Umbrella (39 page)

goading
my
withers, I’m Rothschild’s pair, trotting down Brook Green Road and turning into the Broadway
. . .
He sees the well-crafted step that leads up into the bramble patch, he sees old Hammersmith Town Hall soberly clad in red sandstone, gas-jets atop fluted iron pillars burning either side of its stolid portico. He hears the first salvo of the resumed barrage quite some time after registering the shell’s scream, and so he dithers: is the noise more piercing in his right or his left ear? He twists in the sap, compelled to turn first up, back and to the left, then up, back and to the right – it’s pointless anyway, because as it homes in on him the rising Eeeeeeeeeee! bores into the absolute core of his brain
spores glow dried-out dandelion head
and he knows he would have to go over the top to evade the shell that stops precisely where his gaze
locks
. . .
Umbrellas Re-covered and Repaired on the Premises, Umbrellas Re-covered in One Hour,
2/6
, King Street opposite the Temperance Hotel
. . .
If only he had availed himself of this service, because
when all was
said and done
you should
never go out without one
. Nevertheless, he
acquiesces to this: that the shell
one of ours
will fall between him and
Jerry’s Maxim
— such dull matters
are
a mere
flapdoodle
– what’s significant is that Stanley can see inside the brass casing of the 50-pounder, make out not only the discrete layers of Trotyl, guncotton and tri-nitro-toluene but what put them there: the sprinkling, wadding and pounding of those yellow hands. He sees those hands also
fritillaries fluttering
above the dingy wooden bench, he hears the
peevish whine
of the lathe, the
hissing contempt
of the oxy-acetylene torch, the
rheumatic complaint
of the overhead hoist, and he hearkens to the lusty voices raised in song,
Where are the girls of the Arsenal? Working night and day, Wearing the roses off their cheeks for precious little pay, Some style us canaries but we’re working the same as the lads across the sea, If it wasn’t for us, the munitions girls, where would the Empire be –?
The arrested shell sings a hundred feet above the trench
in
a cloud of penny novelettes
, and the turning of its fuse cap and detonator plug, the brazing of its smoothly seductive haunches – all the scores and hundreds of repetitive motions that led to its triumphantly short-lived embodiment are there, plain to his exophthalmic eye. And Stanley Death understands, even as the rest is over, and the angelic feet begin once more to pump the pedals, the perforations are engaged by the ebony pegs, and the pianola resumes its plummet
Doo-d’doo, doo d’doo, doo-d’-dooo, doo-d’-dooooooooooooo
. . .
that upon impact all of its strings, hammers, levers, cogs and screws will blast across the shattered terrain in wave upon wave of tics, jerks, yawns, spasms, blinks, gasps, quivers, pursing, bobbing, pouts, chews, grindings, palsies, tremors and twitches, sending them dancing from mind to mind, so animating body after body to perform choreography that will stand in for civilisation unprompted, matinee upon matinee – evenings as well –
a merry dance
. . .
However, this is all he thinks – the moment is over, the shell detonates, thrusting up an obscenely wobbling earthen breaker that curls over the sap – over Stanley, where he claws at its wall of sweet-smelling loam. Reddy-dark and then maroon-to-black, it pushes his eyes back into their sockets, it rushes silence beating into his eardrums, it packs around arms, legs, trunk, neck, head – hammering down cottony paralysis into every join and crevice – if, that is, these bits are between anything at all, for there is no feeling any more – none after that final and extreme myoclonic jerk: the arms flung backwards, the spine bowed by the shockwave. There is no information, no current, no resistance, no up or down or back-to-front – only this that worms through the mind, a thought that sucks upon its own tail even as it is reborn, disappearing into one hole, re-emerging from another, expressing only this nightmarishly symmetrical identity:
I-am I-am I-am I-am
, which is simultaneously expressed numerically,
one-equals-one-equals-one-equals-one
, over and over again, its maddening equivalence allowing for no purchase, nothing to be gripped upon, so that the
I
that
am
might be assisted to
sit up –
which is what Gracie does, and, although Audrey feels her friend’s arm behind her back, smells the broth, sees its
floury
steam
sift through my hair
and sees also her own top half, propped up now on a bolster, two cushions and a pillow, while above her tousled head hangs a dear little watercolour of a windmill backed by clouds that Gracie found in the bric-a-brac shop on Coldharbour Lane –
still I am not in Flat G,
309
Clapham Road
but remain in that other place, where, naked, she thrusts out her behind and kicks out her legs as she
impiously struts
the boards before an audience she can only dimly perceive, although – from the shape of its noses, the strength of its chins – she knows it to be composed
entirely of Doctor Trevelyans who smile and with folded eyeglasses tap the backs of their copies of Married Love in time
, as she sings over and over and over again,
Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore
– a futilely contradictory ditty, because how can you avoid having more when your name is Moore, and therefore the very demand defeats itself, as there are more and more Moores the more this imprisoned part of Audrey descants,
Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore
– more Moores and more Trevelyans as well, the rat-a-tat-tapping of their tortoiseshell spectacle frames on the book covers
a
hideous chaffering
– if only she could get past this bulky womanish obstruction! On to:
Too many double gins, Give the ladies double chins, Too many double gins, Give the ladies double chins
– gins and chins proliferating now, chins doubling up as mouths yawn so more and more gins may be poured down, stray teeth in a magenta juniper haze, torn bodices . . . –
No!
Not there, on further:
Our cemetery’s so small, There’ll be no room fer ’em all, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no room fer ’em
– no!
Not there either, so the bed of the lathe
that’s me
ratchets back to
Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore
, while Gracie holds her around the shoulders, shouting it all down with the gentle entreaty, Can’t you at least take some of this broth, Aud’? There’s some brawn left inall if you’d fancy that – I’ll go an’ get it straightways . . . It has been two weeks since Audrey has lain in this swoon, two weeks during which Gracie has had to rouse her up for the lavatory and feeding. To Gracie’s untutored eye there is nothing mysterious about her friend’s affliction: illness is all around them in the long, low block of flats, it lingers in the dim stairwells, then either mounts the stairs to the three storeys above, or descends to the one below, where it slouches along the ill-lit passageways, a bad nurse bearing jugs full of microbes and bowls brimming with bacteria, who makes of this place a dying-in hospital. The building is only a couple of years old and there is still the foul sweat of distemper on the walls, and the nosey tickle of sawdust in the tiny angular bay windows. Illness is all around them – twitching the chintz back and opening the casement, Gracie hears Audrey mutter, Poor man they
’
ung
’
im, while from outside come the chants of urchins playing in the front yard: She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! In the flat above them a returned Tommy has run a fever of a hundred and four for seven straight days. Audrey managed to whisper an address – Gracie took a precious sixpence and went to the office, where she painfully composed the telegram: miss death ill stop send help please stop, at a loss to know what to do with her
five spare words
. The doctor who finally comes from Kennington – paid for, Gracie assumes, by Audrey’s lover – speaks of this poor soul and many others. The isolation wards and fever hospitals are all full, he says, and, being a staunch progressive who believes in speaking the truth, whispers: the morgues and cemeteries also, I’ve been at Mortlake and seen bodies laid out in a potting shed . . .
Our cemetery’s so small, There’ll be no room fer ’em all, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no
–. He examines Audrey with enough care, exerting himself to lift her with an arm behind her shoulders so he may sound her with the
cold collation
of his stethoscope
aspic shivery lies between my blancmanges, fish slice on my neck . . . dill tickles my nostrils
. . .
He is much taken by Gracie, and when she brings him a bowl of warm water to wash his hands in, he takes hers and, examining their backs, says, Oleum? She concedes as much with eyes downcast on the brown burn speckles. The doctor is not much more than thirty, very earnest and sandy, with a narrow skull and hazel eyes. When he tucks his stethoscope up inside his hat brim, it lies against his sparse hair
black crêpe on a photograph frame
. I’ve seen, he says, Thomasinas who’ve worked with tri-nitro-toluene, cordite and Trotyl, and who’re gravely ill now – how d’you fare? Gracie looks away to where her old overall dress, her jacket and her trousers hang on the hook behind the door, the stiffness of the material giving them . . .
body
. I miss . . . she is hesitant . . . t’be honest I miss the wages, sir, an’ the other girls. No work t’be ’ad juss now, no matter ’ow far you goes paddin’ the ’oof. An’ since they done turfed us straight out of the settlement ’ouse – rent ’ere’s eatin’ up our savings, an’ what with Ordree not workin’ . . . She falls silent, wondering if she should add that she begrudges her friend nothing – but it isn’t moral hygiene that interests the doctor. Headaches? he queries. Any, ah, hysterical seizures – fits? The ether, y’know, in the cordite – it’s been known to be productive of epilepsy.
No paint or powder
but he examines her face critically. It’s, she says, as you see, sir, I’ve only the jaundice to show fer me three years – an’ that’s fadin’. Gracie wants to ask about Audrey, whose head is cast down in the pillows, while her knees are
Mother Brown!
an unnatural posture she maintains as she murmurs, Dunavanymaw, dunavanymaw – and soon enough, Gracie knows, her friend will start to sob, she will keen and writhe, ravaged by grief. It is not, Lord knows, that there isn’t enough to sadden her – the loss of her younger brother, the estrangement from her family, and the near-total abandonment by
fancy-pants
Mister Cook,
the swine . . . that’s as may be
, there is still more grief in Audrey’s wasted frame than it can contain:
a world of it
. The doctor – whose name is Vowles – sighs. – We-ell . . . I’ve read a warning put out by the Medical Association concerning a strange sort of brain fever – strikes people down who’re in the finest of fettle, strikes ’em down in a trice. Your friend . . . well, her symptoms would seem to indicate that she does have this . . . this sleepy sickness, however, the malady is so, ah, curious that I cannot diagnose it with any certainty . . . He pauses – the cramped quarters are on the lower-ground floor, a dugout that forces its occupants to stare up at a pictorial space