by Gerald Kersh
Charles Small laughed bitterly and said: “You’ll never see my name on any programme, dear Ivy. I threw it all up donkey’s years ago.”
“Oh, but why? You were so fine!”
“To please the Old People. They practically threatened to die. I couldn’t have been any too damned fine, or I’d have gone my way and let them die. Everybody must die, and so must everybody live. It would have broken their hearts—hah!—what nonsense! What if it did? A mercy-killing, better than cancer. What are hearts made for? No, no, Ivy my dear, I did what they wanted, and did well at it; and oh, good God, how I wish … It would have been rough work, Ivy; furnished rooms, tinned salmon, hand-to-mouth, and all that kind of thing. But there would have been you and me, and you’d have loved me and I’d have loved you, and if I didn’t have a penny to put in the gas-meter, we’d have kept each other warm. But the Old Ones were dying, don’t you see, and they had to suck my life. So there you have it, Ivy, my one and only love—and here I am like the shell of a dead crab, stinking to high heaven on a grey beach, covered with flies. Am I prosperous? Oh yes. I have plenty of money. I have plenty of nothing. All I want is Ivy, Ivy, Ivy.”
Ivy was silent.
“And you?” said Charles Small.
“If you don’t mind, Charles, I’d rather not talk much about that now—not here, anyway. I married someone named Squire—perhaps you remember him?”
“What, that horrible man? Oh no!”
“Yes. I have two children, girls. Would you like to see some snaps of them?”
“No, no. Squire! That one!”
“He died two years ago.”
“I hope he’s rotting in hell!” said Charles Small. “What business had he marrying you?”
“Mother made me,” said Ivy. “But I didn’t want anyone but you, dear Charles. You married, too?”
“Yes, and my wife isn’t dead, and I’ve got a couple of children.”
“That must be nice,” said Ivy, sighing.
“It isn’t nice. I want you—never wanted anything but you.”
She sighed again, looked at her watch, and said: “I must go, dear.”
“No, don’t—please don’t go!”
“I must; the girls. But why don’t you come to tea to-morrow afternoon?” she said, giving him her card.
“I will, I will!” cried Charles Small. Then he took the velvet-lined jeweller’s box out of his pocket and compelled Ivy to accept it, saying: “I knew I was going to meet you and I got this for you.” She took it in a daze, and opened it.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“You must.”
At last he persuaded her to lock the bracelet on her right wrist, and they parted with a lingering handshake. Charles Small was in high spirits that afternoon, and evolved a good idea in connection with textiles. When the office closed Conscience nudged him. He stopped at a flower shop and bought a pound’s worth of red roses for Hettie, over which she ran at the nose with delight.
Charles Small lay awake until three o’clock in the morning, day-dreaming of tea-time to-morrow.
*
Thus Ivy and he were together again, as in the old times. When no one was looking they sat close to each other, holding hands, knee-to-knee, sometimes cheek-to-cheek, saying little, imagining much. Ivy’s daughters did not like him, perhaps because he was nervous in their presence. When he recited poetry, or tried to tell a funny story, they exchanged looks of astonishment, as if they were asking each other what the hell this jittering imbecile thought he was playing at. Still, he was happy with Ivy, although he scarcely touched her except with his fingertips, and only brushed her cheek with his lips.
One day in July the girls were sent to stay with their Aunt Enid, who had a house near the sea in Bournemouth. Charles Small’s offspring, Laura and Jules, had gone with their mother to spend a week or two with Lily, the wife of Nathan, the Photographer. Lily was far from well; she had a prolapsis, and her womb more or less fell out, so that a surgeon had to put something like what seamstresses call a “tuck” in an unmentionable orifice. Lily was old now, and given to talking about dear, dead days beyond recall. Nathan, retired with more than a modest competence, had arthritis, gout, colitis, and something that felt like a nest of mice in his stomach—to say nothing of hæmorrhoids, corns, wax in the ears, a pain in the neck. He sat by the fire, in the heat of July, shivering and brooding, staring at the embers which seemed to wink at him knowingly, while the smoke hissed and the coals crackled: Quick, quick, Nathan … Pss! What are you waiting for? He could not eat; he dared not smoke; he had never taken refuge in wine; he could not urinate, tie his shoelaces, or even breathe properly. His false teeth had to be taken away from him in case he might swallow them and choke himself, because his gums had shrivelled. He tried to read an Encyclopædia of Photography, in which there were plates of nudes—one of them undepilated—but his rheumy eyes registered grey blurs, and he could see nothing but the fire, the whispering fire that hissed: Hurry up, hurry up over the rasping chuckle of the cinders. Stanley, the gynæcologist with the Ronald Colman moustache, married to the homely daughter of a wealthy builder of shoddy houses, was poking about the private parts of hypochondriacal hags in Harley Street. Old Auntie Lily needed company, and sympathy. All the fight had been knocked out of her. She and Hettie got along like a house on fire, as the saying goes. Laura and Jules played and fought, while the old man drooled at the fire, and the women pitied each other over teacups, brushing biscuit-crumbs from their bosoms, exchanging secrets unprintable except by H. K. Lewis, and in a Limited Edition at that.
It came to pass, then, that Charles Small stuck his elbow into a cream cake and, grasping Ivy’s hand, said: “Ivy, my dear Ivy, I love you better than anything in the world! Let’s go away, just you and me together. We’ve missed so much, Ivy. Your mother, my mother; your father, my father—they’ve taken everything away from us. Together, Ivy, you and me—oh, a devil of a long way away, my darling! Please come.”
“What about your wife and children, Charles?”
“They don’t need me, they don’t want me. They’ll have plenty of money. I don’t do them any good. I’m a nuisance to them. When I’m out of the house they sing and they dance, and when I come home they go on tiptoe. They don’t like me, they don’t want me, Ivy; and I don’t want them—I want you.”
“Enid adores the girls,” said Ivy, slowly. “… I do love you very dearly, Charles …”
“Oh then, Ivy my dear, let us go away, a long way away, right away! I love you, you love me; isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Charles.”
“Everyone will be looked after. There’s plenty of everything for everybody. Didn’t you see how glad your girls were to go to Bournemouth, to their great-aunt? They don’t like you, honestly they don’t And mine—I never saw them so happy in their lives as when they were waving good-bye to me out of the carriage window. Please! Ivy, darling! What do they want us for? What do we want them for? You worry them, they worry you—what for? Come away with me, Ivy, a long way away. Yes?”
Ivy shed tears, and replied: “Oh, I do love you, Charles—I do, I do! More than the whole world, my darling. The girls wouldn’t really care; they’re their father’s daughters, and not mine…. It’s a wicked thing to say, I know, but I never wanted to have them by Jack, and they never wanted to have me….”
“You’ll come then? You’ll come with me?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Oh Ivy, when?”
“As soon as I pack my clothes.”
“Thank you, bless you!” cried Charles Small. “I’ll pack mine, now. To-morrow? … Have you got a passport? … Have you? Oh good, good! Portugal, let’s go to Portugal yes? Or anywhere. We’ll meet at Victoria, eh? And go away, eh? Where doesn’t matter—only when. To-morrow, eh?”
Ivy nodded, and said: “To-morrow. At what time shall I meet you?”
“I must pack, and buy the tickets to-day, and let you know first thing in the morning. Be ready very first thing,
dear Ivy.”
“I’ll be ready, dear Charles.”
Charles Small had never tasted such spice in life, such happiness. He felt that another little drop of joie de vivre would unbalance him, send him off his rocker. He sobbed:
“… Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but Death part thee and me …”
Then, with the taste of her tears on his tongue he hurried home.
As Millie would have said, he “threw himself about” when he got home. He stuffed ten suits, twenty shirts, eight pairs of shoes, fifteen pairs of socks, nine changes of underclothes, a handful of neckties, and a Panama hat into a cabin trunk and an immense valise. He forgot his studs, cuff-links, toothbrush, razor, hairbrush and handkerchiefs; but—he does not know why—he turned the house upside down in search of an eye-bath, and a sixpenny tube of yellow eye ointment, for he was subject to sties. Also, and this was significant, he packed several family photographs which he had never found the courage to throw away: Millie Small had a superstition about throwing away photographs. There was one especially repulsive family group: the old man, dressed in his best, looking at Millie, who was in her prime. She was holding the two-year-old Priscilla in her lap; even at that tender age Prissie looked like the uninhibited little tart that she turned out to be. As for Charles Small, he stood like the nebbisch that he was, in such an attitude that his head seemed likely to drop off at any moment. (Pity it didn’t.) He drove like a madman to Victoria Station, checked his luggage, and went to the office, where he told his secretary to drop everything and buy two tickets on the Golden Arrow to France. After that he went next door to the bank, just before closing time, and drew a thousand pounds in ten-pound notes. He was wildly excited; he was alive. He went to the inner office. A secretary said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Small, but Sir Solomon says he’s on no account to be disturbed”—but Charles Small pushed her aside and, brushing off a few buzzing office-boys, burst into the Holy of Holies, Sir Solomon Schwartz’s private office.
The hunchback was grey, now, and almost bald. He was dried up. The muscles between his neck and his shoulders had shrunk, and his chin was low on his chest, so that his hump appeared like Popocatepetl, but his eyes flashed as he growled: “What d’you want, trottel? I wasn’t to be disturbed. Who asked you to barge in? Were you told?”
“Mr. Schwartz—I mean, Sir Solomon——”
“—Bugger that for a lark; what’s on your mind?”
Charles Small said: “This must be good-bye. I’ve come to say good-bye.”
Solly Schwartz replied: “Out with it, trottel! Don’t stand there hopping about like a bear with a sore arse. What’s your trouble? Look sharp. Sit down. You worry me. Speak up. What d’you mean, good-bye?”
“Do you remember, once, a long time ago, when I told you about a girl named Ivy Narwall? It was the night you took me to dinner….”
“Yes. You took after your old man, another trottel—two drinks, and you were drunk as a tinker’s bitch…. Narwall, I remember him,” said Solly Schwartz, laughing in his throat. “He thought he was clever. He wasn’t. And Ivy, Ivy? Oh yes. Knew her before her arse was as big as a shirt-button. So? What?”
Charles Small said, simply: “Will you give me the Paris Branch? Or the New York Branch? Or any other Branch out of England?”
“Try and make sense, will you? What’s all this got to do with your Ivy? For Christ’s sake, man, cough it up!”
“I know I can talk to you in confidence——”
“—You bloody well can’t for more than three minutes, you know. Cough it up, spit it out! What about it?”
“Ivy Narwall and I are going to go away together. Please, can I have one of the Continental or one of the American Branches? You know, I——”
“—I know you, trottel; I knew you before you were born. Don’t make me laugh, I’m not in the mood. You run away from your wife? What, you? Gertcher! American Branches! You couldn’t hold down a twig, let alone a Branch. Next time you barge in here you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m leaving instantly, Sir Solomon. I hand in my resignation.”
“Don’t want it. I’ll see you to-morrow.”
“I shall not be here to-morrow.”
“You will. You are just like your Dad—you haven’t got the bloody nerve to run away. So long, Charley.”
“Good-bye,” said Charles Small.
Knocking aside his proffered hand, Solly Schwartz said: “I’ll be seeing you.”
On his way out Charles Small slapped an office-boy for whistling. Then he went to Shortland’s and ate cold boiled beef, which he afterwards threw up all over the dashboard of his car … there seemed to be pounds of the stuff.
He had had a busy day. For all that, he could not sleep. His secretary came to his house at seven o’clock with the tickets. She gave him a peculiar look. “Will you be gone long, Mr. Small?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly, Miss Appel.”
“Shall I——”
“—Yes, yes. Good-night, good-night.”
He telephoned Ivy at seven o’clock in the morning: “My dear, darling Ivy—did I wake you?—Are you dressed? Have you packed? Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Victoria Station, then, at nine?”
“Nine o’clock, dear, in the big refreshment room.”
He left an eight-page letter for Hettie. She had a good house, and a good car, all weighed and paid, and enough to support her and the children for ever. When he got into the taxi, Charles Small felt light and free. But when the door of the cab slammed behind him, he felt like a man in a box. There was a weight in his chest, and in his mind an image of Hettie’s eyes pink and puffy, and in his ears the sound of her snuffling.
*
Time would not pass. Twenty times he looked from his watch to the clock and back again. The second hand jumped slowly, like an old toad. He palpitated over a cup of undrinkable coffee and listened to the hissing and the clashing of in-coming trains, and the rumbling of trundled trolleys, and the noise—like a kind of dry, stale rain—of thousands of leather heels tap-tapping on the stones. He was suffocated with excitement, sick with fright, far from comfortable in fact; and he was so tired and all his bones ached. His eyes smarted; he could not stop yawning. He caught sight of himself in a mirror behind the counter, and saw that he looked like a man half-awake after an evil dream. He took his cup of coffee from the bar to a table where he sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, checking watch with clock, clock with watch and watching the seconds flop sluggishly around and around. He closed his eyes against the light, and then a gentle voice said: “Charles?” and he started up as if someone were behind him with a gimlet.
“Ivy! Thank God you’ve come. I was worrying about you. Have … a cup of hot cocoa, have a bun.”
She chose cocoa.
“Have you got all your luggage?” he asked, in a whisper.
Ivy shook her head and said, “No, Charles dear. Dear Charles, I haven’t, I’m afraid.”
“You haven’t? Why not?” asked Charles, staring at her.
She did not speak until a waitress had put down a cup of cocoa and departed, and then she said: “Darling, I love you very much; but I can’t!”
“Eh? What do you mean? What can’t you?”
“I can’t come away with you.”
“What the devil are you talking about? What do you mean, you can’t come away with me?”
“I was all packed and ready last night, and I was so excited, I lay awake thinking. I love you, Charles, and always have, and always will, and I’d rather go away with you than do anything else in the world. Dear Charles, I hate to hurt you. Forgive me. I got to thinking, about the girls. Edith is … just starting to be a woman. She needs me; it’s a critical time in her life—a girl nee
ds her mother then. Charles, truly, it wouldn’t be any use. We could never be happy—we’d never know a minute’s peace of mind. We’d always be fretting over our children for the rest of our lives. We’d torment ourselves and each other; we’d feel like deserters; if we met anyone we knew we’d have to cross to the other side of the street. We’d never dare to come back home. We’d be wanderers, Charles. We must go home to our children.”
At this, Charles Small began to laugh. He couldn’t help it. He laughed until bitter bile came into his throat and salty tears ran down his cheeks. “Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,” he said; and “Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it!”
“We must say good-bye, now, and never meet again, my darling Charles. We’d only hurt each other.”
“I suppose you’re not hurting me now,” Charles said, bitterly.
“Oh my dear, don’t be like that! I thought you’d understand.”
“Certainly I understand. I give up everything for you”—he waved the tickets at her—“and at the last moment your children come first. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. If it’s not your bloody mother, it’s your lousy father, and if it isn’t your stinking parents it’s your snotty-nosed children!”
“Don’t talk like that, Charles—I won’t have it.”
“Turnabout’s fair play, I suppose,” said Charles, with a sneer. “First the old cows grab the smeary-arsed little ones by the tail, and then the little ones grab the old cows by the tits.”
“Charles!” exclaimed Ivy, rising.
“Oh don’t Charles me,” he said. “I don’t understand it. Just because one of your ill-mannered little bitches is starting to have a monthly period, she needs you. A Mother’s Care. What are you going to do? Put a cork in her, or something? What the devil do they want you for? To slobber over them? Bah! They don’t need you, you need them. You want to take your revenge for what your mother did to you. Well, fair’s fair. They eat you now; later on you’ll eat them, just as that rotten old witch of a mother ate you!”
