Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  ‘You’re a very lucky man,’ said Miss Calthrop, heavily defending her sex. ‘And you ought to be extremely grateful that you have such a provident girl for your future wife.’

  ‘Oh, I’m grateful all right,’ said Parker, with mock resignation. Robert knew in a moment why he could not bear him—it was because he was always approximating himself to some character in cheap fiction—now he was the long-suffering, hen-pecked male. It was really too disgusting. Robert remembered the wonderful phrase in Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to His Son—the bit about hating fools so profoundly because in their company he always felt himself a fool.

  Robert felt utterly humiliated at having to eat with such a creature. With what thankfulness he saw him go out of the room after Miss Calthrop! He sat down again by the fire, blissfully alone once more. Miss Middlesborough came in with a cup of coffee for him. He thanked her and then burst out, ‘That Mr Parker is really too appalling!’

  ‘He is a little bumptious, isn’t he?’ agreed Miss Middlesborough. ‘But he isn’t a nuisance in the house, and he’s quite kind to people in his way.’

  Miss Middlesborough went out of the room again and Robert leant towards the bookcase to read the titles. A Greek lexicon, some early bound Chambers’ Journal, Thackeray’s Virginians, several obscure novels and The Essays of Elia stood closely packed together. Robert chose the Lamb, and started to read about the wonderful old house in which the child used to roam. It was exactly what he loved to read about, so he quite forgot his surroundings until the front-door bell rang. It was very loud, and he could not help noticing it, but he did not imagine it had anything to do with him, until the dining-room door opened and Gerard Hope stood in front of him.

  He jumped up from his chair, looking a little too surprised for absolute politeness. He had only been spoken to by Hope on the day before, when they had both found themselves alone in the Antique Room. It had been towards the end of the day and Robert was the only one still trying to draw the Clapping Faun. Hope, a senior student, had come in to arrange a still-life group for one of the evening classes, for to act as pupil-teacher was part of his course.

  He looked across at Robert and saw De Profundis lying on the donkey in front of him.

  ‘What d’you think of that?’ he asked smiling.

  ‘Not very much; I bought it off a stall at lunch-time; I’ve read somewhere that it was all cut about before it was published. That’s what’s wrong with it, I expect—most of it’s left out!’

  They both laughed and went on talking about Oscar Wilde. Neither of them knew very much and there were pauses.

  ‘What do you do in the evenings?’ Hope asked at last.

  A little taken aback by the direct question, Robert answered hurriedly, ‘Oh, I don’t know; I read and go for walks over the heath.’

  ‘That sounds rather gloomy. Don’t you ever get depressed?’

  ‘Sometimes—but I don’t think it’s what I do that makes me depressed.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ asked Hope rather sharply. Robert could not answer, and again there was a slight pause.

  ‘I have to spend most of my evenings going round to my various friends and cheering them up,’ said Hope, showing a little too much gaiety and brightness.

  It was clear to Robert that Hope wished also to come and cheer him up one evening, so he was prepared for the next question: ‘Whereabouts do you live?’

  ‘I have a room in an old house in Croom’s Hill. Do you know it? Opposite Greenwich Park.’

  ‘Oh, I know it quite well; I live fairly near there myself. How far up or down the hill are you? What is the number of the house?’

  Robert told him with that slight feeling of reluctance which comes when another has been working hard for information. He got up, put away his drawing-board and said goodnight rather more abruptly then he would ordinarily have done.

  Now here was Hope in the doorway waiting to be welcomed.

  ‘I just thought I’d look in to see if you were at home, since I was out in this direction,’ he said breezily as he took off his gloves.

  Robert held out his hands to take Hope’s coat and then pulled another chair up to the fire. Hope sat down and held his hands to the flames; Robert noticed that his nails were very clean and very carefully filed. This surprised him, for art students generally had nails black with pencil dust or gruesomely coloured with Slizanne crimson or some other staining colour. Hope’s hands too were very smooth and white, with only a very few dark hairs on them; and this also was surprising, for his small round head was covered with almost black hair, and although he could be no more than twenty his jowl and upper-lip were already swarthy, and rough with shaving.

  He suddenly looked up at Robert, and Robert was able to notice that his eyes were of a quite clear blue-grey. They held a curious glittering expression which was too bird-like or lizard-like to be comfortable.

  ‘I’ve just had some coffee,’ said Robert, looking at his empty cup. ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup too? I’ll go and ask Miss Middlesborough.’ But as he got up to go to the door Miss Middlesborough came in bearing a tray with coffee-pot and milk and biscuits on it.

  ‘I thought your friend might like something hot, and I don’t suppose you’d say no to another cup either!’ she said, smiling at Robert.

  They both thanked her warmly, as people do when their wishes have been granted with no effort on their part. Robert enjoyed pouring out the coffee. He passed the biscuits to Hope, and they settled down to talk. Hope seemed determined to interest and amuse his new acquaintance. He started on the topic of the public schools—always so fertile a field for anecdotes of the ridiculous and the sexy. From this he jumped in some way to the supernatural, and Robert suddenly found himself listening intently to an experience which had befallen Hope. The scene (at least in Robert’s mind) was an ancient schoolyard with a church on one side and the ruins of a priory on the other. Hope was there with a countryman and two dogs. They seemed to be waiting for something. Soon a shape, eddying and swirling and menacing, appears through the broken arches of the priory. The dogs bristle and bare their teeth. The countryman runs forward with a heavy stick and Hope closely follows him—only to find that the menacing shape is made by the smoke from a smouldering fire left by some gypsies who have encamped amongst the ruins.

  At the end of the story Hope smiled and Robert tried to hide his disappointment at the anticlimax; for at the beginning of the story his interest had been gripped.

  ‘It didn’t really happen to me at all, you know!’ Hope said complacently. ‘I wrote it for a Somerset magazine and they printed it last month.’

  Angry and confused at having shown so clearly his belief in the fiction, Robert turned red and said, ‘You completely took me in.’ Then, before he realised what he was doing, he held his wrist out and looked at his watch. It was well past midnight, and he suddenly knew that he had enjoyed Hope’s visit, for otherwise the hours would not have melted away thus rapidly.

  ‘It’s frightfully late,’ he said gaily. ‘Do you think you’ve lost your last bus or tram or train or whatever you travel by?’

  He was yet to learn that Hope never missed buses or trains—unless he had planned to.

  ‘Oh no, there are several more yet,’ Hope answered calmly; ‘anyhow, I can always walk if I do miss the last one.’

  They both got up and Robert helped Hope into his coat. Softly he drew the huge bolts of the front door and undid the unwieldy chain. The whole house was sleeping.

  He walked down the steps with Hope and their feet went ringing over the pavements together, for a little way; they said goodbye at the corner, and Hope asked Robert to come to his house for their next meeting.

  Robert ran back, thinking of how stimulating this new friend was. ‘He actually tries to be interesting and amusing to other people!’ he said to himself in wonder. He as yet only saw this as a virtue.

  II

  After that night Robert saw a lot of Hope—not at the school, but in the evenings, after w
ork. He went to Hope’s house for a meal. He did not want to go, for he was afraid that he would have to eat food he did not like, but when he arrived at the house in Queen’s Grove, somewhere down a road leading to the river, he found that Mrs Hope was out and that they had the house to themselves. Hope had laid the meal in a little room leading off the kitchen. Two candle flames sailed and swam in the air above the table, the rest of the room was in darkness. Hope took a casserole from the hob-grate and held it in a folded napkin. When he dug the cold spoon into the spaghetti, the rich pink sauce spat and bubbled, it was so hot.

  ‘Did you make this yourself?’ said Robert with a new respect, as he tasted the delicious dish.

  ‘Of course; we have no slaves. We’re so poor we have to live in a slum, as you’ve already noticed.’

  He turned his eyes straight on to Robert and gave him a metallic smile. Robert was thrown into confusion, fearing that his face had betrayed him on entering the house.

  Someone ran boisterously up the stairs, taking two or three at a time, it would seem.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Robert, surprised. ‘I thought you said that you only lived with your mother and that she was out.’

  ‘Oh, that’s my eldest brother. He has a separate flat on the top floor with his wife. We have nothing to do with them; they only use the stairs.’

  ‘What does he do?’ asked Robert, not having learnt yet that this is not a good social gambit.

  ‘He’s a chemist,’ said Hope, adding hurriedly, ‘not the sort that keeps a shop, you know, but the research sort.’

  They both laughed nervously and fell to eating. Robert noticed how thoughtfully the table was laid. Under the glasses were little painted discs from a German beer-garden. Gothic scripts, brilliantly enamelled flowers and animals spotted the wood. An arrangement of gaudy dyed feathers and crisp paper flowers frothed out of a Victorian white china boot.

  ‘You have made the table pretty,’ Robert said appreciatively.

  ‘Oh, do you like it?’ asked Hope as carelessly as possible; and from this Robert could tell how much time and thought had been given to the little meal. He felt pleased and flattered and wanted to do justice to it all.

  Hope poured out more cider and took away the spaghetti plates. He lifted another dish from the hob, this time a glass one, and said, ‘This is a sort of special apple charlotte that someone told me of. You put treacle and lemon juice and other things in it too.’

  ‘How lovely it sounds!’ Robert exclaimed. ‘You really ought to be a chef, not waste your time painting!’

  ‘Shall we clear away and wash up now?’ asked Robert, with a little too much eagerness, at the end of the meal. Hope was clearly offended and shocked.

  ‘Good God, no! My mother will do that when she comes in. We haven’t had our coffee yet. Let’s take it into the other room.’

  He stooped down and picked up the brown French earthenware pots, asking Robert to carry the absurd little cups and the sugar. Nothing has been left to the last moment, thought Robert. Even the coffee is hot and ready on the hob, so that all we have to do is to drink it!

  They went down the narrow passage, Hope leading the way and turning up the gas with a soft plop, as they entered the sitting-room.

  ‘You see how primitive we are!’ he said, grinning at the bracket. ‘Doesn’t it give you an effect of Gissing and Constantin Guys and Ernest Dowson?’

  ‘My grandfather will never have anything else,’ Robert said hurriedly. ‘He thinks the light is much kinder to the eyes.’ ‘How queer this sounds,’ he thought; ‘the gas has made me stilted and Victorian.’

  ‘Sit on the corner of the sofa near the fire,’ ordered Hope. Robert let his eyes travel round the room. Above the mantelpiece was a large picture by Hope. It was a still-life of an unrolled map, on which lay a coiled rope, a shell, a globe and an elaborate gilt bird-cage in which was imprisoned the plaster cast of an eye of heroic size. The painting was meticulous and plain, with no tricks of surface or texture. This plainness and approximation to the actual objects reinforced the obvious symbolism. Robert knew that the huge eye in the cage was Hope surveying all the countries of the world from the house in Queen’s Grove.

  ‘That’s awfully good!’ said Robert, much impressed. ‘How on earth did you do the bird-cage with the eye in it?—all those bars and then the ones behind them—I would have got terribly confused.’

  ‘My mother thinks it’s frightful,’ said Hope. ‘And someone else who saw it said that I was obviously trying to be a surrealist, but I just did it for my still-life subject last term. I didn’t even know what a surrealist was then.’

  ‘What a good thing! It wouldn’t have been nearly so good if you had known—don’t you think I’m right?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you are. If I’d seen more surrealist pictures I might have spoilt my own by putting in some entrails, and one of those sticky, sluggish streams which might be milk, or blood, or ink, or all three mixed together!’

  ‘Why do they copy so?’ asked Robert, with a worried look. ‘Or is everyone’s subconscious stuffed with the same images? I can’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s all fashion. You’ll see; it will change from broken-nosed statues and ferns and entrails and giblets and web-footed babies into something quite different in a year or two,’ said Hope. ‘I like it, don’t you, in spite of so many shams? Art needed it badly, I think. All those apples on plates and bits of newspaper under fish—oh, and the violins and guitars—they were getting dreadfully boring, weren’t they?’

  ‘They were—those people who shrieked “literary!”, as an insult, were also getting terribly boring. Of course, they’re shrieking it more than ever now, but happily the surrealists have made people understand that it isn’t an adjective only to be applied to the criminal classes in painting.’

  The conversation was becoming a little stilted; for it is not usual for students to talk much of their work, unless in heated argument.

  Hope picked up a book and sat down next to Robert on the sofa. ‘Do you like looking at old photographs?’ he asked.

  ‘Love it,’ said Robert. ‘I can never really have too much. Snapshots are best—when people have their hair down, or are caught in their bathing-slips, looking absurd, or perhaps much better than in their clothes. Then there is the sad part too. Don’t you feel terribly sad when you look at the pictures five years, ten years old? When you see yourself as you were and when you remember everything that has been caught in the snapshot, the minute twigs on the bush, the flowers and the corner of the garden-seat or wheelbarrow?’

  ‘These are snapshots,’ said Hope. ‘So I hope you’ll find them absurd and sad enough.’

  He opened the book, resting one of the boards on Robert’s knee and drawing himself closer, so that the book should not fall between them.

  ‘This is me at three years old with my father,’ he pointed out.

  Robert saw a little boy in a white fur cap, holding the hand of a large ungainly man with a spade.

  ‘He was always digging in the garden,’ Hope explained. ‘That’s how he killed himself in the end. He saw an enormous weed and pulled at it with all his might. Of course, it had a root yards long, and the next thing we knew was that my father had fallen down dead. You see, he was over seventy-five. I’ve got a sister of fifty—isn’t it amazing?’

  ‘What did they say when you appeared?’ asked Robert in mock surprise.

  ‘I hardly like to think,’ answered Hope in the same vein, with mock primness.

  Wedged close to the fire, Robert began to feel very hot. He could not move away because Hope was sitting so near him on the other side. The stiff pages were turned, one by one, very slowly. Hope put one arm along the back of the sofa behind Robert’s neck; then, when a particularly funny picture was discovered and they were both shaking with laughter, he placed his other hand over Robert’s, under the book as if to steady him.

  Robert finished his laugh carefully; then, with a jerk, he jumped to his feet, saying with unna
tural heartiness, ‘Christ, I’m hot! Sitting so close to the fire and all that laughing have made me sweat like anything!’

  He made as if to wipe his face with something from his pocket, then found it to be the remains of the bright paper napkin he had had at supper.

  ‘Look what I’m trying to do!’ he said, gaily throwing the ragged paper on to the flames with a flourish.

  Hope watched him with a show of detached amusement. His head was well back on the cushions of the sofa and he had thrown his feet up, so that he lay full length. Robert noticed for the first time how hollow his cheeks were for so young a man. He also saw in a flash that the curious glittering of Hope’s eyes was due to nothing so much as to his habit of puckering the skin all round them when he looked at things or people. It was as if his face contracted in tingling excitement as he fixed his gaze.

  Now he looked at Robert almost contemptuously, as if to say, ‘What are you gesticulating and jumping about out there for? Why do you get covered with confusion for no reason at all? You’re hysterical.’

  ‘Play something for me,’ said Robert, looking towards the black cottage piano hurriedly.

  Hope lazily got to his feet and asked, ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Anything,’ said Robert: ‘You play and I’ll dance a gay fandango, or a stately pavane, or a sprightly jig, or whatever it may be.’

  Hope broke into ‘Shepherd’s Hey’ with syncopated variations of his own. He really played extremely competently, with a rather attractive touch of vulgarity.

  Robert threw his arms and legs out with wild abandon, since nobody was there to watch. Sweat trickled down his face and ran into his eyes, but he said, ‘Go on! Go on!’ when Hope made as if to leave the piano stool. The piece, and with it the mood, changed; Hope played something of Schumann’s and, after it, ‘The Merry, Merry Pipes of Pan’.