Umbrella (11 page)

A cake sits on a tin stand in the window of the coffee shop, which otherwise is indistinguishable from the rundown book dealers flanking it. Audrey looks at the cake
black as coke
on its dirty paper doily. A sign beside it contends
TEN OUNCE CHOPS 6D., CUTLET 5D., FRIED ONION 1D
. That’s all. A man comes from within to stand in the doorway – wound tightly into his apron, he’s
the same shape
as the milk churn he sets down. He has thick black curly side-whiskers and below his red cheek a
redder
goitre rests on his Gladstone collar. A barefoot piker boy comes limping along the lane, his cap pulled right down, the sleeves of his man’s jacket rolled right up – his arms are
all
striped lining
. In one hand he holds a skinned rabbit by its ears and, stopping by the coffee shop man, he raises it
bloody socket where its guts were
but says nothing. The man shakes his head: Inna pig’s arse. The boy limps on. Cummin an’ eat befaw we boaf starve . . . It’s a while before Audrey realises he’s addressing her, and then she complies. There’s nothing much to the coffee shop – four pew seats, two rickety tables – everything is coated with the brownish patina of tobacco smoke, grease and ingrained dirt. The gaslight and the geyser are confused in one another’s piping – both are lit. The man asks Audrey what she wishes for, and while he is absent in the back the geyser heats up and begins to steam – droplets condense on the ceiling, then fall, one
hissing
on the gas-mantle.
It’s raining inside
. . .
She opens her hand: the thru’pence has impressed a portcullis on her palm. The man comes back with a mug of tea and two slices of bread and marge, sliced diagonally. I dunno why I does vat, he says, looking at the droplets swell and fall, but I allus do. He turns the key in the pipe and the geyser pops off. Could I –? Is there –? There can be no mistaking
surely
the reason for her discomfort . . . He points offhandedly and says: Jakes is out back. She goes and finds a lean-to against the kitchen wall, beyond it another section of the two-storey-high timber bulwark, and beyond this the wreckers’ ball hangs in the foggy dusk, a
black moon
. When she returns, he’s lit the geyser again, and, as she nibbles the slices and sips the tea, he stands erect by the matchboard counter, head up, massaging the goitre while doggily
listening to its rising notes . . .
there’s no ’arm innim
. All that’s left are crumbs, smears,
dregs
. . .
still her father does not come. Abruptly, Audrey rises from the pew – the man gives her a penny and two farthings change, which she holds so tightly as she walks back up the road that the metal discs replace her knuckles,
Enigmarelle, the Man of Steel
. There’s no one about except a
tall gent inna topper
who reminds her of an illustration she’s seen of Bransby Williams
the ’personator
, so cross-hatched is he by shadow. Fellowes’s shop is shuttered — tapping fearfully on the door, she is relieved when it swings open, so scurries in to the smell of mouse droppings, cat’s piss and the ammoniacal residue of birds. Inside there is no illumination at all – only different strengths of darkness, the
black bat night
brushing against her. She mounts the stairs to the accompaniment of a concerto of creaks – one flight, a second, a third and a fourth – then peeks along a landing at eye-level, to where bright white light leaks from beneath a closed door. She hears – in there – a sharp intake of breath, h’heurgh! and a
piggish grunt
. Her belly seethes with
glow worms
— last month Mary Jane
fixed me up
with cotton pads and an itchy belt sewn from hemming tape. When Audrey pointed out to her the advertisement in the back of a Free Library book –
Sanitary, Absorbent, Antiseptic, Available from All Drapers
– her mother snapped: What d’you fink we are? but not unkindly. A cord that stretches taut from her tummy-button along the landing and under the door draws her in with each h’heurgh! every
piggish grunt
. She barges the door with her shoulder and collapses into a room lit brilliantly by clear bulbs under shades of frosted glass. In front of a floor-length nankeen drapes an aspidistra in a hammered-bronze pot, beside this a chaise-longue covered in green velvet, on this the skinned rabbit
what the piker ’ad
its glistening dead legs sticking up from a
mess of petticoats
. Standing with his back to Audrey, a
bare-arsed
man does something to the rabbit’s belly,
guttin’ it –?

–
No, no, no! That won’t do! A florid man with pomaded hair, in his shirtsleeves and a fancy embroidered waistcoat, comes out from behind a kinematographic apparatus set up in the tapering corner of the attic. No, no, no! he cries again – his expression is mad and guileless – this ’ere girlie’s torn it –! Mister Beauregard? Audrey ventures, but the red-faced man ignores her, his regard is fixed. — When Audrey turns back there’s no coney, only a girl a little older than her who sits on the chaise buttoning her
bubbies
into her bodice. The girl’s hair is up apart from a few stray locks, and atop its nondescript mass sits a lady’s toque complete with magenta-dyed ostrich feathers. There’s no bare-arsed man either, only Audrey’s father, who’s standing there in his long rabbit-skin coat and buttoning up gloves
I’ve never see before
. He doesn’t acknowledge his daughter but raises his bowler to Mister Beauregard, says, O-vwar, m’dear, to the girl and, retrieving his umbrella and a brown paper parcel from behind the drapes, conducts Audrey unceremoniously from the room. They are borne down the stairs on the
wave
of electric light – its
crest breaks on the blank street
. There is no sign of Fellowes – only his name fading across the tops of the shutters. – All this – Samuel Death strikes with his umbrella at the complicated dinginess of the Jacobean frontage – will be gone wivvin weeks . . . He sounds neither regretful nor cheered by the prospect.
I do not know ’im
who leads her on through streets
shuttered
by the massive timber bulwarks, working their way through the condemned rookery to the purlieu of Waterloo Bridge, where, through a gap, they can see the workings: navvies’ picks thrust handle-first in grave-fill, beside this
Calvary
a
slough of despond
wellin’ over
with night-time and the
drowned-corpse
smell of the river
. Why, Audrey longs to ask him, have they stuck bills on the insides of the hoardings? For surely navvies aren’t likely customers for Beecham’s Powders or a
GUARANTEED 7 HOUR PASSAGE FROM
Tilbury to Cherbourg. There will be, Samuel says, a grand booleyvard runnin’ norf t’Olborn, the newest street in Lunnun town, with the nobs pacin’ up an’ pacin’ down . . . an’ there’ll be a tunnel connectin’ to the bridge for the trams runnin’ under a twenny-storey buildin’ that’ll ’ave business premises, an arcade of posh shops, theatres . . . This, Audrey realises as they go through the Saturday evening drowse of Lincoln’s Inn, is his gift: this tour of the city about to be swept away, and this portrait of an orderly city of the future. – At Chancery Lane the boys are crying Bulgarian Massacre! and there’s a feverishness to the tipsy clerks gathered round a sandwich stall. Finally, it is night. The
wreckers’ ball
has turned and dropped, the air fills with dust,
fog
,
smuts
. . .
thickening with
dark droplets
,
I dunno why I does vat
– but I allus do
. . . as the passengers rise up from the Underground station
dewy mushrooms sprout
alongside the old timber house fronts of High Holborn. — This, I recall, Audrey says: the glacé silk and the oiled cotton of the covers, so many of them – and t’were only a little drizzle . . . It ish, Gilbert Cook says sententiously, to the petit-ourgeoishie of London what a fetisssh is to an African primitive – he manipulatessh it, speaksh to it, forgetsh it at hish peril, for, should the shky godsh choosh to show their dishpleasure, he will be losht without hish portable shelter. Conshider thish, Audrey, when Crushoe – that quinteshenshial petit-bourgeois – is cashtaway, the firsht implement that he makesh for himshelf ish an umbrella! This speech would be hard to tolerate were Gilbert not
bare-arsed –
he has
no shame
, and this is more satisfying to Audrey than anything they do to each other: his insouciance, standing there rinsing out the prophylactic device in the rose-patterned bowl, pulling it between the
mangle rollers
of his chubby little fingers so that the water
spurts
. It reminds her that it was instruction that formed the greater part of his seduction: he described how she should insert the pessary beforehand – and then after use the syringe to sluice herself out while squatting above a different bowl. Audrey had admired Gilbert Cook for this commitment to the technical aspects of free love, far more than his written advocacy thereupon. – Admired him for this – and for his abjuration of all
jealous sentiments
. I tell you, m’dear – he said on that first occasion, as he curled his hand to simulate her vagina and spoke of how to exterminate
the troubleshome spermatozoa
– not sholely sho that I may enjoy your delightsh without, um, complicationsh – although I do fervently wish to enjoy them, and on thoshe termsh preshishely – but in order that you may enjoy shimilar, or in all probability far greater onesh, with whomshoever you choose. His teacherly approach to the exercise of deflowering her had been
what I needed
, the hot suffusions of shame and guilt coming first, and then, in response to his instruction, she found herself left free to enjoy – that first time as well – his demonstration. Yet, despite the vigour with which he impressed upon her his vision – that
the shex relashion ish all about ush, if diffushed
, and that
we do not do it, either like pershonsh or animalsh
, but attract it,
like lightning-conductorsh –
Audrey was appalled to discover herself after their second liaison exhibiting all the symptoms of a
love-struck moon calf
, some
diaphanous Daphne
or
vapid Venetia
, who cared nothing for the
New Dawn
of womankind, but only the old and poetical ones. Now, setting the
slug
down, he comes to sit beside her and says, Tell me, why d’you shpeak of thish inshident now – of your father’sh conshorting with proshtitutes and their pornographersh – ish it becaushe we have jusht . . . fucked? Audrey strokes the green damask of Venetia Stanley’s chaise-longue and runs a finger around one button, then a second. No, she says eventually, no, Gilbert, it’s not that . . . it’s . . . How she
loathes
Venetia Stanley without ever so much as having
clapped eyes on her
. Try as she might to prevent herself, Audrey has asked him whether their relation is physical – although he disdains the idea: Venetia? M’dear, she’s a baby, she’s shwaddled in the eternal childishnessh of wealth, shponged and pampered by her nurshing maids and wet nurshed at houshe parties . . . That may be so, yet for Audrey the closeness between the society lady and the socialist is
insupportable
, especially here, where a portrait photograph of her attired as Diana the Huntress stares down from a nearby whatnot . . . it’s the umbrellas. Aha, the umbrellash, the fruitsh of your laboursh. He
mussav a way of fixin’ ’em
– his dentures – because holding forth in drawing rooms or public meetings his tone is full and
loud as sounding brass
, while at such times as these, at his ease, divested of his clothing, his hair dishevelled, comes this endearing
lishp.
She counters: I don’t make umbrellas, Gilbert, or brollies, or garden tents, or portable pavilions for the bloomin’ beach – I’m a typewriter, I make words.
Such words
: Dear Sir, in respect of your order of the 15th instant, I regret to inform you that we are unable to supply the precise numbers of the Peerless and the Paragon models that you requested due to Fox’s tardiness in fulfilling our own order for their patented Aegis frames. As I know you appreciate, all Ince & Coy umbrellas are finished to the highest standards and employ the Aegis frame as a matter of course due to their superior quality and efficiency. We are consigning by carrier a gross of the Peerless pro tempore, together with an hundred of the Paragon, and will endeavour to complete your order at Fox’s earliest convenience. I remain your obedient servant, A. De’Ath, Expediting Clerk, on behalf of Thos. Ince. An initial will suffice, Miss De’Ath – so said Appleby, the crabbed and querulous senior clerk – some of our customers may not be so tolerant when it comes to the matter of female employment . . .
More tolerant than you, I’d wager!
Appleby is senior only to Audrey, the two occupying the garret above the Bishopsgate premises, he seated on his stool at an old-fashioned high desk under the dormer, while she is thrust under the attic’s slope, up against the
mouse-gnawed
wainscot. Her Sholes is mounted on its small table, and each time she returns its carriage with the inbuilt treadle mechanism she is forcibly
kerchunggg!
reminded that this is women’s work:
sweated, menial, repetitive
. Although the truth is that her actual responsibilities exceed his – Appleby, in his grisly old suit and soured linen collar, is
a makeweight
, kept on by Ince’s out of gratitude for service tendered long since. He scratches at the accounts, wages and inventory books. Each Friday he totters to the bank accompanied by a sturdy boy armed with a cudgel — and he conveys to Audrey only the faintest outline of the matters to hand, leaving her to endow them with the necessary materiality. All the letters, all the memoranda, all the advertisement copy –
such words
her hands make, inverted into claws that scrabble about on the keys of the Sholes, over and over, in a pattern that
cannot really be a pattern since it is never repeated
.