“Oh?” he said. “Well, in that case, tinkerty-tonk.”
The interview then terminated. Oofy hailed a cab, and Bingo returned to his Wimbledon home. And he had not been there long when he was informed that he. was wanted on the telephone. He went to the instrument and heard Oofy’s voice.
“Hullo,” said Oofy. “Is that you? I say, you remember me saying I would like to dance on your mangled remains?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking it over–“
Bingo’s austerity vanished. He saw what had happened. Shortly after they had separated, Oofy’s better nature must have asserted itself, causing remorse to set in. And he was just about to tell him not to give it another thought, because we all say more than we mean in moments of heat, when Oofy continued:
”—thinking it over,” he said, “and I would like to add ‘in hobnailed boots’. Good-bye.”
It was a tight-lipped and pensive Bingo Little who hung up the receiver and returned to the drawing-room, where he had been tucking into tea and muffins. As he resumed the meal, the tea turned to wormwood and the muffins to ashes in his mouth. The thought of having to get through a solid month without cocktails and cigarettes gashed him like a knife. And he was just wondering if it might not be best, after all, to go to the last awful extreme of confessing everything to Mrs. Bingo, when the afternoon post came in, and there was a letter from her. And out of it, as he tore open the envelope, tumbled a ten-pound note.
Bingo tells me that his emotions at this moment were almost indescribable. For quite a while, he says, he remained motionless in his chair with eyes closed, murmuring: “What a pal! What a helpmeet!” Then he opened his eyes and started to read the letter.
It was a longish letter, all about the people at the hotel and a kitten she had struck up an acquaintance with and what her mother looked like when floating in the brine bath, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t till the end that the tenner got a mention. Like all women, Mrs. Bingo kept the big stuff for her postscript.
P.S. (she wrote).—I am enclosing ten pounds. I want you to go to the bank and open an account for little Algy with it. Don’t you think it will be too sweet, him having his own little account and his own little wee passbook?
I suppose if a fairly sinewy mule had suddenly kicked Bingo in the face, he might have felt a bit worse, but not much. The letter fell from his nerveless hands. Apart from the hideous shock of finding that he hadn’t clicked, after all, he thoroughly disapproved of the whole project. Himself strongly in favour of sharing the wealth, it seemed to him that the last thing to place in the hands of an impressionable child was a little wee passbook, starting it off in life—as it infallibly must—with capitalistic ideas out of tune with the trend of modern enlightened thought. Slip a baby ten quid, he reasoned, and before you knew where you were you had got another Economic Royalist on your hands.
So uncompromising were his views on the subject that there was a moment when he found himself toying with the notion of writing back and telling Mrs. Bingo—in the child’s best interests—that he had received a letter from her stating that she was enclosing ten pounds, but that, owing doubtless to a momentary carelessness on her part, no ten pounds had arrived with it. However, he dismissed the idea—not because it was not good, but because something told him that it was not good enough. Mrs. Bingo was a woman who wrote novels about girls who wanted to be loved for themselves alone, but she was not lacking in astuteness.
He finished his tea and muffins, and then, ordering the perambulator, had the son and heir decanted into it and started off for a saunter on Wimbledon Common. Many young fathers, I believe, shrink from this task, considering that it lowers their prestige, but Bingo had always enjoyed it.
To-day, however, the jaunt was robbed of all its pleasures by the brooding melancholy into which the sight of the child, lying there dumb and aloof with a thumb in its mouth, plunged him. Hitherto, he had always accepted with equanimity the fact that it was impossible for there to be any real exchange of ideas between his offspring and himself. An occasional gurgle from the former, and on his side a few musical chirrups, had served to keep them in touch. But now the thought that they were separated by an impassable gulf which no chirrups could bridge, seemed to him poignant and tragic to a degree.
Here, he reflected, was he—penniless; and there was the infant—rolling in the stuff; and absolutely no way of getting together and adjusting things. If only he could have got through to Algernon Aubrey the facts relating to his destitute condition, he was convinced that there would have been no difficulty about arranging a temporary loan. It was the old story of frozen assets, which, as everyone knows, is the devil of a business and stifles commerce at the source.
So preoccupied was he with these moody meditations that it was not immediately that he discovered that somebody was speaking his name. Then, looking up with a start, he saw that a stout man in a frock coat and a bowler hat had come alongside, wheeling a perambulator containing a blob-faced baby.
“Good evening, Mr. Little,” he said, and Bingo saw that it was his bookie, Charles (“Charlie Always Pays”) Pikelet, the man who had acted as party of the second part in the recent deal over the horse Gargoyle. Having seen him before only at race meetings—where, doubtless from the best of motives, he affected chessboard tweeds and a white panama—he had not immediately recognized him.
“Why, hullo, Mr. Pikelet,” he said.
He was not really feeling in the vein for conversation and would have preferred to be alone with his thoughts, but the other appeared to be desirous of chatting, and he was prepared to stretch a point to oblige him. The prudent man always endeavours to keep in with bookies.
“I didn’t know you lived in these parts. Is that your baby?”
“Ah,” said Charles Pikelet, speaking despondently. He gave a quick look into the interior of the perambulator to which he was attached, and winced like one who has seen some fearful sight.
“Kitchy-kitchy,” said Bingo.
“How do you mean, kitchy-kitchy?” asked Mr. Pikelet, puzzled.
“I was speaking to the baby,” explained Bingo. “A pretty child,” he added, feeling that there was nothing to be lost by giving the man the old oil.
Charles Pikelet looked up, amazement in his eyes.
“Pretty?”
“Well, of course,” said Bingo, his native honesty compelling him to qualify the statement, “I don’t say he—if it is a he—is a Robert Taylor or—if a she—a Carole Lombard. Pretty compared with mine, I mean.”
Again Charles Pikelet appeared dumbfounded.
“Are you standing there and telling me this baby of mine isn’t uglier than that baby of yours?” he cried incredulously.
It was Bingo’s turn to be stunned.
“Are you standing there and telling me it is?”
“I certainly am. Why, yours looks human.”
Bingo could scarcely believe his ears.
“Human? Mine?”
“Well, practically human.”
“My poor misguided Pikelet, you’re talking rot.”
“Rot, eh?” said Charles Pikelet, stung. “Perhaps you’d care to have a bet on it? Five to one I’m offering that my little Arabella here stands alone as the ugliest baby in Wimbledon.”
A sudden thrill shot through Bingo. No one has a keener eye than he for recognizing money for pickles.
“Take a tenner?”
“Tenner it is.”
“Okay,” said Bingo.
“Kayo,” said Charles Pikelet. “Where’s your tenner?”
This introduction of a rather sordid note into the discussion caused Bingo to start uneasily.
“Oh, dash it,” he protested, “surely elasticity of credit is the very basis of these transactions. Chalk it up on the slate.”
Mr. Pikelet said he hadn’t got a slate.
Bingo had to think quickly. He had a tenner on his person, of course, but he realized that it was in the nature of trust money, and he had no me
ans of conferring with Algernon Aubrey and ascertaining whether the child would wish to slip it to him. It might be that he had inherited his mother’s lack of the sporting spirit.
And then, with quick revulsion, he felt that he was misjudging the little fellow. No son of his would want to pass up a snip like this.
“All right,” he said. “Here you are.”
He produced the note, and allowed it to crackle before Charles Pikelet’s eyes.
“Right,” said Charles Pikelet, satisfied. “Here’s my fifty. And we’ll put the decision up to the policeman that’s coming along. Hey, officer.”
“Gents?” said the policeman, halting. He was a large, comfortable man with an honest face. Bingo liked the look of him, and was well content to place the judging in his hands.
“Officer,” said Charles Pikelet, “to settle a bet, is this baby here uglier than that baby there?”
“Or vice versa?” said Bingo.
The policeman brooded over the two perambulators.
“They’re neither of ‘em to be compared with the one I’ve got at home,” he said, a little smugly. “There’s a baby with a face that would stop a clock. And the missus thinks it’s a beauty. I’ve had many a hearty laugh over that,” said the policeman indulgently.
Both Charles Pikelet and Bingo felt that he was straying from the point.
“Never mind about your baby,” said Charles Pikelet.
“No,” said Bingo. “Stick closely to the res”
“Your baby isn’t a runner,” said Charles Pikelet. “Only the above have arrived.”
Called to order, the policeman intensified his scrutiny. He looked from the one perambulator to the other, and then from the other perambulator to the one. And it suddenly came over Bingo like a cold douche that this hesitation could mean only one thing. It was not going to be the absurdly simple walk-over which he had anticipated.
“H’m!” said the policeman.
“Ha!” said the policeman.
Bingo’s heart stood still. It was now plain to him that there was to be a desperately close finish. But he tells me that he is convinced that his entry would have nosed home, had it not been for a bit of extraordinary bad luck in the straight. Just as the policeman stood vacillating, there peeped through the clouds a ray of sunshine. It fell on Arabella Pikelet’s face, causing her to screw it up in a hideous grimace. And at the same instant, with the race neck and neck, she suddenly started blowing bubbles out of the corner of her mouth.
The policeman hesitated no longer. He took Miss Pikelet’s hand and raised it.
“The winnah!” he said. “But you ought to see the one I’ve got at home.”
If the muffins which Bingo had had for tea had turned to ashes in his mouth, it was as nothing compared with what happened to the chump chop and fried which he had for dinner. For by that time his numbed brain, throwing off the coma into which it had fallen, really got busy, pointing out to him the various angles of the frightful mess he had let himself into. It stripped the seven veils from the situation, and allowed him to see it in all its stark grimness.
Between Bingo and Mrs. Bingo there existed an almost perfect love. From the very inception of their union, they had been like ham and eggs. But he doubted whether the most Grade A affection could stand up against the revelation of what he had done this day. Look at his story from whatever angle you pleased, it remained one that reflected little credit on a young father and at the best must inevitably lead to “Oh, how could you’s?” And the whole wheeze in married life, he had come to learn, was to give the opposite number as few opportunities of saying “Oh, how could you?” as possible.
And that story would have to be told. The first thing Mrs. Bingo would want to see on her return would be Algernon Aubrey’s passbook, and from the statement that no such passbook existed to the final, stammering confession would be but a step. No wonder that as he sat musing in his chair after dinner the eyes were haggard, the face drawn and the limbs inclined to twitch.
He was just jotting down on the back of an envelope a few rough notes such as “Pocket picked,” and “Took the bally thing out of my pocket on a windy morning and it blew out of my hand,” and speculating on the chances of these getting by, when he was called to the telephone to take a trunk call and found Mrs. Bingo on the other end of the wire.
“Hullo,” said Mrs. Bingo.
“Hullo,” said Bingo.
“Oh, hullo, darling.”
“Hullo, precious.”
“Hullo, sweetie-pie.”
“Hullo, angel.”
“Are you there?” said Mrs. Bingo. “How’s Algy?”
“Oh, fine.”
“As beautifully as ever?”
“Substantially, yes.”
“Have you got my letter?”
“Yes.”
“And the ten pounds?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it’s a wonderful idea?”
“Terrific.”
“I suppose it was too late to go to the bank to-day?”
“Yes.”
“Well, go there to-morrow morning before you come to Paddington.” “Paddington?”
“Yes. To meet me. We’re coming home to-morrow. Mother swallowed some brine this morning, and thinks she’d rather go and take the mud baths at Pistany instead.”
At any moment less tense than the present one, the thought of Mrs. Bingo’s mother being as far away as Pistany would have been enough to cause Bingo’s spirits to soar. But now the news hardly made an impression on him. All he could think of was that the morrow would see Mrs. Bingo in his midst. And then the bitter reckoning.
“The train gets to Paddington about twelve. Mind you’re there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And bring Algy.”
“Right-ho.”
“Oh, and Bingo. Most important. You know my desk?”
“Desk. Yes.”
“Look in the middle top drawer.”
“Middle top drawer. Right.”
“I left the proofs of my Christmas story for Woman’s Wonder there, and I’ve had a very sniffy telegram saying that they must have them to-morrow morning. So will you be an angel and correct them and send them off by to-night’s post without fail? You can’t miss them. Middle top drawer of my desk, and the title is ‘Tiny Fingers’. And now I must go back to Mother. She’s still coughing. Good-bye, darling.”
“Good-bye, precious.”
“Good-bye, lambkin.”
“Good-bye, my dream rabbit.”
Bingo hung up the receiver, and made his way to the study. He found the proofs of “Tiny Fingers”, and taking pencil in hand seated himself at the desk and started in on them.
His heart was heavier than ever. Normally, the news that his mother-in-law had been swallowing brine and was still coughing would have brought a sparkle to his eyes and a happy smile to his lips, but now it left him cold. He was thinking of the conversation which had just concluded and remembering how cordial Mrs. Bingo’s voice had been, how cheery, how loving—so absolutely in all respects the voice of a woman who thinks her husband a king among men. How different from the flat, metallic voice which was going to say “What/” to him in the near future.
And then suddenly, as he brooded over the galley slips, a sharp thrill permeated his frame and he sat up in his chair as if a new, firm backbone had been inserted in place of the couple of feet of spaghetti he had been getting along with up till now. In the middle of slip two the story had started to develop, and the way in which it developed caused hope to dawn again.
I don’t know if any of you are readers of Mrs. Bingo’s output. If not, I may inform you that she goes in pretty wholeheartedly for the fruitily sentimental. This is so even at ordinary times, and for a Christmas number, of course, she naturally makes a special effort. In “Tiny Fingers” she had chucked off the wraps completely. Scooping up snow and holly and robin redbreasts and carol-singing villagers in both hands, she had let herself go and giv
en her public the works.
Bingo, when I last saw him, told me the plot of “Tiny Fingers” in pitiless detail, but all I need touch on now is its main theme. It-was about a hard-hearted godfather who had given his goddaughter the air for marrying the young artist, and they came right back at him by shoving the baby under his nose on Christmas Eve—the big scene, of course, being the final one, where the old buster sits in his panelled library, steadying the child on his knee with one hand while writing a whacking big cheque with the other. And the reason it made so deep an impression on Bingo was that he had suddenly remembered that Oofy Prosser was Algernon Aubrey’s godfather. And what he was asking himself was, if this ringing-in-the-baby wheeze had worked with Sir Aylmer Mauleverer, the hardest nut in the old-world village of Meadow-vale, why shouldn’t it work with Oofy?
It was true that the two cases were not exactly parallel, Sir Aylmer having had snow and robin redbreasts to contend against and it now being the middle of June. It was true, also, that Oofy, when guardedly consenting to hold the towel for Algernon Aubrey, had expressly stipulated that there must be no funny business and that a small silver mug was to be accepted in full settlement. Nevertheless, Bingo went to bed in optimistic mood. Indeed, his last thought before dropping off to sleep was a speculation as to whether, if the baby played its cards right, it might not be possible to work Oofy up into three figures.
He had come down a bit in his budget, of course, by the time he set out for Park Lane next morning. One always does after sleeping on these things. As he saw it now, twenty quid was about what it ought to pan out at. This, however, cut fifty-fifty between principal and manager, would be ample. He was no hog. All he wanted was to place child and self on a sound financial footing, and as he reached Oofy’s flat and pressed the bell, he was convinced that the thing was in the bag.
In a less sanguine frame of mind, he might have been discouraged by the fact that the infant was looking more than ever like some mass-assassin who has been blackballed by the Devil’s Island Social and Outing Club as unfit to associate with the members; but his experience with Charles Pikelet and the policeman had shown him that this was how all babies of that age looked, and he had no reason to suppose that the one in “Tiny Fingers” had been any different. The only thing Mrs. Bingo had stressed about the latter had been its pink toes, and no doubt Algernon Aubrey, if called upon to do so, could swing as pink a toe as the next child. It was with bright exuberance that he addressed Oofy’s man, Corker, as he opened the door.
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