Fowlers End (43 page)

Since nobody stepped up for the moment (I think they rather liked this form of address) I elbowed my way through and, in about half a dozen strides, got across the street to the telephone booth near the Load of Mischief, where they were pulling the old wall down. More tactics: I couldn’t have them panicking my full hall, so I was heading them off—this brilliant stroke occurred to me, it is true, several days after it happened, but it wasn’t bad, really.

The phone booth was one of those old-fashioned ones made of wood on three sides, but with a plate-glass door. This was before the days of dials: you had to lift the receiver, wait for the operator to answer, give your number, insert two pennies, and twist a knob. In case of emergency, you were supposed to say “Fire!” or “Police!” as the case might be, and simply wait.

After what seemed to be an hour, a voice asked, “What number, please?”

“Emergency—police station,” I said.

“Please insert two pennies.”

“Damn it, I want the police!”

“I have yet to see the situation that is improved by the use of filthy language,” said the voice.

“Quick, get me the bloody police!”

“Kindly modify your shitty language and insert two pennies, please.” I was fumbling in my pockets. There were florins, half crowns, little silver threepenny bits, halfpennies, and a pound note—but no pennies.

I shouted, “Look, I haven’t got any pennies. This is an emergency. This is a matter of life and death. For Christ’s sake—I’ll fold up a pound note and put it in the slot, only get me the police!”

The voice said severely, “All right, young man, just for taking the Lord’s name in vain and using bad language, you can fold up your pound note and stick it up your arse.” There was no time to argue the point, because I heard an ominous scraping noise outside.

Darby O’Kelly O’Toole, assisted by the Brick Foster, had lifted a sort of pudding stone, a great lump of old brick and mortar weighing about a hundred and fifty pounds, and together they were poising it in their four horny hands to throw it at me through the plate-glass door. It stood to reason there was nothing for it but to open the door—it opened outward—and fight my way back to the Pantheon. The door of the booth being hinged on the right, I pushed it with my left hand while I lunged with the other. I felt an electric shock; and everything went black, and at the same time I heard
a rending noise.

They have killed me,
I thought....

But then I felt a dragging weight on my right arm. I had forgotten to replace the receiver before hitting O’Toole. All the power of my body must have been behind that punch, because the instrument and pay box, the screws of which must have been rotted already by the stinking winds of Fowlers End, had come out of the wall.

As for what that chipped telephone receiver did to the Irishman’s eye, thank God for the darkness that fell, or I might not have had stomach for the rest of the fight. As it way, he fell senseless, letting go that mass of brick and mor
tar, which fell on the instep of Foster; and he howled to the sky like a coyote.

Behind this pair stood Pute and half a dozen others. I still had the mechanical part of the telephone box in my hand, gripping it by the receiver. My heart beat high. I swung it like a medieval
morgenstern,
bellowing at the top of my voice, and knocked one of the louts into the rubble.

Twirling this interesting weapon around and around, I fell upon the demoralized rear of O’Toole’s force, utterly defeating them. The last man I hit, as I remember, was a weasel-faced man in a beret named Jonathan Bible; and he may think himself lucky that I did not land fair and square, or he would not be alive to boast of it.

There was a ricochet off his miserable shoulders and onto the back of his head; whereupon the cord parted and the box went through Godbolt’s window in a shower of pennies. The noise of these coins falling on the pavement—not the sound of broken glass, for Fowlers End was used to that—conjured up a host of ectoplasmic creatures, materializations of twilight. They rushed into the jagged breach, looking for loot. Who they were and where they came from I do not know; and nobody knows where they went with whatever they could lay their hands on, because only one was later arrested in the swam
p, clutching to his bosom an old-fashioned wire-and-canvas dressmaker’s dummy clothed in a coarse chemise. He was a half-wit whose name nobody knew: he didn’t know it himself.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Godbolt, who kept saucepans and kettles of water boiling on the stove, emptied them out of the first-floor window on the heads of the mob, while her husband, brandishing a pair of scissors, exhorted them to repent before it was too late. It was something like
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Most of the boiling water fell upon the helmet of a policeman, Inspector Dench, who had arrived just then at
the instance of the General Post Office to see who had been mucking about with the telephones; and he assured me later that there is nothing more agonizing to wear than a policeman’s helmet soaked in boiling water. He roared like a lion and tore his helmet off.

Then, I suppose, he remembered the years that immediately followed the end of World War I, when dogs had to be muzzled on account of an outbreak of rabies. Policemen were instructed, if they saw a foaming dog with its tail between its legs, to take off their helmets, thrust them out for the dog to bite, and then, having warned the dog, use their batons.

He took off his helmet with a loud cry, thrust it into the face of one of the looters—who, it transpired, was a pregnant servant girl looking for diapers—and hit her on the shoulder with his truncheon. Later, before he was relegated to duty in some even more deserted place, he swore by the Almighty God that there was froth on her lips and she had a tail.

I got back to the Pantheon twirling nothing but the telephone receiver on the end of a bit of flex; and there was Sam Yudenow, embattled. He was fighting like a fishmonger, and for what he shouted I must refer you to one of those “Dictionaries of Unconventional Language.”

“... Take away my sodding living?” he cried. “So what’ll become of my wife and children, loafers? Go make the salt-o’-the-earth fat on the dole, the scum! Don’t be working-classes, shit-pots—find a job! Come on, you poxy pigs, come on!...”

It was to be noted that while Sam Yudenow was hurling all the invective and doing a species of belligerent tap dance, Copper Baldwin was throwing most of the punches. Then, when I attacked from the rear with what was left of the telephone, Miss Noel came out—something to haunt your dreams—crying drunk and swinging that three-
legged piano stool that was raised and lowered by means of a wooden screw.

At this, we all fell back, friends and enemies alike; and Inspector Dench came in, followed by a sergeant and four constables. “Any trouble here?” he asked.

Sam Yudenow said, with irony, “Trouble? Don’t make me laugh, I got a cvacked Up. This ain’t trouble, it’s a rehearsal. Tvouble! Tickle me under the arms, I want to giggle.”

“Isn’t that blood I see on the floor?” asked
Inspector Dench.

Sam Yudenow started to say “Sherlock Holmes—” but Copper Baldwin interposed, “What the ‘ell would blood be doing on the floor? Tomato ketchup!”

The Inspector asked, “And what would tomato ketchup be doing on the floor of the lobby?”

“Vestibule!” said Sam Yudenow.

“Taste it and see,” I said.

Frowning at me, Sam Yudenow said, “I’m serving a high-class brand nourishing snack—Greenburgers! So they need a bit tomato sauce? A crime? Try one; see! Lavendorpf, half a dozen special Greenburgers,
miv! ...
What d’you mean, miv
what?
Miv a slice ham, miv a slice cheese, miv tomato sauce.... Copper, wipe up.... Where’s that bloody boy?”

He was referring to Johnny Headlong, who had disappeared. Copper Baldwin looked sad. His expression said,
I did not think young Johnny would have turned yellow....

Inspector Dench said to me, “Your mouth’s bleeding. So are your knuckles. What’s the cause of that?”

I said, hastily improvising, “I’ve got what they call ‘The Blood Disease.’”

He said, keenly, “It doesn’t, by any chance, get caused by a beetle? Does it attack potatoes?”

“The Bourbons and the ruling houses of Spain and Russia have it,” I said.

“Paint it with iodine. What are you doing with that telephone receiver?”

“It came loose in my hand.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“Something must have been wrong with the line.”

“Isn’t that blood I see on your cuff?”

Copper Baldwin rushed out, scooped up a fingerful of it, which he held under the Inspector’s nose, saying, “Tomato—taste it.” When the Inspector declined, Copper Baldwin seemed to lick it himself—that is to say, he offered himself the forefinger but sucked the third finger—and said, “Lovely, tell your mum.”

Now Godbolt came in, struggling for breath, crying, “Police! Inspector! I’m a leaseholder, a freeholder, and a copyholder; I’m a ratepayer and a taxpayer; and I demand—”

“Now I’ll tell you what,” said the Inspector. “Better be careful how you interrupt an investigation: I’ve got my eye on
you!”

Then there was brought in a tray of Greenburgers. Reinforced with everything that could be found to put in them, they were more than doubly repulsive. The Inspector took a bite, and said, “Not bad at all.”

He took another bite. “Might go better with a mustard pickle.”

“Thank you for this advice,” said Yudenow. “This I got to remember.... Laveridge, make a note—mustard pickle!... Maybe, Inspector, a bit chuntney?”

Everything was going well, but then that boy Headlong had to choose this moment to dash into the vestibule, hard put to it to breathe, gasping, “Okay, Mr. Laverock. I run to Ullage. The Ullage mob’s on the way, and oh Jesus, will we do ‘em! Jack Palmtree’s got a
Woolworth’s chopper an’ ‘e swore on ‘is muwer’s grave ‘e’d chop O’Toole’s—” Then he saw the Inspector and said, in an unnaturally casual voice, “Ahem. Just thought I’d warn you, Mr. Laverock. Better get up to the rewinding room now.... ‘Ave a cigar, Inspector?” Inspector Dench said, “No.”

Headlong had to explain in a rasping whisper: “I’m sorry if I done somet
hink wrong, Mr. Laverock. But if you play one side orf against the other, ain’t there a rule o’war?”

Sam Yudenow said to him, “Upstairs!” Then, to the Inspector, obsequiously, “Another Greenburger, just a little one?... Copper, get mustard pickles....”

So it came to pass that just as the ambulance came to pick up O’Toole and one or two of his friends, the Ullage boys tur
ned up with war whoops, armed to the teeth with homemade weapons, and found themselves confronted by Inspector Dench, a sergeant, and four constables, all smelling strongly of Greenburgers.

The invaders were dragged away with imprecations. Then “Laid in Lavender” came to an end; and we played “God Save the King.”

“It’s me for the high seas,” said Copper Baldwin.

“Me, too,” said I.

Epilogue

“WELL, CHEER up, cocko,” Copper Baldwin said. “You got your passage and you got your papers. Now work it out this way: for a lousy twenty-pound note you travel like a gentleman; and for a dirty ten-pound note you got your papers. We all got our money back, and to spare. Cheer up, young ‘un, cheer up.”

But I kept looking one way and another, mostly at the receding coast line, which, I believed, I should never see again. Before me lay the great gray sea. I put my forehead on the rail and wept.

I did not know why, because we had given up love of country in those years—love of anything. But it was as if I saw before me something like homesickness in perspective.

Copper Baldwin said, almost in a whisper, “I know ‘ow it is, son, but you’ve got to face it. Face it, ‘old on to your cash. Only face it. And now I
must
get below.”

In a broken voice I said, “But my papers. They’re in a silly name.”

“What’s in a name? I got to get below. See you.”

I settled myself to look at the wake that fanned out in foam to the coast of England, with which, in spite of all it had done to me, I found myself in love. Now I wanted to go back, to starve for her if need be. But somebody took me by the shoulder and spun me round.

He was a gigantic man with a fiery face and icy eyes: John Williams, Master, better known as “Kicking Jack” Williams. “Admiring the scenery?” he asked.

“Kind of pretty,” I said.

He shouted, “Keep your bloody mouth shut when you speak to me! Get below, you little bastard!” “I paid my passage,” I said.

“Passage? What passage? I’ve got your papers. What d’ye mean, passage? You’re one of my crew, and your name is Frank Mudd. Bugger off before I flatten you.”

“You took twenty pounds off me—” I began.

“This,” he said, “I have never heard of. Your papers say Frank Mudd, trimmer. Got it? Trim coal, or tough as you think you are—” and he hit me with a right hook to the jaw, knocking me down.

I saw his right foot describe a little circle, poising itself; then he let it down lightly and shrugged gently as if to say,
Where’s the sense in smashing up a hand?

“Get up,” he said wearily. “Off your arse, you, and this is the last time I’ll be lenient with you. Get below!” I struck him with all my force on the side of the head, and hurt my hand.

He said, “Be sensible. I could stand a week of playing patty-hands. Now will you get below, or shall I put you there?”

There must have been some trace of sympathy in his nature because, seeing me cast a last glance at the land, he said, “Gets you like that at first. Pity.”

And then he kicked me—scientifically, not to maim me—so that I sprawled six feet away.

So I went below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gerald Kersh
wrote his first book at the age of seven and published it privately in a limited edition of one copy, bound in his fathers brocade waistcoat. He tore up his second and third literary efforts but, at twenty-three, found a publisher for his fourth, a novel. Unhappily, he was sued by four uncles and a cousin who had seen the manuscript, and the book was withdrawn. But Mr. Kersh persevered, to the tune of five thousand magazine articles, three thousand short stories, and twenty-three books, including the bestselling
Night and the City,
which was made into a film, and
Fowlers End,
his latest. He is also the author of the famous World War II poem “A Soldier: His Prayer,” an excerpt of which can be found in
Bartlett’s Quotations,
woundingly attributed to Anonymous.