Umbrella (50 page)

but Mark loved it
. . .
so for hour after hour we’d played it in amusement arcades: pulling the levers, twisting the dials, our heads hanging there in all the ring-a-ding-dinging and the reek of melting sugar
. . .
He sighs, Aaaaah, – Mark had given him a novelty ballpoint pen, inside its fat belly were six ink cartridges:
green, blue, black, red
. . .
I forget the other two
. . .
He had explained his note-taking system to the boy and this was his thoughtful response. Mark showed his father how you could push down two of the coloured ballpoints at once, and so write duochrome. Busner had long since ceased to take any sort of notes at all –
let alone such pretentious ones!
Yet he feels the want of that pen now, imagines wielding it with all six nibs out, so as to fuse colour and symbology in this realisation being compounded within him from
images, memories, recent ideas and long-since-made clinical observations
. . .
A mother and small child exit the newsagents – they wear matching scarlet puffa jackets so bright they could be
spotted floundering on a glacier from a helicopter
. . .
The child tears the cellophane from a lollipop, the mother the cellophane from a packet of cigarettes,
the breeze
choreographs their filmy discards
. . .
Aaaah, he turns abruptly away to see that the memories have indeed crept right up behind him, and that they
aren’t so much as
bothering to play the game!
for when he turns towards them they wiggle their limbs shamelessly in the bright spring sunlight: Miriam:
who gave me that digital watch
, and
that bastard Whitcomb – he had one of the first pocket calculators and was mucking about with it the day I went to see him and he told me they were thinking of pulling the plug
from a socket hidden behind a grotesque coat tree, its nine upturned branches ending in animal horns of some sort that have been mounted into the wood. The parlour maid gets to her feet all tangled up in her full skirts and the cabling of the machine, which is, Audrey thinks, as ugly as the coat tree, being confected out of broom, bagpipes and an electrical fan. Its whine whirrs away into silence, and the housekeeper who has opened the door –
a grim-faced harridan
with her face scraped back into her hair and her hair scraped back into a
frightening bun
– calls back: That’ll do for now, Rose, before giving her attention once more to this unanticipated visitor. Is it Mister or Missus De’Ath that you wishes to see? No title is bestowed on Audrey
maybe if I had a visiting card?
who replies, I don’t suppose my brother will be at home, so if you could kindly tell my sister-in-law that Audrey De’Ath desires a word I’d be most obliged. She believes this well done, and that she is also well got up to pay this call in a new pleated skirt, linen for best, belted mackintosh and cloche hat. She has also borrowed a slim parasol with a porcelain handle from Appleby’s collection that
must cost a month of this one’s wages – poor old mare, back in harness again!
The housekeeper runs a sceptical eye from the top to the bottom of Audrey, while behind her the parlour maid continues her battle with the lashing tail of the vacuuming machine. The housekeeper is on the point of shutting the door in Audrey’s face while she goes to speak to her mistress, when two doors open simultaneously on to the hallway – one at the very back, through which Albert emerges, treading gingerly, a large china tankard in his hand – and one to the left, whence comes in
a crisp cloud of white organdie
a lady of Audrey’s own age, who, although she has only clapped eyes on her once, briefly, and six years previously, she nevertheless immediately recognises. Albert pads towards the door, saying, What’s this, then, Missus Egremont – then sees who it is and for a moment his broad, smooth face is seized by an unaccountable expression:
Albert . . . shocked?
before he moves to his wife’s side and takes her arm. Rosalind, my dear, he says, this is my sister Audrey. And to Audrey there is a curt: You’d better step in here. They all three go into the drawing room, which is
as uglily done out as the hall
. Surveying the heavy old pieces of oak and mahogany furniture that have been pressed into service for telephone tables, wireless and phonograph cabinets, Audrey surmises that this a domesticated battle of the sexes, one, moreover, in which the amiable and doughy blonde has already capitulated. The three of them move in and out, round and between overstuffed armchairs – a formal dance of awkwardness, until Albert says, Won’t you sit down, Audrey? No fanks, Bert, Audrey replies, cockneyfying purely to see its effect on the two of them. Then she takes up a paper knife that lies on the mantelpiece and ting-tings it along a row of china dogs, china sheep, china shepherdesses in hooped skirts with china crooks, until it clanks against a brass box fashioned from the casing of a 50-pounder shell. On the domed lid of this is inscribed: In Grateful Acknowledgement of the Service Given by Albert De’Ath –. Which is all Audrey wishes to know, so she prises open the lid with the paper knife, revealing the
little white cartridges
, and says, D’you mind? then without waiting for an answer withdraws a cigarette. Both De’Aths start forward, speaking over one another, The matches are –/Can I get you a –? and laughing she is pleased to take receipt of both boxes, deftly remove a match from each one, strike both and suck fire from one flamelet, then the other, funnelling the smoke out at them – the dead matches she drops in the grate. You’re all done at the Arsenal, then? she says presently, and Albert concedes this with a nod, before continuing, so as to forestall the looming oddity of the situation, May I introduce you to my wife, Rosalind? Audrey grimaces. – Charmed, I’m sure, and, taking the
baby-soft
hand she’s offered, continues: I expect you miss your gauntlets and your racy peaked cap. Rosalind blushes. – I’m – I’m . . . Well, frankly, I’m amazed you remember –. Well, I do, Audrey states baldly, and leaves go the hand, but it seems that you do too. Tell me, what did my brother say to you that day at the Danger Buildings? If he didn’t speak of me on that occasion, he must’ve since – told you something of my way of carrying on, eh? My scandalous amours and incendiary opinions? Rosalind is
struck dumber
– she shares with her husband an air of ponderous containment, and, while pretty enough, Audrey detects within her overripe skin
fleshiness about to ooze grubbily out
. We all, Albert declares, did our bit.
As if this is what’s at issue between us!
Audrey laughs bitterly, flings herself down in one of the chairs, boldly crosses her legs, takes a pull on her gasper and rejoins: Maybe so, Bert, although some of us sacrificed more than others, and some of us . . . She looks pointedly to the crystal dolphin that leaps beside a Chinese vase . . . gained. Turning to the
silly thing in her shepherdess’s dress
, she raises her voice: Did he ever speak to you of our brother, my dear? Did he so much as tell you he ’ad one? Well, ’e weren’t as clever as Bert – not a born ’ustler like your ever so upstandin’  ’usband! Stan wasn’t one to black the King’s boots, oh no, couldn’t turn three tricks at once for the same master – but ’e was our flesh an’ blood –! A cry drops down into the drawing room from high up in the house, piped here through a speaking tube Albert has had installed. Baby! Rosalind exclaims, then, spying an Old English sheepdog that lies on its back by the hearth with rigid straw-filled limbs upthrust, he chortles indulgently: Oh, the silly thing’s left his doggie here, I shall have to take Darsing up to him . . . You will excuse –. And she is gone, the stuffed dog tucked awkwardly under her fleecy arm.

Well, Audrey persists once Rosalind has left the room, did you – did you ever speak of him to your well-bred wife? Can you so much as bear to think of him, remember him? You may be a great computer, Bert, but there’re some things that can never be accounted for. Albert simply regards her, his pregnant eyes full of . . .
hatred, no, that’s too passionate for him – he never hates, only kills all insane persons in fact? Yes, in mercy and in justice to themselves
. . .
At length he says, There is the matter of Collins and the Free State, some might consider it a war – a civil war indeed. Audrey says: Is that your view, Bert? Do you think the poor bloody Irish a sufficient cause of your coldness? Is it this that makes you such a white man? Albert blanches, his tone dulls and flattens still more
lead flushing
. I am not, he says, at the office this morning because this afternoon I shall be taking the boat train from Waterloo – there are cemeteries to be surveyed, sites for the monument and so forth –. He stops, seeing not his sister – her fiery auburn hair constrained, he has noted, to a fashionable bob – but the churned Flanders mud, sutured by white wooden crosses – and he hears not her but the silly ass of an architect he has to deal with, a dishevelled fellow who makes puns both excruciating and dishonourable –
the Gate of Messiness
is what he calls his own design!
What’s in the mug? Audrey asks. Mug? he queries. Yes, the mug you had in your hand when I came in.
He’s losing his hair, the brassy nob of his head shines through – losing his hair and gaining the weight of influence . . . but he’s still tough . . . still dangerous
. . .
Albert picks up the tankard from the table where he’d placed it among a slew of his tools: metal rulers, propelling pencils, slide rules, dividers . . . Audrey thinks: She hasn’t got the measure of him, he does as he pleases – always has. He’s taken this lovely house and started to clutter it up – she’ll go first, then he’ll fill it to the rafters with his jumble. Not that it’s confusing to him: he knows where ev-ery-thing is . . .
Am I right, sir?
It’s a sort of tonic, Albert says gingerly, of my own, ah, devising. Audrey laughs. – Give over, Bert, what d’you mean by that? He peers into the tankard, then tilts it towards her so she can see the thick brown liquid it contains. It’s the black drop! she cries delightedly, and Albert says, Hardly, it’s a mixture of Bemax, molasses and some extracts of these new vit-a-mines together with my own, ah, solvent. She cackles again. – Solvent! Whass that when it’s at ’ome? Before answering her, he takes a long draught from the tankard – it leaves a sewerage mark around his shaved-beige lips:
mercurochrome-brown with a cream foam rim
. Milk stout, he says, wiping this off with his handkerchief, Huggins’ for preference – but Guinness if it isn’t to be had. Audrey splutters: You – You, you’re turnin’ inter the old man after all! For a time both are silent in contemplation of the Cheriton Bishop Deers, Samuel’s decline has been precipitate
. . .
a downhill stampede – brakes on the ’bus failed, the heavy vehicle running down its own team . . . shafts, then legs shattered . . . rabbit-skin coat all torn and bloody . . . horses squealereaming . . . Only terminus likely: the knackers
. Whatever else you may be, Bert, Audrey says presently, I never pegged you for a crank — and that word alone, crank, springs the lever from the cog, so that the balls of the horizontal pendulum begin to rotate beneath the glass dome of the clock on the mantel. A melodious chiming, d’ding-ding-ding, d’ding-ding-dong, summons Audrey to her feet – it had been growing within her these past few weeks, seizing at first a single hand or foot, clenching, then releasing it with the viciousness of an old . . .
enemy
. To the model lighthouse, given to Albert De’Ath in his capacity as a Fellow of Trinity House, she charlestons, her legs propellering, and grasps the top of the tinplate tower. Aha! as she suspected: another cigarette case. She nips one from the hole directly into her mouth, then a second, then a third – fourth – fifth – sixth – all flung and lip-caught unerringly,
Sorta fing the Brothers Luck did at Karno’s Fun Factory – there was six of  ’em inall!
She turns to show off her white fangs to her big brother, who backs towards the door
so’s to give me more room
– space that allows her to windmill her arms as well as her legs, to pluck up cushions from the sofas and chairs so that she may juggle with them, to take up handfuls of Albert’s pointed implements so that she may drum with them –
such a turn! he ain’t about to stop me – and I can’t help meself!
This wilfulness has been growing alongside the t-t-t-t-ticcing of her hands and the j-j-j-j-jerking of her neck – and now it occurs to her that this trip to Blackheath – unanticipated by her quite as much as by them – may be another instance of an action beyond her control that will be repeated
again and again annagain
. That she will find herself walking up Montpelier Row from the station, skirting the grassy edge of the heath, trotting up the stairs of the imposing house
over and over anover
, until the spring winds down and the penny peepshow snaps shut – except that this cannot happen, because, in the midst of all the fluttering, clawing and pecking of
the intrepid birdwoman
, other more sinister rhythms have begun to be imposed: the rotation of an historic flywheel, the pulling of an eternal lever, the lowering of that
perspicacious thinker
, the headstock. And this is no fun at all, these long-buried motions
tearing through my skin
. Audrey hears machine guns roaring and sees Rosalind coming back into the room,
silly moo
, judging from her expression,
she’s never seen a good old-fashioned cockney clog dance before!
– while as for the creature in her arms:
thass no baby! ’e oughta be in trousies
. . .
Oh, says Rosalind, Oh, Albert! She lays her hand across the little boy’s eyes to hide this sight: not a woman –
a puppet heaving rocks
, and then, when the thing begins to scream, Don’t av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t av any more, Missus Moore, Rosalind presses his tousled head to her breast and claps her hand to his other ear.
Oh, Albert!
resonates into the child’s mind followed by
Poor Peterkins!
– which is him, or some other little boy with the same name who sits inside his mother’s
soft bits
more closely held, more deeply loved.