Ineffectual fornicator, Purge of poor publicans, Kettle-mob catamite, Cheater of Chasper, Furniture-fracturer, Light-hearted liar, Counterfeit-cashman, Free meal filcher,
Prey on us.
He was surprised to see, from a clock outside a watch-repairer's, that it was nearly eleven-thirty. He hurried to the great restaurant and was fascinated to find that a mad sort of compartmentalisation had made - for the literal-minded - a full and balanced meal impossible. For there was a coffee-bar, a steak-house, a chicken grill, a potato parlour (Steaming Jumbo Murphies Slashed And Buttered), a yumyum pastry shop, and even a jungly-looking place called Lettuce Land. Edwin eventually found a Pickwick Breakfast Bar, sat on a stool of contrived discomfort at the counter, and looked at the menu. 'From six a.m. for Early Birds till Noon for Lie-abeds,' it said. Charming. A tired girl (no Pickwick Breakfasts for her) wearing a tall chef's cap took his order. He proposed flapjacks with maple syrup, haddock with two poached eggs, pork sausages and bacon with rognons sautes, toasted muffins, marmalade, much coffee. Various Pickwickian characters looked down from the wall in approval. Seeing Sam Bilabial Fricative-eller reminded him about his little popular article. Later. Plenty of time for that. Meanwhile there was a great deal to be said for sexual exercise, promoting as it did such appetite. Edwin was pleased to see a brisk trade in breakfasts and a Gents W.C. conveniently placed. Charming.
He ate like a raven, belching a rich counterpoint of flavours at the end. He finished the coffee, lit a cigarette, and saw that the serving girl was busy with a huge urn that made a strangled sound. He got off his stool and went to the Gents. There he took off his wig and his tie, stuffing them under his shirt. He limped out, gormless and aged, carrying a lavatory brush. He took his time, even pausing to throw glances of hungry censure at the breakfasters. Then he limped to the door, looked right and left in tremulous indecision, and shambled slowly round the corner. Easy, all too easy. And now it was time for the Anchor, wearing dark glasses to hide himself from possible Bob, and there undoubtedly at last would be Sheila, anxious and loving, having heard all, but now perhaps pleased to know that he was cured. Cured? He could prove it. The return of desire. Restoration of normal olfaction. No more syncopes. The future? Don't be silly, the future doesn't exist. Living for the day was most stimulating and remarkably easy, he thought, tonguing out sausage gristle from a back tooth.
But he needed a little money: enough for a pint if Sheila were late showing up or, perhaps, did not today show up at all. There was no particular hurry about Sheila, when all was said and done. Edwin saw a public library, pigeon-soiled soot-gnawed Ruskin, and went in. In the entrance hall were lavatories to right and left, so Edwin proceeded to one and voided a pint or so of diuretic coffee, fitted on his wig, tied his tie, and was ready for more petty crime. Or was it going to be that, really? For, though he was to take, he had given: the Gents now had two lavatory brushes.
The Reading Room he entered was raftered and grim. Shabby men stood at the newspaper-lecterns as at the treadmill; here the rarest wit of the feuilletons must crumble, the news of divorced earls become obscene. At rows of factory benches old men were reading in tough cloth cases, prayer-book-coloured with faded gilt titles, The Nineteenth Century and After, The Poultry-Fancier's Gazette, Chambers' Journal, The Seventh Day Adventis's Quarterly, Blackwood's, The Church Organist, The Home PigBreeder. One old man vented a loud bark of laughter at, improbably, something he had seen in Punch. Edwin went over to the shelves where mouldered the Encyc. Britt. and Grove and Jane's Fighting Ships. He chose a rather recent and still clean-covered book on heraldry, its pages not at all disfigured by the library brand of ownership. The flyleaf had an accession number but there was no book-plate. Edwin openly tucked this book under his arm and, humming quietly like an old man in the sun, strolled round the daily papers to see the headlines. Another teenage male pop singer, he noted, had been torn by girl admirers; a vendor of smuggled watches - not Bob, unfortunately - had been arrested; a fierce winter was forecast; the American President wanted peace. Interesting. Leisurely and still humming quietly, Edwin walked out of the Reading Room and back to the lavatory. There he very carefully tore out the flyleaf and made sure, by slow examination, that the book now looked an orphan. He walked out of the building, heraldry under his arm, and sought a street of secondhand books. The shadiest-looking shop had a twitching shifty man with three pairs of glasses. Edwin asked for fifteen shillings. 'I find,' he said, 'that I already have a copy in my library. Not even the most insatiable amateur of the subject needs more than one.' He demurred at the offer of five shillings but finally accepted it.
What an easy world it was to live in, this big innocent trusting London. Back to nature, with fruit growing everywhere for the plucking. Only a fool, really, would return to the hard graft of teaching linguistics under a Burma sun. Whether he was completely a fool he hadn't yet decided.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
' 'E's 'ere,'cried Harry Stone, punching Edwin hard as soon as he set foot in the public bar. 'Where ve bleedin' 'ell you bin? Buggerin' off like vat wivaht permission, ve 'ole of bleedin' town bein' scoured for you.' Leo Stone and Les looked reproachfully, as did various others outside the circle whom Harry Stone infected with his bitter wail. 'You're avin' one 'arf,' said Harry Stone, 'one 'arf only, and ven you're goin' to be locked up in our place, whever vose two little German bitches are vere or not. You see,' he said to Les, 'you couldn't be trusted. Give 'im you to look after and ven what happens? 'E's gorn, 'e doesn't come back till bleedin' near free o'clock frowin'-ahttime.'
'Look here,' said Les, 'I'm not having that. Man is born free and is everywhere in chains, as J. B. Priestley says. It's downright indecent to lock a man up against his will. It's up to the man's own common sense, the way I see it. If a man can't see reason about it himself, then there's nothing that anybody can do about it.'
'Vis,' said Harry Stone, passion in every limb, 'is exceptional. 'E won't or can't see bleedin' reason. 'E can't see ve importance of keepin' vat bald 'ead safe till after tonight. Cor,' he said, looking up at Edwin's wig. 'Jesus Christ alone knows what 'e's been lettin' appen' to it. Let's 'ave a shufti.' He whipped off Edwin's curls and walked like a panther round the naked head. 'Needs a good goin' over,' he said, 'but otherwise it looks all right. Bleedin' wonder, vough, considerin' vat 'e's been aht all night doin' 'oo knows what. Come on,' he said bitterly, thumping Edwin, 'knock vat back, and ven you're comin' wiv Leo and I.'
'Leo and me.'
'Leo and I. I'm bleedin' comin' as well.' And Edwin was at once escorted from the public bar by the Stone twins, one gripping him hard at either side, and the dog Nigger prancing and barking all about.
'My wife,' said Edwin. 'What about my wife?'
'We've 'ad to tell your wife a bleedin' lot of lies,' said Harry Stone. 'To keep vat 'ead pertected for tonight.'
'You've seen her, then?' said Edwin, struggling to get free. 'Where have you seen her?'
'She's in the saloon bar right now,' said Leo Stone, 'drinking with that yob with the beard.' Edwin struggled harder and the dog snarled at him.
'You shouldn't 'ave said vat, Leo,' said Harry Stone. 'Now you'll 'ave 'im agitated and it won't do vat 'ead any good. Listen 'ere,' he said bitterly. 'She's no friend of yours, your missis isn't. You know what 'appened? She went to ve 'ospital, see, to see 'ow you was gettin' on, and vey told 'er vere vat you'd done a bunk and vey was all very worried. So she's goin' to get in touch wiv ve law and 'ave a bleedin' cordon of coppers all rahnd ve town closin' in on you. She's goin' to tell vem vat you're dangerous and 'ave got to be picked up and shoved back in vere.' He let his right shoulder shiver in the general direction of the hospital.
'Oh,' said Edwin. 'She did that, did she?'
'Yes,' said Harry Stone, and, with a toxic essence of bitterness - gall, wormwood and aloes distilling their innermost heart in a single word - he said, his teeth clamped: 'Women.'
'But she'll never know where you are,' said Leo Stone 'not till it's to
o late, that is. And she can't get out of the saloon bar of the Anchor, not for a long time.'
'Why? How?'
'Do you fink, said Harry Stone, 'vat me and 'im is brainless, like you, even vough you are a bleedin' perfesser? Don't you use your bleedin' eyes? Didn't you see vat lorry jammed in ve alleyway vere, and nobody not able to get neiver aht nor in, so vat all ve saloon bar customers is trapped in vere for a 'ell of a long time? Vat's where ve door to ve saloon bar is,' he shook Edwin, 'in vat alleyway. Vere's some as won't get to work vis afternoon,' he said sadly, 'if vat driver does 'is work proper.'
'But,' said Edwin, 'if I could explain, if I could show - I'm all right now, you see. I'm cured. I always knew that the operation wasn't really necessary. If I could just explain to her----' But he was being led farther and farther away from his wife. 'Is there a telephone there?' he asked. 'If I could speak----'
'Vere's no telephone vere,' said Harry Stone. 'Vere's only ve box across ve road, and nobody can't get to vat. Now don't you worry abaht anyfink till tonight's over, see. Vere'll be plenty of time for worryin' when you've won vis prize, and ven you won't 'ave to worry.'
'What were these lies you told?' asked Edwin.
'Nothing much,' said Leo Stone, shrugging his left shoulder. 'We just said you were living with an old bag somewhere near Stepney. A motherly old bag, we said, who'd taken a fancy to you. But we said you came up for air now and again and she wasn't to worry too much. That's when she started on about getting in touch with the law.'
They had arrived at a high Regency facade, noble in decay, its former family unity now meanly nibbled into innumberable rented cells. 'Vis is it,' said Harry Stone with distaste. 'Vis is where we 'ang aht in ve utmost discomfort.'
After two flights of naked stairs, the original Regency paper on the well-wall scrawled on and peeling, they came to a door that had long lost its paint. Inside was a large high room with two beds in it. In one bed lay Renate, in the other two flat-chested girls whom Edwin remembered from that Sunday afternoon in the club, the German girls who had found his bedroom-slippers. They were silent in calm efficient sleep; she snorted and bubbled in irregular rhythms. 'Look at vem,' said Harry Stone in disgust. 'Wake up,' he cried, 'you bleedin' German sow,' kicking, with a foot held athletically high, the breech presentation of Renate.
'Don't do that,' said Leo Stone. 'Remember that it's me who's living with her, not you.' But his tone was not harsh.
'You kiddin'?' said his twin. 'We bofe live wiv 'er, God 'elp us, but you can do ve kickin' if you want to.' He turned away as to vomit.
Renate woke, bleared, with much mouth-smacking. 'So,' she said. 'WievielUhr?'
'Time you got out of vat bleedin' bed,' said Harry Stone, 'and got somefink goin' on vat stove. None of us 'ere 'asn't eaten since last Sunday's breakfast.' In the case of the Stone twins, Edwin thought, that must be literally true; but, being hungry again, he did not dissociate himself from this general cry of famishment. Renate sat on the edge of the bed in an agony of yawning, her large Teutonic breasts lolling and wobbling, horny feet flat to the bare floor. After her yawns she seemed to recognise Edwin. 'You, my darling,' she said, nodding. 'Five pounds doppel gin yesternight have I yes drunken.' She shook her head as though bemused. Then she put on shoes and a man's overcoat - probably interchangeably both Leo's and Harry's - and quite amiably began to see about a meal.
Edwin sat on the now free bed and looked around the room. There was a fair Regency window giving on to television aerials and the autumn sky. There was a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, both of the kind seen flanking, outside junk-shops, an opulent radiogram at seven pounds whose bleat is that of an old woman trying to talk young girls' language. There was a gas-fire and a gas-ring and a meter. Renate turned on the ring, but there was no hiss; struck a match, but there was no flame. 'Schilling,' she said, 'is needing.' Leo Stone turned on her like a man whose neck is broken, and said:
'A pile of shillings was there yesterday. What you done with them, eh? What you done with that pile of shillings that I gathered, often begging on my hands and knees in this district that's so hungry for bloody shillings for old maids' bed-sitters, with agony and humiliation in the face of frequent refusals, eh?' This was a new Leo Stone without thespian and commercial voice-masks. He approached his mistress like an ape with a broken neck, his arms stiff with hooks at the ends of them. 'Shillings, shillings, shillings,' he said in crescendo. 'What should go for power and warmth and nutriment goes for gin. That's it, isn't it, eh? Gin. How many times have I not come home here weary and longing for the comforts and nourishment that are a man's right, regardless of colour and creed, and found instead the gas dead and no money for it? Is this the reward I get for the pampering and fattening of one who is, by rights, the enemy? The enemy, yes, by God. For the house of bondage in modern times was bloody Deutschland. Ah, ia, ja, richtig. And there's the bloody defeated, eh, in the lap of luxury, fattened and coddled by Jewish sweat, all the shillings for the gas dispersed and converted into gin for a bloody gin-soaked sauerkraut-guzzling apology for an old bag of a bloody bastardising inefficient apology for a no-good layabout of an unsavoury and unappetising sort of a whore.' He took breath. Harry Stone said:
'Vat goes for me too.' The two German daughters slept deeply in a bliss of myth: the ring in the forest and the guardian dragon and the shining hero with the sword. Renate said loudly:
'Ach, Jew. Jewish pig. Fat of Jewish pigs to make fat German land. No good else.'
'You'll take that back,' said Leo Stone, coming nearer. 'You'll take back that bloody slander or I'11 cut your throat with this bread-knife here.' Renate grew visibly frightened. 'Now,' said Leo Stone, gripping the lapel of the overcoat, 'take it all back.'
'Jewish pig and hound,' persisted Renate. 'Jewish fat for soap to wash swinehouse.' Leo Stone, his face alight with the long hates of his people, said:
'The only good ones you ever had in Germany were Jews? Yes?'
'No, no. Jews pigs. Oh,' said Renate, strangling hands upon her. 'Yes, yes. Jews good, very good. You stop now, Jewish pig. Jews very good.'
'You,' said Leo Stone fiercely to Edwin. 'You're educated. Who were the big German people? Writers and whatnot?'
'Oh,' said Edwin. 'Look, I've got two separate shillings here. Let's have that fire on, for God's sake.' Harry Stone came and collected the coins bitterly. He lit the gas-fire. Its miniature pillars of fire hissed and glowed comfortably. 'Well,' said Edwin, 'there was Goethe and Schiller and Heine. And Kotzebue and Wagner and Schumann. And Nietzsche and Kant and Schopenhauer and Beethoven. And Hans Sachs and Martin Luther.'
'And they were all Jews, weren't they?' threatened Leo Stone. 'Everyone of those German bastards was a Jew. Say yes, blast you, or I'll do you in.'
'No, no,' said Renate. 'Yes, yes,' she amended. 'All Jew. And Hitler dirty bloody swine. He Jew too.'
Leo Stone dropped relenting hands. 'As long as you know,' he said, 'who's the master. We want no trouble, really. We want love and peace and harmony, as was taught in olden times. We want shillings in the meter and a hot meal ready when we ask for it. Now get cracking on that.' The gas-ring was hissing its poison. Renate lighted the jets. Leo kissed her on the cheek. All was forgotten.
'I was finkin',' said Harry Stone, 'vat we could use vem two.' His sad eyes of speculation were on the sleeping sisters. Edwin said:
'Isn't the club open this afternoon?'
'You kiddin'?' cried Harry Stone. 'After vose visits from ve law? And you passin' aht and makin' vem get suspicious? We got to lie low for a time.'
'I think I see what you mean,' said Leo Stone. 'Dressing them up and using them as a sort of pair of bridesmaids. And he could have a sort of stick in his hand and a train behind. Like the Coronation.'
'Vat's right,' said Harry Stone. 'Vat curtain vere might do ve job.' And indeed there was a fine moth-eaten length of what looked like red flannel bunched at one end of a runner at the top of the window.
'These girls,' said Edwin. 'What do they re
ally do?'
'Well,' said Leo Stone, 'it's a night job, you see. We don't quite know what it is, but they do it together. Two nice girls they are if you get to know them. We call them Lili and Marlene.' Their mother meanwhile was frying some garlicky mess, singing:
'Mit blankem Eis und weissem Schnee
Weinachten kommt, juchhe, juchhe!'
And at the very mention of Christmas she began to cry gently, tears sizzling in the pan, thinking of the Christchild and the candles, the silent snowy night and clank of beer mugs. Evening came, cosy with only the two foci of burning gas. Leo Stone said: 'Christ, I nearly forgot. I've got to rehearse. Not a bad idea really, trying it out on him.'
'Just ve song?' said Harry Stone, handing his twin a walking-stick.
'Just the song. I can ad lib the rest. You know: sorry I'm a bit late getting here, but I just got blocked in the passage. That kind of thing. That comes easy enough. Lights,' he called. 'Music.' No music sounded, but Harry Stone switched on the one bare bulb and the room became less cosy. The sleeping sisters stirred, groaned, frowned. Leo Stone sang in raucous old-style Cockney:
'Every night my old man
Goes aht to ve boozer.
Vere'e drinks ve night awye,
Spendin' all is 'ard-earned pye.
Muvver knows when 'e comes 'ome
Vat'e will abuse'er.
'E'll 'ave a crack at little Jack
Across ve kitchen tible.
'E'll'ave a go at Uncle Joe
And also Auntie Mibel.
Us kids is up in bed
But know what'e's abaht.
And when we'ear is tread
We all begin to shaht:'
'And now,' said Harry Stone, 'we've got to join in ve chorus.' Leo Stone sang, at the same time performing a rudimentary stick-dance:
' 'E's got'em on, 'e's got'em on,
'E's got'em on agyne.
Just been to ve boozer
At ve bottom of ve lyne.