Fowlers End (35 page)

We got the business over and done with in no time at all. When we were out of that malodorous office and back in Chicken Lane, I said to June Whistler, “Well, now you are a director of a Limited Company, eh?”

“Hold up, lady!” cried Copper Baldwin, as she fainted in his arms. “It’s all right, so am I.... If you ask me, the lady wants a drop o’ brandy.”

She came to in a few seconds and, still clutching her prayer book in Swahili, allowed herself to be led into the private bar of the Wat Tyler, which was almost exactly opposite the cook shop: one of those extraordinary pubs that look forlorn and forgotten but in which big business is done in the City. Coming into a place like Chicken Lane and pushing open the sticky red door of the Wat Tyler, you find to your astonishment well-dressed men, all whispering. This was before the Wat Tyler got a direct hit with an eight-hundred-pound bomb in 1941. It was in all the papers: there were fo
urteen corpses and seven hundred skeletons—the bomb had turned up another old plague pit under the foundations. That was the night brave London burned, and St. Paul’s, marvelously untouched, stood nobly against the flames.

Well, there is no more Wat Tyler now, but there was then and a charming place it was. When I called for brandy,
the land-lady produced a hundred-year-old bottle of very young liquor which she poured as if it were molten gold, and charged for it likewise. Baldwin and I had ale. At the first sip of brandy, June Whistler, who could not take her eyes off the bottle, revived. “It really is remarkable when you think that Napoleon himself might have drunk this very same brandy,” she said.

“Ain’t it?” said Copper Baldwin. “Or Stanley Baldwin, or Winston Churchill. Marvelous. You drink it all up, ma’am, and we’ll get a bite.”

It was impossible not to smell the cook shop, and I could see his Adam’s apple working as he swallowed something that was not his pint of ale, which he had finished at a gulp. I said, “Let’s go across the road—” my mouth was watering, too—“Let’s have boiled ham and pease pudding.”

“I’d love that!” said June Whistler.

But Copper Baldwin, with jaunty disdain, said, “That place is for pen-pushers—in celluloid collars. You stand up and eat like a bloody—excuse me, ma’am—like a confounded ‘orse at a bloody manger. No, we’ll go to Tozer’s, where the directors go. They make a special kind o’ pie—steak and kidney, oysters and mushrooms, and skylarks.”

Dreading to meet my Uncle Hugh, I said, “Come on, Copper, we’ve got to get back.”

June said, “Did you ever read ‘Ode to a Skylark’?”

“
‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit, Bird thou never wert ...’“ said Copper Baldwin, “and something about ‘profuse strains of unpremeditated art.’ But economically valueless. One nest o’ skylarks will devastate an acre, in season—“

“I couldn’t eat a skylark,” said June Whistler, her eyes filling with tears, “but I’d like to taste one....”

So we went to Tozer’s, where grave and hearty men used to sit in booths and eat themselves half insensible at lunchtime. My appetite had left me. As soon as he set foot
in this ancient and somber restaurant, Copper Baldwin showed signs of a desire to flee. All over the place men in stiff collars who were built like cubes were talking millions and writing on the tablecloths.

The waiters alone were worth the money—Tozer made them wear frock coats, and the youngest of them was over sixty. God knows where he found them: they all had the air of scions of some great house, begotten on the wrong side of a monogrammed blanket, who had been kept in the scullery for half a century or so to nurse a terrible grievance. Our waiter was the spitting image of Austen Chamberlain. Frustrated though I was in the matter of the boiled ham and pease pudding, I enjoyed Copper Baldwin’s discomfiture. But June Whistler was having a good time.

As if attached to an invisible thread, the little finger of her right hand went up in the air. With this finger she adjusted an errant wisp of hair, while she said to the waiter in a languid voice, “Really, I think I could eat a skylark.”

“The pie, ma’am?”

Becoming irritated, I said, “Presumably the lady doesn’t want a skylark in a cage!” “One pie.... Gentlemen?” “Three pies,” I said. “Cocktails?”

“Champagne cocktails,” said Copper Baldwin aggressively. “And make ‘em double.”

The waiter called a wine waiter who looked like Prosper Merimee, “The Man Nobody Could Love.” He took the order with such an air of disgust that I wished I were dead; June Whistler thought him distinguished. There was a busboy, too, who resembled Chopin in the last stages of consumption, and a headwaiter who put me in mind of President Wilson. The proprietor had once been mistaken, in Smithfield Market, for King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales.

I said to Copper Baldwin, “And what would have been the matter with boiled ham and pease pudding?”

“Better order wine,” said he, putting down his empty glass with a grimace.

“Beer,” I said.

“What, can you order wallop from that bloke wiv the silver chain round ‘is neck?”

“I can and I will,” I said. Then the food came, under silver covers. It was common or garden steak and kidney, with foreign bodies in it. I said, “They buy only two or three skylarks in the summer and keep on using the bones—”

But June Whistler did not hear; she was engrossed. While tears trickled down her face, she was saying between substantial mouthfuls, “‘Bird thou never wert’... Oh, the cruelty of men! To cut off his melodious pipes ...”

Copper Baldwin was eating sourly; he knew he was in the wrong. Assured now that my Uncle Hugh was not likely to be in today, I got my appetite back and, having emptied my plate, called for dessert and cheese. I tried to revive the spirits of Copper Baldwin. I made June Whistler keep a skylark bone for luck. The meal had put heart into me. We all felt better. I told preposterous anecdotes about my Uncle Hugh, whom I represented as a species of bloated clown—at the top of my voice, too.

I called for port, I called for brandy and liqueurs, but when I called for the bill—in spite of Copper Baldwin’s protests—an assistant headwaiter, who could have stood in for Henry James, said respectfully but very distinctly, “It is
paid,
sir, thank you.”

“Paid? By whom?”

“Mr. Hugh Laverock, sir, the gentleman in the booth immediately behind you. Thank you, sir.”

Feeling as if every bead of the perspiration that sprang out all over me was a small pin, I leaped to my feet. Oh, indeed, separated from me by about an inch of oak sat
my Uncle Hugh, who had been eating chateaubriand and drinking burgundy with a pair of rollicking stockbrokers. As I looked, the wine waiter, with an entirely different aspect from that which he had presented to me, came up with a bottle of unquestionable port.

“Have a nice lunch, Dan?” asked Uncle Hugh. I could only say, “Thank you, but—” “Didn’t want to barge in on your conference, old boy, but you don’t mind if your silly old uncle picks up the bill, I hope? Oh, by the bye—George Chowder, Bill Saulte—my nephew, Daniel Laverock. Introduce your friends?”

There was nothing for it but to do so. Copper Baldwin shook hands in his dour way. But June Whistler, comforted with skylarks and stayed with chartreuse, decided to be amusing. I was tormented by the fear that she might tell my Uncle Hugh about our big deal and tried to drag her away. But she wouldn’t come. They made room in the booth and offered B-and-B. There was nothing to do but accept— I was indebted again to that man.

Having swallowed a thimbleful of brandy-and-benedictine, I said, “Must get back on the job, I’m afraid. Look here, Uncle Hugh. This lunch. You mustn’t. I mean. No, honestly. After all’s said and done.”

“Well, all’s said and done, my boy, and that’s that. But shall I give you a tip? There’s an improved sound system coming out, and a new photoelectric cell. Talking pictures are in.”

“A mere fad,” I said. “A novelty. Are you ready, Copper?”

Ill at ease in such company, Copper Baldwin was very ready indeed; but June Whistler was not. She said, with hauteur, “Really, I can’t gulp. It’s awfully bad for one. Besides, I got the day off, so I’m a lady of leisure.”

So I shook hands with her and my Uncle Hugh, bowed politely to his friends, and left the restaurant with Copper Baldwin, seething with humiliation. I was sure that my Uncle Hugh had overheard every word I had said about him; and the annoying part of it was that he not only took it in good part, he seemed to find it funny.

When we got back to Fowlers End, Sam Yudenow was waiting in the vestibule, looking—with writhing lips and twitching nostrils—at a pitch-black Burma cheroot of the cheapest and vilest kind, which he was holding between thumb and forefinger. “Fire that rewinding boy!” he shouted. “Back to the reformatovy school miv him! Like a millionaire already, so he comes up to me and sticks this in my mouf, and says,” ‘Ave a cigar!’Is this discipline? Is it right? Laveridge, go and give ‘im a bloody good hiding. I would’ve done it myself, only I was taken off guard. Take this cigar away; put it on Godbolt’
s doorstep—he’ll think it was a dog. It tastes exactly like it....

“What a morning I’ve ‘ad! What a booking I made! I tell you an experience. A veritable
Covered Wagon,
that trade show! And a lovely title:
Sinners Beware!
We all owe a debt to society. This is it. Honest to Gord, it’ll frighten the piss out o’ the layabouts. And ‘ere’s the secret of show biz—let me not see a dry seat in the house—give ‘em the horrors, the dirty rotten yobbos!
Sinners Beware!
It’s all about venereable disease—pox, to you—spine-chilling, frank, revealing. That’ll put a stop to all this so-called sexual intercourse! Not that I give a flying bugger if the whole lot of ‘em catch bl
ack syphogonic cholera so their heads fall off, so long they pay for their seats, the scum. But I’m a funny fellow—I like to be unspirational, the layabouts. So wait till you see this picture, Daniels. You’ll never drink another cup o’ tea so long as you live without you first boil yourself. And before you touch a woman, paint ‘er miv
iodine, soak ‘er in permanganate of potash. Then run for your life.

“Oh, it’s marvelous, it’s terrible, it’s breath-taking! Draft me some streamers, double crowns, eight sheets, twelve sheets, twenty-four sheets, forty-eight sheets. Never since the
Covered Wagon
‘ave I wished there was such a thing as a ninety-six sheet! Sinners
Beware!
It’s clean as a whistle, but we play up the sex angle, get it? It’s scientific. It’s German. It’s all about pox and clap and ‘ow to get it— as if the layabouts don’t know. Rahnd Fowlers End anybody who ‘asn’t got clap ‘as got pox; the rest are consumptive. So let ‘em learn a lesson, the stinkpots! Lavendrock, tell me
like a father—’ave
you been drinking tea
out of a cup lately?’

“Well, what am I supposed to drink tea out of? A jamjar?”

“Did I say that?” asked Sam Yudenow. “At home it’s different. I got a set from Hacker the Breaker, miv scalloped cups, and my wife is clean as a whistle. Did I say a whistle? As a gentleman I withdraw that statement. What is filthier than a whistle? Everybody breathes into it, and it ‘as to be shook out. Spittle comes. When Booligan was ‘ere, the police whistle was going day and night. Ever smell the inside of a trombone from the wrong end? Mauseating. Gord forbid that my wife’s tea set should be clean as a whistle. Tea we drink, in my house, not gob.... But this picture: it’s unfantic, it’s
gryadammatic, it’s credible, it’s unbelievable! Laveridge, pox is like a snake. They done it like
Mutt and Jeff.
You go into a teashop, so you say, miv a mysterious smile, ‘Tea and a Bath bun.’ And very nice too. But believe me—I’m telling you for your own good—in the wim o’ this cup is a chip, and in your lip is a crack, so magnifried objects come out. Result, geneval paralysis.... There was also a sequence. In a park a bloody policeman kisses— miv a mustache yet—a nursemaid miv a pram. Nursemaid
kisses contents of pram. Result? The baby’s face falls off. It’s marvelous!”

He was overcome with emotion for a moment but went on earnestly, ‘Tell me one thing—do
you wear a belt?”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

With tremendous vehemence Sam Yudenow cried, “Get rid of it!”

“Then my trousers will fall down,” I said.

“Thvough belts comes pyorrhea. You’ll see. Thank Gord I wear braces. In
Sinners Beware!
you’ll see a sequence, a sadder and wiser man it should make you, you! Jesus Christ, so there’s somebody like a postman miv a sword. A blonde gives ‘im a mysterious smile in a room where there’s a brass bed miv knobs on. So he takes off his belt, he takes off his boots, he takes off his jacket, he takes off his trousers. The boy is well brought up—he takes off his cap. Two seconds later, so this nice boy is bald, miv a thing on his head like a volcano—ain’t nature marvelous?—and his wife is paralyzed,
and his son is blind, and his daughter is mad miv Hutchingson’s teeth, and there’s a whole hospital full o’ babies miv sores and not a nose between ‘em. Ashundder ran up and down my back—it was just like Fowlers End, only there were clean sheets. No more belts, no more teacups. Let the layabouts drink octupuses out o’ chips. Buy yourself a new teacup. Your face falls off, and I’m the sufferer. Miv no nose, Sam Yudenow don’t want a manager. It looks bad, kind o’ style. In my vestibule it gets people groggy. Next time you get a chance to undress, and I want my managers should change the
ir shirt at least once a week, look out for a rash on the chest. And lay off the tea. If you go to a restaurant, carry miv you a few crystals permanganate o’ potash: put ‘em in the coffee, sprinkle on the chops, make a solution in a glass water—a glass water costs nothing—and give a good soak
to the cutlery. And
never use toilent paper somebody ‘as used before....

“But there is hope, thank Gord! A couple poor boys made it incurable, miv mercury and arsenic. You seen mercury? Believe me, it’s fascinating, like germs—you can’t put your finger on it. It’s too fast. It’s faster than germs; it runs after them and crushes them. Arsenic is a deadly poison
; it gives them such a deadly poisoning your worst enemies should have such a deadly poisoning. Only your teeth fall out. Believe me, teeth are a source of infection, ‘better out than in,’ as the duchess said when she blew off. Venereable disease was invented by a Yisher fellow called Ehrlich. That’s what
they
say. But the originator o’ pox was Wassermann—anoth
er one, miv an assistant, some Gveek called Reaction.... No, Lavendrock, the time comes when you don’t want to be commercial. You want to do good. I want to spread venereable disease over the country. And put a stop to any intercourse whatsoever. I booked
Sinners Beware!
for a whole week, miv an option. It should gross more than
The Four Feathers.
It shook me. Boil me a glass o’ water.”