Young Adolf

by Beryl Bainbridge

  He had no time for Adolf at all – the man was inefficient, arrogant and as he said himself difficult to live with, blasted difficult. And yet there was something about the conversation that disturbed him. He didn’t like it. He had married Bridget, fathered a child by her, and still he felt she was less familiar than Adolf. She belonged to the present and Adolf belonged to the past and at this moment the past seemed more real than either the present or the future.

  ‘This delivering of parcels,’ he asked irritably. ‘For one of the guests. Is it regular?’

  ‘Fairly regular,’ said Adolf.

  ‘And how much are you tipped each time?’

  ‘Twopence,’ lied Adolf. It was not that he deliberately sought to deceive Alois, but he wanted to buy himself a new pair of trousers as soon as possible. And a jacket. It was all right saving his wages towards his fare but maybe Alois would consider the tips as something different. He wasn’t going to go without a new pair of trousers just because Alois wanted more money to put on the horses. For the next few weeks he resolved to fetch and carry for M. Dupont like a gun-dog. He would crawl on his belly if need be. It was unendurable to be wearing verminous clothes.

  29

  As it turned out, there wasn’t a great deal of fetching to be done. Twice M. Dupont cancelled his afternoon newspaper. He was out most days or else busy upstairs. Several times Adolf loitered about the corridors of the first floor in the hope that M. Dupont would come upon him and remember some urgent errand. He was seen by a pageboy who warned him to be especially careful. Extra security men had been hired to patrol the building. Something was up. The disguises they got themselves into would take your breath away.

  ‘He’s one,’ hissed the boy, pointing at a man in a leather coat who, a fraction before Adolf looked in that direction, had disappeared behind the life-sized statue of a marble god.

  Though he had no doubt the boy was half-witted, Adolf could not help regarding with suspicion the stuffed bear that stood outside the entrance to the Sportsman’s Bar.

  If he had been employed night and day by the hotel he would have been perfectly happy, for there he wore his smart grey uniform and his undervest of laundered cotton with the monogram on the shoulder. But his work ended at half-past five. In the store room when he changed into his jacket and trousers he felt he became a leper; walking home through the crowded streets he imagined that the passers-by shrank from contact with him. He was forever sniffing his armpits or examining the seams of his coat. Alois complained that it was worse than living with a monkey. It began to affect Adolf’s work. Once, spoken to in a hectoring manner by a stout Jewish gentleman who had ordered a glass of Russian tea and a dish of strawberries and cream, he was overcome by rage. The kitchen had dispatched him with the glass of tea and a jug of cream, but omitted the strawberries. ‘Take the tray away,’ ordered the gentleman. ‘I wish the items to arrive simultaneously, not in dribs and drabs.’ Purple in the face with supressed passion, Adolf picked up the tray and contrived to tip the contents of the cream jug into the gentleman’s lap. And that’s just for starters, he thought. Mollified he hastened to fetch a sponge and a basin of water.

  Finally, unable to bear his condition any longer, Adolf turned to Meyer for help. Perhaps he would be loaned the dark blue jacket with the gold buttons. Since the fiasco of the revolution he had seen very little of him. He had expected to find him reduced and out of sorts and was surprised to see him seated cheerfully at the table in the front room, playing checkers with the doctor.

  ‘Ah! the working man personified,’ cried Kephalus at the sight of him.

  ‘I will come back another time,’ said Adolf, and he went out slamming the door violently behind him, hoping to bury the disgusting doctor under an avalanche of plaster.

  The very next morning, having received his newspaper in the Mauve Breakfast Room, M. Dupont said: ‘I have observed you going out by the front entrance and returning by the side entrance. Why is that, do you suppose?’

  ‘Merely a rule,’ explained Adolf. ‘I have never questioned the logic.’ Thankfully he pocketed a threepenny bit.

  ‘By the way,’ said M. Dupont. ‘I would like you to run a little errand for me this afternoon. Meet me in the foyer at one o’clock sharp.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Adolf said carefully, ‘it would be better if you yourself brought the parcel downstairs. We aren’t allowed into the rooms.’

  ‘How inconvenient,’ sighed M. Dupont. ‘Perhaps I should ask someone else.’

  Adolf persuaded him that there was no need. If things went wrong, he told himself, he had both Meyer and Alois to speak for him. Meyer was highly thought of in the supper rooms.

  At one o’clock when, trembling, he climbed the stairs to the first floor, he found the corridors completely deserted. Either the page boy had been exaggerating or else the house detectives were all drinking behind the closed doors of the linen room. Arriving safely in the foyer with the brown paper parcel under his arm, he was stopped by a man in a leather coat who said something incomprehensible to him. At that moment the head porter stepped forward and handing Adolf a prescription told him to go immediately to the chemists in Lord Street. The man in the leather jacket looked at the prescription, then at the head porter and dismissed Adolf with a wave of his hand.

  It was raining outside. M. Dupont had impressed upon Adolf that it was vital to deliver the parcel to Mr Brackenberry by 1.45 at the latest. Adolf waited twenty minutes at the chemist for a bottle of cough mixture. When he returned to the hotel he positioned himself in the centre of the cab rank and whistled frantically for the commissionaire to come down the steps. The commissionaire told him forcefully to go round to the side door and do his own delivering. Adolf was forced to part with his threepenny bit.

  He ran as fast as he could through the streets, but he was hampered by the raised umbrellas in every hand. He told himself it was just a manner of speech, M. Dupont’s mania for punctuality.

  Turning into Pitt Street he was alarmed to see a policeman hovering on the pavement in the vicinity of the Chinese provision store. He stopped and pretended to be looking into the window of an ironmonger’s. A second policeman came out of the store, holding fast to the arm of a man who, by the loudness of his motoring coat, was instantly recognisable as Mr Brackenberry.

  By now both Adolf and his paper parcel were saturated by the rain. He walked thoughtfully back to the hotel, pondering on how he would extricate himself from this dilemma in a dignified manner. It was obvious that he had been a fool. He no longer cared if he spent the rest of his days in his old coat and trousers. But for chance and the crowded chemists, he would now be locked in a cell at the Bridewell. The parcel in his arms was already sodden, and simply by pressing one finger to a portion of the wrapping he was able to split the paper.

  He entered the hotel, made his way to the store room where he kept his outdoor clothes and, finding the place empty, examined the contents of the package. He wasn’t surprised to uncover a quantity of silver spoons, snuff boxes, and various small articles of jewellery. Retying the parcel as best he could, he wrapped it in his outdoor coat and bundled it into a shoe cupboard. Then he went in search of M. Dupont. He wouldn’t reproach that gentleman or even indicate that he knew what the parcel contained. He would merely tell him where it was hidden and how in future, though it was regrettable, he would have to fetch his own newspaper, morning and afternoon editions. Leaning forward through the steam of the Turkish bath he would drop the key to M. Dupont’s suite into the damp folds of his belly.

  M. Dupont was neither in the Turkish bath nor in the foyer. At four o’clock he failed to make an appearance in the lounge. Nobody had seen him since luncheon. On enquiring finally at the desk, Adolf was told that M. Dupont had paid his bill at 1.30 and left in a cab for New York, via Pier 47. I will drink a glass of water, thought Adolf, and think of something. I won’t give way to panic.

  There was only one sensible solution – all others could in the end point
to his being an accessory – to return the parcel to the suite and leave the key in the lock. But how to get the parcel upstairs? After some thought Adolf purloined a tray from the kitchens and a white cloth. Returning to the store room he washed his hands and his perspiring face and carefully combed that lock of hair at a slant over his brow. Balancing on the palm of his hand what he hoped appeared to be a tray of afternoon tea, he crossed the Lounge. At this hour every sofa, every chair was occupied. On the dais a string quartet was playing a medley of waltzes by Strauss. Adolf could see himself reflected in the mirrors, dapper in his grey uniform, the edge of his tray glittering under the chandeliers as he threaded his way between the tables. The modernity and brilliance of the scene dazzled him. The air was filled with the buzz of voices, the tinkling of cups, the lilting strains of the violin. It seemed to him that the vast lounge had never been more beautiful. It was the best job he had ever had, even if it was his first. God damn M. Dupont to hell for this paradise lost. Tears in his eyes, he climbed the stairs to the first floor. Again he was lucky. There wasn’t a soul in the corridors.

  He had put his tray down momentarily on the green carpet and was fitting his key in the lock when a hand touched him on the shoulder. Turning, he looked full into the face of the bearded man who, that night in the square when he had fallen over the Christmas tree, had engineered his escape from the prostitute.

  ‘Son,’ said the bearded man, and would have said more only now Adolf, recovering from that second of paralysis, was running full tilt along the corridor having abandoned himself completely to some earlier ancestral condition when, chased by brontosauruses or demons and flooded with adrenalin, man had fled for the safety of the cave. Skidding around the curve of the staircase, he leapt into the foyer and hurled himself into the revolving doors. Emerging into the night air, he took the wall of the cab rank in his stride and landed on his feet in the street below. He felt immensely powerful as he sprinted along Lime Street and turned left towards the market. Minus his horse, he was Old Shatterhand himself, cunning as a coyote and determined to shake off his pursuers. Had there been a convenient rock in the middle of the city street he would have climbed to the top of it and pulling down the tram cables as though they were cobwebs shouted to the skies that he was great, he was glorious.

  Then suddenly it was over – he had burnt himself out. Utterly spent, he dribbled to a standstill. He had to cling to a lamp-post in case he fell down on the pavement. I’m wearing the hotel uniform, he thought. I shall be charged with theft as well as being an accessory.

  He had no idea how long he stood there, shuddering with fatigue, his teeth chattering in his head. He flapped back and forth like a rag as the pedestrains brushed past him. He was in a narrow street, his back to the lighted windows of a department store. Across the road was a warehouse of some kind with a small door at street level and a loading bay two storeys higher. Further down he could see a section of a cobbled square in which stood a circular urinal, open to the sky. Peering over the top of the ornamental grill, the lamplight clearly illuminating the plains of his face, was the man with the beard.

  Adolf crossed the road and like an animal nosing for cover blundered through the door of the warehouse.

  30

  He was outside the Grand Salon of the Pondevedrian Embassy in Paris. Count Danilo was singing:

  ‘I’m off to Chez Maxime

  To join the swirling stream

  For one brief hour enchanting …’

  ‘Help me,’ cried Adolf, and he fell into the arms of a young man who stood in the passageway beside a flight of stone steps.

  ‘When people ask what bliss is

  I simply tell them, this is …’

  ‘Steady on,’ urged the young man, and he guided Adolf into a little cubbyhole set in the wall and assisted him on to a high stool.

  ‘Where am I?’ whispered Adolf. ‘Is it possible I’m dead?’

  ‘You’re a queer colour,’ the young man said, answering him in German, though in a tone of voice reminiscent of Mrs Prentice. ‘But you’re not yet a corpse.’

  Several young women in low-cut dresses, cheeks heavily rouged and eyelashes dripping with lamp blacking, ran down the stairs.

  ‘Look at this,’ called the young man. ‘Is he drunk or ill?’

  The ladies took no notice. Smoothing their dresses and patting their curls into place, they swept through the pass-door on to the stage.

  ‘You’ll have to go,’ the young man said. ‘It’s more than my job’s worth. There are only artistes or scene shifters allowed through here and you’re neither of those.’

  ‘If I’m sent into the street,’ protested Adolf, his voice stronger now, ‘I shall be instantly taken into custody. There’s a man waiting to pounce on me and drag me to the police station.’

  ‘It’s none of my concern,’ muttered the young man, looking anxiously up and down the passageway. ‘You shouldn’t have misbehaved.’

  ‘I didn’t misbehave,’ shouted Adolf. ‘I swear it. It is too exhausting to go into the full details, concerning as they do a Chinese provision store and a matter of secondhand clothes and a French gentleman who duped me, but I’m telling the truth. I have committed no crime. I behaved foolishly, but only to save myself.’ He paused fractionally. ‘I didn’t want to go under.’

  ‘Ah!’ murmured the young man.

  Adolf waited. He gripped the edges of the stool as though he were in danger of drowning. He would only use Meyer’s name as a last desperate measure. It was possible the young man hated his father.

  31

  At first Adolf strenuously resisted the suggestion, but eventually he realised he had no choice. As the young man so rightly stated, the theatre was a utility building – every cupboard, every inch of space had a purpose. Though it was against the rules, when the musicians were in the orchestra pit their sweethearts waited in the band room beneath the stage. Nor could Adolf be hidden in the Green Room, the Prop Room, the manager’s office or the wardrobe. It was absurd to think he could pass unnoticed in the dressing rooms. If he did manage to squeeze himself behind the back drop, he would have to pray that the fly-man wasn’t drunk. He could receive a fatal blow on the head from a carelessly dropped sand bag. Then there was the fireman who shone his torch into every corner of the building every half hour or so. ‘And you’d be hiding for two of us,’ concluded the young man. ‘Not just for yourself. If you were rumbled it would be disastrous. I’d be out on my ear. I’m directly responsible for anyone who gets past that door.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Adolf testily. ‘I take your point.’ He was annoyed that he had been unable to put to some use the valuable lesson he felt he had learned the night of the abortive rebellion in Argyll Street. Though the young man was a minority of one, Adolf had tried to exert his authority and failed. The young man simply talked him into the ground.

  ‘We have very little time,’ worried the young man. ‘The curtain will be down at any moment.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Adolf. ‘They haven’t yet finished the Pavilion Duet.’ He had seen The Merry Widow seven times. It was his favourite operetta.

  The change had to be accomplished within the constricted space of the cubby hole in the wall. There was nowhere else that was safe.

  ‘Oh my God!’ protested Adolf, when he saw the garments that were handed to him. ‘Surely you can find something less conspicuous.’

  ‘It’s the safest costume in the world,’ the young man assured him. ‘For a man in your position.’

  He should know, thought Adolf. Resigned, he stepped into the voluminous skirt and struggled to fasten the innumerable hooks and eyes of a blue voile blouse.

  ‘Hurry,’ the young man urged. ‘They are coming to the end of the finale.’

  Thanking his stars that he hadn’t been given a bonnet, Adolf draped a grey shawl over his head and stepped down into the passage.

  ‘Out,’ said the young man, and opening the street door he pushed Adolf into the night.

&
nbsp; He walked so rapidly and with head so inclined to the ground that he couldn’t tell if people regarded him suspiciously or not. He was no longer concerned about being arrested. He had done his best. There was nothing further he could do. Indeed his anxieties were now centred on how he should proceed if he reached Stanhope Street safely. He could no longer stay in England. He was a marked man. He had three weeks’ wages saved and four shillings and threepence in tips. He didn’t think it would be sufficient to buy him a ticket for the steamer and the train. And he would need other clothes. He could hardly go to Lime Street Station wearing the distinctive grey uniform of the Adelphi Hotel.

  He had meant when he arrived at the house to creep up the stairs and discard his women’s clothing in the top room. Let Meyer and Michael Murphy and the youth with crinkly hair make what they like of it. But no sooner had he entered the dark lobby than the door of Meyer’s room opened. Adolf quickly turned his back to the light and stood there, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t see him. He imagined it was Mary O’Leary, attending to the coals.

  He was astonished to feel two arms encircling his waist. He struggled; the shawl slipped completely over his face. A name was breathed against his chest. His buttocks supported in two large hands, he was jiggled up and down. Outraged, he threw a wild punch and had the satisfaction of feeling bone under his fist. He was released at once. Snatching off his shawl he came face to face with Meyer.

  A second figure stepped into the hall. It was the man with the beard.

  32

  It wasn’t a commonplace misunderstanding by any means, but by now Adolf was so inured to peculiar happenings that he accepted it almost as such. Meyer acted as interpreter. The man with the beard admitted he’d been following him for weeks. He hadn’t made himself known for two reasons – he wanted to be sure Adolf was who he was, or rather who he wasn’t, and he didn’t wish to be seen by Mary O’Leary. If he was proved wrong in his surmise he would only distress her – he had a grand little common-law wife in Blackpool. He had hoped that Adolf was his son. After all he had been husband to Mary O’Leary for one night. He was sorry to have caused Adolf so much inconvenience and regretful they weren’t flesh of one flesh. This last sentiment didn’t sound totally sincere; he avoided looking at Adolf’s blouse and skirt.