Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

They went inside. ‘Good afternoon, m’lady. Good afternoon, m’lady.’ Forests of black-coated young men were bowing round them. Brian little knew that they had done this many times before, that they had partici­pated at the propitiation of many a sleek young man, had recommended cigarette-cases to so many dozens of ‘nephews’ that they were beginning to wonder when Lady Hardcastle would invent some other form of relationship.

  ‘I want to see some gold cigarette-cases, please.’ She paused, mentally undressing the suave attendant, and having done so, dismissing him from her mind. ‘For my nephew.’

  ‘Yes, m’lady.’

  A tray was produced. Why are cigarette-cases so ‘suspicious’? Is it because they so often seem to con­tain, nowadays, curious and partially incriminating inscriptions? Or is it because they have been so largely repandus by Anne Hardcastle? One wonders.

  ‘Which do you like best?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He paused. ‘I really don’t know if my opinion’s worth much.’ (Poor child! He really did think it was for a real nephew.)

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she crooned. ‘Say which you like.’

  Dutifully he pointed to a delicately chased object with platinum bands. ‘That’s rather a beauty.’

  ‘Yes – isn’t it?’ She took it. ‘Of course, I always think the great thing about . . .’ (Brian was sure she was going to say ‘Life,’ but she went on . . .) ‘about cigarette-cases is, that they should open easily.’ She turned to the attendant. ‘How many does this hold?’

  ‘Ten, m’lady.’

  ‘That means twelve in stinkers,’ said Brian.

  ‘How delicious you are!’ said Anne, with large eyes.

  Why a reference to ‘stinkers’ should qualify the speaker as ‘delicious’ Brian did not for the moment grasp. But he strongly objected to being called delicious in front of a blue-chinned dago who was smirking at him with a look of damnable condescension.

  ‘Very well,’ said Anne. ‘I’ll take that. And if you’ll give me a pencil, I’ll just write down the address.’

  Brian discreetly looked away. Oh, to get rid of this woman. One would have to be fumigated if one went about with her much longer. He glanced at his watch. Two thirty-five. He would stay with her till three, and then go.

  ‘By the way,’ said Anne, as soon as she had written down the address, ‘could you come down to Hardcastle the week-end after next?’

  A few months ago Brian would have jumped at the suggestion. He knew all about Hardcastle, with its moats, and its mazes, and its minstrel galleries. He even remembered a paragraph which he had written about it, long before he ever met Anne. It was headed, ‘PICASSO IN THE BATHROOM,’ and it read:

  ‘Few of us realize the difficulties with which owners of old houses have to contend when they desire to make a collec­tion of modern paintings. Thus, the lovely Lady Hard­castle, who has just brought back from Paris a superb Picasso, found that the walls of Hardcastle were so filled with Romneys, Gainsboroughs, Reynolds, Opies and Lawrences, that she has been forced to hang her treasure in one of the many bathrooms. “What a tonic for the beginning of the day,” whimsically remarked the Prince of Wales, as he emerged from the bathroom, clad in a pale blue dressing-gown, having just been splashing in the shadow of the modern masterpiece.’

  He did not, however, narrate this piece of informa­tion to her ladyship. Nor did he tell her that he was quite determined never to be lured between those fatal walls. He merely said that he was terribly sorry, but he was engaged.

  Anne sighed. This meant a visit to the tailor’s. And what with the price of young men’s clothes to-day, and the super-tax, as well . . . Still, she was a nice generous woman. She had a momentary impulse to remind him, in case he had not realized it, that the cigarette-case was intended for him. But she quelled it, as not being in the best of taste. For she was nothing if not well-bred.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘That means we shall have to go to the tailor’s now, doesn’t it?’

  Brian stared at her in open astonishment. Were the bats already winging their way through her belfry? He had said, ‘I can’t come to Hardcastle.’ She had replied, ‘Then we must go to the tailor’s.’ Where in the name of Heaven was the connection?

  ‘If you like,’ he answered, hoping that at least she would not become violent.

  Her face had the look of one who is resigned to heavy expenditure. As a matter of fact, she adored extravagant young men. But it did not do to let them know it.

  ‘Clothes are so terribly expensive now, aren’t they?’

  ‘Awful,’ said Brian, who at one time had been used to paying five guineas for ready-mades, and had grudged it.

  ‘Still, one must keep up appearances. I think that’s really the great thing to do in life, to keep up appear­ances.’

  ‘One of the greatest, certainly,’ he remarked. It was one of the ninety-ninth greatest things since lunch.

  They arrived at the shop. Anne had decided that she would go to two lounge suits. ‘Further than that,’ she said to herself, ‘no decent woman would go.’

  There is nothing quite like the atmosphere of a really first-class English tailor’s shop. Even film stars who are in the habit of ordering suits of clothes in Hanover Square with a carelessness which the average man would reserve for his cigarettes or his handkerchiefs, are slightly quelled, a little hushed by the austerity, the rich discretion of it all. In these surroundings, beneath an Adam ceiling, among a few sober rolls of perfect tweed, in the shadow of that yellowing notice over the mantelpiece, informing customers of the dates of Courts and Levees, clothes partake of something of the sanctity of state robes. One feels a little ashamed if one is not going to the levee, and as for one’s under-garments – but there are some subjects which are too painful for discussion.

  When, therefore, Brian entered this establishment with Anne, he instinctively braced himself to meet the scrutiny of the suave attendants, who were drooping in the shadows with the air of weary diplomats who knew how much more important was the cut of a waistcoat than the boundary of a country. All his past, his pre­sent, and indeed his future seemed sordid before the gaze of these gentlemen.

  However, he had no time for reflection. A second edition of the forest of young men was once more sway­ing round Anne, who said:

  ‘I want to see some patterns for lounge suits. For my nephew.’

  ‘Certainly, m’lady.’ And here the foreman, who was Scotch, cast a gloomy and suspicious eye at Brian.

  Suddenly, he understood. Oh yes, he was very dense, if you like. He should have understood at the beginning of the chapter. But when you are compara­tively new to London, and are still in the stage when you regard presents as part of the disappointments of birthdays and Christmas, when, in fact, you are still a fairly decent young man, you may be excused for a little lack of comprehension. The realization that Anne intended to give him some suits, coupled with the realization that her interest in him was not that of a mother, or a sister, or indeed of any of the list of female relatives so tantalizingly railed off from matrimony in the end of the Prayer Book, made him shy like a young colt. He could think of nothing but escape.

  Over his crimson face a look of much agitation passed as he glanced at his wrist-watch.

  ‘Good Lord! Lady Hardcastle. I must fly!’

  Her mouth drooped, and her eyes opened wide.

  ‘But the suits?’

  ‘I’m sure your nephew will be able to trust to your judgment.’

  ‘Oh – how silly you are. You’re the nephew!’

  She beamed at him. Now, surely, he would come to Hardcastle. But the beam soon faded, for an expression which nobody could have called encouraging came over his face.

  ‘I see. It’s very kind of you. But I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly accept a present like that.’

  ‘But I want to give you some suits,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry.’ He looked completely dogged.

  She seemed baffled.
Really this boy was impossible.

  ‘The great thing about life,’ she began, ‘is never to . . .’

  ‘Never to miss an experience,’ said Brian. ‘I know. But this is an experience which I’d really much rather miss. So, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll go.’

  He turned, went to the door, and waited. He was trembling with shame and indignation. She was trem­bling with thwarted plans and stagnant desires. She came to the door.

  ‘Won’t you change your mind?’

  His voice was hoarse. ‘You really shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘But I wanted to do it. . . .’ Her voice trailed off like that of a child who has been denied an extra sweet­meat. She looked dangerously near to tears.

  ‘I wouldn’t let anybody give me things like that.’

  ‘Like what? I wasn’t patronizing, was I?’

  He felt acutely uncomfortable. ‘No, of course not. But . . .’

  ‘There aren’t any “buts.” Why can’t you look upon me as a friend?’

  ‘That’s what I hope I may do.’

  And he was gone. She thought that it was a curious thing for a young man to say.

  Of course, he would come. She had never failed yet. But how? That was the question.

  She clambered into the car alone, and whirled away into the shadows. As she applied the nineteenth coat of powder to her nose, she wondered, in her slow, obvious way, what this strange young man did want. He was really quite different from the rest. When she had taken that divine young dancer from the ballet to be fitted for a new suit he had chosen not one but a dozen. He had run amok among tweeds and broad­cloths and merinos, choosing costumes that would have equipped him for a world-tour. And not only ‘would’ but did so equip him, for he had sailed for America on the very first day that the suits had arrived, without even giving her a kiss.

  Well, here she was at Madame Vadaire’s, and really she almost shuddered to think of all the things they would have to do to her face to conceal the ravages which her very emotional afternoon had traced on it. They would have to cover it with towels, and smooth it with creams, and rub it with ice and – oh, dear, why was Love so tiring?

  She climbed up the stairs, entered the rose-lighted salon, and followed her own attendant to a little white room filled with bottles and lotions and strange elec­trical appliance. Around her rose the babble of voices from the ladies of Mayfair – tired voices, harsh voices, greedy voices. She recognized among them the tones of several of her friends. Pretty ladies! Charming ladies! They were all sitting back, like her, being hurt, being bored, being twisted and torn and slapped, in order that their faces might smile bravely through another season. The feeling that she was surrounded by kindred spirits encouraged her. For though she did not realize it, the peculiar attitude of Brian had quite troubled her turgid spirit. Really – such an odd young man. But so terribly attractive.

  ‘The usual treatment, m’lady?’

  She glanced up, and cast a look of acute envy and malice at the uncannily smooth face of the masseuse who bent over her.

  ‘Yes. The usual.’

  She closed her eyes, and the first application of cream stung her face. It hurt – ooh – how it hurt! But it was worth it.

  And that evening, when Brian returned to the flat, there was a little parcel for him, with red sealing-wax and blue ribbons. When he discovered the cigarette-case inside it, he had a spasm of moral indignation which lasted for quite ten minutes. But he kept the case.

  Which shows that he was not such a fool as you may be beginning to think.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The observant reader, who has followed Brian’s passage through London, ticking off the various vices, plain and coloured, with which he has come in contact, will doubtless be puzzled by a curious omission. Where are the drug fiends? No single whiff of cocaine has blown across these pages, nor have we heard the rattle of even a miniature hypodermic syringe.

  That omission will now be rectified, not, it must be confessed, in order to please the reader, nor even to round off Brian’s experiences, which are still far from complete, but as a sober record of fact. There is noth­ing particularly exciting about, say, the taking of cocaine as a mere physiological phenomenon. Its action on the body is coarser and far less exquisitely balanced than the action of a common pill, and its effect on the mind is, after a regrettably short period, less stimulat­ing than a dramatic criticism by Mr. George J. Nathan.

  No. The interest is in its reaction on the spectators. Take a young man like Brian, to whom the very idea of cocaine suggests the Evil One. Take Lord William Motley, the subtle reference to whose little gold box, a few chapters back, will not have passed unnoticed. Bring these two characters together, produce the gold box, describe the deed. What happens? Something not without interest.

  But why did Lord William choose, at this particular period, to lay his cards on the table? For the simple reason that the desire to spoil is among the keenest desires of the human race. Few of us can resist scrabbling with our walking-sticks on a stretch of virgin sand. There is something almost damnably irritating about a field of untrodden snow. And though Brian could not possibly be described as either virgin or snow-like, he was still deliciously innocent of the more advanced stages of unmoral amusement.

  In any case, whatever the motive, and whether it is boring or amusing, it happened, and that should be enough for us, for it accelerated the whole action of Brian’s life. For the first time that one sees a drug addict ‘at work,’ as it were, is as shocking as the first time one sees the face of the dead.

  There are dining, in a private room at a celebrated little restaurant, Lord William, Brian, Gloria – the æsthetic young woman who figured briefly at Hayseed – and Gloria’s sister, Avril, who is a slightly pathetic, and smaller, imitation of Gloria herself. Lord William had arranged the dinner at a moment’s notice, feeling the itch for a sensation upon him, undecided how he would obtain that sensation, but choosing the least sophisti­cated of his friends, in order to heighten the effect.

  It is a painful dinner. Lord William is drunk. He is irritated, at times moody, at times riotous. The two women are obviously alarmed. Brian is puzzled and a little disgusted, not only for himself or for the women, but for the charming old head-waiter, who hovers round with a crimson, beaming face, like an ancient Pirate King, drawing attention to the vintage of the wines, which he has preserved for many years with the care of a father.

  The scene which now occurs may be described with the greatest simplicity. It will always remain in Brian’s mind as one of the most hideous of all his life’s experi­ences. Lord William had been comparatively tranquil during the last ten minutes. He had merely sat with his head leaning on one hand, gazing vacuously before him, while his fingers drummed monotonously on the tablecloth. True, if examined closely, he was a repul­sive sight, with his white skin, and his drooping eyes, but there was no need to examine him closely. He could just be treated as an accessory.

  Brian was talking to Gloria. Suddenly the white figure became animated.

  ‘Let’s have some brandy.’ The words were gargled like water coursing out of a bottle.

  Gloria looked at Brian with a mute appeal. ‘I don’t want any,’ said Brian at once.

  Avril was silent, petrified.

  Lord William took no notice.

  ‘Patron,’ he shouted.

  The pirate king appeared.

  ‘Brandy.’

  The pirate king beamed. In a moment there were four glasses before Lord William. In another moment those four glasses were filled with brandy – exquisite, golden liquor, whose very smell was intoxication. The pirate king’s face, as he regarded those four glasses, was paternal.

  Lord William took a glass in each hand. And he tossed the brandy on to the floor.

  That sounds a simple, sordid, and unexciting act. To Brian it was certainly sordid, and sufficiently simple, but it was also horrible. He saw Lord William’s twisted smile. He saw the black clo
ud over the pirate king’s face. He saw the twittering fear of Avril, and the unsophisticated shame of Gloria. He saw the glint of the shattered glasses on the stone floor, smelt the perfume of the outraged vintage. It was a very nasty moment. But not so nasty as was to come.

  ‘You damned fool.’

  Quickly Brian took the remaining two glasses out of his reach. He became heroic, semi-hysterical.

  ‘If you were a gentleman you’d ask these ladies’ par­don and drink their health.’

  ‘Not a gentleman.’

  There was silence. Lord William breathed heavily. His eyes glared in front of him, glazed. And then:

  ‘Want some cocaine.’

  ‘Don!’ Gloria’s voice broke in. He took no notice. Already his hand was searching in his pocket.

  ‘I’ve not got much, but it’s enough.’

  It all happened in a second. A little packet of blue paper was in his hand. It was opened and his fingers dipped into the white powder. With a clumsy gesture he stuffed the powder into his nostrils and sniffed – once, twice.

  Brian felt desolatingly sick. Why, he could not tell. It was not as though the action were unfamiliar, because it had frequently been described to him. Rather was it the fact that as Lord William took it, his whole being seemed charged with the melancholy of the damned. It was not done with a smile, nor even with a gesture of defiance. It was done in the manner of some mournful and inevitable rite. The corners of the mouth drooped, the head drooped, the eyes drooped. The fingers themselves were weary, seeming to realize the futility of their task.

  He gazed, fascinated. Lord William seemed not in the least ashamed. His features were still set in a mask of idiotic depression. Slowly his fingers closed round the packet, pressing it very tightly.

  Then gradually the transformation took place. It was as though a corpse were being generated into activity by the application of electricity. The muscles of the face twitched, contracted again, and then seemed to be pushed together by a powerful agent. He began to sit up. He breathed less heavily, though more quickly. His eyes began to sparkle, became very bright, dilated. He actually smiled. And he pushed the packet to Brian with a smile.