Rotting Hill (39 page)

    “Arthur,” I said, “you need a gin-and-tonic.”

    “That is so,” said he and we directed our steps to “The Flying Horse”, not far from “The Catherine Wheel”. We seated ourselves at a round table and I went to the bar and fetched the drinks.

    “’Tis a rotting world,” said Arthur, picking up his drink which I had placed before him.

    “It is rotten,” said I. “It stinks, Arthur.”

    “I feel I am buzzing through space inside a rotten egg.”

    Arthur was in bad spirits. His periodic glance at the World Press, always makes him like this. The expensive U.S. monthly I had seen him reading had informed him that Russia already had enough hydrogen bombs to blow the British Isles out of the water, but that the United States had ten times as many, twice the size, and could sink half of Russia in the Polar Seas. There seemed little doubt that both these countries would soon be at war. Arthur was one of those men who was forever nittering about in the future.

    “I cannot see, Arthur, what you expect of this earth-ball. You know it is composed of dung. You talk as if we were flying around upon one of space’s fairest mud-drops played to by the music of the spheres. This is a nasty place, Arthur. Millions of little organisms compete, only the police make them keep their hands off one another. I could name at least a hundred citizens who would kill me if it were not for the C.I.D. But with nations it is a different matter. There is no police force to restrain them from exterminating their neighbours. I cannot see why you should expect a nation to behave itself better than a man, Arthur.”

    “All right,” he said. “But must we have this rotten government?”

    “You think it would be better to conserve than to socialize?” I asked him.

    “Yes, it would,” grumpily muttered Arthur.

    “But can you not see that they are the same? The conservers flung all our money away in mad wars. Now, disguised as an honest working man, they are engaged in a huge confidence trick. The stars have been changed, but the play is the same. Cannot you feel the state’s great greedy hand in your pocket? It is robbing you to pay its gambling debts. Its war debts. It is the
same
hand. These names, Arthur, ‘conservative’, ‘socialist’, ‘communist’, mean very little. They’re just like the fancy-names of medicines. You should keep your eye fixed upon
the State.
Stalin is a Czar in a cloth cap. Mr. Attlee…”

    “Yes, yes, all right. But these gamblers, these states, that gamble with our money, get progressively poorer. What will they be like after another fling?”

    “Millions of Englishmen will be cancered or starved. The states, all earth’s states, dazed and imbecilic will be squatting in the gutter. But my God, Arthur, how did fifty million people get on to this island. It is a rabbit warren, on a coal mine. You can’t feed that number. Quite impossible. But there is no decent excuse for keeping our numbers down with rat poison or something, so what does a poor state do? It gets another state to come and kill us off. Russia is the Ratin man, of the ’fifties of the twentieth century.”

    “All right.”

    “You always say all right, Arthur.”

    “What do you expect me to say?”

    “Well, something different to that, Arthur. It is not in harmony with your customary attitude of unrelieved gloom, where
nothing
is right.”

    “Is it? But I agree with what you say about the state. It is rotten luck having these beastly things fixed on our backs. I wish we could get rid of these infernal states of ours, don’t you?”

    “Of course I do. We
are
out of luck and
that’s
a fact. But you speak of the state, Arthur, as if it were a parasite. Really it is the other way round. The state to which we belong is a truer image of the universe than we are, just as our private minds depart from the norm. The ‘mob-mind’ is the more central, the nearer to nature.”

    “All right,” howled Arthur, “I agree. And where do we go after that?”

    “Nowhere, Arthur. We are always at the same spot. We go nowhere, Arthur.”

    “All right,” muttered Arthur. “All right.”

    I was obliged to say good-bye to him at this point. He remained in the public house brooding upon the socialist administration, for I had not succeeded in convincing him that socialism was the same thing as conservatism or as communism. I delivered a parting shot before I left however: “If your lovely conservers were here, Arthur, they would have to pawn you for what you are worth just as much as the present lot. Debts have to be paid. No government would have any choice but to sell you up.”

    “Rot,” shouted Arthur. “The socialisms use me as a golden brick to build their New Jerusalem.”

    “That’s politics, Arthur, not economics.”

    Near “The Flying Horse” was the booth of the sorceress Betty, who looked the beautiful witch that she was, just nut-crackery enough to qualify and no more. She crouched over her crystal, her black eyes riveted upon the future. I went up and crossed her palm with silver. “What do you see in your crystal, Betty, as that affects myself!” Drawling a little, “I see a tall, dark man,” she said. “How original, Betty.”—“I see a small woman with reddish hair.”—“Has she got bad teeth?”—“No, she gives a dazzling smile as she picks your pocket.” I laughed, saying “Good morning”, and headed north. Betty always tells your fortune that way if you venture to be ironical.

    As I was nearing “The Catherine Wheel”, Roy Campbell at the head of his group, responding to the mirth of his followers with a series of spasmish nods of the torso of jovial assent, emerged from the famous public house. From the expressions of those about him I could see that he had been telling them how the bull tossed the matador the full length of the arena, how Campbell caught him and laid him gently down, executed a tourniquet before the bull could reach them, but when he did, head down, and kicking up the dust, Campbell killed him with the fallen matador’s espada. He was now obviously walking out of the bull-ring, stepping gingerly to the deafening applause of the officionados.

    Ours is a great hill. Almost at its gates I encountered Augustus John, his blue headlights blazing on either side of his bronzed beak. He had heard there were some mumpers encamped not far from the Borough Reading Room. There was an anticipatory glare of fraternity in the old Romany Rye’s gaze.

    Lastly, standing by one of the gate-posts, was Britannia. She wore what Yankees call a “liberty-cap” (hired from Moss Bros.). Once so robust, she was terribly shrunken: some wasting disease, doubtless malignant. The trident now employed as a crutch, she held out a mug for alms. I saw in the mug what looked like a phoney dollar bill, and dropped myself a lucky threepenny bit. I would give my last threepenny bit to poor old silly Britannia. In a cracked wheeze she sang “Land of Hope and Glory”. I must confess that this last apparition, and its vulgar little song, rather depressed me.

    
[1]
A friend in Washington now calls this quarter of London “Rotting Hill,” since hearing of my ordeal with the rot. I have adopted his expressive substitution to maintain a proper anonymity.