Indian Summer 165
But I am crying, only the tears won’t come.
I’m snivelling like a woman I once saw when I
visited the hospital.
I haven’t got a handkerchief.
I can’t bring myself to wash in that dirty cracked
basin. We've brought no soap. The towel’s soiled
and torn. I must have some H....
I’ve just been to see Lillie Fitzroy. How can men
give her money? Her hair is gray, crudely dyed.
She has wrinkles and rotten teeth. She was in bed,
of course. I shook her roughly to wake her. I’ve lost
every feeling for others, and people see it, and it spoils
my own game. I must pretend to have the kindness
and gentleness which I used to have so much; which
used to make people think me an amiable fool.
Some one told me once that adjectives spoilt nouns
in literature, and you can certainly cut out that one.
She’s a good sort, all the same, poor flabby old thing.
She only takes M., and only gets that in solution ready
to inject. She saw I was all in, and gave me a dose in
the thigh. It doesn’t touch the spot like H., but it
stops the worst of the suffering. She never gets up till
tea-time. I left her a fiver. She promised to see what
she could do that night with the man who gets it for
her.
She got very affectionate in a sentimental, motherly
style, told me the story of her life, and so on, for ever
it seemed. Of course, I had to pretend to be interested
to keep her in good humour. Everything might depend
on that.
. But it was awful to have to let her kiss me when I
went away. I wonder if I should get like that if I
went on with dope.
What absolute nonsense! For all I know, it may
have prevented her going faster still. She must have
had a beastly rotten life. The way she clawed at that
five quid was the clue to her troubles; that and her
ignorance of everything but the nastiest kind of vice
and the meanest kind of crime.