A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin Read Free Book Online Page A

giving another dragging wrench in the other direction . Katherine could almost feel the pain exploding beneath the anaesthetic, and nerved herself against a shriek. It seemed impossible for the girl to feel nothing. As the dentist levered and wrenched again, the muscles in his wrist moved, and as he withdrew the forceps she thought he had failed until she saw the long root in their grip, bright with blood. He dropped it in a silver casket, then tweaked out the wet and bloodstained roll of cotton wool, and removed the rubber gag.
    These he put aside and stood watching her.
    Katherine watched her too. Without her spectacles her face looked young, perhaps twelve years old, and quite peaceful: there was no hint in it of petulance or distress. She did not look at all the same: this was the face she had once had, but now had nearly outgrown, a face she wouldhave soon quite outdistanced, that perhaps only her parents would remember. Her hands were still folded, as in prayer or death. She did not come round. The dentist picked up the golden cross, which swung to and fro in the electric light so that it flashed. The water in the glass had quietened to a deep crimson; Katherine found that step by step she had moved right up to the very arm of the chair.
    The voice of the dentist broke the silence.
    “It’s all over,” he said.
    Miss Green’s eyes were open, expressionlessly.
    “It’s all over,” he repeated. “It’s all right now. Would you wash your mouth round.”
    Slowly her hands began unclasping. She sat up, slowly, grasping for the arms of the chair. Her mouth seemed to move in a smile, or to speak, and a sudden thin stream of blood ran down her chin.

5
    Katherine lived in Merion Street, though she had not said as much to Miss Green. She lived in a room on the top floor above the chemist’s shop. Therefore when she got Miss Green out into the street again, she suggested they went up to her room, where Miss Green could rest.
    Miss Green gave her to understand that she agreed, but she was not in an articulate condition. They had gone down the stairs one step at a time, Katherine holding the girl firmly round the waist: Miss Green’s eyelids were drawn almost completely over her eyes, and the expression on her face was as if she had swallowed something decayed. Her footsteps were not steady.
    Katherine hardly thought of the fact that to visit her room fell in with her own plans. Most of what she had beenthinking had been wiped away in the last half-hour: she felt she had given Miss Green a bad time, yet it was hard to know if she could have suggested anything better. She was still desperately eager to help her. Outside the chemist’s she propped her against the wall like a piece of valuable china, and hurried in to buy aspirins; then they pushed open the street door and began climbing the stairs. It was an old-fashioned building, with extinct gas-brackets on the walls, and no light on the narrow flights: carpets gave way above the first floor to linoleum. As they climbed higher, the walls looked bare and deserted, until on the top landing they emerged onto plain boards, an empty packing-case that had once held chemical glassware, a single door with a spring-lock, and a little room, at the end of the passage by an uncurtained window, that held a sink, and had been converted from a primitive laboratory to a primitive kitchen. It held a cooking-stove.
    An electric-light connection hung from the ceiling, but there was no bulb in it.
    Miss Green leaned against the banisters while Katherine found her key and pushed open the door onto inner blackness : they creaked slightly. A bottle of milk stood outside, and the door jammed momentarily on a letter that had been thrust under the door. These things she carried in and put down on an invisible table. A moment later daylight spread from a window inside and revealed a room beyond the door. Katherine reappeared anxiously.
    “Come in,” she said.
    Miss Green detached herself from