Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

by Angus Wilson

  Mrs Salad's dim old eyes took on a distant look and she brought out a small lace-edged handkerchief from her old black velvet vanity bag, filling the room with the scent of violets.

  'Many's the time Sir Beerbohm Tree's stood outside the theatre, and Mr Lewis Waller too; lovely little body he had. "I'd strictly advise you," they'd say to their lady friends, "to use Mrs Salad's lavatory; it's on the left of the stalls going in." And they'd come, all the upper tens! I wouldn't have the trash - the demimondes and débutantes - I didn't want that filth. "There's a cloakroom on the other side," I'd say, and send them to old Mother Rogers. And now you want your present,' she said abruptly, as reminiscence and invention both gave out, and opening a brown paper bag, she produced a huge white silk handkerchief on which were embroidered a number of large orange flowers.

  'Thank you,' said Gerald. 'I like that very much. I'm glad you're able to keep up your embroidery.'

  'Art's in the bones or it isn't,' said Mrs Salad sententiously. 'I'm sorry it's marigolds, dear. I know you like the birds better, but I can't see to do their beaks now. The Mayor of Southtown,' she added rather vaguely, 'was looking into my eyes only the other day, "It seems against nature, Mrs Salad," he said, "to see those lovely little horbs dimmed." But there! Time takes and it gives, for all it's called the Great Healer. And so I tell Vin. "Your time's now," I tell him. Slim as a girl he is. But he don't seem to settle down now 'e's out. I don't see what good it's done him. Delicate made 'e is, and only a boy. Stands to reason 'e couldn't rough it with the others.'

  'I shouldn't worry too much, Mrs Salad,' Gerald said. 'Of course, I loved soldiering. But National Service doesn't do any harm, even to those who don't.'

  'National Service!' Mrs Salad repeated. She smiled to herself and then she looked sharply at Gerald, but she only said, 'H'm.'

  Gerald laughed. 'You and John should get together,' he said. 'National Servicemen's problems. That's one of John's great specialities. He's been urging a reduction in the Services all this autumn in his articles.'

  Once again Mrs Salad looked strangely at Gerald. 'Say toodle-oo to Mr John for me,' she said. 'You tell him from me there's some company that's not to be helped and it's better not to try. But there you are, life's no easy lottery, they say. As we've seen who've lived it.'

  Her feelings about the poinsettia she made very clear, for she ostentatiously left it behind when she said goodbye.

  Since Frank Rammage had grown fat, he liked to spend his time doing odd jobs indoors. With his short legs and his pot belly, he couldn't do much that required the use of a ladder, but he laboured hours painting shelves or fixing electric wires. It was easy to spend so much time on these small tasks with four houses to keep in repair, and in Frank two instincts were very strong - orderliness and economy. His innate inclination to keep things tidy had been developed into a mania by his years of service in the Navy; his passion for saving reinforced since he had become a property-owner. These two obsessions were always at war with a third - his philanthropy; he did not mind that a large number of his lodgers were petty crooks, drunkards, tricksters, and middle-class down-and-outs, indeed it was what he chiefly esteemed in them, but he hardly knew how to support their untidiness, their dirtiness, and their extravagance with light and gas. As he busied around putting up a new shelf in his large bed-sitting room, which was all the space he reserved for himself, he prepared to do battle with a lodger over the question of old pilchard tins.

  'It's no good. I've told you twice about it and you've done nothing,' he said, gobbling like a Norfolk turkey and thrusting his fat, smooth, pink face at the girl before she had fully entered the room. 'You'll have to go duckie.' He called everyone duckie or dear.

  'I'm sorry, Frank. I've been so tired coming back in the mornings,' she said plaintively. Her thin, white face, greasy with vanishing-cream above her dirty, roll-topped sweater and jeans, looked hungry rather than anxious.

  'We all get tired,' said Frank, and his little rosebud mouth closed tightly with the moral air of a reproving hospital matron.

  'Oh, God!' said the girl, swinging her emaciated boy's body on to the divan bed with its crimson coarse weave cover.

  Frank had ideas about interior decoration and the room was filled with modern Scandinavian furniture and little lamps with coloured paper lampshades. Upon the walls, each painted a different colour - crimson, grey, apple green, and lilac pink - hung ferns in wicker cases. A naval motif was given by crossings of arty ropes and crimson anchors.

  'You're too bloody fat, Frank; that's your trouble,' she said.

  'I've reduced considerably of late,' Frank snapped, 'and that doesn't answer all those fishy tins. That'll smell the place out.' It was only in his use of 'that' for 'it' and in an occasional glottal stop that Frank's East Anglian origin could be detected.

  'Well, it wouldn't do much harm if it did smell a few of the stinkers you've got here out of the place,' the girl said, and she took off one of her sandals and shook it over the floor.

  Frank's bald head with its ring of carroty fuzz shot forward at her.

  'Stop that at once,' he said. 'No wonder you don't get any work at the studios. You'll spend the rest of your life in the ice-cream factory if you don't smarten yourself up a bit. Look at those jeans.'

  'Well, what are you wearing?' said the girl.

  It was true that Frank also habitually wore jeans and a woollen T-shirt, but they were scrupulously clean, if, perhaps, a little unsuitable for a man of fifty-nine. It was this aspect that the girl seized on. 'I've never seen anything so silly at your age,' she said.

  Frank was now really angry. 'You'd better go,' he said, 'and if you land back in the approved school don't come to me for a good character. Pilchard tins and rudeness, I've had enough of it.'

  'You know what,' said the girl; 'you're a bloody hypocrite. You don't care about the pilchard tins. Not a damn. You're just frightened about your rent. Only you won't say so. Not Mr Frank Rammage, the friend of the down-and-outs, the man the police come in to tea with, the pal of all the social workers and snoopers in South-west London. Oh no! It's just that he wants to help, that's all.'

  The mention of rent put Frank on his mettle. 'That's all right, dear,' he said; 'you pay when you can.'

  Each time that he spoke this familiar phrase, and sometimes it was as often as twenty times in a week, he felt overcome by the sadness of the situation. It was seldom, he knew, that any good would come of his sympathy, but it was the hopelessness, the endless hopelessness of the lives with which he had surrounded himself, that awoke his compassion. Frank Rammage's attitude could hardly be called sentimental, for it went farther than mere feeling - he regarded the dishonest and depraved as almost sacred. As usual, however, the little scene had satisfied the mixture of bullying and masochism that lay on the surface of his strange, Dostoyevskian philanthropy. He felt quite jolly. He seemed more like matron in an expansive mood as he picked up a piece of yellow material from the table and showed it to the girl.

  'Buttercup yellow,' he said. 'It's very difficult to get that exact shade.'

  'Lovely, Frank,' said the girl abstractedly. She, too, had got what she had intended - a further extension of credit. 'Well, so long, Frank,' she said; 'I've got a date.'

  The chance to moralize was too great to resist. 'You ought to leave "dates" alone,' Frank called after her reprovingly, 'and rest yourself. To keep them healthy and good to look upon, that's what God gave us bodies for.'

  'Like Mr Rammage, I suppose,' called the girl from the landing.

  'You do talk cock, Frank, don't you?' said Vin Salad in his refined drawl, which sounded as though he had got rid of a Cockney accent by swallowing it. He called back upstairs to the girl, 'Put something on your face, Myra, before you go out to meet him.' Then, seating himself demurely on the divan, he said, 'That girl's face looks terrible naked. That's nice,' he added, pointing to the yellow material. 'Six and eleven?'

  'No,' said Frank sharply, 'seven and five.'

  'You've be
en taken for a ride,' Vin replied, 'as usual.'

  He sat for a while very still and tall and languid on the divan. There was something almost Egyptian or Persian about Vin Salad's stillness and languor, with his long, docile, almond-skinned face and his huge, liquid black eyes. His clothes were far from Eastern, however, for Vin was very careful to avoid anything that suggested the ornate or even the flashy black of the Teddy boy. He wore a very plain dark grey worsted flannel suit, with a cream silk shirt, dark red tie, and light suede strap shoes. It was rather a fragile covering for the winter season, but it was all he had at the moment, and in any case, Vin was always shivering slightly with cold even on a hot summer day. Suddenly his eyes flickered in his stillness and the tip of his tongue appeared between his even teeth. It was a saurian movement, but too quick to be sinister.

  'She's a lying little bitch,' he said. 'Have you got rid of her?'

  'I had it out with her about the pilchard tins,' Frank said petulantly.

  'Oh, Christ!' Vin exclaimed. 'You get on my tits.'

  He reached over for a box of chocolates from a small crescent-shaped table and, placing it in his lap, ate the chocolates slowly but greedily one by one as he talked.

  'You knew she was a filthy slut when you took her in. But you haven't got the guts to kick her out. All you can do is to nag and natter at the silly bitch.'

  He seized the apple-green silk cushions and punched them feebly, then, placing them behind him, he lay back languidly and half closed his eyes, looking at Frank through his long lashes.

  'Why don't you twist her arm or punch her face, if that's what you want?' he drawled.

  Frank got up from a kneeling position and stood arms akimbo, a hammer held at his hip. He wore the broadminded smile with which he accompanied certain of his lectures.

  'Sex and violence - that's why you're only a waiter, Vin,' he said. 'Your dirty little imagination can't carry you any farther. You think you're so bloody smart, but your mind doesn't take in more than a quarter of what it could. Get what you can how you can. It's so bloody easy, and look where it gets you.'

  Vin stared at Frank like a young ruminating cow, then he held out the box of chocolates. 'Have one,' he said. 'They're marvellous.'

  His pronunciation of the word was like a mixture of a small boy's and a Kensington hostess's. He had as many variations of speech as had his grandmother. 'Crime doesn't pay,' he said, closing his eyes. 'I wonder you don't get tired of all that crap. You know why I'm just a waiter as well as I do. Because I don't want to get mixed up with the police again. If I liked to troll the 'Dilly like Larrie, I could live as grand as Madame de Pompadour, or pretty near.' He got up lazily and stretched his arms. 'I don't know what's the good of being good,' he said in a Shirley Temple simper. 'By the way,' he added, 'you'd better tell Larrie to lay off it. The silly ...'

  A large black face appeared round the door.

  'Ah, Mr Rummage,' said a deep West Indian voice, 'I want you to give me evidence. Gloria says she didn't have a man up there last night and I know she did. Did you see anyone go up?'

  'Now, Artie, landlords don't tell stories,' Frank said. 'You ought to know that.'

  'If I find her with some man, I'll spatter them both,' said the head and vanished.

  Frank called after him, 'And my name's not Rummage either, as you perfectly well know. ... Oh dear,' he said, 'I expect he will. They're as excitable as children, those West Indians,' and he clucked his tongue in disapproval.

  'I can't think why girls frequent them,' said Vin in refined tones. 'I shouldn't think of it,' he added. 'You won't see me for two days now, Frank. But don't let any of the dear lodgers use my room, see? We work late tonight and I'm going straight down to Gran's for Christmas.'

  'That's good,' said Frank. 'There's nothing like a family Christmas.'

  Without any relatives himself, he believed that family life infallibly spelt decent living. Vin said nothing this time, he just looked.

  'I've got a little present for you,' said Frank and, going to his desk, he produced a bright yellow tie.

  'Thank you,' said Vin. 'Funny how some boys like those bright ties. I haven't got a present for you,' he added. 'I don't see any sense in giving things to rich people; well, you tell Larrie ...'

  But once again there was interruption. 'Can I come in?' said a very deep voice.

  'Of course, Major,' said Frank.

  A tired-faced, military-looking man with grey wavy hair and a much-cleaned, much-pressed check suit opened the door. 'Can you change this for me, Rammage? Left myself without anything over Christmas and it's too late to go up to the ruddy bank!'

  'I can do you ten,' said Frank, counting the money from a very full wallet.

  'Perfectly silly of me to have my bank up in Piccadilly,' said the Major, a little over-eager in pocketing the notes. 'I must get my account moved down to Earl's Court. Well, a Happy Christmas to you,' and the Major left them.

  Vin looked at Frank. 'Well, I don't know,' he said. 'Him you give ten pounds. Me you give this,' and he picked up the yellow tie.

  'It may bounce and it may not,' said Frank. 'Trust is the only thing to give him back his self-respect. Besides, it's hard for him to get work and he pretty nearly conked out in November with that pleurisy. They only saved him with penicillin.'

  'Silly, isn't it, what they do?' said Vin. 'Any fool could see he'd be better dead. They've got it in for your blue-eyed Larrie. You tell him from me. And if he thinks because he's such a dear friend of Mr John Middleton's they won't book him, he's a sillier cow than I thought. There's a war on in our world.'

  'Now, Vin,' said Frank. 'I know you don't like Larrie, but he's a good boy at heart. He's Irish and wild and he doesn't tell the truth, but he's not really bad. All this going about with John Middleton's gone to his head, that's all. I'd like to put a stop to it.'

  'Yes,' said Vin, 'I'm sure you would.' Then, looking at Frank's round apple face, he added, 'And I believe you honestly don't know why. Or ever will, for that matter: no wonder you've got that old clergyman's photograph stuck up on the desk. Who is he, anyhow?'

  Frank looked at the conventionally handsome, clean-cut features in the picture - it was the face of an old-fashioned matinée idol playing a clergyman.

  'He was a very good man,' he said, 'Canon Portway. He was rector of Melpham, where I was born.'

  'And you were in the choir. Christ! isn't life boring?' drawled Vin. He looked at Frank for a second. 'You've gained weight since then,' he added, then, taking a piece of holly from the profuse Christmas decorations of the room, he placed it neatly on Frank's bald head. 'It's you and the plum pudding,' he said, and sauntered out of the room.

  Like his grandmother, he left his Christmas present behind.

  'No, I don't think it's at all funny, Larrie,' said Elvira Portway, John Middleton's secretary, and taking the sheet of paper on which he had typed 'A Happy Xmas to all our bleeders', she crumpled it up and threw it into the waste-paper basket. 'John,' she said, 'stop him touching the typewriter, or, much better still, get him out of the office altogether.'

  'The darlin' girl doesn't like me, Johno,' said Larrie, all Irish eyes and smiling.

  'You'd better beat it, Larrie,' said John Middleton, his earnest, boyish tones a little more edgy than his great wireless public would have recognized. 'Cut along and have a lovely Christmas. I'll see you Tuesday.'

  'Look after yourself, Johno, and don't eat too much.' Larrie began a playful sparring at John, hitting him lightly on the belt. 'You don't want to add to that, now do you?' he asked.

  It was perfectly true. At thirty-three, John Middleton had the air of a boy who was getting gross.

  'Give my love to your Mum, Johno. Tell her it was the grandest day of my life that I spent at her lovely house. Did you know I'd been to Johnnie's mother's for the day?' Larrie asked Elvira, and noted that, although she made no reply, she also looked down at her desk. 'The top of the morning to you, Johnnie. And to you, my lovely,' he said to Elvira, who again did not answ
er. 'Isn't she gorgeous?' he called to John, and left the office.

  It was perfectly true. Elvira Portway was exactly gorgeous - tall, dark, voluptuous in the Roman style. Perhaps she inclined a trifle to the heavy in that same style, but it was as yet but the briefest inclination. She was a Roman matron before her time, and yet there was about her a quality of naïveté that suggested the English rose. A nice English girl's upbringing, of course, is guaranteed to withstand the impact of many years' persistent Bohemianism, or rather, it controls and makes its own Bohemianism. It was not so much that Elvira's devotion to the arts was' insincere, but rather that it brought with it something of the fresh keenness of the hockey-field.

  'Well, that's all taped then,' said John, sprawling in the scarlet leather armchair.

  The office had been furnished two years before under South Bank influence in scarlet and white. He ran his hands through his thick black surly hair and pulled his small leathery face into a monkey-like grimace which, largely owing to his white, even teeth, came out as his famous impudent grin.

  'Correspondence complete. Parker's doing that now, isn't she?' At Elvira's affirmative nod, he went on: 'Wednesday's Globe article, script for next Friday's broadcast, speech for Co-op luncheon.'

  He smiled a more natural smile to himself. There was only one thing he liked more than 'clearing off arrears', and that was 'getting down to a new batch'.

  'You've forgotten the Macclesfield Chamber of Commerce,' said Elvira, yawning and stubbing a lipsticked end of cigarette into an already over-full square glass ashtray. 'Will you address their dinner on February 3rd?'

  'Yes,' said John. 'I'll give them the works about London the Octopus and the need for provincial culture.'

  'Why?' said Elvira.

  'Why on earth not?' said John, kicking a ball of screwed-up paper from the floor and catching it. 'It's a very good speech and a very important problem. It's all very well for cosmopolitan Bohemians like you, but it's serious for the country's vitality.' He looked stern through his horn-rimmed spectacles, like a prefect 'jawing' the House on slackness. 'Oh, I know what you're going to say - it's inevitable - up to a point it is, but there's nothing like fighting inevitability.' Then, to soften the priggishness, he said, 'That's why I fight the approach of age. Larrie's quite right, I must get this down,' he patted his stomach. 'Get on to Jock Henning after Christmas and see if he'll play squash again with me regularly.'