Chapter Four
Somebody had gone behind the bar and scrawled on the mirror in lipstick, “Welcome Home Jack Agass.”
Jack saw it through a dazzle of tears, for by nine o’clock he was maudlin drunk and was reaching out and shaking every hand he saw.
It was a warm evening, and the heat in the saloon bar of The Lamb was almost unbearable. It had driven many of the customers outside, where they gossiped in clusters on the pavement, lifting to every flutter of breeze faces which were still scarlet and beaded with sweat. Every time the door opened, simultaneous gusts of heat and noise burst out on them. Inside, the hardy majority congregated, seated in families along the wall, crowded beneath the revolving fans or swarming round the piano. Delegates from all these groups pushed to and from the bar, each miraculously balancing a collection of empty or freshly-filled glasses.
At the far end of the room the young blood of the street made uproarious music. In their midst were the Woodruff twins, Chick battering at the piano, Gus wrenching deafening disharmonies out of a piano-accordion. All the young men looked alike; big and well-built, with red, strong faces and abundant hair close-cropped round the base of the skull. Although none of them seemed beyond his middle-twenties, most of them moved and spoke with the authority and confidence of old soldiers. Their clothes were an answer to those who complain of lack of colour in our day — angularly-cut suits of bright blue that showed off (and embellished with Elizabethan shamelessness) the magnificent proportions of shoulder and waist; sports outfits of dazzling light grey; exotic American jackets in tan or white with facings of coloured velvet; huge ties on which bolts of red and green lightning flashed across yellow sunglare or pink nymphs swam in lucent green; gay shirts of silk or creamy poplin; and splendid shoes on huge crepe soles. They always trooped about in great, rowdy gangs; they thought of themselves as the Lads of the Village, although the local middle classes (who did them an injustice, for they were a hard-working and law-abiding lot) were provoked by their animal high spirits to refer to them distastefully as ‘the Lamb Street Yobs’. It was their mission, in this little community, always to be the life of the party. They went to football together every Saturday afternoon in the season, and boasted that even in a crowd of sixty thousand they could make themselves heard. They went to the pictures together in the evenings, where they were not ashamed to hail a beautiful actress with noisy approval or a particularly lush love scene with still noisier derision. Every year it was the Lads who organised a coach outing to Southend, and they could always be relied on to arrange a ‘do’ for the children or parties to celebrate coronations, victories or each other’s weddings. On the street corner they assembled every evening as a public judging committee which pronounced aloud on the qualities of every girl who went past, and sometimes they might be seen playing Jimmy-Knacker (a violent and large-scale form of leapfrog) with as much gusto as the small boys who imitated and adored them. Their diversions, however, were entirely harmless, and it was with justice that their mothers swore that they were good boys.
The girls were confined to two basic patterns; some of them slender and painstakingly alluring, the others red-cheeked and heroically built. All of them were well-dressed, and all of them displayed the same unflagging vigour. They and the Lads mingled in combative good nature like a horde of Katherines and Petruchios.
Chief among the Lads and this evening’s choirmaster was the huge, red-haired Bernie Whiteflower. “Come on,” he roared above the din — four years ago he had been a sergeant in the Army and he reinforced his appeal by brandishing his clenched fist as if he were rallying his platoon — “let’s ’ear yer, let’s ’EAR yer!” The Lads and their lasses bellowed and howled with redoubled volume; it was characteristic of the Lads that, while they could sing as harmoniously as a glee club when they were sitting on the top deck of a bus with their great knees poking out into the gangway, they considered it obligatory to caterwaul as tunelessly as possible when they were in a pub. Their elders sipped at foaming pints and went on talking solemnly, as if they could not hear the tumult; from time to time a group of them would stop talking, join absent-mindedly in a chorus or two and then resume their conversation. Bernie caught sight of Jack Agass and gave an order to the barman. “Oy!” Bernie hailed Jack with a costermonger’s roar, and sent a pint off from hand to hand along the counter, “One pint of inspiration — comin’ — UP!”
The drinks were lining up on the counter faster than Jack could cope with them. He was happier than he had been for years. The chatter, the shrieks of laughter, the music, the clink of glasses, the beer fumes and stale breath were more intoxicating than the liquor he was drinking. The whir of the fans beat on his confused mind. Lights burned unnoticed overhead but their beams reflected in mirrors, in massed bottles and on sweaty, glistening faces with a sickening brilliance that seemed to fuse all the heat and noise into a heavy blanket of unreality that sheltered him from the unkind world outside.
For a while he was freed from the ache of regret for his lost years and for the irrecoverable past which lay beyond them; the grinning faces of old friends appeared and vanished in the mist of sweat and tears, so many of them that for the moment he did not remember the missing ones whom the years had banished or struck down. There awoke in him a wild surge of derision at his own cowardice, four years ago, in throwing away his chance to come back to all this. Four years; he had thrown away four precious years; and all because — he thought again of his first sight of the patch of waste ground where his home had been, of the first few moments after he had heard about Rosie, and of the faces in the streets, all empty and unaware of the dead. Oh, what was the use of thinking about all that now?
“Enjoyin’ yourself, boy?” Mr. Wakerell appeared at his side with a fresh glass of beer.
“Ah!” Jack wiped his hand across his forehead; it came away wet. “Feel like I do, you can get drunk without touching a drop. Straight up!”
“I know. Used to be a trick of my missus, when we were courting.” Mellowed by beer, Mr. Wakerell was unexpectedly talkative, but his attitude was as shy and hangdog as ever, his voice as slow. “She wouldn’t touch nothing but ginger ale in those days.” He stared intently at the floor, and his words were spaced out as if he were picking them up one by one. “Nothing but ginger ale. Thirty years ago, that was. Little while back, eh? Nothing but ginger ale — and yet people always used to think she was drunk. It was just from laughing. Ah!” He made a wondering sound between tongue and teeth and withdrew for a few moments into private contemplation. “She could laugh, all right! Shriek the place down, tears pouring down her face, couldn’t stop to save her life. I had to carry her home once. She was ill, just from laughing. She hadn’t touched a drop.” He shook his head, as if still amazed by the occurrences of thirty years ago. “Funny, she was brought up very select. Too polite to laugh out loud before she met me. I thought I’d found a quiet one there. And then, the very first time I took her out, off she went! Screaming with laughter! Frightened me out of my wits.”
Jack looked across the room at Mrs. Wakerell. “I don’t know about then, but she can’t half mop it up now.”
“Ah,” Mr. Wakerell rumbled in an apologetic voice, “she soon got the taste for it. Can’t blame her really. With me to put up with! Ha! Ha! One thing, she never shows it. You watch her afterwards. She’ll walk home like a duchess.”
“Doesn’t Joycie ever come in with you?”
“Ha, no!” He laughed sadly. “Too high-class for us. I suppose it’s working in that dress shop. She’s one of these coffee-up-the-Corner-House girls. Well, that’s the way her mother wants her.”
Jack had spent a few minutes alone in the parlour with Joyce before coming out. After washing himself he had come into the room to find her reddening her lips in front of the mirror. She looked a different girl, full-bosomed but slender in a close-fitting fawn dress. Shampoo had given her fair hair a silken sheen. She was not wearing glasses; cream and powder had softened her complexion and her roug
ed lips were red and full. She took no notice of him, but he knew from the hostile set of her shoulders that she was aware of his presence. Abashed and delighted, he tried to think of a compliment to pay her. At last he said, “Whew! Talk about a dog’s dinner!”
“Can’t say the same for you,” she said, without turning. “Suit’s hanging off you like a busted banana skin.”
“No use trying to button it up,” he explained, pulling the jacket across his chest in proof, “give us a chance. Only been back a day. You wait till I been up the old Fifty Shilling.”
“Wait? Me? If I had nothing more to look forward to but seeing you in a new suit I’d put my head in the oven tonight.”
“Sweet kid, ain’t you?”
“Sweet or sour as the fancy takes me.” She turned to face him. She must have known that she had impressed him, for her attitude was more relaxed. “Only my fun, Jack. We’re all glad to see you.”
“Comin’ up The Lamb?”
“No fear. Don’t think me unsociable, but I’ve got better things to do than sit with all the old mums guzzling Guinnesses.”
“Can’t think of anything better myself. Where you going? Dancing?”
“No.”
“Pictures?”
“No.”
“I’ll buy it.”
“Who said I was selling?” Again there was the instinctive tension; again she relaxed, and this time she smiled. “In the park, if you must know. It’s nice and cool, and there’s a band playing, and it’s all set out with tables and chairs, like the Continent. You can buy lemonade there.”
“Who’s the lucky chap?”
“Does your fiddle only play one tune?”
“I was only asking.”
A few minutes later her friend arrived; a big, fat girl who stared at Jack until he cringed with embarrassment, and who, when she hurried out with Joyce, was obviously bursting to ask all about him.
“Funny girl,” he muttered to himself, standing in the bar with his friends swarming about him.
“Wha’s ’at, Jack?” said Barmy Naughton, the barman.
“Eh?” Jack became aware of his surroundings. “Only talking to myself. Must o’ caught if off you, Barmy. Soon have people talking about me, eh?”
Barmy’s eyes glowed a smile in their deep sockets, and his lips twisted, drawing the waxen skin tight over his skull. “Talk!” he said in a high, sharp voice. “Talk! You’re right there. They talk. They look at yer.” He broke off into a long, neighing laugh. “Don’t you talk to yerself, Jack. Talk to yerself, yer barmy.”
“’Ere!” Bernie Whiteflower was thumping on the counter. “’E’s orf playing the First Bloody Gravedigger agin. ’Urry up with them five bitters, Barmy, an’ never mind the sollyoloquy. Jack, boy, wha’r abah’r a song? I’ve burned me bloody throat out for your sake tonight. Time you obliged.”
Jack listened joyfully to the clamour of approval. There were the Wakerells smiling encouragement, the girls screaming and applauding, Chick Woodruff shouting, “What’s it to be, boy? You say it, I’ll play it!” He made a fuddled pretence of unwillingness. The applause increased. He had his arm — how had it happened? — round a woman’s waist. She screwed moist lips against his cheek. “Elsie Cakebread!” he said, “I never see you come in.” “Come on, Jack,” she urged, “Lily of Laguna, that used to be your favourite on the old charabanc, remember?”
He began to sing. The blur of white faces surrounded him. Oh, his friends, his friends! Wakerells, Braceys, Prawns, Woodruffs, Coggers, Bateses, Greens and Pennyfarthings, Elsie, Bernie, Barmy and all the others! Red faces and white faces grinning at him, mouths grotesquely open bawling at him; and, head and shoulders above them all, handsome and greyhaired, Mick Monaghan, moving among them with all the courtesy of a host in his bearing, yet aloof and watchful as a police inspector at a race meeting. Jack bellowed the chorus, glorying in the swoop and lilt of it and in the din that rolled back at him as everyone joined in. He was frantic with gratitude, brimful of wellbeing, and he poured it all out of him in the song. Elsie pressed against him, smothering him with love. The sweat was running down the back of his neck. He felt sick each time he looked up at the lights. He could have cried. He ended, “She is my Lillee-ee-ee” — prolonging the note with a glorious siren howl — “of Laguna, she is my lily and my rose.”
There was more applause, and more drinks appeared on the counter in front of him. Elsie freed herself from his embrace and went back to her husband.
He lost track of the last hour. A tired, drugged feeling took possession of him. He sat down by Mrs. Wakerell, hardly able to keep his eyes open. He rested his head against her shoulder, and she made him comfortable as if he were a child. The roar and babble of voices became as meaningless and somniferous as the crash of waves and the crying of gulls on a sunny beach. He was only half aware of a voice shouting, “Time!” His hand was being shaken; people were moving past him, saying, “Goodnight!” “Goodnight!” “Goodnight!” He could only grin and mumble.
He followed the Wakerells to the door, feeling as if he were walking on water. Mick Monaghan, standing in the doorway, said, “Well, old soldier, you’ll sleep tight tonight. By God you will!”
“Tight’s the word,” laughed Mrs. Wakerell. Jack, face to face with Monaghan, remembered the shock of rage and humiliation he had felt when they had first shaken hands earlier in the evening. There was a fleeting pang of it now. Mick said, “I’ll tell Rosie you’re home. She’ll be putting flowers in her hair for you.”
“What’s it to me?” Jack thought, bitter and bewildered. He laughed idiotically and muttered, “Goo’night, Mick.”
It was cool on the pavement. The twilight rang with parting shouts and the clatter of footsteps. A woman, lurching home, sang in an ugly voice and her husband could be heard hushing her, for, if drink was popular in Lamb Street, open drunkenness was not. Doors slammed. Quiet returned to the street.
Mrs. Wakerell led the way home, walking with a stately but perilous slowness. She saluted the last passers-by with a nod so slight that they might have been offended if they had not known how fearful she was of losing her balance. Her husband trudged after her, his loquacity dried up at its alcoholic source. The only sign of his condition was a slight forward lurch in his walk; this and the frown that creased his lowered face made him look like a bloodhound sniffing along the pavement. Jack, intoxicated anew by the fresh air, reeled behind them, laughing to himself.
At the front door, Mrs. Wakerell said, “Come on in, boy. You’re going to stay the night, aren’t you?”
Jack mumbled, “Got to go. Really got to be going.”
“Rubbish! You couldn’t walk to the corner, let alone get back to your hotel. Besides, Fred’s old room’s all ready for you. It won’t be any trouble.”
Jack followed gratefully into the house. Joyce was in the kitchen, reading a magazine. She said, “Hallo,” in a disapproving voice. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“Not for me, dear,” said her mother. “It’s bed for little me. Dear old, beautiful bed. Whoo! It is stuffy in here!”
“It wasn’t before you came in,” said Joyce. She hurried to support her mother, whose huge bulk was swaying on its narrow base. “Come on, I’ll help you upstairs.” She said, over her shoulder, to her father, “you give that one a hand —” she indicated Jack, who was slumped over a chair — “before he goes right off to sleep.”
The two women disappeared. Jack could hear them toiling up the stairs. He let Mr. Wakerell drag him up on to his feet and lead him to the foot of the staircase. Mr. Wakerell put his foot on the first step and tugged. Jack stood as solid and still as a mule. Mr. Wakerell grunted, “Cerm — on!” and pulled again. Jack groaned, “Oh, Gawd!” and sat down on the bottom step with his head between his hands. Mr. Wakerell swayed above him, muttering to himself; then he expelled a long, hoarse, sigh, said despairingly, “I dunno!” and made his way upstairs alone, pulling himself up by the banisters.
Jack was still sitting on
the stairs when Joyce came down. She said, “Another one!” Jack grinned at her. “Up you get,” she said sharply. “Great baby, you are!” She stopped, put his arm round her shoulder and heaved him up on to his feet. “Come on now! And for Heaven’s sake stop breathing beer all over me. I can’t stand it. Up now, one, two, three, four — come on, you don’t want me to pick your feet up, do you?”
She thrust him in through the door of his room, released him, then darted forward to catch him as he was on the point of falling. “Had a wonderful time, haven’t you?” she said bitterly. “Grown man can’t put himself to bed!”
“Lovely,” cried Jack, suddenly speaking with a glassy clearness. “Lovely, lovely, lovely.” He felt the words floating away from his mouth like bubbles. “Hup, they’re lovely!” he shouted. “Ices, they’re LOVELY!”
“Shut up! You’ll have the neighbours knocking at the wall! This time of night!”
“Hoo-up, they’re lovely. All alive-oh, all a lovely, lovely, live-oh!”
Rosie Hogarth Page 4
