had the guts to cut ourselves loose from the Yankee capitalists, stopped spending money on an army which we didn’t need, and had a pact with Russia, we should be as right as rain.
Eleanor now brusquely changed the subject. She selected one quite free of political entanglements. The unprecedented the sumptuous summer weather—that had nothing to do with a planned economy or the redistribution of wealth. No one was to blame if the weather was bad, no one had to be thanked except God if it was fine. And then she went on to say how perfect the weather had been up in London, where she had been on a visit to relatives. She thought nostalgically of London, and I asked her if she had been to any shows. No, she said, no: just shops. But she continued—with great inadvertence—to complain how difficult it had been to shop. There were such dense herds of people. Where on earth did they all come from!
Rymer waited until she had finished, and then he struck:
“Where do you come from, my dear, there is always that.” The slightly Johnsonian answer to her conundrum his wife received with a wry smile, having detected her faux pas too late. “Those people are the masses of women…”
“They weren’t all women!” she laughed.
“Women,” he said firmly. “They come in their millions from the suburbs and the slums and the slums and suburbs of other cities. The pavements are impassable. It is like cutting one’s way through a dense and rubbery undergrowth.”
“What an excellent description!” his wife exclaimed.
“I agree they are dense, ” he went on. “Of course they are. For the first time in their lives they have sufficient time and money to go shopping in the most luxurious stores—where they could not go before.”
Here I joined in with alacrity.
“Could not go,” I said, “because of their class —without being followed around by store-detectives, stared out of countenance by shopgirls from behind counters, asked every minute by a shopwalker what articles they required. Any charlady now can go in, try on a mink coat or two, then fling them down and say she thinks she’ll wait till next season when they may have a better assortment. Harrods is jammed with charladies. The working-class throng Selfridges like Woolworths at Christmastime. That really is socialism. Observe that in Moscow the slums are barred from any but the slum shops.”
We returned to the drawing-room after we had eaten and sat talking for a long time; it is a very peaceful spot, but in Rymer there is no peace. My hostess was washing up the dishes. She was absent at least and there was no one else in the house. The knuckly proliferation of the polygonum waved beyond the window-sill, the yellow leaves tumbled past from a tree, a wasp appeared on his way from the larder where he had been able to find no jam, no honey—nothing sweet, because the English had won the war and consequently are not allowed to grow sugar in their West Indian islands, and there is not enough beet sugar to go round. Also I noticed a sick-looking bird. The crumbs put out for it were, of course, full of bran and chalk. I suppose it was constipated. It should have pecked off as much corn as it wanted before it was cut, making a rule to touch no human food. The corn gone, why not fly off to some more sensible country? What are wings for?
I think that politics and poetry are what interest Rymer almost exclusively. At that moment politics were uppermost in his mind because the question of communism (at his instigation) was coming up the following week at the diocesan conference, and he was of course to speak, or hoped he would be able to. Communism is with him something quite unreal, for he certainly is not a communist. He is of the generation of the great fellow-travellers of the ’twenties, who painted the universities pink. But it was a solemn rag, a generational badge, and meant
Eleanor now brusquely changed the subject. She selected one quite free of political entanglements. The unprecedented the sumptuous summer weather—that had nothing to do with a planned economy or the redistribution of wealth. No one was to blame if the weather was bad, no one had to be thanked except God if it was fine. And then she went on to say how perfect the weather had been up in London, where she had been on a visit to relatives. She thought nostalgically of London, and I asked her if she had been to any shows. No, she said, no: just shops. But she continued—with great inadvertence—to complain how difficult it had been to shop. There were such dense herds of people. Where on earth did they all come from!
Rymer waited until she had finished, and then he struck:
“Where do you come from, my dear, there is always that.” The slightly Johnsonian answer to her conundrum his wife received with a wry smile, having detected her faux pas too late. “Those people are the masses of women…”
“They weren’t all women!” she laughed.
“Women,” he said firmly. “They come in their millions from the suburbs and the slums and the slums and suburbs of other cities. The pavements are impassable. It is like cutting one’s way through a dense and rubbery undergrowth.”
“What an excellent description!” his wife exclaimed.
“I agree they are dense, ” he went on. “Of course they are. For the first time in their lives they have sufficient time and money to go shopping in the most luxurious stores—where they could not go before.”
Here I joined in with alacrity.
“Could not go,” I said, “because of their class —without being followed around by store-detectives, stared out of countenance by shopgirls from behind counters, asked every minute by a shopwalker what articles they required. Any charlady now can go in, try on a mink coat or two, then fling them down and say she thinks she’ll wait till next season when they may have a better assortment. Harrods is jammed with charladies. The working-class throng Selfridges like Woolworths at Christmastime. That really is socialism. Observe that in Moscow the slums are barred from any but the slum shops.”
We returned to the drawing-room after we had eaten and sat talking for a long time; it is a very peaceful spot, but in Rymer there is no peace. My hostess was washing up the dishes. She was absent at least and there was no one else in the house. The knuckly proliferation of the polygonum waved beyond the window-sill, the yellow leaves tumbled past from a tree, a wasp appeared on his way from the larder where he had been able to find no jam, no honey—nothing sweet, because the English had won the war and consequently are not allowed to grow sugar in their West Indian islands, and there is not enough beet sugar to go round. Also I noticed a sick-looking bird. The crumbs put out for it were, of course, full of bran and chalk. I suppose it was constipated. It should have pecked off as much corn as it wanted before it was cut, making a rule to touch no human food. The corn gone, why not fly off to some more sensible country? What are wings for?
I think that politics and poetry are what interest Rymer almost exclusively. At that moment politics were uppermost in his mind because the question of communism (at his instigation) was coming up the following week at the diocesan conference, and he was of course to speak, or hoped he would be able to. Communism is with him something quite unreal, for he certainly is not a communist. He is of the generation of the great fellow-travellers of the ’twenties, who painted the universities pink. But it was a solemn rag, a generational badge, and meant
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