§ 2
For three months she played the piano at the Upton Rising Royal Cinema; then she applied for and was appointed to a similar position at the Victoria Theatre, Bockley. The salary was better and the hours were not so arduous.... And yet she was becoming strangely restless and dissatisfied. All through her life she had had a craving for incident, for excitements, for things to happen to her. The feeling that she was doing something almost epically magnificent in living on her own whilst not yet out of her teens gave her an enthusiasm which made bearable the dull monotony of life in Gifford Road. It was this enthusiasm which enabled her joyously to do domestic things such as making her bed every morning, darning stockings, cleaning boots, etc., things that normally she loathed. For the first few months of her independence everything was transfigured by the drama of her position. The thought would occur to her constantly in trams and omnibuses when she noticed someone looking at her: “How little you know of me by looking at me! You cannot see into my mind and know how firm and inflexible I am. You don’t know what a big thing I am doing.”
Reaction came.
It interested Catherine to picture various meetings with her father and to invent conversations between them in which she should be unquestionably the winner. The ideal dialogue, she had decided after much reflection, would be:
HER FATHER (stopping her in the street). Catherine!
SHE (haughtily). I beg your pardon!
HER FATHER (tearfully). Oh, don’t be so cruel, Cathie—why don’t you come back?
SHE. I am not aware that I am being cruel.
HER FATHER. You are being horribly cruel (passionately). Oh, Cathie, Cathie, come back! I give in about your going out to work, I give in about anything you like, only do come back, do, do come!
SHE (coldly). Please don’t make a scene.... I am perfectly comfortable where I am and have no desire to make any alteration in my arrangements.
HER FATHER. Oh, Cathie, Cathie, you’re breaking my heart! I’ve been lonely, oh, so lonely ever since——
SHE (kindly but firmly). I’m sorry, but I cannot stay to carry on a conversation like this. You turned me out of your house when you chose: it is for me to come back when I choose, if I choose.... I bear you no ill-will.... I must be going. Please leave go of my arm....
That would be magnificent. She was sure she was not in the least callous or hard-hearted, yet it pleased her to think that her father was lonely without her. One of her dreams was to be passionately loved by a great man, and to have to explain to him “kindly but firmly” that she desired only friendship....
One day she did meet her father.
She walked into a third-class compartment at Bockley Station and there he was, sitting in the far corner! Worse still, the compartment was full, saving the seat immediately opposite to him. There is a tunnel soon after leaving the station and the trains are not lighted. In the sheltering darkness Catherine felt herself growing hot and uncomfortable. What was she to do? She thought of her ideal conversation, and remembered that in it he was supposed to lead off. But if he did not lead off? She wished she had devised a dialogue in which she had given herself the lead. Yet it would be absurd to sit there opposite to him without a word. She decided she would pretend not to see him. She was carrying a music-case, and as the train was nearing the end of the tunnel she fished out a piece of music and placed it in front of her face like a newspaper. When the train emerged into daylight she discovered that it was a volume of scales and arpeggios, and that she was holding it the wrong way up. The situation was absurd. Yet she decided to keep up the semblance of being engrossed in harmonic and melodic minors. After a while she stole a glance over the top of her music. It was risky, but her curiosity was too strong for her.
She saw nothing but the back page of the Daily Telegraph. It was strange, because he never read in trains. It was one of his fads. He believed it injurious to the eyes. (Many and many a time he had lectured her on the subject.)
Obviously then he was trying to avoid seeing her, just as she was trying to avoid seeing him. The situation was almost farcical.... There seemed to be little opening for that ideal dialogue of hers. She wished he would lean forward and tap her knee and say: “Catherine!”
Then she could drop her music, look startled, and follow up with: “I beg your pardon!”
Unfortunately he appeared to have no artistic sense of what was required of him.
It was by the merest chance that at a certain moment when she looked over the top of the scales and arpeggios he also looked up from his Daily Telegraph. Their eyes met. Catherine blushed, but it was not visible behind her music. He just stared. If they had both been quick enough they might have looked away and let the crisis pass. Unfortunately each second as it passed made them regard each other more unflinchingly. The train ground round the curve into Bethnal Green Station. Catherine was waiting for him to say something. At last the pause was becoming so tense that she had to break it. She said the very first thing that entered her head. It was: “Hullo!”
Then ensued the following conversation.
“Good-morning, Catherine ... going up to the City, I suppose?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yes. I’m going to see some friends at Ealing. Bus from Liverpool Street.”
“Oh, I go by tube to Oxford Circus. I’m seeing if they’ve got some music I ordered.”
“Don’t suppose they’ll have it ... very slack, these big London firms....”
Pause.
“Getting on all right?”
“Oh, fine, thanks.”
“I heard you’d got a place at the Royal Cinema.”
“Oh, I soon left that ... I’m on at the Victoria Theatre now. Much better job.”
“Good ... like the work, I suppose?”
“Rather!”
Pause.
“Nasty weather we’re having.”
“Yes—for April.”
Pause again. At Liverpool Street they were the first to leave the compartment.
“You’ll excuse my rushing off,” she said, “but I must be quick. The shop closes at one on a Saturday.”
“Certainly,” he murmured. Then he offered his hand. She took it and said “Good-bye” charmingly. A minute later and she was leaning up against the wall of the tube subway in a state bordering upon physical exhaustion. The interview had been so unlike anything she had in her wildest dreams anticipated. Its casualness, its sheer uneventfulness almost took away her breath. She had pictured him pleading, expostulating, remonstrating, blustering, perhaps making a scene. She had been prepared for agonized entreaties, tearful supplications. Instead of which he had said: “Nasty weather we’re having.”
And she had replied: “Yes—for April.”
As for the ideal dialogue——