Cora! An exciting name. She wouldn’t be like Brant. He was sure of that. She was dark, didn’t wear a hat and had a red bone bangle: an exciting description! George took off his collar and tie, and filled the basin with hot water. He would spot her all right, he assured himself. Even if he didn’t speak to her, it would be interesting to look at her. But, of course, he was going to speak to her. Alone in the steamy little bathroom, George felt very confident. He forgot that he was shy with women. Somehow, Brant’s sister would be different. He was quite sure of that. It was odd how stupid he had been about women in the past. He stared at himself in the mirror. There was no sense in working himself into a fright because of what had happened years ago. He had been fifteen then, and big for his age. That always seemed to be the trouble. He was always too big for his age. School masters expected too much from him. During the war, when he was fourteen, people expected him to be in the army. Even at fifteen he had been backward and, of course, innocent. He had been in the park by himself when the woman began talking to him. She was an impressive-looking woman, rich, well dressed, refined. She said she was lonely, and George had felt sorry for her. He was lonely himself. They stood talking beside the duck pond; at least, she did the talking, while George listened politely. He was really more interested in watching the herons; but she was lonely, so he listened. She talked about people being nice to each other, about being lonely and what a fine, strong fellow he was. It was talk that George could understand. So when she suggested he might come to her house because it was chilly standing by the pond, he was flattered, and he did not see anything wrong in going with her.
He thought it odd that she should take him straight up to her bedroom. He had never seen such a beautiful room. But before he could appreciate it, the refined lady seemed to take leave of her senses. George never quite knew how he got out of the house. It was like a nightmare, and he dreamed for many years about running down long passages and opening and shutting many doors with someone screaming names after him as he ran.
That experience kept cropping up at the back of his mind when he had anything to do with women. He never quite got over it. It made him shy and suspicious of women. Of course, sometimes he needed a woman, but his need was not as strong as his nervousness, so he never did anything about it. Once or twice, when he had been a little tight, he had ventured as far as Maddox Street. But the waiting women he found there seemed so unlike any other women he had seen that he had abruptly turned back and caught a bus home.
Now, in the solitude of the bathroom, he only felt the excitement and not the fright that women raised in him.
It was after four o’clock before he left the house. In high spirits he walked briskly down the street. It was a grand afternoon, and he found a secret pleasure in mingling with the crowds moving along the Edgware Road. He was now one of the crowd; he had somewhere to go, someone to meet. It gave him a feeling of security and confidence. He must do this more often, he told himself. It was absurd to bury himself away in his bedroom as he had been doing.
Mortimer Street consisted of a row of small shops, three or four hawkers’ barrows and a public house. George had to walk the length of the street before he discovered Joe’s Club. It was over a second-hand bookshop. The open door revealed a flight of uncarpeted stairs that rose steeply into darkness, and through the doorway cane the smell of stale scent, spirits and tobacco smoke.
He hesitated for several minutes before climbing the stairs. Finally he went up, his hand on the rickety banister, his feet treading cautiously, the stairs creaking under his weight.
There was a dimly lit passage at the top of the stairs, and at the end of the passage there was a door on which was a dirty card with “Joe’s Club” printed in uneven, illiterate letters.
George turned the door knob and pushed open the door. He found himself in a long, narrow room, which, he guessed, must stretch the width of the two shops below. At the far end of the room was a bar. Rows of bottles stood on shelves within reach of the bartender’s hands. All round the room stood tables on which chairs were stacked, their legs pointing to the dirty, grey-white ceiling. Opposite the bar, at the other end of the room, was a dais containing a piano, three battered music stands and a drummer’s outfit. The walls of the room were covered with large reproductions of nudes from La Vie Parisie nne a nd Es quire. A public telephone box stood just inside the door.
“The joint’s closed,” a man’s voice said at his elbow.