The Itinerant Lodger

by David Nobbs

  Then they drank.

  Then Mr Burbage said: “Ever thought of going into business?”

  “No,” said Simpson.

  Then they drank.

  Then Mr Burbage sought his advice about the new wallpaper for his bachelor flat. It had resolved into a choice between light grey, and Simpson agreed that it was an excellent choice. Mr Burbage told him of all the plans he had for the rejuvenation of his flat. Simpson wanted to tell of his plans. He wanted very much to confide in this new friend of his and win his approval. Somehow, however, each time he was on the verge of beginning, he hesitated. Eventually, after several minutes of misery, he decided to keep them to himself until he could present them as a fait accompli. It was wiser that way.

  “Drink up,” said Mr Burbage, noting his unease.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not used to drink.”

  “Anyway, you’ve someone to look after you.”

  That was true. And he owed it to Mr Burbage. He drank up. That was it. That was the way to live. Swing the glass, swing.

  Mr Burbage went to the bar and bought two more drinks. Then he returned.

  “I enjoy drinking with you.”

  “So do I.”

  Which of them was speaking? Or had their personalities already merged? Did not everything begin to merge? Did not the walls and the gathering smoke and the filling, clinking room and the talking and the shadows and the walnut and the irises of their lovely eyes merge? Mr Burbage was talking. He’d better listen.

  They talked of the Devon coast, and many other things, and to Simpson it was as if neither of them was there any more.

  “I know that man,” said Mr Burbage suddenly. “Schoolmaster. Nice chap. He lives in my road. He doesn’t get out very often. I’ll fetch him over.”

  He went over to the bar to fetch the schoolmaster, but he returned alone. “Pity,” he said. “He has some pupils to discuss. You’d have liked him. A nice, quiet chap.”

  Mr Burbage bought two more drinks. As they drank them he began to talk about his childhood, when the days had been long and the summers had been hot and long, hot loaves of fresh bread had stood on the low, wooden table in the scullery. The little boy Burbage was still wearing short trousers then, and his legs were not yet something to be ashamed of, but he was old enough to listen while his grandfather sat by the window, gazing out over the hollihocks that stretched towards the orchard, and told him how his grandfather had loved to sit there by the old reddened wall of the orchard and talk to him about his youth. In those days jugs of fresh, warm milk had stood on the table in the scullery and his grandfather had loved to take him to the old mill and tell him how he had stood with his grandfather, listening to the roar of the water as it came through the floury old mill and set off on its long, brave journey to Holland. All the little boy could see was a clear, minnowy stream with a lot of nettles on its hot banks, but he liked to hear how the water grew swollen and muddy and travelled all the way across the sea to Holland. His grandfather had told him that when he grew up he must work hard. Great new times were coming, and if he worked hard there would be no limit to what he could do. He had worked hard, the great new times had come and gone, and he had told his grandson that he must work hard, because great new times were coming. He had told his grandson that he must work hard, because great new times were coming. The great new times had come and gone, he had worked hard, and he had told his grandson that he must work hard, because great new times were coming. He had worked hard, the great new times had come and gone, and he had told his grandson to work hard, because great new times were coming.

  “I have worked hard,” said Mr Burbage, and then he told how the house had been sold to a Major-General, who had converted the orchard into an Eton fives court.

  Then he said: “Same again?” and Simpson said: “Thanks,” and Mr Burbage bought two more drinks. Then they drank.

  Did not Mrs Pollard merge? Mrs Pollard and the irises of her bathroom taps and the clinking filling of her teeth, and the onion and the carrot and did not Miss Daisy Wilkinson merge? He drank up, and they merged. That was the way. Swing the glass, swing. Soon be there. Panacea. Very exclusive club. For all mankind. Nobody else admitted in any circumstances unless in evening dress. He felt sure that he had lost something, or had forgotten something. Never mind, he must drink up. That was the important thing. See, he has raised his glass and is drinking.

  “There’s a chap I’d like you to meet. Odd fish altogether, but I think you’ll find him interesting. Hey there, Setters.”

  “Dear Mr Burbage, I do like his little moustache,” thought Simpson.

  “He used to be a Major-General. Now he’s a journalist of some sort. He does a lot of literary criticism. He’d do quite well if he moved to London, but he won’t. He has an inferiority complex.”

  Eventually Mr Burbage managed to drag Setters over. He was a drinking man, big and red. Introductions were effected. Then some more beer went down and there was talk. Simpson, much to his amazement, made some polite enquiries.

  “I had to leave the army on account of this game leg,” said Setters in answer to one of them.

  “He isn’t interested in your leg,” said Mr Burbage.

  “I am,” said Simpson.

  “I’ll show it to you some time.”

  “He doesn’t want to see your leg. He’s just come out of prison.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Prison, eh?”

  “I want to see it very much.”

  “I’ll show it to you in the gents, if you like.”

  “I want you two to get together and talk literature,” said Mr Burbage.

  “Are you a literary man?” enquired Setters.

  Simpson blushed. “I used to write poems.”

  “Good man.”

  “You must show them to Setters. He’ll criticise them for you.”

  “Healthy criticism never did anyone any harm.”

  “He’ll bring them as soon as he can.”

  “I’ve thrown them all away.”

  “Thrown them away? Why?”

  “They weren’t any good.”

  “That’s the spirit. I always wanted to be a poet. Never really had the gift of the gab, though. That’s what it is, you know. A gift. A knack.”

  “Yes,” Simpson murmured, twisting his glass uneasily.

  “Setters commanded a division during the war, didn’t you?”

  “Yes I did, come to mention it. What did you do?”

  “I was in the Pay Corps for the last two years.”

  “And before that?” barked Setters.

  “Before that I was too young,” said Simpson politely.

  “Disgraceful. What would Kipling have said if he’d heard you say a thing like that? Anyway, as I was saying, I hadn’t got the flair or whatever it is for poetry, so I went into the army. Only thing to do, eh? Well, soldiering is soldiering and literature is literature. Then I got this blasted leg—I’ll show it to you in a minute—and I gave up soldiering and went back to literature. Cut your coat to suit your cloth. I mean, a soldier, he volunteers for a dangerous assignment, they ask ‘How many legs has he got?’ It counts against you. I must say I’ve never really regretted it, though. Your soldier, he may win wars, but your critic, he criticises literature.”

  ‘Once in a train, a long time ago,’ thought Simpson, ‘I did…nothing. Once upon a time I must have married Mrs Simpson. What’s the stupid drunk saying?’

  “…spread literary values a bit. I think I may be said to have an open mind, but I’m damned if I call that coffee bar stuff art. Some of those young nappy slappers, I’d like to get them in uniform. Greek art, that was the stuff. They may not have known how to treat their women but they had some great art. Just a bull on a vase, and there it is. Greatness.”

  “I’m sure you agree with that,” said Mr Burbage, and he called to a waiter—there were waiters after 8.30, obsequious in their white coats—and ordered three more drinks. It made him feel good, managing to ca
tch the waiter’s eye so quickly.

  “Aeschylus, an artist. Aristophanes, an artist. There was some backbone to it. It had something. It was manly. I may only have been a soldier, but I think I know great art when I see it.”

  Purged, thought Simpson. A new life. No more words. Actions. When his glass arrived he banged it martially on the table. It broke, and the beer foamed all over his trousers. Never mind. Over there, by the bar, with her hair undone, sat universal love. Smoky and dusky like a potato in its jacket she was steaming over there by the bar with her hair undone and her lips done in a pout. Over there he would go. A new life. Any second now he would feel his feet rise and he would walk over to her and tell her that she had been chosen.

  The dogs. On all sides the thirsty hounds were baying. What on earth did they find to bay to each other? Leave her for the moment. The universal panacea would still be there in the morning. Tonight, life. It was easier. Life, a babble of consuming tongues.

  “Sixteen overs an hour! They’d never have stood for it between the wars.”

  “Did you hear the one about the Ethiopian tent maker?”

  “I think he was Irish. Nice, though.”

  “Didn’t know old Parsons had it in him.”

  “Very cold.”

  “Snowing when I left home.”

  “In broad daylight, right outside Marks and Spencers.”

  “So he lifted up the flap of the third tent, and there was another beautiful…”

  No, thought Simpson. He had better find the universal panacea pretty soon. There was no time to lose.

  Over there by the bar universal love was smiling, and for a moment he thought she was smiling at him, but no, she was smiling at a big hooked nose, hooked to a big accountant, who was counting his blessings as he spoke to her with her potatoes in her jacket and her hair over there by the bar. Oh well, let the accountant reach out to the new life, if that was fate. Too tired now. No time. Later. Must drink up. Down in the sediment resides the ultimate. See it, the lees. There would be silence at the bottom of the glass.

  He reached the bottom of the glass, and damn it, the man was still talking. What a bore! And he was talking to him!

  “You’re an educated man,” he was saying. “Cambridge and Winchester. Excellent names. Excellent names. You can’t go far wrong with names like that. I went to Sandhurst myself. Sandhurst sir. Excellent for a soldier, no damned good for a literary critic. No books. Rifles. But I learnt a thing at Sandhurst. You want to know what it was, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Discipline. I may not be a great intellectual, but I think I can recognise discipline when I see it. A beginning, a middle and an end.”

  Some of them were going round in circles and others were going round in straight lines and he was going round and over there by the bar she was going round. In a minute he would go over to her and tell her that he loved her and that he held the key to her future happiness. Not yet, though. He had better wait until she had stopped going round in circles. Some people didn’t like being interrupted when they were going round in circles.

  Suddenly, just when he was about to walk boldly up to her and confess that it would be impossible for him to live without her and he would always hold her in the deepest affliction, she stopped going round in circles, stood up, and put her arm round the accountant’s waist. They minced happily from the room, to do their audits, doubtless. Simpson stirred uneasily, like a peat bog, with his vocation shattered by a cruel blow of fate. Then, with a brilliant inspiration, he felt hungry.

  “I say,” he blurted out. “Where are the goodies?”

  Mr Burbage smiled approvingly at this and he went to the bar and bought some crisps and cheese straws and three more drinks. Simpson sat, with a new contentment, munching his crisps.

  “I like a poem to show some discipline,” said Setters.

  “Get your head down, Wordsworth,” shouted Simpson so loudly that several people actually turned to look and listen. “Come on now, get your dressing, you hexameters. In line now. Careful, Byron, those aren’t blanks, you know. Oh, naughty Byron. You’ve shot Keats. Tut tut. That wasn’t a very sensible thing to do now, was it? You were supposed to be on the same side. Have you polished your style this morning, Samuel Taylor?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr Burbage anxiously to Setters. “He’s been in prison, you know.”

  “I can’t say I’m altogether surprised,” said Setters. “You longhaired wierdies can’t fool me just by wearing a convict crop. I wish you’d been in my division. Well, old boy, I’ll be pushing along.”

  “Yes. Good-bye. I’m sorry about this.”

  “Not your fault. You get them.”

  Drink up. As a man increases in stature, so does he drink up. And as he drinks up he approaches nearer to the attainment of his aims in life.

  “Did I upset him?” Simpson asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mr Burbage, with a forgiving smile.

  “Good. I’m glad. Nothing but trenches from the moment he came in.”

  Were these the artists? Was this the turn? A stir of boredom ran through the assembly. Three seedy men slithered onto the platform, clicking everything that could be clicked, smiling with everything that could be smiled with. The Three Penfolds.

  As they sang Simpson’s universal love was stirring. It was as if he was trying to burst into leaf. But he was too old. He was a dead old tree which grew where there had only been mud and where there would only be mud again. He was strong and gnarled and around his mossy bole the fog swirled. Through the fog a blackboard swirled. It was long ago, at school, in the labs. On Doctor Finney’s blackboard there had been a man and there had also been a woman. Wooldridge had fainted. Long ago there had been mud and dinosaurs in the labs at school. They had come far, those early Druid children, to learn to distinguish the dinosaur from the pterodactyl, to learn to wear long trousers.

  It was foggy. Nearer at hand there was a woman, but this was not his woman, so there were two women, and, if there were two women, which of them was universal, and, if not, where was Mrs Pollard and why didn’t he drink up?

  “I’m universal man,” he shouted.

  “Quiet.”

  “Bloody hell, isn’t anybody interested? I should have thought it was worth listening to. Perhaps you didn’t hear what I said. I said: ‘I’m universal man.’”

  “Quiet. You’ll have us thrown out.”

  Who was this idiot? Oh, it was Burbage. Nice old Burbage. It was nice to lie in the mud alongside Burbage, the one coniferous, the other deodorant, with their fat, knotted trunks sinking slowly into the primeval slime, where below the mossy earth they would merge. I, thou, he she or it, we, you (plural), they merge, and still half a glass to drink. Drink up.

  “I could have,” said Simpson dogmatically.

  “Could have what?”

  “Anything. I distinctly recall her. I—I never meant to do it. Or not to. You understand that, don’t you, Georgie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good ole Georgie. You’re a good chap, Georgie. You may only be a commissionaire or whatever it is you are, but I’ll say this for you, Garbage old man, you’re my mate.” His head nodded against the table. He let it lie on his cheek and he squinted up at Mr Burbage with bloodshot eyes.

  “You’ll come with me on bob-a-job week, won’t you, Georgie?” he asked.

  “Yes. Of course I will.”

  “Good old Georgie.” He pointed his forefinger very seriously at Mr Burbage. “Tell me, Garbage old man,” he said. “You’re a man of the world, aren’t you? I thought you were. Tell me, Garbage, this love, and all that stuff, it’s pretty important, isn’t it? Because bloody hell, I—listen, Garbage. I’m going to tell you something. I—I wannago.”

  And his head fell down in the midst of all his arms. The fog grew thicker, and above his head there was a big berblack gemonst all fuzzing and squeezie and down down down and squeezie fainted.

  Chapter 18

  WHEN HE AWOKE T
HE SITE WAS BOMBED. THE STARS, even the moon, shone brightly on the rubble. The tins and old whistles, the dockets and packets and lids, the labels and old food, the dead messages and the slag were all covered in a soft coat of furry snow and the tracing of the wind on its surface gave it an impression of great depth. A cruel frost was penetrating his clothes, a cold wind was blowing round his legs, and he huddled inside his coat like a doormouse inside a winter. His head ached, but his brain was music-clear. Above his neck lay arctic wastes, and across his forehead jagged blocks of pack-ice slowly floated.

  His first thought was that this was the top of the world. He looked around. Not a soul in sight. He stood up, and immediately felt ill. He leant unsteadily against a wall, and on an old tin, sheltered from the snow by a ruined corner-stone, there was a brief intermezzo in E-flat, and then silence. A rat stirred uneasily against its mate, and a touch of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. He began to see where he was. He was above the city, on the top of one of the hills, and far below him the spires of the churches were becoming visible in the increasing light.

  Where had he been? He had difficulty in remembering. Drinking, of that he was sure. He recalled awakening in a strange room, fully clothed upon a bed, and feeling cold and ill. He remembered wondering where he was, and creeping stealthily out, in case it was somewhere unpleasant.

  Every time he moved impressions ran through his head like butterflies impaled on pins in the pages of an album. He saw a woman, a comfortable woman. He saw a girl, a young girl seated in a train. The woman piled more fuel on the range, and the girl stirred in her sleep. Then both scenes faded before a wave of nausea, and he clung to something, anything, it was an old railing, where a garden had once been. The wind caught him, his coat swirled around his shoulders, and his body seemed to be stampeding past him in panic. He was sick.

  He began to walk. The pain of cleaving the cold air soothed his nausea. He could see that the hill on which he was walking took the form of a ridge, and in front of him all signs of ruined buildings ceased and there was only barren earth, where perhaps there had been open-cast mining.