Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  Blinking at him over the coffee, Miss Marrow said, ‘Are you having a nice time?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker.

  ‘Oh, you! It’s marvellous. Let yourself go.’

  ‘I am doing that.’

  ‘Well, drink up,’ said Miss Marrow, ‘nearly time for my train. It’s a Pullman. I’ve got a cubicle to myself. Now we have to hunt out all my luggage.’

  Miss Marrow found a redcap and ordered him round briskly, while Walker marvelled. The redcap explained where the trains were; they had all been hidden underground. They went to the gate, where the attendant refused Walker entrance. ‘Well, this is it, farewell,’ said Miss Marrow. Miss Marrow and the true humanity of the human race become one and the same; affection for her was a stay against total hostility, obeisance to nobility and inner-direction.

  ‘Let me kiss you goodbye,’ said he, delicately, nervously.

  ‘Here?’ said Miss Marrow.

  ‘No, come over behind those lockers.’

  Behind them, she turned to look sadly at him. ‘Not a smudgy one,’ she said, ‘you can’t get on a train like that.’

  ‘Crisp and hard,’ said Walker, doing it. ‘I wish you weren’t going,’ he said when it was over. ‘Now I shall really miss you. Let me never be left here for long without anyone.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s me,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘I think you’re afraid and it’s made you sentimental. The tables turned, sort of thing. Still, we’re two of a kind. We should have given ourselves a chance. But you thought you could do better, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, well, maybe you will. Though I just don’t understand about your wife.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, must go,’ said Miss Marrow. Walker struck again with his lips. ‘Now that was smudgy,’ said Miss Marrow, taking out her handkerchief and etching the edge of her mouth. ‘Well, be a good boy, have a nice time.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Walker. ‘You do too. In this strange land.’

  ‘Going our separate ways,’ said Miss Marrow. They went back to the gate again. ‘Well, take it easy now, as they say here,’ said Miss Marrow, as the attendant let her through. ‘Cheerio, Porker.’

  ‘Cheerio, Fern,’ said Walker. He watched her descending the escalator into subterranea, where her train lay. She waved a hand, a noble Britannia, and went below the earth. The hailstorm of loneliness blew up again.

  Alone! Confused, lost, running with sweat, he turned and went back into the concourse and watched the clerks selling tickets from great long racks of machinery, helped by flickering television sets.

  While he stared at this mysterious process, a man came up to him; he was a little man, wearing a crinkly transparent shirt, with a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes showing from the pocket, and a pair of brown pants with wide baggy cuffs. ‘How’d you like this neck-tie? It’s wrinkle-proof. Five-dollar value for ninety-eight cents.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Walker.

  ‘You from Boston?’ said the man.

  ‘No, from England,’ said Walker.

  ‘No, really?’ said the man. ‘What’s your name, what do they call you?’

  ‘Walker,’ said Walker.

  ‘Walker who?’

  ‘Walker James,’ said Walker.

  ‘I’m Harry Dimilo,’ said the man. ‘Shake.’ Walker shook. ‘Glad to know you, Walk,’ said the man. ‘You visiting?’

  Walker looked around for escape; there was none. The implications of the confidence trick grew more remote, but confidence trick Walker knew there was. He was really rather terrified, and only grateful that, thanks to the confusion about his name, he was not yet perfectly defined. He said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘In New York for long?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker, ‘I’m leaving almost immediately.’

  ‘You wanna stay around, it’s a great little city.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Walker, ‘but I have to go.’

  ‘What’s your line of business?’

  ‘I’m a teacher.’

  ‘I thought you was an educated man, Walk. I’m not, but I’ll tell you, I really wish I was. What kinda thing you teach?’

  ‘Literature.’

  ‘Books, poems, that kinda stuff? I know, I love it. I got a whole buncha books in my room, paperbacks. I get ’em down the supermarket. Whole buncha real sexy books there.’

  ‘I must go,’ said Walker.

  ‘Goin’ far?’

  ‘Fair way,’ said Walker.

  ‘Where to, Walk?’

  ‘Madison Avenue.’

  ‘What number’s that?’

  ‘Five hundred and something.’

  ‘In the five hundreds, yeah, I think we can find that. I’ll walk uptown wid you.’

  ‘Oh, I can find it,’ said Walker.

  ‘No, I like talking to you, Walk.’

  Walker began to sweat a lime. He set off walking; the little man grasped his arm. ‘No, let’s save ourselves. It’s quicker out this way.’ They went through the concourse together, the little man slightly behind, tearing the strip of red paper off the top of his Luckies. ‘I toit you was from Boston because of your accent. You know you got an accent?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘That an English accent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They all talk like that over there?’

  ‘Most of them,’ said Walker.

  ‘You still got a queen, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Walker.

  ‘I seen her photograph in the newspaper,’ said the man. ‘Like it over here?’

  ‘Very nice,’ said Walker.

  ‘Better than back home, huh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Walker, ‘I’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ll like it here better. It’s a real crazy country. What d’ya think of American dames?’

  ‘I have yet to find out,’ said Walker.

  ‘Stay off ’em, Walk,’ said the man. ‘I tell ya, I’m through wid these dames. I mean, look at me, I’m not a handsome guy, but I’m better than some. I got it down here what I ain’t got in good looks. I tell ya, I spent the best years of my life chasing a nice lay. I screwed dames in every locality in New York. I screwed them in the Bronx, I screwed them in Brooklyn, I screwed them in Flatbush and Queens, I even screwed them in Harlem. I treated them good likewise. One dame I even gave a Motorola air-conditioner to. There wasn’t one of them dames didn’t run me round in circles. One of them I found in bed with another dame and no less than four guys. That’s right.’

  ‘Terrible,’ said Walker.

  ‘You hit it, Walk, terrible. You ever fall in love with a man?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, you can’t live without feelings. Look, you’re a foreigner, let me put this to you, another opinion. You think a guy can live without it, like these monks do? You think you can manage without feelings?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Walker.

  ‘Aw,’ said the man, ‘it’s like what they always say about the English. They don’t know how to make the scene. All that cricket and roast beef. You wanna try a bit of anguish, Walk. Come on, try. Let’s see the steam coming out your ears.’

  Walker began to walk a little faster. ‘Hold it,’ said the man. ‘Don’t walk. You don’t wanna get run down or get a ticket, do ya?’ They waited until the sign across the intersection turned to Walk, his name. ‘All these signs around,’ said the man. ‘You ever noticed how many signs New York has? You always got sompn to read. That’s why you’re doing a good job, you know that, Walk, teaching literature to them kids. How else they going to read all the signs? Look up there, what’s that say?’

  ‘Niterie,’ said Walker.

  ‘There,’ said the man, ‘that’s English. Or don’t you call that English?’

  ‘Not really, no,’ said Walker.

  ‘Uh,’ said the man, ‘you know, I like talking to an educated man. I guess we’re getting near the fi
ve hundreds. What you going to this place to do?’

  ‘I have to see a man in one of the offices.’

  ‘What kind of office is that, Walk?’

  ‘A literary agency,’ said Walker.

  ‘Oh, that like a theatrical agency?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Walker.

  ‘Plenty of girls around, model girls?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker, growing more and more uncomfortable with his incubus. What did he want? When would he leave him? Would he follow him even right up into his agent’s office? Was this a homosexual pick-up, an attempt to sell him something, or a pact at exchanging souls?

  ‘What you want to see this fellow for?’

  ‘He sells articles I write.’

  ‘You a journalist too, Walk?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘An all-round man, I found myself an all-round educated man. What’s the number of the building?’

  ‘I can find it,’ said Walker.

  ‘You think I don’t know how to help a stranger? What’s the number?’

  Walker told him. ‘It’s further on a little ways,’ said the man. ‘You ought to write something about me.’

  ‘I don’t write that kind of thing,’ said Walker.

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘I write mostly about books.’

  ‘You’re a scholar, Walk. I got a little Jewish guy upstairs from me, a real scholar. He sits on the can all day and reads books. He’s got an apartment there with books all round de walls. Furnishings he don’t care about, I guess he sits on those goddam books. Look, this is the place.’ The man pushed the revolving doors and went inside. ‘You gotta check the name on the board, ya see. What’s the name?’

  ‘I’d better find my own way,’ said Walker.

  ‘No, come on, what’s the name again?’ Walker told him. ‘Right, twenty-sixth floor, I found it for you. Now you wanna take the elevator. Round here.’ He led Walker to the elevator. ‘Twenty-six, chief,’ he said to the elevator man.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Walker, but the man got into the lift. ‘I’ll come up wid you.’ At the twenty-sixth floor they got out together.

  ‘Look, I’d better go in here alone,’ said Walker.

  ‘This the place?’ said the man, going inside. ‘Guy to see you,’ he announced to the secretary, a blonde girl at a Danish desk. ‘Nice place you got here. What’s all these photographs?’ Signed photographs lined the walls of the agency.

  ‘I think Mr Tilly is expecting me,’ Walker said, ‘my name’s James Walker.’

  ‘Take a seat please, Mr Walker.’

  ‘This man’s nothing to do with me. He followed me here,’ Walker went on.

  ‘I’ll tell Mr Tilly you’re here,’ said the secretary, working the switchboard, ‘but I know he’s very busy just now.’ Walker sat down. The little man joined him and lit a Lucky.

  ‘Take a look at those breasts,’ he said. ‘I like a girl wid a frontage. Whadya say, Walk?’

  ‘Look,’ said Walker, ‘I shall have to leave you now.’

  ‘Mr Walker, will you go in briefly?’ said the secretary. The little man rose too.

  ‘Mr Tilly is expecting only one,’ said the girl.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said the little man, sitting down again.

  ‘Along the corridor to the right, then the door on the left at the termination,’ said the girl.

  ‘You got a boy you go out wid?’ the little man was saying as Walker went from earshot. He found Tilly’s room and knocked on the door, his heart still beating hard from this encounter. Would the man be there when he was finished? Could he ever lose him?

  ‘Entrez!’ cried Tilly. Walker went into the office, dark because the venetian blinds were drawn. Tilly, a middle-aged man wearing a bleeding madras jacket, tailored Bermuda shorts, a white, button-down shirt with a dark foulard tie, and a grey felt hat with a narrow brim and a madras band, was pouring papers into a briefcase; he looked up with pleasure on his face. ‘Jam Walker, as I live and breathe,’ he said. ‘Come in, Jam, glad to know you at last. A friendship conducted by letters needs this kind of cement. Actually, Jam, I’m just going.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Walker, ‘I was hoping we could talk about some of my stuff.’

  ‘Nothing I’d like better, Jam, but I have to be at Grand Central in just thirty minutes. But I’m really glad you stopped by, really. You should have come into New York any weekend but this. I wanted you to meet all kinds of people, editors, you know. Vogue are dying to take a look at their darling Britisher. Still, I expect you’ll be in and out of New York all year, no?’

  ‘I gathered I’d picked a bad weekend,’ said Walker.

  ‘Labor Day Weekend. Everybody’s out on the Cape. You don’t have any friends on the Cape?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker.

  ‘The fellows I wanted you to meet at Esquire, the lassies at Vogue, they’re all out of town, or I’d call them up right now. Look, I have to run fast; but, Jam, nice to see you. A nice day for me. Just like the photographs, old boy. We’ll meet again, of course. Lots of time. Good for me, good for you. Soon, promise me soon. Come back, spend two weeks, we’ll really do the thing properly. I’ll fix a party.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Walker.

  ‘Will be,’ said Tilly. ‘Hotel all right?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Walker said.

  ‘I just stuck a pin in the book,’ said Tilly. ‘You said somewhere away from the centre. Sounded just your dish of tea.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker, ‘it’s passable.’

  ‘Not so hot? We’ll try something else next time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Walk me down to the elevator,’ said Tilly. ‘Want to see anyone else here?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Walker.

  They walked out through the entrance hall. ‘Leonie,’ said Tilly to the secretary, ‘meet James Walker. He’s going to be a very great man.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Leonie indifferently. ‘The bum who followed you left. I told him I’d call a cop.’

  ‘Bum followed you up, Jam?’ asked Tilly, going out through the glass doors.

  ‘Yes, a very curious experience,’ said Walker. ‘He latched on to me at Pennsylvania Station and came all the way here with me. I couldn’t lose him.’

  Tilly, pressing the button for the elevator, said, ‘You have to be careful in New York City. People get mugged round here in broad daylight.’

  ‘I don’t think he meant any harm,’ said Walker. ‘Just a . . . democratic encounter.’

  ‘Some kook,’ said Tilly, ushering Walker into the elevator. They went down fast, with a whine. In the entrance hall Tilly shook Walker’s hand and said, ‘Been nice. Come back soon.’

  ‘I will,’ said Walker.

  Alone again! On the sidewalk he felt curiously stranded. He had come to New York to be great, to make all the contacts Tilly had promised. But instead of grandeur it was expulsion; great you may be, but not on Labor Day Weekend. Now there was little left. He was at the low ebb of his fortunes; the only worse thing would be not to have, in his pocket, that ticket westward that set him free from all this. But it wasn’t even the west he yearned for; it was for England, that simple, comfortable hospital of a place. He watched Tilly’s head disappear into the crowds of Madison Avenue, largely male, smartly dressed. Then, at a loss, he turned along one of the crosstown streets. This brought him to Fifth Avenue, near the Rockefeller Center. The crowds surged, looking smarter still. There were bright girls in shirt-waisters or plain sheath dresses, simple and smart, crisp and clean as fresh lettuces, carrying themselves with assurance and style. He stared after them; they reminded him that he was in a cosmopolitan city, and they made him only sorry to be alone. He went on up the avenue, beneath the towering buildings, which made him feel like a dwarf.

  Then the open space of Central Park, beyond the line of horse-taxis, appeared, a ready relief. His size came back. He took off his jacket, put it over his arm, and crossed the street to
go into the park, green, dense, outcropped with bursts of rock. But a patriarchal old man stood in his way: ‘Stranger in town?’ he said, and warned Walker not to go in there – it was full of hoods and muggers. ‘You’ll lose your wallet, maybe get a broken nose too.’ Beyond him was the green grass; but with a sigh Walker turned and went back down the avenue again. Bargain damask tablecloths and dwarf binoculars tempted him from windows. He compared the prices of shirts and once stopped to watch a gang of men planting a fully grown tree outside a high grey glass building. He looked at the goodies in Tiffany’s. Then, again, decked out with flags, was the Rockefeller Center, with tables under sun-umbrellas spread in the open forecourt. He leaned on the balcony and looked down on the drinkers below. When he felt in the pocket of his jacket he found he had lost his fountain pen and sunglasses. Inside, he joined a tour and, with a crowd of mid-western visitors to the metropolis, went up to the top of the building in two wild express elevators, like racing cars. On the observation platform the wind blew and, down far below him, New York looked like a gigantic waffle iron. Down at street level again, his heart thumping, he peered nostalgically into the offices of the British Railways in the Plaza and then went on down the avenue. There was Greek and Roman statuary at bargain prices in the windows of Brentano’s, and an all-glass bank revealed, like a temple now devoid of its mysteries, an open vault in its intestines.

  He sat down on one of the benches outside the New York Public Library, behind one of the lions, watching the shop and office girls going by for their lunch-hour, carrying paper sacks from Lord and Taylor and the Tall Girl shop. Trim, smart, above all assured, they reminded him of Julie Snowflake. Why didn’t he call her? By the side of the library he found a row of glass telephone booths. The dialling system was complicated and the machinery ate several dimes before he managed it. Then a deep low buzzing came out of the American void and sounded in the vibrator against his ear. It was soon replaced by a voice. ‘Snowflake household here,’ it said. ‘Who dat out dere?’

  ‘Is that you, Julie?’ said Walker.

  ‘Dis here de Snowflake household. Who dat?’

  ‘Could I speak to Miss Julie Snowflake, please?’