Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

  ‘What have you been doing yourself?’

  ‘Getting drunk.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No. Some chaps.’

  ‘Exciting for you.’

  ‘Awfully. Had a fight with a policeman.’

  ‘That was elegant.’

  ‘Fearfully.’ He went to the sideboard and poured out a whisky. He swallowed it neat.

  ‘Do you ever stop drinking?’

  ‘Not when I can help it. Cheers my lonely hours.’

  ‘Is that a veiled hit at me?’

  Walter knocked out his pipe on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Not particularly veiled. We don’t see such a terrific lot of each other now, do we?’

  ‘Is that my fault?’

  ‘Frankly, yes.’ He looked at Brian as though he were looking at a stranger. ‘You keep rather late hours for me nowadays.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help that.’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  Brian turned to him angrily. ‘If you’re going to preach . . .’

  He laughed. ‘Preach! That’s funny. To you of all people.’

  ‘Well then, don’t do it.’

  Walter looked at him from the corner of his eye. ‘You must have brought quite a lot of brightness into people’s lives in those trousers to-night.’

  Brian did not answer.

  ‘I expect they wanted to adopt you, didn’t they?’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  ‘I’m only trying to learn about this wonderful party.’

  Brian sat down and began to take off his shoes. ‘Wouldn’t interest you.’

  ‘Is that exactly matey?’

  He threw the shoes irritably into a corner of the room. ‘Well, it wouldn’t.’

  ‘Anything that was ruining your health and your temper ought to be interesting. Otherwise it seems hardly worth while.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘If I understood, then, you’re mad.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not. You are ruining your health and your temper. You’ve suddenly been taken up by a lot of – well, I won’t characterize them. You’ve become a social success – a sort of social success.’

  ‘Go on.’

  There was a dangerous calm in both their voices.

  ‘I say “sort of” social success because it’s obvious that, with seven pounds a week, no other friends, and precious few clothes, your success will be – shall we say? – of a certain kind.’

  Brian stared at him coldly. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, ‘but you sound damned insulting.’

  ‘It isn’t insulting to tell you that you’re successful, merely because you’re something chic, for the moment, and because most of these women would like to have an affair with you.’

  ‘You’re damned clever, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m six years older than you. I’ve seen this happen before. As a matter of fact, it rather amused me, till it happened to you. I’ve seen other fellows taken up like this, just because they were good-looking and amusing – taken up out of the gutter . . .’

  ‘Are you suggesting that I was taken up out of the gutter?’

  ‘No, but you’re damned well putting yourself on a level with people who were. I could show you page­boys out of second-rate hotels dancing with your friends at the Embassy. I’d probably do the same if I were a page-boy, but still . . . I could show you poisonous swine out of dancing academies who’ve now got their flats in Half Moon Street. How? How? You know how.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Brian walked up to him.

  ‘Do you mean to say . . .’

  Walter held out his arms. He wanted to put his hands on Brian’s shoulders, but Brian shook him angrily off. He said:

  ‘Brian, old thing, I know you. I’m not suggesting anything. It’s only what other people are suggesting.’

  ‘Have your friends been talking?’ There was a sneer in Brian’s voice that he instantly regretted.

  Walter lowered his eyes. ‘My friends aren’t much. I know that, thank you. But they’re better than yours.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Think!’ He blazed up again. ‘Think? Your friends may be brilliant and æsthetic and God knows what, but they’re no damned use to you. If you weren’t a childish ass you’d see that. You’d see that you’d got into the rottenest set in London with about as much rapidity as a little lost boy in an American society film. Tanagra Guest! How does she get her money? You can’t give her sort of parties on the proceeds of miniature paint­ings. She lives merely by arranging nice little dinners for people and then going out of the house. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re foul. You’re absolutely foul.’

  Walter’s hand was on his wrist, holding it in a vice.

  ‘As for Lord William, your other great friend, he’s so filled up with vice that he can’t see out of his eyes. He’s so desiccated himself that he wants you merely because you’re young and vital and healthy. Soon you won’t be any use to him. And you’ll be dropped flat.’

  ‘For God’s sake leave go of my wrist.’

  He held it tighter. ‘Now we’re on this we’ll have it out. Look at Maurice Cheyne. Charming manners. Perfect clothes. Dances like a well-trained snake. Doped all day and all night. Would do you down for sixpence and make a good story out of it.’

  Brian was struggling violently. ‘You’ll be sorry for this.’

  ‘I couldn’t be sorrier than I am now. Look at that freak Jane, the sister of your lovely lady. Do you call her a normal woman? In a civilized society she’d be put into corduroy trousers and locked up. Look at the life they lead. It isn’t life – it’s a revolting parody. They’re none of them ever in a state of anything but intoxication of some sort or other. They’re a mass of nerves. You’re a mass of nerves, too. You’re pale and jumpy and impossible. . . .’

  ‘My life’s my own. Will you let go?’

  ‘Just one more thing. Julia. Yes, this’ll hurt. I don’t care. If ever there was anybody less worth wast­ing twopennyworth of affection on, it’s her.’

  With a breathless effort Brian freed himself.

  ‘You’ll go too far.’

  Walter came close to him. ‘She cares about as much for you as for a new bottle of scent. Because she’s beautiful, she thinks it’s her right to have affairs with anybody she damn well pleases. She’s as foul as the rest of them; fouler, because she’s making you foul too. . . .’

  With a sob of anger, Brian hit him across the face.

  Walter staggered back. Instinctively he prepared to hit back. Then he checked himself. A look of utter misery came over his face. He turned towards the door, and went out without a word.

  It is, of course, all wrong that a young man should weep. Weeping, according to the psychological chart which mankind has mapped out for our guidance, should be the strict monopoly of women and children.

  Yet, there are occasions when young men do weep – when the stream of tears which they thought had dried up in childhood proves, after all, to have been running underground, all the time, and with an agonizing tra­vail forces its way to the surface. To-night was such an occasion. For a whole hour Brian had been weeping. From head to foot he had been racked with sobs. Almost he had seemed to drown with sorrow. It was not only that his face was wet and glistening with tears; his whole body ached with the violent physical contor­tions which it entailed. For a few moments he would have calm, and then again the agony would seize him, and he would bite his lips, while his breath came in shuddering and spasmodically, and his face twisted itself into a mask of pain.

  ‘This is all wrong, all wrong,’ he told himself. ‘Mustn’t give way like this. All wrong.’

  Gradually the storm spent itself. He felt as though he had been whipped until he could not stand. He lay on his back on the bed, too tired to move, too exhausted even to raise his hand to wipe away the tears that still trickled, salt and warm, on to his lips. Still, at least now, he could br
eathe without that fearful shuddering effort. He heaved a deep sigh and shut his eyes.

  He did not remember falling asleep. But he must have done so, for when he woke it was already dawn, and he could hear Mrs. Pleat moving about in the little kitchen outside.

  He felt stiff and weary and forlorn. Why? Suddenly he remembered. He looked down at his still clothed limbs. Then, with a start, he rose to his feet and began to undress. Mrs. Pleat mustn’t find him like this.

  He had only just got into his pyjamas and sprung, shivering, into bed, when Mrs. Pleat entered.

  She surveyed Brian with a watery eye.

  ‘Not slept well?’ she said.

  Brian pretended to be sleepy. ‘Oh – not so badly.’

  ‘’E ’asn’t come in at all.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr. Walter.’

  ‘Not come in?’

  ‘No. That is to siy, not unless ’e’s come in and gone out again, and made ’is own bed, which isn’t exactly like Mr. Walter.’

  She was studying him intently. Brian thought furi­ously. She must not guess that anything had happened.

  After a pause he said, ‘Now I come to think of it, I believe he said he was going to stay with friends.’

  ‘Hoh!’

  She shut her mouth grimly. She didn’t believe that. She knew there was something in the air. Still, it was none of her business. She bustled to the window and shut it, her face wrapped in profound gloom. Then she turned and blinked.

  ‘It’s Toosday,’ she said.

  It’s Toosday! Somehow that seemed the bitterest thing of all. For Brian knew now that Walter had gone for ever. It had been inevitable. After what had hap­pened last night, even the stanchest friendship must break. Mercifully, for the moment he did not realize all that the breaking of such a friendship implied. He did not realize that the room below was empty, that never again, perhaps, would he have his morning ‘rags,’ never again find a face to welcome him home. Like all men who come to the parting of the ways, the first steps on the new road seem very much like those that have gone before. It is only when the road winds away into the dis­tance that one begins to understand what it has all meant.

  But the little phrase, ‘It’s Toosday,’ hurt – hurt as though she had bruised his heart. It was one of the most precious jokes he had ever shared with Walter. He would share it no more. Walter had flown into his life like a bird. Like a bird he had flown away.

  He turned his face to the wall.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s Tuesday.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Toosday’ went by, and Wednesday, Thursday, Fri­day and Saturday, and still Brian stayed in bed. For two days he lay in a high fever, which peopled the room with hectic shapes and painted crimson shadows on the ceiling. He had no company save a thin, rusty old doctor, who uttered platitudes about burning the candle at both ends and prescribed the obvious medicines, which Mrs. Pleat dispensed with grimy fingers, standing over him with that morbid interest in every phase of his condition which is one of the greatest delights of the very poor.

  Then on the Friday visitors were allowed. First there was Mrs. Gossett, who was so thrilled at the idea of being in a man’s bedroom that her eyes almost popped out of her head, her speech became tremolo and inarticulate, while she sat on the other side of the room, keeping her gaze primly fixed on the centre of the opposite wall in order that she might not see anything too . . .

  ‘Oh – won’t you stay and chaperwon me?’ she had cried to Mrs. Pleat, as that lady had announced her intention of departing.

  Mrs. Pleat regarded her for a moment with dark sus­picion. ‘I ain’t a trained nurse,’ was her sole reply. So that Mrs. Gossett for twenty delirious minutes was left with Brian alone, and if any woman could have been compromised by looking it, Mrs. Gossett was that woman.

  Then the rest of them had come sweeping into the flat, filling it with scent and chatter, until he longed to be really ill again that he might get rid of them. Lord William brought masses of roses, which he thrust into the arms of the astounded Mrs. Pleat, and a strange machine which was supposed to give oxygen to the air, but only succeeded in fusing the lights and slightly electrifying Maurice, to his lordship’s great delight. Tanagra came too, with a scent by Lentheric, and Mrs. Grindhaven, with the works of Mr. Michael Arlen (in each of which she fondly imagined herself to be the heroine), and Lady Jane, with a pair of green pyjamas. And they all went away saying how ‘delicious’ he looked, lying there in his little room. They also made other comments concerning the room itself, but those were not so kind.

  Finally, Julia.

  She had emerged from her car on the evening of Saturday just as Mrs. Pleat was coming out of the front door to go home. So appalled had Mrs. Pleat been by the vision of loveliness before her that she merely muttered something about ‘the secon’ floor up,’ and fled. Julia had therefore tiptoed upstairs, found Brian’s card on the door, and walked softly in, alone.

  So this was Brian’s room. She took it all in with one glance – the worn carpet, the cheap chairs with their lumpy corduroy cushions – and again the strange motherly protective feeling – one of the few feelings in which life is true to fiction – swept over her. She stepped across to the mantelpiece, and then she saw a thing which changed the motherly feeling into some­thing else – her own photograph, cut out from a page in The Sketch, set in a frame which, she realized, must have cost him half his week’s salary.

  ‘Who’s there?’ A tired voice from the next room.

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Julia!’

  There was the sound of somebody rising up in bed. She walked quickly to the half-open door and stood in it.

  ‘Ssh!’ she whispered. ‘You’re not to get up.’

  ‘I’m all right. Honestly. Oh – my dear.’

  Her fingers were on his forehead. She stood over him, looking into his uplifted eyes, which were wide and bright after a day of sleep. She bent down and with her face touched his fair, tousled hair, rubbing her cheek softly against it. In such a way, during her flash­ing childhood, had she rubbed her cheek against the silken mop of a worshipped golliwog.

  ‘Hot hands,’ she whispered.

  The hands clutched hers tightly.

  ‘Just lie back!’ She patted the pillow for him.

  He did as he was told. ‘I’m in heaven.’

  She kissed him lightly, brushing her lips with his, and his bare arm came round her neck, drawing her face to his, keeping it there, while he closed his eyes.

  ‘Shall we stay like this for ever?’ His voice was only a drowsy murmur.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I should have grown a huge beard, though.’

  ‘And my hair would be falling down my back.’

  ‘And we should have nails like eagles.’

  ‘And all our family jokes would be exhausted.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind. I’d go on holding you like this.’

  ‘We’d have to have some food now and then.’

  ‘We could have it in tubes, very quickly.’

  ‘And somebody would have to rub your back with methylated spirits.’

  ‘You could do that. And when we died, in about sixty years from now, we’d do it together. You would wake up one morning and say, “I rather think I shall die to-day.” And I’d say, “Very well, if you insist.” And when the actual moment came I should give you a ter­rific kiss through my beard. Then I should say, “On the word one, take a deep breath. On the word two, let the breath out. On the word three, make a huge rattley noise in your throat and die.”’

  ‘Ooh. You’re frightening me.’

  ‘There’s no need, because we should shoot up to heaven.’

  ‘What’s heaven like?’

  ‘Just an empty room. And you.’

  ‘Oh, darling. Something else.’

  ‘You don’t love me if you want anything else.’

  ‘Only sometimes.’

  ‘Well – I think it’s horrible of you
. Still, we might arrange it. . . .’

  But no. There are limits. Nobody can be expected to read somebody else’s idea of heaven. It is about as dreary as Tchekov on a wet Wednesday afternoon. The clock must be set on six hours, to one o’clock in the morning, the scene changed (with that agreeable ease which is one of the chief compensations of the novelist) to Julia’s bedroom in Berkeley Square, which is pan­elled in faded yellow brocade, with white leather furni­ture, lit by the cool silver flame of naked candles. And there the amazing secret is revealed that Julia, for the first time in her life, is really in love.

  It is not as dull as it sounds, if you take the trouble to read on. For common or garden love was the very last emotion of which Julia, or anybody else, conceived her­self capable. Passions with a new twist, certainly, senti­mental states, mental processes of a sweetly sexual nature, which lent themselves to analysis – all these caricatures, variations and attitudes of love which to­day we welcome as the real article – all these things she had known, had practised, and had adored. But love – the sort of love which has no complexes, which is so simple that it passeth understanding, that was a new and quite singular emotion. No wonder, therefore, that she stood at her door, undecided, radiant, as though she heard melodies which, for the rest of the world, were muted.

  She walked across the room slowly and sat down at her ridiculous desk, with its notepaper that matched the coffee-coloured carpet, its precious Venetian inkpot, its spray of yellow orchids that leant tired and bloated fingers over the lacquered edge. The light from a faded parchment shade shone on to a pile of white paper that she had laid there before she had dressed for dinner. She began to write.

  The first words tell her secret:

  ‘Brian, I love you. For a whole hour, I believe, I shall love you. And then the other “I” will wake again, and I shall look at what I have written, and laugh.

  ‘This is not a letter to you, darling. It is a letter to myself. It is a letter that is written by this curious real-unreal “me,” that sometimes comes out from its shell, to the other “me” that you know, and I know, and the rest of the world knows. Oh – it’s too involved. And I don’t want to analyse myself. I want just to drown in my own feelings – my real feelings for a minute.