She laughed too and invited me to drink a cup of coffee with her while waiting. She said, “Judging by your voice you come from Manchester, and it is years since I had a heart-to-heart talk with a sensible down-to-earth English woman.”
I popped out and told Wedder this. He stared at me blearily then swallowed the second green fairy. I went back in.
She began by telling me she had once been Millicent Moon of Seven Dials and keen on the hotel trade, but London hotel regulations made life hard for beginners so she had come to Paris where new hôteliers were encouraged. In the Notre-Dame she had first occupied a very subordinate position, but became so indispensable to the manager that he married her—she was now known as Madame Cronquebil, but I should call her Millie. She had become manager herself after the Franco-Prussian war, when the Communards had suspended Cronquebil from a lamp bracket because of his international sympathies. She said she regretted his demise, but pursued her avocation with a facility and acumen which were appreciated in the correct quarters. French men were a lot easier to manage than British. The British pretended to be honest and practical but were at bottom a race of eccentrics. Only the French were sensible about the important things—did I not agree? I said, “I cannot say, Millie. What are the important things?”
“Money and love. What else is there?”
“Cruelty.”
She laughed and said that was a very English idea, but people who loved cruelty had to pay for it, which proved love and money came first. I asked what she meant? She stared and asked what I meant. I said I was afraid to tell her. At this she stopped being motherly and jolly, and asked in a low voice if a man had hurt me?
“O no Millie—nobody ever hurt me. I’m talking about worse things than that.”
I was trembling and starting to weep but she held my hands. This strengthened me so much that I told her what happened in Alexandria. And now I have the strength to tell you about it too, God, but it is so important that I will divide it from the rest of my letter with another line.
Mr. Astley and Dr. Hooker took me to a hotel where we sat among well-dressed people like ourselves at tables on a veranda chatting eating drinking and a crowd of nearly naked folk mostly children watched us all across a space where two men with whips walked up and down and at first I thought a jolly game was happening for many in the crowd were amusing folk on the veranda by bowing and praying to them and wriggling their bodies and grinning comically until someone on the veranda flung a coin or handful of coins onto the dusty ground before the veranda then one or two or a horde raced out and flung themselves down on the coins scrabbling and screaming while the audience at the tables laughed or looked disgusted or turned away then the men with whips who had stood with folded arms pretending not to see suddenly saw and rushed into the crowd flogging it apart and back which caused laughter too and Mr. Astley said remnants of the race that carved the sphinx and Dr. Hooker said that looks like a deserving case and pointed to a thin little girl blind in one eye carrying a baby with a big head who was blind in both she held it tight in one arm held the other straight out swaying the empty clutching hand from side to side mechanically as if in a trance in a trance I stood and walked to her I think the men shouted and followed I crossed the space and entered the crowd of beggars taking the purse out of my handbag to put into her hand but before I could do that someone snatched it anyway the money could never be enough she was my daughter perhaps I knelt on the ground embraced her and the baby lifted them up waded stumbled back through crippled blind children old men with running sores scrambling screaming stamping each other’s fingers to get coins from split purse I climbed onto the veranda a hotel man said you cannot bring these here and I said they are coming home with me and Mr. Astley said Mrs. Wedderburn neither the port authorities nor the captain will let you bring them onto the ship and the baby was wailing and peeing but the little girl clutched me with her other arm I am sure she knew she had found her mother but they dragged us apart YOU CAN DO NO GOOD bellowed Dr. Hooker nobody had ever cursed me insulted me like that before how could he say that to me who like all of us is good right through to the backbone I CAN DO NO GOOD? I cried hardly believing I had heard such a vile suggestion but Mr. Astley said distinctly none at all so I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth sink in.
The taste of blood sobered me. I was also surprised, because Mr. Astley did not wince or groan. He only frowned slightly, but two seconds later his face lost colour and he would have collapsed if Dr. Hooker and I had not helped him indoors and placed him on a sofa in the alcove of a lounge. Dr. Hooker ordered hot water, iodine and clean bandages, but though he has a medical certificate it was I who bathed and dressed the wound and bound it with a tourniquet bandage. I also told him I was sorry. In a sleepy voice he told me that a clean, unexpected flesh wound, however painful, was a flea bite to one who had been educated at Eton.
On the way back to the ship in a cab I sat silent and rigid, staring straight ahead while they talked. Dr. Hooker said now I knew the great task which lay ahead of the Anglo-Saxon races, and also why Our Father in Heaven had created an afterlife to counteract the evils of life on earth. At the same time (he said) I should not exaggerate the evil of what we had seen. The open sores et cetera were a source of income to those who flaunted them, and most beggars were happier than folk who lived by honest toil. The girl and baby were accustomed to their state, it was not misery in our sense of the word—they were certainly happier and freer in Egypt than they would be in a civilized country. He admired how completely I had recovered from my first reaction to a terrible surprise, but was not sorry to have administered that surprise—from now on I would think like a woman, not like a child. Mr. Astley said my pity was natural and good if confined to the unfortunate of my own class, but if acted on promiscuously it would prolong the misery of many who would be better dead. I had just seen a working model of nearly every civilized nation. The people on the veranda were the owners and rulers—their inherited intelligence and wealth set them above everyone else. The crowd of beggars represented the jealous and incompetent majority, who were kept in their place by the whips of those on the ground between: the latter represented policemen and functionaries who keep society as it is. And while they spoke I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.
“I still do not know,” I told Millie, smiling through my tears. “I had better return to God for advice. But I cannot do that until I am rid of the poor fellow who waits outside.”
“Bring him in,” said Millie firmly. “Your apartment is ready so take him up to it, knock him off quick and we will have another talk. Your heart is too good for this wicked world, my dear. You need advice from a friendly, experienced woman you can trust.”
I thought “knock him off” a queer way to say “put him to bed”, but out I went and saw—no Duncan! Four empty little green fairy glasses stood on the table top, a waiter who wanted paid sprang forward, but my Wedder had vanished.
I went back inside. Millie made us more coffee then asked how I had met such a man and why I was wandering in Paris with so little luggage. I told her.
She said, “I greatly admire your sense, my dear, in taking a nice long honeymoon with your lover before marrying a respectable husband. Too many women enter marriage completely ignorant of what they ought to give and take. But this Wedderburn is obviously an over-sucked orange. You will be a far better wife to your husband if you now enjoy some variety.”
She explained that the hotel was the sort Londoners call a knocking-shop—her customers were men who paid to wed a total stranger for periods of an hour or less. Knocking was illegal in Brita
in, but any clean intelligent girl could get a licence to do it in France, or find work in a licensed establishment like her own.
“Is it possible for strangers to wed so quickly?” I asked, astonished, and she said many men preferred strangers because they could not wed those they knew best. Most of her customers were married men, and some of them had mistresses too. It seemed a mistress was what I had been to Wedder, though a Parisian kind are called midinettes.
“He obviously found one while waiting for you,” she said. “Hotels constantly lose business to amateurs—if I did not love my métier I would have retired years ago. I don’t suppose you will want to stay here forever, but many deserted women earn enough to return to God while working for me.”
“Not to my God,” I said.
“Of course not, dear. I’m talking about Catholics.”
Then Wedder strode in. He was in one of his wild states, and demanded a talk with me in private.
“Do you want that, dear?” said Millie.
“Of course!” said I.
She led us very stiffly upstairs to this nice little room then said (to Wedder) “Out of respect for the person of your companion I am forgoing the tariff which is customarily paid in advance, but if in any way she suffers you will be made to pay to an extent you will find astonishing.”
She said this in a very French voice.
“Eh?” said Wedder, looking confused as well as wild.
In a more London voice she said, “Remember, walls have ears,” and left, shutting the door.
He then strode up and down making a speech which sounded more like the Bible than Shakespeare. He spoke about God, his mother, the lost paradise of home, hell-fire, damnation and money. He said that by stealing the five hundred friedrichs d’or I had broken his run of luck, stopped him breaking the casino’s bank and cheated him out of marriage. My theft had robbed the poor of vast sums he would have donated to charity and to the church, and deprived us of a town house in London, a yacht in the Mediterranean, a grouse moor in Scotland and a mansion in the Kingdom of Heaven. And now that he no longer wished to marry—now that he wished he were separated from me by a gulf deeper than Hell itself—he was chained by his abject poverty to the fiend who had damned him to Hell—was chained to a woman for whom he now felt nothing but hate hate hate hate hate—loathing, detestation and hate.
“But Duncan,” I cried happily cutting open the lining of my coat, “luck has returned to you again! Here are Clydesdale and North of Scotland banknotes to the value of five hundred pounds sterling—they are just as valuable as friedrichs d’or. God gave them to me because he knew something like this would happen, and I have kept them for our last moment which has now arrived. Take it all! Return to Glasgow, to your mother, to maidservants who will love your manliness more than I can, to any church of God which catches your fancy. Be free as a bird once more—fly from me!”
Instead of cheering up he tried to swallow the notes while flinging himself out of the window, but being unable to get it open he rushed through the door and tried to dive downstairs head first.
Luckily Millie had been listening from the room next door (this hotel is full of apertures) and had called out her staff. They swarmed over him and filled him with exactly the right amount of brandy. It was not easy getting him off on the train to Calais. He did not really want to leave me, but many hands make light work and off he went. Millie wanted me to keep most of the five hundred pounds but I said no: Wedder loved money more than I did and it was his reward for the weddings we had enjoyed. I would now earn what I needed by working for a living: a thing I had not done before. She said, “If that’s what you really want, dear.”
So here I am.
18
Paris to Glasgow: The Return
I am no longer a parasite. For three days I have earned a wage by doing a job as well and fast as possible, not for pleasure but cash like most people do. Each morning I sink into slumber, glad to have knocked off forty and earned four hundred and eighty francs. I am surprised at my popularity. Bell Baxter is certainly a splendid looking woman, but if I was a man there are at least a dozen here I would want more than me: soft little cuddlies, tall supple elegants, wild brown exotics. Millie describes me in our brochure as “The beautiful Englishwoman (la belle Anglaise) who will fully compensate you for the pains (travail) of Agincourt and Waterloo.” She is careful that I only deal with Frenchmen, because (she says) it might embarrass me to meet some of her English clients in later life. Perhaps she also thinks it might embarrass them! She has a lot of these at the weekends who require special services from some of our girls who are between employments at the Comédie Française. I watched one of the performances through an aperture last night. Our client was Monsieur Spankybot who arrives in a cab wearing a black mask which he never removes, though he takes off everything else. He has very elaborate requirements for which he pays a great deal, being first treated as a baby, then as a little lad on his first night in a new boarding-school, then as a young soldier captured by a savage tribe. His screams were out of all proportion to what was actually done to him.
My best friend here, Toinette, is a Socialist, and we often talk about improving the world, especially for the miserable ones, as Victor Hugo calls them, though Toinette says Hugo’s special insights are très sentimental and I should apply myself to the novels of Zola. We discuss these things at the café next door because Millie Cronquebil says politics should be detached from the hotel trade. The intellectual life of Paris is in its cafés, and our quarter (which contains the University) has cafés whose customers are writers or painters or savants of other kinds, and the academics have different cafés from the revolutionaries. Our café is mostly frequented by revolutionary hôteliers who say the rich will only disgorge through a bouleversement of the structure totale.
No time to write more. Someone’s coming.
I am writing the end of this letter in a splendid office which smells of disinfectant and leather upholstery, just like home. I left the Notre-Dame suddenly today after two hours of terrible confusion. The cause was my own ignorance. Will I ever reach the end of it?
For obvious reasons we usually rose late in the mornings, but today Millie knocked on my door soon after eight and said I should hurry downstairs at once to the Salon International because the doctor was looking at the girls there.
“An early start indeed!” thinks Bell but says aloud,
“Certainly, Millie. What doctor is this?”
“He is employed by the municipality to enforce public health regulations. Just wear your dressing-gown, dearie, and it will be over in a jiffy.”
So I joined the queue, noticing many of the girls wore nothing but their chemise and stockings. All the ones outside the alcove seemed quieter and glummer than usual so to cheer them up I said it was good for the municipality to care about our health, and I hoped Toinette (who was ahead of me) would get the doctor to prescribe something which would ease her migraine headaches. This did cheer them up—they giggled and said I had esprit, which puzzled me. But when I reached the alcove I saw an ugly little man with a ferocious scowl who was barking “Wider! Wider!” at poor Toinette like a bad-tempered drill-sergeant. She lay with her legs apart on a padded table while he pressed a thing like a spoon into her loving groove or vagina (as the Latins call it) while nearly sticking his nose and heavy moustache in after it. That was the only part of women he cared about because a moment later he said, “Pah! You may go.”
“I am not going near him!” I said firmly. “He is no doctor—doctors are kind and gentle and care for every part of their patient.”
Uproar. More than half the queue fell about laughing.
“Do you think you are better than the rest of us?” screamed others.
“Do you want him to remove our licence?” screamed Millie, rushing in.
“Insanity!” roared the doctor. “She willingly accommodates any quantity of verminous male appendages, but recoils from a clinical spatula in the hands of an i
mpersonal scientist. But no, she is not insane—she is English, and has something to hide.”
That was how I learned about venereal diseases.
“I am sorry Millie, I can no longer work here. As you know, I am engaged to be married. And this medical inspection is unfair and inefficient. Your girls are healthy when they start working here so it is the clients, not the staff who spread the diseases. It is the clients who should be medically examined before we let them into us.”
“The clients would never allow it and there are insufficient doctors in France.”
By this time we were tête à tête in her office. I said, “Then train the girls to examine each client before the wedding starts—make it part of the ceremony.”
“The accomplished ones already do so and the house cannot afford to start classes of instruction for novices. From our earnings I am obliged to pay for rent, rates, gas, furnishings, police bribes, wages and a clear fifteen per cent profit to the lawyer who acts for the company. If my monthly return ever falls below fifteen per cent I will be replaced tout de suite and die a lonely and wretched old woman.”
Though plump and queenly she began wailing like a little thin child, so I saw that coaxing, kissing and passionate embraces were required. I led her upstairs to her bedroom while Toinette manned the reception-desk.
But nothing I did cheered her up. She said she hated Paris and the French and had been trying for years to get back to England. She dreamed of buying a boarding-house in Brighton and ending her life with a decent Church of England funeral, but every time she managed to save a little money an accident like this morning’s took it all away so she would never escape from Paris—her cadaver would end on a slab in the public morgue by the Seine, her maquillage smeared by the drippings of water onto it from a rusty tap. She said other lovely, tragic, despairing things which wrung my heart, they were so daft. She said, “It is all so unequal—I have the fifth place in your affections. First comes your mysterious guardian, then your peasant fiancé, then the debauched Wedderburn, then the frigid Astley. Since I was a little tiny girl I have prayed for a pal but God hates me. Every time someone beautiful and friendly enters my life crash bang wallop, out they fly again leaving nuffink behind but a bloody big owl.”
Poor Things Page 15