The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  Your STEP-DADDY.

  Win went every day to the post office in Charing Cross Road. In her loose way she had always referred to this office as the Charing Cross Post Office; but the Charing Cross Post Office is in Duncannon Street. Therefore she never received Mr. Mellish’s letter.

  Two weeks later he received a letter in a ready-stamped post office envelope. It was written on telegram forms.

  … I suppose I ought to have known. What a fool I was ever to write to you at all. I shall always hate you because you are a cruel, miserly, mean, thoroughly rotten, treacherous, deceitful, dirty old man. I despise you, and hate myself for ever having liked you. Mother hated you too. She only married you because she thought you would look after me, but you only married her for sexual reasons. I shudder at the thought!!!! You will laugh when you get this letter, and tear it up, and go on stuffing yourself with your cutlets and sleeping with your Mrs. Moore. But if there is a God he will punish you!!! But there isn’t a God. If there was a God how could he let a rotten beast like you live in comfort, rolling in money and making a pig of yourself with your cutlets and your Mrs. Moore while I am compelled to sell my body on the streets? I am glad Mother is dead, and I wish she had fallen down dead the day before she married you. She cried and cried as if her heart would break, because she hated you, you disgusted her! It was only for my sake she married you, and I wish that I had never been born, because if I had not been born, Mummy would not have married you, and then she would not have died of a broken heart, you Miser, you Beast!

  WINIFRED JOYCE.

  Mr. Mellish had been waiting for a letter from his stepdaughter. He opened this and read it before he ate his breakfast. Mrs. Moore screamed when, having read it to the end, he crumpled it in his right hand, and fell back, drawing up his knees so that the tray crashed to the floor. She called the doctor. Later the admiral came, carrying four hot-house peaches and a concoction of old brandy and the yolks of fresh eggs.

  “What do you think you’re playing at, young feller? Pull yourself together.”

  Mr. Mellish looked at him, but did not speak.

  “Hurry up, young feller, take hold of yourself. I’ve thought up a new opening … Pawn to Queen’s Bishop three. Let’s have the board up and try it out, what? Hey?”

  Mr. Mellish could not speak.

  Later the admiral said to the doctor: “There’s nothing seriously wrong, of course?”

  The doctor shrugged: “Mr. Mellish is no longer a young man,” he said. “He must be very careful, very very careful. The least excitement might be dangerous.”

  “But I should have thought Mellish was sound as a bell.”

  “Appearances are often deceptive. When the arteries harden up and the heart gets tired, it’s as well to look out for yourself.”

  “That little bitch!” said the admiral, with such vehemence that he made the doctor jump.

  *

  He referred, of course, to Win, who was sitting in a café in Charlotte Street drinking coffee and hoping that some old friend might come in and offer her a meal or even lend her some money. She had fifteen shillings, and could not imagine what she would do when that was gone. She was worried and angry; the most ill-used victim of man’s injustice since Hagar.

  A woman came in and pretended not to see her.

  “Why, hello, Loulou!” said Win.

  “Win darling, how nice to see you. How are you?”

  “Pretty awful.”

  “You look fine.”

  “I feel absolutely dreadful. Sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk to me. You don’t know what a relief it is to meet someone you can talk to.”

  “Well, it’ll have to be a pretty quick one,” said Loulou, grudgingly, “I haven’t got much time. I’ve got a date.” When they were sitting she asked, in a confidential undertone: “How was it? They tell me it isn’t really as bad as people make out.”

  Win laughed without mirth. “They ought to try it and see,” she said, bitterly. “It was absolutely frightful. The wardresses are absolute beasts—but absolute bitches, Loulou darling. And the food is vile. I couldn’t eat for ten days, you know … And then as a matter of fact, it wasn’t only the food, you know, Loulou darling—it was the misery, the injustice of it all. What have I done to be cooped up with thieves and prostitutes?”

  “Well, if you took away the thieves and prostitutes round here, Win darling, the pubs would be empty and there’d be nobody left to talk to. Personally, I don’t mind thieves and prostitutes myself, as long as they’re amusing.”

  “… And then I was so ill. I was going to have a baby, you know. I did so want to have that baby, Loulou. Oh Loulou, I did want that baby!”

  “What for?”

  Win could not answer that. She said: “I don’t know. I just wanted it.”

  “Why, what would you have done with it when you got it?”

  “I don’t know, I’d have managed somehow.”

  “How?” asked Loulou, who was a quick, bright, practical little woman.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, I’m all muddled in my head as a matter of fact. I suppose it’s just as well. I wish I’d died too. And my stepfather has been an absolute beast, Loulou, as a matter of fact. It half chokes me when I think of it.”

  “Then don’t think of it, darling.”

  “How can you help thinking of these things, Loulou?”

  “Have it your own way, Win darling.”

  “After all,” said Win, pretending to laugh. “I mean, why should I bore you with my troubles?”

  “I don’t know. Why does everybody bore one with their troubles? Go on, bore me with your troubles—I don’t mind, bless you.”

  “No,” said Win, bravely, “you tell me about yourself.”

  “I’ve got a job. Guess what?”

  “Oh, Loulou darling, I’m so happy for you! Do tell me,” cried Win, clapping her hands.

  “I’m a demonstrator. You know those sixpenny lipsticks and rouges and stuff they sell in Woolworths? I demonstrate ’em. I make myself up with the muck to show people how good it is. The idea is that if they spend eighteenpence they can look just like me.”

  “Oh, not in films?”

  “Films? I’ve made exactly six pounds out of films in five months.”

  “I do so admire you, Loulou darling. Nothing ever seems to get you down. I do so wish I had your strength of character. You are awfully strong, aren’t you? I do wish I was like you, Loulou; oh, I do, I do!”

  Loulou looked at her with an understanding eye, finished her coffee quickly, and said: “I’ve got to be going.”

  “As a matter of fact, Loulou darling, there’s something I wanted to ask you. As a matter of fact it’s rather urgent——”

  “—I tell you what; I’ll be around to-night or to-morrow. Tell me all about it then, eh? I’m one of the world’s workers,” said Loulou, talking fast and gripping her bag tightly under her left arm. “Cosmetic workers of all lands, unite, you have nothing but your virginities to lose and not a damn thing to gain. See you soon. Bye-bye.”

  “I’ll walk to the corner with you.”

  “Not going to the corner. I’ve got to fly. Be seeing you around, eh?” said Loulou; and the door slammed behind her.

  Win visited two or three other cafés frequented by people she knew. She met only one old acquaintance, a little bookseller who lived by selling back numbers of American magazines. As soon as she greeted him his night-bird’s instinct warned him. that he was in danger. He said: “Hello there, Win. Glad to see you around again. How’s things with you? With me they’re lousy. How’re you fixed? I’ve got to get some stock. I’m pretty ribby just now. I don’t suppose you could manage to let me have a couple of pounds till Friday?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Win, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “Coincidence, eh? Life is like that, isn’t it? Life just don’t mean a thing, does it? There we are both in the same boat. Literature is a mug’s game,” he s
aid, hitching up his bundle of secondhand copies of Vogue, Startling Detective and Snappy Stories.

  Then he went briskly in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Win, remembering that American Henry Fabian lived in Wardour Street, decided to try her luck there. It was twenty past twelve: she had tried twice before to find him at home. Fabian slept late: he was there when she came.

  *

  He said: “For Sweet Jesus, what the hell do you want?”

  Fabian was ready to go out. He was elegantly dressed in a brand new suit of pinkish cheviot and a silk shirt.

  “I did so much want to say hello to you, Harry, because … well … I just came to say hello to you, Harry.”

  “Okay. You said hello. Beat it.”

  “Harry!” said Win, wet-eyed, with a catch in her voice, “I want to talk to you. It’s such a long time since I talked to anybody worth talking to.”

  “Okay then, you can come in if you like, but make it snappy, will you? I got a date with a film distributor. I got to see a man about an animated cartoon, so make it snappy.”

  In his room Fabian fixed his hat more firmly over his right eye and made certain adjustments to the brim. He had taken to wearing his hat like Bing Crosby—jauntily, casually, in a devil-may-care way, as if he had absent-mindedly clapped it on to his head in the dark. This could not be achieved without trial and error, and patience. He squinted at himself and turned the hat a fraction of an inch to the right, like a biologist at the fine-adjustment screw of a microscope.

  “Don’t you look beautiful?” said Win.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT was only a few days since a man called Clipp had stopped Fabian in Cranbourne Street and said: “Look, Harry; got a pound?”

  Fabian said: “What for?”

  “I want the loan of a pound.”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Fabian, half closing one eye and opening the other wide. “I wish I had a pound for every time I wanted the loan of a pound.”

  “Be a sport, Harry,” said Clipp, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find a pound.”

  “You don’t know what you’re going to do if you don’t find a pound,” said Fabian. “Who lends me pounds? Jesus, the money I’ve loaned to every layabout in this god-damn town! And what have I ever got but the double-cross? Go and fiddle your own god-damn pound, Clipp, and stop worrying me. What am I? Henry Ford? John D. Rockefeller? Do I pick money off trees?”

  “I know you had a rough time, Harry, but I’ve always been your friend.”

  “I haven’t got no friends, and neither have you. Skip that bull. On your way, little feller.”

  Fabian had got little feller from Leo, and used it now whenever it was expedient. Clipp knew this, and smiled. “Make it half a nicker,” he said.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Lend me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something, Harry.”

  “You’ll tell me something?”

  “You give me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something.”

  No one knew how Clipp lived. He collected bets for a bookmaker on the street corners between Attenborough’s pawnshop in Wardour Street and the French pub in Dean Street. Everybody knew him. He was all things to all men. There was nothing Clipp would not do. Sometimes he assisted a peanut vendor; sometimes he helped to distribute picture postcards. Occasionally he pretended to be a racing tipster. He was so petty, so ridiculously small of body and soul that he was not regarded as a human being. In the underworld he was a Gulliver in Brobdingnag; women exchanged shameful secrets and performed messy and malodorous functions in his presence. Petty criminals, habitual whisperers and talkers in mysterious sign-language forgot that Clipp was there when they laid out guttersnipe strategies. He was conspicious, yet he remained unobserved, like gaudy wallpaper in a familiar room. Everyone knew him (or thought they knew him) but nobody knew the colour of his eyes. How old was he? … How many buttons are there on a policeman’s tunic? What clothes did he wear? … How many eyelet holes are there in a postman’s boot? Clipp was a fixture and a fitting. He was sat on, leaned against, spat into; used as a receptacle for dust and ashes; employed as a runner of errands, a carrier of messages; a stooge and a laughingstock. If a coward wanted someone to hit, he hit Clipp. If a beaten harlot wanted to express her loathing for mankind she remembered that Clipp was in a way a sort of man—at least he was not a woman—and she abused him. He had no feelings to hurt: a few small coins settled everything. He was an animated pig-nut; something next to nothing in the centre of a shell as hard as stone. He was a backside to kick, and a dirty hand into which you threw your small change. If you spat into his beer he would drink it, and he would smoke your chewed cigar-butt with enjoyment.

  Fabian gave him five shillings and said: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, here you are. But if it’s a horse, Clipp, you know where you can stick it. I know all about your lousy horses, little feller. I don’t want a horse. I had one for breakfast.”

  Clipp said: “If you want a horse, put your shirt and your grandmother’s drawers on Sweet Caporal in the 2.20 to-morrow at Doncaster. I know it for a fact—it’s on the job. But that wasn’t what I was going to tell you. If you really want to know something, make it half a nicker and I’ll tell you.”

  Clipp grinned and winked. Fabian gave him two more half-crowns and said: “There you are, that makes half a nicker. Go on, spit it out, little feller—not that I’m interested.”

  “Thank you very much, Harry, I appreciate that. You’re one in a million, Harry—apart from being the best dressed man in the West End. One in a million! Now let me tell you something. You know the Australian?”

  “So what?”

  “Well, you know his brother?”

  “I never knew he had a brother. Why?”

  “Oh, he’s got a brother all right. He calls himself Dicky Dart. You know Dicky Dart? He used to be a scrapper.”

  “Jesus Christ Almighty, little feller, what the hell do I know about these lousy slap-happy leather-pushers?”

  “Well, Dicky Dart’s just come up from Brum, and he wants you.”

  “He wants me? What the hell for?”

  “Well, somebody passed Dicky Dart the word, and he wants you. He wants to have a word with you. You know what I mean by a word? He wants to have a nice quiet chat with you, just you and him, all alone. See what I mean? You know Dicky Dart, if you get what I mean. Even the Brummagen mob was afraid of Dicky. Well, so now you know, Harry—Dicky Dart wants you.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Fabian, “I never did anything to him. Jesus, I don’t know him!”

  “Somebody passed him the word about his brother, the Australian. There’s no love lost between Dicky and the Australian, but Dicky wants to see you as a matter of principle, just for a nice quiet chat.”

  “What harm did I ever do the Australian?” cried Fabian.

  “I don’t know, Harry, but there you are; that’s the way it is.”

  “Nuts! I don’t give a good god-damn!”

  “I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all. Dicky said—I’m only repeating what Dicky said—Dicky said you wasn’t worth hanging for, and you wasn’t worth ten years. He said he’d just give you the boot until your own mother wouldn’t recognise you and break a few of your arms. He said he might sort of accidentally kind of scratch one of your eyes and kick you in——”

  “—Scram, little feller! Who gives a good god-damn? It’s a misunderstanding.”

  “That’s what I thought at the time. Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the word, in strict confidence. Take it or leave it: you know best. And I’m much obliged to you for these four tosheroons,” said Clipp, jingling the ten shillings in his pocket.

  Clipp sidled away and disappeared, and Fabian killed time in crowded places until Katusha, who was now known as Russian Katty, came to report. She had accommodated three clients and had already earned nine pounds.

  “Now you see, kid,” said Fabian, “you see for yourself whether I was right or wrong.
Didn’t I tell you all along? Stick by me and I’ll put a gold spoon right in your kisser. But listen—don’t you kind of get sort of fed up with this lousy city? Don’t you sort of feel it’d make a kind of change to get the hell out of it?”

  “I like it,” said Katusha. “You meet such interesting people.”

  “Interesting people? Jesus, kid, you call these people interesting? I want to take you to Hollywood. I want you to get some place. Hell, I’ve got to admit I made a mistake coming here. Jesus, there’s nothing for me to do here. Christ, kid, I want to get the hell out of it. Frankly speaking, I don’t mind telling you I’ve sort of had just about enough. Let’s pack everything up and scram out of it, and go to Hollywood. Christ, a girl like you—you’d be in the bright lights inside of six months. I could introduce you to the right people. Whaddaya say? How’d ya like it?”

  Now every prostitute between Hyde Park Corner and Cambridge Circus knew Harry Fabian and had discussed him freely with Katusha. A girl called Star had told Katusha how Harry Fabian, living on the earnings of a girl called Zoe, had made love to her one night when Zoe, having been arrested, was in a cell under Vine Street Police Station. Another girl said that Fabian was a rat, a rat and a liar; he came of a Cockney family and was no more American than Neville Chamberlain; and he had given her a horrible disease.

  Yet Katusha said: “Could we really go to Hollywood?”

  “On my mother’s grave. Only, look—money’s going to be tight, kid, till we get over there to the Coast. So we’ve got to get some scratch. We’ve got to dig for it. I want everything we can lay our hands on, because I’m so fed up to hell with this town I want to get the hell out of it. Okay?”