Dance and Skylark (19 page)

Florrie, meanwhile, stood ready with the brandy bottle; for it was her experience that only in cases of severe and indeed mortal sickness would such a strict teetotaller as Mr. Handiman enter a public house. Mr. Handiman, however, when Stephen asked him what he'd have, timidly requested a lemonade; and clutching the glass in a hand that was obviously not much used to holding glasses, he went across to Mr. Oxford, with whom he began a conversation in urgent whispers. Florrie tactfully raised her voice as she discoursed to Stephen on the subject of her last husband and his peculiar hobby.

“—And when he'd finished the bottle,” she said; “well,
punished
it, that was always his word, Florrie, he'd say, looking quite ashamed like, ‘I've been punishing the whisky again'—then he'd ask for a kettle of boiling water and he'd steam off the label ever so careful and stick it in his scrap-book.”

Stephen, who was beginning to enjoy himself, bought Florrie a port and himself another pink gin. Florrie went on:

“But in the war there was too many brands, you see, and he overdid it. They had gaudy labels such as I'd never seen in fifty years in the Trade, all about dewy glens and mountain mists and there was one with a picture of a dying stag on it, called Twelve-Pointer. Now 'tis my belief as
that Twelve-Pointer killed my husband; for it was the last bottle of whisky he ever drank. Pleased as Punch he was to find it, because he said it made his hundredth brand. And when I came back from work that night he said quietly, ‘I've been punishing the Twelve-Pointer, Florrie, I'm afraid.' But he didn't have the heart to steam the label off it. I got the doctor to him in the night, and next day he died.”

Florrie heaved a tremulous sigh. Stephen observed a brief silence to the memory of Bertie and the bottle of Twelve-Pointer, and heard Mr. Oxford, whose whisper would in lesser men have been described as a hoarse shout, saying:

“Not a bet, not a
bet
, Mr. Handiman: what you mean is a little investment.”

“That's it, investment,” squeaked Timms.

There was the sound of notes being counted; and Mr. Oxford said to Timms out of the corner of his mouth: “Two hundred pounds to a fiver, Mr. H. Put that down careful, 'cause we'll have to lay it off.” He turned to Mr. Handiman.

“Shake on it,” he said; and Mr. Handiman, unaccustomed to these formalities, shyly put out his hand. A moment later he took his leave and scurried out of the bar like a bolted rabbit.

Mr. Oxford swallowed his whisky, licked his lips, and said at last:

“It will out. You cannot keep it down. It's like rubbub beneath a concrete floor; it always comes up in the end.”

“What does?” asked Stephen.

“The Englishman's natural desire to 'ave a little flutter,”
said Mr. Oxford, beaming. “Spite of laws, spite of Ministers, spite of Methody. You cannot keep the Englishman down.”

“Tradition!” exclaimed Timms, as one who had made a startling discovery.

“As you say, old man, tradition. ‘Earts of hoak! And where should we be, I ask you, if we had not got that tradition? We'd never 'ave 'ad a little flutter at Mons; we'd never 'ave 'ad a little flutter at Dunkirk. Winnie'd never 'ave 'ad 'is bloody great gamble on invading Normandy. In other words, old man, if it weren't for the Englishman's 'abit of 'aving a little flutter, we'd be down the plug-'ole, all of us!”

Delighted with this logical conclusion to his argument, Mr. Oxford called for drinks all round; and although Stephen was well aware that he ought to go back to his office, where Faith was dealing single-handed with whatever fresh catastrophes the past half-hour had brought, he allowed himself to be persuaded to have a third glass of gin. He was already feeling the beneficial effect of the first two, for his panic had entirely vanished and in retrospect the affair of the transparent dresses seemed to have been very funny indeed. Councillor Noakes was no longer repellent, but was a figure of minor comedy; as dear old Florrie sensibly said, it took all sorts to make a world. Even last night's rehearsal had been funny, thought Stephen, if one looked at it in the right way; and to-night's promised to be funnier still. In a mood of unwonted devil-may-care he swigged his gin and, since it was now his turn, ordered another round. While he was doing so Lance came into the
bar, followed shortly by Mr. Gurney, who as soon as he saw him playfully poked him in the stomach with his umbrella, crying, “Naughty! Naughty! I have found you out!”

“What have I done now?” said Lance.

“I went to the rehearsal last night. You can't pull the wool over my old eyes.”

“Well?”

“Young man,” said Mr. Gurney, “you
made up
those folk-songs.”

Lance, in considerable embarrassment, gave Stephen a sideways look.

“Well, not exactly. Say if you like that 1 improvised on an old theme.”

“Oh, don't imagine I'm blaming you,” grinned Mr. Gurney. “A man who's been in the old furniture trade as long as I have knows that many a forgery is better than the original. And sometimes,” he added thoughtfully, “the forgeries are harder to produce.”

Stephen, who as producer should have been shocked by Lance's admission that the folk-songs weren't genuine, was surprised to discover that it merely endeared Lance to him by betraying a new, mischievous and original aspect of his character. For now, after four gins, he was aware of comedy stirring all round him, in the corvine croak of Mr. Gurney, in the rich pomposities of Mr. Oxford, in Timms' diminuendo squeak, in Florrie's tales about her three husbands. Surely, he thought, she is the Wife of Bath reincarnated! And there came into his mind the perfect motto for her:

                  
And Jesu Crist us sende
Housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe-a-bedde,
And grace to overbyde hem that we wedde
.

He was so pleased with the aptness of the quotation, and the accuracy of his memory, that his heart warmed to Florrie, and when in her old-fashioned way she said, “It's my turn to stand treat now,” he felt that it would be discourteous, cavalierly, it would be downright un-chivalrous in the face of such a friendly gesture to refuse her; and since Florrie had been brought up in the Trade, in which the greatest sin is to be niggardly in hospitality, she poured him out a very large one, with which most daringly he drank a toast to her fourth marriage: “for you've done the hat-trick, my dear Florrie,” he said in a voice that was curiously unlike his own, “and upon my word, I believe you'll bowl another man out yet!”

Florrie's large bosom heaved with pleasure, quivered and fluttered as if some eager bird were imprisoned in it. Stephen was now comfortably leaning on the bar in the attitude of one who had been there for a long time and proposed to remain there much longer, and she rose up before him like a mountain—no, there was a suggestion of cragginess about mountains, like a huge hill of Cotswold, Stephen thought, composed of the kindliest convexities which ran together towards the summit and suddenly fell away in a steep escarpment on the other side. Splendid and spendthrift she must have been in her youth, thought Stephen:

And I was yong and Jul of ragerye,
Stiborn and strong, and joly as a pye
.

He had a keen sense of history and of the continuity of English things; and perhaps this sense was sharpened by drink, for as Florrie turned away to serve him with another gin—Mr. Gurney had called for a round—and as he contemplated the steep scarp of her back, broad and rippling beneath the black lace dress, he said to himself, “She is the Wife of Bath indeed. In each generation she is born again. These are the true, the only immortals—she and Falstaff, Doll Tearsheet, Bottom, Shallow, Pistol, Nym, the Wellers, Mr. Micawber. They are omnipresent and ubiquitous. You could always find them, somewhere in England, if you knew where to look. They, and not poor little whimsy Peter Pan, are the ones that never grow old!” Into the midst of these confused but fascinating speculations burst the voice of Mr. Oxford booming, most aptly, the word “Tradition,” and Stephen was struck by the percipience of Mr. Oxford, who through a haze of whisky was nevertheless able to distinguish eternal truth. A lovable fellow, thought Stephen; and Timms was only slightly less so. He moved across the bar towards them.

“Take Charles the First,” said Mr. Oxford. “There's tradition for you!”

“They cut his bleeding head off,” said Timms.

“Ah,” Mr. Oxford sighed. “There was, indeed, a breach of tradition there. But take Charles the Second, 'iding in a hoak-tree. The hoak, symbolic, as they say, of
England. ‘Earts of hoak, old man! There's tradition for you!”

“'Dition.” Timms' squeak was becoming very faint indeed; it must be getting late, thought Stephen, and looking at the clock above Florrie's head, which was decorated with a big bunch of balloons, he was horrified to see that it was a quarter to two. And the official opening was at three! Nevertheless, he decided he just had time to smoke one cigarette and drink the gin which Mr. Gurney had bought for him. He put his hand into his pocket, searching for the cigarette packet, and discovered the forgotten bundle of telegrams. He opened one, finding unaccustomed difficulty in slitting the envelope, and read:

Daisy delighted deputise Toto very quiet aged shall I send road or rail Smythe. …

He read it again, and it meant nothing to him. He opened another telegram.

Will gladly lend little girl's pet dark tan unusual markings Railton. …

Stephen took a third telegram at random. Fortunately for his sanity this one was more explicit. It said:

Am sending substitute donkey in horse-box no charge Brown. …

He finished his gin, and for an uncomfortable moment the comical and extravagant world seemed to revolve about him, nebulous as a dream. Then he heard Lance saying: “Have one for the road, Stephen,” and with a great effort he collected his wits; though his voice, as he thanked Lance, seemed even more alien to himself than it had done before.

“Alas, no,” he said gravely. “I have to see a girl about a donkey.” And with no more difficulty than might have been ascribed to his wounded knee he contrived to make his way to the door.

A fleet of red charabancs was passing through the town. They were full of fishermen and the wives and intendeds of fishermen, but Stephen associated them vaguely with the Festival because most of the women were wearing comic paper-hats. They lent colour to the streets as they went by, matching the flags which had broken out all over the town like bunting on a ship's mast when she suddenly makes a long signal. How strange, thought Stephen, that he had not noticed those flags when he walked up the street on his way to the Red Lion, and that he had paid no attention to the roses either, which filled the window-boxes outside almost every house and shop. Why, the Town Hall, with red and white ramblers growing in tubs on each side of the door, and more ramblers hanging from mossy baskets, was a very bower, an arbour of roses. What a purblind miserable wretch he must have been not to see them; and by contrast what an impressionable, responsive, cheerful Matthew Merrygreek he felt now, as he daringly dodged the charabancs and waved his hat gaily in response to the banter of the paper-hatted women! He gazed about him like a sightseer, craning his neck to look at the flags of all the nations which were hung across the street. Remnants of old coronations and jubilees, they fluttered with a sad defiance in the wind, the blue, black and white of Esthonia, the black, white and red of Germany before Hitler, Albania's
eagle, the forgotten flags of Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Hungary and Montenegro. They came out of the rag-bag of a dead Europe, they were the attic-rubbish of a departed age.

But certainly they brightened the town. It had been quite transformed by the flags and the roses; and Stephen was troubled by a sense of unfamiliarity with the street which he walked along every day: an odd feeling, dreamlike and disconcerting. But here, at any rate, was a homely figure: that of Mr. Handiman with his fishing-rod over his shoulder and an old wicker creel on his back. Stephen remembered that he was responsible for the roses and hastened to congratulate him.

“Mr. Handiman,” he said, shaking him warmly by the hand, “you are like the Goddess Flora!”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Handiman, looking strangely at him.

“Roses and raptures!” exclaimed Stephen, making a sweeping gesture towards the window-boxes and tubs outside the Town Hall; but Mr. Handiman had already fled, leaving Stephen with his arm upraised like a bishop giving a blessing. From time to time, as he hurried up the street, Mr. Handiman glanced back over his shoulder in a puzzled and rather furtive way, which made Stephen feel extremely uncomfortable; and he was also worried about the behaviour of his lame leg, for it seemed even stifler than usual and caused him to walk with a sort of goose-step which felt quite as ridiculous as he was sure it must appear to the passers-by. After a few paces he paused to rest it, leaning upon his stick, and in that moment it was borne
upon him that he was drunk. Drunk, by God, within less than an hour of the official opening! Simultaneously there emerged from the Town Hall the Mayor himself, in his robes and chain of office. He waved to Stephen and hastened towards him.

“My poor chap,” said the Mayor kindly. “Your leg's giving you trouble, I'm afraid.”

“A mere twinge,” Stephen managed to say.

“Ah, you make light of it, I know.” The Mayor put a hand upon his shoulder. He looked ridiculous in his robes, yet curiously engaging, like a well-loved uncle dressed up as Father Christmas. Eager as a schoolboy, be burst out:

“I've got some news for you, Stephen.
Foreign visitors
are beginning to arrive!”

Stephen thought it best to say nothing. He fixed his eyes upon the heavy medallion at the end of the Mayor's gold chain and orientated himself by that fixed point as by a star.