Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

  But the thing was beyond a joke. He was in the midst of it all. The spell was thick around him. Prob­ably, had he been fitter, had he not been weary with late nights, mentally emasculated by constant drink­ing, to which he was not accustomed, corrupted by a universal example of licentiousness, enervated by an unwonted luxury, he might have treated it all as a vastly entertaining procedure, allowed Lady Hardcastle to come to his room, tickled her playfully under the chin, and dismissed her unsatisfied, telling her to be a good girl. That was what a healthy young man would have done – unless he had packed his trunks and de­parted by the next train.

  But Brian was no longer a healthy young man. He was spoiled in body and soul. He still possessed his exceptional good looks, but that was about all. His courage in the face of difficulties had gone, for the simple reason that his belief in the essential value of life had been taken from him. He believed in nothing – nothing. He loved nothing, except Julia, and even that love was a form of agony more bitter than the rest.

  Dinner was over, and they were together in a long room lined with mirrors. Julia had gone outside. The night seemed hotter than ever.

  Brian lay on the sofa and listened to Anne’s singing. Her voice was like herself: it was infinitely suggestive. It was an entirely animal voice, deep-rooted in the body. One felt that, had a photograph been taken of her at that moment, the voice itself would actually have appeared on the negative, after the fashion of those psychic photographs which show a thread of proto­plasm emerging from the mediums. It seemed to curve round him, stretching out tentacles of sound, exploring his mind, penetrating his body.

  She sang, too, the type of song that one would expect her to sing:

  ‘Te souviens-tu, o Romeo, te souviens-tu

  Des beaux soirs en sang sur Verone

  Et de l’Adige vert et jaune?

  Te souviens-tu

  Du jardin frais

  Et des fontaines

  Et des Cypres

  Et des palais rivaux et verrouilles de paines

  Avec leurs herses et leurs chaines?’

  Never before had he realized how appalling a woman can be. Appalling, because desire, to a woman of this type, was a drug. She allowed it to saturate her. She welcomed its advances, she moved lazily and luxuri­antly in the swell of its tide. No man had ever been so possessed. A man’s passion might cut like a sword, or burn in a sudden destructive flame, but it could never attain to the proportions of a disease.

  ‘Do come over here.’

  He tried to smile. ‘I’m so terribly comfortable on the sofa.’

  ‘Shall I join you?’

  He rose to his feet quickly. At any other moment he would have felt the situation to be extremely ludicrous.

  ‘No. You’ve got to go on singing.’

  He stood by her at the piano. She struck a chord, then paused.

  ‘Damn,’ she whispered. ‘My bracelet’s come undone. Be an angel.’

  She lifted her arm. The coolness of the coarse emeralds was refreshing to his finger-tips. He fumbled with the clasp, thinking, ‘This is an old trick.’

  ‘Clumsy.’

  Her head was close to his, and as he raised his eyes their lips almost met. He looked at her with an expres­sion that seemed to plead dumbly to be left alone. She found it intensely attractive.

  The clasp was fastened; he released her hand. ‘Please go on singing.’

  ‘I’m tired of songs about love,’ with the accent on the ‘songs.’ ‘The great thing about life is to love – not to waste time singing about it.’

  ‘Well, sing about hate.’

  ‘It’s funny you should say that.’

  ‘Is it? Why?’

  ‘Because you hate me so much.’

  Her hand was stretched out towards his. He shifted his fingers and laughed nervously.

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Neck back, eyes drooping, lips half-parted. ‘Oh, I want to tell you you’re foul,’ thought Brian to himself. ‘I want to tell you that you’re undignified, and con­temptible, and that I hate you.’ But he only said:

  ‘Lady Hardcastle. It’s terribly rude of me, but I’m going to leave you now. I’ve got a nasty headache.’

  ‘Poor darling.’ She was smiling and her eyes were glistening.

  ‘It’ll be better soon.’

  ‘If you go and lie down, I’ll bring you some eau-de-Cologne.’

  ‘Please don’t bother.’

  ‘It isn’t any bother.’

  She struck a chord. And he escaped.

  He had been in his room half an hour, leaning out of the window, listening. He heard the voices of Anne and Julia raised as though in some fierce argument. A few words drifted up, which seemed to have a sinis­ter, horrible meaning. For a moment he listened in wide-eyed fright; then he shut the window.

  The acuteness of his senses almost frightened him. The thin rustle of the leaves outside was a clap of thun­der. The scent of the roses was overpowering. He hated the moonlight for bathing the gardens in so glaring a radiance; and he hated the voices below.

  The voices below. Julia and Anne, Anne and Julia. Julia and Anne. Angry voices. Arguing about him. Was ever situation more contemptible?

  The voices ceased. There was a long pause. He waited for a knock at the door. It came.

  Here was Julia. She stood there in the doorway, the light shining behind her, outlining the smooth surface of her arms and shoulders, giving them a ghostly radiance.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Darling. Of course.’

  His heart was thumping, thumping against his shirt. Why had she come? Had she come because . . . Had she come from Anne? From Anne? Was she still playing that woman’s game?

  He did not go towards her. He walked to the mantel­piece and poured himself out a drink.

  ‘Julia. There’s something I want to say.’

  For a fraction of a second she frowned. Then: ‘Do give me a cigarette first.’

  ‘There are some in the box by your side.’

  With a shrug of her shoulders, she stretched out her arm and took one.

  ‘Would it be troubling you too much to ask for a match?’

  Impatiently he struck one and put it between her fingers. He did not wish her to see how his hand was shaking.

  Almost he felt inclined to laugh. One tries to talk seriously, and – lo, a cigarette must be lit first. Always these cigarettes. Could one never escape from them? They burned away one’s life; they stifled one with their smoke. He had a cigarette between his own fingers at the moment. Irritably he threw it away.

  ‘You seem distrait.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked at her and smiled. There was a quality in the smile which did not please her, for she turned away.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’re a crashing success with our hostess.’

  He made no reply. He was waiting for her next remark. His fists were tightly clenched.

  ‘Did you hear me, darling?’

  ‘Yes. I heard.’

  ‘Well?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why don’t you answer?’

  ‘What do you expect me to say? That I’d been a crashing failure? Or a crashing bore? Or a crashing angel?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, don’t be silly. You’ve got a headache. Run along to Anne and she’ll take it away for you.’

  There was a long pause before he said: ‘Do you mind repeating that?’

  ‘Darling, you’re getting deaf. I said, “Run along to Anne and she’ll take it away for you.” ’

  He leant back his head and closed his eyes. Instinct­ively he felt this was the knock-out blow. This was the thing he had been waiting for – his coup de grâce. Misery and anger fought in his heart, and misery being the child of slower step, anger won. He turned and brought his fist down with a crash on the table.

  ‘So it was true!’

  ‘What was true?’

  ‘What I heard in the library.’ />
  Instantly she, too, threw off the mask.

  ‘So you’ve been listening, have you?’

  ‘Yes, I have. It seems to me the most honourable occupation anybody has in this house.’

  ‘And what did you hear?’

  ‘If I heard right . . .’ He could not finish the sen­tence.

  ‘If! If! So there’s an if in it, is there?’

  ‘No. I’m damned afraid there isn’t.’

  ‘Oh – swearing? That’s hardly the little innocent, is it?’

  He took a step towards her. Frightened, she with­drew.

  ‘Now, once and for all, we’re going to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘There’s everything to talk about. Put down that cigarette. We’ll get some fresh air.’

  Insolently she puffed the smoke in his face. Without a word, he seized her wrists, took the cigarette from her fingers and threw it into the fireplace.

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Yes, now.’ She was breathing quickly. There was hatred in her eyes.

  ‘You want me to go to Anne Hardcastle’s room, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Why, I ask you.’

  Again he was a step nearer.

  ‘Why? Why? Why?’ she cried. ‘Oh, stop this ridiculous scene. It’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘It’ll have to. For once in a way you’re going to forget your nerves. You’re going to face facts.’

  ‘This piffling melodrama,’ she muttered.

  ‘Melodrama? Yes. It is a melodrama. A pretty dirty one too.’

  ‘I see.’

  Ridiculously, as in all human arguments, there came a pause, stemming the flow of passion, bringing them back again to the status of normal human beings. But the atmosphere was too electric for this to be more than a few seconds’ grace. Once more they drew their swords, all the more highly wrought because of this instant’s return to the normal.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I’m not going to.’

  ‘Shall I answer it for you?’

  ‘If you please. It doesn’t interest me.’

  ‘You want me to go to Anne Hardcastle’s room’ – he spoke very slowly and deliberately – ‘because you want me to . . . to make . . . love. . . .’

  Each word was like a blow which he was striking against his own heart. But she merely regarded him with unabated calm.

  ‘How amazingly intelligent you’re getting.’

  ‘So it’s true.’

  ‘Perfectly true.’

  He gazed at her, his hands raised above his head, feebly, in desperation. Misery filled him like a poison, contorting his face, his limbs, stabbing his heart with pain.

  ‘But, Julia – Julia . . .’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what?’

  ‘Julia!’

  ‘Are we always to be so utterly virtuous?’

  ‘But it’s filthy,’ he cried, his voice rising with hys­teria. ‘It’s nauseating. I wouldn’t believe that any human being . . .’

  ‘No human being is any more nauseating than any other. I fail to see what the fuss is about. If you can’t take a little trouble to help me out of rather an unpleas­ant situation . . .’

  He looked at her dumbly. Anger was slowly lighting up her face, painting a deep glow on her cheeks, a flush round her neck.

  He tried to say, ‘You used to love me,’ but the words stuck in his throat. He could only whisper them. Yet she heard.

  ‘I used to love you? Why, I can’t imagine.’

  She turned to go.

  ‘Julia,’ he whispered again.

  ‘Oh – what is it? What have we got to say to one another now? The first thing I ask you in my life you refuse. Well, it’s the last time I shall ask.’

  ‘But anything – anything in the world . . . but –’

  ‘But the one thing one happens to ask.’

  ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know one little thing about me. And I thought I’d told you every­thing.’

  ‘What are you?’ she laughed hysterically. ‘A pretty boy. Not quite so pretty as he was, but still pretty enough. And rather spoilt, too, isn’t he? Thinks be­cause he’s been asked to dine a few times, and has bought a new suit or two that he’s everything that’s most chic. Thinks he’s irresistible. Thinks he’s – oh, God knows what!’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was almost screaming now. ‘Well, let me tell you that you’re merely rather a vulgar second-rate reporter. That and nothing more. Why the devil any of us took the faintest notice of you I don’t know. You’re merely one of hundreds of young men who occasionally amuse us. Where they come from, where they go to, I don’t care. Nobody cares. They disappear after a time. That’s all. Well, you’ve had a long run for your money. You can disappear. And the sooner you disappear the better. Good night.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The season was ended, and the vulgar month of August was everywhere in evidence. Blinds were being drawn, one by one, in the windows of Grosvenor Square, like lids lowered over eyes that had grown glassy with sparkling too late into the night. Once more the few remaining members of White’s Club glared suspiciously at their fellow-members in the St. James’s and Boodles’ who, for reasons best known to themselves, had not departed to Scotland or the Lido. Once more the restaurants were deserted save for a few Americans, wandering like lost sheep among a surfeit of stale hors d’œuvres.

  London, in fact, was empty – quite empty. You might have felt inclined to doubt the fact, seeing the black throngs of pedestrians in the Strand, the buses roaring down that dear little valley in Piccadilly, the wagons, and lorries and taxis cavorting dizzily about the merry-go-round of Hyde Park Corner. You might have felt inclined to say, ‘London is as full as ever.’ But how sadly would you be lacking in taste!

  These are not real creatures, these creatures of the bus and the pavement. They are ghosts. They have no moral or physical reason for existence. They are Robots, phantoms, ideas – what you will, but they are not real. Occasionally, through the crowded solitude, a Rolls-Royce glides disdainfully, and inside it, perhaps, you may see a real person, with real paint on her face and real pearls round her neck. But, oh! how lonely she is! as lonely as though she were in the desert.

  And somewhere amid this crowd of ghosts, in his little office in Fleet Street, Brian was working. You know enough about his state of mind to excuse me from further elaborating it. It may be remarked, however, that in his passage between the first and last chapters of this book he has grown considerably older in appear­ance. His face is thinner, there is a droop about his mouth, and his eyes seem darker and more deeply set.

  He was back at his old job, writing paragraphs. A suitable occupation indeed, for a tragic comedian. To fawn and smirk and lie and prate about the great ones whose littleness he knew so well! To write sycophan­tic nonsense, in a vulgar news-sheet, around a name which he had lately breathed to the stars! To pretend a lackeyed respect for those whom he knew to be con­temptible and obscene! Oh, God! – if he could but tell the truth! If instead of his specious platitudes he could take up his pen and dip it in bitter aloes, and give to the world a few of the facts which seemed to have shrivelled his own heart. That would be worth while indeed! The idea dominated him. He laughed out loud, startling the grimy office boy, and wrote, so quickly that the words flowed together as though they were molten with anger:

  ‘Amusing, isn’t it, quite terribly amusing, the affair which Lady Julia Cressey has just had with that strange young man, Brian Elme? Who Mr. Elme was, nobody seems to have known or cared, but he was one of those people that one meets positively everywhere nowadays, who seem to imagine that they can know anybody merely because of their appearance.

  ‘It really was delicious to see the way she managed him. They tell me that he actually used to cry at her feet. And all the time, of cou
rse, she was merely amused by him, because he was so charmingly gauche, and did the wrong thing at the right moment with quite exceptional regularity. Eh bien! It’s over. And Lady Julia is in Scotland, looking too lovely in all sorts of tweeds. They say she has found dozens of new lovers, who are more than compensating her for the loss of dear Brian . . .

  He threw the paper on the floor and began another. It seemed to be a way of working off a great deal of perilous energy.

  ‘How pretty the Hon. Maurice Cheyne looked when he went to Mrs. Grindhaven’s Ball dressed as a woman! Really, I think it a most admirable idea, don’t you, dearest? I could not conceive what that little group of old-fashioned people on the stairs meant when they said that they thought he ought to be shot! Fancy being shot for wearing a quite lovely Molyneux dress, with an exquisite phallic design in dia­mante round the waist! After all, he is a deliciously girlish creature, and in these days of self-expression one knows how dangerous it is to repress one’s natural instincts. I only hope that lots of charming young men will soon be following his example . . .’

  The scene of a month ago, in the café, flashed through his mind, and again he wrote:

  ‘That fine example of the British aristocracy, Lord William Motley, has a charming scheme for carrying the cocaine which is so necessary to his existence. He keeps it in the top of a long walking-stick, in a tiny phial of onyx and platinum, and after each little sniff his epigrams become more brilliant than ever. I expect we shall all be copying him soon, shan’t we, darling? After all, life is too exhaust­ing to allow us to carry on without just a little stimulant, even if the doctors do say it is naughty of us.’

  ‘I was really shocked the other day to read in some horrid Bolshevik paper a suggestion that it really did not matter whether “we” carried on or not. How amazing those Labour people are! What would all the darling little night clubs do without us? And the poor sturgeons? And Mr. Cartier? All nature would be upset if it weren’t for “us.” Roses would be forced to bloom in season, and diamonds would lie all cold and dirty in the clay, without any of those sweet black men to dig them up and bring them to us. The dear geese would be bored to death if nobody wanted any more foie-gras, and really, one knows that the footmen would quite go to the dogs. . . .’