Children of the Archbishop (10 page)

17a Leak Street was the address for which he was making. He had written it so many times at the top of sheets of cheap note-paper that he knew it by heart. At times, he almost felt that he really lived there. Not that there was anything in particular to commend Leak Street. It lay in the very heart of the north island of Soho, and the traffic that flowed along the broad rivers of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road knew nothing of these forlorn, forgotten jungles. The street was full of small dejected shops, and there were children playing in the gutters.

No. 17a itself was a disappointment, a disappointment in a street of disappointments. It was only half a shop and the slice of window that it had retained was filled by a board of small advertisements. To recover his breath, Mr. Prevarius paused and started to read: “Reliable woman wants work, mornings only”; “Deal chest of drawers, cheap”; “Feathers any quantity, distance no object”; “Artificial flowers, experience not necessary”; “Widow where child aged three not objected to …” Mr. Prevarius winced. Whichever way he turned, the sadness of life seemed to be pressing in on him.

Then he went inside past the rack of magazines and periodicals and stood there, peering across the counter that had bottles of ink and toy balloons displayed upon it. The little grey-haired woman with the knitted cardigan pinned across her bosom came out of the back room and smiled at him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Cavendish,” she said.

Mr. Prevarius smiled. He enjoyed the sensation of being somebody different, someone else. And then the irony of it occurred to him: he didn't know the little old lady's name himself. While he had assumed a pseudonym, a nom-de-guerre, a false address, this ancient creature by remaining where she was in her own shop had beaten him at his own game. She was utterly anonymous.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. …”

“Sixpence, please. Threepence on each,” she replied. And in her hand she held out two envelopes addressed to B. Cavendish, Esq.

He had only one plan now: to read the letters. But he was careful, deliberately careful. He wanted to do nothing that might appear rushed or over-eager. Therefore he paused for a moment and addressed the little old lady a second time.

“And a bottle of ink: the twopenny size, please,” he said.

“Blue-black?” the little old lady asked him.

“No. Plain blue, please. The pale kind. And two thin nibs.”

He opened the letters in the entrance to a side courtyard. It was a sordid spot of cats and dustbins and the sound of quarrelling. But Mr. Prevarius was too much excited by his letters to notice his surroundings.

Not that the first did anything to cheer him. It was from a leading impresario and said merely that the concert trade was down at the moment, and that only pianists of European reputation were being given bookings. The other, however, was decidedly better. So much better, in fact, that Mr. Prevarius whistled. Then he straightened himself.

“Charing Cross Road,” he murmured. “Couldn't be better. We will go and visit him.”

No two streets in London are exactly the same. And when you see the Charing Cross Road you feel glad they aren't.

It's a queer, disordered sort of thoroughfare, the Charing Cross Road, narrow at each end with a bulge like a tuber down by the National Portrait Gallery and a circus where five other streets come together just after the thing gets started. No real continuity, nothing consistent; not even straight. And it suffers from the same lack of purpose in its occupations. It sets out quite openly
to be the principal book-selling pavement in the capital—and not just new books, novels, paper-backs, whodunits and trash of that kind, but good solid books; stuff that has stood the test of time; sermons, classics, histories; all original binding, half-calf, 24 vols. uncut. Then, just when the victory of culture and antiquity seems conclusive, the present-day keeps breaking in, raucous and irreverent, like a red-hot blast from Broadway. As well as the bookshops, there are five theatres, three cinemas, an underground dance hall, a fun-fair, a shop that sells nude photographs, little half-shops specialising in surgical unmentionables, one or two milk-bars and a great plate-glass emporium full of tenor saxophones, castanets, harmonicas, conductors' batons, chromium-and-mother-of-pearl squeeze boxes, and sheet-music.

Especially, sheet-music. It is on sheet-music, in fact, that the real fortune of Charing Cross Road is founded. There are reams of it, coming off the presses every day; acre upon acre of minims and crotchets and quavers and strict tempo love-ditties. It is the staple export of the place, like ships from Clydeside or lace from Nottingham. No matter what goes on at street-level, the upper storeys are dedicated to sheet-music. There are suites of rooms where the conversation is of nothing else but hot numbers and lyrics and plugging and close harmony and song-hits. It is one of the lower slopes of Parnassus, this Tin-Pan-Alley of ours, with Terpsichore or her agent, always one flight up.

As Mr. Prevarius looked down the Charing Cross Road, his eyes lit up. After St. Mark's Avenue and the Hospital, it was like finding himself on another and a brighter planet. At the corner of Old Compton Street, for example, there was a coloured gentleman in a white trilby, arm in arm with a lady with a lot of yellow hair. Really, it was magical. It was like getting on the Underground at Oxford Circus only to find that the next station was Marseilles or New Orleans. But still not half so astonishing as to think that Mr. Prevarius really had business there.

He padded rapidly along in his spongy crêpe soles, his black clerical-looking hat pushed on to the back of his head, his music-case swinging agitatedly in the crook of his left arm. And when he reached Arcadia House he was breathless. But it was more than breathlessness that made him utter a deep sigh as he turned inside. It was happiness. Sheer happiness. This, he told himself, was life; real life; a secret life of which Dr. Trump and his other tormentors knew nothing.

And right on up to the fourth floor he climbed, past the office
of a man who engaged midgets, and another who booked bands, and a third who dealt in juveniles, until he came to a frosted-glass door lettered with the words “Spike Jerome, Music Publishers.” Then he went inside.

The hall was also the waiting-room. There were three chairs in office-oak, a square of cord carpet, a pedestal ash-tray and a polished deal table covered with song sheets, like periodicals set out in a club library. The walls, of thin, white-painted woodwork, had panels of frosted-glass mounted above them, and the sound of two or three different conversations all came through at once. A small bell-push on the farther wall was prominently marked: “Ring.”

Mr. Prevarius hesitated for a moment. Then he obeyed the notice. But because a telephone bell rang at the same moment, Mr. Prevarius was kept waiting. He was unprepared, in fact, when one of the glass panels was shot suddenly upwards and a girl's head appeared.

“Gottenerpointment?” she asked in a slow, husky drawl as though she had only just got off the boat at Southampton.

“Not exactly,” Mr. Prevarius told her. “But Mr. Jerome wishes to see me personally. I have his letter here. ‘Cavendish' is the name.”

“Okay,” the girl told him. “Takerseaplease.”

The glass shutter descended and, through the frosted-glass, Mr. Prevarius could see the girl still sitting there and apparently polishing her nails. He was sorry that she had shut herself off again so suddenly because she looked interesting. Not that there was anything very strange in that. To Mr. Prevarius, all blondes looked interesting.

Because there seemed no immediate prospect of seeing her except through frosted-glass, Mr. Prevarius began to look around him.

He went across to the fumed oak table and began turning over the music library—“Grandmamma's Straw Bonnet,” “Honolulu Lulu,” “Clinging to the Stars,” “You are my Torment,” “The Girl with the Icicle Eyes,” “Miss Fortune,” “Perfume for Two,” “Bewilderment.” But it was all old stuff. Nothing to fear from that. No serious competition. No discoveries …

He was lost in his own thoughts when the shutter lifted for the last time and the girl addressed him.

“Misterome's ready now,” she announced indistinctly. She
was putting on lip-stick this time and her voice was more muffled and out of focus than ever. “Goritin.”

Mr. Jerome was only a small man. Small and bald and harassed-looking. But he wore a vivid American tie as though in an effort to persuade people that he was really a carefree trans-Atlantic sort of dare-devil. And he carried a cigar between his lips for apparently the same reason. During the whole time Mr. Prevarius was there he didn't see him get so much as a puff out of it: Mr. Jerome just kept transferring it from one side of his mouth to the other, and spitting out the portions of leaf that had become detached on the way.

But he knew his business. Shut up there in his little glass and plywood cell with the walls plastered with signed photographs of sleek, ferociously smiling men and drooping, romantic women, he wasted no time in idle courtesies. He got down to things right away.

“Sit down, Mr. … er … er …” he said. “I like that last number of yours.”

“‘Four o'clock Doll,' you mean?” Mr. Prevarius asked him. Mr. Jerome nodded.

“It's got something. Catchy little piece if we can get the boys interested.”

The cigar suddenly began coming apart so alarmingly that he had to interrupt himself to get rid of the fragments.

“You in a band yourself?” he asked, as soon as he could speak again.

Mr. Prevarius shook his head.

“Not at present,” he replied evasively.

“Pity,” said Mr. Jerome, frowning. “Know anyone in the B.B.C.?”

“Only on er … er … the religious side,” Mr. Prevarius admitted.

Mr. Jerome was not impressed.

“Wrong department,” he said. “Wouldn't help. Have to do everything myself.”

“Perhaps I could ask to see some of them,” Mr. Prevarius suggested.

Mr. Jerome, however, did not seem impressed.

“Better leave it to me,” he advised. He paused.

“Of course, I shall lose money on this, mind you,” Mr. Jerome went on.

“I'm sorry,” Mr. Prevarius replied, not knowing what else to say.

“Have to keep the royalties low to pay for advertising. No good unless it's properly promoted.”

Mr. Prevarius tried to nod understandingly.

“No, no. None at all.”

“America O.K.?” Mr. Jerome inquired.

“I understand so,” Mr. Prevarius assured him, wondering why Mr. Jerome had changed the subject so suddenly.

“No ties?”

“None whatsoever,” Mr. Prevarius replied, still wondering what Mr. Jerome was talking about.

“Any split?”

“Any what?”

“Split. Any helpers? Did you go to anyone for the orchestration?”

“The words,” Mr. Prevarius replied slowly, “and the music are mine and mine alone. I … I wrote them myself, in fact.”

“You'll have to sign the usual,” Mr. Jerome told him.

“Naturally,” Mr. Prevarius replied. “Would you like me to sign it now?”

The idea appealed to him because he wanted to know what sort of a thing the usual really was.

But Mr. Jerome was not to be rushed.

“Got to get it typed first,” he said. Then he looked up. “Berkeley Cavendish your full name?” he asked.

Mr. Prevarius turned his round dark eyes full on him.

“Berkeley
de Vere
Cavendish,” he replied slowly. “But I drop the ‘de Vere' for professional purposes.”

It was Sweetie's problem. When you are four, the days of the week don't stand out very clearly. Sometimes there seem to be eight of them and sometimes only six. You count up as carefully as you can. And then you find that you have missed a day like Tuesday altogether, or done something silly like counting Sunday twice over.

It had been like that this week. According to Sweetie's calculations it should by rights have been Wednesday. But instead of prayers and arithmetic, and then break and singing and Scripture and needlework, it had turned out as prayers and arithmetic, and then break and
English
and
geography
. And that showed that it couldn't be a Wednesday. Then when the afternoon came and Margaret turned up at the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital, Sweetie realised that it couldn't be Tuesday either. It
must be
Thursday.

And that was lovely. Because as soon as Margaret had taken off her coat and hat, she would begin the games. But even before the games started, Sweetie was quite happy just standing there watching her. She was so smooth and peaceful-looking. It made Sweetie want to rush up and bury her face in Margaret's skirt. But that would have been silly. The other little girls would have laughed at her. And Sweetie couldn't bear being laughed at.

But Sweetie reminded herself that the other little girls weren't to know what she was
thinking
. Thoughts were private. You could do what you wanted with them. They were a sort of obedient dream. You could have happy endings every time if you wanted things that way. Or you could make yourself so miserable that you nearly cried. Or you could just think about being grown up. That was one of the best thoughts of all. And she had decided, quite firmly and definitely without any chance of ever changing, that as soon as she was old, really old like Margaret, she would wear a long black coat with a little piece of brown fur round the collar and a hat with a thin strip of veiling along the brim and brown kid gloves that she would take off slowly, finger by finger, and then fold them up and put them down beside the hat on top of the piano. It had to be a piano. A dressing-table or a chest-of-drawers wouldn't have done. Because when Sweetie grew up she was going to be exactly like Margaret in everything.

But to-day there was something worrying her. And she knew what it was: it was the English lesson. Not that it was exactly Miss Wynne's fault. Miss Wynne hadn't really got any faults. She was just a flat, grey thing in a drooping knitted suit. She taught lessons. For a long time Sweetie had wondered whether Miss Wynne really knew what she was saying during lesson time. And to-day Sweetie was quite sure that she didn't know. If she had known, she could never have repeated such a horrible story. It was called Snow White. And it was the first time Sweetie had ever heard it.