They said good-bye to Ravelston outside the restaurant. The taxi bore them away. Ravelston had insisted on paying for the taxi from the registry office, so they felt they could afford another taxi. Warmed with wine, they lolled together, in the dusty May sunshine that filtered through the taxi window. Rosemary’s head on Gordon’s shoulder, their hands together in her lap. He played with the very slender wedding ring on Rosemary’s ring finger. Rolled gold, five and sixpence. It looked all right, however.
‘I must remember to take if off before I go to the studio tomorrow,’ said Rosemary reflectively.
‘To think we’re really married! Till death do us part. We’ve done it now, right enough.’
‘Terrifying, isn’t it?’
‘I expect we’ll settle down all right, though. With a house of our own and a pram and an aspidistra.’
He lifted her face up to kiss her. She had a touch of make-up on today, the first he had ever seen on her, and not too skilfully applied. Neither of their faces stood the spring sunshine very well. There were fine lines on Rosemary’s, deep seams on Gordon’s. Rosemary looked twenty-eight, perhaps; Gordon looked at least thirty-five. But Rosemary had pulled the three white hairs out of her crown yesterday.
‘Do you love me?’ he said.
‘Adore you, silly.’
‘I believe you do. It’s queer. I’m thirty and moth-eaten.’
‘I don’t care.’
They began to kiss, then drew hurriedly apart as they saw two scrawny upper-middle-class women, in a car that was moving parallel to their own, observing them with catty interest.
The flat off the Edgware Road wasn’t too bad. It was a dull quarter and rather a shimmy street, but it was convenient for the centre of London; also it was quiet, being a blind alley. From the back window (it was a top floor) you could see the roof of Paddington Station. Twenty-one and six a week, unfurnished. One bed, one reception, kitchenette, bath (with geyser), and W.C. They had got their furniture already, most of it on the never-never. Ravelston had given them a complete set of crockery for a wedding present–a very kindly thought, that.
Julia had given them a rather dreadful ‘occasional’ table, veneered walnut with a scalloped edge. Gordon had begged and implored her not to give them anything. Poor Julia! Christmas had left her utterly broke, as usual, and Aunt Angela’s birthday had been in March. But it would have seemed to Julia a kind of crime against nature to let a wedding go by without giving a present. God knew what sacrifices she had made to scrape together thirty bob for that ‘occasional’ table. They were still very short of linen and cutlery. Things would have to be bought piecemeal, when they had a few bob to spare.
They ran up the last flight of stairs in their excitement to get to the flat. It was all ready to inhabit. They had spent their evenings for weeks past getting the stuff in. It seemed to them a tremendous adventure to have this place of their own. Neither of them had ever owned furniture before; they had been living in furnished rooms ever since their childhood. As soon as they got inside they made a careful tour of the flat, checking, examining, and admiring everything as though they did not know by heart already every item that was there. They fell into absurd raptures over each separate stick of furniture. The double bed with the clean sheet ready turned down over the pink eiderdown!
The linen and towels stowed away in the chest of drawers! The gateleg table, the four hard chairs, the two armchairs, the divan, the bookcase, the red Indian rug, the copper coal-scuttle which they had picked up cheap in the Caledonian market! And it was all their own, every bit of it was their own–at least, so long as they didn’t get behind with the instalments! They went into the kitchenette. Everything was ready, down to the minutest detail. Gas stove, meat safe, enamel-topped table, plate rack, saucepans, kettle, sink basket, mops, dishcloths–even a tin of Panshine, a packet of soapflakes, and a pound of washing soda in a jam-jar. It was all ready for use, ready for life. You could have cooked a meal in it here and now. They stood hand in hand by the enamel-topped table, admiring the view of Paddington Station.
‘Oh, Gordon, what fun it all is! To have a place that’s really our own and no landladies interfering!’
‘What I like best of all is to think of having breakfast together. You opposite me on the other side of the table, pouring out coffee. How queer it is! We’ve known each other all these years and we’ve never once had breakfast together.’
‘Let’s cook something now. I’m dying to use those saucepans.’
She made some coffee and brought it into the front room on the red lacquered tray which they had bought in Selfridge’s Bargain Basement. Gordon wandered over to the ‘occasional’ table by the window. Far below the mean street was drowned in a haze of sunlight, as though a glassy yellow sea had flooded it fathoms deep. He laid his coffee cup down on the ‘occasional’ table.
‘This is where we’ll put the aspidistra,’ he said.
‘Put the what?’
‘The aspidistra.’
She laughed. He saw that she thought he was joking, and added: ‘We must remember to go out and order it before all the florists are shut.’
‘Gordon! You don’t mean that? You aren’t really thinking of having an aspidistra?’
‘Yes, I am. We won’t let ours get dusty, either. They say an old toothbrush is the best thing to clean them with.’
She had come over to his side, and she pinched his arm.
‘You aren’t serious, by any chance, are you?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘An aspidistra! To think of having one of those awful depressing things in here! Besides, where could we put it? I’m not going to have it in this room, and in the bedroom it would be worse. Fancy having an aspidistra in one’s bedroom!’
‘We don’t want one in the bedroom. This is the place for an aspidistra. In the front window, where the people opposite can see it.’
‘Gordon, you are joking–you must be joking!’
‘No, I’m not. I tell you we’ve got to have an aspidistra.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s the proper thing to have. It’s the first thing one buys after one’s married. In fact, it’s practically part of the wedding ceremony.’
‘Don’t be so absurd! I simply couldn’t bear to have one of those things in here. You shall have a geranium if you really must. But not an aspidistra.’
‘A geranium’s no good. It’s an aspidistra we want.’
‘Well, we’re not going to have one, that’s flat.’
‘Yes, we are. Didn’t you promise to obey me just now?’
‘No, I did not. We weren’t married in church.’
‘Oh, well, it’s implied in the marriage service. “Love, honour, and obey” and all that.’
‘No, it isn’t. Anyway we aren’t going to have that aspidistra.’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘We are not, Gordon!’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘No!’
She did not understand him. She thought he was merely being perverse. They grew heated, and, according to their habit, quarrelled violently. It was their first quarrel as man and wife. Half an hour later they went out to the florist’s to order the aspidistra.
But when they were half-way down the first flight of stairs Rosemary stopped short and clutched the banister. Her lips parted; she looked very queer for a moment. She pressed a hand against her middle.
‘Oh, Gordon!’
‘What?’
‘I felt it move!’
‘Felt what move?’
‘The baby. I felt it move inside me.’
‘You did?’
A strange, almost terrible feeling, a sort of warm convulsion, stirred in his entrails. For a moment he felt as though he were sexually joined to her, but joined in some subtle way that he had never imagined. He had paused a step or two below her. He fell on his knees, pressed his ear to her belly, and listened.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said at last.
‘Of course not, silly! Not for months yet.’
‘But I shall be able to hear it later on, shan’t I?’
‘I think so. You can hear it at seven months, I can feel it at four. I think that’s how it is.’
‘But it really did move? You’re sure? You really felt it move?’
‘Oh, yes. It moved.’
For a long time he remained kneeling there, his head pressed against the softness of her belly. She clasped her hands behind his head and pulled it closer. He could hear nothing, only the blood drumming in his own ear. But she could not have been mistaken. Somewhere in there, in the safe, warm, cushioned darkness, it was alive and stirring.
Well, once again things were happening in the Comstock family.
