One Hand Clapping

  'Christmas isn't right in a hot place. It just can't be Christmas at all, can it? I mean, it stands to reason that Christmas has got to be cold, doesn't it?' And then Howard went on with his photographic brain about the day temperature in Bethlehem when Jesus was born and that I was being conservative or conventional or something. So I said Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it being cold, over and over again, till Howard very nearly gave in completely. What we decided at the finish was that we should take a trip to America, in a plane, and be in some big hotel or somewhere in New York for Christmas, and then after Christmas we'd fly or sail or something to the Caribbean. Howard drew me on a piece of paper a perfect drawing of America with all the islands, straight out of his photographic head, and he showed me what was meant by the Caribbean, which I'd never properly understood before.

  Well, it wasn't just a question, like on the pictures, of ringing up the airport and asking if there was a plane for New York and being told 'Yes, sir, leaving in thirty minutes, you'll just make it.' It was a lot more trouble than that for people of our class. In the first place, we had to have passports and that took some time. Then there was arranging things with the travel agents in Bradcaster High Street, Jepson's World Travel, which I'd passed a hundred times and never been inside. It was exciting, looking at all the folders with pictures of absolutely red men and women in sunglasses lying on tropical beaches, absolutely yellow, and all the pictures showing bridges like Meccano sets and old cathedrals and skyscrapers. I left everything to Howard and all that Howard left to me was going to buy clothes for myself, Bradcaster being a very good shopping centre with three big stores as good as anything you get in London, and very good for clothes. What Howard did was to give me a whole cheque-book that was blank except for where he'd signed his name, and what I had to do was to fill in the amount I was paying in each of the stores and then they'd send what I'd bought as soon as the cheque cleared, whatever that means. Well, I had a marvellous time, as you can guess. I bought cocktail dresses and costumes and playsuits and stockings and shoes and underwear. Also handbags and three lovely evening dresses, all frothy and plunging. When I met Howard again, who'd also been doing some shopping, but for himself, I told him what I'd bought and they'd be sending it all on, and he said:

  'Where's your mink coat?'

  I looked at him with my mouth open a bit, 'But that's impossible,' I said. 'A mink coat costs thousands and thousands. A mink coat isn't for people like me.' Howard nearly went mad and hit me on the street and said:

  'It is, it is, it is. You're to get a mink coat, do you hear? One that costs thousands and thousands. Do you hear?' And he sort of did a dance of rage in the street so that people turned and looked at him. So I went to Einstein's the furriers and they got the shock of their life when I said I wanted a mink coat, full-length, like what the Queen wears. That woke them up, I can tell you, so that they spilled their tea and one girl knocked her cup over. They even brought a little man up from the cold storage, a nice little Jewish man with rings and curly hair where he wasn't bald and he bowed round me and couldn't do enough. It ended up with them not having a good enough one in stock and they'd ring up their branch in London and they'd only be too pleased to come to our house and let me try several on. So I was bowed off the premises in great excitement.

  Now when we got home from a day's shopping about four in the afternoon one day we found a man waiting on the doorstep. We couldn't see him very clearly, but he said, 'Mr Shirley? Is it Mr Shirley, patron of the arts?' Howard couldn't make much of this, so he said, 'Just a minute' and then opened the front door. 'What's all this about?' he asked. 'You'd better come in.' Well, this man came in and we could see him clearly now in the light in the hallway. He was a young man with a bitter sort of face, no overcoat on but a thick pullover up to his neck, so I suppose he had no shirt on either. He was a dark young man with dark rings under his eyes and a droopy sort of a mouth. His hair wasn't exactly long but he had a long straight bit in front that kept falling into his eyes. His complexion was very sallow, rather dirty-looking. But he had a very sweet smile. He wore a pair of flannel trousers that looked to me to be too thin for the winter and moreover were very dirty and stained and his shoes were dirty too. 'Now then,' said Howard, taking this young man into the living-room, 'what is it you've come to see about?' For Howard thought it might be somebody from the travel agency or one of the shops.

  'I wanted to say that you did the right thing with your money, Mr Shirley,' said the young man. 'I got it yesterday. Nine hundred pounds. I promise you I won't let you down.'

  'Nine hundred?' said Howard, puzzled. 'Oh, I see. But,' he said, puzzled again, 'what I sent was a cheque for a thousand.'

  'Bert Reeves kept a hundred for himself,' said the young man. 'He said he'd really acted as an agent and he'd kept ten per cent as commission. Oh, my name, by the way, is Redvers Glass.'

  Howard had to get him to say that name over and over again until he'd got it. It was a queer sort of name, I thought, but there was no real reason why it shouldn't be a real name. 'Well,' said Howard, 'it was very kind of you to come and say thank you in person, so to speak.'

  'Not so to speak,' said this Redvers Glass. 'It is really me in person.' That, I thought, was a bit rude, but Redvers Glass said it with a nice smile so you couldn't take offence. 'I'm writing the story of my life,' he said. 'In verse. That nine hundred pounds will come in very nicely.'

  'I'm very glad,' said Howard. 'Look, you needn't have come all this way just to say thank you, you know. You could have just sent a letter or something.'

  'I thought,' said Redvers Glass, and the silly thing was that we were all standing up in the living-room, Howard and me still with our coats on, 'I thought I'd come and actually see with my own eyes somebody who is a patron of the arts. And,' he said, looking round, 'lives in a council house. With,' he said, suddenly turning towards me, 'a most charming wife, if, of course, it is your wife.'

  'Look here,' said Howard, ready to get nasty.

  'What I mean,' said this Redvers Glass, 'was that she might be your sister of your betrothed or something like that.' Then he sort of bowed and grinned all round and I had to giggle a bit.

  'What train did you think of catching?' said Howard. 'I suppose you'll want to get back to London fairly soon.'

  'London?' said Redvers Glass, as though London was a dirty habit or something. 'Oh, no, not London. If the provinces can have patrons of the arts the provinces is where I ought to be. If Bradcaster can produce men like you, unselfish givers to the cause, Bradcaster is the sort of place I've long been looking for. Nobody in London has ever helped, no, nobody, no, not anybody at all.' And he grinned at me again. He must have been about Howard's own age.

  'Bradcaster's all right,' said Howard. 'There's nothing much wrong with Bradcaster. You could do worse than stay in Bradcaster for a bit.' He kept eyeing Redvers Glass all the time, sort of weighing him up. 'There's one or two good hotels in Bradcaster, the Royal, the George, the Swinging Lamp.'

  'The Swinging what?'

  'The Swinging Lamp. And there's the White Lion which is a four-star place.'

  'People like me don't stay in hotels,' said Redvers Glass, and he sort of hunched himself up, as if to make himself look very cold and small. 'People of my class. Perhaps people of your class stay in hotels, but me and my kind, no.' And he turned towards me, shaking his head very fast and going prrrrr with his lips. So I said:

  'Well, we'd all better have a cup of tea. It's a perishing day.' And I went off to make it. Redvers Glass said:

  'Very strong, please. I like it very strong.' I said: 'You'll get it the way I like it. Cheek.' But I couldn't help grinning a bit to myself as I went into the kitchen. You didn't often see people like this Redvers Glass in Bradcaster. You didn't often see poets and suchlike. While the kettle was boiling I put some biscuits on a plate and also took out of its tin the walnut cake which I'd bought a week before but neither Howard nor me had liked much, and then I made the tea and brought ever
ything into the living-room. Howard was just saying to this Redvers Glass, 'You're a bloody impostor, that's what you are, and I've a damned good mind to chuck you out into the street!' When he saw me, Howard said, 'This man say's he's a writer and a poet and I asked him to recite me something he'd written just to see if he was genuine, and what he recited wasn't his own at all. It was part of "To his Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, 1621-78. He thought I wouldn't know, he thinks we're all bloody morons up here.' Redvers Glass grinned at me and gave me a wink while Howard was going on at him and then he said:

  'That was just to test you.'

  'It's not up to you to test me,' shouted Howard. 'It's up to me to test you, thank you very much.'

  'Not at all,' said Redvers Glass. 'That looks delicious walnut cake. Please give me a really big slice.' I was only too glad to, because Howard didn't like it a bit and I wasn't all that keen. So Redvers Glass stuffed his mouth full of walnut cake and said something like 'Munch munch munch' to Howard. Then he swallowed and said, 'You're one of the very few men I've ever met who've been able to see through my little deception. You'd be surprised, really. Now I'll really recite you something of my own.' But to stop him doing that I said, 'Have some more walnut cake,' which he did, a bigger slice than before. He was very hungry. They never taught us at school to really appreciate poetry. This Redvers Glass seemed half-starved. He finished the whole walnut cake off with no trouble at all.

  Chapter 14

  It was quite a bit of a job getting rid of this Redvers Glass, though it was more Howard wanting to get rid of him than me. I'd often heard about poets, though not much at school, and it was a really new experience for me to have one there in our living-room. He was not very well-dressed, as I've already said, but you could see he had something about him, especially when he talked, and he had a nice voice, all fruity. He kept on talking and telling us how he'd been at Oxford with this Reeves man of the Daily Window and how Reeves had been poor in those days and Redvers Glass's family had been very rich, though now they had thrown him out or something for being a poet and not wanting to go into the family business or something. Anyway, at Oxford College or University or whatever it's called, Redvers Glass had helped Albert Reeves with money and Reeves had never been able to pay him back but had always sworn that he would some day and here he'd done it, in a way. That was Redvers Glass's story. He also finished off the biscuits as well as the walnut cake and drank six cups of tea, the last cup being almost pure water. So I asked him if he'd like a drink from one of our bottles, which I could see him eyeing in a thirsty sort of a way, and he said yes, so I poured him out this Grand Marnier in mistake for sherry, but he drank it without turning a hair. Then he wanted more and wanted to start reciting his poetry, but Howard said, 'You get off into town now and get a hotel for the night and then decide what you want to do tomorrow.' Redvers Glass said:

  'London is finished, finished and finished and finished.' You could tell that was the Grand Marnier coming out. 'The future of healthy English art lies in the provinces. Yes, oh yes, that is where the poet and musician will best flourish.' And a lot more like that, saying London was too big to care about anyone, and it had no heart, but in the provinces things were different. I didn't follow much of what he said, but I couldn't help the odd sly giggle. Anyway, Howard more or less threw him out and you could hear him singing a bit down the street, a real happy poet, as he should be with nine hundred quid of Howard's in his pocket or bank or wherever he had it. Then I giggled really out loud and Howard couldn't help smiling either. I got our supper ready now and, as we were in the money, I'd bought some tinned Russian Crab which was very expensive just about then because of the trouble or something, and we had it with vinegar and tinned potato salad and I'd made more tea. And after supper we didn't watch the TV. Instead we had a look at maps and things and talked about what we'd do when we got on our holiday, and we also read some of the letters that had come that day, begging letters from people in the town, so you could see somebody had been talking, somebody in the bank or at the bookie's office, but we burned all the letters when we'd read them, nobody really being deserving.

  It was about half-past ten that we heard a loud knocking at our door. Howard went, of course. I didn't like that loud knocking, it being as though the loudness meant something horrid like somebody dying or very ill. I heard voices so I went out into the hall and on the doorstep was a policeman we didn't know, a big gormless copper with a very uneducated voice, and this copper had hold of this poet, Redvers Glass. Redvers Glass was very drunk, you could see that, so Howard did the right thing and asked the policeman to bring him into the hall, us not wanting passers-by or neighbours taking the dog for a walk to see all this. So Redvers Glass was dragged in by his scruff practically and propped up against the wall and I wanted to giggle very badly but I kept a straight face. The copper said:

  'He were found drunk and incapable just by the Swingin' Lamp.' And Redvers Glass began to sing in a drunken way with his eyes shut a very rude song about the Street of a Thousand Somethings by the Sign of the Swinging Something Else. 'All we found in his pockets,' said the copper, 'by way of identificairshun were his cheque-book and a lot of five-quid notes and your address writ down on a bit of pair-per, so it were thought best to bring him here.' And he looked very sternly at Howard as though it was all Howard's fault, which in a way I suppose it was. 'Perhaps he's some relairshun of yours,' said the policeman, 'though he don't talk like a Bradcaster chap.' Howard said:

  'Why didn't you let him sleep it off in the cells? He's nothing to do with us. I just gave him some money, that's all.'

  'Well,' said the copper, 'you can see what he's done with the money, can't you?' And he gave Howard another stern look and then a pitying and disgusted look sort of at Redvers Glass. Redvers Glass was still against the wall with his eyes shut burbling away at sort of poetry. You could just hear a few words coming out, making no sense at all, and then I realised that Redvers Glass was in the same position as we'd been that night in London, having no luggage and perhaps going from hotel to hotel and getting told there was no room and then going to get drunk. Really, in a way, he'd been very decent, not just coming back to us cadging a room for the night from us but trying to work things out for himself, a bit difficult, him being a stranger. Then Redvers Glass, still standing against the wall swaying, started to go straight off to sleep, snoring a bit. The copper said, 'You'd best give him a bed for the night, you being the only folks he knows in Bradcaster, and then he'd best get on his way in the morning. Daft young fool,' he said. Redvers Glass said:

  'I heard that. I heard what you said. Won't have anybody calling me names,' and then he started to snore again.

  'All right,' said Howard. 'Let's put him in the spare room. He shouldn't have done it. Taking advantage, really, that's what it was.' Well, the policeman just swung Redvers Glass over his shoulder in what's called the Fireman's Lift, but he could see our stairs were too narrow, so then he and Howard took one end of Redvers Glass each and sort of worked their way up the stairs with Redvers Glass's arms flopping at the sides and his mouth open and his eyes shut and still snoring away. It was very funny when you came to think of it, and I had to fight to keep down my giggling. I stayed downstairs, and I could hear crashes and bangs as they dragged him into the spare bedroom (where Myrtle had slept that time) and then a sort of big flop and heavy sighs and what sounded like Howard and the policeman wiping their hands as though what they'd carried upstairs was something wet. You could hear the flip flop of one hand wiping against the other. Then they came downstairs and the copper said again, 'Daft young fool.'

  'He'll be all right in the morning,' said Howard. 'We'll dose him up with black coffee and then send him on his way. He's a poet, you see.'

  'Ah,' said the policeman, nodding, as if that explained everything. 'Right. Well, much obliged to both of you,' and he shook hands with us in a very solemn way and said he'd got to be getting back to the stairshun. He spoke very broad. Just before going out he sor
t of grinned for the first time and said, 'He's a paw it and don't knaw it, got a bald ead and frightened to shaw it.' That was his bit of humour. Then he went off back to the station.

  When we went to bed, which we did shortly after, it having been a very hard day, we could hear Redvers Glass snoring away, lying on his back which is what makes you snore, as well as too much drink. But it was a regular sort of snore, not jerky like my Pop's used to be, and you can sleep through that without too much trouble. These days, I ought to mention, Howard had quietened down a lot at night, and there was very little of this walking round the house in his sleep and putting the lights on and very little too of his talking and shouting out. He'd pretty well stopped doing all that at the time when he was getting ready for the quiz, as though his brain had too much to think about to bother with all that fun and games of the night. Only now and again he'd suddenly shout out the name of some book, as I took it to be, or some writer, or some date or other, but he very rarely got up these nights now. So I was getting more rest. And if I could sleep through the fear of Howard suddenly shouting out in my earhole, well, I could certainly sleep through all this snoring of Redvers Glass next door.

  In the morning, which was cold and very dull, being nearly the end of November, Howard and I got up at the usual time of half-past seven, and we could still hear Redvers Glass honking away there next door while we were getting washed and dressed, and also while we were having breakfast of bacon and tomatoes in the living-room. We put on the wireless and had music and the news, and the snoring still went on and could be clearly heard above the radio and when the news came on these snores were a bit like a commentary and I couldn't help giggling a bit. It was a bit like this:

  'Mr Gaitskell HONK said yesterday HONK he had every confidence that the Labour Party HONK would something-or-other HONK before the next election HONK.'

  We had tea with our breakfast but Howard said I'd better make some really very strong coffee and then this Redvers Glass had better wake up and drink it and put himself right for his journey to wherever he was going. I said to Howard that Redvers Glass had said that he was determined to stay here in Bradcaster, but Howard said nonsense, London was his place and that's where he was to go back to. Very stern, looking over the top of his newspaper. Well, it was nine o'clock and there was Redvers Glass still snoring away, and Housewives' Choice came on with Mrs Hoskins asks for the Sheep May Safely Graze Cha-cha-cha for her daughter-in-law in St Helens, and the honks came in nicely with the cha-cha-cha bits. I made this very strong coffee, expense being no object, and Howard said he'd take it up, which he did. But he seemed to have a lot of trouble waking up Redvers Glass the poet. I could hear 'Come on now, blast you,' and 'Huh? Huh?' and it seemed very amusing to me, I don't really know why. I suppose really it was something new in my life. Howard came downstairs frowning, not really having much of a sense of humour, and said, 'I've got him to wake up, that's one thing. The best thing is to leave him with that pot of coffee up there and let him come to, so to speak, gradually. Then he can have a shave with my razor, then he can go.' And he sat down, very stern again, to have a read of his paper.