Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  'Oh, did you just see him today! Just like him, the old silly. Hole in his pullover.'

  'Yes, I did. But it wasn't that. As it happens it was another hole I was thinking about.'

  'What hole?'

  'Your bedroom keyhole. Does he still do his peeping torn act?'

  She frowned. ' Fancy bringing that up,' she said.

  'Well does he?'

  She shrugged: 'Yes,' she said simply. ' He was there last night when I was trying on my wedding dress. I know he was. My mother caught him at it a few weeks ago and he pretended he was all bent up with indigestion.'

  'And he saw you last night?'

  'I expect so. It was the last time anyway. Unless I stay at home sometimes.'

  I sat dumb. The waiter arrived with the drinks and I'd drunk half of mine before I pursued it. ' He saw you naked. With nothing on?'

  'Well, yes.' She looked perplexed at the questions. 'I was in my undies and things, but I stripped right off as well. I expect he saw me then. He wouldn't have wanted to miss that.'

  I drew in my breath then turned to her. ' I think that's bloody disgusting,' I said angrily. ' Nothing short of bloody disgusting!'

  'Shush! You mustn't use language like that in here.' Her face had emptied of colour. 'We come to somewhere decent and you swear and shout like that.'

  'Listen,' I snarled, but considerately lower. 'Don't you think it's disgusting? Don't you? That dirty old bugger looking through the keyhole at you. And you showing him everything. Christ, he's seen more of you than I have. And I'm your husband.'

  'You're seen my bosoms,' she corrected severely. 'You've done more than just see them. You practically fried them in candle fat, if I remember rightly.'

  'That's all I have seen,' I said nastily. I finished my drink and the waiter began to circle us. ' I'll have another,' said Pamela to both of us. 'Double creme de menthe, if you please.' I wanted to say I would have a beer, but in a strange way I was afraid of her so I asked for another Drambuie.

  'Think what you've got to come. What a treat,' she said haughtily.

  'It's only a Drambuie,' I grunted.

  'I mean with me' she sniffed. 'There's the rest of me. All my body. You can see what my grandad's seen.'

  'Thanks,' I said but mollified because I really wanted us to be happy that night. 'I'll be looking forward to it.'

  'I wonder if that man on the violin does requests,' she said abandoning the subject as easily as she always did.'Do

  you think he'll do the Persil's thing for us? I thought it sounded lovely on the organ. When you could hear it above the wind, that is.'

  To my surprise she got up and threaded through the chairs and tables, around a group of half a dozen people who had just come in, and up to the violinist. He was deaf and he made her shout her request close to his ear. She returned laughing and one of the middle-aged men in the group caught her hand as she went by and made a joke to her. She laughed deliciously and I sat and groaned deep within myself, wondering if she would ever laugh like that with me.

  The violinist couldn't play her request, or he did not hear properly, because he launched himself into a series of solitary waltzes. 'He's lovely,' sighed Pamela.' I do like the violin. When it's well played.'

  We left after about an hour. The half-dozen people in the group got up at about the same time and went by us into the hotel dining room. For one terrible moment I thought Pamela was going to suggest following them. But she gave an infinitesimal shrug and we went out into the town again. The porter pushed the swing door for us.

  'You ought to have tipped him,' she said when we were in the street. The rain had stopped and there was a pasty moon coming up at the end of the road.

  'Who? The violinist?'

  'No, the porter. You always have to tip porters. Surely you know that. That's why they stand there like that.'

  'But he only shoved the bleeding door for us. I didn't ask him to do it.'

  'He told us the way to the cocktail bar,' she corrected, walking ahead in a tubby but dainty way, her superior nose sniffing at the air.

  'I feel like doing something else,' she announced breezily.

  So did I. But instead I said: 'Well, what?'

  'Dancing,' she smiled. 'I really would like to go dancing, Arthur.' I felt my face set. We stood in the street, facing each other, on this the evening of our wedding day, her persuasive smile forming slowly. Her eyes had become coy. 'Come on,' she encouraged me. 'There must be somewhere where there's decent dancing. It's Saturday.'

  'It's our wedding night,' I mumbled.

  'I know,' she said. 'If you want to go back to Spooky Hollow right away, then I'll come with you. It's just I'd like to go somewhere first, just to sort of warm up.' She lowered the coy eyes again. 'To get me in the mood.'

  We went. The place was proclaimed as The Roxy in coloured lights, but some joker who knew where the leads were located had blacked out the second leg of the letter R. I experienced a quick squirt of hope as we went in, for a man in a smutty dinner jacket advanced on us holding his hands like fenders.

  'Too late, old lad,' he boomed. 'Place is jammed. It's half past ten.'

  'Right,' I nodded thankfully and began to turn Pamela towards the door which had hardly stopped swinging from our entry.

  But she smiled her fattest smile at him and caught hold of his purple hand.' Go on, let us in,' she persuaded. ' It's our wedding day.'

  I could not believe she was saying the words. Trading something as personal and private and embarrassing as that for an entry ticket to a sweaty dance hall. I stared at her, but she still had her hand on his and he was beaming back.

  'Today ?' he inquired unbelievingly.' Married today ? And you've come here tonight?' His glance, at once a nasty and pitying glance, shot my way. Then his face exploded into a laugh. 'Oh, you must come on in! Have the freedom of the house. This is really terrific! Terrific!'

  Pamela swung jubilantly on me. ' There,' she exclaimed. 'I told you it would be all right.'

  'Let me relieve you of your coats,' he said pompously. 'And then you must come and have a drink, a nuptial drink, with me in the office. Now, tell me your names.'

  'Mr and Mrs McCann,' she volunteered immediately. 'Pamela and Arthur. From Newport.'

  'My name is Digby Frost,' he boomed.' I'm the manager.' He paused, then said: ' From Newport ... ?' The remote thought arrived. 'You're not in Swindon for your honeymoon are you ?'

  'We are,' gurgled Pamela triumphantly.

  The news appeared to shatter even him. 'Swindon, on honeymoon,' he repeated and looked at me with that snide pity again, now mixed with the suspicion that anyone who honeymoons in Swindon deserves.

  He took our coats to the cloakroom counter and threw them across with an extravagant cry: 'Hilda - these are on the house!'

  'Nothing's spared,' I grunted.

  Pamela glanced sulkily at me. ' Don't start,' she warned.

  'I don't think I ever will,' I forecast bitterly. Then Mr Frost zoomed back and took us through the double doors into the ballroom. The heat, the music, the fetid air jostled each other to get out. Youths with their hands in their pockets and girls picking their teeth were thick around the walls. There were others crowded around the floor, their heads silhouetted against an explosion of purple light which was haloed around the band.

  'Terrific!' Pamela howled in Mr Frost's ear as we pummelled our way through the mob. I saw that she now had hold of the elbow of his dinner jacket.

  'Best band in Wiltshire!' the manager bellowed at her.

  'And they've got their new Stardust jackets on tonight,' he added, half turning to include me in the information.

  'Terrific!' responded Pamela.

  'Terrific,' I groaned.

  He poured us two double scotches, poured a lemonade for himself and toasted our future. Pamela sipped hers to the bottom of the glass. I am sure that this was the drink that did it. That this was the moment when the rot began, when our marriage began to go wrong. On top of the creme de menthe it w
as too much. As I watched her streaking towards the dance floor with the manager I knew that I had as good as lost her for that night, and, in a way, forever.

  I stood in the ranks of Swindon's youth, my fists as clenched, my eyes as bored, my jaw working on the same non-existent gum as any of them, while my wife, happy-faced, hands like half-hung wings, performed the stuttering steps of a tango with the sweating manager.

  'Now I don't reckon that's right,' muttered the youth next to me.

  'What?' I asked miserably.

  He had a yawning West Country voice: 'That soddin' Frostie takin' the girls on the floor. There ain't a bloody nuff to go around anyway.' He turned on me challengingly: 'Ain't you got one then?'

  'Well I have and I haven't,' I said. 'That's mine poncing around with Frostie.'

  He looked at them and then back at me again. 'Yours?' he said. 'Now, I wouldn't stand for that, boy. If you like I'll get some of my mates and we could duff him up a bit. We been wanting to give that bastard a duffing up for months.'

  I might have gone gladly with this suggestion, but Pamela and her partner, after a shouted conversation during their Latin American advances and retreats across the floor, broke up and came towards me. Pamela was gushing with enthusiasm: 'Come on Arthur, pet. Come with us.'

  Stiffly I moved forward, towards her outstretched hands. Her modest engagement ring was flashing like a signal in the light reflected from the revolving globe above the middle of that great hole.

  'Go on, Arthur, pet,' mimicked the youth who had talked to me. 'Go on, pet.'

  I was so sick and low with it all, the drink curdling inside me, the raging noise hitting my ears, that I was tempted to turn, give the tormentor one good punch, then run from the hideous place and vanish forever. Even back to Port de Loupe.

  But Pamela had taken hold of me with more enthusiasm and tenderness than she had shown all through what should have been that most enthusiastic and tender of days. I was disconcerted by the knowledge of Mr Frost's podgy hand urging me forward with pats on the bottom. Then I realized what they were going to do. We were mounting the steps to the stage, among the musicians in their dazzling new Stardust jackets. The bandleader, a moribund-looking man, who wore a gold jacket to contrast with the silver garments of his musicians, held up one hand and the music stopped except for one sleepy saxophone which went on wailing alone until nudged by a neighbouring performer, whereupon he ceased and looked about froggily.

  The manager threw a whisper to the bandleader, who looked at me accusingly and then smiled a starved smile at my wife. Evidently the musicians had already summed up the situation and they bored into the palais arrangement of the wedding march. On the floor below the activity slowed and stopped and the white faces of the youth of Swindon and surrounding districts were lifted up to us. I shivered with the shame of that moment (I still do) but I looked across to Pamela and I could see her glowing.

  'Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,' bellowed Mr Frost into the microphone when the band had finished its introduction. 'I want a big cheer for Mr and Mrs McCann...' He turned to us and hand over the mike inquired, 'That's right, McCann?' I nodded woodenly. He uncovered the instrument again. 'Mr and Mrs McCann ... Pamela and ... and . ..'

  'Arthur,' helped out Pamela. 'Pamela and Arthur.'

  'And Arthur,' continued the moron. 'Who come from Newport and were married only this afternoon!'

  There was an astonishing chorus of female ooooohs and aaaaahs, like wind echoing in a tuneful mountain hole. There followed some spontaneous rudery from the youths yawning against the walls, but over this the manager flung his trump: 'And they are spending their honeymoon ... guess where?'

  'Bed!' a young man bellowed from the rear.

  'In Swindon!' bellowed Mr Frost and this was apparently even funnier because he had to shout over the uproar: 'Three cheers for Pamela and Alan.'

  'Arthur,' I whispered and nobody heard. The band started up again and glasses of West Country champagne were poured out on the rostrum. We were toasted and we drank. Everybody cheered. Pamela screwed up her nose at the bubbles as though she were advertising the stuff. Then Mr Frost patted me on the shoulder and said: ' I think that was all right don't you? We didn't leave anything out.'

  'Nothing,' I answered wearily, sadly. 'Nothing at all. Unless you'd like us to do a demonstration fuck.'

  Thirteen

  Even after this distance of years I keenly recall how embarrassing and difficult it was to get Pamela back to The Shunter's Arms Hotel that night. The amount and variety of the drinks she had swallowed made her noisy, violent and very truculent. At The Roxy the manager and what seemed to be relays of other men, who kept appearing from the noisy shadows, bought her drinks and she kept drinking them. It had all the appearances of a one-person wedding because I was completely ignored while she laughed and danced and made an exhibition of herself. I bought an ice-cream cone and sat quietly and licked it. It failed to mix with the Drambuie and West Country champagne and I went out of the hall and was sick. I felt much emptier, cooler and better after that. When I returned Pamela was in the centre of a sweating chorus line doing the Palais Glide (God, was it that long ago?), hooting her head off. She had not noticed my exit, and neither had anyone else. For all my bride knew I might have gone out to cut my throat. I certainly felt like it. We were the last to leave the dance hall. By this time she had been reduced from a bride to an encumbrance. She hung on to my neck like a murdered albatross as I stood on the cold steps outside. The manager had, at last, gone home, not without giving me a final pitying handshake and Pamela a passionate embrace.' Mr McCann,' he said, one encourag-

  ing arm on my shoulder. 'Or I think by now I can call you Alan . . .'

  'Try Arthur,' I suggested.

  'Arthur,' he agreed as though conceding a fifty-fifty point. 'I just want to tell you that you've got a great woman, there.'

  'I think you're right, Mr Frost,' I nodded holding up my heavy bride. I shivered in the Swindon damp and tried to hold my face away from hers for the alcoholic fumes were thick. Eventually a taxi came patrolling down the street and we went back to the hotel.

  No bridegroom has ever been more miserably tired on his wedding night. I heaved her up the stairs, not caring whether we woke Mrs Donelly or anyone else who was sheltering in The Shunter's Arms that night. But, unchallenged, we reached our wretched bridal suite and I rolled her out upon the counterpane that should have been covering our night of love. She was out cold, her hair sticking across her forehead, her face pallid, her knee staring through a hole in her stocking, the result of a fall during one of her tribal dances.

  I was hunched at the side of the bed for half an hour as though keeping religious vigil on a corpse. The thought crossed my mind that I ought to undress her and put her into the bed, but as I leaned forward to touch her coat she emitted a grisly little snore and instead of touching her I turned and walked angrily from the room. Without hiding my footsteps I went down the stairs and out into the void street. I seemed to be spending a lot of my time walking in the dark at that period of my life.

  The street was as comforting as a sewer pipe. Over the tall wall the engines were still stirring; trucks and wagons butted each other metallically in the dank distance. I trudged the length of the dumb houses and then turned a dark corner and another, without object, without thought. I felt almost weightless. Around the third corner, half way up the street, was one wall square with lights, music and noise squeezing out of its open windows and above that the sound of a girl singing with careless verve. There were three cars parked against the kerb and a herd of bicycles and motor cycles in the little patch of front garden beyond the privet hedge.

  The pavement and the front path to the open door were spotted with damp confetti. The house seemed piled up with people. I stood for a moment looking into the door and, hardly crediting what I knew I was doing, I casually walked in.

  There were three or four couples grappling romantically in the narrow hall. I smiled as though I knew e
veryone and nodded left and right and then turned craftily into a front parlour full of people shuffling in each other's arms. There was no musical accompaniment at that moment and I saw that the record on the radiogram near the door needed changing. It was revolving impotently, moaning to itself. I lifted the arm and turned it over, then thinking they might have played that side just previously, I took another record from the bottom of a heavy pile and put it on. Fortunately it was a slow tune and they continued with their minimal movements, lips against ears and cheeks, damp happy smiles, full arms. I saw some bottles on a table and poured myself a thick brown ale. I took a swallow and sat back on the edge of the table surveying them, trying to look as though I had been there for hours. At last I had found myself a wedding.

  'What time is it, then?'

  'Ten past one,' I answered. I turned to see who she was. She was leaning against the table, looking at the dancers through the bottom of her empty glass.

  'Do they look any better through there?' I asked.

  'Different,' she said.' I wouldn't say "better". Here, you can have a look if you like, my dear.'

  The elderly endearment did not sound odd because she was young, for her voice was undisguised rural West Country. She handed me the glass with the air of a good child who doesn't mind sharing her toys. I held it up cooperatively and squinted through at the people.

  'It looks even more crowded,' I said. I returned the glass to her. She was thin and a bit gaunt, but with strong eyes

  and straight dark hair, long over her shoulders. She wore some sort of gipsy dress and, remembering her now, I realize that she was before her time because she looked like the girls you see around today. But in those days she was a rarity. If I did not know it then, I knew it later.

  'Did you put this record on? You did didn't you? I saw you from the door.'

  'Yes,' I admitted. 'It's all right, isn't it?' She nodded. I wondered if she had seen me come in. I said: 'Are you having a good time ?'

  'Oh aye, I always do,' she said.' Haven't seen you around before. Been here all the time?'

  'Oh, I came a bit late,' I said truthfully.