Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  That young lady had telephoned to tell her mother that she was pregnant, and the student responsible was black.

  I was sceptical. ‘She didn’t look pregnant the last time I saw her,’ I said.

  ‘But, Dad, why would she tell me such a monstrous lie?’

  ‘Well, Madge, I think she’s putting you and Frank to a test. You say you’ve given yourself to Jesus, so you ought to be able to welcome with love any unfortunate grandchild Midge presented you with. By making it black she’s made the test all the harder, that’s all.’

  ‘It would be your great-grandchild, Dad,’ said Madge. ‘If it was black, would you cherish it?’

  ‘I’ve not been born again, Madge. I’ve not given myself to Jesus.’

  Therefore, I was still at liberty to allow myself all my human prejudices.

  ‘But, Madge, I assure you there’s no child, black or white, in the offing. It’s a bluff.’

  She considered. She dried her eyes. She nodded. ‘Thanks, Dad. I think you’re right. She’s just testing me. You too, Frank.’

  ‘Yes, honey, me too.’ Frank’s voice was sad. He knew he had failed the test. Jesus might punish him by not letting him have Mrs Birkenberger’s account.

  That might not depend on Jesus, Frank. It might depend on me.

  ‘I’m surprised that she didn’t ask if you’d approve of an abortion,’ I said.

  ‘She did,’ said Madge.

  ‘That surely settles it. She was testing you. I don’t know Midge as well as I should but I know her well enough to be convinced that the last thing she wants, at this time in her life, is a child, particularly a black one.’

  ‘Dad’s right,’ said Frank. ‘Honey, we’re worrying about nothing.’

  I could have said, Frank, you should be worrying about the dubiousness of your love for Jesus. But I didn’t say it. We were all hypocrites in our own way.

  I excused myself and went to lie down in my room.

  They must have thought I had fallen asleep, or else they forgot how thin the walls were. They discussed me, in whispers, but I heard most of it.

  ‘Didn’t you say,’ said Frank, ‘that he had an unhappy childhood?’

  ‘Jean and I often thought he must have, but we didn’t really know, he never talked about it, not even to Mom.’

  ‘And he’s never spoken about his parents?’

  ‘I’ve never even seen a picture of them. I think his father died when he was a child. I just don’t know about his mother.’

  Then they must have realised that I might be listening, for either they dropped their voices or they went into another room.

  7

  At the Country Club the red Buick was at once recognised as belonging to Linda. It was taken as a sign that I had already begun to enjoy the lady’s favours. Reactions varied. Some elderly widows were cross with me. Come-hither smiles turned to go-to-hell scowls. In the men’s locker room, according to Bud, there was some ribald jesting at my expense, but it was good-natured and congratulatory. They paid me the compliment of assuming that I was in it for the money and, having in their day brought off lucrative business deals, risky and not altogether honest, they looked upon my pursuit of Linda as a similar venture and wished me well. The general opinion, however, was that, if I was after a widow with money, I would do better to make a bid for Mrs Harrington, who might not have Linda’s immense wealth and fame but didn’t have her temper either. A sweet-natured dim-witted old lady, she would not object to my playing golf as often as I wished. Also she would never notice if I had adventures on the side. Linda, on the other hand, might take it into her head to ban golf altogether and God help me if I as much as smiled at another woman.

  I put up with all the chaffing like a good sport but took care not to join in any denigration of Linda. According to Chuck, there was a belief that she had spies at the Club.

  While waiting for another invitation or summons, I took a notion to go downtown and drop into one of the run-down hotels that catered for penurious pensioners and have a chat with some of them. I would go by bus. That would be part of the exercise.

  It would be salutary for me after my consorting with the smug pampered well-off members of the Club.

  On Saturday morning I mentioned at breakfast that I was going downtown.

  ‘If it’s anything special you want, Dad,’ said Madge, ‘College Grove Shopping Center’s a lot nearer.’

  ‘No. I want to go downtown.’

  ‘All right. We’ll go with you. Won’t we, Frank?’

  ‘Sure will,’ said Frank, ever willing to help one who had not yet helped him.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather go by myself

  ‘Oh.’

  Into that small word much suspicion was crammed. Downtown were porno movies, dirty-bookshops, massage parlours, and topless bars. Madge had had a letter from Jean. Probably my remark about the whorehouses of Tijuana had been quoted in it.

  I had a little lie ready. ‘I’d like to go to the Public Library and have a look at some British newspapers. The papers here never have any British news.’

  ‘Are you feeling homesick, Dad?’ asked Madge.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Are you sure you could drive yourself? You’d have to use the freeway.’

  ‘I’m going by bus.’

  ‘Bus?’

  She and Frank looked at each other in amazement that quickly turned to horror.

  ‘Why on earth should you go by bus, Dad? If you don’t want to drive, either Frank or I will take you.’

  ‘Sure will,’ said Frank.

  ‘What’s wrong with going by bus?’ I asked. ‘I’ve travelled in buses at home.’

  ‘It’s different here, Dad. Only blacks and poor whites ride the buses. The one you’d have to use takes over an hour and goes through a black district. You’d feel very much out of place. Wouldn’t he, Frank?’

  ‘Sure would.’

  ‘Out of place among my fellow human beings?’

  ‘You know what we mean.’ Madge’s voice was sharp.

  ‘I’ve never been on a city bus myself,’ said Frank, ‘but I guess it must be an uncomfortable experience. Dangerous, too. You could pick up some disease. Another thing, Dad, people on their own are often mugged in broad daylight downtown, only a few yards from the main street.’

  Only a few yards, therefore, from the business area, where his and other banks rose 20 storeys high, the cathedrals of our age.

  ‘You would be the only white person on the bus,’ said Madge. ‘You’d be surrounded by big fat black women and their screaming piccaninnies. You’d love that.’

  In my room, getting ready, I studied myself in the mirror. Good bone structure. Wide brow. Firm but sensitive mouth. Commanding nose. Abundant white hair. All those were gifts of nature. Who would blame me for practising tilts of the head to achieve the full patrician effect? A champion of the poor and oppressed ought never to be sullen and hangdog. Had not Sir Galahad been the noblest knight, with the most costly caparison?

  Making the joke, I heard the rustle in the undergrowth where lurked hideous memories that no shining sword could slay.

  I had to walk a quarter of a mile to wait for a bus. In that district, where every household owned at least two cars, few people were ever seen waiting at bus-stops. I was alone, therefore. Since the morning was warm and sunny, I wore no jacket, only a white open-necked shirt and a pale blue cashmere pullover, the best that Hawick could produce. My tan slacks were Daks. Drivers of passing cars glanced at me in surprise. If any had stopped to offer me a lift, I was prepared to decline with a chuckle, letting it be deduced that I was not travelling by bus because I was poor, but for a subtler, more intriguing reason.

  At last the bus came. As I stepped on board, the driver looked as if he was tempted to advise me to take a taxi. I slipped my nickel and quarter into the slot and then had a choice of 50 seats, for the bus was as yet empty.

  In the black district, the houses were smaller, little better than s
hacks, the shops tawdry, the churches numerous but hardly inspiring. The bus-stops were thronged. A big fat black woman with a heavy shopping bag sat beside me and crushed me against the side. I smiled to show that I did not mind, but she ignored me. They all did. I might as well not have been there. They thought I was being patronising. If they could have afforded to go by car or taxi, they would have. Why didn’t I? What was my game?

  The superabundance of churches – I stopped counting at 35 – surely proved true Marx’s dictum that religion was the opium of the masses. Every Sunday, black preachers would rant about the everlasting glory to come. Their congregations, drugged by that promise, accepted meekly their earthly misery.

  In America, poverty was a culpable state. The poor were blamed, not pitied. To take help from public funds was as bad as stealing. In Britain too that had been the case 30 years ago. In my ILP days I had played a small part in making society a little more humane.

  The bus put me down near Frank’s bank, huge as an iceberg, glittering in the sun. I had visited him in it once. It had marble floors and pillars in the main hall, and yet it was only a few minutes’ walk from the doss-houses where the winos and dropouts lived. In his office, with the Stars and Stripes on his desk and a portrait of the President on the wall, Frank worked hard and conscientiously to make more money for his bank and therefore for himself. In his earnest way, he had explained that the more he earned, the more tax he would pay, thus doing his duty by the poor.

  The Reading Room was upstairs. Madge had warned me that its frequenters would be out-of-work misfits, all men and all shabbily dressed. She was right. Most were elderly. Few had come to read. What was happening in the world or in their own country was no concern of theirs. No one cared whether they existed or not. They stood or sat staring at newspapers or magazines, occasionally they turned a page, but they took nothing in. There was an air of disuse or uselessness about them. In the richest country in the world, they had nothing to look forward to. They came here every day because, if they did not speak or eat or spit – notices forbade such practices – they would be tolerated. The room was bare and the chairs hard but it must have seemed palatial compared with the cubby-holes where they slept.

  Another peculiarity of America, or at any rate of California, was that the old, or, to use the fashionable euphemism, senior citizens, liked to herd together. There were the dingy downtown hotels for those with no other means but their State pensions, and at the other end of the social scale the Ranchos, green oases on the outskirts of the city where retired people with money bought big houses and had every amenity laid on for them, including geriatric golf.

  In a corner were racks of newspapers, some from American towns I had never heard of, such as Coos Bay, but there was no Guardian or Telegraph or Times.

  To be fair, if an American went into the public library in some Scottish provincial town such as Dundee, looking for the San Diego Tribune, he wasn’t likely to find it.

  Frank had advised me to ask at the desk. This I did, politely.

  My politeness wasn’t appreciated. The woman in charge was middle-aged and grey-haired. She looked at me with what seemed disapproval. She thought that a man so well dressed and well-spoken could afford to buy any newspaper he wanted to read.

  ‘We’ve only got the London Times,’ she said, pushing a slip of paper across the counter. ‘Write your name and address.’

  I did so.

  ‘How many d’you want?’

  ‘Two or three of the latest issues, please.’

  ‘Write three then.’ She showed me where.

  She took three copies of The Times from a shelf behind her.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  I went over to a table at which only one man was sitting. Other tables had four or five at them.

  I looked through the newspapers. There was very little news of Scotland.

  There was an account of a debate in Parliament on the subject of devolution. My own view on home rule for Scotland was simple. All my life I had wanted Britain to be a socialist country. That I might have hated to live in it, as my daughters and the Druids of Murchison’s tearoom had often taunted, was beside the point. Not that it would ever happen. The English would prevent it. Those lord-lovers would always give the Tories a majority. On its own, Scotland might have become socialist if it had not lost faith in itself. Tamely the Scots had let themselves be cheated out of nationhood.

  Absorbed in these reflections, I was slow to notice the stink near me, rubbing elbows with me, in fact.

  The man was as old as myself. There was nothing to be seen to account for the awful smell. It was not simply cloacal. His clothes were shabby but clean enough: they looked as if they had been supplied by the Salvation Army. His face was shrivelled, his hands bony and mottled. There were no visible suppurations, gangrenes, eczemas, or oozing boils.

  The fact that its source was unknown somehow made it all the more horrible. It should also have made it more pitiable.

  Another man came and sat at the table. After a few seconds, he muttered, ‘Jesus Christ!’ and got up and moved away.

  Illness could humiliate. The poor fellow must know that he exuded this stench of decay, disease, and mortality. Where could he go that it would not offend anyone? There were many such places in California, with its enormous deserts, but perhaps he needed the company of people, even of people who could not bear his presence.

  There were notices enjoining silence, but surely no committee framing rules and no woman appointed to see that they were observed would have objected to a whispered ‘What is wrong, friend? Is there anything I can do to help?’

  I did not say it. Instead I tried to read a witty article on the badness of food in British roadside restaurants.

  Two men at the counter were talking to the attendant and looking in the direction of my companion. They were protesting about his presence.

  I wished the unfortunate man would go of his own accord and spare everybody the unpleasantness of seeing him ordered out.

  The attendant came over and stood beside us. Her nose twitched. In this land of gadgets, there was none to assess the amount of human stink allowable in a public library.

  On her dour face appeared for a few seconds a gentleness of pity.

  He got up and crept out of the room, with a shame and weariness poignant to behold.

  ‘If I get complaints,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to act on them. Was he bothering you?’

  She did not wait for an answer. It was as well, for it would have taken me a long time to find one.

  Out on the street, I did not now have the impudence to venture into a pensioners’ hotel with my dubious solicitude.

  All of me shaky, especially my legs, I went into the first bar I came to. I almost ran out again for it had a jukebox blaring pop music and barmaids with bare bosoms, but I slunk over and crouched in a corner.

  The girl who swaggered over to take my order was chewing gum. She had hard eyes, dyed-blonde hair, and big breasts, but she was young and healthy and smelled like roses. I could not resist sniffing gratefully.

  How could I have explained to her that she represented not a means of stimulating enfeebled lust but the sweetness and goodness of life itself? Alas, she misinterpreted my sniffing. No doubt in the hope of a tip made generous by guilt, she let her left breast touch my cheek as she bent down to wipe the table.

  ‘Smell all you want, Grandpa,’ she said.

  I had meant to order beer for it was too early for whisky but I found myself whimpering, ‘A scotch, please, with water.’

  ‘You foreign? Where from? Let me guess. Poland?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ireland?’

  This time I nodded. Let Ireland be given the discredit of the sniffing old lecher.

  ‘It’ll be Irish whiskey then?’

  I nodded.

  When she came back with the whiskey, I gave her a dollar as a tip. It was more than generous,
but she seemed displeased. She thought I should have paid for the sniffs.

  I took a taxi home, though it cost $20.

  8

  As soon as I got home, Madge, in a panic, insisted that all the clothes I was wearing must be immediately washed and fumigated. After that, they would be put in a black plastic bag and given to the Salvation Army. I demurred, for they had cost me a lot of money, I felt comfortable in them, and I thought she was exaggerating the fear of disease. Then I was ordered to use disinfectant soap when taking my shower. Heaven knew what germs I had picked up.

  I didn’t ask her – I was too ashamed – how I was to cleanse my mind of the memory of that unhappy man creeping off to a bitter loneliness, with no one to give him a pat on the shoulder or a word of comfort.

  I knew what she would have answered. ‘Just forget it, Dad. There’s nothing you could have done, there’s nothing you can do, to help. So just forget it.’

  And she would have been speaking for the world. Certainly Frank concurred.

  I did not tell them of my own agony in the topless bar.

  In the afternoon, Frank Junior and Midge visited the house. They were in a forgiving tolerant mood. Midge forgave her mother for being so stupid as to believe the lie about the pregnancy and Frank Junior, who wanted money from his father, was unusually prepared to be broad-minded as to how his father earned it.

  They were not interested in my story about the man in the library. ‘Down-and-outs are ten a penny downtown.’

  I felt sad. They were the young, in whose keeping should have been the ideals not only of their own country but of all humanity.

  Frank Junior was studying philosophy. ‘You know what Socrates said, Grandad. Know yourself. Well, man’s a selfish acquisitive animal, isn’t he? He still is, after thousands of years. So we can assume he always will be. So he shouldn’t waste time thinking he can improve.’

  Midge was a student of contemporary history. ‘Didn’t your Prime Minister say that, if the Good Samaritan hadn’t made a lot of money, then he couldn’t have done his good deed? Neither he could, could he?’

  Seeing me in discussion with her children, Madge was grateful to me. ‘I’m glad you’re taking an interest in them, Dad. They have respect for you.’