The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (40 page)

Clear-eyed and indignant, Priscilla replied: “They are tadpoles, Daddy!”

“Hm—tedpoles!” said I. Small, and went away. Later he came back to look at these strange creatures, lashing about with their diaphanous tails. He spent hours before the jam-jar. Once, he offered them a little bit of liver sausage, which sank to the bottom of the jar, where it remained ignored, while the disconsolate tadpoles swam around and seemed to look at him with disdain. He
was interested to observe their growth. He was an early riser. One morning, about six-thirty, the Small ménage—and half the street, for that matter—was awakened by something that sounded like Roland’s Horn. Millie Small hurried down in her night-dress, saying that she had “just dozed off”—she pretended, the liar, that she never slept—she was always too full of care to do anything but doze off. Charles came running, buttoning his trousers, followed by Priscilla, half-naked, scratching her bottom.

“For God’s sake! What’s the matter with him now?”

Pointing a trembling forefinger at the jam-jar, I. Small
stammered
: “What next will they bring into the house? The bleddy beggars have got
hands!
Chuck ’em in the dust-bin! … Hands, already!”

Despite Priscilla’s shrill protests, the old man forced Charles to throw the tadpoles into the dust-bin. He was afraid to touch the jar himself—no doubt he had some creepy idea that they might leap out and grab him by the throat. But he could not get away with that kind of thing with Priscilla. On the
afternoon
of that same day, at tea-time, she placed before her father a large plate covered with a bowl. I. Small pinched her cheek playfully, smiled in anticipation, called her a good girl, and lifted the bowl. Then he cried to God like a damned soul because, with a “
Brekekekex
—
koax
—
koax
——
!
” two large frogs jumped into his lap. He held them at bay with a bread-knife, shouting: “Stand back!” Millie Small went out to call a policeman, while Priscilla laughed herself into convulsions and Charles sucked his thumb, not daring to laugh. When the policeman arrived he saw the old man slicing empty air with a bread-knife, and said: “Come on now, this won’t do. Stick that knife in me, and you’ll be the sufferer.”

“Bleddy liddle green beggars jumping all over me! Where’s your cruncheon?”

“You put that knife down, or you’ll soon find out,” said the policeman. “Does he drink, Missus?”

“Oh no!”

“Ever threaten before?”

“No, no.”

“Want to make a charge?”

“Certainly not!”

The policeman was disappointed. He pocketed his
notebook
, gave I. Small a long, hard stare, and said in a cold clear
voice: “Lucky for you. We’ve got our eye on you. You’d better be careful. I know your sort. Better watch out!”

“The bleddy things jumped all over me off of the bleddy plate!” I. Small shouted.

“That’s all right now. We’ve heard that tale before. Now you’ve been warned. Remember. We’ve got our eye on you…. Are you quite sure you don’t want to make a charge, Ma’am?”

The policeman sounded so wistful that Millie Small was
half-inclined
to oblige him. But she said: “No, thanks. Would you like a nice cup of tea?”

The policeman said that he had to be on his beat. Some other time, perhaps. In the meantime Mrs. Small might rest assured that her dangerous husband would be under constant supervision.

This was why, thereafter, I. Small, when he went out, scuttled like a rat to the corner of the street before turning up his moustache and walking on his way, whistling “
Lily of Laguna
”.

On the following day Priscilla brought home six newts. I. Small hated the sight of them, but he dared not say a word. They, too, had horrid little hands. She kept them in a bedpan. For fear of what she might do next, the old man did not say a word. For all he knew she might bring home a bleddy crocodile. But one night he crept into the room Priscilla shared with her brother, and poured carbolic into the water, so that by dawn the newts were liquidated.

*

If I. Small thought that Priscilla would be discouraged by the death of her newts, he was to learn that, as the saying goes, he was talking out of his hat. Two days later she came in from school at tea-time with a hop, a skip and a jump, and put on the table an animal at the sight of which Millie Small went off like a factory whistle and the old man bayed like a bloodhound. It was, in fact, a dangerous-looking creature. It was deathly white, with an arched spine, a pink nose and ruby-red eyes. From nose to tail it must have measured about twelve inches. Charles, also, as he remembers, was afraid of this beast because, looking first at him and then at the old man, it bared two rows of teeth like needles. I. Small was petrified, frozen with dread. He tried to say “Bleddy——” through a mouthful of muffin, but made a noise like
Blubby
—while the animal watched him closely.

“It’s a ferret,” said Priscilla. “His name is Dicky.”

I. Small gulped his mouthful, washed it down with tea, wiped his moustache, filled his lungs for a nice loud outcry and raised the
Westminster
Gazette
for a deadly stroke; while Millie Small said, in an hysterical voice: “This is all I’m short of!”

“Better be nice to him—Dicky bites,” said Priscilla. “Ferrets bite. They kill rats and rabbits. When they bite, they don’t let go until their teeth meet. They suck blood. Old Gonger told me.”

Cautiously drawing back his chair—knocking over his cup in the process—the old man, moist with hot tea and cold sweat, stared fearfully at the ferret. All he could say was: “Who’s Gonger?” in a feeble voice.

Old Gonger, it appeared, was one of Priscilla’s gentleman friends. He was a professional rat-catcher: a horrid old man. Looking at him, sensitive observers felt that his business was fratricidal. He looked like a rodent; he was rat-coloured, he smelled like a rat, he was verminous, and thoroughly detestable. He was generally seen lurking in the twilight with a sack full of sewer rats, great ferocious ones, which he sold at the back door to a sporting publican who kept a bull terrier that could kill
twenty-eight
of the fiercest rats in two minutes. For a quart of ale, Gonger would bite a live rat’s head off. He was a species of Geek. Yet, by some mysterious means, Priscilla had touched some tender spot in the heart of this malodorous man. He let her accompany him to a rat-infested warehouse, where he delighted her by pulling out of his pockets (his trousers pockets, at that) a pair of deadly little red-eyed animals that went, silent as smoke, after their grey enemies … and then there was much agonised squeaking followed by a sickening silence. Also, he laid down poison and set traps, big wire traps of the Catch-’
Em-Alive
-O type. Suddenly he started, thrust his right hand into his left armpit and, with an impatient exclamation, dragged out another ferret which—recognising him for what he was perhaps—had buried its teeth in his arm. Gonger cuffed the ferret’s head, saying: “Dicky! Haven’t I told you a thousand times? Spiteful bugger!”

Priscilla was entranced. She said: “Mr. Gonger, please, can I have him?”

“What, Dicky? I wouldn’t part with Dicky for a thousand pound.”

“You give me Dicky, and I’ll give you a kiss,” said Priscilla.

Old Gonger was deeply moved. Something stirred within him. He picked the ferret up, holding it under the belly, and gave it to the child, saying: “All right then, it’s a go. Lift him like this—so—see? He’s a good-natured feller but he hasn’t been fed for two days, and he’s sort of irritable. Feed him a bit o’ raw meat. Now then, where’s m’ kiss?”

Holding the ferret by the belly, Priscilla laughed and said: “No. You smell.” Then she was gone with Dicky before old Gonger could catch her.

… So, Dicky crouched on the tea table. I. Small approached the ferret cautiously, offering it a lump of sugar. (He would have offered it a cigar, if he had had a cigar.) Dicky, the ferret, took a small circular piece out of his thumb. I. Small roared like a hurricane: tea and muffins flew in all directions. Looking for the wherewithal to annihilate this bleddy little murderer, he found a pot of black-currant jam which, brandished on high, emptied itself on his head; so that he stood there, waggling a bloody thumb, dripping with black-currant jam, bleddying and beggaring to shake the house. Priscilla, of course, was overjoyed. She clasped Dicky to her bosom. He didn’t bite her. Probably he hadn’t the nerve. Mrs. Small threatened to call a policeman. The old man, who felt that he had been dangerously wounded and was in a critical condition rushed bareheaded to Dr. Ribbon; burst into the consulting-room, gasping like a donkey-engine: “Quick! Look!”

Having looked, the doctor said: “All right. Suck it. That will be three-and-six.”

As an afterthought he grudgingly applied a bit of cotton-wool soaked in iodine, adding: “Four shillings.”

“Sis not poisonous, Doctor?”

“How many consultations do you expect for your dirty four shillings? Go home, go away, get out of here!”

So I. Small returned to the house, full of anger, determined to thrash his parricidal daughter until she was red, white and blue. He weighed in his hands his heaviest stick, but, taking into consideration her youth and weakness, rolled up last week’s
Jewish
Chronicle,
and went to her room—for Millie Small had sent her to bed. There she lay, serene and beautiful, smiling in her sleep, with the ferret warm and comfortable, draped like ermine about her throat. It opened its bright red eyes and gave
the old man a look that seemed to be fraught with menace. He dropped the
Jewish
Chronicle
and ran for his life.

Downstairs he said to Millie: “You see what she is?”

“Thank goodness she doesn’t take after me,” said Mrs. Small, “she’s bad to the backbone—she’s got bad blood.”

“Who then does she bleddy-well take after, with her bleddy blad blood? The bleddy little rotter! Stinkpot! Who does she take after? Me, if I said one word to my father, over went the wrong side of his strap on my
tukhess
till it was like a rainbow! And this one, your bleddy Priscilla, she lets bleddy wild beasts tear, already, her own father to pieces—and she goes to sleep laughing! That’s what she is!”

He was right for once in his life. That was what she was, thinks Charles Small; and wishes that there were a few more like her.

It pleases him to remember such little incidents: the memory of them tickles him, even if, in strengthening his admiration for Priscilla, they exacerbate his self-contempt.

At the recollection of the old man, dishevelled, balancing a blob of ruddy-brown cotton-wool on the tip of a tremulous thumb, Charles Small laughs, for a change—and with the laugh comes a kind of hiccough with a nauseating eructation, as if that brief
pop
of mirth has uncorked a carboy of fuming acid, concentrated, destructive, sour stuff—that which is eating his life away and utterly destroying him.

*

The poor old man, I. Small, opened his heart to Lizzard, the atheistic cobbler. This was after the Drapery Business came to its inevitable, ignominious end, and I. Small stubbornly insisted on going into High Class Ladies’ and Gents’ Repairs—at which, at last, he made a respectable living; for whatever one might say of the old man, it could not be denied that he was a tireless worker, for whom no job was too large or too small. Millie hated the business. She preferred something clean and quiet. But the drapery business had come to grief. Having laid in a large stock of preposterous and unsaleable haberdashery—Edwardian drawers that split in the middle and had lace at the knees,
job-lots
of perished elastic, millions of pearl buttons, rolls of wide satin ribbon to tie up little girls’ hair, thick lisle stockings—in short, everything the wholesalers were delighted to sell and
nobody wanted to buy, Millie Small became businesslike. She went to a stationer and bought a whole lot of tickets, red
-and-white
, inscribed:

Then (this was her idea of salesmanship) she wrote 2/- under
NORMAL
PRICE
…, crossed it out with a blue pencil, and wrote 1/11¾d. under
SALE PRICE
…! By these subtle machinations she hoped that the world would beat a path to the dingy shop in Lewisham. What the devil made them think of Lewisham, Charles Small wonders, remembering the dreadful desolation of that boring suburb.

Nathan, the Photographer, suggested a nice position in the Old Kent Road, but Millie would not hear of that. What, was he trying to humiliate her? The Old Kent Road! Among the costers, the drunkards? She could just see herself selling tape, hygienic diapers, perished elastic, and so forth, to a hulking Pearly Queen of a coster-woman who came in, reeking of beer, running at the nose and saying: “Quick, ducks—gimme a bleedin’ snot-rag.” Nathan, the Photographer, should live so sure. They went further afield, to Lewisham, which was neither alive nor dead, but respectable. Nathan, the Photographer, took over the premises in the Old Kent Road, and there established a Studio, out of which he made a lot of money. He employed some miserable wretch to take photographs of the local Pearly Kings and Pearly Queens, and grew fat on the fat of the land. Bawdy, ribald Cockneys in bell-bottomed trousers and ostrich feathers reeled past, drunk as lords, singing “
Down the Road Away Went Polly
”, and:

Much Nathan cared! He drew his dividends from the Old Kent Road and Bond Street, while Millie Small, inspired, fluttered from stationery shop to stationery shop buying tickets and little signs. Her last gesture was the purchase of a sort of streamer, about six square feet of paper, upon which was printed in lurid colours the ominous words:
CLEARANCE
SALE!
She crossed
out previous prices and slashed what remained of the prices until they bled, bleddy-well bled. No one paid any attention. If women wanted drawers, garters, hosiery, buttons, etcetera, they could get them across the street from Messrs. Tom Dick and Harry at half the price.