England Made Me

  ‘When are you going to produce the play then, Mr Hammarsten?’

  ‘Never. These are only idle ideas, dreams – I have no money, Mr Fecund.’

  ‘Farrant.’

  ‘Ferrett. I have no connexions with the theatre, the managers won’t look at my work, I am only a school-teacher with a great love for William Shakespeare.’

  (A long life . . . generous . . .)

  ‘I will let you have twenty-five thousand crowns, Professor Hammarsten.’ The old man said nothing, he turned away from Anthony and stared at Krogh with his mouth a little open; he looked too terrified to speak. Yet, Krogh thought, he’s always imagined this: for years he’s day-dreamed that a rich man will hear him speak of this play – what name? I can’t remember – and be convinced, give him the money. The old fool’s angled for this and now he can’t believe it, he’s afraid that I’m joking. ‘Ring up my secretary tomorrow,’ he said.

  Professor Hammarsten said: ‘I can’t speak . . . I don’t know . . .’ Some foam still clung to the tip of his nose, he tried to shake it off. He said, ‘Pericles? In my own translation?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Professor Hammarsten said suddenly: ‘But my translation. I don’t know, perhaps it’s bad. I’ve never shown it to anyone.’ He said, ‘If people should not understand. The Druid Gower.’ He said: ‘For years and years . . .’ He wanted, it was obvious, to explain that one could not suddenly reach the end of a very long journey without fear of one’s reception. Friends are older; one may not even be recognized. The white stubble on his chin, the steel spectacles told plainly enough just how long the journey had been. ‘I wrote it twenty years ago.’

  ‘Choose your theatre and your cast,’ Krogh said. Already he was bored by his generosity. He had done this sort of thing so often before. It was expected of one. A hundred-crown note for a paper flower, a new wing to a hospital, a pension more than equal to his wages to the first employee who lost his hand in the new improved cutter. It was reported in the Press, it looked well. The more eccentric the gift the greater the publicity, and there were occasions when such publicity was useful, before a new issue, at such a time as this of short-term loans, of selling at Amsterdam, of throwing good money into a worthless company. It was curious that it should be old shabby Hammarsten who benefited, who had got himself involved in the anxieties of Laurin and Hall. He felt a deep contempt for the old language-teacher and half-time journalist who sat there in terror at his good fortune, doubting himself, letting his spectacles slip, giving the impression that some final disaster had befallen him.

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Krogh,’ a voice said, a hot husky voice, and cap in hand between the pool and dance floor, grey and skinny and pouched under the jaw, appeared Pihlström. The great floodlights bleached his thin indeterminate coloured hair. Before either Anthony or Krogh could move, the Professor had risen to his feet. He trembled with indignation, the spectacles shook, he thrust his hands behind his black coat-tail. ‘Pihlström.’

  ‘Hammarsten,’ Pihlström exclaimed. He moved tentatively closer. ‘You old liar,’ he said suddenly. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘We want nothing to do with you, Pihlström,’ the Professor said, ‘I will not have Herr Krogh troubled like this. If you want to know, Pihlström, Herr Krogh is here in order to discuss with me a little project, a little flutter in which we require each other’s help. It has nothing to do with you, Pihlström, or the paper you represent.’

  ‘But Hammarsten –’

  ‘Be off now, Pihlström,’ the Professor said, and turning with a rusted magnificence, his hand shaking in his pocket among his loose coins: ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘will you crack a bottle of wine with me?’

  5

  Up the long flight of stairs to the fourth floor, treading upwards from Purgatory (left behind on the other bank the public lavatories with the smutty jokes, envy, and the editor’s dislike, mistrust, the nudist magazines) to Paradise (the house groups, the familiar face flannel, the hard ascetic bed), mounting unscathed, I, Minty.

  He knew the number of steps, fifty-six: fourteen to the first floor where lived the Ekmans in a two-roomed flat with a telephone and an electric cooker; he was a dust-man, but he always seemed to have money to spend. Often he would come home as late as Minty; he would be a little drunk and would shout good-bye to a friend all the way up the fourteen stairs, and Fru Ekman would come out of the flat at the sound of his voice and shout good-bye too. She never seemed to mind that he was drunk; sometimes she would be flushed herself and the doorway would be full of friends saying good-bye, and the smell of cheap cigars would follow him up fourteen stairs to the second landing, burning his eyes.

  Twenty-eight stairs and one came to the empty flat. It was the largest in the building and it stood furnished, tenanted, always empty. The owners were abroad; for the last two years they had not been home, but the rent was paid. Minty had never seen them; his curiosity prowled the landing; he tormented himself with his lack of knowledge; but he was afraid to be without it, to dispel it with direct questions; it was an interest. Once, when the landlady had opened the flat to dust it, he had seen into the hall, seen a steel engraving of Gustavus Adolphus and an umbrella-stand with one tired umbrella. Climbing, he left the flat behind, the Ekmans dropped further, by fourteen steps, down the wall of the long stair. On the third floor an Italian woman lived who gave lessons; she reminded him of his colleague Hammarsten, for they worked in the same school; he hurried upward, fourteen more stairs, to the fourth landing, to security, to home – the brown woollen dressing-gown hanging on the door, the cocoa and water biscuits in the cupboard, the little Madonna on the mantelpiece, the spider under the tooth glass.

  He was tired; it was early; but there was nothing to do but sleep.

  When he put on the light, he went at once to the window to close it; he was afraid of moths. The flats below made little rungs of light between him and the street: everyone was at home: the Ekmans had turned on their wireless set. His monthly account lay on the washstand beside the spider. Minty went on his knees and routed in his cupboard; he poured some condensed milk into a saucepan and added two spoonfuls of cocoa; he lit a gas-burner which stood beside a polished mahogany commode, and while the mixture heated, he searched for his tea-cup. He found the saucer, but there was no sign of the cup. Presently he saw a note which his landlady had left on his pillow: ‘Herr Minty, I regret your tea-cup has been broken,’ signed with a flourish, no further apology. I shall have to use my tooth glass.

  The spider was obviously dead; it had shrivelled; the landlady might just as well have cleared it away. He took the glass and drank his tepid cocoa, but looking round for the soap-dish where he kept his cigarette-ends, Minty found that the spider had moved. It was cunning, not death, which had withered it; now blown out to twice the size, it was dropping to the floor on its invisible thread.

  The hunting teasing instinct woke in Minty’s brain; it had been a good day’s sport. He took the glass and caught the spider, broke the thread when it began to climb, and deftly, with quick wrist, had it imprisoned again on the marble beside the washbasin. The spider had lost a second leg; it sat in a small puddle of cocoa. Patience, Minty thought, watching it, patience; you may outlive me. He drummed his nail on the glass. Twenty years in Stockholm, I’m not as young as I was. I’ll write a note tomorrow: ‘Do not touch.’ I shall have to buy another tooth glass as well as a tea-cup: a shopping day it will have to be for Minty; and feeling quite excited he forgot to say his prayers before he got into bed. Once there, it seemed unnecessary to climb out again on to the cold linoleum: God was no more a respecter of positions than of persons. All that mattered was – prayer should come from the heart; and joining his hands under the harsh blanket he fervently prayed: that God would cast down the mighty from their seats and exalt the humble and meek, that he would give Minty his daily bread and guard him from temptation, and growing more particular, that Anthony would be preserved from Pihlström and the others, that
the Minister would consent to a Harrow dinner, that he would find a match for the broken tea-cup; and last of all he thanked God for His great mercies, for a happy and successful day. In the opposite house the lights went out one by one; soon he could not see the moth which persistently pushed its way up the window-pane; he turned out his own lamp and lay in darkness, like the spider patient behind his glass.

  And like the spider he withered, blown out no longer to meet contempt; his body stretched doggo in the attitude of death, he lay there humbly tempting God to lift the glass.

  PART IV

  1

  ANTHONY was punctual. The bells were striking eight on either side the water when he came up on to the North Bridge. It was not his usual policy. He didn’t care to be kept waiting by a woman; it put any relationship at once on the wrong footing. The woman should arrive first and he should be a little late, even if it meant hanging round a windy corner just out of sight, breezy and apologetic and incurably vague. But the case had altered. He had a job, and walking briskly through the early mist from Mälaren, which lay like dew on his new overcoat, he carefully considered his new technique: efficiency, punctuality, not too much time to spend with women, a man’s man, must be at the office soon after nine, can spare you an hour, a weight of responsibility.

  But already at the other end of the bridge she was waiting, and his manner weakened. Her absurd name was Lucia: poor kid, how tough. She’d dressed herself, without disguise, to kill: the small, the saucy hat which went so badly with the serious face. He thought: she might be meeting her lover and not a pick-up in Gothenburg, and again, as always, he found himself betrayed into tenderness by his astonishment that any woman should take the trouble to please him (even if it meant, as in Lucia Davidge’s case, the putting on of too much powder). You might say what you would, even the toughest of them had a silly innocence which charmed; even Mabel had had that.

  As he came close, she almost ran. They had the bridge to themselves. Her much-too-high heels skidded on the misted pavement and her head butted him in the chest, setting the small hat further awry. They kissed like old friends, without premeditation. He drew out from under his coat the tiger, but he had not thought of sheltering it when he first left his room, and its fur was dripping wet.

  ‘You dear,’ she said. ‘How wet it is. You’re both wet. You’re nearly drowned.’ Indeed the heavy mist lay on his coat and hat like heavy rain. He thought, one could hardly be more wet if one had been fished up from the lake, and because a thought of that kind was apt to weigh like a cold compress too long on his brain, he laughed it away, ‘I’m a good swimmer.’ But it was not true. He had always feared the water: he had been flung into a baths to sink or swim by his father when he was six and he had sunk. For years afterwards he dreamed of death by drowning. But he had outwitted whatever providence it was that plotted always to fit a man with the death he most dreaded. It was the good swimmer who took risks: Anthony, the bad swimmer, was safe. He took none. Even now, reminded of his wet coat, he took none. He was as careful of his own health as a mother of her child’s. ‘What we both want,’ he said, ‘is a cup of good hot coffee.’

  ‘And some toast and marmalade.’

  ‘And some eggs and bacon.’

  ‘If only this was London.’

  They laughed and sighed and felt English and wistful and exiled. But there’s no time to be lost, Anthony thought: he knew how easily he caught cold; his chest was an imposing façade hiding a congenital weakness. He ran for a taxi and they flung themselves into it anyhow, out of breath and laughing and not knowing where to go and with the uneasiness that always comes to two people who take a journey together for the first time alone.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Anthony said, while the taxi-man waited at the door and the heavy mist fell and gathered on the bridge, dripping gently to the pavement, and somewhere near the city hall a ship’s siren blew, the sound shrilling and catching in the pipe and shrilling again like a plover feigning a damaged wing. ‘I don’t know this place at all. You choose. Where shall we go?’ He began to take off his wet coat and surreptitiously he felt his shirt: it was dry. That was the kind of pleasure trip’s end he never felt certain of avoiding: bed and a bad cold, perhaps pneumonia.

  She said: ‘Drottningholm. I haven’t been there. There’s a palace.’

  ‘But is there breakfast?’

  ‘There must be breakfast.’

  The mist slid across the windows, and she cleared a pane with her hand. Anthony kissed the back of her neck. She said: ‘If only poor father knew the life I led.’

  ‘You mean me?’ Anthony said.

  She turned to face him with a look which was meant to be bold to the point of recklessness, but was more like that of a scared animal. ‘You don’t think you’re the only one?’ He thought: heavens, what is she after? He wanted to make some formal declaration of the purity of his motives, that he wanted nothing at the moment but his breakfast. She said airily: ‘Even in Coventry, you know, there are one or two men one can look at.’ Her eyebrows had been thinned unevenly, there was an amateurish touch about her whole face, the too-pronounced lipstick, the dry flakes of powder on her neck. Her manner had the unconvincing swagger of a new boy at a boarding school who has something to hide, some physical defect or perhaps only an absurd name. Lucia, he thought, Lucia.

  But as if, having once established the fact that she was the devil of a creature, she were happy to leave the rest to him, she said: ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Fine,’ Anthony said, ‘Krogh and I are getting along like a house on fire.’ He put his arm round her and absent-mindedly stroked her left breast.

  ‘And what – what exactly are you?’

  ‘I’m his bodyguard. You know these big men in industry are all afraid that someone will take a pot shot at them. Well, my job,’ he said swaggering in his turn, ‘is to be first on the draw.’

  She leant back against him, her saucy hat pushed askew, her mouth dry, and said in an uneasy voice: ‘It doesn’t sound right.’ Her excitement reminded him of his position; he squeezed her breast in a friendly formal way and said: ‘It’s right as rain. He’s made of money.’

  ‘What I mean is,’ she said, ‘it’s not a job for a gentleman.’

  ‘I’m not a gentleman,’ Anthony said and kissed her.

  ‘Oh, but you are,’ she protested. The mist began to peel away from the flowery suburban streets, leaving white tatters in odd places, round chimneys, broken columns, tall pots of flowers and fountains. ‘I liked you for it from the first. That tie – I believe it’s Eton.’

  ‘Harrow,’ Anthony admitted.

  ‘I’m a snob,’ she said. Her confessions were oddly mixed: they varied from the dare-devil to the humble. ‘I’m a beastly snob.’ There was nothing she was not ready to say about herself, Anthony thought, except that she was scared, that she didn’t know how to behave next. ‘It’s nice seeing you after all these foreign men.’

  ‘But you haven’t been in Sweden a week.’

  ‘Does it take a week,’ she boasted, ‘to know a few men?’ Then again she confessed quite humbly, ‘I’ve never been out of England before.’ He was confused; he couldn’t keep up with her hinted experiences and her self-exposed innocence. When in doubt, he told himself, make love, say nothing. He kissed her again, played with her breast, stroked her thigh, but her response startled him. He was like an expert poker player who has picked too ignorant an opponent: coveting the jackpot, one has an extra ace concealed, one has expertly cut the pack, but at the same time one expects a certain primitive reserve, an attempt to play, from an opponent; there are formalities which even a swindler likes to see observed. One is irritated, watching the revealing face, hearing the too guileless bids, by the thought that one might have won as easily without all this preparation, without a doctored pack; one might really have played square.

  She put her hands to his head and held his mouth to hers; he could feel her legs shift and strain. She was hungry, she wanted satisfaction, all Cov
entry was in her gesture; why trouble to plot and lie and charm? He wondered with dismay whether he was not simply being used, whether this affair was his defeat rather than his victory. He thought, while he embraced her, of bicycles, of how one changed trains at Rugby.

  But it was impossible to pretend that one felt guilty. Nowadays, he thought, with a rather shocked puritanism, seduction is really too easy; it lacked the glamour of locked doors, the bottle of champagne, ‘a man’s rooms’ at midnight; he wondered whether he could cope with this excitement. He was immeasurably relieved when she withdrew to her corner of the taxi and began to make-up again, but he longed to advise her: ‘Throw away that lipstick. It’s the wrong shade.’ He thought of Krogh’s suits, the good material wasted, the appalling choice of ties. I must take these people in hand. When I’m through with them, they’ll have learnt a thing or two. The idea of a visit to Krogh’s tailors, of a shopping expedition with Lucia, lent his face an air of responsibility. He said: ‘I can’t call you Lucia. It will have to be Loo.’ He said: ‘I suppose the shops in Coventry are rather dreadful.’

  Loo said from behind her compact, blowing little scented grains of powder all over the taxi: ‘Oh, we’ve got some good shops in Coventry. You’d be surprised. And then, you know, it’s not two hours to London. Cheap tickets every day.’

  He said: ‘I suppose you manage to get a lot of fun.’

  ‘Oh,’ Loo said, ‘I’m not promiscuous. Besides, it’s not safe at home. Father screams if I’m not back by twelve. You can’t imagine the ructions. Why, he sits up for me.’