by Gerald Kersh
Priscilla was entranced. She said: “Mr. Gonger, please, can I have him?”
“What, Dicky? I wouldn’t part with Dicky for a thousand pound.”
“You give me Dicky, and I’ll give you a kiss,” said Priscilla.
Old Gonger was deeply moved. Something stirred within him. He picked the ferret up, holding it under the belly, and gave it to the child, saying: “All right then, it’s a go. Lift him like this—so—see? He’s a good-natured feller but he hasn’t been fed for two days, and he’s sort of irritable. Feed him a bit o’ raw meat. Now then, where’s m’ kiss?”
Holding the ferret by the belly, Priscilla laughed and said: “No. You smell.” Then she was gone with Dicky before old Gonger could catch her.
… So, Dicky crouched on the tea table. I. Small approached the ferret cautiously, offering it a lump of sugar. (He would have offered it a cigar, if he had had a cigar.) Dicky, the ferret, took a small circular piece out of his thumb. I. Small roared like a hurricane: tea and muffins flew in all directions. Looking for the wherewithal to annihilate this bleddy little murderer, he found a pot of black-currant jam which, brandished on high, emptied itself on his head; so that he stood there, waggling a bloody thumb, dripping with black-currant jam, bleddying and beggaring to shake the house. Priscilla, of course, was overjoyed. She clasped Dicky to her bosom. He didn’t bite her. Probably he hadn’t the nerve. Mrs. Small threatened to call a policeman. The old man, who felt that he had been dangerously wounded and was in a critical condition rushed bareheaded to Dr. Ribbon; burst into the consulting-room, gasping like a donkey-engine: “Quick! Look!”
Having looked, the doctor said: “All right. Suck it. That will be three-and-six.”
As an afterthought he grudgingly applied a bit of cotton-wool soaked in iodine, adding: “Four shillings.”
“Sis not poisonous, Doctor?”
“How many consultations do you expect for your dirty four shillings? Go home, go away, get out of here!”
So I. Small returned to the house, full of anger, determined to thrash his parricidal daughter until she was red, white and blue. He weighed in his hands his heaviest stick, but, taking into consideration her youth and weakness, rolled up last week’s Jewish Chronicle, and went to her room—for Millie Small had sent her to bed. There she lay, serene and beautiful, smiling in her sleep, with the ferret warm and comfortable, draped like ermine about her throat. It opened its bright red eyes and gave the old man a look that seemed to be fraught with menace. He dropped the Jewish Chronicle and ran for his life.
Downstairs he said to Millie: “You see what she is?”
“Thank goodness she doesn’t take after me,” said Mrs. Small, “she’s bad to the backbone—she’s got bad blood.”
“Who then does she bleddy-well take after, with her bleddy blad blood? The bleddy little rotter! Stinkpot! Who does she take after? Me, if I said one word to my father, over went the wrong side of his strap on my tukhess till it was like a rainbow! And this one, your bleddy Priscilla, she lets bleddy wild beasts tear, already, her own father to pieces—and she goes to sleep laughing! That’s what she is!”
He was right for once in his life. That was what she was, thinks Charles Small; and wishes that there were a few more like her.
It pleases him to remember such little incidents: the memory of them tickles him, even if, in strengthening his admiration for Priscilla, they exacerbate his self-contempt.
At the recollection of the old man, dishevelled, balancing a blob of ruddy-brown cotton-wool on the tip of a tremulous thumb, Charles Small laughs, for a change—and with the laugh comes a kind of hiccough with a nauseating eructation, as if that brief pop of mirth has uncorked a carboy of fuming acid, concentrated, destructive, sour stuff—that which is eating his life away and utterly destroying him.
*
The poor old man, I. Small, opened his heart to Lizzard, the atheistic cobbler. This was after the Drapery Business came to its inevitable, ignominious end, and I. Small stubbornly insisted on going into High Class Ladies’ and Gents’ Repairs—at which, at last, he made a respectable living; for whatever one might say of the old man, it could not be denied that he was a tireless worker, for whom no job was too large or too small. Millie hated the business. She preferred something clean and quiet. But the drapery business had come to grief. Having laid in a large stock of preposterous and unsaleable haberdashery—Edwardian drawers that split in the middle and had lace at the knees, job-lots of perished elastic, millions of pearl buttons, rolls of wide satin ribbon to tie up little girls’ hair, thick lisle stockings—in short, everything the wholesalers were delighted to sell and nobody wanted to buy, Millie Small became businesslike. She went to a stationer and bought a whole lot of tickets, red-and-white, inscribed:
NORMAL PRICE …
SALE PRICE …!
Then (this was her idea of salesmanship) she wrote 2/- under NORMAL PRICE …, crossed it out with a blue pencil, and wrote 1/11¾d. under SALE PRICE …! By these subtle machinations she hoped that the world would beat a path to the dingy shop in Lewisham. What the devil made them think of Lewisham, Charles Small wonders, remembering the dreadful desolation of that boring suburb.
Nathan, the Photographer, suggested a nice position in the Old Kent Road, but Millie would not hear of that. What, was he trying to humiliate her? The Old Kent Road! Among the costers, the drunkards? She could just see herself selling tape, hygienic diapers, perished elastic, and so forth, to a hulking Pearly Queen of a coster-woman who came in, reeking of beer, running at the nose and saying: “Quick, ducks—gimme a bleedin’ snot-rag.” Nathan, the Photographer, should live so sure. They went further afield, to Lewisham, which was neither alive nor dead, but respectable. Nathan, the Photographer, took over the premises in the Old Kent Road, and there established a Studio, out of which he made a lot of money. He employed some miserable wretch to take photographs of the local Pearly Kings and Pearly Queens, and grew fat on the fat of the land. Bawdy, ribald Cockneys in bell-bottomed trousers and ostrich feathers reeled past, drunk as lords, singing “Down the Road Away Went Polly”, and:
“… Who’re you going to meet, Bill?
’Ave you bought the street, Bill?
Laugh! I thought I should’ve died!
Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road, Gorblimey …”
Much Nathan cared! He drew his dividends from the Old Kent Road and Bond Street, while Millie Small, inspired, fluttered from stationery shop to stationery shop buying tickets and little signs. Her last gesture was the purchase of a sort of streamer, about six square feet of paper, upon which was printed in lurid colours the ominous words: CLEARANCE SALE! She crossed out previous prices and slashed what remained of the prices until they bled, bleddy-well bled. No one paid any attention. If women wanted drawers, garters, hosiery, buttons, etcetera, they could get them across the street from Messrs. Tom Dick and Harry at half the price.
It could not be denied that I. Small had done his bit. He dressed, up, and showed at least three inches of stiff cuff—pink cuff, brilliantly starched. The ladies of Lewisham went for him in a big way. Here, between good laundering and the careful barbering of a ginger moustache, here was Dark Male Ecstasy. If it had not been for the old man, the establishment would not have lasted three months. He talked, and hawked, and snorted like the oaf that he was; but looking at him you would have put him down as a visiting diplomat, a Minister Plenipotentiary.
The ladies of the locality preferred him to Millie Small. The old man strutted like a peacock, while the Missus screamed like a pea-hen; until at last, when she had hysterics, I. Small took her by the shoulders and shook her, shouting: “Enough! No more bleddy drawers, no more bleddy elastic! Ribbon, schmibbon! Back to the bleddy boots, or to bleddy beggary!”
It sounded like King Richard III before the Battle: “Back to the bleddy boots, or to bleddy beggary!”
So, they went back—Millie was so ashamed—to cobblery. The old man’s working dress consisted in an old pair of e
vening-dress trousers, carpet slippers, and a flannel shirt. He kept up his trousers with a belt, clasped by a buckle with which he might have knocked down a cow—only he would have run away from a cow. Then he was quite happy. He was doing what he knew, and he had company, the atheistic cobbler, Lizzard, from whose conversation he derived much pleasure, if not profit.
One day, in a slack period in August, when everyone was at the seaside, a big man dressed in khaki stamped in, twirled a pair of light moustaches at I. Small, and said in a rasping voice: “Our snob’s dead. Want to stud some boots?”
I. Small attempted feebly to twirl his own moustache right back at the Quartermaster Sergeant, saying: “So?”
The Quartermaster said: “Put the business your way, if you make it worth my while. Be worth your while, you make it worth my while.”
“Certainly!” said I. Small.
“Right you are then.”
After the door had slammed behind the soldier, the old man said: “A bit of luck, thenk God, thenk God!”
Lizzard, who was whetting his knives on a well-worn stone, looked up sharply and snapped: “Thank God? What d’you mean, God?”
“What does he mean, what do I mean? God!”
“May I harst, Mr. Small, exactly what d’you mean by God?”
Charles Small was present at the time, and he saw that the old man was stumped. But he came up fighting with: “Mean, schmean! God! I said God! Na!”
Lizzard purred: “You believe in God, Mr. Small.”
“Bleddy-well yes!”
“All right, sir. Is God good?”
“What the bleddy hell does he think, with his ‘Is God good?’ Certainly! A bird lives from the scheiss from a horse—God is good!”
“Very well,” said Lizzard. “God is good. God is all-good. Is He all-powerful?”
“Certainly. What then should he be?”
“But—par’m me—are there bad things in this world of ours, Comrade Small? Is there … indigestion, corns, cancer, toothache, hunger, thirst, eh? Are these good?”
“No bleddy good,” said I. Small.
“Evil, then, eh?”
“No bleddy good.”
“Now you say that your God is all-good and all-powerful. If your God is all-good and all-powerful, I harst you how you reconcile an all-good and all-powerful God with the existence of Evil! Eh?”
I. Small made a noise like coals sliding off a rusty shovel; then lost his temper and shouted: “No argument! There must be Something, and God is good!”
“Prove it,” said Lizzard. “D’you believe in a life after death?”
“What the bleddy rubbishing hell is this?” cried I. Small. “When you’re dead, you’re done for, gefinished! What new madness is this? Life after death, beggar it! Schmife after death, the bleddy fool!”
Lizzard began to say: “Then how do you reconcile——”
I. Small, very angry, fumbled in a pocket, took out some money, and slammed it down on the bench, saying: “No arguments! Nothing but your chains to lose, all right. But God is good, d’you hear? Na! A week’s wages! Wrap up your bleddy knives and go to beggary!”
The old man had given Lizzard the sack every week for years. Now the atheistic cobbler took it in silence. He put his few tools into a little linen bag, picked up his money, and went out without another word. I. Small was first disconcerted, then enraged. He cried: “What did I said, idiot? God is good! By you is a crime?”
Lizzard slammed the door, and shambled away. I. Small turned to Charles. “What did I say wrong, Charley?”
“Nothing, Dad.”
“I didn’t said nothing wrong. He’s a good man, Lizzard. It’s all right. I kicked him out of the bleddy place a thousand times. Did I said something? ‘God is good’—sis a crime? All right, never mind, to-morrow he’ll come back, the drunkard.”
The old man went back to work, disconsolate, for he had a fondness for the courageous Lizzard, who denied God and spat upon the State. I. Small could visualise Lizzard, somehow, as one of the desperate men in the breathless Battle of Sidney Street, when the Anarchists, as they were called, opened fire on the police, and a bright young Home Secretary named Winston Churchill called out the Guards.
I. Small shook his head and said: “Sis a heathen, a—a—a Atheist, a Intellectual.”
Charles Small remembers that, next morning, munching buttered toast, the old man, obedient to an imperious knock, went to open the side door. There stood a big blue policeman. Startled out of his wits, the old man choked on a crust, spraying the policeman with moist fragments. Charles went to tell his mother, but when they came down the policeman was gone and I. Small was crying at his bench. Lizzard, the atheistic cobbler, had killed himself—cut his throat. Before doing so he had addressed a little package to I. Small. This package, screwed up in a brown paper bag, contained two paper-backed books: The Age of Reason by Tom Paine, and Free Will and, Determinism by Goodness-Knows-Who. These were his treasures. He had nothing else; only a few razor-edged leather-knives, a spare pair of trousers, two flannel shirts, a broken watch, and a bloody blanket. There were also his boots. He had soled and heeled them only a week before, sewing on thick leather of the finest quality, hammering iron tips into heel and toe, and saying: “These will last me a good seven years.”
CHAPTER XXV
BUT Charles Small’s passion for the theatre had become a monomania. Opening a boiled egg, for instance, he would rant and roar like Othello: “… I took by the throat the circumcised dog and smote him—thus! …” Stabbing a piece of pudding with his fork he muttered: “… Cæsar, now be still! I killed not thee with half so good a will! …”
At first the old man said: “Sha! Shakespeare!” But when, at a family gathering, Charles was invited to recite, and let fly with:
“… Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No:
The wren goes to’t and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight …”
And so on to:
“… But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’;
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit
Burning, scalding stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! Pah! Pah! …”
—then all the sisters, who were very particular about their feminine hygiene, looked aghast. (Later, Becky went to the Library and took out a copy of The Tragedy of King Lear and went through it carefully, in search of the spicy bits.) Millie did not know where to look. Nathan, the Photographer, looked grave and shook his heavy head. His son, Stanley, the handsome one, had decided to go in for Diseases of Women instead of Dentistry; he was such a nice-looking fellow that it was generally agreed that few women could resist the temptation to be professionally fumbled by him. And here was this nebbisch, Charley, with his stenches and his sulphurous pits!
It was generally agreed that the idea of acting had to be knocked out of the boy’s head. I. Small looked stern, and took a firm hold of a rolled-up copy of the Sunday Referee.
Later, Millie went to Nathan and tearfully asked what on earth she could do. It was more than she could bear. The little girl, Priscilla, was picking up Charley’s dirty talk; she, too, had caught the infection and wanted to go on the stage. Srul, she said, was as good as gold but … he was a foreign fellow—he could not understand. “Nathan, do me a favour—talk to Charley,” she said.
So, one evening, the Jesuitical Nathan dropped in as it were en passant, for a casual visit. The old man poured a glass of whisky. Millie buzzed about like a blue-arsed fly, preparing a monumental tea—nobody was going to say that there was a lack of food in the house. Nathan ate and drank everything that was put before him; he was one of those slow, deliberate, insatiable eaters. And he talked in the same way that he ate—ponderously, chewing every word thirty-two times before spitting it out. (A Cockney charwoman, whom he dismissed on the spot, irritated to the verge of madness by his long drawn-out periods, had said: “Come to the bleedin’ point, Mister—either piss or
get off the pot!”) Charles Small sensed funny business. It was in the air. It was not like Uncle Nathan to go out of his way to pay visits to poor relations, and when at last the man said to him: “Let’s go for a walk, Charley. Come on, I’ll take you to the theatre”—why, then, Charles Small smelled a rat. However, he was not going to let suspicion come between him and a little free entertainment, so he went with Nathan, who, to his astonishment and delight, carried him off to a music hall. They rode in a cab. All the way, Nathan made sly allusions to the precariousness of the Stage as a profession. The life of an actor was a hard one, a squalid, wretched, anxious life … your theatrical people lived from hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal was coming from; begging, borrowing, stealing, lying, writing stumer cheques, and ending in the gutter…. Actors lived miserably in bug-infested furnished rooms, for which landladies, justly suspicious, demanded rent in advance…. They had no roots, no homes, no lives of their own…. Who ever heard of an actor coming home to a nice little house after an honest day’s work, with a regular Friday pay envelope in his pocket, and sitting down in a familiar arm-chair by a nice fire while his respectable wife took off his shoes and helped him put on his slippers, and the Little Ones called him Daddy, and the kettle began to sing, and a clean housemaid made music with cups and saucers and spoons, while, like incense, there came the aroma of muffins, and all that? … No, the actor was outside in the raw night, coughing in the fog, threadbare, shivering in the rain….
So Nathan ran on until the chicken-heart of Charles Small grew cold in his pitiful little breast. But at last they reached a famous music hall, and there was richness! Everybody was on the bill. He wept when Albert Chevalier sang:
“… We’ve lived together now for forty years
An’ it don’t seem a day too much—
There ain’t a lady livin’ in the land
As I’d swap for my dear old Dutch! …”
