Fowlers End (12 page)

5

BECAUSE, AFTER all is said and done, a man has his pride—or at least a certain decent habit of self-continence. But do you know what? The “harsh realities” that jostle him from point to point are matters for a healthy man to laugh off; he lives, at his fullest, in essentially imaginary noble quarrels, fierce triumphs, and saintly defeats.

Especially in the small hours, from the kind of people that like to spill their souls, I have heard a lot of talk about loneliness; and to deal plainly with you, I don’t believe in it. There is no such thing as one person alone— this side Colney Hatch, where the lunatic asylum is. I went there once to pay a visit to a melancholic, bringing him a harmless, nourishing, and beautiful bunch of grapes. An imbecile would have played with them. A maniac would have trampled on them. The melancholy madman did neither, but just looked at them without seeing. He had achieved—largely through wanting to es
cape—complete solitude, the last word in self-containment. You see, he was within himself, sold to himself.... Believe me, as long as a man knows that he is lonely, he is not alone; he is still fumbling the void for an imaginary companion, of no matter what sort.

It takes three to make a person—himself, a friend, and an enemy—even when he is in the self-imposed solitary confinement romantically known as Loneliness.

Most of your Great Lonely Souls, so-called, are nothing but stubborn babies crying to be picked up. And that is what I was, animated as I thought by manly pride. Manly pride? Frantic childishness refusing its supper in order to be coaxed and willfully hurting itself just a little for the sake of a lot of bandaging and cosseting; trying to make a virtue of an error, presuming on my childishness. A great sin, that: to wet your bed to water the seeds of guilt in your
elders! I should have known better. Mine was something like the story of Little Trott, over whom I wept reading it in the
Children’s Encyclopedia.
His mother having the presumption to suckle his newborn sister, Trott threw himself off a high-backed chair and bumped his head, whereupon he was taken back to the maternal bosom and to the paternal mustache discreetly redolent of toilet water. A swift slap in the jaw is what Little Trott wanted. So did I. To my horror, I got it self-administered.

Walking into the Pantheon, I felt that this was no time to treat Copper Baldwin with reminiscence (or what the critics call a flashback) but I knew what I thought I knew, and smiled at him—mysteriously. I was thinking about my pride, and it seemed to me that I was a hell of a fellow, and little he knew. Hunger, love, et cetera—I could show Copper a thing or two if I chose!

When the last of my valuables went up the spout, as the saying goes, and my landlady told me that, whereas she had all the faith in the world in my prospects, unless I let her have a little something on account there was a gentleman from Leicester in steady work who needed my room, I pressed my tie by putting it between two sheets of damp cardboard and sitting on it for two hours, and steamed my hat with the last of a pennyworth of gas; said that I would return in due course to settle my little account and every inch a gentleman, went my way down the windswept road of the night. Lo
neliness? I asked for it; it was romantic.

Mine was the pride of the eagle (that filthy bird which lives on mice and leavings) that brooked no company. Craggy was the word for my hauteur when I refused to have anything to do with other down-and-outs, when the Depression was going strong and if I had gone and sat on a bench on the Embankment where I belonged I might have got a cup of cocoa, a pie, a lecture, a couple of cigarettes, and a blessing. I tried it once, being parched and starved,
but Pride stepped in the way. Cocoa, as a beverage, I detest; but I was cold and hungry, and no steam ever smelled more delicious. There was also a promising-looking oblong packet containing, as it had been whispered, a sandwich, five Woodbines, a piece of slab-cake, and a tract full of useful information about the Second Coming and Repent Ere It Is Too Late. Also, a bit of soap—to which I was particularly looking forward. But when it came to my turn I said to the lady with the packet, “No, no, thanks all the same—really, I couldn’t dream...” Taken at my word, I went away empty—emptier,
I believed, than any human vessel had ever been before—and walked away and away, drinking saliva until on the stroke of two I remembered that there is a little gate near the zoo through which the park keepers pass and the mysterious tradesmen who carry in the carcasses of horses they cut up for the hyenas. To this gate, twirling my cane m an elegant manner, I made my way hoping that if I were seen I might be mistaken for some gay young man-about-town seeing life.

This part of Regents Park borders on Primrose Hill. “The Scotchman’s Zoo” they call it, because here is Monkey Hill where the baboons live and publicly perform certain acts which the local girls, peeping between their fingers, describe as disgusting. To this part of the Zoological Gardens are relegated the creatures that once were beasts— an old wild boar, undistinguishable, until it breaks wind, from the winter mud or the summer dust; one or two scabby dogs of the dhole or dingo variety, I forget which; a moth-eaten bison, a discouraged antelope, et cetera. You could look at th
em free any time the park was open; that is why this part of the place was called “The Scotchman’s Zoo.”

Well, as I had foreseen, the little gate was ajar, so I went into Regents Park and sat down, not far from the Lion House, to doze away the rest of the darkness on a bench,
leaning on my cane—an elegant old malacca with an ivory knob which was still in my possession for three reasons: nobody would buy it, I could not give it away, and whenever I tried to lose it someone always brought it back to me. There was thunder in the air, and the great cats were restless. A lion roared first of all, and then a tiger; whereupon a leopard made a noise like a blunt saw going through plywood, and all the monkeys began to scream and chatter in terror, while my empty stomach grumbled in sympathy. Soon a man came by shoving a wheelbarrow.

“‘Ow’d you git in?” he asked.

“Climbed over the railings,” I said.

“You’re not supposed to,” he said.

I said, “Breath of air.”

“‘Ark at the lions. ‘Ear ‘em?”

“I thought I noticed something roaring.”

“They smell blood, you know.”

“Do they? What blood?” I asked.

The man was fragrant with breakfast bacon; I wished he would go away. But he lingered, and said, “‘Orse blood. They’ll be knocking orf an ‘orse just about now, aginst feeding time. Bloody marvelous, that old ‘orse.”

“Bloody marvelous what old horse?”

“Charley, the old ‘orse we keep in there. Just like a ‘uman bean. You wouldn’t think an ‘orse could sink so low, would you? It’s bloody marvelous!”

“So low as what?”

“You know a lion eats twenty-eight pounds of ‘orse meat at a sitting? Well, every day, more or less, we slaughter an ‘orse. Well, you know an ‘orse ‘ates the smell o’ blood, specially ‘orse blood? Well, old as they are, these ‘ere old ‘orses balk like ‘ell at the slaughter ‘ouse. Well, that’s where old Charley comes in. Twenty-two years old, ‘e is, and a bloody nuisance to ‘imself, but ‘e rubs along gettin’ a livin’ as a sort of a nark. Charley gives a kind of a
whinny over ‘is shoulder, as much as to say, It’s all okay, chum, foller me and see.’ Walks into the slaughter’ ouse. Other ‘orse calms down an’ foilers ‘im in. Biff, bang, wallop! A ‘umane killer right in the conk, and down ‘e goes in all bloody directions like a carpenter’s ruler. While Charley walks out the other side and ‘as ‘is breakfast. Marvelous!” “Lucky horse,” I said.

“In a ‘uman bean, you’d think nothink of it. But in an ‘orse it’s bloody marvelous.” “It only goes to show.”

“It do, don’t it?” said this pestilential man, and hiccuped slightly. “My eldest gel married a farmer, and she sent me a flitch o’ bacon from Wiltshire. I overate meself this morning.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“The Frenchies eat ‘orse flesh. So do the Belgiums.”

“They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

“And frogs. Snakes eat frogs too. Bloody marvelous!” He chuckled. “One o’ these fine mornings, though, old Charley’s goin to git the surprise of ‘is life. ‘E’ll walk in as usual, only this time the other ‘orse’ll be
in front
of ‘im. I bet old Charley’ll ‘ave taught ‘im ‘is job, too. I’d like to see the expression on poor old Charley’s face when they say, ‘Wait a minute, Charley—’ I bet ‘e’ll eat tough.”

You have to be in just the right state of physical and mental balance not to be nauseated, or maddened, by the fundamentals—food and sex—and the whole cosmos, it seems, is generally in a conspiracy to rub you up the wrong way in these matters. If you hunger for physical love, the world is as full of full-blown female buttocks as a baby’s pipe is of bubbles; you may look and yearn, but you may not touch. An invisible portcullis has been let fall between you and your desire. Come away, satiated with the embraces of some object of your affection, and (as if you have invented a new kind of ma
n) all womankind will make
tracks for you. Again: Eat your fill of your favorite food— eat
ad nauseam—and
wherever you turn you will encounter the sight or the smell of it, or hear some voluptuous talk of it, to turn your stomach. Fast, dream lustfully of how right your good mother was when, after you turned your nose up at fat mutton broth, she said, “You may be glad of it someday”—brood over the semolina you rejected, the custards you had to be bribed to eat, and so forth—and wherever you turn there is sure to be some malevolent spirit in the form of a park-keeper, or what not, talking food, food, food!

It is all very well for one of these martyrs you read about to go on a hunger strike. He has a cause; somewhere, somebody goes hungry with him out of sympathy; benevolent jailers coax him with steaming broth, et cetera. In any case, he knows perfectly well that a man, lying still, and upheld by his belief that the show must go on, can prolong his dying a couple of months on nothing but water. An Irishman out of the I.R.A. (it took him thirty years to eat himself to death in America on the strength of it) told me how he once went on a twenty-day hunger strike in prison. The first se
ven days, he said, were the worst; after which, the gnawing pain in the stomach having subsided, there was no discomfort but a feeling of lightness, of freedom from the flesh. Very likely. But mine was a one-man hunger strike, and I was full of an urgent desire to live. Furthermore, not yet having fully grown, all my tissues seemed to scratch and scream for nourishment. Yet again, I had no one to show off to.

And here, depression notwithstanding, was a world full of food, an atmosphere full of roars in anticipation of food, down-trodden minorities talking about Wiltshire bacon.... I walked to the lake in Regents Park with, I believe, some mad idea of stealing a duck. No doubt I was lightheaded with hunger; floating away from my body. All the ducks were gathered about an eccentric old lady in with
ered skirts who was throwing them bits of cake. I toyed with the idea of going up to her and saying, “Madame, I am Curator of Ducks. It is strictly forbidden to feed ducks with cake. A duck, as you know, has a special kind of digestive system. Cake is deadly poison to the duck. I am afraid I must confiscate that bag; and think yourself lucky!” But my nerve failed me.

I walked, with dignity, to a drinking fountain, washed my face, filled myself up with water, and walked, swinging that nuisance of a cane, into Baker Street. Where does one go from Baker Street? Why, to Orchard Street, and thence to Oxford Street. The restaurants were warming up. I hurried along, paused, and, for want of something better to do, asked a policeman if he could direct me to the British Museum. I pretended to speak little English; he held up the traffic while he pointed the way. So I walked eastward, window-shopping in the provision stores, until I reached Museum Street
and so came to the museum, and sat for a while where the Easter Island monoliths are, wishing that I were a pigeon: a crop-filled, amorous, law-abiding pigeon, subject to no rules and protected by the state. Soon I went inside for another drink of water. A party of students was being conducted around the room on the ground floor where the Egyptian statues are. Now here you may find a certain glass case containing statuettes; look through it at a certain angle, and an empty granite sarcophagus twenty feet away is mysteriously filled with the image of the god Anubis, or it may be Thoth. It is a trick of
reflection. Here was an inspiration—I might make a couple of shillings by pointing this out. Hanging on the fringes of the crowd, I hemmed and I hawed, and prepared my little speech; but nothing came out. The guide, who had been looking at me suspiciously, said, “Are you aware that this is a privately conducted party?”

I said, “Of course. I mean, no.”

Then I went to the gallery, to look at that colossal mask of Rameses which hypnotizes with its blind eyes by virtue of sheer hugeness; it is just great enough, and small enough, for you to see in all its immensity from a distance of a few yards—if you get the right angle.

At this I stared and stared, until the stone eyes blinked and I had hypnotized the granite mask. But then I fell in spirals and awoke with a start. One of the attendants was tapping me gently on the shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry, sir, you’re not supposed to sleep here, sir.”

I said, “What do you mean, sleep? I was thinking.”

“Ah, you want the library,” he said.

In the lavatory, where I went for another drink of water, I saw my reflection in a mirror. These British Museum lavatory mirrors will impart to the best nourished and most carefully nurtured face a ghastly gray archaeological look. As I believe I have mentioned, I am no oil painting at the best of times; now I had a two-day beard. I hurried out and walked again. Now I might quite easily, without shame, have dropped in on any of four or five relatives, or one or two prosperous friends. It was lunchtime. It would be:
“Why, Daniel, my boy! How are you? Just in time for a bite. Have a chop, have
a chicken, have a lobster!”—“No, no, not a morsel!”—“Come on, Dan, have a saddle-bag: twelve juicy oysters sewn up in a thick filet of steak and grilled until the bubbles come out at the seams?”—“Oh, well, fust a corner, since you insist.”—“Glass of burgundy?”—“Oh, no, really! Well, perhaps
...” It would have been like that, only pride held me back; they would have looked at the state of my chin and my shirt, and somebody would have said, “If only Daniel had listened to his Uncle Hugh!”

Rain was coming down in an uneasy, sporadic drizzle; evidently the weather was getting set to make a day of it, just out of spite. I wandered into Soho, where there were
several men on the loose who owed me money or money’s worth. But I could not bring myself to within the breadth of a street of where any of them might be found; I don’t know why. At last I found myself—all roads led to food—in that market place between Berwick Street and Brewer Street. The city seemed to be bursting with a plethora of agonizingly appetizing food. The barrowmen were shouting, begging and pleading with passers-by to take the stuff away just for a few pence. The butcher’s shop there had more meat than it knew what to do with; but I think that it was the smell of the cheesemonger
’s that tipped the balance. I put out my finger to stroke a beautiful round Dutch cheese, not much larger than a grapefruit; it had a waxy surface, which was so pleasant to the touch that I must have stood there for some moments in the attitude of that Philosopher with a skull, in the picture; until a black-browed man in a white coat came and stared me out of countenance. I went away toward the Cafe Royal, but here, too, the air was dense with the aromatic steam of food. So, via Shaftesbury Avenue, I arrived again at the market and stopped to look at a barrow-load of oblong tin cans under a sign
which said: