Fowlers End (8 page)

“Oh, I suppose you would have given preference to a lamb, just because you liked its looks, over a bloody butcher from the Midlands? Yet that butcher begot William Shakespeare. I like your presumption! It’s like a mouse in a cathedral talking architecture.”

At this point we generally had another drink, and then Sourbreast would say moodily, “You don’t know the meaning of doubt.”

My reply never failed to irritate him. It was, simply, “That’s right.”

“Yet anyone can see with half an eye that you’ve suffered like hell.”

“In point of fact, I haven’t,” I would tell him. “Traumata are a lot of crap. Anybody who says he remembers a physical pain is a liar. You are not constructed to remember pain, or you’d never survive being born.
You remember only the fear of being hurt.
It is fright, not hurt, that destroys you.”

So I told him, and so I believed—and so I still believe. Now, in perspective, I see my sentiments just as they were when I lived by instinct. I still believe that sensation is nothing but a spur on the heel of time rowelling the crotch of eternity. Pleasure and pain are neither here nor there; both are evil if you consecrate yourself to one or the other—if you do this, you fall in the scale of things; you sink under the surface of yourself. True happiness is to be found in a species of spiritual osmosis—in absorbing, and at the same time being absorbed. Be calm, hold on to the nucleus o
f yourself; let yourself be taken in by what surrounds you, and you will get back more than you have given, and so become stronger by having been thus involved. In the meantime, you will have given back some of your strength to its nameless source.

We are all part of a cosmic give-and-take. There is nothing to be afraid of—not even your own shadow, no
matter what
danse macabre
it makes between guttering candles and the dying embers in the small hours when life runs down.

As for suffering, I am told that I have had my share of it. But it never took. Experience never taught me to be afraid. It taught me that a pain is a red light, a danger signal, something that warns you to be on your guard against what it presages. But the memory of pain suffered never dulled my desire to find out what lay beyond the pain, behind the red light. Why, good God, if there were any such thing as true remembrance of physical pain, there would be the end of adventure and high endeavor—which would be a great pity. Ninety-five per cent of the tales people tell about the
ir sufferings are a kind of emotional sales talk. Take child-birth, for example, which is the commonest pain in the world and, while it lasts, one of the most acute: every woman talks about it but not one, not a single one, truly remembers it. Pain brings its own anodyne. One deep sleep, and all is forgiven. What they remember about it is the anticipation of it.

Fear is a kind of hate; they both smell alike. I should not be surprised if it turned out that many of the early Christian martyrs got no more than they asked for—hating and forgiving, and fearing and hoping all in quick succession. Whereas Daniel came alive out of the den of lions simply because he couldn’t be bothered with them. By the same token, if you like, God destroys those who fear Him as surely as life destroys those who fear to live. Superficial observers believe that it is on account of my formidable appearance that I can walk unharmed, well dressed and talking li
ke a gentleman, in places where the very policemen have to go in twos and threes. It isn’t true. Apart from the fact that ill-disposed people, looking at me, ask themselves what the other fellow must have looked like when the fight was over, and respect me on sight as a dangerous kind of
walking casualty, I think they get a spiritual feel of me. Neither they nor their dogs curl a lip at me—well, hardly ever—because, my face notwithstanding, they know that I am of them, involved in them.

We are all breakables close-packed in one
universal parcel.

Apropos of dogs: I was snapped at only once, and that was when I was ill with an undulant fever. Running away from bad dreams and lonely with an ineffable loneliness, I paused in a doorway to stroke a mongrel terrier. He warned me off, snarling. The dog was right: fear and disease give out a whiff of corruption which all healthy animals shy away from. The smell of fear, like pain, is one of nature’s warning signals.
Danger-Keep Off!
it says. You must know yourself that, in school for instance, the least popular boy— the creep, the drip, the butt, the one who is most avoided—
is the most fearful of you all. You feel that he carries with him a contamination of uneasiness. Whereas, though he may have all the vices in the world, you will follow the daredevil like a pack of hounds. No disrespect; it’s only natural....

“I admit,” I said generously, “that I am no oil painting.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Sam Yudenow. “The year before last I and my wife, we went for a holiday to Belgium. I got a brother-in-law in the diamond trade. So they take me to the Weirtz Museum, an’ believe me, a very nice class oil painter paints worse types than you. Don’t you worry. You got the face for the
job.
Rudolph Valentino wouldn’t last five minutes in Fowlers End—” He stopped abruptly and said, “Uxcuse me, what’s your name?”

“Daniel Laverock,” I said.

“Laverock,” said Sam Yudenow, “Laverock—isn’t that a kind of a cow?”

“No,” I said, “that’s a maverick. A laverock is Old English for skylark.”

Sam Yudenow said, “I’m broad-minded. I don’t care what your name is, personally. But Fowlers End ain’t Old England an’  they’re sure to call you Laventry. Why not call yourself Carlton, or something?”

I said, “Call me what you like, so long as I get my wages. Oh yes, that reminds me—what
are
my wages?”

“You could go all over London,” said Sam Yudenow, “an’ not get a ‘alf. There’s men seventy, eighty years in show biz who’d
pay
me for your job, an’ do my laundry an’ darn my socks an’ wash my back every Sunday morning. One o’ my managers in Luton,
‘e
got
less
than ‘alf o’ what you’re getting, an’ ‘e used to cut my ‘air every week.... You’re not ‘andy miv a pair scissors by any chance?”

“Not very. Seriously, how much?”

“It’s a gentleman’s life. It’s a chance in a million. A lot o’ people I know miv university edyacations would pay a premium to learn show biz from Sam Yudenow. An’ ‘ere you are, a beginner, an’ I’m paying you wages like a prince. What more could you want?”

“How much was it you said?”

“I don’t know why I should, but I like you. Speak any foreign languages?”

“French, Spanish, German.”

“Forget ‘em. Well, seeing it’s you, Laventry, I’ll make it forty-five shillings a week. That puts you in the upper brackets rahnd ‘ere. Only don’t tell anybody ‘ow much I’m paying you—they’ll
all
want a rise. If Mrs. Yudenow should ask, ‘Confidentially, Mr. Carlton, ‘ow much is Sam paying you?’I want you should keep a straight face an’ take the Bible in your right and an’ say, ‘Mrs. Yudenow, I swear on this ‘ere Book that I’m not getting a penny more than thirty-seven-and-six.’ There’s a Bible in
the office, only the inside’s been cut out to make a cigar box. Is your mother living?” “Yes,” I said.

“In that case, you can say also, I swear on my mother’s grave.’ If she ain’t got one, it can’t ‘urt. Your father dead? ‘E is? Then you can say, ‘May I never shake ‘ands miv my father again, Mrs. Yudenow!’But I want you should keep your fingers crossed at the same time because I never lie to Mrs. Yudenow. She always finds out. Where do you five?”

“My address,” I said evasively, “is Poste Restante, Charing Cross.”

“Give ‘em notice. Why should you work for a West End landlord? Or if you got a long lease, sublet. I like my managers should be on top o’ the job. So if you like, I can fix it up miv Costas you should ‘ave a room ‘ere an’ breakfast for ten shillings a week.” He cupped a hand over his ear and listened intently for a second. “‘Ear that chirpy noise? It’s the critics rahnd the stove.”

“Crickets?”

“I said critics, diddle I? Some people say they’re lucky. When you got nothing else to do Sundays, trap ‘em. Borrow a pisspot, an’ put some crumbs at the bottom. They jump in an’ eat themselves sick, the uncivilized little bastards, an’ then they can’t get out. When you got a pound or two of ‘em, chunk ‘em into Godbolt’s. I dare say you’re quick miv your ‘ands. Catch fleas. Buy for a penny a tin pea-shooter. Get two bits cotton wool to plug it up. When you got a tubeful—an’ you’d be surprised ‘ow long those little buggers can live mivout food—go over to God-bolt’s in the dead night, an’ blow ‘
em thvough the keyhole. Only be sure to draw a deep breath
before
you blow. That bastard Booligan didn’t an’ for days ‘e was complaining of a tickling in the thvoat.... Bedbugs, they’re easy to catch. Fill up a paper cone; undo this cone an’ drop the lot thvough
Godbolt’s letterbox. As I calculate, if only one in five gets into the woodwork, that’s good enough. An’ on no account drown rats. I got a wire ‘Catch-’Em-Alive-O’ trap in the cellar: its capacity is four. When it’s full, take it to Godbolt’s letterbox an’ open the trap. Stir ‘em up miv a sharp pencil an’ in they go. There’s a pencil sharpener in the office. Now

...”

We climbed the dark stairs. There was a fine film of burned grease over everything.

“Now this,” said Sam Yudenow, “is the ladies’ dressing room.” Sometimes, when the day is a gray waste in the middle of which I find myself lost, when I am alone among strangers and depressed, I think of that room. It was larger than the shop parlor. The shadow of an adjacent building kept it in perpetual twilight. Leaning out of the window to get away from it, you saw a blank wall. If you craned heavenward there was nothing but a cistern out of which came a strangled noise and a tangle of pipes wrapped in rags of sackcloth and sprinkled with dust and ashes. Below in a stone yard
stood a dead plant in a tub of sour dirt, and a big dustbin. I am telling you that there was no escape. The room was cold and, at the same time, stuffy. Against the wall to the left of the door stood a washstand topped with a slab of mud-colored false marble on which was a jug of cold water in a big blue basin and an empty glass; at the lightest footstep, the jug and basin chattered like teeth. Below, icy white and gleaming, a chamberpot. The bed was of iron tubing covered with peeling brass: there was more comfort in the prospect of a grave than that of the bed at the end of a day—that pitiless,
flat, naked bed with its skin-tight cotton counterpane. Instead of fire, the hearth contained crumpled red crepe paper. The mantelpiece bore two eighteen-pounder shell cases about which somebody had tied bows of pink sateen. Between them hung a yellow photograph of a man who looked like a hang
man turned churchwarden: a dour, cruel old man in a billy-cock hat, clutching a black stick, resting one glazed-looking fist upon a book. Against the window stood a dressing table. There was an enamel pail and a small straw mat—nothing more except white wallpaper stamped with blue roses and marked in one place by a patch of dampness. Yet there was something else which I could not define: an atmosphere.

Women had used that room and somebody had cleaned up after them; but all the mottled soap in Fowlers End could not have scoured away an overhanging aroma of uneasiness, a taint of misery which clung there. I could distinguish a faint smell of mingled sixpenny perfumes and perspiration. In the crockery tray upon the dressing table lay two hairpins, one black, one “invisible.” The woodwork bore the black marks of cigarette burns. Gloom had soaked into the fabric of the place. On the wall under the gas bracket somebody had written three words. They were written small, but the utter nakedness o
f the room made them conspicuous:
Out goes Pat.
The abandoned ones, the forgotten ones, the derelicts, the
Marie Celestes
of the theater had been dragged down this way by the undertow of time and change, leaving behind them nothing but a few cigarette marks, two pins, three words, and a desolation....

Sam Yudenow said, “I don’t know what your religion is but the way I look at it everything is a blessing in disguise. Variety’s gone to rack and ruin, but like brothels it makes the town safe for respectable girls. Also for the likes of us. A variety turn
must
‘ave a wash at least once a week, ‘specially if she’s a contortionist; otherwise, the effects can be dangerous an’ far reaching. Only before you ‘ave a go miv one o’ the ladies ‘ere, better put down a sheet greaseproof paper on the coverlet. Costas guards ‘is sister’s virtue, an’ quite right too. Booligan used to keep a roll of
it. The men’s dressing room is next door.”

It was the same as the other room, only there was a lithograph of Garibaldi over the mantelpiece and more inscriptions on the walls. Also, I noticed an old-fashioned bidet. Sam Yudenow pointed to it with a laugh. “I got that in a job lot from my friend Hacker the breaker. For years, Mrs. Yudenow thought it was for pickling cucumbers in. Actually, if you sit on the floor you can use it for a kind
d
table.”

I asked, “And where’s my room?”

“The way I look at it,” said Sam Yudenow, “what more could anybody ask for than the ladies’ dressing room? Airy like a palace miv a cupboard that
locks!
During the day what do you want a room for, what? After the turns ‘ave gone ‘ome, Costas’ sister tidies up, an’ it’s all yours. Don’t worry, you’ll be on the go like a gentleman from nine in the morning to ‘alf past eleven at night. Ten bob a week miv a breakfast thvown in—what king could ask for more? For your other meals, ask Costas. ‘E charges next to nothing. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it up miv Costas. My God, in a couple years you’ll sav
e money to buy me out! For you I’ll be working. That’s
la vie
for you. See? I talk French too, only in show biz the more you savvy the less you say. So all you got to do is, move in like a gentleman, you lucky bastard, an’ live like a lord. From now on, you’re God Almighty rahnd ‘ere. When you say ‘yes’ it’s yes, when you say ‘no’ it’s no; your word is law—so long as you consult me first.... ‘Ear that cveaking? That’s Costas on the stairs. ‘E listens. When Gveek meets Gveek, watch your step.” Then Sam Yudenow, clearing his throat and winking at me, said in a loud, clear voice, “Five pounds ten a wee
k, Mr. Carlton, take it or leave it!”

“Eh?”

He whispered, “In show biz always multiply by two what you earn, an’ add ten per cent.”