Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

  ‘I’m a selfish beast,’ went on Walter. ‘I want to go on living with you until the real thing comes. And then . . .’

  ‘But, this is the real thing.’

  ‘For you, perhaps.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ There was agony in his tone. ‘Why . . .’ His voice trailed away into nothingness. For he had caught sight of himself in the glass. And he had noticed, not the eager face, not the sparkle of youth in his eyes, but a frayed collar and a rather worn tie. And beyond himself he had seen a shabby wall, with a few spotted prints hanging on it, a couple of faded cur­tains, a cracked window, and through the window a lowering sky.

  ‘Walter, old thing.’ He turned to him.

  ‘Yes, B.’

  ‘Am I making a fool of myself? Supposing it’s absolutely hopeless? Supposing she was just laughing at me – pulling my leg? What then?’

  ‘What then? I’ll tell you what then.’

  ‘Well?’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘I should go round to her, and I should put my hands on her neck like this’ – he suited the action to the word – ‘and my knee on her tummy like this’ – and here he gave Brian a dig in the stomach with his own knee – ‘and I should throttle and throttle and throttle until she was lying at my feet. Then I’d remove my hat, give her a kick, and go off and have a bitter.’

  ‘Ow! You brute. You’re hurting.’

  ‘Sorry, B.’ He released him.

  ‘And if you’re ever disrespectful about Julia again, you’re for it.’

  He turned again to the window. The sky looked frozen and forlorn. The glass panes against his fore­head felt like sheets of ice. ‘Lord!’ he said, ‘it’s cold. The whole world’s cold.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Julia was now definitely decided that Brian should be her refuge against ennui during the next few months. She must have some such refuge, and really he was quite the newest and freshest thing which had been washed up on to the shore of Mayfair for a considerable period. One might play terribly amusing games with him.

  It must be admitted that there were few cures for boredom which she had not sampled, either for her body or her soul. Last year, for instance, she had been principally intrigued by the latest mysteries of the medical profession, and had made, in company with her friends, pilgrimages to Harley Street which had often proved as entertaining as a first night. Standing before sleek and monocled physicians, she had been initiated into the devices of that strange instrument, Abram’s box, which, as far as she could understand, claimed to diagnose, and cure, the most complicated ills of the human system by some electrical reaction from a spot of the patient’s blood. A little farther up the street she had experimented in organotherapy, had sat in waiting-rooms surrounded by rich cretins and their despairing relatives, subsequently filling herself with the glands of goats (which, to tell the truth, toned up her system considerably). Still farther along she had indulged in a little mild psycho-analysis, but that told her little that she did not know already. As for osteopathy – ‘the old maid’s romance’ – that struck her as rather too tame, and, after a single treatment, she gave it up.

  Another year, interior decoration had claimed her for its own. Plenty of her more prosperous acquaintances were always having their houses done up, so why should she not do it for them? And provided one possessed a temperament and a blank cheque one could obtain the most delicious results. So she had created bedrooms of the palest lemon-colour, with furniture of white leather and little green tables on which nothing more substan­tial than a lip-stick could ever rest. There had been dining-rooms hung with green brocatelle, and staircases with glass banisters, and corridors whose walls teemed with the bloated fantasies of Serck, and bathrooms of glistening silver (which caused agony to tired house­maids), and . . . But you know it for yourselves, do you not? It is a little obvious nowadays.

  Then, of course, there was the great year when every­body was indulging in the strangest diets, in order to reduce. Julia had no need whatever to reduce, but she played the game because all the world was playing it. At one moment she nibbled lettuces, at another she chewed biscuits which seemed to be composed of a delicate mixture of sawdust and horse-flesh. Sometimes an eager friend would arrive hot-foot from the country, where he or she had been indulging in an orgy of milk and potatoes, and she would try their system for a while, until it was supplemented by the even more curious habit of a lemon-juice breakfast, followed by a lunch of raw vegetables and a dinner which it would be far too depressing to describe.

  Ça passe. And unless somebody organized a trip to the moon there was nothing new in life. Hence the fascination of Brian. To meet anybody who really was thrilled by a first night, who opened his eyes wide at the sight of a woman smoking a cigar, who had never even crossed the Channel, who had never tasted Blini, who was frightened by one’s butler, who swam in the Ser­pentine, who had read the works of Walter Scott, who thought Lord William brilliant, who stayed in London during August, and probably imagined that Marcel Proust was a form of infectious disease – all this was interesting in the extreme. Hence the following tele­phonic conversation, which must now be recorded.

  ‘Is that you, Don?’

  ‘Yes, Julia.’

  ‘I want you to ask Brian Elme to lunch.’

  ‘I have already done so.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I shan’t come. But I want you to ask him down to Hayseed, please.’

  ‘Very well. You are going to have an affair?’

  ‘Good-bye, Don. Good-bye.’

  The above scandalous conversation floated a few days later over the wires that run unconcernedly across the noisy streets from Berkeley Square to Queen Anne’s Gate. Had I the time in this narrative, I might indulge in some agreeable fantasies concerning the passage of words and passions and heart-throbs across those sober wires. Supposing, for example, that the wires were made sensitive, assuming the varying hues which were demanded by the conversations they were privileged to bear. Supposing that they glittered when the business men transacted their affairs in the city! What a golden mesh would hang over the black-coated throng that surges down Lombard Street, into the grey, mot­tled thoroughfares that circle the Bank of England. Supposing that they blushed a delicate pink as the ladies of Mayfair crooned their guilty secrets from scented rooms at dusk! What a pretty, fluttering array of ribbons would sparkle across the skies that vault the hallowed precincts of Berkeley Square and the Place that is called Carlos!

  However, there being no time for those pleasant ex­cursions of thought, one must make the telephone bell ring once more, this time in the office of The Lady’s Mail.

  Brian was writing a paragraph. You may think it an impertinence; but it was his humble way of paying tribute, even if, in substance, it was a lie. . . .

  ‘I was in a little café the other day,’ he wrote, ‘and found myself behind Mr. Augustus John, who was dining with Sir William Orpen. They were discussing the per­fect type of the female human face. Sir William, in his quaint Irish brogue, was extolling the ancient Greek. John, of course, was inclined to revere the very modern. But both, curiously enough, agreed that both ancient and modern were perfectly combined in the features of Lady Julia Cres . . .’

  It was at the close of this revelation that the telephone rang. Brian frowned. It was the office boy’s job to answer the telephone, and the office boy’s voice was in that slightly indecent stage which recalls a duet between Melba and Scotti, with a healthy crow acting as arbi­trator. He waited until the duet should be over.

  But the office boy, having put his ear to the receiver, started back in alarm. He glared at Brian.

  ‘It’s Lord William Motley,’ he said, in a perfect mixture of soprano and bass. ‘’E wants you.’

  Brian sprang to his feet. In awe the office boy re­garded him. ‘All right, this is private. You can go out­side for a minute.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The crow this time was uppermost in the office b
oy’s voice. He departed.

  ‘Is that Brian?’

  ‘Yes. Hallo!’ (Damned silly remark, that.)

  ‘Is it possible that you can lunch to-day?’

  ‘I say, yes. I’d love to.’

  ‘We’ll lunch alone, I think. At the Gaga?’

  ‘Just as you like.’ (Lord, was that a brick?)

  Brian learnt a great deal from that lunch, as indeed Lord William had intended. It began with his refusal of caviare. He would have loved caviare, but he ob­served from the menu that it cost seven shillings and sixpence a portion, and that seemed too fantastic a sum even to contemplate. Lord William saw through this subterfuge, and informed him that the habit of choosing cheap things on menus when somebody else was paying the bill was not only in exceedingly bad taste, but was a sure sign of an inferiority complex. Spurred on by this information, Brian proceeded to choose lobster cardinal, quail in aspic and foie-gras, a combination which Lord William heartily approved, although the sight of so healthy an appetite made him feel slightly faint.

  ‘You should study Maurice,’ he remarked. ‘That sweet child has an eagle eye for expensive things, and he can tell a really prohibitive cigar merely by looking at it. People adore being imposed on by youth, if they can afford it. Don’t you realize that? If you asked me at this moment to lend you five pounds I should be immensely happy. Aren’t you going to?’

  ‘I don’t want it, thanks awfully.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do. But that will come later, I expect. It is a pleasure still in store.’

  This curious dialogue occurred as they were motor­ing back to Lord William’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate, of which the newspapers are always telling us so much.

  They emerged from the car. ‘Emerging’ is indeed a gracious way of describing the scramble which descent from his lordship’s car involved. He had designed the body of his car one day on a sheet of notepaper, when he had been slightly drunk, making it exceedingly narrow and drawing the roof with a single audacious curve. The sheet of notepaper had then been sent, by special messenger, to the coach-builders, who, having regarded it for some time with pained astonishment, had regret­fully given it for execution to their workmen. The design had been faithfully carried out. As a result the car was undoubtedly a thing of beauty, but it could hardly be described as a joy for ever, or even as a joy for five minutes. The shortest journey in it (in spite of its immense chassis) involved curvature of the spine, sore knees, and a ruined temper. Still, Lord William stuck to his car. It was really so terribly chic.

  The descent having been accomplished, they entered the house. A pale footman approached his lordship.

  ‘The manicurist has been waiting since three o’clock, m’lord.’

  ‘Send her away. I’m far too tired to be manicured to-day.’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  ‘And bring some liqueurs.’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  Brian leant his stick against a chair. In a Chinese stand were at least twenty varieties of sticks, topped with ivory, tortoise-shell, silver, gold, amber, polished bone.

  ‘Slightly vulgar, aren’t they? All presents, from peo­ple who think I go in for flagellation. Do take one.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He stretched out a finger towards the silver one.

  ‘That’s the cheapest one,’ said Lord William. ‘Need­less to say, it came from Maurice.’ He looked at Brian curiously. ‘If I’d asked anybody else to have a stick, they’d have grabbed a gold one.’

  ‘I’ve been properly brought up,’ said Brian.

  ‘Yes. That’s so clever of you.’

  ‘I shall get over it.’

  ‘Don’t. Go on being more and more properly brought up. It always pays for a man. For a woman it’s fatal. Anne Hardcastle is the only properly brought up woman I know, and as a result no bailiff will enter her house without a revolver or a dose of poison. Let’s go upstairs.’

  As they turned the corner of the staircase Brian suddenly stepped back in alarm. Through an open win­dow immediately in front of them the head of a negro appeared. From the expression on his face he seemed to be in great distress. The head was followed by an immense body, clad in white. He scrambled through the window, bowed low, and then, with a frightened glance around him, he ran down the corridor.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Only my servant.’

  ‘But . . . coming through the window?’

  ‘He comes through the window because he thinks the hall is full of devils.’

  At any other moment Brian would have thought only of the superb newspaper story which this would make. ‘Peer’s strange attendant. Maddened negro who enters through the window.’ As it was, he found himself wondering if Lord William were quite sane.

  ‘But – do you let him?’

  ‘Why not? I adore him. He adores me. But he’s been taking drugs lately and they seem to have got on his nerves. He assures me that the hall is possessed by every sort of devil. I told him that must be because it is decorated by Fryers.’

  ‘How does he get up, though?’

  ‘I keep a ladder for him.’ Lord William took him to the window and showed him a ladder stretching down into the courtyard. ‘Really, Rastus would be thrilled to think of all the excitement he’s caused. I must intro­duce you. He’s the sweetest thing, and will try to poke hypodermic syringes into every part of you. What fun. But we’ll leave him to himself just now.’

  With a sigh of relief Brian followed Lord William up the stairs.

  ‘Here we are. All the pretties.’

  They stood in the doorway. A long room, with black painted walls and a silver ceiling, stretched before them. Round the walls, outlined with startling distinctness, were hung a series of masks, of every shape and colour. They stared into vacancy with sightless eyes, with fixed smiles and eternal frowns. A sudden wind blew in through the window and one of the masks fell to the floor. Brian shivered.

  ‘Damn. Anne Hardcastle has crashed. Come and look at her.’

  A little gingerly, as though the masks were about to speak, Brian advanced into the room. Lord William bent down to pick up the mask which had fallen.

  ‘Doesn’t she look horribly evil? It’s a perfect like­ness. The rather cow-like cheeks and that drooping mouth.’

  ‘Is she really as awful as that?’

  ‘She is. I’d love to introduce you to her. You’d be asked down to Hardcastle and given a liqueur which tastes of corpses.’

  Brian went over to the wall. ‘This is lovely, with the flower in her mouth.’

  ‘Yes. It was a murderess I saw once at the Old Bailey. I feel that if I were clever I should give the flower some symbolical meaning. I suppose I shall have to call it life.’

  He walked round the room pointing out mask after mask, some that were pale and perfect, some that were grotesquely contorted. There were masks that laughed with a painted frozen laughter, masks that were half turned aside, as though in fear of some mimic Medusa, masks with foolish pouts and semi-insane leers, masks so deformed that they were like the nightmares of a German caricaturist.

  ‘They’re my criticism of life,’ he continued. ‘That’s how I see my excellent friends. The masks in this room are all generalizations of types that are running about London to-day – types which you will soon have the great pleasure of meeting. But – I sometimes do some­thing more than generalization. . . .’

  ‘What? Real people? Like Lady Hardcastle?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Oh, I say – do let me see.’ Again Brian felt the journalistic value of this remarkable revelation. ‘Lord William Motley’s strange hobby. Secret masks of the great and the notorious. Lady Oxford in green plaster of Paris. Sir James Barrie in white soap-stone . . . Anita Loos in pink papier mâché.’ He sighed at the thought of so much copy wasted.

  Lord William seemed to pause for a minute. ‘Only two other people have ever seen them. . . .’

  Brian was t
ouched for a moment with a medieval tremor. ‘Perhaps you think I oughtn’t to . . .’ he said.

  ‘I’m quite sure you oughtn’t to. So you shall.’ A rather feverish smile spread over his immense cheeks. He drew a key from his pocket, walked over to the wall, pulled back a piece of tapestry and pushed open a door. He switched on a light which swung from the ceiling of a tiny room. ‘There!’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Brian stepped back. It was as though he had suddenly intruded upon a party of all his new acquaintances and had found them struck with some mortal plague. In the thin greenish light he discerned the face of Lady Thane, wrinkled and decayed, and by her side a coarse, brutal caricature of Lady Jane. A thin-lipped, frowning Maurice stared at him from a bracket near the roof, and a sallow, puffed-out Tanagra Guest (whom we shall meet later) gazed white and blank from the only table. Other men and women whose faces he had casually glanced at were here also, silent and sightless, but strangely real. Most dreadful of all were those which smiled.

  ‘I’ve seen enough of those,’ he said.

  ‘How delicious and temperamental.’ Motley took him by the arm. ‘Look! Look at Lady Thane.’

  ‘I thought you liked her.’

  ‘Look at her wrinkles and her double chins and her stupidity. Look at her lovely daughter Jane. She only needs a waxed moustache to make her perfect. Look at Tanagra – silly, bubbling, babbling Tanagra, thinking that she’s going to escape from life because she can chatter anybody off the face of the earth. Look at him, and her, and this, and that. And look at Maurice.’

  ‘I think you’re rather beastly to Maurice,’ said Brian quietly.

  Motley clapped his hands with delight, though he was not regarding him. ‘You’re always true to type. Always the chivalrous schoolboy. One day I shall do a mask of you.’

  ‘You’d better not.’

  ‘It will be completely pink and innocent. And it will be winking. That’s how I see you. So young and fresh, and with such an unbounded capacity for wrecking people’s lives. But oh – aren’t they lovely – aren’t they lovely?’