Fowlers End (17 page)

He replied, cryptically, “More tvouble again? Who miv, this time?”

I said, “Contortionist.”

He sounded brisk, businesslike; one could recognize that he was talking for the benefit of a third party. The tone of his voice was such that I could not tell whether he was admonishing me, or giving me a secret signal, or making a burlesque. He said, “Mr. Daniels! Whereas you are raw to this business, Sam Yudenow wants you should work your way up thvough its bottom. You should understand, Rome wasn’t built mivout tvouble in the genevator room. A vose by any other name would smell. But what’s the billing?”

I said, as quietly as possible, “Chinese contortionist, name of Eena.”

Then he said, with asperity—I could almost see him flapping about with his free hand—“Take a scvewdriver. Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“That’s not what I asked. Are you
there?
... Right. Praps I’ll look in, in an hour or two. I’m making allowances, mind you, because you’re new. But... when I was your age, the scvewdrivers wasn’t even insulated yet. Genevator rooms! What, again, is the nature of the tvouble?”

Losing patience, I said, “Eena, the Chinese contortionist.”

“‘Ow many you got in the house?”

“A matter of a hundred or so,” I said.

“I’m ruined,” said Sam Yudenow. Then, in a very meaning voice, “I’ll get along as soon as I can, about the genevator room. See that everything is in order, but do nothing until I come. Any tvouble yet?”

“Chucked out a fellow called Dilly,” I said.

He replied, “Then you’ve as good as signed my death warrant.... You can’t turn your back five minutes. Hang up the receiver, Laventry. Do you vealize that all this chatter is costing me a bill? A thing you should vealize. If possible be like Shakespeare—no speeches—a word of one syllabub. One-two-thvee, and every picture tells a story. I’ll be right over. So what are you sitting there talking for? Count
tukheses—uxcuse
the expression, I mean arse holes—you should know what you got in every seat. Why ain’t you downstairs? Answer me.”

“Because I am talking to you upstairs,” I said.

“You go down and leave that genevator room to

me.”

I rang off. By the time I got downstairs the extension phone in the box office was ringing. Mrs. Edward said, “Mr. Yudenow on the phone—urgent.”

I shouted into the mouthpiece, “Well?”

“Where are you?”

“In the lobby.”

“Vestibule! Good-by.”

Some more people were coming in. The ticket machine went wrong: it made a noise like a hacking cough which gradually muffled itself until it became mute; whereupon Copper Baldwin discovered that, one of the tickets having got bent, some scores of others, blindly following it, had made what he called a “raffle” just under the slit where they were supposed to come out. The grinding urge of the powerful machinery had reduced these tickets to shreds,
which we had to sweep up and put into a bag to satisfy Inland Revenue on entertainments tax.

Meanwhile there slunk into the Pantheon a middle-aged man of indeterminable race. He was about five feet tall, and of the color of an old penny—repellent in his expression, which was at once abject and arrogant, ingratiating and sullen. The whites of his eyes were brown, and his lips were a crusty purple. He was buttoned to the neck in a sad old velvet-collared coat and wore a bowler hat. He had no teeth.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

He put down the Gladstone bag he was carrying (I thought he was going to try to sell me a fire extinguisher) and, thrusting a skinny hand under his clothes, started as it seemed to pick at himself as you do when your skin is peeling after scarlet fever. He had the same rapt expression. He paused for an instant to lift his hat and scratch his glabrous head with one finger before he offered me his card. It read:

EENA, THE CHINESE CONTORTIONIST
FACIAL CONTORTIONS
WORLD-WIDE IMPERSONATIONS

“How do you do?” I said.

“I walked all the way from Brixton,” said Eena, the Contortionist, in anything but a Chinese accent. “Anywhere I can cop a kip for half an hour?”

Copper Baldwin said, “You can lie down in the gents’ dressing room for ‘alf an hour if you like, Mr. Laverock says. I take it you
are
male and not female?”

Eena said, “I got a wife and six children. Can I sub ten bob?”

“Mr. Laverock will let you ‘ave two tosheroons, if you like.... You are prepared to let this artiste ‘ave two ‘alf crowns on account, ain’t you, Mr. Laverock?” I observed
that Copper Baldwin seemed to be enjoying himself. He patted Eena on the shoulder and said to Mrs. Edwards, “Five shillings advance for Eena, Mr. Laverock says. Mr. Laverock will sign the chit.” Then, to Eena, the Contortionist: “Mr. Laverock says, where’s your note from Billy Bax?” He took the soiled slip of paper which Eena scratched out of himself and handed it to me. I gave it to Mrs. Edwards, who put it on a spike.

The feel of a few shillings in his hand worked wonders with Eena. He said, in the manner of a temperamental star, “O’course, I shall want a consultation with your musical director. I got my music with me. I’ll need to give him his cues. When I say ‘Dracula’ I want a bit o’ Grieg, and’ a green spot on my face. Et cetera. And when I cover the whole of my nose with my lower lip—”

“You go upstairs and ‘ave a nice rest, and tell it to Mr. Yudenow,” said Copper Baldwin. “Eh, Mr. Laverock?”

“There is a blue light in the generator room,” I said. “He’s impressionable, Mr. Eena. You never can tell where it might lead.”

“Well, I’ll pull a few faces for him, if you like,” said

Eena.

Copper Baldwin said, “That’s right. You cover your nose with your lip.”

“I can touch my forrid with my tongue,” said Eena.
I said, “By all means.”

So I showed him to the gentlemen’s dressing room, where he immediately unpacked his suitcase. His wardrobe consisted of a little girl’s party dress with frilly bloomers, a wig of blond corkscrew curls, silver-buckled shoes, and a Dracula cloak.

When I got back into the hall, Copper Baldwin said to me, “I think you kind o’ bring me luck. I ‘aven’t laughed so much since Father died.”

“Tell me, Copper, what does Sam Yudenow
do
with his contortionists and what not?”

“If you want my candid opinion, cocko—nothing.”

“Tell me something else, Copper. Where did you get all your education?” I asked.

He said, “It come natural to me. I told you, my mother was a finder o’ the pure.”

“And what’s that?”

“Pure, son, is dog’s dung. It’s best ‘and-picked, and in the better quarters o’ the town, or round the posh kennels.”

“What do they use it for? Growing fl
owers?” I asked.

“Gawd, no! Pure is death to flowers. But it’s the only thing you can possibly treat Russia leather with. Dog’s dung and no other dung’s got some chemical principle in it that makes Russia leather supple and fragrant. The best sort was worth a few pence a pound, and it ‘ad to be picked by ‘and so you knew what you was getting. None o’ your biscuit-fed pure would do, nor your bone-eating pure. The real meat-fed stuff with body in it.... Didn’t you know that? It’s still in use, but Gawd knows who collects it. My father was a finder in the sewers. But I’ll tell you all about that s
ome other time, one o’ these days.... The old woman put a bit by, and when she got too rheumatic to bend, she opened a little general shop back o’ the Polygon. Well, there was the garret going empty, so she lets it to some old geezer that was writing a book. Don’t ask me what book. We called ‘im Old Maunder. ‘E ‘ad thousands o’ books of ‘is own, but ‘e was writing another ‘un. ‘Alf a crown a week rent Old Maunder paid—earned it addressing envelopes. I used to go up, when my old man wasn’t about, and bring ‘im a bit o’ cake, or something, from my old woman, and sweep up a bit. My old woman covered up for ‘i
m; ‘e never paid no rent for the last few months, and my old man would never ‘ave stood for
that. (My old man lost ‘is nerve when ‘e was attacked by rats in the sewer by Lambeth and didn’t do much.) So this Old Maunder used to tell me stories—the Glory that was This, and the Grandeur that was That, and so on—and I soaked it up.

“‘Abit-forming. My old woman dies, and I know what’s going o ‘appen to Old Maunder then, and to all ‘is books, sick as ‘e vas. That’s what made me cry, when they buried the old woman, slot ‘er. She was as good to me as she knew W to be, which vasn’t very; but we all got to go sometime. I could see poor old Maunder out in the street, and ‘is books ... Well, anyway, I sold papers, I run errands for a few pence, which I give my old man. But every Sunday I got up five o’clock in the morning ‘nd walked out to ‘Ighgate, where the fat man they called Jolly Rhino ‘ad his pub and ‘playing fields.’
Also, roundabouts and swings and coconut shies, and all that. Champions was bred there, yes. But ‘undreds was ruined. One o’ Jolly’s big attractions was the ‘Junior Events’—which meant to say, two twelve-year-old boys fought it to a finish wiv gloves in a ring. The winner got ‘alf a crown and ‘is dinner, apart from praps a few tips—what they called ‘ring money’—chucked into the ring if ‘e was ‘specially good. Loser take nothing, and a bloody good hiding. Unless ‘e was ‘specially game, in which case ‘e got ‘is dinner and ‘is fare ‘ome—because you can believe me, ‘e’d be in no condition to walk.

“After that, a football match. Then ‘ome. I never lost a fight. They used to call me ‘The Little Eel,’I was so slippery, and I’d go ‘ome and give my old man ‘alf a crown, and tell ‘em, ‘Old Maunder’s rent.’ Generally, my old man give me a bloody good ‘iding for being out late or, if I ‘appened to ‘ave a black eye, for fighting. Because the more the bastard lost ‘is nerve, the more ferocious ‘e’d get. Typical. But in between times, I’d sneak up to sweep out Old Maunder’s place, and ‘e’d tell me about the abdication
o’ Diocletian, and Shelley, and all that. I thought it was worth it, but now I doubt it.

“One day I got a job with a furniture mover, to ‘elp ‘im take a van down to Cardiff. I always ‘ad a fight ‘and wiv ‘orses. Like ‘orses?”

I said, “I can take them or leave them alone, Copper.”

“Leave ‘em alone. I admire ‘em, mind you, for one thing—they don’t like people. But I despise ‘em, on the other ‘and, because they’re subservient to man. Madness is catching. All ‘orses are mad. As I was saying, my old man made me take this carrier’s job to Cardiff. Ever been to Cardiff? No? Congratulations. It was a special load, see, that couldn’t go by railway or canal—a bit to be picked up ‘ere, a bit to be dropped off there. Well, it was three weeks before I got back, and there was no more Old Maunder. It seems ‘e caught pneumonia in my absence, and died. The parish buried ‘
im. My old man got all ‘is books and stuff onto a cart and sold the ‘ole bloody lot in the Farringdon Road for thirty bob. What Old Maunder was writing, Gawd alone knows, because ‘e never finished it, but there was enough of it to stuff a sofa, and the rag-and-bone man gave eighteen pence for it. That’s when I ‘ad my one real bundle with my old man. ‘E weighed fourteen stone, but it was beer fat, and ‘e was yellow. Never touched
me,
but I cut ‘is face open, and closed ‘is eyes, and bloodied ‘is nose—crying like a babby all the time, mind you, just out o’ temper. Then I left the ‘ouse and got a job as plumber’
s mate.... You wanted to know ‘ow I got my education? Now you know.”

“I thought you told me,” I said, “that you won a scholarship.”

Copper Baldwin said, “So I did—could ‘ave gone to grammar school. Would ‘ave, too, if my old woman ‘ad ‘ad her way. But she was too sick with a growth in the inside, plus rheumatism, to fight my old man;
‘e
wouldn’t ‘ear of
it. Gave me a tanning wiv ‘is belt for daring to presume to go and pass scholarships when my own father couldn’t read or write. I got the scar to this day, on my ‘ip, where the buckle cut in ... and there was my poor old woman crying with rage, too much in pain to take a frying pan to ‘im, poor old girl....”

“And what happened to your father, i
n the end?” I asked.

“What ‘appened to
your
father, in the end,” said Copper Baldwin.

“Died.... Blimey, ‘ark at Miss Noel play! Crossing ‘er ‘ands, I bet you. But wait, she’ll tail off—ginger ‘erself up with a dose o’ Red Liz and go on till she unwinds. Poor cow. I think you made a proper conquest there, son.”

And he would not say anything more until Sam Yudenow arrived, half an hour later, saying, “Tvouble in the genevator room already? And this Eena?”

Copper Baldwin said, “Eena’ll be in the generator room in five minutes—won’t she, Mr. Laverock?”

I said, “Oh, definitely.”

So Sam Yudenow went into the generator room carrying, for the look of the thing, an insulated screwdriver, while Copper Baldwin went next door and roused Eena out of a deep sleep. The Chinese Contortionist put on his Little Nell dress, but covered himself in his Dracula cloak, and came down. As they hurried past me, I heard Copper Baldwin saying, in his most affable voice, ”... Yes, touch your forehead with your tongue, by all means, and cover your Irish Rose with your lip. And you say you can dislocate your jaws? Do that, and I’ll stand you a quart....”

Then they disappeared in the dark. If my life had depended an it, I could not have kept away from the door of the generator room. Copper Baldwin came out and whispered to me, “One good ‘eart attack ought to finish that twicer.... D’you ‘ear anything?”

I could hear nothing; only I had a sense of quiet tumult in the vestibule, which I ran to investigate. There stood a hornet of a woman hunched in a mink coat and wearing a lot of precious stones. She must have been pretty, in her day; but she had the appearance of the victim of an acid-throwing outrage—if you can imagine corrosive acid thrown from the inside outward. She said to me, “You’re the new one, I suppose, are you? I am Mrs. Yudenow. Where’s my husband? ... Don’t bother to lie. I heard every word on the extension. Give me the key to the generator room!”

I gave her my keys. She knew exactly where to go. More customers were coming in, but “To ‘ell wiv ‘em!” said Copper Baldwin. “This is an education.” Mrs. Yudenow got the right key—she knew the feel of it in the dark—twisted it, flung open the door, burst in, and began, “So, at last—” Then she let out such a scream, so high and sustained that it was later alleged that the factory hands of the locality went to dinner. She fell back in my arms unconscious. Sam Yudenow got her by the legs and said, “Give Mrs. Yudenow a lift out into the fresh air, Laventry. Copper, get a glass cold w
ater—a glass cold water get.”

For “fresh air” we carried her to the office and put her on the chaise longue. The Chinese Contortionist, who had followed close behind us, took off his wig and fanned her with it. She awoke with a sneeze.

Sam Yudenow said, “Dolly, what’s the matter, what? Tell Sammy, Doll, what did somebody do to us?”

“That face! Oh, that face!” cried Mrs. Yudenow.

“What? Mr. Eena?” said Sam Yudenow. “A new attraction. A face is only skin deep. But this one, Dolly, is made of India rubber. I got a use for ‘im. Cashier, praps.... Eena, make again miv the ears.... Can you imagine, thvough a box-office window, such a face, for example? ... But what
d’you come here for, Dolly, notmivstanding? You wanted s
omething? Only speak!”