And now, of course, everything was flooding back – noise, colour, light, the real world – roaring and rushing back. But he was so confused by the crack in his head, and by the rushing and roaring back of reality, that he couldn’t collect himself. He would be all right soon, but for the moment it was a bit too much for him. He couldn’t make out where he was.
‘Are you all right?’ he heard a voice saying, and he was aware that this voice had made the same inquiry only a moment before.
‘Yes, I am all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right.’
Where was he? He had got to keep up pretences until he found out where he was.
Still leaning for support against the table, he lifted his head. A room, evidently. But what room, and how had he got there? Had he walked into a strange room? Had he got drunk? Had he been hit over the head and robbed? Had someone taken him into then-house to recover?
Now he heard the same voice speaking near, right in his ear. ‘What’s the matter with you, man? Are you doped or something?’
He turned, and saw a fair man with a moustache staring into his face. He didn’t know that he had ever seen his face before, and yet he had a sensation of hating it for some preconceived reason, an intuition of its having an evil, nightmare familiarity.
‘No, I’m all right,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had a come-over. I’ll be all right.’
He felt that if he could only put a name to this evil face it would cease to be evil, and that everything else would come back. It was bound to come back soon. All that had happened was that his head had cracked back from one of his ‘dead’ moods. In the meantime he must keep up the pretence of knowing where he was.
‘Netta,’ he heard the voice say. ‘Our friend’s had a come-over and spilt his drink. Where’ll I find a rag to mop it up?’
‘Netta’… He knew who ‘Netta’ was all right. That was the girl in Earl’s Court he was so crazy about, who gave him such hell. But how was she in on this? Where was she? Why was her name mentioned?
He heard a voice from the next room. ‘What’s the matter? What’s he done?’
That was Netta’s voice. No mistaking that. Netta! Here! In a flash he saw it all. This was Netta’s flat. He recognized it. The evil man was Peter. He recognized him too. It was as clear as day. But how had he got there? What was the time? What was the day? What were they doing? In the meantime he must pretend he knew.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll get a rag. Don’t bother. There’ll be one in the kitchen.’
He went into the kitchen, found the rag, and came back.
‘What did I do?’ he said, mopping up the mess and trying to pump Peter who was now in the armchair again. T came over all dizzy.’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Peter. ‘I was reading. You were swinging the club, and then you seemed to throw a sort of fit and plunge forward and grasp the table.’
‘Oh…’
Swinging a club? What club? He could only think of an Indian club. Had he been doing Swedish drill or something?
Then he saw the golf club lying on the floor. How in God’s name had that got there? He had bought that at Brighton! He’d thought he’d like some golf on the approach course in Kensington. What on earth could have induced him to bring it up here? Netta and Peter didn’t understand about golf.
Having mopped up the mess, he took the rag back to the kitchen. He turned on the tap, and washed the rag out. He was glad to be alone. He had to think this out. It was coming back slowly. Brighton. His ‘dead’ mood on the front – the waking up at Portslade. His coming back and finding them gone. His long wet day hanging about, and then taking the train next morning to Town… Then blank – another sudden ‘dead’ mood – completely blank until his head cracked back into position a moment or so ago and he had nearly passed out.
How long had he been ‘under’? It might have been for days for all he knew. But he was fairly certain it was only since that morning. He was wearing the same shirt and suit he could remember wearing on leaving Brighton, and he had an unmistakable feeling of having been in a train recently. He looked at his watch and saw it was half past twelve.
What had he been doing in the meanwhile? Where was his suitcase? He had taken it to his hotel presumably. He supposed he would find it there when he got back. Then why and how on earth had he got round here with a golf club? He was going completely mad and must see a doctor without delay.
In the meantime he must put the best face on it he could. He went back into the sitting-room. Netta had now come out. She was dressed and was putting on her shoes.
‘Hullo, Bone,’ she said, ‘have you recovered?’
‘Yes. All right now.’
‘I’ll have another of your very nice gins,’ she said, ‘if you can pour it out without throwing another fit.’
Your very nice gin? Had he provided the gin, then? It sounded as though he had. Best to say nothing about it.
‘Right,’ he said, and poured it out, and put in the lime and handed it to her.
‘Are you having one, Peter?’
‘Oh… Thanks.’
He poured out one for Peter and gave it to him, and poured out one for himself. He took a good pull at it, and began to feel a bit drunk.
He looked at them and remembered Brighton – all he had suffered at their hands in the last sixty hours.
Why had he come back here of all places? What devil, or angel, or whatever it was that guided him in his ‘dead’ moods (about which he knew absolutely nothing) had brought him back to them? After what they had done he had only hated and wanted to get away from them.
He marvelled that they had the nerve to face him. No mention of her treachery in bringing the others down, no mention of the bill he had paid, no mention of their walking out without leaving so much as a message. They just took everything for granted, because it was ‘George’. He felt he must get outside.
‘What’s the programme, by the way,’ he said, ‘shall we go and have a drink outside?’
‘There’s no programme,’ said Netta. ‘I’ve got a date at one at Gloucester Road. That’s all.’
‘Right then. Let’s go out and have a drink, shall we?’
‘All right,’ said Netta, ‘I’m agreeable.’ And ‘All right,’ said Peter, and a few minutes later they were all clattering down the stone stairs together.
It was still raining. He wondered what Netta’s date was. With the little brown-eyed school bully? He didn’t really care: he was too confused and tired to care.
They went to the ‘Black Hart’ as that was near the station and Netta could get a train to Gloucester Road quickly. It was very crowded, and the moment they got in they were assailed by Mr Montague (the vast, burly, rich-voiced, appalling Jew who had got matey with them lately, and always just had to tell them the other little one about the man who had just married his wife, see?…). Mr Montague bought them all drinks, and told a story to Netta and Peter to which he couldn’t even bother to listen. He found a seat and sat drinking his beer alone amidst the hubbub and confusion of the lunch-hour trade.
At about twenty past one Netta left (so nice for whoever was waiting for her!) and Peter was in an argument about Jews with Mr Montague… Mr Montague, like Peter, was on the whole against Jews, but there were infinite subtleties… He could hear it, through all the noise, from where he was sitting…
He was very tired. He would have another beer, and a cigarette, and then he would go back to his hotel and sleep. He presumed his suitcase was there all right. He pushed through the crowd and got his beer, and sat down, and felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. He pulled out a pink, folded piece of paper, pierced with innumerable bright silver pins…
Pins!… A golf club, a bottle of gin, and a packet of pins. Things were getting interesting. Was there anything more?
He felt in his pockets. He found ten, new, crisp pound notes in his hip pocket, and in his waistcoat pocket a Paddington cloak-room receipt.
Paddington. So that was where his suit
case was! He somehow always knew at the back of his mind that it wasn’t at his hotel.
Pins… gin… pound notes… golf clubs… Netta… cloakroom tickets… It was too much for him. He was drunk, anyway. He had better go and sleep.
He walked out of the noise without saying good-bye to Peter, and, putting his head against the rain, he walked to his hotel in Fauconberg Square.
The white cat was in the passage outside his door. Seeing him, it opened its mouth and made a half plaintive, half irritable noise. He took this for a welcome.
‘Hullo, pussy,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and have a sleep, shall we?’
It was funny, going to bed at twenty to two in the afternoon without any lunch. Downstairs the guests were no doubt having theirs. As he took off his coat and trousers, the white cat, crossing one paw methodically over the other as it walked, weaved itself in and out of his legs, and purred like mad.
He drew the flimsy curtains to quickly, and jumped under the bedclothes in his shirt. There was a pause, and then he felt the sudden springy weight of the cat on his body.
He lifted up the bedclothes so that the cat could come in. The cat, hesitating, came half in, and began to paddle and purr.
‘Come on, pussy,’ he said. ‘Stop playing the piano and go to sleep.’
But the cat went on paddling and purring and he still had to keep the bedclothes held open for it.
Finally the cat dived down under, and turned round laboriously, and went on purring, but stopped paddling.
‘Come on. Let’s go to sleep, pussy,’ he said.
The cat purred, and he began to breathe heavily…
Pink packets of silver pins, bottles of gin, pound notes, golf clubs, Netta, his ‘dead’ moods, cloak-room tickets, Paddington… It was all too much for him.
The cat, warm against his side, suddenly stopped purring and slept. The warmth of the cat beat up against his side, beat up against the pins and the pound notes, and George Harvey Bone slept too.
The Eighth Part
MR BONE
Desire of wine and all delicious drinks,
Which many a famous warrior overturns,
Thou could’st repress; nor did the dancing ruby,
Sparkling out-poured, the flavour or the smell,
Or taste, that cheers the hearts of gods and men,
Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream.
J. MILTON Samson Agonistes
Chapter One
In the year 1939 there came from Lewes, in Sussex, to Earl’s Court, in London, a young man of eighteen of the name of John Halliwell. He was employed by a firm of insurance brokers in the City who thought highly of him for his industry, integrity, and good nature.
He was a fair-haired, clean-shaven young man with a fresh skin, and a rather prominent nose, and he occupied a small, cheap and slightly sordid room at the top of a house in Nevern Road.
Here he slept and was given breakfast; but most of his spare time he spent out of doors in the immediate neighbourhood. For he was alone in London for the first time, and at an age when the external world generally bears a totally different aspect from the one it bears to its more battered and jaundiced inhabitants – at an age, indeed, when even the scenery of S. W. 7 might be associated with the beginning of life rather than the end of all hope, and its streets and people charged with a remarkable mystery and romance of their own.
Sometimes, of an evening, he would just walk about, and sometimes he would go to the pictures; but most of all he preferred to go to the saloon bars of public-houses, and having one or two drinks, watch and listen to people who were older than himself. On these occasions he would drink small glasses of port, which was the only alcoholic drink he at all liked. He was not even certain that he liked this, but he was anxious to acquire the worldly feeling of liking and taking drink, just as he was anxious to acquire the worldly habit of going into public-houses.
Sometimes he would get into conversation with someone, and might have as many as five or six of these small ports in the course of an evening (going home pleased with the spiritual achievement, rather than the physical sensation, of being slightly intoxicated), but usually he stood by himself in a corner and watched.
Amongst the many types he observed in this way, there was one particular little set of people by whom he was a good deal impressed. The centre of this set, as he saw it, was a dark and extremely attractive girl, with a mass of hair which she always wore uncovered (thus giving the impression that she had just slipped out in a rather slovenly way from somewhere next door to have a drink), and an unsmiling, bored expression which at once repelled and fascinated him. With her there was nearly always to be seen a blond man with a rather savage, pasty face, and a blond ‘guardsman’s’ moustache – a little man with a moustache whom they all called Mickey and who was very voluble and at times extremely drunk: and an enormous, blue-eyed, tired-looking man, also with a moustache. Quite often there would be others in this circle as well – slightly younger men (and even an occasional woman) who, he gathered, were connected with the theatre.
Young Halliwell was impressed by these people for a number of reasons. In the first place, he was impressed merely by their age and maturity (they were all either a little way above or a little way beneath the thirty level) – by the phase of life they were enjoying – one in which, it seemed, they retained all the appearance, vigour and boisterousness of youth, while obviously having accumulated a stock of worldly wisdom and experience, such as he himself, in the modesty of his eighteen years, doubted whether he would ever acquire. Then he was impressed by the noise they made, and the sophisticated humour and slang they used, and the way they had of making themselves at home, seeming at once to own and despise whatever property they happened to be upon at the moment. Then he was impressed by the amount they drank and the money they spent in conjunction with their seeming total idleness or unemployment. Then he was impressed by their apparent connection with the world of the theatre (the girl, he gathered, was a film actress of some sort). And finally, of course, he was tremendously impressed by the girl herself, whose dark beauty and strange, off-hand manner overwhelmed and haunted his immature imagination, filled him, in point of fact, and although he would not admit it, with a sort of hopeless yet immeasurable longing.
Indeed, if it had not been for the girl he would probably have never thought twice about the set in which she moved, for, though to a certain extent awed by their general swagger and behaviour, he did not altogether like the atmosphere they gave forth. Because of the girl, however, he made a point of visiting the houses he knew they frequented (particularly the ‘Black Hart’) and, standing in a far corner by himself, he would watch all that took place, a certain amount of disdain, but more perhaps of envy, in his heart. He often wondered whether he would live to be old and experienced enough to carry on in public as these people did, and to be on free-and-easy terms with such a girl as that. He felt towards these people, in short, very much the same sensations, half-hating, half-admiring, as a new boy at a public school might feel on observing the antics of the ‘bloods’.
Apart from the girl, there was one character in this crowd in whom he took a slightly greater interest (and towards whom he felt less sensations of awe) than the rest. This was the big, tired-looking man, whose name, he ascertained, was ‘George’. This ‘George’, he noticed, although he drank as much, made considerably less noise than the others, and, in the midst of the revelry or argument, would often sit by himself, staring into space in a lonely, melancholy way. He had also a more simple, kindly expression than the others, with whom, indeed, he seemed at times to be slightly out of the picture.
Towards the end of the summer young Halliwell noticed that this figure seemed to have dropped out of this circle, though remaining in Earl’s Court and still drinking.
He would see, for instance, the girl and her friends drinking and making merry in one pub, and then go along to another, and find the big, sad man standing in front of a glass of beer by hims
elf.
It happened that one night he found himself alone in a saloon bar with this ‘George’ and he wondered whether he dared enter into conversation with him. He was eager to do so, not only because he had taken so much interest in this crowd, but because he had at the back of his mind the hope that if he got to know the man he might, in the course of events, get to know the girl, and even establish contact as a whole with this most intriguing senior-form in the school of life.
After pondering various conversational openings, and rejecting them all as too banal or obtrusive, young Halliwell had at last decided that he hadn’t the nerve to address the other, when, happening to open a new packet of cigarettes, and to throw its cigarette card (one of a series of ‘Golfing Hints’) on to the counter, to his utmost astonishment and pleasure he found the big man addressing him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said quietly, ‘do you want that?’
‘No. Not a bit,’ said young Halliwell giving up the card. ‘Are you interested in golf?’
‘Yes. Rather…’ said George, looking at the card and reading its back. ‘Not that these hints are any good… But I always like to look at them.’
‘Of course, I could never get on with golf,’ said young Halliwell, anxious at all costs to keep the conversation going now that it had started. ‘I’ve had plenty of tries, but it just beats me. Are you any good?’
‘Well, I wasn’t bad at one time,’ said the other. ‘As a matter of fact, when I was down at Brighton a little while ago, I did a sixty-eight’
‘Sixty-eight! That’s tremendous, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It wasn’t bad, was it? It was on a strange course, too.’
This little confession of a past triumph was uttered in such a naive, simple, subdued tone that young Halliwell was quite taken aback. Having seen this man until recently only against the background of the mature, harsh, and aggressive set with whom he mixed, he had got a picture of him as being almost certainly in some measure harsh and aggressive as well. But here he was, like a child, obviously proud of his little feat at Brighton, and anxious to tell a stranger about it. The heart of the younger man from the country, relieved, flattered, and gratified, at once wanned to that of the older man of the town, and before long they were in friendly and easy conversation.
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