Fowlers End (23 page)

“Get her washed and changed,” I said. “She’s offensive. She’s offensive to you, and me, and herself.” I added, “And who will be the sufferer? Everybody will say I did it. I don’t mind telling you, I’ll see myself damned before I let this sort of thing go on every night. Into the ladies’ toilet with her, before Sam Yudenow comes down!”

So we got her there. She did not take much undressing, since she was wearing only a vile old slip and what they used to call a “‘jumper suit” of knitted wool.

“They’ll do for Godbolt’s doorstep,” said Copper Baldwin, pushing them aside with a squeegee. “Come on now, pull yourself together like the gentleman says, Miss Noel. Mr. Laverock wants you to play for him, Miss Noel, and ‘e’s a gentleman in a very important position. Come on now, Miss Noel. The gentleman’s accustomed to better be’avior than this, you know....” Meanwhile I washed her with a loofah.

At a certain point she said, “I’ll do the rest. Please go outside for a moment.”

And so we did, but not before Copper Baldwin had picked up the bottle of eau de cologne and put it in his pocket.

“You mug, she’d drink it,” he told me, with his eye to a crack in the door. “... It’s all right, chum. I’m looking for a purpose. Yes, she’s washing all right. We’ll sprinkle ‘er with this stuff afterwards.... Gawd stone me blind if she ain’t washing ‘er ‘air! Now this is something I ‘ave not seen....” He imparted to this commentary a quality of
breathless excitement, like one of the better sports commentators. “Now she’s drying it—now she’s combing it—now the comb’s bust!... No, it ain’t—yes, it ‘as—no, it ain’t; it got through! ... Wait a minute, the insides of ‘er arms are wet. She’s groggy, but she’s dryin’ ‘em—and oh, my, does she look bruised! Yes, sir, she must ‘ave ‘it ‘erself in the shoulder with the piano.... Now, what’s the first thing she goes for? ‘Er combinations! She never ‘ad none before.... Drawers coming up! Oh, nicely, nicely! A bit low in the knees but lovely, tell your mum! Stockings now.... Oh, pity, p
ity—no garters? Ah, good gel, very good gel—rolled ‘er tops—that’s right, twist ‘em. Good, good. Now it’s the lipstick—steady now, steady—that’s right! Jumper, skirt—it nearly fits. Comb again. Pat, pat, pat with the old towel, and it’s the old sweet song: ‘Johnny, I ‘Ardly Knew You!’... And now she’s picking ‘er nails with that little file....” There were tears in his eyes now as he said to me, “‘Ow did you do that, Dan?”

“Not I,” I said.

Then Miss Noel came out of the lavatory, looking drunker than ever, but in a different way. Copper Baldwin sprinkled her with the stuff Laylock called eau de cologne and said to me, “You ought to got ‘er a toothbrush, some face powder, and a bit o’ glycerin-and-rosewater for ‘er ‘ands—”

I was going to explain that I had intended to buy a mouthwash but had felt certain qualms about getting close enough to her to observe whether she had any teeth, when Sam Yudenow came down humming a tune. “Look at Rockfellow, look at Armour, look at Corned Beef! Out of oil alone, you’d be surprised—” he began. Then he saw Miss Noel, and said, “The lady’s face is familiar, pardon the familiarity. Could the name be Noel?”

Miss Noel said, “That is my name.”

Ebullient and confidential, but at the same time abstracted, Yudenow said, “My pianist’s sister? No doubt. Pleased to meet you. Believe me, Miss What’s-a-name, blood will tell. Vice versa, murder will out, and love will have its way. Blood will tell. It told. That your sister had unfluential relatives, I knew. So I took her into my bosom. Good enough? Good enough. Out of the hands of the police I have kept her—didn’t we, Copper? Nourishment I gave her—didn’t we, Lavendrop? Right. Especially in good families is always a black. Sheep, I mean. There is a science about it, miv which th
ere is, if you will uxcuse me, bed-wetting, et cetera, et cetera.... So, you come to get your sister. And quite right too. Aman’s got a heart, so I took her out of the gutter. And believe me, Miss, rahnd ‘ere you know why they got reinforced tires on the busses? The gutters. Acid. It’ll eat you away to the bone.... She had some terrible misfortune maybe? A disappointment? Don’t worry, she’ll be in, in a little while. Whereas, in the meantime, I ought to tell you, there’s a little bill owing. I’m sorry to say your sister lost control. There’s a cleaning bill. All in all, it amounts to—look, I’
ll leave it to you. I’m like a father rahnd ‘ere, Miss Noodle; ask anybody, miv the soluntary exception of Godbolt. Ah, many is the time your poor old sister has helped me out miv Godbolt, specially on the Saturday morning after payday. Believe me, she was worth her weight in dead cats. Once I paid her fine, five shillings, ‘drunk and incapable,’ and for the stumminck pump half a guinea. But I’m like that, I’m a funny feller. Be done by as you do, Miss. Sam Yudenow asks no reward—he leaves it up to you—” He stopped abruptly, looked at her with more attention, and said, “Now you’re crying I recognize you. Y
ou are Miss Noel. But all dolled up?”

I think that out of one of the blind alleys in his labyrinthine mind emerged some ghostly idea that Miss Noel had come into money. It is a fact that, newly washed
and dressed, even in God-bolt’s slops, she had the air of a lady. In what this air consists, nobody knows. To describe it would be to describe recognition, which involves something to which our vocabularies are not fitted. If you could describe, in so many words, what you recognize in an expression or a manner, you could write a definitive work on diagnostics—which hasn’t been done yet, and never will be done. Because language is allusive, in its highest forms. You can no more describe a human condition than you can define, say, the contradistinction between the odors of roses and onions.

One can only make images and trust to one’s neighbors’ senses. For example: in Soho there used to be a most degraded drunkard of a girl. She was only twenty-three, but it was impossible to think of her as anything but forty-odd. Her manners and her un-cleanliness revolted the lowest whores in Old Compton Street. There was nothing she would not do for a drink. And yet she was accorded a certain respect because she was a “lady.” By the same token I know a filthy little criminal who once beat up his father and robbed him of his monthly pension money to buy dope; who lived on the immoral
earnings of a factory girl; but, although he was the merest apology for a man, not much over five feet tall, hollow-chested and racked by a bad cough, commanded a certain respect even in places as tough as the Dive because he was a “gentleman.”

Yet again, I know a rough-and-tumble, foulmouthed woman from Cumberland who can outdrink the fish she sells and fight all comers. Provided she kept her voice down, I would take her anywhere: there is something about her that causes people in general to defer to her as a “lady.” It must be something in the blood, something in the spirit.

So it was now, with Miss Noel. She had regained a certain fortitude of the ego, an attitude which Copper
Baldwin had sensed all along, but which Sam Yudenow— with a shock of surprise—had only just got the hang of. Yes, snuffling where he belonged, he had picked up the trail of human dignity.

If I had had the sense I might have known what that meant: that whenever animal smells man, comes fear.

Now it must be remembered that poor Sam Yudenow, our boss, was not cruel any more than a pig is cruel. Cruelty involves at least a little forethought; and Yudenow could not think, except as a pig thinks, in terms of appetite. He could not scheme: he could only sniff with his brain along a track to the trough. Poor wretch! He lacked a certain sense of value that is necessary to pure pity.

Yudenow was incapable of love or hate. He was blind appetite. He was mindless—which passes as single-mindedness and makes executives—and whatever he may ever have had in the way of morality must have been something thin and flimsy like one of those joss papers our mothers used to let smolder to smother sickroom odors. It was a smoke screen between himself and his shame.

Yudenow was a controlled panic of self-preservation on two uncertain legs; abject slave to a mad desire for what beasts know as blind survival.

A comical beast, I thought, but asked myself, “Why prolong mere living for its own sake?” The question answered itself: “Because a beast is blind.” In Yudenow’s case, he was animated by nothing but a terror of Nothing, a horror of ceasing to be; by a hopeless desire to evade consequence and issue, parry cause and duck effect. But he had—and you can read it in the faces of defeated fighters, doglike to the verge of tears in the outer offices—the hope-against-hope that, by fiddling and scraping against all the odds in the world, his ringcraft might outmaneuver the inevitable.

And do you know what? There is the Spirit of Man in this—good, bad, or indifferent, a certain heroism.

So, while I soon lear
ned to hate Sam Yudenow, I couldn’t find it in my heart to betray him—though it did not take me long to decide tha
t, if he ever said one offensive word to me I would knock his head off.

Only he never said that word in time for me to act on my decision.

9

IT MUST have been about then that the sharp points of experience began to puncture the overblown inner tube of youthful enthusiasm. There is life for you: you go to sleep a child and wake up an apology for a man or a woman.

It was then, I am sure—pitying myself in retrospect—that I really started to know my place in the world, and who was who—to realize that what I had hitherto seen in a mirror was not myself, nor even anyone I had ever seen, but only the projection of a shadow.

I don’t believe them when they say that wisdom is something gently acquired. It may come gradually over your head, but it hits in a flash and with a shock. Such wisdom as you have strikes like lightning, and you are none the happier for it—if you are wise. I can liken it only to a sudden and agonizing eructation of perceptiveness, upon whose sad wind your years of innocence are belched away, leaving a bitterness which it takes all the years of your maturity to purge you of—if you are lucky.

Do not ask of me a definition or an explanation of how it came to pass; but I got wise, in this moment, when Sam Yudenow caressed Miss Noel’s newly washed hand. It was a curious gesture. There was nothing sexual in it: you have seen the last couple of strokes of a barber stropping a hollow-ground razor? Imagine that. He was taking a little more sharpness out of her hide. But although I somehow sensed that there was nothing but bad luck for Miss Noel in this gesture, there was nothing I could say. It takes a less introspective fool than I to find a cause for direct action in t
he smile on the face of the tiger. Besides, it seemed to gratify her, so that she appeared to gain at least an inch in height; and when Sam Yudenow said, “Mmm! Such nice perfume!” ten years fell off her.

God knows how obtuse a man can become. Perhaps Sam Yudenow was still delirious with his Greenburger, or something. He seemed in an instant to forget what he had just said, and went on: “Believe me, Miss, I’ve done what I could for your sister. Didn’t I, Copper? Whereas, however, she’s incorruptible—she won’t even help herself. A pail I put down for her; out of the gutter I’ve picked her. But what’s the use, Miss? It’s a ... a—” he made a twisting movement with his hands as one who works a lever ”—a vice. I deliberately paid her less, for her own sake, and then she drank up a pint shell
ac the minute my back was turned, so Copper Baldwin had to make a stomach pump from a carbolic spray in reverse. Could a father do more? Miss, more a father couldn’t do. Believe me, for scented disinfectant alone she cost me a pretty penny, miv her wind in the bells! ... So if, perhaps, there might be a small bill...” He started like a man who has been dreaming of falling from a great height and sighed with pleasure at finding himself safe and sound on the pillows of his adjustable consciousness. “Uxcuse me, I was thinking of Booligan,” he said. “Miss Noel, you may confidently expect a rise in s
alary as soon as talkies go out. Meanwhile, keep on the job meanwhile. Believe me, it does me good to recognize you only by the tears in your eyes!”

I saw Copper Baldwin calculating the distance between his left hand and Sam Yudenow’s chin. Indeed, I believe that if he had struck and missed I would have gone for Yudenow myself in my close, shortsighted way; only Miss Noel said, “The piano is somewhat out of tune, Mr. Yudenow.”

He said, “Copper, take a scvewdriver and tune it. Nothing but the best is good enough for the Pantheon—eh, Daniels?”

It was impossible not to laugh. I said, “You mean a corkscrew.”

“A thing miv a handle,” said Yudenow impatiently. “Borrow it from the pub.... And while you’re about it, in the genevator room you’ll find a pair of bellows. Give those piano wires a good dusting. For Sam Yudenow’s musicians, Miss Noel, nothing is too good. Remember that, Laveridge, and Sam Yudenow will remember you miv love and gratitude. Only no false pride, please! You take the bellows to the piano; you see here and there missing a few wires—take off your jacket, roll up your sleeves, and put ‘em back. There’s a roll wire in the genevator room. The tone depends on the way it’s s
tretched. Here a wire, there a wire; it’s a question of tension. Okay? Okay. I thank you one and all. Uxcuse me, please, I got to take my drops. Let the show go on, which is the Ten Commandments of the biz. The Eleventh, I already told you: a capacity house, or there’ll be a wave of unemployment rahnd ‘ere. Enough chatting—you think I got nothing bigger on my mind? Get on the job!”

“I’ve got to go to town to get my things, you know,
” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘town’? What town? Things? What sort of things? ... Oh, yes, I remember, Laventry—go right ahead, don’t hesitate for one moment to dock yourself up to four hours, and to hell miv the expense. I’ll gladly give you a lift. Which way are you going?”

“Toward Regents Park,” I said.

“I like your conversation—there’s never a dull moment—and I’ll gladly give you a lift in the opposite direction.... What, you don’t want to go in the opposite direction? Why not? ... Oh, your things. What a pity. Good-by now.”

When he was gone, Copper Baldwin said, with something curiously resembling pride, “And
now
do you begin to see what I mean? I tell you, Danny-boy, that one’s a sort of a genius.... By the way, what’s your definition of a man o’ genius?” When I said that I didn’t have one, he said,
“Nor me, neither. But as I see it, a genius is a ‘uman being evolved from Sam Yudenow. Ain’t ‘e a bastard? An’ does ‘e still make you laugh? You wasn’t laughing much a couple o’ minutes ago, unless my eyes deceived me.