by Gerald Kersh
“I am ashamed,” said Miss Noel, crying.
“Always have been,” I suggested.
“They made me,” she said, between two sobs. “Oh, please tell me, what am I going to do?”
There being no more time for dissertation, and she being in such distress, I said, “Have a good wash, change your clothes, and play the piano. There’s nothing like a wash and a change and a little quiet music to clarify the intellect.”
“I haven’t got another dress.”
I said, feeling like one of those characters you read about in books, “Then you shall have another dress.... Copper, a word with you.” I took him aside and said, “Since you seem to be so lousy and free with your bloody money to all the Cruikbacks and what not, lend me another couple of quid. On my honor, you’ll get it back.”
Without argument he gave me two pound notes, and then said dryly, “Anything else this morning?”
I said, “Get hold of some boiling water and fill up the hand basin in the ladies’ toilet. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Then I walked across the street to Godbolt’s, memorizing my order, which, in my haste, I blurted out in a breathless rush: “One gentleman’s handkerchief, one lady’s handkerchief, one lady’s jumper, one skirt, one pair lady’s knickers, one pair stockings, one comb, one cake scented soap.”
Mr. Godbolt looked at me curiously—he was yet to discover that I was Sam Yudenow’s new manager—while he made a hunchback of himself in his obsequiousness. “We have a very nice quality gent’s handkerchief at sixpence—”
“One of those, please—”
“And a very nice lady’s handkerchief at two shillings a dozen.”
“Could I have sixpennyworth?”
“I could do you three for sevenpence,” he said.
“The way that works out, one of the handkerchiefs out of the dozen is free of charge,” I said.
He simpered, “That’s right.”
“May I have that one?”
He was not the sort of man who appreciates a good, subtle joke. But he tittered in a nervous way and started to pull out shallow, square boxes tied up with green ribbon, saying, “Guaranteed to be one hundred per cent.”
I said, “Oh, all right, do me three for sevenpence. Now what about the underwear?”
“I can do you a very nice knicker for one-and-eleven-three.”
“Do me one,” I said.
“Would the lady like a lovely shade of vyoo-rose?”
“You haven’t anything in brown?”
“Not in brown, sir, but I can do you a beautiful knicker in navy blue. What size, if I may ask?”
“Say, a lady about five feet two, with wind.” I drew him a diagram in the air. “And make it vieux-rose.” He was unused to this way of doing business and could not stop his sales talk: “Guaranteed one hundred per cent genuine art silk. I have another very superior knicker that will last you a lifetime, in blue serge, with a cotton washable knicker lining at three-and-eleven—”
“Congratulations. But I’ll have the first one you mentioned.”
“The medium size has plenty of give in it. It fits small and large alike.”
“The very thing. What about a jumper of the same nature?”
“I have a very popular line of jumper at four-and-elevenpence-farthing, in royal blue, peach, vyoo-rose, black—”
“Black. And do me a skirt, also black, if you will.” He did me one at nine-and-elevenpence-three-farthings, which is draper’s language for ten shillings; and a pair of guaranteed one hundred per cent genuine artificial silk stockings, flesh color. When I told him that I had seen flesh that color when somebody I knew upset boiling water on her foot, he shook his head with hypocritical regret and started to quote one of the Psalms, breaking off in the middle of the fourth line to ask whether the lady wouldn’t like a suit of combinations. And that struck me as being a good idea, the weather being what it was.
“Better give me a suit of combinations,” I said.
“I have a lovely comm, knee length, at six-and-three.” Here, Godbolt looked left and right, and left again, lowering his voice. “And the French opera comm with genuine blue shoulder straps at eight-and-four—”
“The common or garden, and make it snappy,” I said.
“As for the soap,” said Godbolt, “we have an arrangement with Mr. Laylock the chemist. He sells no underwear, I sell no drugs, tee-hee! That will be twenty- four-and-threepence.”
Having the money safe in his hand, he said, “A gay young sprig, I dare say? Showering your wealth, in a manner of speaking, on the Strange Woman of the Scriptures? Oh, however you may have sinned—and I read it in your face—settle down, settle down!”
“Who with?” I asked.
“Oh, I have lived a decent life, but I know the world. Why are you buying these undergarments for the lady except, as they say, to ‘try them on’ her? Get married. Will that be all? Could I interest you in a satinette tie? Oh, be warned! Laylock’s shop is on the left, and don’t forget to say Mr. Godbolt sent you. I thank you, sir, and a very good day to you.”
Laylock the Chemist, whose establishment was no more than twenty yards away, was a shop to which its proprietor had transferred his ancestor’s sign, LAYLOCK— CHYMIST—ESTAB. 1824. His window was filled with a great cardboard advertisement for tangerine-colored lipstick. Above this, on the left, was stuck a gelatin transfer which said, Dr. Bissell’s Cachets for Feminine Disorders. This was in blue. In red, to the right of it, was stuck another sign saying, Male Weakness? Take Street’s Striped Pills No. 74! Say: “Seventy-Four!”
Laylock was a secretive tall man, dressed all in black; I remembered him, years later, when I saw Boris Karloff playing the dope fiend in Smart Money. The whole place reeked of cough drops and scented soap gone bad. All over the place, ersatz violet waged a running battle with paregoric; and there was, on the side, a pincer movement, a secret collaboration between a stopped-up drain and the miasma of the street. Someone had tried to attack all this with carbolic, traces of which, sprinkled from a punctured tin can, were visible on the bare floor. Looking at Mr. Laylock the pharmacist, I was impressed by the scrubbed complexion of his hands. He must have washed them every hour or so. But they did not convey an impression of cleanliness; they put into my mind an idea that he had just scoured and pared them after burying something in the cellar.
And it was: Oh, was it a cake of soap I wanted, then? No, really now, only one? He could do me a golden gift-wrapped box of six. No? One only? Then right I was—here was a silver-wrapped box of three...
“One!” I cried.
“Have two?”
“One.”
“Glycerin soap, baby soap, or disinfectant?” asked Laylock.
“I’d better have one of each,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” he said comfortingly. “I’ll do you the three for nine-pence.”
“And while you’re about it, do me a bottle of eau de cologne.”
“Genuine 7211, full half-pint, eightpence?”
“That’ll do.”
“Let me do you a sponge now, sir. I’ve got a real honeycomb.... No? Well then, a lovely loofah, only tenpence; worth three-and-six, only you don’t have much call for them round here. In fact, the last one I sold, a boy ate it. You’re a stranger here, I see. The standards aren’t high, sir. Oh, let me do you a loofah for tenpence. Ninepence?”
“Oh, all right, a loofah. Also a comb—”
“A Wave-Comb?” he asked, producing a coarse comb with bent teeth. “Guaranteed to give a lovely wave? Sixpence?”
At this I revolted, and shouted, “And how the bloody hell do you work that one out?”
He said, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. A fine comb, perhaps? Could do you one for sevenpence.”
“All right. Do me, at the same time, a sixpenny nail file.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir—they run threepence, fivepence, sevenpence—”
“Fivepence. And a bottle of
aspirin tablets—”
“Ten, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred—”
“Ten.”
“Will that be all, sir? I thank you, sir.... Stranger here, sir? Delightful place, sir, but overcrowded, overpopulated. A nice douche can, sir? For purely hygienic purposes—or something in the rubber-goods line? We all have our own faith, and personally I am very strict. The climate hereabout is inclement. I can do you a line of rubber goods in the finest latex at three for sixpence in a tin box, on the understanding that you undertake to use them only to keep your money in, the way sailors do.... No? Well, they do say in Fowlers End that it is like shaking hands with gloves on....”
I paid him, picked up my parcels, and ran across the street. Sam Yudenow was still communing with his soul, I suppose, and brooding in his eyrie over the concept of the Greenburger. Down in the orchestra poor Miss Noel had the shakes. She had been drinking methylated spirits. Knowing it to be a fact that if you give a methylated-spirits drinker a glass of water the morning after, he will get mad drunk again, I got her some milk and made her drink it, while Copper Baldwin stood by and watched with wonderment thinly disguised as scorn. I said, “Now, there—there, now then, drink it all up. I want you to play for me when you feel better. Don’t we, Copper? ... Copper, for Christ’s sake, did you put that hot water in the basin, in the ladies’ toilet? Then lend a hand while we get her there. You swabbed up, I see. Come on then—lend a hand with Miss Noel.” “What to do?”
“Get her washed and changed,” I said. “She’s offensive. She’s offensive to you, and me, and herself.” I added, “And who will be the sufferer? Everybody will say I did it. I don’t mind telling you, I’ll see myself damned before I let this sort of thing go on every night. Into the ladies’ toilet with her, before Sam Yudenow comes down!”
So we got her there. She did not take much undressing, since she was wearing only a vile old slip and what they used to call a “‘jumper suit” of knitted wool.
“They’ll do for Godbolt’s doorstep,” said Copper Baldwin, pushing them aside with a squeegee. “Come on now, pull yourself together like the gentleman says, Miss Noel. Mr. Laverock wants you to play for him, Miss Noel, and ‘e’s a gentleman in a very important position. Come on now, Miss Noel. The gentleman’s accustomed to better be’avior than this, you know....” Meanwhile I washed her with a loofah.
At a certain point she said, “I’ll do the rest. Please go outside for a moment.”
And so we did, but not before Copper Baldwin had picked up the bottle of eau de cologne and put it in his pocket.
“You mug, she’d drink it,” he told me, with his eye to a crack in the door. “... It’s all right, chum. I’m looking for a purpose. Yes, she’s washing all right. We’ll sprinkle ‘er with this stuff afterwards.... Gawd stone me blind if she ain’t washing ‘er ‘air! Now this is something I ‘ave not seen....” He imparted to this commentary a quality of breathless excitement, like one of the better sports commentators. “Now she’s drying it—now she’s combing it—now the comb’s bust!... No, it ain’t—yes, it ‘as—no, it ain’t; it got through! ... Wait a minute, the insides of ‘er arms are wet. She’s groggy, but she’s dryin’ ‘em—and oh, my, does she look bruised! Yes, sir, she must ‘ave ‘it ‘erself in the shoulder with the piano.... Now, what’s the first thing she goes for? ‘Er combinations! She never ‘ad none before.... Drawers coming up! Oh, nicely, nicely! A bit low in the knees but lovely, tell your mum! Stockings now.... Oh, pity, pity—no garters? Ah, good gel, very good gel—rolled ‘er tops—that’s right, twist ‘em. Good, good. Now it’s the lipstick—steady now, steady—that’s right! Jumper, skirt—it nearly fits. Comb again. Pat, pat, pat with the old towel, and it’s the old sweet song: ‘Johnny, I ‘Ardly Knew You!’... And now she’s picking ‘er nails with that little file....” There were tears in his eyes now as he said to me, “‘Ow did you do that, Dan?”
“Not I,” I said.
Then Miss Noel came out of the lavatory, looking drunker than ever, but in a different way. Copper Baldwin sprinkled her with the stuff Laylock called eau de cologne and said to me, “You ought to got ‘er a toothbrush, some face powder, and a bit o’ glycerin-and-rosewater for ‘er ‘ands—”
I was going to explain that I had intended to buy a mouthwash but had felt certain qualms about getting close enough to her to observe whether she had any teeth, when Sam Yudenow came down humming a tune. “Look at Rockfellow, look at Armour, look at Corned Beef! Out of oil alone, you’d be surprised—” he began. Then he saw Miss Noel, and said, “The lady’s face is familiar, pardon the familiarity. Could the name be Noel?”
Miss Noel said, “That is my name.”
Ebullient and confidential, but at the same time abstracted, Yudenow said, “My pianist’s sister? No doubt. Pleased to meet you. Believe me, Miss What’s-a-name, blood will tell. Vice versa, murder will out, and love will have its way. Blood will tell. It told. That your sister had unfluential relatives, I knew. So I took her into my bosom. Good enough? Good enough. Out of the hands of the police I have kept her—didn’t we, Copper? Nourishment I gave her—didn’t we, Lavendrop? Right. Especially in good families is always a black. Sheep, I mean. There is a science about it, miv which there is, if you will uxcuse me, bed-wetting, et cetera, et cetera.... So, you come to get your sister. And quite right too. Aman’s got a heart, so I took her out of the gutter. And believe me, Miss, rahnd ‘ere you know why they got reinforced tires on the busses? The gutters. Acid. It’ll eat you away to the bone.... She had some terrible misfortune maybe? A disappointment? Don’t worry, she’ll be in, in a little while. Whereas, in the meantime, I ought to tell you, there’s a little bill owing. I’m sorry to say your sister lost control. There’s a cleaning bill. All in all, it amounts to—look, I’ll leave it to you. I’m like a father rahnd ‘ere, Miss Noodle; ask anybody, miv the soluntary exception of Godbolt. Ah, many is the time your poor old sister has helped me out miv Godbolt, specially on the Saturday morning after payday. Believe me, she was worth her weight in dead cats. Once I paid her fine, five shillings, ‘drunk and incapable,’ and for the stumminck pump half a guinea. But I’m like that, I’m a funny feller. Be done by as you do, Miss. Sam Yudenow asks no reward—he leaves it up to you—” He stopped abruptly, looked at her with more attention, and said, “Now you’re crying I recognize you. You are Miss Noel. But all dolled up?”
I think that out of one of the blind alleys in his labyrinthine mind emerged some ghostly idea that Miss Noel had come into money. It is a fact that, newly washed and dressed, even in God-bolt’s slops, she had the air of a lady. In what this air consists, nobody knows. To describe it would be to describe recognition, which involves something to which our vocabularies are not fitted. If you could describe, in so many words, what you recognize in an expression or a manner, you could write a definitive work on diagnostics—which hasn’t been done yet, and never will be done. Because language is allusive, in its highest forms. You can no more describe a human condition than you can define, say, the contradistinction between the odors of roses and onions.
One can only make images and trust to one’s neighbors’ senses. For example: in Soho there used to be a most degraded drunkard of a girl. She was only twenty-three, but it was impossible to think of her as anything but forty-odd. Her manners and her un-cleanliness revolted the lowest whores in Old Compton Street. There was nothing she would not do for a drink. And yet she was accorded a certain respect because she was a “lady.” By the same token I know a filthy little criminal who once beat up his father and robbed him of his monthly pension money to buy dope; who lived on the immoral earnings of a factory girl; but, although he was the merest apology for a man, not much over five feet tall, hollow-chested and racked by a bad cough, commanded a certain respect even in places as tough as the Dive because he was a “gentleman.”
Yet again, I know a rough-and-tumble, foulmouthed woman from Cumberland who can outdrink the fish she sells and fight all comers. Provided she kept her v
oice down, I would take her anywhere: there is something about her that causes people in general to defer to her as a “lady.” It must be something in the blood, something in the spirit.
So it was now, with Miss Noel. She had regained a certain fortitude of the ego, an attitude which Copper Baldwin had sensed all along, but which Sam Yudenow— with a shock of surprise—had only just got the hang of. Yes, snuffling where he belonged, he had picked up the trail of human dignity.
If I had had the sense I might have known what that meant: that whenever animal smells man, comes fear.
Now it must be remembered that poor Sam Yudenow, our boss, was not cruel any more than a pig is cruel. Cruelty involves at least a little forethought; and Yudenow could not think, except as a pig thinks, in terms of appetite. He could not scheme: he could only sniff with his brain along a track to the trough. Poor wretch! He lacked a certain sense of value that is necessary to pure pity.
Yudenow was incapable of love or hate. He was blind appetite. He was mindless—which passes as single-mindedness and makes executives—and whatever he may ever have had in the way of morality must have been something thin and flimsy like one of those joss papers our mothers used to let smolder to smother sickroom odors. It was a smoke screen between himself and his shame.
Yudenow was a controlled panic of self-preservation on two uncertain legs; abject slave to a mad desire for what beasts know as blind survival.
A comical beast, I thought, but asked myself, “Why prolong mere living for its own sake?” The question answered itself: “Because a beast is blind.” In Yudenow’s case, he was animated by nothing but a terror of Nothing, a horror of ceasing to be; by a hopeless desire to evade consequence and issue, parry cause and duck effect. But he had—and you can read it in the faces of defeated fighters, doglike to the verge of tears in the outer offices—the hope-against-hope that, by fiddling and scraping against all the odds in the world, his ringcraft might outmaneuver the inevitable.
