Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell Read Free Book Online

and smoke up his remaining cigarettes, and read
King Lear
or
Sherlock Holmes
. His books were on the mantelpiecebeside the alarm clock—Shakespeare in the Everyman edition,
Sherlock Holmes
, Villon’s poems,
Roderick Random
,
Les Fleurs du Mal
, a pile of French novels. But he read nothing nowadays, except Shakespeare and
Sherlock Holmes
. Meanwhile, that cup of tea.
    Gordon went to the door, pushed it ajar and listened. No sound of Mrs Wisbeach. You had to be very careful; she was quite capable of sneaking upstairs and catching you in the act. This tea-making was the major household offence, next to bringing a woman in. Quietly he bolted the door, dragged his cheap suitcase from under the bed and unlocked it. From it he extracted a sixpenny Woolworth’s kettle, a packet of Lyons’ tea, a tin of condensed milk, a teapot and a cup. They were all packed in newspaper to prevent them from chinking.
    He had his regular procedure for making tea. First he half filled the kettle with water from the jug and set it on the oil-stove. Then he knelt down and spread out a piece of newspaper. Yesterday’s tea-leaves were still in the pot, of course. He shook them out onto the newspaper, cleaned out the pot with his thumb and folded the leaves into a bundle. Presently he would smuggle them downstairs. That was always the most risky part—getting rid of the used tea-leaves. It was like the difficulty murderers have in disposing of the body. As for the cup, he always washed it in his hand basin in the morning. A squalid business. It sickened him, sometimes. It was queer how furtively you had to live in Mrs Wisbeach’s house. You had the feeling that she was always watching you; and indeed, she was given to tiptoeing up and downstairs at all hours, in hope of catching the lodgers up to mischief. It was one of those houses where you cannot even go to the WC in peace because of the feeling that somebody is listening to you.
    Gordon unbolted the door again and listened intently. No one stirring. Ah! A clatter of crockery far below. MrsWisbeach was washing up the supper things. Probably safe to go down, then.
    He tiptoed down, clutching the damp bundle of tea-leaves against his breast. The WC was on the second floor. At the angle of the stairs he halted, listened a moment longer. Ah! Another clatter of crockery.
    All clear! Gordon Comstock, poet (‘of exceptional promise’,
The Times Lit
.
Supp
. had said), hurriedly slipped into the WC , flung his tea-leaves down the waste-pipe and pulled the plug. Then he hurried back to his room, re-bolted the door, and, with precautions against noise, brewed himself a fresh pot of tea.
    The room was passably warm by now. The tea and a cigarette worked their short-lived magic. He began to feel a little less bored and angry. Should he do a spot of work after all? He ought to work, of course. He always hated himself afterwards when he had wasted a whole evening. Half unwillingly, he shoved his chair up to the table. It needed an effort even to disturb that frightful jungle of papers. He pulled a few grimy sheets towards him, spread them out and looked at them. God, what a mess! Written on, scored out, written over, scored out again, till they were like poor old hacked cancer-patients after twenty operations. But the handwriting, where it was not crossed out, was delicate and ‘scholarly’. With pain and trouble Gordon had acquired that ‘scholarly’ hand, so different from the beastly copperplate they had taught him at school.
    Perhaps he
would
work; for a little while, anyway. He rummaged in the litter of papers. Where was that passage he had been working on yesterday? The poem was an immensely long one—that is, it was going to be immensely long when it was finished—two thousand lines or so, in rhyme royal, describing a day in London.
London Pleasures
, its name was. It was a huge, ambitious project—the kind ofthing that should only be undertaken by people with endless leisure. Gordon had not