The Bachelors (10 page)

Matthew
said, ‘I know a girl who’s expecting a baby by an old spiritualist. She’s
lovely. She’s got long black hair.’ He saddened into silence and gazed upon the
girl in jeans dispassionately, recognising her as Ronald’s former girl-friend.

‘I went
abroad to paint, but my cousin the Marquise’

‘I’ll
tell you this much,’ Matthew said, ‘there’s no justification for being a
bachelor and that’s the truth, let’s face it. It’s everyone’s duty to be
fruitful and multiply according to his calling either spiritual or temporal, as
the case may be.’

‘Monet
admired my work. Just before he died he visited my studio with his friends,
and—’

‘These
are the figures,’ Matthew said, and took from inside his coat a bundle of
papers from which he selected one which had been folded in four, and which was
split and grubby at the folds. He straightened out the sheet, following the
typewritten lines with his finger, as he read out, ‘Greater London, the census
of 1951. Unmarried males of twenty-one and over: six hundred and fifty-nine
thousand five hundred. That’s including divorced and widowed, of course, but the
majority are bachelors—’

‘I can
see him now,’ said Walter, ‘as he was when he was assisted into a chair before,
my easel. Monet was silent for fully ten minutes — the painting was a simple,
but rather exquisite roof-top scene—’

‘Unmarried
males of thirty and over,’ said Matthew: ‘three hundred and fifty-eight
thousand one hundred. Since 1951 the bachelor population has increased by—’

‘Put
that vulgar little bit of paper away,’ Walter said. ‘Tim Raymond gave it to me,’
Matthew said, putting it away very carefully. ‘He works in the C.O.I. God help
him.’

‘You’d
better get married,’ Walter said.

‘Do you
think so? Why?’

‘Because
you obviously haven’t got the courage to get your sex any other way.’

‘There’s
more than sex in marriage.’

‘But
not in your mind.’

‘Perhaps
that’s true. I often wonder if it’s only sex when I think of getting married.
Still, I feel I should be married and multiply. I feel—’

‘Do you
really want to get married?’ Walter said.

‘No.’

‘I
nearly got married,’ Walter said, ‘in 1932 when I was out of work and the
family had cut me off. The girl had a job. If a girl had a job in those days it
was like a dowry. She was anxious to marry me. But I was really more taken up
with her father. He was a carpenter, one of the last of the true English craftsmen.
But I did not marry his daughter. She was a bourgeois little bitch with her
savings in the post office. Her name was Sybil, if you please.’ The memory of
Sybil, though in fact she had never existed, was so fiercely implanted in
Walter’s mind through frequent elaborations of his imagined affair with her,
that he was always thoroughly incensed by her.

‘I
wished her joy of her savings in the post office and departed,’ Walter shouted.
He rose and set down his empty glass and fastened his black coat on one button
across his huge stomach.

‘Are
you going to go?’ Matthew said. Walter clenched both fists as if to fight with
Sybil. ‘I’ll walk with you to the station,’ Matthew said. Walter sat down again
and made his lips into a long line.

‘I’ll
have to be going,’ Matthew said. ‘My other brother-in-law has just come over
and I’ve got to meet him at my uncle’s.’

‘My
boy,’ said Walter, ‘you have much to bear.’

‘Not my
uncle at Twickenham. My other uncle at Poplar,’ Matthew said, with his eyes on
the brown bobbed head of Ronald’s girl in jeans who was laughing with Chloe.

‘I want
a drink,’ Walter said.

‘I’m a
bit short of cash,’ Matthew said, ‘this time of the month.’

‘Fresh
young Chloe will cash me a cheque,’ Walter shouted.

‘Chloe
will not cash you a cheque,’ Chloe called out, ‘for the simple reason that
Chloe is not allowed to cash cheques any more.’

Francis
Eccles swivelled round in his high chair.

‘Why,
Walter!’ he said.

‘Why, Eccie!’
said Walter.

‘There’s
a very definite rule about cheques,’ Chloe said.

Walter
ambled over to the bar and said in a tone of dignified reproach, ‘As it happens
I haven’t got my cheque book on me. But I’m surprised, Chloe, that you should
take up this ridiculous lower-middle-class attitude.’

‘I have
my orders, Walter,’ Chloe pleaded.

‘What
will you drink, Walter?’ said Eccie.

‘You
have your orders, Chloe,’ Walter said. ‘Very well, you have your orders. But
really, my dear, this is dreadfully bourgeois of you.’

It
worked quicker than usual. Chloe said, ‘I’m not bourgeois, really I’m not. I’ll
personally cash you a cheque. It’s only that I can’t, I mustn’t, cash cheques
for the club.’

‘Since
when?’ said Walter.

‘Since
last week,’ she said. ‘Honestly,’ she said.

‘First
I’ve heard of it,’ said the girl in jeans.

‘I’ll
cash your cheque,’ said Eccie, also anxious not to be bourgeois.

‘It’s
of no matter,’ Walter said. ‘I only object on principle. As it happens I haven’t
got my cheque book on me.’

Eventually
he accepted a loan from Eccie, and when the deal was done Matthew reappeared
from the cloakroom. He took a high chair at the bar and helped himself to a
pickled onion off a plate.

‘Matthew,’
said Chloe, ‘meet Hildegarde. Hildegarde, meet Matthew.’

Matthew
leaned forward and smiled across Walter’s bulk at the girl in jeans. ‘We’ve met
before,’ he said.

‘Where?’
she said.

‘At
Ronald Bridges’. Aren’t you a friend of Ronald’s?’

‘I used
to be,’ she said.

‘I know
Bridges,’ mused Eccie. ‘I wonder if he could help…?’

‘No,’
said Chloe. ‘I shouldn’t think so, Eccie.’

‘Don’t
you?’

‘No.’

‘What
is this secret conversation?’ roared Walter.

‘It’s
something Eccie and I were discussing,’ Chloe said. ‘It’s private.’

‘Common
little creatures,’ Walter shouted. ‘Very bad behaviour.’

‘I’m
not standing for that, Walter,’ Chloe said. ‘Are you standing for it, Eccie?’

‘Well,
no,’ said Eccie. ‘I must say, Walter…’

‘This
is too much,’ said Hildegarde. She swung her long legs off the stool and
departed.

‘Come
on, Walter,’ Matthew said, ‘I’ve got to meet my brother-in-law—’

‘I
shall not be driven away by a barmaid and a snivelling middle-class younger son
of an upstart earl,’ Walter said.

‘You’re
drunk,’ said Chloe.

Walter
laughed without noise or humour, but with a shaking of his flabby shoulders,
chest and stomach.

Eccie
said sadly, ‘Walter, Walter, I don’t like this.’

‘You
are deriving a certain pleasure from lumping it,’ Walter said.

‘Walter,
I’m out of a job, you know. The Institute is closing down.’

‘Not
before time,’ Walter said.

‘As an
art school, I admit it had its weaknesses,’ said Eccie. ‘But I flatter myself I
was able to contribute something useful with my lectures, especially on the
country itinerary which I’ve been taking for the last two years.’

‘Nonsense.
You contributed nothing. You know nothing of art.’

‘Oh,
Walter, come!’ said Eccie, Christianly.

‘He’s drunk,’
said Chloe.

‘I’ll
have to go and ‘phone my sister,’ Matthew said.

‘Drunk,’
said Chloe, ‘and this time’s the last. He can’t come here insulting the
members—’

Walter
took from his pocket the five pounds that he had borrowed from Francis Eccles. ‘I’ll
give you this back,’ he said, ‘before I’ll admit you know anything about
painting, Eccie.’

Eccie
said ‘Goodnight, Chloe. Goodnight, Matthew,’ in a tone of gentle reproach, and
left.

‘That
was mean of you, Walter,’ Chloe said. ‘I am an honest man,’ Walter observed, ‘when
treating of the few existing subjects to which honesty is due.’

‘I’d
better ring my sister,’ Matthew said. ‘My cousin will be on the telephone to
her as I haven’t turned up at my uncle’s to meet my brother-in-law.’

‘It was
unkind of you, Walter,’ said Chloe, leaning over the bar forgivingly. ‘Poor old
Eccie’s upset at losing his job.’

‘He
doesn’t need a job,’ Walter said. ‘He’s got his private income and his
basement. And he’s an Anglo-Catholic. Anglo-Catholics always get jobs.’

‘He
hasn’t got much income,’ Chloe said. ‘Have you seen the way he lives? That
basement is going down and down. No-one to look after him.’

‘He
ought to have got married,’ Matthew said.

‘He’s
not the marrying type,’ said Chloe.

‘He
pees in the sink,’ said Walter, ‘not that I hold that against him.’

‘He
doesn’t!’
said Chloe.

‘True,’
said Walter. ‘It’s nothing. We bachelors all pee in sinks and wash-basins.’

‘I don’t,’
said Matthew.

‘You’re
young yet,’ Walter said.

‘Filthy
beasts, the lot of you,’ Chloe said, laughing towards one face and another as
she leant over the bar.

Then
she straightened up.

‘Halo,
halo,’ she said, for Mike Garland, accompanied by an elderly man who wore a
clerical outfit, had entered.

‘Walter,
Matthew,’ she said, ‘this is Dr. Garland and Father Socket.’

‘How do
you do, Father,’ said Matthew, jumping off his stool to shake hands.

‘Not of
our persuasion,’ Walter informed Matthew, whereupon Matthew drew away his hand
nervously and said, ‘Pleasant evening.’

‘These
two are fraud spiritualists,’ Walter roared. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said
Father Socket. ‘I grant it with a plenary indulgence,’ said Walter as he pushed
Matthew before him out into the high autumnal winds of Hampstead.

‘I’d
have liked to talk to them a bit,’ Matthew said. ‘What was all your hurry?
Alice Dawes, that pregnant girl with the long black hair, is a spiritualist.’

‘These
are fraud spiritualists.’

‘Is
there a difference, then?’ said Matthew.

Chapter VI

RONALD said, ‘How long
have you known her?’

‘Since
two weeks,’ Matthew said. ‘She’s got long black hair. She has it done up on top
when she’s in the coffee bar and she lets it go long when she’s in bed.’

‘I
should think you’ve got a chance,’ Ronald said. ‘Seton isn’t much of a rival,
from what I know of him. But are you sure you want to marry this girl?’

Matthew
hastily remembered that the last thing he had said might be misconstrued, so he
told Ronald, ‘I saw her in bed because she was 11 and her friend Elsie took me
along — Elsie’s the other girl in the coffee bar.’

‘Have
some tea,’ Ronald said. ‘Help yourself. Pour it out.’

‘I hope
you don’t mind me consulting you like this? ‘Ronald poured out tea, holding the
teapot as high over the cup as possible without making a splash. This had been
a habit of his for as long as he had been making tea for himself, and he did
not notice now what he was doing as he raised the teapot, by habit, twelve
inches above the cup, nor did he remember that the pretty sight of the long
stream of golden liquid had once made the process of tea-making less of a bore
than if he had poured it from a normal height.

‘Be
careful,’ Matthew said, ‘you don’t spill it.’

‘You
will be thirty-two this month,’ Ronald said, testing his memory.

‘My
birthday was last week,’ Matthew said, aimlessly as a boy-seminar answering a
tall black frock.

Ronald
said, ‘Everyone consults me about their marriages.’ Three months ago Tim
Raymond, before he had joined his aunt’s spiritualist circle, had come to
Ronald with the marriage question. He had said, ‘Do you think everyone will say
I’m marrying her for her money and she for my connections?’

‘I don’t
know. I expect so.’

‘Perhaps
that’s the truth of the matter.’

‘Well,
you’ve got good connections. It isn’t every set of connections a woman wants to
take on. And for your part, it isn’t everyone’s money you would touch, I
daresay. There’s an element of mutual respect involved.’

‘There’s
something in that. Still, it would be tiresome if people said—’

‘Do you
love the girl?’ Ronald said.

‘Funny
thing, you know, in a funny sort of way, she’s fun.’

‘Well,
I don’t see why you shouldn’t get married. Does she love you?’

‘I
think so. Of course she says so.’