Under the Net (2 page)

Magdalen was in the bath when we arrived. We went into her sitting-room, where the electric fire and the little piles of nylon stockings and silk underwear and the smell of face-powder made a cosy scene. Finn slumped on to the tousled divan in the way she always asked him not to. I went to the bathroom door and shouted ‘Madge!'

The splashing ceased, and she said, ‘Is that you, Jake?' The cistern was making an infernal noise.

‘Yes, of course, it's me. Look, what is all this?'

‘I can't hear you,' said Magdalen. ‘Wait a moment.'

‘What is all this?' I shouted. ‘All this about your marrying a bookie? You can't do this without consulting me!'

I felt I was making a passable scene outside the bathroom door. I even banged on the panel.

‘I can't hear a word,' said Madge. This was untrue; she was playing for time. ‘Jake, dear, do put the kettle on and we'll have some coffee. I'll be out in a minute.'

Magdalen swept out of the bathroom with a blast of hot perfumed air just as I was making the coffee, but dodged straight into her dressing-room. Finn got up hastily from the divan. We lit cigarettes and waited. Then after a long time Magdalen emerged resplendent, and stood before me. I stared at her in quiet amazement. A marked change had taken place in her whole appearance. She was wearing a tight silk dress, of an expensive and fussy cut, and a great deal of rather dear-looking jewellery. Even the expression on her face seemed to have altered. Now at last I was able to take in what Finn had told me. Walking down the road I had been too full of self-concern to reflect upon the oddness and enormity of Madge's plan. Now its cash value was before me. It was certainly unexpected. Madge was used to consort with tedious but humane city men, or civil servants with Bohemian tastes, or at worst with literary hacks like myself. I wondered what curious fault in the social stratification should have brought her into contact with a man who could inspire her to dress like that. I walked slowly round her, taking it all in.

‘What do you think I am, the Albert Memorial?' said Magdalen.

‘Not with those eyes,' I said, and I looked into their speckled depths.

Then an unaccustomed pain shot through me and I had to turn away. I ought to have taken better care of the girl. This metamorphosis must have been a long time preparing, only I had been too dull to see it. A girl like Magdalen can't be transformed overnight. Someone had been hard at work.

Madge watched me curiously. ‘What's the matter?' she asked. ‘Are you ill?'

I spoke my thought. ‘Madge, I ought to have looked after you better.'

‘You didn't look after me at all,' said Madge. ‘Now someone else will.'

Her laughter had a cutting edge, but her eyes were troubled, and I felt an impulse to make her, even at this late stage, some sort of rash proposal. A strange light, cast back over our friendship, brought new things into relief, and I tried in an instant to grasp the whole essence of my need of her. I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this. It is not in my nature to make myself responsible for other people. I find it hard enough to pick my own way along. The dangerous moment passed, the signal was gone, the gleam in Magdalen's eye disappeared and she said, ‘Give me some coffee.' I gave her some.

‘Now look, Jakie,' she said, ‘you understand how it is. I want you to move your stuff out as soon as poss, today if you can. I've put all your things in your room.'

She had too. Various objects of mine which usually decorated the sitting-room were missing. Already I felt I didn't live there any more.

‘I don't understand how it is,' I said, ‘and I shall be interested to hear.'

‘Yes, you must take
everything,'
said Magdalen. ‘I'll pay for the taxi if you like.' Now she was as cool as a lettuce.

‘Have a heart, Madge,' I said. I was beginning to worry about myself again, and felt a lot better. ‘Can't I go on living upstairs? I'm not in the way.' But I knew this was a bad idea.

‘Oh, Jake!' said Madge. ‘You are an imbecile!' This was the kindest remark she had made yet. We both relaxed.

All this time Finn had been leaning against the door, looking abstractedly into the middle distance. Whether he was listening or not it was hard to tell.

‘Send him away,' said Magdalen. ‘He gives me the creeps.'

‘Where can I send him to?' I asked. ‘Where can we either of us go? You know I've got no money.'

This was not strictly true, but I always pretend as a matter of policy to be penniless, one never knows when it may not turn out to be useful for this to be taken for granted.

‘You're adults,' said Magdalen. ‘At least, you're supposed to be. You can decide that for yourselves.'

I met Finn's dreamy gaze. ‘What shall we do?' I asked him.

Finn sometimes has ideas, and after all he had had more time to reflect than I had.

‘Go to Dave's,' he said.

I could see nothing against that, so I said ‘Good!' and shouted after him, ‘Take the cases!' for he had shot off like an arrow. I sometimes think he doesn't care for Magdalen. He came back and took one of them and vanished.

Magdalen and I looked at each other like boxers at the beginning of the second round.

‘Look here, Madge,' I said, ‘you can't turn me out just like that.'

‘You arrived just like that,' said Madge.

It was true. I sighed.

‘Come here,' I told her, and held out my hand. She gave me hers, but it remained as stiff and unresponsive as a toasting-fork, and after a moment or two I released it.

‘Don't make a scene, Jakie,' said Madge.

I couldn't have made even a little one at that moment. I felt weak, and lay down on the divan.

‘Eh, eh!' I said gently. ‘So you're putting me out, and all for a man that lives on other people's vices.'

‘We all live on other people's vices,' said Madge with an air of up-to-date cynicism which didn't suit her. ‘I do, you do, and you live on worse ones than he does.' This was a reference to the sort of books I sometimes translated.

‘Who is this character, anyway?' I asked her.

Madge scanned me, watching for the effect. ‘His name,' she said, ‘is Starfield. You may have heard of him.' A triumphant look blazed without shame in her eye.

I hardened my face to make it expressionless. So it was Starfield, Samuel Starfield, Sacred Sammy, the diamond bookmaker. To describe him as a bookie had been a bit picturesque on Finn's part, although he still had his offices near Piccadilly and his name in lights. Starfield now did a bit of everything in those regions where his tastes and his money could take him : women's clothes, night clubs, the film business, the restaurant business.

‘I see,' I said. I wasn't going to put on a show for Madge. ‘Where did you meet him? I ask this question in a purely sociological spirit.'

‘I don't know what that means,' said Madge. ‘If you must know, I met him on a number eleven bus.' This was clearly a lie. I shook my head over it

‘You're enlisting for life as a mannequin,' I said. ‘You'll have to spend all your time being a symbol of conspicuous wealth.' And it occurred to me as I said it that it mightn't be such a bad life at that.

‘Jake, will you get out!' said Magdalen.

‘Anyhow,' I said, ‘you aren't going to live here with Sacred Sam, are you?'

‘We shall need this flat,' said Magdalen, ‘and I want you out of it now.'

I thought her answer was evasive. ‘Did you say you were getting
married?'
I asked. I began to have the feeling of responsibility again. After all, she had no father, and I felt
in loco parentis.
It was about the only locus I had left. And it seemed to me, now that I came to think of it, somehow fantastically unlikely that Starfield would marry a girl like Magdalen. Madge would do to hang fur coats on as well as any other female clothes-horse. But she wasn't flashy, any more than she was rich or famous. She was a nice healthy English girl, as simple and sweet as May Day at Kew. But I imagined Starfield's tastes as being more exotic and far from matrimonial. ‘
Yes
,' said Madge with emphasis, still as fresh as cream. ‘And now will you start packing?' She had a bad conscience, though, I could see from the way she avoided my eye.

She started fiddling with the bookshelves, saying, ‘I think there are some books of yours here,' and she took out
Murphy
and
Pierrot Mon Ami.

‘Making room for comrade Starfield,' I said. ‘Can he read? And by the way, does he know I exist?'

Well, yes,‘ said Magdalen evasively, 'but I don't want you to meet. That's why you must pack up at once. From tomorrow onward Sammy will be here a lot.‘

‘One thing's certain,' I said, ‘I can't move everything in a day. I'll take some things now, but I'll have to come back tomorrow.' I hate being hurried. ‘And don't forget,' I added fervently, ‘that the radiogram is
mine.'
My thoughts kept reverting to Lloyds Bank Limited.

‘Yes, dear,' said Madge, ‘but if you come back after today, telephone first, and if it's a man, ring off.'

‘This disgusts me,' I said.

‘Yes, dear,' said Madge. ‘Shall I order a taxi?'

‘No!' I shouted, leaving the room.

‘If you come back when Sammy's here,' Magdalen called after me up the stairs, ‘he'll break your neck.'

I took the other suitcase, and packed up my manuscripts in a brown-paper parcel, and left on foot. I needed to think, and I can never think in a taxi for looking at the cash meter. I took a number seventy-three bus, and went to Mrs Tinckham's. Mrs Tinckham keeps a newspaper shop in the neighbourhood of Charlotte Street. It's a dusty, dirty, nasty-looking comer shop, with a cheap advertisement board outside it, and it sells papers in various languages, and women's magazines, and Westerns and Science fiction and Amazing Stories. At least these articles are displayed for sale in chaotic piles, though I have never seen anyone buy anything in Mrs Tinckham's shop except ice cream, which is also for sale, and the
Evening News.
Most of the literature lies there year after year, fading in the sun, and is only disturbed when Mrs Tinckham herself has a fit of reading, which she does from time to time, and picks out some Western, yellow with age, only to declare half-way through that she's read it before but had quite forgotten. She must by now have read the whole of her stock, which is limited and slow to increase. I've seen her sometimes looking at French newspapers, though she professes not to know French, but perhaps she is just looking at the pictures. Besides the ice-cream container there is a little iron table and two chairs, and on a shelf above there are red and green non-alcoholic drinks in bottles. Here I have spent many peaceful hours.

Another peculiarity of Mrs Tinckham's shop is that it is full of cats. An ever-increasing family of tabbies, sprung from one enormous matriarch, sit about upon the counter and on the empty shelves, somnolent and contemplative, their amber eyes narrowed and winking in the sun, a reluctant slit of liquid in an expanse of hot fur. When I come in, one often leaps down and on to my knee, where it sits for a while in a sedate objective way, before slinking into the street and along by the shop fronts. But I have never met one of these animals farther than ten yards away from the shop. In the midst sits Mrs Tinckham herself, smoking a cigarette. She is the only person I know who is literally a chain-smoker. She lights each one from the butt of the last; how she lights the first one of the day remains to me a mystery, for she never seems to have any matches in the house when I ask her for one. I once arrived to find her in great distress because her current cigarette had fallen into a cup of coffee and she had no fire to light another. Perhaps she smokes all night, or perhaps there is an undying cigarette which burns eternally in her bedroom. An enamel basin at her feet is filled, usually to overflowing, with cigarette ends; and beside her on the counter is a little wireless which is always on, very softly and inaudibly, so that a sort of murmurous music accompanies Mrs Tinckham as she sits, wreathed in cigarette smoke, among the cats.

I came in and sat down as usual at the iron table, and lifted a cat from the nearest shelf on to my knee. Like a machine set in motion it began to purr. I gave Mrs Tinckham my first spontaneous smile of the day. She is what Finn calls a funny old specimen, but she has been very kind to me, and I never forget kindness.

‘Well, now, back again,' said Mrs Tinckham, laying aside
Amazing Stories,
and she turned the wireless down a bit more until it was just a mumble in the background.