The Best of Gerald Kersh (5 page)

Here the old man held out a gnarled left fist, bulging with blue veins. He touched one of these veins with the forefinger of the other hand, and said, quite pathetically: ‘Springy as a pneumatic tyre. What’s hard about that? … Doctor says red meat and wine will make me drop in my tracks…. Salt, too, they deny me. And what is life without salt? …
No
excitement,
they say. So what is left? Other people’s excitement, vicarious pleasure … and you, Rodney, deny me even that…. Ninety-eight per cent water, you vegetable! At least I can live to watch you wriggle…. An oyster would make him ill. Go to bed, Rodney, go to bed – I’m sick to the heart at the sight of you! Go away!’

He looked so lonely as he sat there, feeling the big blue veins in his clasped hands, that I said: ‘Oh, my dear Uncle, forgive me if I have offended you——’

‘– What was that you said?’

‘Oh, Uncle——’

‘– I thought you would come around to that again. Three hundred and fifty a year it is now. Go to bed.’

Such was Sir Arnold Arnold, my uncle: a brutal old man, who had lived only for pleasure; a savage hedonist, whose appetites had outlived the means of gratifying them. Lusty, in spirit, as an uninhibited
bon
vivant
of thirty, here he sat, at eighty, with half a million in the bank, and nothing to look forward to but the oyster season next September. For the fear of death was upon him. The doctors had warned him that, although he might be good for another ten years of life, if he took care of himself, a little over-indulgence in food, or wine, or emotional excitement could kill him as quickly and as surely as a bullet in the heart. Much as I hated him that evening, I was sorry for him. Going to bed, I
reflected
:
Why,
I
don’t
believe
that
even
his
oysters
give
him
any
great
pleasure,
now
that
he
can’t
spice
them
with
pepper
sauce
….

I thought of his many kindnesses to me – he may have been a ruffian, but his heart was in the right place – and, although he had just ruined me, I forgave him. In a way, I loved him – even admired him; and if I ever hated him, it must have been because I envied him. Examining my inner heart now, I come to the conclusion that he was the man I should have inclined to be if Nature and Circumstances had given me half a chance.

I swear, I never really meant to kill my uncle.

*

… I could not sleep. I lay awake, reproaching
myself
, attacking myself from every angle…. There was no doubt about it, my uncle was right in his estimate of my character. I
was
a milksop, a weakling, a vegetable, ninety-eight per cent water. I
did
cut a ridiculous figure. I
had
made a fool of myself that very evening, with my evasions, and my confessions which were not
confessions
….

… But was my marriage to Mavis something to con fess, like a crime?

… I felt my face growing hot in the dark; and,
remembering
my uncle’s constant allusions to my
incurable
habit of blushing, burned hotter. No one had the right, I told myself, to make game of a man because he blushes at a word. There is cruelty in that – schoolboy insensibility. You might as reasonably make mock of a man because he has one leg shorter than the other…. And as for making a joke of my red hair – why, if you condoned that kind of humour, you condoned, in effect, the persecution of negroes because they are black….

I remembered a boy who was at school with me, at Eatonstowe. His name was Ward, and he was an albino. None of the other boys bore him any grudge – yet how pitilessly they persecuted him! One day somebody sent him a message saying that his cousin had come to see him; and there was a pink-eyed white mouse in a
cardboard
box…. Yet he was silent. He made a pet of this mouse, kept it in his pocket. It used to run up his sleeve and sit on his shoulder. He used to take the mouse to bed with him…. One morning, poor Ward woke us all up before the bell, I remembered: he had turned over in his sleep, and smothered the mouse; and that was the first time I had ever heard that lonely boy cry … and
oh, the desolate hopelessness of it, the woe, the helpless grief! It struck us silent, and afterwards we offered Ward toffee and fruit; but he would never speak to us any more, and soon his guardian took him away from school….
Us,
I remembered; because I – God forgive me – had been among the worst of Ward’s persecutors. Why? Because, before he had come to school, it had been I who was the butt of the form, on account of my fantastically red hair. It had been a relief to have
someone
else to persecute….

Then I remembered Fatty Onslow, who had been the worst bully of the lot – a monstrously fat boy who, having been mercilessly teased for three terms, suddenly developed a giant’s strength, which he tyrannously used like a giant. I had thought I should never forgive the things he did to me…. Yet, when I ran into him fifteen years later, in Pall Mall, he was as quiet and gentle a fellow as you ever met … and died, as I wished I might die, heroically, in the North Sea. ‘Stand by to ram!’ he roared, bleeding to death – and, with his destroyer, rammed and sank a German cruiser.

Such, again, was my Uncle Arnold, I thought. Only there was, perhaps, too much of the fourth-form bully left in him – that was all. I blamed myself for letting him treat me so. There was, I reasoned, never a man on earth who would not respect another, however puny, who was devoid of fear … and I was rotten with fear, eaten up with it!

In this respect, only Mavis understood me, because she was sensitive, too. It was she who made it clear to me that I was not really a coward; only sensitive. She loved the colour of my hair, she said, because it reminded her of something out of Dubinushki’s setting for the
Valse
des
Fleurs
…. My heart ached then as I thought of Mavis.

She had had a hard life, poor girl. Almost literally, she had danced herself out of nowhere——

– Hey,
wait
a
minute!
I said to myself, trying to reason with myself –
what
do
you
mean,
out
of
nowhere?
She
is
still
nowhere.
But
she
relies
upon
you
to
help
her
dance
her
way
somewhere.

Mavis depended upon me so absolutely. She had such faith in me, and relied so utterly upon my given word – and I had sworn to see her through her career…. It is generally an excellent thing to have a woman pin all her faith and hope on you … but it may be sometimes a very bad thing. It takes a broad back to bear the weight of a woman’s trust. A woman’s unstinted faith may put a strong man’s head among the stars; on the other hand, it may put a weak man’s head into the gas oven. And I am a weak man.

Yes, I contemplated suicide that night in my uncle’s house; and I wish I had had the courage to commit it….

I had come, paying my duty-visit, with the intention of borrowing a little money – a matter of some few
hundred
pounds. Before I knew Mavis, I had regarded
myself
as quite a rich man: my uncle allowed me eight hundred pounds a year, and over and above that I had my salary, four hundred pounds a year from the High Commissioner’s office where I worked. Twenty-four pounds a week was affluence, to me. I had my little flat in Knightsbridge; my books and my gramophone records: my little self-indulgences. I could even lend a little to my friends. But after I fell in love with Mavis, somehow I could never make ends meet.

I met her at a meeting of the Little Ballet Group, in Russell Square. She performed the dance Riabouchinska
used to do, with the little metal fawn … only Mavis was smaller than Riabouchinska: an animated ivory figurine, most beautiful! Mavis lived, she told me, only for The Ballet. But her health was not very good; one of her lungs was questionable – she had had a hard time of it in her early youth. Her father drank, her mother kept a little general store in a side street off the Gray’s Inn Road…. She had been sent out to work in a factory at the age of fourteen. But she wanted to dance –
dancing
was her life, she said, again and again.

She did that Fawn Dance in a borrowed costume, stained with someone else’s grease-paint. When I went to congratulate her, after the dance, and saw her weeping so forlornly in the little dressing-room, it was as if a hand came out of the foggy night and squeezed my heart into my throat.

Mavis had such humility…. Now, here is a joke: it was I, of all created creatures, who coaxed and persuaded her into artistic arrogance! Seeds of my own
destruction
? Yes, perhaps I sowed them. It was I who said to Mavis: ‘You must not wait and hope; you must insist, demand!’
I
, mark you! …

She insisted. She demanded. I believe there is nothing quite so persuasive as the eloquence of a weakling who, genuinely despising himself for what he is, preaches in favour of that which he would be if he could.

I made Mavis hard. Soon my twelve hundred pounds a year was nothing. And, in talking my doctrine of
Strength
–
Strength
–
Strength,
I found that I had talked myself into contempt and out of existence as the man who had comforted the thin little girl when she was crying in the dressing-room.

I do not know whether Mavis had overestimated my
fortune. I am sure I made my financial position pretty clear: eight hundred a year from my uncle, four
hundred
a year from my office. She thought herself lucky, at that time, if she drew a hundred and fifty a year, and had enough, at the end of the week, to satisfy her landlady in Bernard Street.

But when Mavis and I came to be together, the money went like water. There had to be supper parties, cocktail parties, and luncheon parties; because she had to ‘meet people’. And could she meet people in a shabby dress? Of course not. And could I do her discredit by appearing less elegantly turned out than an adagio dancer? No. I went to Savile Row for my suits, to St James’s for my shoes, and to Bond Street for my shirts. Again, could we live in three little rooms in Knightsbridge?
Knightsbridge
, yes; three rooms, no. We needed a big lounge for ‘people’, and impressive furniture.

I got into debt. I mortgaged myself. And, at last, when the dressmakers, and the other tradesmen, were pressing for settlement of their accounts, I had gone to my uncle to borrow five hundred pounds, and found myself with my allowance cut in two.

Mavis would have something to say about this!

I had not lied when I told my uncle that I could not live without her. She was all I had ever loved. Weary of turning over in my mind what I should say to her when I returned home, I began to consider ways and means of killing myself.

And then – at half-past three in the morning –
someone
knocked at my door. Lambert came into my
bedroom
, and said: ‘Oh, Master Rodney – Master Rodney – will you come down? Sir Arnold – I mean your uncle – is taken very bad!’

I put on dressing-gown and slippers, and followed him. As I went downstairs, I was aware of a sense of doom.

I wished my uncle dead, yes. I wished him dead, God forgive me, for his worth in money, considering the terms of his will. But I beg you to believe me – do, please, believe me – when I tell you that I loved the old gentleman very dearly, and had no intention of
murdering
him, as I did, that night.

Y
OU
may imagine that, as I went downstairs – steadily, slowly, contemplatively – my thoughts were with my uncle. As a matter of fact, they were not. The date was 30 April, but the weather struck cold in the old house. I thought, first, that it might have been a good thing to put on my overcoat, over my dressing-gown; then it occurred to me how right Mavis was when she insisted that a woman had to have a fur coat. This being the case, therefore, I had bought her a fur coat.

Now there are fur coats and fur coats. Mavis had told me how a certain class of woman could not distinguish between musquash and mink, or between mink and sable. Such women were earmarked for oblivion. But Mavis had ‘modelled’ for furs, and knew what was what. She had a great deal of this kind of knowledge. Mavis knew, and wanted to be one with, the kind of woman that recognises – let us say – blue fox, blond mink, and Siberian sable. She could explain the difference between
the pelts of certain rodents – for example, mole and
chinchilla
. The difference, generally, ran into many
hundreds
of pounds. Mavis made a social difference of it.

… Chinchilla and sables, perhaps, might come later. Meanwhile, she could wear nothing cheaper than mink. And wearing mink, how could she ride in a bus? Women wearing mink do not ride in buses – it is
antisocial
to do so – the proletariat stares. And what is a mink coat without a corsage of orchids, preferably purple? … But what girl, who respects herself, wears a suit by a lesser craftsman than Vallombroso under a mink coat? Respecting herself in a Vallombroso suit, how could she feel comfortable with something inferior to Ambergh underwear next to her skin, a Bobini
hair-cut
, and shoes by Dupuy? … The hat was another item. Nobody who was anybody wore a hat that was not made by Berzelius. And one became a Somebody by mixing with Somebodies. This was Mavis’s philosophy, and I could not disagree with it.

‘I always found,’ she had told me, ‘that when I had supper for eighteen pence at the Café Mauve, I never had more than eighteen pence to pay for my supper. But when I started to have supper for three-and-sixpence at the Café Impérial, I managed to find three-and-
sixpence
…’