by (epub)
Mrs. Spencer starts afresh: “Finnagan, do you know you’ve changed a lot. Twenty-two years ago when I came to you, and then later on when I cleaned this place here, and upstairs and the laboratory, the one at the back—only you had the key. And that afternoon when you asked me—of course for scientific purposes, as you put it cleverly. You know, Finnagan, I don’t think it was quite right. You know, one really couldn’t say that I willingly—it was a very strange afternoon—I don’t think a physician, just not a physician, a throat specialist, of course, scientific purposes and all that——”
Finnagan suddenly turns around. And without saying a word he sits down quickly at his desk, takes out his cheque-book and makes out a cheque. And Mrs. Spencer leaning over his shoulder can plainly see that it is another cheque for one hundred and two pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence. He hands it to her, doesn’t even care to look at her. But when she waddles towards the door he suddenly jumps at her, grabs her by that thin, skeleton neck of hers, screams through clenched teeth: “You—you—I’ll show you! You can’t scare Finnagan. No! I shall stop your mouth. Your hideous, filthy, diseased, rotten mouth!”
This awful head of hers, this face, spectacles, closed eyes, like a dead rat with spectacles on, is turned towards his. He weakens, he feels like fainting; this face, this awful face, with closed eyes. Her spectacles drop on the floor, he takes his hands off her and she leans down, picks up the glasses, and suddenly her thin, haggard arm flies up with renewed diabolical power. She hisses like a cobra, a cobra attacked: “We shall both go! Finnagan, remember! We both!”
She is gone. And on the floor, on the carpet, there is a cheque, crumpled up. One hundred and two pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence in writing. Crumpled up. Just a scrap of paper.
Meat. Raw meat. On hooks. Strong hooks. Holding raw meat. Legs of mutton and sheep and calves with their heads back, slit throats, half-closed eyes. There’s still a glance of lovely green pastures, trees and high grass in the blue-grey pupils of their half-closed eyes.
And wooden blocks. And the sparkling meat axe over there, freshly sharpened. And a bundle of such small sheep’s hearts. So small. Animals don’t love with their hearts. Only with their eyes and their awkward bodies.
This is a high-class store. There is a lady standing in an expensive fur coat, next to her, her chauffeur. She is buying little cutlets. Just two. Something for the sick-room. Master X. is probably not feeling well. That poor darling.
And Mrs. Spencer. She certainly doesn’t fit into these hygienic, dignified, and clean surroundings. Nobody pays any attention to her, so she leaves again, and the man at the door who looks like a chef de la cuisine says: “Nothing to-day.”
What does he mean? She wasn’t begging. She didn’t have a chance. So she walks down New Bond Street. She seems to be tired. Her feet give way and she always has to pull herself together again. Hell. It’s a long way to walk. There’s a newspaper dealer, and he has a few American books for children in his kiosk. And Mrs. Spencer stops again, and picks one up, and her eyes see a king and the queen, very stylised, just lines drawn by a cartoonist from Cincinatti or Ohio. And her eyes wander away to the shops across the street: piano stores, flower shops, and a bootmaker: “Under Royal Patronage”: and back to the queen and the king, and underneath the text: “Have a cup of tea, Queen. You look tired.”
“Are you going to buy it—or aren’t you?” says the newspaper-dealer, peeping out of his kiosk. Hurriedly she puts down the stiff-backed book and walks over to a telephone booth. She has a bright idea. That’s quite obvious. Just wait and see. But the telephone booth is occupied by a Spanish-looking gent in a fur coat, his moustachio drawn like a narrow line under his long voluptuous nose and beaming nostril. One can’t hear what he says, though the door doesn’t quite close, but it must have been good what she said, otherwise he wouldn’t leave now with a satisfied smile.
Mrs. Spencer picks up the telephone book which is on a chain, and starts fumbling about with this timetable of names. She obviously tries Finnagan’s number, but the page from Finklestein, Henry, to Fireproof Shutters and Doors, Ltd., 197 Victoria Street, S.W.1. is torn, so she walks out again, but rather nervous and very excited. She has never telephoned Finnagan before. She could enter a teashop and ’phone from there.
Pavement, street in between, like a frozen river, and pavement again. That means she has to cross the street. That’s not so easy, Mrs. Spencer. Anybody will tell you you have to look right and left before you cross because if you don’t . . .
Cars; two No. 25 buses; delivery vans: Scotts, Piccadilly; horses; bicycles and pedestrians. Don’t you see, Mrs. Spencer, one has to be careful? Even the Government gives out orders. You are requested to be careful, as anything might happen, and it’s not so good to cross a street practically blindfolded. And you can’t sneak around. This bus might pull up at any moment, you see, and the driver is right if he does pull up. . . .
“What’s the matter?” “Killed?” “I put on the brake!” “Hysterical women!” “What’s your name?” “Move on! Move on! Get an ambulance!” “No, not killed.” “Is she dead, officer?” And high-pitched: “Was she blind?” “Officer, I am Daily Telegraph.” “Move on! Move on!”
The white ambulance. Two men. A stretcher. A body. They pick up a body. That’s their job, and emotions don’t go with it. The traffic goes on again, and as it isn’t so early now all sorts of smart women with bunches of expensive lilac, and parcels from Asprey or Fortnum and Mason under their arms, secrets wrapped up in brown paper with string made of hemp or old paper squashed, re-milled, coloured and so re-born, are passing along.
Two gentlemen, the so-called “Colonel” type, are just leaving Hill’s, the barber, and addressing the porter—gold medals, uniform and all that: “I say, what happened, Porter? Somebody said accident?”
“Come,” says the other gentleman. “Come, Sydney, don’t stop.” And continuing his very exciting narrative: “But you know how she is: if Cynthia has two drinks—so what could I do?”
“Of course,” says the other. “Don’t I know those women?”
And the other, with a shaky, port-wine gesture: “I just—eh—he-he-he-he!”
The chimes from Atkinson’s start again. A perfumed old English melody, Eighteenth century, if you please.
“. . . Twenty-five complains about headache and pains in the ears. Shall we give her another aspirin or——”
“You might,” says the young, clean-shaven physician, dressed for an operation.
The nurse, rather an oldish woman, wants to ask him something more, but at this very moment another doctor passes by.
“Hallo, Fraser,” he says heartily. “Are you coming to the Sandborns to-night? We are going to have a game of bridge. Hartnell is coming too. And afterwards the Monseigneur as usual.”
“I suppose I shall, if I can get away,” says Doctor Fraser, hurrying along down the dark corridor towards the operating theatre.
“Interesting case?” shouts the other after him.
“No, not particularly,” shouts back Fraser. “Second operation. Woman, sixty-eight. Accident. Nothing remarkable.”
This is a corridor on the second floor of St. Henry’s Hospital. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon. The sun didn’t come out all day, and although all the lights are turned on, this December afternoon is still breathing in every corner and staircase. Damp dreary patches of early afternoon to be followed by an unwanted, hopelessly long and unending night.
There is a drinking-water tap. Clock-like trickling, and from the ward: coughing, sneezing, and half-subdued chatter. On the tap it says: “A. Goslet & Co., Ltd., London, W.C.2.” if anybody cares to know this. Waiting in a hospital gives one all sorts of strange ideas. Quite. And then there are some windows facing a blank wall, and they are filled with an opaque, dead, stubborn daylight.
Ah! The door to the operating theatre is open wide, so that Mrs. Spencer can be wheeled out again and down the corridor and through this ward past oth
er patients. Bandaged faces and arms; and some drowned in cushions, noses alone sticking out like periscopes from submarines.
Fraser, taking off his rubber gloves, says to one of the nurses, who holds a towel and soap ready for him: “You’d better communicate with whatever family she has. She’ll come to in an hour or so. I won’t be here to-night.”
“Yes, doctor,” says the nurse.
“Yes,” says the doctor, young Doctor Fraser, washing his hands with a lot of water and heaps of foaming soap, as only physicians do. They take their time. It really is part of their lives. “Yes, I am going out to-night. Worked all last week—late—haven’t been out a single evening. Yes—a little bridge won’t hurt—in fact”—and he dries his hands now, “it’s quite essential to take one’s mind off work.”
“That’s what Doctor Epstein always used to say,” says the nurse, handing him the towel.
“You should take it easy too,” continues the doctor, wiping his face with the towel. “Three operations a day—it’s a bit much.”
“I’m going out to-night,” says the nurse. “It’s my night off.”
“Ah,” says the doctor, with faked curiosity and put-on charm.
“No, no,” says the nurse. “My nephew is in town. I am taking him to the pictures to-night.”
“Good,” says the doctor. “Good.”
Night. Something dark. Black. Slow-moving. And a light far out. And a few glittering pebbles catching the light of a street lamp. Pebbles. The skeleton of a lifeboat drawn ashore. Closed down bathing huts, and a white shimmering lifebelt on a rusty hook. High Street lamps shining down heartily on a cold and deserted asphalt pavement. Empty seats and collapsible chairs drawn together by a chain and locked. The promenade. And then: naked, freezing pillars sticking in the mud; the tide’s gone out, and the sea has left something like jellied cotton-wool and shining bubbles. Three months ago this was a crowded beach. Now only the shadows of two lovers walking along and a dog sniffing about.
And then lights and more lights in circles, ovals, and way up on masts: Palace Pier Theatre, on a December night.
Shouts of: “Peanuts! Fresh roasted peanuts! Chocolates and ices! Ices! Ices!” blended with “Two minutes! Curtain going up! Curtain going up!”
Smoke in thick clouds. Cigarette butts on the floor and here and there a lonely flattened-out orange skin, and dangerous-looking little pips.
As everybody takes his place, Bailey and Mr. Shark find themselves suddenly alone in the lobby. The doors are closed and through the oval windows they can see the audience.
Applause. Julian at the piano, and Viva leaning against it. “Some Day I’ll Find You.”
“Doing very well,” says Bailey. “Of course, time will show.”
Shark turns around and lights a cigarette. “Good number,” he says. “Good number, this. ‘Old songs and New.’ They’re doing very well together. I really discovered them. Brought them together. She has the looks, he has the talent.”
Bailey can’t make any of his funny or even sarcastic remarks, so he shuts up, watching the number attentively through the window. “I rather like the popular tunes,” he suddenly remarks. “The good old ones. What is there better, for instance, and more refreshing to an old pretzel like me, than ‘There was I, Waiting at the Church’?”
Trying to hum, his voice gets tangled up in his larynx; violent coughing and sneezing buries whatever is left of it, and Shark pushes him away from the door. “Quiet, Bailey, quiet!”
While Bailey is trying to quiet the distemper of his voice, a telegraph-boy from the Post Office appears.
Telegrams are meant to be speedy, and delivered at once, my good little boy. But the boy hides behind Bailey, terribly interested to get part of a show for nothing. He is probably fifteen, has a few pimples on his face.
Shark turning around seizes the intruder, snarling quietly: “What is it?”
“Telegram,” says the boy. “For Spencer.” Without taking his eyes off Viva: “Good show you have here,” he remarks.
“Hop it,” says Shark.
“ ‘Some day I’ll find you again!’ ”
Applause. Julian gets up and makes a bow. More applause, so they settle down again to give an encore.
Shark stands in the left wing holding the telegram like a dainty morsel to attract Julian’s attention. Bailey stands behind him and remarks: “Telegram for the genius.”
“ ‘I’ll be your Sweetheart if you will be Mine.’ ”
“I like that,” says Bailey. “My sister-in-law used to sing that.”
Shark observes, bitter and annoyed: “Must have been a treat.”
And Kraut in the dressing-room slips another woollen vest over his hairy chest.
“ ‘All my life I’ll be your Valentine. Bluebells I’ve gathered . . .’ ”
“Beautiful,” says Bailey. “That reminds me, Shark. You know my sister-in-law has a little house in Wimbledon, and last March——”
Shark makes: “H-sst!”
“ ‘Take them and be true . . .’ ”
Kraut pushes his chest out, trying to get into his caveman character.
“ ‘When I’m a man, my plan will be . . .’ ”
“What is this?” says Bailey. “Is it the song of a baby? One is a man or one isn’t. There is no sense to it,” he adds. And again sneering, he repeats: “ ‘When I’m a man, my plan.’ ”
“ ‘ . . . will be to marry you!’ ”
Applause again. Curtain down. Shark hands the telegram to Julian. He opens it quickly before the curtain goes up again. Looks at it. And when the curtain goes up he forgets to bow. Two stage hands quickly shove off the piano and bring in Kraut’s paraphernalia. Two huge dumbells and a few pieces of iron and strong steel wire and all the things a man needs to show that he has power, strength and is good for something. The music behind the curtain starts playing again the first bars of the ‘Victory March.’ Shark points at the piece of paper—the telegram which they forgot to pick up from the stage floor. But it is too late. The curtain is up and they can’t grab it any more. Let’s hope Kraut won’t slip on it with his felt-padded Roman boots, because that would be funny. Sometimes one likes to see the strong man fall down flat on his face. Some sort of satisfaction for any anæmic little shrimp in the audience.
By the way, on the telegram it says: “Come at once. Your mother very ill. St. Henry’s Hospital.”
White skeletons of trees. Telegraph poles and wires. Shimmering pebbles. Rain. Fog. Rain. And sometimes a house stands up with dark windows, rain pouring from the roof. And dogs wake up and hear the train and bark, and sometimes a closed car tries to catch up with the train, speeding through frosty fields, with open headlights. And in a third-class compartment; Julian Spencer. Hat and coat. Not even a suitcase, a package or anything on the rack. Drambuie, King of Liqueurs. And something about Charles II. Austin Reed: a man with a super-smart collar and necktie. The face doesn’t count. Gamages. And on the other wall—mind you, it only takes an hour from Brighton to London, but even an hour, especially at night, does take so long.
Handsome photographs. Windsor Castle. Beach Life in Worthing. And Arundel. Another castle again. Antiquated but dignified ramshackles of very old age. People always seem to travel at more or less greater speed towards castles. For no particular reason at all. It is, of course, more comfortable to face the past than the present. Not to mention the future. That applies to Julian Spencer as well. One gets nervous sitting in a train, and looking at these pictures—advertisements of the Southern Railway and of different firms—doesn’t make it better, but one simply can’t help looking at them. Maybe Mrs. Spencer has died already. Windsor Castle. Maybe he is too late. Worthing. And about Viva. Arundel Castle. What is he going to do? Give up the flat? For Improper Use Penalty £5. Don’t look at your watch, Mr. Julian Spencer. You did this fifteen times already. There are still another twenty minutes to London. Drambuie, King of Liqueurs. Twenty minutes to London. Victoria Station. And another ten minutes from there t
o St. Henry’s Hospital. Austin Reed, Regent Street. Arundel Castle. Windsor Castle. For Improper Use Penalty £5. Drambuie, King of Liqueurs.
Austin Reed, Regent Street. And rain hits the windows and trickles down in big drops. Skeleton trees and telegraph poles. And a small station. Not worth while stopping. Gentlemen—Ladies. 785 Feet Altitude. And then night and rain again. Yes. It’s quite a journey, Brighton to London.
Blubb-clubb-clubb-blubb gossips the swinging door of the lounge-bar-dining-room of the Old Ship Hotel: as often as Joseph, the flat-footed old waiter-porter, enters and exits, bringing beer to and fro.
To-day is good business. The artistes from the Palace Pier Theatre are here. They are going to come here every evening after the performance as long as the show lasts. There are two rocking-chairs—leather, rusty buttons and a squeaking noise—and a grandfather-clock striking the quarters five minutes in advance. A few green plants and the picture of two sou’-westery seamen struggling ashore in a boat while a large vessel is seen collapsing in the distance, and a poster from the Cunard Line. Otherwise smoke and laughter, as all the girls are sitting about, chatting. Shark discussing with Mrs. Esmond: new ‘old friends’ since the rehearsals at the Melody in Hammersmith: that unpleasant incident about ‘Hallo Brighton, here we come,’ you remember?
And Kraut close to Viva on a sofa against the wall, and Ritornelli, a scarf around his neck, sleeping quietly.
Joseph runs in and out and the door swings clubb-blubb.
Kraut, leaning gallantly, beer glass in hand, towards Viva: “I used to know this man, Haarmann,” he says. “The mass-murderer, but interested in athletics. Oh, I just talked to him and I never thought this bird eats babies and boys like anything. ‘I like strong men,’ he used to say.”
Viva isn’t interested in this bloody subject. “Will you put this down for me?” she says, and hands him her empty glass.
Kraut puffs at his cigar eagerly, trying to change the subject. “I should have been a singer, too, Miss,” he says. “I used to have a voice my father was proud of.” And opening his mouth wide like a fish, he starts: “ ‘Eine feste Burg is unser Gott.’ ” (A strong castle—mind you, a castle, of course, with little cannons you can shoot with—is our Lord.)
