by Will Self
Scant light from Waldemar Avenue’s newly planted lamps casts the shadow of the balustrade into iron Bedlam bars that fall across the two beds and clash with the bars of Olive’s cot. Violet has kicked the coverlet away – her skinny legs lash about beef to the heels. Spring-heeled Arnold is poised on the window ledge and Audrey thinks: I’ll never ever sleep, I’ll never ever sleep . . . that she’ll go mad with not sleeping, mad with the pissmist from the potty in her nostrils, mad from the counting up of her two pennies, her ha’penny and her farthing, then dividing this sum into eleven farthings, then adding them together again. Coins on the blackboard, coins on the slates, fingers in the inkwells, Two-times-six-is-twelve, three-times-six-is-ay-teen, four-times-six-is-twenny-four, an entire classroom of Audreys and Stans in their drab clothes and their cracked boots, their plaintive treble voices plaiting, then unravelling into two sound-streams that flow out through girls and boys into afternoon streets to twine once more – dirty boys’ hands grabbing pigtails to straitjacket the girls in the booby-hatch, until someone comes to release them, D’you wanter claht in ve jaw! Coz you never did touch my ed, so there . . . the Wiggins boys dancing round her – then little Stan caught as well and flung in there with her, howling, his shirt torn. — No wonder we called the game Bedlam, thinks Audrey, a big girl of fourteen now, walking back from Shorrold’s Road Baths on a Saturday afternoon and seeing a load of kids mafficking. We called it that – not that we knew what Bedlam was. It had been mixed up in Audrey’s six-year-old mind with the Cyprian Orphanage and the Gunnersbury Isolation Hospital – places to which children were removed, leaving a hurting gap behind for days or weeks that soon enough their siblings grew into. She turns the corner into the Fulham Road thinking that cherry blossom is frogspawn in the pond-green sky, and looking forward to the slow stroll past Anderson’s Tea Rooms, savouring the cakes surrounded by fancies, until she sees her father with his foot up on a shoeblack’s box and wishes she hadn’t — because nowadays Audrey believes that if she sees him he can spy her at once. He has become a stage magician, the smoke from the seegar stuck in ’is face lime-lit green an’ fleein’ to reveal . . . Arnold Collins. Go which way you will, you will run up against them, and it makes it worse that, as her father swaps feet, Collins doffs his hat and says: She’s gainin’ flesh, guv’nor, an’ it ain’t all rare meat neevah. Sam grunts, Well, why shouldn’t she? She’s not some bantin’ flapper! Now, Or-dree, I’ve a co-mission that Mister Collins ’ere az hentrusted me wiv –. He breaks off to snap at the boots: Givvit some elbow-grease, boy! Then resumes, We’ll be headin’ up West, you and I, time a farver showed iz dotter ve runuv ve place, ain’t it so, Arnold? Collins only twitches his tight lips, fiddles with the brim of his boater, pats the lush brown wings of his pomaded hair. Audrey feels the dampness of her shift at the backs of her thighs and sighs. – But, Father, Mother’ll be wantin’ –. A chop of the smoky hand: Yer mother’s always wantin’, Audrey – allus will be. He fiddles out a coin and drops it on the paving stone – anticipating this, the boots is there, grubby face ruffed with white-blond curls pushing up from beneath his corduroy cap, a single tooth questing from his bottom lip. Givovah, yer worship, he says scrabbling for his penny. Dob uss two more like vat an I can make me passage fer Noo Yawk. Death’s sardonic smile snips him a pair of jowls he wags at the boots. They ain’t letting your sort in juss now, he says, you’re best off sticking it out ’ere on ha’pence a boot! Uneasily, Audrey takes in piece by piece how Collins dresses much snappier than he did when he was with London General: a swallow collar clips his plump neck, his boater has a blue-and-purple-striped ribbon, his patent-leather boots have cunning suede darting, his tongue darts from side to side in his mouth each time he opens it to speak: And, ah, the, ah, goods, guv’nor? Death slowly transfers his contempt from the boy to the man: Whatever you say, Arnold – shall I cable to you at your a-part-ments to arrange our ren-dez-vous, or have they by any chance a telephone appliance at that sixpenny ding-dong of yours over Marylebone way? After all, this is a new century now, ain’t it – no need to wait any more is there? Time, distance . . . our wizard mechanical contrivances have them altogether ee-lim-ee-nated. Collins is throttled, his cheeks flush. Ah, he says, ah-ah, his tongue darting until Death relieves him: Givovah, Fred, I’ll see you at the Magpie like always, and now – good-byee! Taking Audrey by the arm, he propels her ahead of him off along the road at such a lick that for the first hundred paces she has the disturbing image of herself hooping-the-hoop, her skirts flaring, then falling to expose her bloomers. She looks back just the once to see Arnold Collins arranging his boater on his springy hair, the boots still supplicant at his feet.
Manners got yer tongue, Missus Ward? Since when has her father’s every second utterance become a puzzle she feels it may be dangerous to solve? For how long has she been this tremulous in his presence? And, liking the fluttery sensation of the word in her mind, Audrey rolls it around, trem-u-lous, trrr-em-u-lous, this, surely, is one of the finer feelings felt by advanced young ladies as they stroll among the hollyhocks –. I said, manners got yer tongue? His cleaver nose, glanced side-on, slashes through bricks and hedge and shop awnings. They turn into Parsons Green Road – There goes Roffschild an’ iz dotter, says a white-aproned butcher with a calligraphic moustache, the words in their wake, but surely . . . mennabe heard? Audrey teeters between shame and pride while her father – the personage – seems oblivious, ramrod-straight he promenades, the ferrule of his umbrella striking hard every fourth paving stone. Rotten egg, he mutters, exuding not malice but Coniston’s hair tonic, which, blown from his shiny face, whitewashes the walls of the dingy courts and alleyways around the railway bridge. When they reach the New King’s Road there is a cream-and-brown ’bus clopping in towards the kerb, a lodestone drawing people to it, and Audrey too feels the static thrill, as once when Stan rubbed a celluloid dickey on a scrap of velveteen and held it to her neck and the hairs at her nape prickled. – Hi! Fentiman. Her father raises his umbrella and, thrusting her in front of him, they cut through the gaggle. Mister Death, the conductor says, tipping his hat, and they squeeze up the stairs and make their way to the front seat. Finest penny to be spent on the London stage, her father has said often enough, and he also says, A wide window on a widening world. Sitting, Audrey is aware of the hard slats pushing her sweat-damp petticoat between her thighs, while her hands lie useless and freckled on top of them – she thinks of the Westray’s Whitening Powder she covets above all things and how it would give her the porcelain complexion of Miss Gabrielle Ray . . . Father is speaking of Bert’s benefactor as whip-smack and harness-jingle the ’bus mingles with carts, hansoms and the occasional fly. – Why, Audrey, d’you imagine that Mister Phillips takes such a generous interest in our Albert? Some might think it a little queer, paying for one not your own . . . At least this remark is straightforward enough – besides, Audrey senses she isn’t expected to answer, only bear witness to. – There’s some as might rebuff ’im out of pride alone. The ’bus swings wide to avoid a young lady, her weighted skirts caught up in the chain of her safety bicycle, her leg-o’-mutton sleeves frisking. Oh! Audrey cries, then flushes. Her Oh! hangs in the sudden soundlessness, for the ’bus’s wheels have been shushed by wood paving. A well-set-up woman of pedigree in an old-fashioned coal-scuttle bonnet sits on the other side of the aisle, staring and staring and staring like she ain’t never seen a girl before. Audrey wishes her navy dress weren’t so shabby, wishes her red hair didn’t flare from her head, wishes the cables strung from the multiple crosstrees of the rooftop electrical conductor were the rigging of a fleet clipper slipping anchor and sliding on the ebb tide down t’wards Gravesend and freedom . . . And yet . . . this unexpected excursion is . . . a treat. Formerly, Rothschild would often take one or other of his children for a ride, but since he became the deputy manager she cannot have been on the ’bus more than a handful of times – the trip to Windsor Park last summer, that was by brake, but apart from this she has walked from home to s
chool to market to Sunday school to the baths, and very occasionally to watch Bert and Stan play footer, while their Sunday afternoon entertainment is itself a promenade in the park they walk to. Now, the animalistic swing of the ’bus, the bell-ring of spring, the syringas in the front gardens and the flap of the shop awnings – all of it fills Audrey wiv soda bubbles. The tangy pitch from the navvies’ crucible in front of St Mark’s College is blended with the soot-fall from the Lots Road Power Station – and still the pair down below strain on, their broad backs rising glossy, their hoofs cleaving the chestnuts of their own droppings. Fentiman has come up fer a natter with Rothschild, who’s addenuff of fresh air, struck a match on his boot and is puffing benignant cigar smoke, while studiedly ignoring the boring of the coal-scuttle woman’s eyes. — They speak of Sir David Barbour and wily John Pound and blinkin’ Balfour, of whom only the last is known to Audrey. From time to time Fentiman pivots away along the seatbacks to issue more tickets, then returns to bemoan the tramlines’ encroachment. Sam Death is sanguine. Those white-livered nabobs’ll never have the front, he says, to sweep awlviss away. ’Lectric trams wiv all their cabling and their track’ll awluss be too cumbersome for the middle of town. Fentiman listens respectfully, donkey-faced and sweaty in his black work suit as the guv’nor expatiates: No-no, change ass t’come – no gainsaying that – and change is always a friend to some and an enemy to others. Now, see, there’s the tuppenny tube an’ the padded cell, an’ now they’ve their shield appa-ra-tus there’ll be no stopping ’em from nibblin’ froo the underbits like mites in cheese. No, change is upon us – but it ain’t the ’bus’ll be sluiced down the gutter, mark my words . . . It ain’t us should worry – it’s them.
The slow thrumming of a player-piano eases in – the one Audrey had heard in the Aeolian Showroom the last time she had been up West, with Mary Jane, who, in a capricious mood, had said: Juss coz we ain’t quality don’t mean we ain’t allowed to avva gander. Then, when the counter-jumper parted his coat-tails to sit at the instrument, she couldn’t ’old ’er tongue an’ warbled on, a portly nightingale who forced her accent through some imagined mangle of respectability. – Ooh, yairs, isn’t it luvverly, such fine mahoggerny – while the fellow’s knees rose and fell as he trod in the melody, Doo-d’doo, doo d’doo, doo-d’-dooo, doo-d’-dooo, triplets of notes going up and down. Audrey straightened up, lost her hoydenish hunch – seeing that she took a genuine interest, as he continued to march on the spot, the demonstrator spoke of Brarms, ’is intermetso, and how this was a very high-class roll for the conny-sewer. Listening closely to the trills and coos, her stiff fingers freed themselves from the back of her dress, her chin stilled. The easy motion of the young man’s thighs, the invisible digits pressuring the ivory skin, the so-fa-la! rising up to the ceiling, the exposed roll revolving while around it the world turned – this was beauty, this was what Miss Conway at school meant by har-mon-ee –. A bang, followed by a whip-like crack, the shock of it seizes every passenger on the top deck of the ’bus as the pair shy and a trap horse coming from Sloane Square rears in its shafts. Through a curtain of blue smoke that rumples up into almond blossom, the spectators see this freak: the wheels and chassis of a new-fangled motor car with the upright black body of a hansom fixed on top. A-ha! Ha-ha! Sam Death chortles as the ’bus driver wrestles his horses past the vehicle, which rests at an uncomfortable angle with one set of wheels up on the kerb. – Oh-ho my, what a sainted palaver! The motorist and his mechanic are flapping their tweedy wings over the open engine compartment, which still belches, and Sam says: Must’ve come from the other side – meanin’ Vauxhall, not ’Ades – and, while it may seem unlikely, Fentiman, that ’Arry Tate an ’is pals’ll do away with our equine friends . . . The conductor regards Audrey’s father respectfully as he speaks, as do the other passengers, surmising that the big man has a professional bent – but Audrey recoils from his portmanteau eyes and the Stilton veins that marble his fine pro-bo-siss. While the ’bus continues past the gardens of Eaton Square and the Fulham garage manager speaks of machines, she dreams of terrible chimeras, men with wheels in place of legs, their bellies a dreadful contrivance of rods, gears and flywheels, smoke venting from their iron buttocks. She envisions horses whose hindquarters are ’Oxton whizzers, while steering columns have been speared between their shoulders so that their riders, sat astride their red-hot withers, may twist them this way and that, neighing, screaming . . . A horse’s scream is a fearful thing that Audrey didn’t know she knew, coming as it does from a part of her mind that she didn’t know she had. It comes from underneath the mattress where things fester and cog-buttons are bug-toothed. Stan’s stories came from that place – the leopard man and the dog man, their screams in the night when their flesh was sliced and stretched. The beasts howled beyond the stockade, while Vi and Olive pulled at Audrey’s nightdress, hiding their faces, baring her shoulders. The three of them gaoled by the bedstead as their brother’s dark mouth swallers the nightlight . . . The vehicle, madam, says Sam Death, has been engineered by taking the body of yer normal ’orse ’bus and securing it to the chassis and wheels of a Daimler petrol motor ’bus . . . Her father believes he has won over the coal-scuttle with his informed disquisition. From their elevated position, as the ’bus rumbles from Buckingham Palace Road and on to the forecourt of the station, they are well placed to make a survey: Over there, madam, you may espy a Thornycroft ’bus, the motivation for which is supplied by steam from a coke-fired boiler, heggzackerly the same as a locomotive. Yonder, by the portico of the Apollo, that there is the Fischer ’bus, an innovation of the Americans, it employs both electrical and petrol engines in furtherance of increased reliability. Be that as it may wery well be . . . he continues as they inch their way down the curved stairway behind her heavy silk train . . . I doubt wery much its utility, indeed, I foresee the futility –. However, she has no wish to be lectured further, and so cuts Death off with a tilt of her bonnet and a twist of her parasol’s handle. And a good day to you too, madam! he says with the utmost repugnance and, raising his umbrella to salute Fentiman, he allows its ferrule to travel on, tracing the pilasters and wrought-iron balconies that cover the station’s façade. We ’ave reached the terminus, he says, and, taking her arm, guides her between vehicles jockeying for passengers, then past an advertisement for Germolene so large its letters loop across the end wall of an entire four-storey block, the l encircling an open window from which a slavey in a mob-cap stares frowsily down on the crowded street. Urchins scamper into the road to grab harnesses, then pirouette for a flung copper, as the stand-pipes of toppers somehow join in Audrey’s mind with the droppings underfoot and the gulley-slops in the gutters. Here, more than in Foulham, the city is beset by its own contrariety: the smooth and stony Portland faces of the buildings along Victoria Street are streaked with smutty tears, the alleys that crack the mirroring windows of the smart shops are choked with costers’ carts piled with fruit an’ veg’ already on the turn. Flies dash damp in her face – faces all round are pastier than those on my manor . . . They are deeper dahn an’ ahtuv ve light . . . He points out to her the yellow-brick bulk of Queen Anne’s Mansions rising above the rooftops in the direction of St James’s, its mansard roof festooned with cabling. He speaks of the hydraulic lifts that raise the well-to-do tenants up fourteen storeys, and of the piping that supplies the pumps burrowing beneath the streets.— He conjures in Audrey’s mind a vision of the city as all connected up by streams of invisible power: the telegraph cables coursing with letters and figures, the electricity zipping through gutta-percha sleeves – her own vision skronks so that the beaver skin of a passing homburg conceals . . . an eye, a girl’s pretty face splits lengthwise, sideways . . . She wishes she could turn aside to enjoy the steamer trunks, fishing rods and pith helmets carefully arranged in the window of the Army & Navy Stores, she wishes she could get in there wiv ’em . . . but her father will not slacken his pace. For the first time on this peculiar excursion Audrey feels the frigid probing f
ingers of anxiety: he is so intent, his moustache spit-damp, his high forehead shiny with perspiration . . . on they go, his umbrella marking the time for their marching feet, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap . . . Her uncovered head falls back, my crownin’ glory swishes between her shoulder blades. A great purple-grey quilt is falling over it all, cloudy clumps trapping the scurrying bedbugs in their own poisonous fumigation. The air darkens and darkens: a smutstorm in lurid yellow suspension from out of which swim the castellated battlements of the Westminster Hospital, supported by voluntary contributions – beyond this the rigid skirts of the Abbey fall perpendicular from its stony stays.
