Free Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys Page A

more drink,' he says.
    We walk up the street, trying to find a place that is open. Everything seems to be shut; it is past twelve. We go along the Rue St Jacques hand in hand. I am no longer self-conscious. Hand in hand we walk along, swinging our arms. Suddenly he stops, pulls me under a lamppost and stares at me. The street is empty, the lights in the bars are out.
    'Hey, isn't it a bit late in the day to do this?'
    He says: 'Mais c'est completement fou. It's hallucinating. Walking along here with you, I have the feeling that I'm with a - '
    'With a beautiful young girl?'
    'No,' he says. 'With a child.'
    Now I have had enough to dink, now the moment of tears is very near. I say: 'Well, nothing's open. Everything's shut. I'm going home.'
    He looks up at the door of my hotel.
    'Can I come up to your room?'
    'No, you can't.'
    'Well, can I come back in a little while and get a room here myself and then come to see you?'
    (The patronne saying: 'L'Anglaise has picked up some one. Have you seen?')
    'No, don't come here. I shall be awfully vexed if you come here. Please don't.'
    'Of course I won't if you ask me not to,' he says. Tactful. 'What about the hotel next door? Perhaps I could get a room there.'
    PART TWO
    All the same, at three o'clock I am dressing to meet the Russian.
    He is waiting. He says his fiend Serge is expecting us. 'Le peintre,' he calls him.
    I suggest taking a taxi but he seems horrified at the idea.
    'No, no. We'll go by bus. It's quite near. It's only a few minutes away.' 'Couldn't we walk, then?' 'Oh yes, we could walk. It's just of the Avenue d'Orleans, about five minutes' walk.' 'It's more than five minutes,' I argue. 'It's more like half an hour.'
    Soon now it will be winter. There are hardly any leaves on the trees and the man outside the Luxembourg Gardens is selling roast chestnuts.
    We stand at the end of a long queue. No bus.
    'Do let's take a taxi.' 'Very well. If you like,' he says unwillingly. 'But the man will be very vexed at having to go such a short distance. - Place Denfet-Rochereau, the Metro,' he says to the driver. - 'It won't be far to walk from there.' 'But couldn't we go straight to the place where your friend lives?' 'No, I don't know the name of the street.' 'You don't know the name of the street?' 'No, I've never noticed it.'
    When I see how anxiously he is watching the meter I am sorry I insisted on taking the taxi. All the same, I should have dropped dead if I had tried to walk this distance.
    'Do let me pay, because it was I who insisted.'
    But he has got the money in his hand already and is counting it out.
    He takes my arm and we walk along. 'It's just a minute, it's just a minute,' he keeps saying.
    Walking to the music of L'Arlesienne, remembering the coat I wore then - a black and white check with big pockets. We have just passed the hotel I lived in. That was the high spot - when I had nothing to eat for three weeks, except coffee and a croissant in the morning.
    I slept most of the time. Probably that was why it was so easy. If I had had to go about a lot I might have felt worse. I got so that I could sleep fifteen hours out of the twenty four.
    Twice I said I was ill, and they sent me up soup with meat in it from downstairs, and I could get an occasional bottle of wine on tick from the shop round the corner. It wasn't starvation at all when you come to think of it. Still, I'm not saying that there weren't some curious moments.
    After the first week I made up my mind to kill myself - the usual whiff of chloroform. Next week, or next month, or next year I'll kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up, and my credit for breakfasts in the morning.
    'My child, don't hurry. You have eternity in front of you.' She used to say that sarcastically, Sister Marie - Augustine, because I was so slow. But the phrase stayed with me. I have eternity in front of me. Soon I'll be able to do it, but there's no hurry. Eternity is in front of