Oh, now 'e's'ere wiv is belly full of beer
And 'e's laughin' like a dryne.
'E's got'em on,'e's got 'em on,
'E's got'em on agyne.'
And then, for want of a shilling, the light went out, and there was Leo Stone, a shadow against the gas-fire, leaping and shouting in the repeat of the chorus. 'Eat,' called Renate. 'Eat is ready, my darlings.'
' 'E's got to 'ave vat 'ead gone over wiv ve razor,' wailed Harry Stone. 'And vere's no light. Light, light,' he moaned. 'Oh, bleedin' 'ell.'
Roused by the smell of the nearly invisible food that Renate slopped on to four plates, the dog Nigger crawled out from under the girls' bed, groaning and stretching. The girls turned over together, like another comedy turn, and the bells of their Eskimo hair could just about be seen, shaking. They slept solid. But Nigger wagged his tail at the complicated aroma of garlic, tomato sauce, burnt fat, baked beans, fried stale bread, bacon scraps and crumbled cheese. He put his chin to Leo Stone's knee, as to a fiddle, and looked up in firelit worship. Those bitter words of his master and master's mistress had been to him but as the sound of flutes and viols.
' 'Ave vem two vere in bed got any manny for ve light?' asked Harry Stone. 'Aht all ve bleedin' night and fetchin' no manny in.' He forked in food from his dark plate, standing by the mantelpiece. 'What in ve name of God is ve kind of work vey do, bringin' no manny in to ve 'ouse?'
'Their day,' said Renate, 'is sleeptime. Money in sleeptime man does not spend.'
'But what kind of work do vey do?' Harry Stone insisted.
'For their mother they work,' said Renate, and she spoke, wiping her plate with bread, with pride. 'Hard work, small money, but I am not angry if they enough each night for one bottle gin bring. That is enough, for I am no cruel mother.'
'WHAT DO VEY DO?' cursed Harry Stone, and he pronged the wall with his fork.
'What could they do?' said their mother. 'No education because of the cruel war they have not. Little English speak they. But there gives work for girls with willing body in night-time London. They work hard, and sometimes in schillings only the money to me they bring.'
'Shillin's,' said Harry Stone bitterly. 'Shillin's for ve light and ve gas, and you 'as to spend it all on gin.' But he groped about for a razor, fetched a tin mug of cold water from the landing, and then ordered Edwin to come to the gas-fire. The shaving was done carefully, though both patient and agent had to crouch by the glowing gascolumns. A pleasant domestic evening: two German prostitutes in bed, their mother sucking her teeth, Leo Stone audible from the landing lavatory, Nigger washing plates and frying-pan, Edwin becoming smooth as an egg by the fire. 'Lovely, vat is,' said Harry Stone at last, his phrenologist's fingers feeling Edwin's scalp. 'You'll walk away wiv it tonight if you don't do nuffin' stupid.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Out of his five shillings Edwin now had left only fourpence. Three men and a dog with only fourpence between them had to reach a cinema on the other side of London. They must walk, then, but there seemed to be plenty of time, and Edwin had plenty of cigarettes. It was decided that the fourpence should be spent on some little treat for Nigger. After some argument and peering into cheap butchers' windows they finally bought a few bones with rags of meat on them. These Nigger refused to touch. Hard-faced Harry Stone returned the bones to the butcher with disparaging remarks on their quality, was given back the fourpence, and then bought an old fish head from a fishmonger's that was just closing. Nigger played with this for much of their journey.
There was a fine moon rising. As they walked eastwards they talked of many things. Legitimate ways of making money: a small cigarette factory fed with picked-up dog-ends; conducted night tours for American tourists; Leo put out to stud; old bedsprings sold as radio aerials; home-made potato crisps; face cream made out of horse fat; Nigger taught to do tricks; palmistry; Leo back on the boards; dust sold as snuff; ideas sold to great firms (a refrigerator with a back door, double-headed matches to save wood, a tickling machine, warm water sprays in W.C. pans); Renate deported and her two daughters on the bash for the Stones alone; a sixpenny soup bar with bread unlimited; miniature plaques of the Golden Hind 1/2d sold in envelopes for ninepence to Westminster tourists; street-singing as blind and cripple respectively; lonely girls met at King's Cross and sent out on the bash; expensive scent-bottles filled with Soir de Stoke-on-Trent; Edwin as the starving man in a sideshow; a cure for smoking (unlightable cigarette); Leo's body sold to queers; good honest work. Old London: the gates of the City from western Lud to eastern Ald; Finsbury Fields; St Olave's; Thames Street and Fleet Ditch; gas-flares and jellied eels; Jack the Ripper; Sweeney Todd; the Princes in the Tower; the difficulty of stealing the Crown Jewels. Classical murders; the old-time crook as gentleman; travel for broadening the mind. And all the time Nigger danced his fish head along, happy as the moon in the sky.
It was Nigger, through no fault of his own, that precipitated the trouble which almost wrecked the night. He and his masters and Edwin were only a street or so off their goal when it happened. They had reached a region already well-known in the world's press as a cockpit of racial dissension, a curiously policeless district with static mobs lounging in doorways and at corners. 'Now ven,' said Harry Stone to his companions, 'go easy 'ere. Don't say nuffink, don't do nuffink. We don't want no trouble, not tonight we don't.' Edwin looked with interest at a lounging group of youths, simian-browed with horror-waxwork faces, their clothes and coiffures most, by contrast, civilised. Each jacket was as long as a British warm, the trousers were almost Second Empire, the shoes rose in layer after layer of sole. The hair of the head was piled up dramatically but was not balanced by a poetic cravat; instead, the tie was vestigial, a mere string. This was collective dandyism, thought Edwin, a crazy synthesis of rebellion and conformity. 'Stop lookin' at vem like vat,' warned Harry Stone. 'Vey'd fink nuffink of doing ve free of us.' And then happy prancing Nigger danced a little too close, fish head in his jaws, and one of the youths kicked out. Nigger, though untouched, yelped with surprise and fear, dropped his fish head and ran. 'Vat,' said Harry Stone loudly, 'was a bleedin' filfy fing to do, dead bleedin' cowardly vat was. Vat's abaht your bleedin' mark, I reckon, a poor bleedin' defenceless dog.' Meanwhile Leo Stone, disturbed at the dog's panic, ran after him, shouting:
'Nigger! Nigger!'
It was unfortunate that three genuine negroes from the West Indies should at that moment leave their exile-crammed house and see a white man now standing in the middle of the pavement and hear him calling gratuitous abuse:
'Nigger! Come here, you silly bastard!'
Edwin saw the three negroes - smart men in raincoats and trilbies - advance on Leo Stone. They had had enough of white derision; they had learned that to ignore it was but to fan it. They were joined by two others of their race from another house: their ears had pricked at Leo's call. Meanwhile the seven loutish dandies were more slowly and with far less grace preparing to liquidate Harry Stone. 'And,' said Harry Stone, 'vis is just as bleedin' cowardly goin' to 'ave a go at me. I'll take any one of you 'ere on but not ve bleedin' lot of you, vat stands to reason.' It didn't, however, not to these; it was an out-worn code, the law of the fair chance. Leo Stone was explaining, genuinely shocked and apologetic, that he'd merely been calling his dog, that was all, named Nigger because of his colour. That didn't go down well. 'See,' said Leo Stone, 'I'll show you I'm telling the truth. I'll call him again. See, there he is down there.' And Leo Stone desperately, wildly called the hated name again. But Nigger did not respond; he looked back hangdog, his tail between his legs, a nice hound but not very bright.
Edwin looked from one group to the other, bewildered. The twins were converging and their respective pursuers with them. West Indians and white louts were perhaps now smarting in an uneasy truce. Now they found themselves face to face, not really ready for battle, and suddenly they turned in surprise at the mild professorial voice of Edwin saying: 'This is so obviously pointless, isn't it? There's just been a c
ouple of mistakes, that's all. I suggest that everybody concerned forgets all about it.' Harry and Leo Stone exchanged nods, Leo made a dash for it, and both whites and blacks found themselves preparing to kill or maim or otherwise discomfit the same man. Had it been a collective dream, that conviction of this man's being in duplicate, just for a second or so before that other man there starting talking? 'Vat's right,' said Harry Stone in a sort of loud fearful glee, 'you bleedin' lot of cowards. Not satisfied wiv 'avin' a go at each over, so now you bofe 'ave to get togever to do in a poor bleedin' Yid. Go on,' he said. 'Black unite wiv white for vat purpose.' A white lout pulled out a bicycle-chain and a quick negro responded with a knife. In half a second they were at each other. 'Right,' said Harry Stone to Edwin. 'Leave vem to it.' They ran, shouting battle proceeding behind them, and then Nigger suddenly became brave again, barking loudly. He had lost, but perhaps now forgotten, his four-penny fish head.
When they had run a block they stopped, winded, and there they found Leo waiting for them, his breath just about coming back. 'Vat,' said Harry Stone, 'was bleedin' lacky. Teds against Yids and Spades against Yids and nah Spades against Teds. Poor bleedin' Yids,' he said. 'Ve ole world's been against vem ever since vey started. Ve Egyptians and ve Babylonians and ve Philistines and nah vis bleedin' lot.' Harry Stone held out his arms like a Hollywood prophet. 'What 'arm,' he asked Mount Sinai, ' 'ave we done to vese bastards? When are ve Yids goin' to be bleedin' delivered from ve 'ouse of tribulation? 'Ow bleedin' long is it goin' to be?' The dog Nigger grew skittish, meeting Leo Stone again, barked and begged to be chased. Leo Stone called:
'Nigger! Nigger! Silly bastard!' Dead on cue a negro appeared in a cap, swaying, throwing the breath of rum before him like flower petals. 'Man,' he said, 'you got no right to say what you said just then.' A corps de ballet of negroes was, Edwin was sure, about to appear in the wings. Edwin said:
'He was calling his dog. He bought this dog for a pound or quid or nicker. Hence the name, Nicker. When he utters the name he shows a slight tendency to voice the velar plosive and this makes for a certain phonemic ambiguity. He meant no harm. He did not even say what you thought he said.'
The negro was rummily unconvinced. In the near distance the groans and thuds of inter-racial battle continued. 'I don't like all them long words,' said the negro to Edwin, speaking as through a lamp-chimney. 'If I'm not educated whose fault is that? There was no education in them slave ships, man. Who sent us out there in them slave ships?'
'Oh, come on,' said Harry Stone. 'On our bleedin' way. All ve sins of ve bleedin' world bein' brought up just when we're on our way to a nice bleedin' innocent bald-'ead competition.' But the dog Nigger seemed to have been pursuing thoughts of a similar nature to this man's whose colour he shared. Dogs persecuted, dogs kept down, dogs chained in kennels. He lightly jumped at Edwin, caught Edwin's trouser tear in his teeth, and pulled. The trouser leg at once became a sort of slit skirt. 'Nigger, you bastard,' called Edwin as the dog raced off, a waving pennant in his jaws. 'There you go again, man,' said the rum-flavoured West Indian. 'You just asking for trouble.' And he lurched off, singing a sad slave song of the sixteenth century.
'Vat's what 'appens,' said Harry Stone, 'when you concentrate on one fing to ve detriment of anover. You bleedin' bad dog, Nigger,' he parenthesised mildly. 'We'll 'ave to knock off somebody's strides when we get vere. Can't 'ave you marchin' rahnd wiv all vat leg show-in'. Indecent, apart from anyfink else. What a bleedin' evenin' vis is turnin' aht to be.'
A few more blocks and a right turn, and there, at the end of the street, was a shining cinema called the PANTHEON. They yearned towards it as to the light of their own hearthstone. Above the cinema entrance was a huge portrait of a bald actor with sensual lips and the sardonic eyes of a Mongol, presumably the prototype of all the vying hairless of this evening. 'Take off vat wig now,' said Harry Stone, 'to show vat you're a bonified competitor.' Edwin doffed the curls and thrust them for safe-keeping inside his shirt; thence a curl or two peeped out in a hint of virility. TONIGHT, yelled a floodlit streamer, MAMMOTH CONTEST. BALD ADONIS OF GREATER LONDON. WHO? 'Only one answer to vat,' said Harry Stone confidently. They made their way, Edwin's heart pounding with misgiving, towards the stage door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On his second day in the army Edwin had attended a sort of spiritual parade at which the C.S.M. had said: 'C. of E. this side, R.C. that side, fancy buggers in the middle.' A fat man in a phosphorescent dinner-jacket now conducted the same kind of segregation behind the cinema screen, and Edwin found himself a member of a suspicious-eyed male herd. It was not possible to see very much of these other competitors, because the screen was gigantically preoccupied with a cosmically panting struggle in a dark cellar. Speech, too, was impossible because of the Brob-dingnagian stereophonic nightmare of the music. When colossal horses finally earthquaked over a sunlit plain, Edwin was able to appraise his rivals. They were not impressive: many looked as if baldness came naturally to them, part of the syndrome of decay; there was a bald boy of about ten who could make his scalp-skin creep, horribly. During a long silent interlude of huge kissing, a thin artisan-type of about Edwin's own age said:
'Right lark this is.'
'Yes.'
'Not right, really, the way I see it. But somebody's got to do it, I suppose.'
'That's right.'
'My missis'd go mad if she found out. It's the other one, see, that made me do it.' The vast osculation suddenly unleashed a flood of thundering horse-monsters, and Edwin was able to hear no more. The man in the dinner-jacket, glowing like a high herring in the dark, came round fussily with number-cards, mouthing silently against the noise. Edwin hung a big black 8 from round his neck. Then in a pride of trombones that was louder than any dream of Berlioz, the film came to its end and lights came up. Harry Stone appeared in underpants, thin-legged but, surprisingly, wearing sock-suspenders. He handed a crumpled bundle to Edwin, saying:
'You'll 'ave to take my strides. No bleedin' good, I've looked everywhere, but I can't find one solitary pair to knock off. 'Urry up and change into vem.'
An old-time jazz band had started playing, greeted with much applause. Harry Stone performed a brief hairy-legged cakewalk, his eyes sad and grim. Nigger could be heard barking in the distance, presumably locked up in some lavatory. The trousers, Edwin found, were too short: a lot of sock was visible. Still, they would have to do. The jazz band, having given each instrument a virtuoso chorus, now crashed into its shipwreck climax with every man for himself. Teenage screams laced the applause. Harry Stone went back to his twin, and Edwin watched from the wings the turn that followed. A sloppy young man was greeted with ecstasy. He sang of teenage love, how that and that alone was the real thing, and how life ended at twenty. He treated the microphone as a very thin teenage girl and, after bestowing various caresses upon it, he threw it to the floor and lay on the long rod of the stand, kiss-singing into the mouthpiece while his body made perceptible rutting movements. The girls' screams became orgiastic, orgasmatic. An austere age, thought Edwin, an age of economy. The opulence of Tristan had once been required to produce a like effect in an older generation, though a tactile effect only.
The fat phosphorescent man went on to the stage to announce that all performers tonight were strictly amateur, but some of these amateurs - who knew? - might well become professionals. The next turn, however, was, he said, one that had once been professional, a long time ago, and he was to be given a big hand accordingly. The teenagers howled, left in the air in mid-orgasm, and greeted Leo Stone as if they would like to crucify him. 'Listen to vat bleedin' lot,' said Harry Stone's voice in Edwin's ear. But Leo Stone grinned, a Semite who had wandered through the buffeting world, and said that he was sorry he was late, but he'd just got blocked in the passage, that a funny thing happened to him on the way to the theatre tonight, he'd met old Abie Goldstein on the way to the synagogue with little Izzie, and old Abie said he was going to get his heir cut, that he's been out with many girls
in his time, even a nun, yes a nun, she'd have nun of this and nun of that, would you believe it? He prattled on, and there was little laughter. He sang his song, which the pianist accompanied from memory and clumsily, and few joined in the chorus. Finally he said he would like to do a little monologue called 'Laugh And The World Laughs With You, Snore And You Sleep Alone'. 'Wrote vat 'imself, 'e did,' said Harry Stone with twin's pride.
'Life's a funny thing, my friends. It brings both joy and tears;
A fact that I've discovered as I've travelled down the years.
Life's an April day, my friends, where sun is mixed with rain—
A laugh or two, a joke or two, a little grief and pain.'
At this point Nigger appeared on the stage. 'Owwwww,' squealed Harry Stone, strangling his voice with clenched teeth. 'Oo ve bleedin' 'ell let 'im aht?' Nigger recognised his master and approached him with every sign of joy. 'Bugger off,' Leo Stone could be seen saying from the corner of his mouth. The unkind audience now laughed, but Leo Stone's wit was quick. He picked up Nigger, improvising slowly and loudly:
'And so through life we travel on to reach our journey's end,
But life would be just nothing if we did not have a friend,
A friend, my friends, a little friend, as on through life we jog.
A girl's best friend's her mother, but a man's best
friend's his dog.'
He bowed himself off to a ragged chord from the band, clutching Nigger who now, with dog's perverseness, was struggling to get away. The audience booed and cheered ironically. Edwin was angry.
'And now,' said the phosphorus-man, 'another newcomer, who has not brought his dog with him: Lennie Bloggs from Bermondsey, who will sing for you "A Teenager's Heart".' There were fresh screams of abandonment. Edwin was angrier. But Leo Stone said:
'That's all right, really. I've been seen, that's the main thing. They've got television cameras out there. I've been inside millions of homes tonight, that's what you've got to remember. There'll be offers of contracts galore before the week's out, you just wait and see.'