They returned to Hurst & Storey’s. Old Frater led the way up the stairs. Doble was sitting as they had left him, but as they filed in he turned his head, and Scarsdale saw upon his sallow face a kind of secret gloating.
Old Frater stood by his table, staring down at something. The whites of his eyes showed big; his moustache drooped.
And then Scarsdale realized that he too had a letter waiting for him. He stared at it, and then picked it up, and tore open the envelope.
“The Management regrets that owing to the coming reorganization—”
Frater had moved to the window. He stood in a little patch of sunlight, holding his letter. His face looked flaccid, his eyes empty.
“I’ve been here seventeen years.”
He shuffled his feet.
“I’ve been here seventeen years.”
No one replied to him for the moment. Scarsdale had slipped his own letter into his pocket. It had told him that his services would not be needed after the end of the month. He was conscious of old Frater, shrinking and bewildered in the midst of an ironic patch of sunlight.
A voice said, “It’s a damned shame.”
Doble sniffed, and replaced the tin lid of his sandwich-box.
3
For the first time in his life Scarsdale knew that he was a failure.
But it was strange. He had lived with Spenser Scarsdale all these years, and he had grown so accustomed to the set of his own self-regard, that when it collapsed suddenly, he was astonished. Extraordinary! Why, only yesterday he had been in the thirties and feeling himself mildly important as a critic and a contributor of literary articles. He had written for the Scrutator. He could remember proposing to write a biography, and to publish a collection of essays. Yes, all in good time. He had assumed that he had the cream of his career waiting to be lapped, and that in the late forties he would be one of those mild gentlemen with distinguished heads of hair and pince-nez perched rather waywardly on cultured noses. He had seen himself wearing a velvet coat.
Extraordinary! And he had been sacked; he had been sacked for the second time of asking, and he was in his forty-seventh year. His literary flavour had grown musty. He was sitting on a seat with some small change in his pocket, and about a hundred pounds lying at his bank. At the end of the month, in nine days’ time, he would be unemployed. He had just come back from his holiday. Yesterday morning he had been in Wiltshire, and feeling full of butter and eggs.
Extraordinary! Was he—? What was the word, unemployable? But surely! More than twenty years of literary and journalistic experience! And old Frater? Old Frater was fifty-nine and had children still at school.
Failure. He was alone, and the September evening had a clear, and vital crispness, and yet he was made to feel that some shadowy presence had joined him on the seat. Almost he was moved to edge away. He became conscious of a sense of chilliness. He would remember seeing shabby, frowsy figures sitting on seats, reading dirty newspapers, or looking with blank intentness at nothing. The submerged. The people who had gone under. The people whose boots were derelict.
And suddenly he felt frightened, chilly and frightened. He put his hand to his collar. He remembered the rabbit of Martinsell Hill. He too was in the snare, a failure, a shabby fellow, one of the superfluous and the too many. And he was growing old.
But No. 24A Canonbury Square and Miss Gall remained to him with all the familiar physical associations, the comings in and goings out, the desk at the window, the chair by the fire, Miss Gall’s footsteps on the stairs, the tray that came and went as regularly as the sun itself. Like a frightened child his impulse was to run back to that friendly house and to go up to the familiar room, and light the fire. He was hungry, and Miss Gall would feed him. She would make his bed and send his linen to the wash.
He stood up, and then sat down again. The impulse was stayed. He had not faced the ultimate reality. What would happen to him if he failed to obtain another post in a world that was so young and full of change that he was self standing on his long legs like a war cripple in the midst of the traffic. Obviously, he would not be able to remain in Canonbury Square. He could not sponge upon a woman like Miss Gall.
His consciousness became a calculating machine. How much money had he, and how long would it last? Canonbury Square could not support him on a sum less than three pounds a week. An odd hundred pounds. That would last him about thirty weeks, from the end of September till the beginning of May, and he had a pipe to be smoked and shoes to be mended and he needed new winter underclothing. Miss Gall had reminded him of it.
Besides, he could not sink to the last pound. He would have to keep something in reserve, economize, take cheaper rooms elsewhere.
What a fool he had been about that five hundred pounds. “Pay Julia Marwood—” What a damned fool! And Solfatara Oils and his splurge into speculation! What a rabbit!
4
It so happened that Scarsdale and Mr. Bartlet met on Miss Gall’s doorstep. Mr. Bartlet was going out, jocund and adorned. He wore an opera hat, a white scarf, a black overcoat and patent-leather boots. A taxi was waiting for him. It was the very first occasion upon which Mr. Bartlet had worn an opera hat, and he was conscious of it, and feeling adequate and jaunty.
He stopped to speak to Scarsdale.
“Excuse me,—one moment, sir. I hope you had a good time.”
Scarsdale’s brown eyes fixed themselves upon the opera hat. He was feeling chilly and worried, and this breezy, red-faced, prosperous person challenged him as a butcher’s chop full of electric light and red meat might tantalize a man who was hungry and out of work. He wanted to get away from Mr. Bartlet.
“Most successful holiday, thank you.”
“That’s good. I hope you will excuse me, but I have a favour to ask you. I believe in frankness, sir. I should be very much obliged—if—at any time you should think of making a change—”
Scarsdale’s glance lowered itself suddenly to the level of Mr. Bartlet’s blue and businesslike stare.
“I don’t quite take you.”
“That’s all right, sir. To cut a long story short, should you ever contemplate moving, you would put me under an obligation if you gave me a hint.”
He was urbane, familiar. He tapped Scarsdale on the right shoulder with the tips of two fingers.
“Not that we wish it. Mark you, I’m rather particular, sir, I like to know that the chap overhead doesn’t come in at God knows what hour, and throw his boots about. You are perfect overhead, sir. You understand me, I hope?”
“You mean that you would like my rooms?”
“Only in the event of your leaving. Just the possibility, that’s all. Hope you’ll stay, sir. This place suits me very well.”
Scarsdale’s glance dropped to the level of Mr. Bartlet’s white silk scarf.
“Well, just at present, I don’t contemplate—”
“Very glad to hear it. No offence, my dear sir. Just a neighbourly understanding. Well,—I must hustle. Dining at the Troc.”
He waved a hand and got briskly into his taxi, and bumped his opera hat against the roof, removed it, and restored it to its uncreased rightness. Scarsdale did not observe the little comedy. He was crossing Miss Gall’s threshold slowly and abstractedly, and his eyes were like the eyes of the brown creature he had rescued on Martinsell Hill.
Chapter Twenty
October, November, December were three self-revealing months to Spenser Scarsdale, for no one in London had need of him. He drifted about on his long legs, growing every week a little shabbier and more depressed, carrying a seemingly superfluous self from one place to another. He asked for interviews, and was fobbed off by secretaries and junior clerks. He hung about and waylaid men who were in the position to give him work. By some he was treated with brusqueness, by others with sympathy, but all that kindness could say was, “I’ll keep your name in mind.”
For Scarsdale was not made for the forcing of doors, or built to squeeze himself into some niche when scores of
other men, more hungrily fierce and vigorous than he was, fought and scuffled for the chance to live. He was too sensitive, too quiet, too much the literary gent. He approached each crisis with a polite diffidence, a shyness, a stultifying self-consciousness.
He did not push. He stood a little apologetically to one side and waited for Life to notice him, and when the voice of Life hailed him with blunt candour, he proceeded, with gentleness and modesty, to explain.
“What can you do, you devil?”
“I have had twenty years’ experience—”
“But what can you do?”
Confronted thus and compelled to realize his capabilities, he had to admit that his shop window was not impressive. It was rather like one of those strange, shabby, half-derelict shops seen in back streets in which some elderly person displays an amazing collection of junk. He had nothing new to offer to a world that shouted persistently for some new thing. Newness and noise bewildered him. He would venture into some crowded building, and come forth from it repulsed with an air of deprecating sadness. He was only forty-six, but he looked much older during those winter months, because he was feeling himself senile in finding himself so superfluous. His mild eyes looked pained and surprised. And other men, regarding him appraisingly when he came to ask for a post, were wise as to his ineffectual soul. “No use, no earthly use.” He had no buck, no bounce, no power to impress. Even as a sedulous hack he would have been worth much less than some younger and sturdier mule.
He drifted, he circulated. He looked up casual acquaintances and men of some small authority, and would gently explain his position, and they would look uncomfortable, and talk about hard luck, and promise to keep their eyes and ears open. He made them uncomfortable, and they were secretly glad to be rid of him, and in time he began to understand that he was one of those unwelcome persons who might be expected to cadge. The awareness of it made him go hot and cold. It intensified his moods of diffidence. It made him appear more shy and ineffectual. He went about feeling ashamed.
Particularly did he feel humiliated in the presence of Miss Gall, for she had known him when he had considered himself a person whose views were of importance. Always, for her he had worn a mild halo, his vanity, or the ghost of it, tried to stalk impressively about the house. He was very careful to keep up appearances in the presence of Miss Gall. He would go out for hours, and wander about and sit on seats, and imagine that she would assume that he had been working. He sat at his desk and wrote articles and a short story or two, and had them typed and sent out, and like faithful and forlorn children they came back to him.
Miss Gall was not deceived. She was worried about Mr. Scarsdale, but when Mr. Bartlet asked her cheerful and impertinent questions about the first-floor lodger, she resented this curiosity.
“What’s he do for a living? Seems to me—”
Miss Gall cherished Scarsdale’s dignity.
“Mr. Scarsdale is an author.”
“What’s he write? Never read anything of his.”
“He writes for the papers.”
Mr. Bartlet was not impressed.
“Freelance. Pretty precarious sort of game. Do you get paid?”
Miss Gall looked shocked.
“Mr. Scarsdale’s a gentleman. He has been with me more than twelve years. I’ve never had to wait a day.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She would have liked to say more to Mr. Bartlet, but she lived upon Mr. Bartlet, and he could not be offended.
Christmas came and went. Mr. Bartlet travelled down to Brighton in his car, and took a lady with him, and Miss Gall gave Mr. Scarsdale roast beef and Christmas pudding. He had muffins for his tea too on Christmas Day, and perhaps—because of his problem—they lay heavy on his soul. And a most indigestible problem it was. He had about sixty pounds left in the world, and no prospect of employment, or of any employment that would enable him to live in Canonbury Square. No one wanted him. He had ceased to be astonished by the fact. He was approaching that state of mind when a man is willing to accept any sort of job, and to clutch with a feeling of fatalistic fearfulness at any opportunity. But, obviously, he could not stay on with Miss Gall. He would have to cherish those sixty pounds. He could not run into debt with Miss Gall. He would have to take cheaper lodgings, and economize until something turned up. He still believed that something would turn up.
One day early in January he met old Frater in the Strand, looking very neat and shabby. His face had the waxy pallor of the man who—for weeks—had not been getting enough to eat. Its creases had deepened, and out of the bloodless mask an old man’s eyes stared wistfully.
“Any luck?”
He watched Scarsdale anxiously.
“No. There seems to be nothing doing.”
Scarsdale noticed that old Frater had had his moustache hogged, as though the flaunting, grey wings of it had dated him too obviously.
“No use grousing—I suppose. We’re too old, Scarsdale, that’s about it.”
Scarsdale winced. He had not seen himself bracketed with old Frater. He was thirteen years younger than Father Time.
“How old do you think I am?”
“About fifty-five, aren’t you?”
“Not quite so much as that. You have pushed me on nine years.”
“The war must have aged you a lot.”
They parted, but this meeting with old Frater had a depressing effect upon Scarsdale. Good heavens, did he look fifty-five? Impossible, absurd! But the incident helped to urge upon him the seriousness of the situation. He was spending too much money. He could not afford to go on living in Canonbury Square. He ought to warn Miss Gall and warn her immediately that his professional responsibilities compelled him to live elsewhere. He need not tell her the real reason. It was only fair to her that he should give her an opportunity of reletting his rooms at once. But, of course, there was Mr. Bartlet. He would have to communicate with Mr. Bartlet.
2
On that very afternoon Scarsdale discovered Astey’s Row. He had passed the end of it on many occasions, where the New River ceases to be a river, and disappears beneath the Canonbury Road. He was walking up the Canonbury Road past a hideous grey church and a row of decaying houses, when his eyes happened to lift to the branches of a magnificent and patriarchal plane tree which stood at the end of the row. He paused. It was the first time that he had noticed this tree, and he was surprised by it, and by his own lack of observation. Behind him the still waters of the New River, reflecting a tangle of dusky thorn-trees and splashed by a winter sunset, brimmed their way behind the gardens and houses of Aylwin Road. But Scarsdale was looking down Astey’s Row, with its footpath and its railings, and the broad space where the New River ran underground. The trees that had shaded it still stood there, planes, chestnuts, a weeping ash, and behind their branches the very red walls of a row of model dwellings emphasized modernity.
On the left were the first houses of Astey’s Row backing against the houses of Canonbury Road. They were queer, little old grey boxes with low, slated roofs and groups of red chimney pots. Their walls were peeling. There were touches of faded blue here and there. They had small gardens, and trees and shrubs, and adventures in rockery and window boxes. They looked very old and rather decrepit, but there was an indefinable something about them, a soft and smudgy charm. They were human, individual, if shabby, not like the new, hygienic barracks opposite, whose windows were like rows and rows of indistinguishable faces ranged along the seats of a football stand.
Scarsdale strolled down Astey’s Row, and in the front window of one of these funny little houses he saw a card—“Rooms to Let.” He hesitated. He walked on ten yards or so, and pausing at the top of River Street, he turned and looked back at the house, with the card in its window. A shabby place. It crouched behind its wintry trees and shrubs, and the soil of the little garden had a blackness. A couple of box-trees had been planted in green tubs. The plaster was flaking off the walls. And yet he noticed that the muslin curtains in the windows
were clean.
Well, why not explore? Astey’s Row was not Canonbury Square, but he was in search of economy and this place had an atmosphere of its own. It would not be necessary for him to make any immediate decision, and so he headed for the green gate and opened it, and found himself on the steps outside the door. He rang the bell and waited, and was reminded of the occasion when he had stood on the steps of No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace. He looked at the row of model dwellings on the other side of the hidden river. There were rows and rows of yellow-framed windows in the red façade, rows and rows of slates in the Mansard roof.
A voice said, “Yes, what do you want?”
The door had opened behind him, and facing about he saw a woman in a blue and white check apron. She was neither tall nor short, neither young nor old. Her rather solid face had a clear, calm pallor. Her hair was very black, and her dark eyes had a stillness.
Scarsdale raised his hat.
“Excuse me, you have a room to let.”
“Yes.”
The doorway framed her motionless figure. She looked at him steadily as though her consciousness was a mirror in which men and things were reflected. She noticed Scarsdale’s grizzled hair, and his anxious eyes. She had noticed the thinness of the back of his neck.
“Temporary or permanent?”
“Well, that would depend.”
She nodded. She moved. There was something pleasant and flowing and deliberate about her. She had a certain plumpness of shoulders, throat and bosom. Her voice did not hurry.
“Perhaps you would like to see the room.”
Scarsdale followed her into the narrow passage.
3
An open door at the end of the passage showed him a strip of green curtain, half the body of an old leather-covered armchair, and the flicker of a fire. The woman was on the stairs, and moving silently up them with a hand gliding along the rail. And suddenly he knew that he was alone with her in the house, and that it was full of her presence, the stillness and the darkness of her, a kind of indolent deliberation of voice and of movement. She went up the stairs like a shadow, but when he followed her the stairs creaked.
Old Wine and New Page 21
