The Itinerant Lodger

by David Nobbs

  “Everyone.”

  “That explains why there were 215 people on your bus, does it?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t see why I should refuse anyone admission.”

  “The bus might become overcrowded. Didn’t that occur to you?” Fletcher was silent, and the Chief Inspector continued: “Injuries might have occurred. Fire might have broken out in those crowded conditions. Didn’t you think of that?” Ninety-nine Chief Inspectors out of a hundred would have confined themselves to the regulations and attempted to have Fletcher certified. Chief Inspector Wilkins—although he had never let anyone suspect it, especially his wife, to whom he was happily married—was the hundredth man in any gathering.

  “I don’t see who I could refuse to admit?”

  “You are supposed to allow five standing.”

  “But which five? If one five, why not another?” There was a brief pause. The Chief Inspector, man in a hundred though he was, felt justified in being taken aback. “Why not ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, sir?”

  “Or four hundred and twenty-five, Fletcher. You have to stop somewhere. There isn’t room for everybody. We stop at five.”

  “But you still have to decide which five, sir.”

  “You should allow the first five on. It’s only fair.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t agree with you, sir,” said Fletcher. He was frightened of saying this, but there could be no stopping, now that he had taken the plunge.

  “No?”

  “It seems very unfair to penalise the second five for the fact that there are already five people on the bus. The first five are entirely to blame for that.”

  There was a pause, which the Chief Inspector broke very lamely. “It is necessary to have rules sometimes, you know,” he said.

  Fletcher said nothing. He was not convinced, nor was Chief Inspector Wilkins.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” said the Chief Inspector. “I have never myself regarded buses as being for the use of the public. I don’t think it’s hard-heartedness, although as I told you the idea of service has never appealed to me. I think I like the public tolerably well, on the whole. I wish them well, generally speaking. But I have never been able to accept, in my heart of hearts, that buses are functional. I love them. I love them for themselves. You understand what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I love my wife, I suppose, but I love buses more. Hilda’s a very good woman, in her way, and we get on well, but you couldn’t love her for herself. I love her for her meals, her children, the home she runs. Take all that away and our marriage would collapse. But buses are different. I’d like to drive them around empty. I like their elegant, gently sloping fronts and their comforting square radiators. I—well, I love them. It’s monstrous that they should be used to carry people to cemeteries and supermarkets. Monstrous. Quite, quite monstrous.” Chief Inspector Wilkins recovered himself and resumed in a more conversational, less emotional manner. “I once wrote a paper arguing that the public were a penance paid by all bus people for the original sin implicit in the erection of the first bus stop. That sort of thing doesn’t go down too well in Omnibus Mansions. My attitude to buses is oriental. I admire their purity, their serenity, their detachment. Press the self starter and all that is lost.” He smiled at Fletcher. “I’ve kept all this to myself for twenty years, and now I’ve told you, so you see you have achieved something,” he said. Fletcher smiled back, shyly, and the Chief Inspector continued. “Yes, Fletcher, I was forced to admit, for the purpose of my life on earth, that buses have a function. If I’d told anyone what I’ve told you, I’d have been certified. One has to be careful, Fletcher, and that goes for you too, you know. So, please, go away, get another job, and be careful.” The Chief Inspector stood up and held out his hand. “I’ve spoken to you as a man. Now I appeal to you as a Chief Inspector. You’re fired. You’ll get a week’s pay in lieu of notice.”

  Fletcher felt immeasurably betrayed. He had told this man of his opinions openly and without hesitation, and that was a miracle. He had listened to a confidence without embarrassment, and that was a miracle too. And then he had been sacked. As he went out into the late morning he felt a broken man. The sky was the colour of slush, and the wind was cold, and there was one week’s pay in his pocket, as he tacked through the cold, grey nothing.

  Chapter 10

  “WHAT I ALWAYS SAY,” SAID MRS POLLARD, “IS THAT if a man can’t face these setbacks with a smile he isn’t a man.”

  Fletcher faced this setback with a thin, wan smile. Mrs Pollard, who had seen little of him during the past fortnight, what with his shift work and everything, had been surprised to see him back so early, but she had not been nearly so surprised when he told her that he had lost his job. She had given the impression that she had known all along that he wasn’t the man for bus conducting. There was something, she let it be felt, too intelligent about him. It was not that he had told her anything about his schemes, but she had not failed to notice his studious and distant manner in the evenings. There had been nothing she could do. It had been man’s work, and Mrs Pollard had been a landlady far too long to interfere with that. She knew that she must wait until the moment came for her to swing into action, and that when the moment did finally come she must swing with all her might.

  “I’ll have a nice bowl of stew ready for you in a jiffy,” she said. “Pollard always used to say there’s nothing like a nice hot stew to cheer a man when he’s down. Warm the stomach and you warm the heart.”

  While Mrs Pollard was making the stew, Fletcher sat before his table, as motionless as possible, patiently awaiting the upsurge of some new emotion. Very soon he found himself in a silent world. He rolled the silence smoothly round his brain. It was a silence that might never end. It was his own silence, his great eternity, in which he might sit whenever he wanted, in his usual chair. Whenever the mood took him, whenever he felt unusually battered and bruised, he could return to it and find himself sitting there. As a point of reference it had few equals, but as a refuge it had a draw-back. It could be—and invariably was—interrupted. Perhaps he would never know what had interrupted it, and he would slide gently out of the silence. He would hear all the noises of the world as if they were far away, but coming closer, and he would begin to feel, faintly at first, like the light from the distant opening of a tunnel, his hunger. And then it would get nearer and nearer until he was suddenly out again in the sunlight, fully exposed to all his needs and fears.

  On this occasion he did know what had interrupted it. It was Mrs Pollard, coming in to tell him: “It’s about the stew. It’s not coming along too well.”

  “What?”

  “It’s about the stew. It’s not coming along too well.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “There are things in it that I wouldn’t advise. You know how it is. I thought it was going to be one kind of stew and then I realised that it was going to be a completely different sort. And now it’s got stuck at the awkward stage, and I don’t quite know what to do.” She paused, and then, when nothing happened, she went on: “I wondered if you’d come and have a look. It takes a man to understand these things.”

  A ruse, to secure him to her boudoir! Well, why not go? It would be nice to sit by her fire. These coal ranges were quite delightful, and there was no time to lose. Soon they would be making it into a smokeless zone. Go then. Blossom forth. Old smokeless Fletcher, thirty-nine, of no fixed coal fire, be off with you.

  But after all he had only known her for a matter of a few weeks. And it might be that she really did want his advice on the stew. A fine fool he’d look, in that case. What advice could he possibly give?

  On the other hand if it was just to give some advice, well, there was no harm in that. Wise old Fletcher, what advice you could give if you put your mind to it!

  No. She would make demands on him. He would be drawn in, closer and closer. He would become a part of her hearth, and of her life. He had not had time to think much of Mrs
Pollard since his work had begun, but now there was time and as he thought about her his uneasiness returned. He wanted to be away from her, safe and free, out of the house, out of her reach, out on the open road, far from the open fire.

  And yet to accept an invitation to advise her on a stew could hardly be said to commit him to anything. There would be no question of intimacy. A curt piece of advice, an ingredient or two suggested, and ta-ta for now. It would be churlish to refuse, and besides, it would suggest that he had read into the invitation more than was there.

  So he decided that he would go. He thought he would rise from his chair, but he didn’t. He thought that perhaps if he applied an absence of pressure to his buttocks and raised the top of his head towards the ceiling, he might stand up. But it was not to be, and for about forty minutes he remained seated. Mrs Pollard left long before the end.

  And then, just when he had given up all hope, he was on his feet. He was at the door, opening it. He was in the corridor, and once there he had either to walk down it or to return to his room, which seemed foolish. So he walked down it, and knocked on the kitchen door.

  “Come in,” said Mrs Pollard. She was standing over the casserole, and she smiled when she saw him. “I thought you were never coming,” she said.

  Stiff with self-consciousness, Fletcher walked over to the bubbling, aromatic cauldron and gazed into its depths. “It looks very good,” he said.

  “But it isn’t finished.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “It needs improving.”

  “No. It’s all right.”

  “It would have been such a lovely stew,” said Mrs Pollard, with an air of grumpy wistfulness more suited to a schoolgirl.

  “I know.” For a moment their eyes met, but Fletcher quickly lowered his and the moment was gone. His heart was beating fast and he was on the verge of panicking.

  “I’ll get my table ready,” he said, and he walked towards the door.

  “Won’t you have it in here, then?”

  “No, I—really.” He left the room as slowly as he dared, and rushed to his room. His hands were shaking.

  Mrs Pollard followed with the stew, and to his annoyance she once again remained in his room.

  “You aren’t happy, are you?” she asked with startling suddenness.

  “Well, I’ve just lost my job.”

  “There are plenty more.”

  “I had hopes. Little hopes, you know. It’s always a shock when they come to nothing.”

  “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “No. That’s all right. It’s very kind of you. I just need a bit of quiet, that’s all.”

  “What you need is another job. It’s no use moping.”

  “Not yet. A bit of quiet makes a new man of me. I’ll just stay here for a while, being quiet, if you don’t mind. Nothing serious, you know. Just a week or two.”

  “Well, you know best, I suppose. Though there are some that don’t. Some of you bachelors. If you ask me you ought to be out and about a bit, even if it’s only the pictures. It’s not right for a grown man like you to just sit there.”

  “I shan’t be just sitting. I’d rather call it a period of recreation.”

  “You call it what you like, and I’ll listen. Well, I’ll leave you in peace, then, if you’ve finished your meal.”

  Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t fluster me. Go.

  “Yes,” said Fletcher.

  “I’ll be off and see to Mr Veal.” She walked slowly to the door with the casserole. “Anyway,” she said awkwardly, “you’ll know where to find me, if you want me. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Left to himself, Fletcher found that he was thinking of Veal. He wondered why he never saw the man, and he felt jealous. Why were they never allowed to meet? What did Mrs Pollard do on her visits to him?

  It was only when he caught sight of himself in the hexagonal glass mirror which hung above the mantelshelf that he managed to forget these questions. The mirror had cut-glass borders, and in the borders he could see a thousand faces, long, short and twisted, faces with five mouths and four chins, square mouths and round mouths and oval mouths and some with no mouths at all, all staring back at him with looks of grotesque horror.

  He stood up, and placed himself in front of the mirror, with his eyes shut. All he had to do was to open those eyes of his and gaze straight into the centre of the mirror. He began to lower the pressure on his lids, and the black became tinged with red. Open them! He felt his brain giving out the order. He could feel an opening of his eyes travelling slowly from his brain towards his eyes, but before it could reach them a hasty command was issued to them to remain shut. A series of commands followed, and each time he could feel the command to remain shut catching up with the command to open. He was blind.

  And then his eyes were open, as if they had never been shut. They were gazing at the centre of the mirror, and the face that met them was his own. The cheeks were pale and rather hollow, he had not shaved well, his hair was receding, there were a few blackheads on his nose, and in the centre of his chin there was one white-headed pimple.

  There were signs of approaching age in the lines on his face. Soon he would be too old to be mothered, as in the past he had been mothered by all those mothers of his. All of them, all except one, they had all been mothering him. Just one there had been who had not been mothering him, who had threatened him with something more than that. It had been fifteen years ago, when he was Lewis. He’d been fifteen years younger then.

  He sat down again. Separated from him only by two doors sat Mrs Pollard with her memories, and with her expectations. The logs glowed. Now she rose and bent over the fire, her outline illuminated for nobody to see by the sudden jumping of the flames she had disturbed as she heaped the wood. Then she sat again, with her knitting and her thoughts. What did she think of? What could she possibly knit? She threatened him, there could be no escaping the fact. She wanted him to be more than a son. How desirable all those past years seemed to Fletcher, with all those mothers. He began again to think about his mothers, and of that night, long ago, when he was Lewis.

  Chapter 11

  MOTHER HAD BEEN THE FIRST. SHE HAD BEEN KIND and gentle, or at least he assumed, from the photographs, that she had been kind and gentle. She had died young, and then there had been Aunt Emily, who lived all alone in Worcestershire, with a hoe, a rake, and natural foods. What Aunt Emily had lacked in affection she had made up for in Cash’s name tapes. She had equipped him with all that she took to be the necessities of life—clothes and initials—and had packed him off to his next mother, Winchester.

  At the old Alma Mater his trousers had grown longer and longer, his memory shorter and shorter, and they had cried: “Manners will make a man of him yet.”

  Then came the war and his spell in the Pay Corps, where S.Q.M.S. Wadhurst had been the nearest approach to a mother, without getting significantly close. Next he had been packed off to Cambridge, his education paid for by a father he had never seen. With parents as with everything else he had failed to strike a proper balance. Mothers all along the line, and never a father in sight.

  During his first year at Cambridge he had lived in college, and nobody had taken the slightest notice of him, but after that he moved into lodgings and found another mother—Mrs Violet, just off the Trumpington Road. Mrs Violet had had such a nice boy the year before, a Mr Tompkin-Leverett, who had been a bit of a one but always a gentleman. Mrs Violet had said, without conviction; “I’ll make a Tompkin-Leverett of you yet.”

  And so he had gone out into the world, with all its challenges and its opportunities and its unlimited supply of mothers. There had been Miss Potter, washing his socks and advising him on matters of spiritualism. There had been Mrs McManus, of Barnstaple, keeping up his strength with regular milk drinks and keeping him au fait with affairs “on the other side”. There had been Mrs McManus of Newport (I.O.W.), helping him to buy really durable underclothes, Swiss style, and telli
ng him all about her experiences in other realms. And there had been so many others that he could hardly distinguish them from each other. He had had a large number of employers in his time, but they paled to insignificance beside his mothers.

  His thoughts turned to the one young woman who had not been a mother, when he was Lewis. Miss Daisy Wilkinson had been her name, and it was partly her youth that had prevented her from being a mother. She had floated into his life by accident one night, and almost immediately she had floated out of it again, but he remembered that night as vividly as if it had been the week before.

  There had been snow for several hours. He was sitting motionless in the corner seat next to the window, facing the engine, and she was sitting motionless in the corner seat next to the window, facing him. The train had been delayed for several minutes and it was this that brought them into conversation.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Nor me.” Her mouth was small and her hair was black and her small breasts fixed beady eyes on him out of a green sweater. She had unusually well defined knees, and despite the cold she had allowed the neck of the sweater to fall a little, so that Lewis could admire the white boniness of her shoulders, should he so desire.

  “Somewhere, I suppose,” he said.

  “Like something to read?” she asked.

  “No, thanks. I can’t read in trains.”

  They stared at the fog together, and Lewis felt trapped, leaving so much unsaid. He felt that he was having thoughts, even though he was too confused to realise them. He even felt uneasy at having thought them without feeling clear-headed enough to realise that some of his uneasiness was inspired by guilt.

  “I’ll be late,” she said.

  “You’re going home?” he asked. The breathlessness in his voice must be painfully apparent to her, yet she made no reference to it, thus convincing him that it must be as terrible to her as a disfigurement.