Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

  ‘Have a bit?’

  Brian turned to the women.

  ‘I expect you’d like to go.’

  ‘Please. Please.’

  As though fleeing from a madman they stretched out their hands for their cloaks. For a taker of cocaine, to those who see him for the first time, is a madman. He is animated by a devil. He is a horrible sort of Robot. One feels that nothing he says or does is human. One cannot speak to him. One can only speak at him, beyond him.

  They did not speak to him. They flew out, through the door, along the vestibule and into the windy street. Brian hailed a taxi. They got in, and whirled away.

  He went back to the little room. Lord William was sitting up in his chair, talking volubly to himself.

  Brian watched. He was experiencing a purely primi­tive sensation. It was not Lord William nor his loath­someness that was shocking him. It was not even an under-surge of inherited Puritanism that filled him with nausea. It was life itself, or rather, the distortion of life with which he had allowed himself to drift. As he listened to the babble of meaningless talk, studied the clawing of the fingers on the tablecloth, he said to himself, ‘Brilliance has come to this. Youth has come to this, and gaiety. All things eventually come to this. I shall be like it one of these days.’

  Gradually, the figure became calm, comparatively sane. Taking a large white handkerchief from his pocket, Lord William wiped his forehead.

  ‘My dear child,’ he said, in a fairly clear voice, ‘you are inimitable. You always play up. Nobody could have simulated a more heavenly expression of outraged innocence. It was worthy of Eric, or Little by Little . . . such an attractive young man. And the way you hurried off those cow-like women was masterly.’

  ‘I wasn’t pretending, thank you.’

  Lord William smiled broadly. ‘And you can even keep it up now. It is quite brilliant of you. As a reward . . .’

  He put his hand in his pocket and produced the little gold case. He pushed it across to Brian. ‘This is what I call true friendship.’

  Brian put out his hand, and seized the case and threw it on the floor.

  ‘You damned swine!’ he cried. ‘You damned swine!’ He felt breathless, filled with a bubbling, childish hatred. ‘I didn’t know anybody could be so foul. Oh – God!’ He turned away. He told himself he was behav­ing like a melodramatic fool. He tried, even for a second, to see the thing calmly, to treat it as an amiable eccentricity, but he could not. His whole being was nauseated. His very fingers seemed to burn where they had touched the box. His heart beat very quickly, and he had to swallow to prevent himself from actually being sick.

  There was the sound of a scraping chair, a few shuf­fling footsteps, the slamming of a door. Lord William had gone. Out of his life, for ever. That was all he knew at the moment. He did not realize the complica­tions which such an exit implied. He did not begin to ponder the reactions which such a breach would entail among his circle of acquaintances. He only knew that never would he speak to him, see him, again.

  He took a deep breath, and gulped some water. He went to the glass, and smoothed his hair with trembling fingers, and laid his head on his hands.

  Reflected in the glass he saw the door open slowly, and the crimson face of the patron peeped through. Slowly that gentleman tiptoed into the room, cast a look at Brian, cast another eye upon the floor, observed a little gold box. He picked up the little box, put it into his pocket, cast another look at Brian, and tiptoed from the room, a smile on his lips.

  The little ceiling light in the inner sanctum at Queen Anne’s Gate was swinging backwards and forwards in the wind from the open window, casting the strangest shadows down the long black room, seeming to make the masks on the wall alternately to smile and frown.

  Bending over his table was the bulky silhouette of Lord William. He was working feverishly at a mask which lay almost finished before him. It represented the face of a young man of remarkable beauty, but it was the face of a fool. The lips of sodden clay hung slightly apart, the cheeks were the faintest degree too rounded, the eyelids drooped as though with the hint of sleep, and there was something foolish even in the way he had caused a curl to brush carelessly over the forehead.

  He ceased modelling, and stepped back, wiping his hands, regarding his handiwork. Very soon the mask would be dry. It was one of his best efforts.

  Up and down, up and down the room he walked, muttering to himself. Still the lamp swung, still the shadows caused the masks to smile and frown. To his highly stimulated brain, working at top pressure, the room seemed to stretch into infinity, the ceiling was lost in distant spaces, and the little shadows were like vast ghostly arms, sweeping round him with titanic ges­tures. He had the impression that he was a prince who walked down a medieval hall, and that the mimic faces on the wall were his obsequious courtiers, lined up to do him sycophantic homage.

  He paused, and stretched out his arm before the mask of Lady Hardcastle, which stared at him with blank, narrowed eyes. A phantom Lady Hardcastle, in a gown of faded silk, rustled from the wall, and stood by him. He escorted her to the other side, where, already glimmering in the shadows, could be discerned the form of Tanagra Guest. She, too, drifted out, luminous and whispering, and took her position on his other side. Near the doorway, at the other end of the room, there was a stirring in the shadows, and Maurice, slim and wraith-like, clad in translucent doublet and moonlit hose, glided over to do his homage.

  Then in all corners of the room, there were sighings and whisperings, a wreathing as of smoke, which curled snake-like from the corners, and gradually in the half-light assumed human shape. He waited till they were all ready, lined behind him in a vast serpentine proces­sion. The echo of distant fifes drummed in his ears. Ready? He glanced behind him. Yes. They were all there, lined up. He gave the signal, and began to lead the procession down the hall.

  Up and down, up and down, walked the bulky figure of Lord William. In the street outside there was the sound of passing taxis, but he heard them not. The early spring leaves lisped against the window, but they were not for him. He was far, far away, leading his strange creations – the only children which he would ever give to the world – down the corridors of the past.

  Suddenly the solitary figure paused, the head drooped, the body seemed to crumple. His eyes opened, staring out, half glazed with an overpowering fatigue. His face was deathly white, and he shivered. He dragged his feet over to the table on which lay the mask which he had lately been modelling. He touched it with listless fingers. Of what interest was it now?

  Then, so swiftly that he almost fell, he sank on to the couch by the table’s side. In a moment he was asleep.

  Still the light swung backwards and forwards. The shadows passed over the face of the inane and beautiful young man, which was now quite dry. And each time that they passed, they seemed to twitch it to a smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Brian woke up on the following morning, and saw Mrs. Pleat standing by his bed, holding out his eggs and bacon, he could have kissed her for being so ‘ordinary.’

  All night long he had tossed in the grip of a night­mare, in which he was chased by a gibbering Lord Wil­liam through a snowstorm. Thicker and thicker fell the snow, and ever and anon Lord William would catch him up, trying to cram the snow down his throat. And at last he had been left desolate and alone on an immense plateau, in which the snow was trampled all round him by unseen, cloven feet.

  But with Mrs. Pleat, and eggs and bacon, and in­ferior coffee, he returned to the world of normal human beings, the world of people who read The Daily Mail, and think twice before they spend ten shillings, and follow with real interest the private life of Gloria Swan­son. He leant back in bed, and drank his coffee, listen­ing eagerly to Mrs. Pleat’s acid comments upon the woman who lived in the flat above.

  ‘She says she never uses the bath,’ Mrs. Pleat ob­served. Having made this statement, she retreated to the door, as though the matter were closed. At the door, however,
she suddenly turned round, folded her arms, and regarded Brian more in sorrow than in anger. ‘And you believes ’er.’

  ‘Well – I’ve never seen her in it, but . . .’ Brian began.

  ‘There ain’t no need to see,’ Mrs. Pleat interrupted. ‘It’s the traces.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Mrs. Pleat again advanced. ‘You pay five shillings a week for that there bath, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She snorted. ‘Some people would call it robbery. Still. You pays it. And she isn’t supposed to ’ave no­thing to do with it, is she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then.’ Here she lifted her finger trium­phantly. ‘’Ow is it that this morning the linoneum is drippin’, ’ow is it that the water is cold, and ’ow is it that she’s ’anging wet towels out of the window, and walkin’ up and down the stairs with ’er ’air ’anging down ’er back, looking so comical that I could ’ave laughed in ’er face if I didn’t know what she’d been a-doin’ of.’

  To this elaborate injunction Brian could frame no adequate reply. He was only aware of the existence of the woman upstairs by occasional swift meetings in the hall, and by the sound of hymns, delivered in a guttural voice (she was of Swiss extraction) which penetrated through the matchboard during his morning splashings.

  But to Mrs. Pleat, the woman upstairs was an active, hostile entity. She was a malicious schemer, who spent her life popping in and out of forbidden baths, littering the staircase with hairpins (merely to annoy Mrs. Pleat) and doubtless leading an immoral life. For it must be understood that after Mrs. Pleat’s unfortunate matri­monial experience, all women were hateful. There was no good in any of them. They were her natural enemies.

  Brian propitiated her by promising to complain to the landlord, finished his eggs and bacon, had a cold bath, and came down, feeling considerably refreshed.

  The telephone bell rang.

  ‘Is that you, Brian? It’s Maurice. I want to see you dreadfully. It’s about Don. What? No. I can’t ex­plain over the ’phone. Could you come along straight away?’

  Brian paused for a moment. What had happened? Had Lord William . . . However. It was no use try­ing to speculate. Better learn the truth and face it.

  ‘All right. I’ll come.’

  ‘Angel.’

  Brian put down the receiver and began to prowl round the room. He wanted to saturate himself in his own, personal atmosphere before setting out. He wanted to feel his feet grounded firmly on something which could be called himself.

  He turned to the mantelpiece. It was a treasure-house of absurd but homely associations. There was the egg-shaped ornament of glass, containing water, which produced a snowstorm when you shook it, and covered with white flakes the tiny green enamel house which was fastened to the bottom. There was an old colour engraving of the Countess of Suffolk, painted on black glass, which Walter had picked up for sixpence. It was supposed to be worth the enormous sum of three pounds. There were the four miniature china flower-trees, which had come from Vienna almost smashed to pieces. They had been carefully gummed together again, and would last intact until the warm weather. After that they would come unstuck, and would be put away in a drawer until another winter.

  From the mantelpiece to the piano. Dust lay thick over the scattered, ragged music. Mrs. Pleat really was awful. He would begin to play the piano again soon. Some études of Couperin, ‘Poor Little Rich Girl,’ George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (first pages miss­ing), a very vulgar transcription of ‘La Bohème,’ a Stravinsky waltz which nobody had ever been able to play, glaring unconquered behind a barbed-wire fence of double sharps and unsuspected flats.

  Over to the three book-shelves, which Mrs. Pleat insisted on calling The Library. The poems of Henri de Regnier; Beasts and Superbeasts, by Saki; Trollope’s Barchester Towers; La Feerie Cinghalaise, by Francis de Croisset; a poor translation of Pirandello’s Naked; Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier (unreadable); Sacheverell Sitwell’s Southern Baroque Art; a rather rude volume entitled Madame ne Veut pas d’Enfants (120th Mille); Cranford – his favourite book. He took down this last and glanced once again at that immortal des­cription of the Hon. Mrs. Jamieson’s tea-party, with the wafer bread-and-butter, and Miss Pole’s aristo­cratic conversation for the benefit of ‘her ladyship,’ and the firelight shining on the little table where frail old maids played spadrille. Oh – this was ripping. Every word was a step back on the road to sanity. He felt that if only he had read a little Cranford every morning he would not have strayed into the hopeless morass in which he now found himself.

  He must be getting on. As, on the top of a bus whirling towards Chelsea, he thought of his approach­ing interview, the very idea of Maurice seemed gro­tesque. Even more grotesque when he stood in his studio, faintly scented with yesterday’s odours, before a figure in a dressing-gown of chocolate satin, splashed with huge yellow sunflowers – a figure that held its face away from the light as though it had been a woman dreading the relentless tale of wrinkles.

  ‘What have you been saying about me to Don?’

  ‘What?’

  He repeated the question. ‘I know. I know.’ He was hysterical already. ‘And not only to Don, but to heaps of other people.’

  Brian stared at him in genuine amazement.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Maurice sat down at the piano, and wiped his lips nervously with a yellow handkerchief.

  ‘He rang me up this morning,’ he went on. ‘He told me you’d been going round London saying I ought to be shot. Saying – monstrous things.’ In feminine irri­tation he tapped E flat quickly, six times, with his right forefinger.

  Brian understood. Lord William had not lost much time. He must have decided to queer his pitch. Well – there would be a fight. No. It wasn’t worth it. Lord William could keep his futile friends. Yet – Julia? Oh, Lord! – it was ghastly.

  ‘Lord William’s a blasted liar.’

  Again those maddening six taps on E flat.

  ‘And what’s more . . .’ he began the story of last night. He spared not the smallest detail. And as he went on, he watched Maurice. He expected him at least to be moved, or ashamed, or frightened. To Brian’s utter astonishment, he merely appeared irri­tated. At the end of it, he said:

  ‘Well? What on earth d’you tell me that for?’

  Brian paused. . . . ‘But – isn’t it enough?’ Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. ‘For Christ’s sake stop that row!’

  He stopped. ‘As if you didn’t know before.’

  ‘I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.’

  ‘In any case, it’s no reason why you should black­guard me.’

  Brian looked at him almost in pity. ‘So you still believe I’ve said – whatever I’m supposed to have said?’ It was hopeless trying to argue with such a fool.

  The atmosphere seemed suddenly different – colder, calmer, but more malicious. Maurice stroked E flat again without sounding it.

  ‘You do your tricks very well,’ he said.

  ‘Tricks?’

  He played a few chords with his left hand. ‘This wide-eyed innocence. Terribly attractive.’

  ‘You sound slightly bitter.’

  Maurice gave a shrill laugh. ‘Oh, my dear! You have come on. Answering me in my own language.’

  ‘It’s the only language you understand.’

  ‘And still keeping your lovely moral qualities.’

  ‘That must infuriate you.’

  For answer he rose quickly from the piano and came up to Brian. His face was contorted. ‘Yes. It does in­furiate me. Hypocrisy always infuriated me and always will.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little intense?’

  Maurice did not answer the question. ‘You’re set­ting all my friends against me.’

  ‘Don’t be childish.’

  ‘You think I’m a freak, effeminate, something that ought to have been strangled at birth. Don’t you? Don’t you?’

  ‘Oh,
shut up.’

  ‘I shan’t shut up. I shan’t. You haven’t a right to say those things.’

  ‘I tell you I’ve said nothing.’

  ‘I’m as natural as you are. I can’t help – I can’t help . . .’ Suddenly, grotesquely, he began to sob, silently, with a tight-shut mouth, and dry eyes.

  Brian looked away. He felt acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘I can’t help how I’m made.’ Maurice was walking up and down the room, biting his lips mechanically, rubbing his hands with a restless movement against his thighs. ‘I’ve never liked things that other people liked. I’ve never fallen in love, or wanted to marry, or longed for children. I’ve tried and tried till I’m almost insane. But I can’t.’

  He opened his cigarette-case, found it empty, threw it on the table. Then, speaking more slowly: ‘I’m frightened. Hideously frightened of life.’ He came up and put his hand on Brian’s arm. ‘Sometimes I come back from a party and I turn on all the lights and I play the gramophone, and I stand in the middle of the room, just waiting, till I could scream. The room is bright and noisy, but I feel it’s full of people, looking at me, condemning me. They crowd round me, out of every door, they climb in at the window, they grin down from the ceiling, and oh, God! . . .’ he put his hand over his eyes, ‘they all accuse me. Accuse me. Why should I be accused? Tell me that.’

  ‘Look here. Nobody’s accusing you.’

  ‘Did I make myself? Did I go to God and say, please make me a freak? Please take away from me all power to love anybody? Please put me into this world with desires that I mustn’t satisfy and longings for something I can never get? Did I? Did I?’

  ‘I’m fearfully sorry for you.’

  Maurice looked at him, almost calmly, for a moment. Then his face again twisted. ‘I might have been so happy. Other people are happy. There are other peo­ple who are made like I am, and they make friends, wonderful friends, that stick to them all their life. I haven’t got a single friend.’

  ‘You’ve got Don – if that’s any satisfaction.’