Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  'Yes, dozens,' she said firmly. She was still playing putting and she rolled the ball several feet, with a right hand bias to go ahead by something like six holes to nil on our game.

  'But Pam.. .'

  She looked up at me, at my lost face, and I could see she was really crying now. 'You twerp,' she sobbed. 'I've had the trousers off half the men in this town. What did you think I was doing? Waiting for you to come home and put that clean pillow under my arse?'

  Her face collapsed in weeping. And then it happened. She took a huge, blind, angry swing at my golf ball with her putter and sent it soaring off, a foot above the ground. The old, white, attendant was just returning irritably through the dusk with the park superintendent and had reached the little gate at the end of the putting area. He opened it and put his leg through just in time to meet the skimming golf ball as it flew from Pamela's violent blow. It struck him on the knee and with a terrible screech of agony and fear he collapsed on to the gloomy path and lay writhing there. Stiff with horror I looked at him and then I felt the putter thrust into my hand. I now had two. I looked and saw Pamela running towards the far gate by which we had entered.

  I turned again. The old, white man was flat on his back, his legs waving feebly in the damp Newport air, another man, presumably the summoned superintendent hurrying through the gate towards him. I turned and ran after Pamela.

  If they caught me, I thought as I ran, I would explain that I was running after my wife to save my marriage, and not attempting escape from justice. She was always a good runner and she had gone out of the park gates and vanished into the gloom by the time I reached the road. I ran towards home, took a short cut across some waste ground to head her off, and emerged into the main street again. I was breathless already for the fertilizer dust was still in my lungs to some extent and they had warned me not to run. Now it rose up my tubes and clouds of it flew around inside me and even came out of my mouth. I stopped, bent and gasping. A timid hand touched me eventually and I lifted my choking face to see a recently familiar and puzzled countenance.

  'PIeeeese,' he stammered. 'Cccccc ould....

  you . . . ttttellll m.... the bbbbbbbbbus sttttation....bus station.'

  I straightened up and cleared the awful dust from my gullet. I wiped my wet eyes. He watched me with mute sympathy. Then I bent down near his deaf ear and called out the directions once more. I hope he got there that time, poor devil. I didn't see why he should suffer.

  Eighteen

  It was another three months before I was able to get to New York to seek my splendid Angie. At that time I was suspended on full pay pending the inquiry into the wreck-of Mr Cohen's Rolls-Royce in Mid-Atlantic. It had become known that I was not on the ship when the vehicle was loaded and had not personally supervised the stowing, as instructed by Mr Cohen. The reason, of course, was that I was in Manhattan trying to occupy one bed with two women.

  I could not hope to find her at our apartment; I realized that. I had written to her half a dozen times but, like my letters so long before to Mrs Nissenbaum in that same city, no reply had been returned. The letters were all restored to me when I went to the flat by a whispering man wearing a black wig, fashionable rimless glasses and a Mexican tobacco moustache, who was in occupation.

  'Here's your mail, mister,' he whispered admiringly handing them around the door. 'Did you write all those to that one lady?'

  I said I had. ' That's a whole lot of writing to one lady,' he said so quietly I could hardly hear him. ' I don't think that I could write that many letters to any one person. How can you say so much to one person.'

  'Why are you whispering?' I asked, glancing about me, wondering if perhaps the violent and haunting Leroy were still in the vicinity. He did not seem to think the question an impertinence.' The world's too noisy,' he hissed.' There's a pollution of noise. I'm trying to contribute something. If everybody lowered their voices it would be a better place. We talk too much anyway.'

  'I see,' I nodded quietly. I took the letters and saw something else. There was one for me. With my mind entirely on what that note might contain I whispered my thanks and farewell, and he said I was not to mention it, a sentiment which, by his glare, I knew he meant. So I said nothing further. I went down and out into the street. Standing where, on that remote morning, I had kissed her face for the last time, I opened her letter. It said: 'Darling. You will never see me again, but, whatever anyone tells you about me, I want you to know that you made me happy for a few hours and that it really meant all I said it meant. Love Angie. P.S. It would never work.'

  I felt a ball of joy and hope begin to bounce within me.

  If she felt like that then - the letter was dated three months before - she could feel like that again. We would have the happiness we both needed and sought. All I would have to do was to find her again. It would work!

  It was early evening and New York was full of people going home or going into bars before they went home. The Split Legs Go-Go Bar was unlit, but the doors were open and I went into the dimness of the place. It looked like all those establishments look when they're not operating; dusty, propped up with pieces of wood, threadbare, all the things you can never see in the soft lights at night. The Go-Go girls' birdcage was hanging awry, the door hanging open as though the occupants had escaped only recently. A man was, curiously, sweeping it out with a dustpan and little brush. The place smelled hollow and stale like a tomb. In one corner another attendant was industriously sawing a leg from a chair.

  I remained and watched him for a moment unwilling to disturb him in mid-amputation. Eventually he got through it and glanced up at me: 'The things we do for the mugs who get in here,' he sighed.' Look at that. There's this little guy who complains that chairs are too high, so we make him a shorter chair. Did you ever hear anything like that?'

  'That's service,' I said.' Do you know a girl called Angie?'

  He looked at me suspiciously; 'I don't know any girls,' he said. 'I'm a married man.'

  ' I mean in here,' I said.

  'Especially I don't know no girls in here. I just come in to saw the legs off chairs.'

  I saw someone moving in the shadows beyond the bird cage. 'Who's that?' I asked. He stared obligingly. 'Mr Trombone, the boss,' he said. 'He knows all the girls, I don't.'

  I caught the man at the door of his office. He was fat and soft and he said his name with a long final letter -Trombonee. I told him who I was and he seemed to know of me because his eyebrows, like a pair of fat, fair caterpillars, moved up on his head, and he invited me in.

  'Angle,' he mused. 'Yes, Angie. I been thinking you might come by sometime. Would you like a drink?'

  I refused, but he said: 'Maybe you ought to have one because I think it will all be better with a drink.'

  'She's not dead is she?' I asked in fright.

  He laughed. 'Dead? Angie? Oh boy, she's not dead all right. That's one thing she ain't - dead.'

  I said I would have the drink and he poured one for himself as well. He seemed reluctant to go on with the conversation. But eventually he sighed: 'Sure, sure, Angie.'

  'What's happened to her?'

  'Angie's gone,' he said opening his hands like wings. 'Just. gone. Vanished. Disappeared. But I can't say I'm surprised. You did something to our Angie, mister. Even you don't know what you did. The day you left for England Angie was sitting right there in that chair, where you're sitting now, and the tears were flowing.'

  'Well, we'd grown to be very fond of each other,' I said feeling pleased. 'I'd hoped we might even get, sort of, married.'

  'She was some girl.'

  'Some girl indeed.'

  'That's it,' he said quickly as though he had been waiting. 'Just some girl. And it would only be some sort of marriage.'

  'Why?'

  'Because Angie was a man, mister.'

  'Fuck off,' I cried wildly.

  'Fuck off, indeed,' he replied softly. 'Right off as far as Angie was concerned. Angie was the greatest thing we've ever had in the
Split Legs Go-Go. The greatest female impersonator that ever wagged an ass through Manhattan. And I'm not kidding.'

  I knew he wasn't. 'Oh, God,' I said dropping my head in my hands. 'Oh, shit, God.'

  'You have my sympathy, friend,' he shrugged. 'I didn't go for it from the start. It was a bet. Here in the club. I was there when it was struck. I lost five hundred dollars.'

  'Oh, God,' I said again. I was speaking through my fingers as though they were bars.

  ' The bet was that Angie-Angelo, whichever you like...’

  'Angie,' I muttered miserably. 'Can I remember her as Angie? Please.'

  'As you like, friend,' he nodded. 'At least that disposes of the difficulty of calling him or her, he or she.'

  'Why me?' I asked. The question was more to God than to him. It wasn't just this, it was everything. Mrs Nissen-baum, Pamela, every bloody thing. But this was the worse.

  'Why you?' he repeated. 'Well, it had to be a certain type of guy.'

  'A cunt,' I said sourly.

  'Okay, pick your own label. That's how it started out anyway. Angie wanted something she didn't have, namely a cunt. And you walked by baby.'

  'But it's not possible,' I muttered. 'Christ, we were in bed. I kissed her! I had my hands on her ...'

  'Best boobs, either sex, in New York,' he nodded calmly. 'Unfortunately Angie had the smallest cock in New York too. Small, but complete in every detail.'

  'Oh shut up, for Christ's sake.' I was really crying now. I got up to make for the door, but he put me kindly back into the chair and poured another whisky in my glass. 'Listen, buddy,' he said. 'You might just as well listen. You won't feel so bad about it if you listen. You won't want to go looking for him . . . her . . . now anyway.'

  'All right,' I said wiping my eyes. They felt sore like they did when I cried as a child. 'Tell me all the funny details.'

  'Okay, it was funny,' he acknowledged. 'We had customers here just about croaking at your expense. That was when Angie started crying. She really liked you. It's perverted, but there you are. She was pretty sick about it at the end.'

  'That makes me feel better,' I said bitterly. 'Knowing she felt bad.'

  'Well, it was a bet,' he said throwing his arms wide.

  'Just a laugh. Angie was boasting that she could pass herself off as a woman well enough to spend twenty-four hours or more living with a guy as his wife. And she was good, boy, make no mistake about that. She looked more like a dame than my wife does.'

  'I remember her,' I said hopelessly. For Jesus sake, the best person, the only person for that matter, I had ever felt completely at ease and happy with! Sitting contentedly in my armchair, waiting for her to undress. Listening to her. Kissing her!

  There was a lot of dough thrown about,' he went on. 'Hundreds of dollars. Angie said as soon as the right guy arrived she would go to work. It had to be somebody who ... well, who had a nice outlook on life. Some people, including me, didn't think she could do it, some thought she could. And she was good, boy. Was there ever anything so feminine? Sometimes I had to pinch myself to stop me pinching her ass.'

  'You should have tried,' I said miserably, calmer now, numb from it. ' It was a nice arse as they go. As long as you didn't know.'

  'That's right. Be philosophical,' he encouraged. 'It ain't the end of everything. I lost five hundred bucks, remem-"ber that. All you're without is a good screw and your pride. That was the trouble; that's why I didn't think Angie could swing it.'

  'Swing it?'

  'Pull it off. Oh, shit. Do it. I thought that when it came to the clinch the guy would smell a rat. But you didn't. You were too trusting. I guess that's what you wanted to be, and you have my sympathy. There's too little trust in the world, Mr McCann.'

  'There's going to be even less now,' I said.

  'Ah, now, don't let it ball you up too much. She was real sorry, I can tell you. I had to mop up the tears, so I know. Angie felt that in you, she had found something decent and loving. I mean that. I've got no reason to give you that crap if it's not true. Those sort of words don't come easy to the manager of the Split Legs Go-Go. Decent and

  loving. There I said it again.'

  'Thanks,' I said. It did not make me feel any better. I cringed inside. Fancy kissing a man! And going on a river trip! Holding hands! Buying things for the apartment! Planning a suburban home! The tennis club! No wonder she couldn't cook. I ought to have got her to do some carpentry.

  'The danger was,' he said, going back, 'that you would find out once you were in the sack.'

  'I think I might have,' I said. 'Even me. Even I can count up to two.'

  'That was the reason that Stanley, the other guy. ...'

  'Sandra?'

  He looked embarrassed again. 'Yeah, sure, Sandra,' he said. 'That was the reason that they fixed for Stanley -Sandra - to burst in on you and have to stay the night.'

  'I slept with the pair of them. I mean the two of them,' I admitted dolefully.

  'I know, I know,' he said decently dropping his eyes. 'I heard.'

  'They cuddled each other.'

  'They're old friends,' he shrugged.

  'Ugh!' I shook my head. 'I want to be sick.'

  'Why be sick?' he asked. ' So you shared a bed with two other human beings. In India they sleep ten in a bed. And I want to tell you mister, that Angie was real sorry. She wouldn't even take the money she won. It all went to some charity fund. She was sitting right there, where you are now, and she sobbed her heart out. She said you were the only decent, straight, loving person she had ever met. For her to say that was really something. She just had to mean it. She said for a few hours she had felt happy and secure and clean, and all sorts of crazy things like that. And she was sincere. That guy .. . that girl, really was sincere. You gave her something different, something she'd never experienced before.'

  'It was mutual,' I sighed. I got up. I felt heavy, sick and sad. I smiled wryly at him and we shook hands. 'Thank God there weren't any children,' I said.

  As I walked that mile down Lexington I felt them all laughing at me from all the tall windows. Aircraftwoman 842912 Rose Kirby, Mrs Nissenbaum, Monique, Annette, Belinda, Joanne, and Pamela all pissing themselves to die, catcalling, with their arms about each other's shoulders. All my women. All mine. And there too Mr Gander and Angie, howling and holding hands. And above them all my father, my bastard father, laughing the longest and loudest of all.

  Well I knew then. I knew what I was and I knew what women did to me. What had they wanted me for? A junior dickie for Rose, a walking memorial for Mrs Nissenbaum, a native bridegroom for Monique, a masseur for Annette, a sadist for Belinda, a pram pusher for Joanne and a romantic wet for Pamela. But now they had made me hate. Arthur McCann had turned at last.

  There was a young woman on the corner of Lexington and Forty-second, an auburn haired girl like Greer Garson, for God's sake, telling a taxi driver that she had left all her money at home. I heard her say it but I looked resolutely the other way and walked on. She called 'Oh, excuse me, sir ... excuse me.' But I didn't turn because she could have been calling some other mug. There must have been other mugs on that street and she was very beautiful. Just like Greer Garson who I had prayed would wait for me.

  I walked on three more firm paces. She was still calling. I stopped and then slowly returned to the cab. She smiled brilliantly when she saw me coming. I paid her fare and she touched my hand while I was doing it.

  Her name is Margaret Durbon and if you would care to meet her then it's easy. She is the secretary of an organization called 'No Sex Before Jesus Comes Again Society'. I can give you her address but you're wasting your time. And that's another pitiful story.

  The end

 

 

 
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