Oo—jest a kind of a ROmance, please.'

Gordon selected a ROmance. As he turned, his heart bounded violently. The person who had just come in was Rosemary. She did not make any sign, but stood waiting, pale, and worried–looking, with something ominous in her appearance.

He sat down to enter the book on the girl's ticket, but his hands had begun trembling so that he could hardly do it. He pressed the rubber stamp in the wrong place. The girl trailed out, peeping into the book as she went. Rosemary was watching Gordon's face. It was a long time since she had seen him by daylight, and she was struck by the change in him. He was shabby to the point of raggedness, his face had grown much thinner and had the dingy, greyish pallor of people who live on bread and margarine. He looked much older—thirty–five at the least. But Rosemary herself did not look quite as usual. She had lost her gay trim bearing, and her clothes had the appearance of having been thrown on in a hurry. It was obvious that there was something wrong.

He shut the door after the factory girl. 'I wasn't expecting you,' he began.

'I had to come. I got away from the studio at lunch time. I told them I was ill.'

'You don't look well. Here, you'd better sit down.'

There was only one chair in the library. He brought it out from behind the desk and was moving towards her, rather vaguely, to offer some kind of caress. Rosemary did not sit down, but laid her small hand, from which she had removed the glove, on the top rung of the chair–back. By the pressure of her fingers he could see how agitated she was.

'Gordon, I've a most awful thing to tell you. It's happened after all.'

'What's happened?'

'I'm going to have a baby.'

'A baby? Oh, Christ!'

He stopped short. For a moment he felt as though someone had struck him a violent blow under the ribs. He asked the usual fatuous question:

'Are you sure?'

'Absolutely. It's been weeks now. If you knew the time I've had! I kept hoping and hoping—I took some pills—oh, it was too beastly!'

'A baby! Oh, God, what fools we were! As though we couldn't have foreseen it!'

'I know. I suppose it was my fault. I—'

'Damn! Here comes somebody.'

The door–bell ping'd. A fat, freckled woman with an ugly under–lip came in at a rolling gait and demanded 'Something with a murder in it.' Rosemary had sat down and was twisting her glove round and round her fingers. The fat woman was exacting. Each book that Gordon offered her she refused on the ground that she had 'had it already' or that it 'looked dry'. The deadly news that Rosemary had brought had unnerved Gordon. His heart pounding, his entrails constricted, he had to pull out book after book and assure the fat woman that this was the very book she was looking for. 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'.

He turned back to Rosemary. 'Well, what the devil are we going to do about it?' he said as soon as the door had shut.

'I don't see what I can do. If I have this baby I'll lose my job, of course. But it isn't only that I'm worrying about. It's my people finding out. My mother—oh, dear! It simply doesn't bear thinking of.'

'Ah, your people! I hadn't thought of them. One's people! What a cursed incubus they are!'

'MY people are all right. They've always been good to me. But it's different with a thing like this.'

He took a pace or two up and down. Though the news had scared him he had not really grasped it as yet. The thought of a baby, his baby, growing in her womb had awoken in him no emotion except dismay. He did not think of the baby as a living creature; it was a disaster pure and simple. And already he saw where it was going to lead.

'We shall have to get married, I suppose,' he said flatly.

'Well, shall we? That's what I came here to ask you.'

'But I suppose you want me to marry you, don't you?'

'Not unless YOU want to. I'm not going to tie you down. I know it's against your ideas to marry. You must decide for yourself.'

'But we've no alternative—if you're really going to have this baby.'

'Not necessarily. That's what you've got to decide. Because after all there IS another way.'

'What way?'

'Oh, YOU know. A girl at the studio gave me an address. A friend of hers had it done for only five pounds.'

That pulled him up. For the first time he grasped, with the only kind of knowledge that matters, what they were really talking about. The words 'a baby' took on a new significance. They did not mean any longer a mere abstract disaster, they meant a bud of flesh, a bit of himself, down there in her belly, alive and growing. His eyes met hers. They had a strange moment of sympathy such as they had never had before. For a moment he did feel that in some mysterious way they were one flesh. Though they were feet apart he felt as though they were joined together—as though some invisible living cord stretched from her entrails to his. He knew then that it was a dreadful thing they were contemplating—a blasphemy, if that word had any meaning. Yet if it had been put otherwise he might not have recoiled from it. It was the squalid detail of the five pounds that brought it home.

'No fear!' he said. 'Whatever happens we're not going to do THAT. It's disgusting.'

'I know it is. But I can't have the baby without being married.'

'No! If that's the alternative I'll marry you. I'd sooner cut my right hand off than do a thing like that.'

Ping! went the door–bell. Two ugly louts in cheap bright blue suits, and a girl with a fit of the giggles, came in. One of the youths asked with a sort of sheepish boldness for 'something with a kick in it—something smutty'. Silently, Gordon indicated the shelves where the 'sex' books were kept. There were hundreds of them in the library. They had titles like Secrets of Paris and The Man She Trusted; on their tattered yellow jackets were pictures of half–naked girls lying on divans with men in dinner–jackets standing over them. The stories inside, however, were painfully harmless. The two youths and the girl ranged among them, sniggering over the pictures on their covers, the girl letting out little squeals and pretending to be shocked. They disgusted Gordon so much that he turned his back on them till they had chosen their books.

When they had gone he came back to Rosemary's chair. He stood behind her, took hold of her small firm shoulders, then slid a hand inside her coat and felt the warmth of her breast. He liked the strong springy feeling of her body; he liked to think that down there, a guarded seed, his baby was growing. She put a hand up and caressed the hand that was on her breast, but did not speak. She was waiting for him to decide.

'If I marry you I shall have to turn respectable,' he said musingly.

'Could you?' she said with a touch of her old manner.