Fowlers End (32 page)

“If you do not take this thing off my hands,” I said, “I will not be answerable for the consequences.”

“Let me smell your breath.”

Tick-tick-tick-tick
went the suitcase. Almost weeping with vexation, I said, “This box has got a time bomb in it, due to go off at any moment. I warn you—“

“I warn
you,
none o’ these larks. What d’you want? First, you’ve lost a ring. Now you’ve found this little trunk. Well then, why don’t you take it to the Lost Property Office? Oh, well, all right, fill in this form. If it is not claimed within six months, et cetera—”

Then a jolly-looking old jailer came to my rescue, saying with wheezy good nature, “I think the gentleman’s got it into his head that there’s explosives in this case. Why not open it up and have a dekko?”

The Sergeant looked at me closely and said in a knowing manner, “And it seems to me this person, or persons, has got a broken nose, too.” He shot a question at me:
“Parlez-vous
Greek?”

Hopping from one foot to the other, I replied,
“Non, mais cette
Goddamned trunk
est
stuffed miv C3H5(N03)3.
Ecoutez done, comme elle
ticks,
pour
Christ’s sake!”

“I thought so,” said the Sergeant. “Repeat that, please, while I take it down.”

The jolly jailer said, “Look, mister, save time and public money, and open it up.”

“I haven’t got the keys!”

The man at the desk said, “He’s not here on a charge. No right to search him without his permission. Better fill up a form.”

“I
do
detect a kind of ticking noise,” said the jailer dubiously. And he produced from some recess in his clothes
what might be described as a Brobdingnagian charm bracelet hung with a thousand little keys. He squinted at the locks on the case and found the right key at once, lifted the lid and stood back. All that came out was a stale smell.

Fascinated, tense in throat and stomach, I watched the Sergeant uncovering a knobbly object surrounded by old newspapers and covered with an old stained camisole. It was tamped in by a variety of old socks and a suit of woolen combinations worn into holes like a fishing net. At last were exposed a cheap alarm clock and two dry batteries in a tangle of wires with shiny, newly cut ends—nothing more. The hands of the clock stood at precisely twelve-thirty; I noticed this, because I didn’t know where else to look—and, right on the dot, the alarm went off in a tintinnabulation that frighte
ned me into a state bordering on idiocy, so that between that and relief I could not hold back a high peal of laughter.

Then the Sergeant let me have it. He had been a Lance-Sergeant in the Guards, in his time. It was not so much his vocabulary but his command of the most injurious phrases and epithets in the English language; and what he said to me I do not like to think about, let alone make public. He wanted to charge me with something—obstructing the police, for example—but, finding himself in a false position, decided to be merciful. It was hoaxers like me, he swore, that lost us half a million men at Passchendaele, and if he had his way he would take me into the cells and give me a bloody good hiding.
Henceforward, he assured me, he would have his eye on me. If it were not for a corrupt administration, he would in any case squash me against the wall like a bedbug, drive me into the floor like a tintack— tough as I no doubt thought I was—belt me, scoff me, and in general make my life unbearable. When, about here, I asked if I might please have a glass of water, the jolly jailer intervened before the Sergeant fell dead of apoplexy and,
citing some obscure law whereby they cannot apply the thumbscrew, crush to death a prisoner who refuses to plead, or refuse an accused man a drink of water, took me to the back of the police station and offered me, in the coziest of the cells, a mug of tea and a slice of cake.

He was a fatherly kind of fellow and gave me advice, namely: “You college boys are always up to larks. But don’t you try that one here again, that’s all I’m telling you, because there’s about nine counts we could get you on. Drink your tea, grab your bag, and take your lucky.”

So, burning with shame but faint with relief, I took Kyra’s suitcase to Charing Cross Station, where I proposed to check it in the cloakroom.

The clerk said, “One moment, please,” and disappeared. About half a minute later I found myself surrounded by big men in undistinguished clothes, one of whom said to me, with all possible politeness, “Excuse me, but would you happen to mind if I happened to have a little tiny look inside that case of yours—if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble to let me have the loan of the keys for just a moment?”

“Oh,” I said, “look as much as you like. Only I haven’t got any keys.”

“That’s funny, isn’t it?”

Meanwhile, a crowd was gathering. I remember that a matron pointed at me, shouting, “Serve ‘im right!” Then she asked her neighbor, “What’s ‘e done?” A space was cleared by the police. One of the cloakroom clerks fainted away while the polite detective opened Kyra’s suitcase very easily with a hairpin and a penknife. Seeing that there was nothing inside it but old newspapers, dirty washing, two batteries and an alarm clock, he became annoyed. He, too, gave me a lecture, but only a mild one.

I stopped it by asking, “And is there any law which says that a gentleman may not carry such articles in a suitcase? Are we living in the Middle Ages?”

He said no, not exactly, but orders were orders. So I checked Kyra’s suitcase. The clerk, who had been brought to with a dose of water, banged it down on a shelf and started the bell of the alarm clock ringing again; at which he fainted again. I couldn’t blame him: they were hard times for cloakroom cl
erks—if it wasn’t dynamite from the I.R.A., it was dead babies or portions of unidentifiable female torsos. Once some practical joker deposited a horse’s liver in a tin trunk one summer’s day and went away never to be heard of again.

It seems that I fell into this class because, although he said nothing more, the polite detective followed me with such a look that it seemed to go right through my back like two knitting needles.

It would appear that I was born to be misu
nderstood, and to misunderstand.

I had duties to perform, arduous and unpleasant ones, for which I never was spiritually equipped: I had money to borrow—and while I was convinced that on the Cruikback deal I could return my investors at least seven hundred per cent, I felt that I was on a begging errand. To keep up my strength, I went to a teashop and ordered poached eggs on mashed potatoes. By God knows what miracle of divided consciousness, I put my elbow into it.

12

JUNE WHISTLER was wearing, again, that preposterous gown; and she had been otherwise busy with needles and crochet hook. She had made five pairs of diminutive woolen boots and was working now on a cashmere layette, crooning in a clear sweet voice (but it only had one note) some kind of lullaby, of which I remember only these lines:

Good night, brother squirrel, to bed I must go,
I spend all my winters in sleeping, you know
...

When I came in she cried, “Daddy!” and offered me a sedate embrace, almost at arm’s length.

“You mustn’t be too rough with me. I can distinctly feel kicking.”

“What, already?” I asked.

“I’m awfully healthy, you know, and with some people the little baby develops quicker than in others. Thank God I come of good sound yeoman stock! Really, you know, it’s quite unnecessary to gestate for nine months. It runs in my family. I was born at seven months, and even then they had to get me out with steel forceps. I come of a healthy breed. Oh, darling, I was so looking forward to seeing you! What a pity we can’t make love.”

After what I had been through that day, it would have been a great relief to go to bed with this charming girl with the manzanita hair. In fact, it seemed unreasonable not to. If she were indeed pregnant, by her own reckoning she couldn’t be more than twelve days gone.

“At this stage,” I said hopefully, “I’m sure it couldn’t hurt.” I could not help adding, with some irony, “Or are you afraid, perhaps, that I’ll get kicked?”

She replied gravely, “No, it isn’t that. I got
The Midwife’s Handbook
out of the library, and at this stage the
foetus is head downwards. So the kicking is upwards. And it looks like a dog, a little dog.”

“Do you think it might bite me then?”

There was no stopping her, for the moment. She ran on: “The human foetus goes through all kinds of stages. Isn’t it marvelous? You’d be surprised at the stages the human foetus goes through. In our family we skip a few of them, but generally you look like a tadpole, and then a fish, and then a dog—only instead of limbs you’ve got buds, little buds—” Evidently she was thinking of roses, or something. “And at last there is a real human being with a soul. And it doesn’t hurt, really; and it needn’t be expensive. I didn’t hurt my mother a bit, only it cost thirty-five shillings for ether.... I b
eg your pardon, were you trying to be sarcastic just now?”

“Tadpoles, dogs!” I muttered. “I beg your pardon, sweetheart, only I’ve had a hard morning. Honestly, June, I’m prepared to take my chance of being bitten or kicked as the case may be. Really, I’m quite a strong man. I’ve already been kicked by pretty hefty fellows. And at twelve days, even if this foetus had teeth on it like a mastiff, isn’t it so to speak imprisoned for the time being? I mean, be reasonable. It might look a bit like a dog, but it isn’t, so to speak, kept on a chain to bite people. I cannot consider you, darling, as a kennel. As for its turning out a human being, you can b
elieve me from current experience, the odds against that are about a hundred to one. It won’t mind. Come on, June?”

“Oh, darling, if only it was yesterday!”

“And what was it yesterday? An amoeba, or something?”

“I’m trying to make you understand. It was the little birdies that go
tweet-tweet-tweet,”
she said. “This I do not understand.”

“Well, if you want me to put it in plain English, I was squiffy, and twittered.” And when I still failed to grasp her meaning, she said, “Wait a minute,” and got out
What Every Girl Should Know,
turned the pages until she found the item she wanted, which she marked for me with a delicate pink thumbnail. Feminine euphemisms never fail to amuse and astonish me; women will employ the vilest vulgarisms and the most sickeningly allusive argot rather than the clean scientific term. June Whistler was simply menstruating.

There are certain situations in which all you can do is slap yourself violently on the forehead. This was one of them. I swallowed several times and then said, “Look here, June. After a delay of four days you start naming your future son—”

“Five days.”

“Then you start knitting dozens of pairs of little woolen boots—”

“Only five pairs,” she said, her eyes filling with
tears.

“On top of that you menstruate—” “Don’t
use
such language in my house! I had the red flag out.”

“Excuse me, I will not use any such sickening roundabout talk. Then you start making cashmere layettes. For God’s sake!”

She said, “It’s in
The Nurse’s Vade Mecum:
often a girl can squiff up to the eighth month. And I think you’re being absolutely beastly!” Her anger being aroused, she tore up the
Sunday Express;
relented, wept, wiped her eyes on one of the little white boots, and said, “Comfort me, Daniel—I did so want my little Belisarius.”

I couldn’t help it: this was the crowning absurdity of the day. “Little Belisarius!” I cried, and burst into helpless laughter. “Little Belisarius!”

She hurled the nurse’s
Vade Mecum
at me, missed, but followed it up with an eccles cake, which, by good fortune, hit me on the chin. I say good fortune because, at the sight of this little round cake sticking to my face, her anger vanished and this best-hearted of women began to laugh. Then she contemplated the baby boots and the partly finished layette and said, “I can unravel them and make you a sweater.”

“It would be better,” I said, “to give them to Dr. Barnardo’s Home.”

This idea brightened her up considerably. “I’ll finish the layette,” she said, “only I’ll stipulate, definitely, that the child they go to must be called Belisarius.”

I said, “For God’s sake, sweetheart, don’t do it! They’ll make his life a misery. Say you had a baby of that name. Would you address him as Belisarius? Certainly not. You’d call him Belly. That name would stick to him throughout his life. In any case, gifts of this kind ought to be unconditional.” Mirth overtook me again, half hysterical. “Twittering!” I exclaimed, and she couldn’t help laughing with me; she was relieved, too, only she didn’t want to admit it.

Very tenderly she peeled the eccles cake off my face, scraped its filling off my cheek with a fruit knife, put it back where it belonged, and served it to me with a cup of tea. Then, as if struck with an inspiration, she said, “But perhaps you’re hungry?” and produced a small paper packet. Her eyes filled with tears as she assured me, “Really, they’re awfully nutritious. Honestly, they absorb twenty times their bulk, and it doesn’t take five minutes. Couldn’t I make you a Greenburger—just a little one? Let me lick that eccles cake off your face and fry you a lovely Greenburger?”

I said, “No Greenburgers,” and, taking the envelope out of her hand, opened the window, and threw the envelope into the street.

“But this is preposterous!” June Whistler said, in her great-lady manner.

“I dare say,” I said, adding, “Twitterer!”

After a spell of helpless laughter she became grave—somewhat in the manner of a little girl who is arranging a cardboard-box funeral for a dead mouse—and said, “This is no laughing matter, you know.”

Hardened, perhaps, by Fowlers End, I said, “To me this is a great laughing matter. Sit down, June, and let me talk to you.”

She plucked disconsolately at the maternity garment which she expected, somehow, to fit tight in no time at all, brightened, and said briskly, “Of course, you know, I’m awfully frugal. I allowed for taking in. Really, I could turn this into a summer frock under your eyes.... Dan Laverock, I won’t be laughed at!”

“Shut up and sit down,” I said, with a peculiar lisp because the eccles cake I had tried to swallow was still clinging to the roof of my mouth.

“I love it when you talk to me like that. Call me a bitch. Oh, please call me a bitch!”

“I’ll see you in hell first!” I cried. “You are nothing of the sort.”

“Would you like to bite me?”

“Certainly not,” I said, with indignation.

“Not even pinch my breasts?”

“You know perfectly well that I don’t go in for such things,” I said, “only I want to do something worse to you.”

She cried, “Oh, do it, do it! But not where I’m twittering.... Will you mark me all over with your talons?”

“I will do nothing of the sort. I was simply trying to say that I wanted to borrow some money off you.”