The Bachelors

  Chapter V

  IF there is one thing a bachelor does not like it is another bachelor who has lost his job.

  The Hon. Francis Eccles, small, with those very high shoulders that left him almost neckless, leaned over the bar of the Pandaemonium Club at Hampstead, whose members were supposed to be drawn from the arts and sciences. No scientist had yet joined the club in its twelve years’ existence, but the members at present in the bar were fairly representative of the arts side: a television actor, a Welsh tenor, a film extra who took peasant-labourer parts when they were available, a ballet-mistress, and a stockbroker who was writing a novel.

  It was not only the Hampstead representatives of the arts who frequented this club: many who had left Hampstead occasionally returned to it. Walter Prett for instance, the mammoth art critic of middle age and collar-length white hair, had come from Camden Town; and Matthew Finch, having sent off the last of his week’s tidings for the Irish Echo, had come to meet Walter here on the early autumn evening that tiny Francis Eccles hunched necklessly over the bar so sadly, having lost his job.

  ‘But you don’t need a job, Eccie,’ said Chloe, the young barmaid. ‘I don’t know what you want with a job anyway.’

  Without exchanging a word or sign and by sheer migratory instinct, Matthew and Walter removed their glasses over to the window-seat where they were separated from the jobless nobleman by a grand piano.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Walter to Matthew, ‘do I look any thinner?’

  ‘No,’ Matthew said, ‘you look fine.’

  ‘I’ve lost eight pounds,’ Walter said confidentially, moving his snowy long-haired head close to Matthew’s short blue-black curls.

  ‘Don’t worry, you look___’

  ‘I’ve got to lose two stone,’ Walter said very loudly. ‘Simply got to. My heart won’t stand up to it.’

  Matthew shied a little. ‘Were you not on a diet?’ he said.

  Walter’s voice subsided. ‘I was, but it insisted on no beer, wines or spirits. I’d rather be dead.’ Walter’s eyes bulged redly from the inner circle of his face, for it was surrounded by outer circles of dark blood-pressured flesh. He sipped his wine daintily through his face-wide lips. Matthew thought perhaps the glass would be crushed in Walter’s great hand. Walter was liable to sudden outbursts of temper for no reason at all. Matthew looked at him uneasily, his eyes peeping from under his black glossy eyebrows.

  Walter, observing this effect, was dissatisfied. He smiled sweetly, and it was indeed a sweet smile, such as wide full mouths only are capable of.

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ Matthew said. ‘I’m thirty-two today. I come under the Sign of Libra, the scales of justice. I’m passionate about justice. Like all the Irish.’

  ‘Do they all come under Libra?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe in astrology,’ Matthew said, drinking down his wine in an anxious way.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Walter. ‘Many happy returns. I could give you fifteen years.’

  ‘Could you?’ Matthew said with his mind on something else.

  ‘Forty-eight next year,’ Walter said, ‘and what have I done with my life?’

  ‘You’ve got your column.’

  ‘I should have been a painter,’ Walter said. ‘I showed promise.’

  ‘Did you ever think of getting married?’ Matthew said.

  ‘I showed tremendous promise,’ Walter said, ‘but my family was indifferent to art. They were interested in horses. My father kept three hunters in the stable and then he couldn’t pay the milk bill.’

  ‘Yes, you told me that before,’ Matthew said, looking wistfully at a girl in a large jersey and tight jeans who had just come in and was now sitting up on one of the high chairs at the bar.

  Walter stood up and roared, ‘Well, I’m telling you again.’ For he hated his family stories to be treated indifferently.

  ‘Sit down, now, sit down,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Vulgar little fellows all over the place,’ Walter observed, casting his inflamed eyes round the room. ‘Especially in the art world.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Matthew said. ‘Would you have a drink?’ he said.

  Chloe called over from her place behind the bar. ‘Walter! What’s all the noise about?’

  Walter sat down broodly while Matthew edged round the room and up to the far end of the bar so that Eccie’s hunched back was turned to him. When he had obtained the drinks he did the same detour on his return to their window-seat. On the way, however, he said ‘Good evening’ to the girl in jeans.

  ‘I’m thinking of getting married,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Oh, are you? Who to?’

  ‘I haven’t anyone in mind,’ Matthew said. ‘Only my brother-in-law thinks I should get married. My sister wants me to get married and so does my uncle. Every time I go home to Ireland my mother’s ashamed that I’m not married to a girl.’

  ‘I got a young woman into trouble at the age of eighteen,’ Walter said. ‘Daughter of one of our footmen. He was an Irish fellow. The butler caught him reading Nietzsche in the pantry. To the detriment of the silver. Of course there was no question of my marrying his daughter. The family made a settlement and I went abroad to paint. My hair turned white at the age of nineteen.’

  Matthew said, ‘I know a girl who’s expecting a baby by an old spiritualist. She’s lovely. She’s got long black hair.’ He saddened into silence and gazed upon the girl in jeans dispassionately, recognising her as Ronald’s former girl-friend.

  ‘I went abroad to paint, but my cousin the Marquise’

  ‘I’ll tell you this much,’ Matthew said, ‘there’s no justification for being a bachelor and that’s the truth, let’s face it. It’s everyone’s duty to be fruitful and multiply according to his calling either spiritual or temporal, as the case may be.’

  ‘Monet admired my work. Just before he died he visited my studio with his friends, and—’

  ‘These are the figures,’ Matthew said, and took from inside his coat a bundle of papers from which he selected one which had been folded in four, and which was split and grubby at the folds. He straightened out the sheet, following the typewritten lines with his finger, as he read out, ‘Greater London, the census of 1951. Unmarried males of twenty-one and over: six hundred and fifty-nine thousand five hundred. That’s including divorced and widowed, of course, but the majority are bachelors—’

  ‘I can see him now,’ said Walter, ‘as he was when he was assisted into a chair before, my easel. Monet was silent for fully ten minutes — the painting was a simple, but rather exquisite roof-top scene—’

  ‘Unmarried males of thirty and over,’ said Matthew: ‘three hundred and fifty-eight thousand one hundred. Since 1951 the bachelor population has increased by—’

  ‘Put that vulgar little bit of paper away,’ Walter said. ‘Tim Raymond gave it to me,’ Matthew said, putting it away very carefully. ‘He works in the C.O.I. God help him.’

  ‘You’d better get married,’ Walter said.

  ‘Do you think so? Why?’

  ‘Because you obviously haven’t got the courage to get your sex any other way.’

  ‘There’s more than sex in marriage.’

  ‘But not in your mind.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s true. I often wonder if it’s only sex when I think of getting married. Still, I feel I should be married and multiply. I feel—’

  ‘Do you really want to get married?’ Walter said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I nearly got married,’ Walter said, ‘in 1932 when I was out of work and the family had cut me off. The girl had a job. If a girl had a job in those days it was like a dowry. She was anxious to marry me. But I was really more taken up with her father. He was a carpenter, one of the last of the true English craftsmen. But I did not marry his daughter. She was a bourgeois little bitch with her savings in the post office. Her name was Sybil, if you please.’ The memory of Sybil, though in fact she had never existed, was so fiercely implanted in Walter’s mind through frequent el
aborations of his imagined affair with her, that he was always thoroughly incensed by her.

  ‘I wished her joy of her savings in the post office and departed,’ Walter shouted. He rose and set down his empty glass and fastened his black coat on one button across his huge stomach.

  ‘Are you going to go?’ Matthew said. Walter clenched both fists as if to fight with Sybil. ‘I’ll walk with you to the station,’ Matthew said. Walter sat down again and made his lips into a long line.

  ‘I’ll have to be going,’ Matthew said. ‘My other brother-in-law has just come over and I’ve got to meet him at my uncle’s.’

  ‘My boy,’ said Walter, ‘you have much to bear.’

  ‘Not my uncle at Twickenham. My other uncle at Poplar,’ Matthew said, with his eyes on the brown bobbed head of Ronald’s girl in jeans who was laughing with Chloe.

  ‘I want a drink,’ Walter said.

  ‘I’m a bit short of cash,’ Matthew said, ‘this time of the month.’

  ‘Fresh young Chloe will cash me a cheque,’ Walter shouted.

  ‘Chloe will not cash you a cheque,’ Chloe called out, ‘for the simple reason that Chloe is not allowed to cash cheques any more.’

  Francis Eccles swivelled round in his high chair.

  ‘Why, Walter!’ he said.

  ‘Why, Eccie!’ said Walter.

  ‘There’s a very definite rule about cheques,’ Chloe said.

  Walter ambled over to the bar and said in a tone of dignified reproach, ‘As it happens I haven’t got my cheque book on me. But I’m surprised, Chloe, that you should take up this ridiculous lower-middle-class attitude.’

  ‘I have my orders, Walter,’ Chloe pleaded.

  ‘What will you drink, Walter?’ said Eccie.

  ‘You have your orders, Chloe,’ Walter said. ‘Very well, you have your orders. But really, my dear, this is dreadfully bourgeois of you.’

  It worked quicker than usual. Chloe said, ‘I’m not bourgeois, really I’m not. I’ll personally cash you a cheque. It’s only that I can’t, I mustn’t, cash cheques for the club.’

  ‘Since when?’ said Walter.

  ‘Since last week,’ she said. ‘Honestly,’ she said.

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said the girl in jeans.

  ‘I’ll cash your cheque,’ said Eccie, also anxious not to be bourgeois.

  ‘It’s of no matter,’ Walter said. ‘I only object on principle. As it happens I haven’t got my cheque book on me.’

  Eventually he accepted a loan from Eccie, and when the deal was done Matthew reappeared from the cloakroom. He took a high chair at the bar and helped himself to a pickled onion off a plate.

  ‘Matthew,’ said Chloe, ‘meet Hildegarde. Hildegarde, meet Matthew.’

  Matthew leaned forward and smiled across Walter’s bulk at the girl in jeans. ‘We’ve met before,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’ she said.

  ‘At Ronald Bridges’. Aren’t you a friend of Ronald’s?’

  ‘I used to be,’ she said.

  ‘I know Bridges,’ mused Eccie. ‘I wonder if he could help…?’

  ‘No,’ said Chloe. ‘I shouldn’t think so, Eccie.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is this secret conversation?’ roared Walter.

  ‘It’s something Eccie and I were discussing,’ Chloe said. ‘It’s private.’

  ‘Common little creatures,’ Walter shouted. ‘Very bad behaviour.’

  ‘I’m not standing for that, Walter,’ Chloe said. ‘Are you standing for it, Eccie?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Eccie. ‘I must say, Walter…’

  ‘This is too much,’ said Hildegarde. She swung her long legs off the stool and departed.

  ‘Come on, Walter,’ Matthew said, ‘I’ve got to meet my brother-in-law—’

  ‘I shall not be driven away by a barmaid and a snivelling middle-class younger son of an upstart earl,’ Walter said.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said Chloe.

  Walter laughed without noise or humour, but with a shaking of his flabby shoulders, chest and stomach.

  Eccie said sadly, ‘Walter, Walter, I don’t like this.’

  ‘You are deriving a certain pleasure from lumping it,’ Walter said.

  ‘Walter, I’m out of a job, you know. The Institute is closing down.’

  ‘Not before time,’ Walter said.

  ‘As an art school, I admit it had its weaknesses,’ said Eccie. ‘But I flatter myself I was able to contribute something useful with my lectures, especially on the country itinerary which I’ve been taking for the last two years.’

  ‘Nonsense. You contributed nothing. You know nothing of art.’

  ‘Oh, Walter, come!’ said Eccie, Christianly.

  ‘He’s drunk,’ said Chloe.

  ‘I’ll have to go and ‘phone my sister,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Drunk,’ said Chloe, ‘and this time’s the last. He can’t come here insulting the members—’

  Walter took from his pocket the five pounds that he had borrowed from Francis Eccles. ‘I’ll give you this back,’ he said, ‘before I’ll admit you know anything about painting, Eccie.’

  Eccie said ‘Goodnight, Chloe. Goodnight, Matthew,’ in a tone of gentle reproach, and left.

  ‘That was mean of you, Walter,’ Chloe said. ‘I am an honest man,’ Walter observed, ‘when treating of the few existing subjects to which honesty is due.’

  ‘I’d better ring my sister,’ Matthew said. ‘My cousin will be on the telephone to her as I haven’t turned up at my uncle’s to meet my brother-in-law.’

  ‘It was unkind of you, Walter,’ said Chloe, leaning over the bar forgivingly. ‘Poor old Eccie’s upset at losing his job.’

  ‘He doesn’t need a job,’ Walter said. ‘He’s got his private income and his basement. And he’s an Anglo-Catholic. Anglo-Catholics always get jobs.’

  ‘He hasn’t got much income,’ Chloe said. ‘Have you seen the way he lives? That basement is going down and down. No-one to look after him.’

  ‘He ought to have got married,’ Matthew said.

  ‘He’s not the marrying type,’ said Chloe.

  ‘He pees in the sink,’ said Walter, ‘not that I hold that against him.’

  ‘He doesn’t!’ said Chloe.

  ‘True,’ said Walter. ‘It’s nothing. We bachelors all pee in sinks and wash-basins.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Matthew.

  ‘You’re young yet,’ Walter said.

  ‘Filthy beasts, the lot of you,’ Chloe said, laughing towards one face and another as she leant over the bar.

  Then she straightened up.

  ‘Halo, halo,’ she said, for Mike Garland, accompanied by an elderly man who wore a clerical outfit, had entered.

  ‘Walter, Matthew,’ she said, ‘this is Dr. Garland and Father Socket.’

  ‘How do you do, Father,’ said Matthew, jumping off his stool to shake hands.

  ‘Not of our persuasion,’ Walter informed Matthew, whereupon Matthew drew away his hand nervously and said, ‘Pleasant evening.’

  ‘These two are fraud spiritualists,’ Walter roared. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said Father Socket. ‘I grant it with a plenary indulgence,’ said Walter as he pushed Matthew before him out into the high autumnal winds of Hampstead.

  ‘I’d have liked to talk to them a bit,’ Matthew said. ‘What was all your hurry? Alice Dawes, that pregnant girl with the long black hair, is a spiritualist.’

  ‘These are fraud spiritualists.’

  ‘Is there a difference, then?’ said Matthew.

  Chapter VI

  RONALD said, ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘Since two weeks,’ Matthew said. ‘She’s got long black hair. She has it done up on top when she’s in the coffee bar and she lets it go long when she’s in bed.’

  ‘I should think you’ve got a chance,’ Ronald said. ‘Seton isn’t much of a rival, from what I know of him. But are you sure you want to
marry this girl?’

  Matthew hastily remembered that the last thing he had said might be misconstrued, so he told Ronald, ‘I saw her in bed because she was 11 and her friend Elsie took me along — Elsie’s the other girl in the coffee bar.’

  ‘Have some tea,’ Ronald said. ‘Help yourself. Pour it out.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me consulting you like this? ‘Ronald poured out tea, holding the teapot as high over the cup as possible without making a splash. This had been a habit of his for as long as he had been making tea for himself, and he did not notice now what he was doing as he raised the teapot, by habit, twelve inches above the cup, nor did he remember that the pretty sight of the long stream of golden liquid had once made the process of tea-making less of a bore than if he had poured it from a normal height.

  ‘Be careful,’ Matthew said, ‘you don’t spill it.’

  ‘You will be thirty-two this month,’ Ronald said, testing his memory.

  ‘My birthday was last week,’ Matthew said, aimlessly as a boy-seminar answering a tall black frock.

  Ronald said, ‘Everyone consults me about their marriages.’ Three months ago Tim Raymond, before he had joined his aunt’s spiritualist circle, had come to Ronald with the marriage question. He had said, ‘Do you think everyone will say I’m marrying her for her money and she for my connections?’

  ‘I don’t know. I expect so.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the truth of the matter.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got good connections. It isn’t every set of connections a woman wants to take on. And for your part, it isn’t everyone’s money you would touch, I daresay. There’s an element of mutual respect involved.’

  ‘There’s something in that. Still, it would be tiresome if people said—’

  ‘Do you love the girl?’ Ronald said.

  ‘Funny thing, you know, in a funny sort of way, she’s fun.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get married. Does she love you?’

  ‘I think so. Of course she says so.’

  ‘What does your mother think?’

  ‘Oh, she likes the idea. They all like the idea. And I quite like the idea. But—’

  ‘Do you want to get married at all?’ Ronald said.