by Denton Welch
‘Have you given up wrestling now?’ asked Robert.
‘Oh no. I do both. I’m having a rest from it now, though, as I hurt my arm.’ The model straddled his feet apart and put his two thumbs under the string of his bright scarlet ‘triangle’.
‘Do they do all sorts of queer things and try to gouge your eyes out?’ Robert asked, wanting to draw him.
‘Some of them are dirty,’ said the model; ‘they try sticking their fingers up your nose. I always bite them if I can. Another chap always tries tweaking hair—scalp, chest, under your arms, anywhere—I’ve seen him tear out handfuls. God! It’s painful! You wouldn’t think it was so bad, but it is.’
Robert was pleased that the stories were getting horrific. He encouraged the model, until suddenly he found himself being used for a demonstration. ‘I’ll show you a trick’ or two,’ the model said, comfortably and slickly. ‘Just let yourself go loose and I’ll do the rest.’ He caught hold of Robert purposefully and twisted him round so that he fell on the floor; then, before he had had time to collect himself, the model had got him into some impossible position between his legs. Next, Robert found himself hanging over the model’s back, being held by one leg.
The rest of the students began to laugh. ‘Look at Sonny Boy being treated rough!’ shrieked Madge and Jane gleefully. The model began to march up and down the room with Robert, like some trophy, still hanging down his back.
Robert was crimson in the face from laughing and struggling and being upside down. Learning a lesson from the model, he tweaked the hairs on his legs as he hung down, and said, ‘Let me up, let me up; I’m going to burst!’
The model was pretending to put him head-first into the clammy zinc-lined clay-bin, when the master who taught sculpture came in. He smiled at the scene and said, ‘Work-time now; no more horseplay.’
The students went back to their stands. Robert adjusted his clothes and his hair as best he could, and moved to the door with Madge and Jane.
They settled down in the Antique Room once again. The plaster casts seemed even more unsympathetic than usual, and their drawings more inept. They waited for the lunch-hour restlessly and then ran out to the lorry-drivers’ ‘Good Pull In’, which was nearby. To go to this place was entirely Madge’s and Jane’s idea. Robert was dragged there unwillingly. They made it difficult for him to refuse by saying that they could not go if he would not go with them. Both the girls ordered huge Cornish pasties, but Robert insisted on having only a plate of peas and a cup of coffee. The peas were shedding their semitransparent skins, as snakes do, and the coffee had little coins of fat floating on the surface.
‘Don’t be so fussy,’ said Madge, noticing Robert’s face. They ate more or less in silence. The workmen and drivers, every now and then, would look at them rather suspiciously. All three of them still wore their overalls, which made them difficult to place, for an outsider.
One of the drivers spat on the floor and was reprimanded by the proprietress. He looked shamefaced and said, ‘Sorry’, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, as if to rub out the memory.
Madge and Jane and Robert got up and paid their tiny bills. They went out into the street and pushed through the crowds, insisting, as fiercely as they could, on walking three abreast.
The prospect of settling down again in front of the plaster casts was uninviting. They dawdled on the stairs, talking and fooling. Jane pirouetted and twirled so that her skirts flew out like a Spanish dancer’s.
‘You’ll break your neck if you lose your balance,’ Robert said.
‘Oh, but you’d catch me, wouldn’t you, Sonny Boy?’
The headmaster came up and passed them without saying anything; but they immediately looked purposeful and set their faces in the direction of the Antique Room. They sat down on their donkeys and idled with pencil and rubber. Robert, in desperation, began a new drawing; and, as he concentrated, minute little scenes from early childhood and recent schooldays floated in and out of his mind, mixing and overlapping and sometimes obliterating each other. Jane’s voice, singing a heart-breaking cowboy song, made a solid background for his thoughts.
Towards the end of the afternoon Billings passed through the room. He was wearing shorts and a red and white striped football vest, and he carried a hockey-stick. Robert saw the thinness of his lame leg for the first time.
‘Come and play hockey,’ Billings called out as he went through the other door. ‘On the top field—there are some other sticks in the corner of the still-life cupboard.’
Robert and the two girls ferreted about in the huge cupboard and at last pulled out some dilapidated sticks. They tried them on the floor, bending them to see if they had any spring or if they were too badly split.
Robert had nothing to change into, so he just took off his tie and jacket. The girls left their overalls on to save their dresses from the mud. Jane was for tucking their skirts into their bloomers as children do, but Madge did not take her seriously.
There was a bustle in the art school. People ran about with very little on; and soon a thin line of students was seen going to the top field.
Sides were chosen by a squat little Welshman and Billings. Robert found himself on Billings’s side. The game was curious and fluid. There seemed to be no definite boundaries. When the ball had been chased too outrageously far afield, voices would cry, ‘Bring it back, bring it back.’
Robert decided that, as he was so bad at the game, he must hit the ball hard and follow it up relentlessly. He became quite vicious, pushing and bustling and chasing after the ball in a menacing way. He was delighted to see that people were frightened of him. The Welshman seemed furious. ‘Can’t you control yourself?’ he asked in his sing-song voice. ‘What’s the point of charging about like a bloody bull?’
Madge and Jane were far more expert at the game than most of the others. The nuns had taught them well. ‘Don’t bungle so, Sonny Boy!’ they shrieked, as Robert missed the ball and hit a poor Lancashire girl’s ankles.
The light was fading and turning to a hot rosy glow, as the sun sank down behind the elephant-grey clouds. For a few moments the beauty of the scene was arresting. The grotesquely dressed figures, waving their sticks and shouting, seemed to be dancing some strange ballet against a wonderful backcloth. The smoke and the dull thunder of London were all around.
Robert forgot the game and just stood and watched until the Welshman threw his stick up in the air, caught it again and shouted, ‘We can’t see any more; we’d better stop.’
The teams crowded to the edge of the field and pulled on coats or sweaters. Robert forgot Madge and Jane altogether and wandered back to the building alone. In the twilight it looked majestic, like the garden-front at Hampton Court; the round arch swallowed him up. He went to get his coat and left the school still dreaming.
At the corner, by the bus stop, he went into the lavatory of the nearby pub. Someone was already in there. He could just see the dark shape against the glistening, discoloured tiles and the pink polished-copper pipes. The man turned his face towards Robert as he stood near, and said pleasantly, ‘Evenings are drawing out a bit now, thank God, aren’t they? Let’s say goodbye to bloody winter.’
Robert agreed and said no more. The face of the other, when turned towards him, had been like a white moon, with all the features lost in the half-light. Now, as they went out of the door together and stood waiting for the bus under the street-lamp, Robert saw that the man was very little older than himself. His face was lean and he had too long an upper-lip, but his colouring was of that fresh brick-dust shade and he wore no hat on his curling brown hair.
‘We both go the same way, then, I see,’ the man said jauntily. ‘I get off at Blackheath; do you?’ asked Robert.
‘Well, I can get off there or ride on a bit further. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I ride.’
Tonight he had evidently decided to walk, for he took a ticket to the Green Man, as Robert did. He started to talk about himself as soon as the conductor left th
em; cocking his legs on the window-ledge, for they were sitting in the front seat on the top of the bus, he began.
‘I’ve just come out of the Army,’ he said.
‘How have you done that?’ said Robert. ‘I thought one had to sign on for years and years.’
‘Oh yes—my time wasn’t nearly up.’ He paused for a moment, then went on. ‘I had had a sort of nervous breakdown, you see—and my mother said she had to have someone to help her in the business. Taking both together, they let me out.’
‘Did you like it at all, or couldn’t you stick it?’ Robert asked.
‘Oh, it was all right in some ways—it was different for me—you see, I was in the band and was getting a lot of musical training. Do you like music? I was learning to play the cor anglais. I don’t know why I went off the deep-end. Everything seemed to get just a bit too much for me. Bloody silly—I used to weep for no reason at all.’
He had gone very red as he talked rapidly, and now he looked at Robert with a shamefaced smile, as if he hoped to be understood and excused. Robert saw that his eyes were a bright, hard blue and that the tiny veins at the corners were slightly inflamed. The bright blue and this faintest pink mist at the edges of the whites made his eyes staring and arresting. The rest of the face was good looking but contradictory; for it was placid, perhaps rather animally inert. The lips were soft and fruit-like and the teeth white but uneven and a little projecting.
‘I can understand that all right,’ said Robert with emphasis, masking his concentrated gaze as the other looked back. ‘Don’t we all get dragged down, and don’t we all want to scream our heads off half the time?’
‘Oh, it’s so good to hear someone say that,’ said the other. ‘My mother’s so horribly sensible and everyone else in the Army makes me feel like a BF. I’m perfectly fit now—it was just that ghastly routine of spit and polish and don’t answer back. The Army psychologist said I had anxiety neurosis, and wasn’t he right. I was so anxious I couldn’t even decide which bootlace to do up first without worrying myself silly!’
He laughed with special heartiness and loudness and they climbed down the stairs and jumped off the bus. Robert began to wonder when and where his companion would branch off. They started to walk across the heath, against the wind.
‘I haven’t told you my name,’ the man said suddenly; ‘it’s Russell, John Russell. What’s yours, may I ask?’
Robert told him and they walked on in silence until, to make conversation, Robert asked, ‘What are you thinking of doing now that you’re out of the Army?’
‘As I said before, my mother wants me to help her in the business—it’s a drapery shop. Doesn’t sound very glamorous, does it?’ He stopped talking, as if he were waiting to gauge the effect of this last remark on Robert. Robert said nothing, so he went on, ‘I might do this or I might try to get some more musical training and then get a job in an orchestra. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I’m just feeling my way about at the moment.’
Again the talking dropped. The wind beat the tails of Russell’s raincoat about. Suddenly he turned to Robert and said, ‘Will you go to a concert at the Queen’s Hall with me next week? I have an old friend who has given me two tickets.’
‘I’ve never been,’ said Robert stupidly, as if this were an excuse for not going; then he pulled himself together and added, ‘Yes, I should like to go very much, thank you.’
Russell seemed delighted. ‘Oh, good!’ he said. ‘I thought I’d have to go on my own.’ They arranged to meet at the bus stop. ‘Don’t fail me now,’ said Russell anxiously. They came to a road which led down the hill. Russell stopped and turned to Robert; he seemed to be peering as hard as he could through the darkness.
‘Here’s where I have to leave you,’ he said hurriedly.
‘Oh.’ Robert held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, then; we’ll meet next week.’
Russell took the hand and held it for a moment, then, with a lightning movement, his head swooped down and he kissed it. For a second he knelt before Robert in such a posture of mixed clumsiness, melodrama and sincerity that a cry of protest sprang to Robert’s lips. He choked it; but he could not restrain the stiffening of his body. His hand went dead; then it was free and he saw Russell disappear in the darkness, running hell for leather down the hill.
‘He’s not mad,’ thought Robert. ‘Only lonely and stagy. That’s why he tried picking me up. I’ll go to the concert next week.’ He had to admit that the little bit of homage, mawkish as it was, had undoubtedly appealed to his vanity, in spite of making him feel a fool. ‘He must be awfully pleased that I was friendly,’ he said to himself.
Robert walked on across the heath and down Croom’s Hill. He wanted to relax and think alone in his room. He was looking forward to it. He put his key in the door and then climbed up the stairs. There was a crack of light under his door; he pushed it open, feeling exasperated. Hope was lying on the bed, reading. His trilby and umbrella lay by him as if they were a parody of helmet and sword. He looked up at Robert with special indolence and languor.
‘Well, what have you been up to?’ he asked with a rather untrustworthy smile of indulgence.
‘I’ve just been walking across the heath from the Green Man,’ said Robert; he looked at Hope not very invitingly and added, ‘I didn’t know you were coming round; have you been here long?’
Hope gave a huge yawn and said, ‘Oh, hours and hours!’ Then he sat up, his whole manner changed and he said with relish, ‘As a matter of fact I was on the same bus and only got here first by running all the way.’
He watched the effect of his words on Robert. Robert became confused by the stare. ‘Where were you sitting? I never saw you. Why didn’t you call out?’
‘You seemed very well occupied as it was, and your friend appeared to have a lot to say.’
‘Hardly a friend,’ interrupted Robert. ‘I’d only just met him in the public lavatory the moment before.’
‘He looked more like an escaped lunatic, I must admit; he seemed awfully vehement about something.’
‘He was telling me about his time in the Army and how he had a nervous breakdown. I’m going to a concert with him next week.’
‘Do be careful,’ said Hope, with mock anxiety. ‘You don’t want to be dismembered and left in various suitcases in all the station cloakrooms in London just yet, do you?’
‘Don’t be absurd; he’s not a bit mad. He only gets worked up. He lives with his mother who keeps a draper’s shop, and he’s really interested in music, so it’s all very sordid and drab for him.’
‘Now for Christ’s sake don’t start welfare work. You’re not a bit cut out for it and you’ll land yourself in a God Almighty mess.’
‘What on earth do you mean? I’m not doing any welfare work. I want to go to the concert.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Hope got lazily to his feet. The smirk on his face was so insulting that Robert ran at him.
‘Get out of my room,’ he shouted. ‘Can’t I ever be left alone? How I loathed finding you here when I came in from the heath.’
The shock of these words made Hope quite serious for a moment. He was so wounded that his face lost all expression.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know I was such a bore.’ Then in a flash he twisted it all and, as he did up his raincoat-belt, he added light phrases to hide the reality. ‘You might have told me that you found me so repulsive! How was I to know? I thought you were lonely in the evenings.’ He smiled at Robert sweetly. ‘Don’t come down, will you! I can easily let myself out.’
He shut the door softly and Robert felt a pang of pain and anger. Acting! ‘Everyone I meet or know is always acting!’ he thought. That Russell person on the heath, bobbing about and giving himself a nice thrilly feeling of self-abasement; and now Hope pretending to be so humble and mild and whimsically amused and misunderstood. But even as he thought these things he felt guilty, for he knew that everybody’s acting, including his own, was only the dress of the rea
lity—and even if it was a fancy-dress or disguise, yet this in itself gave the clue to that reality.
He lay down on the bed where Hope had been. He hated to feel the slight warmth that was still there.
V
Russell was already waiting when Robert came up to the bus stop. Dressed in a blue suit with a rolled score tucked under his arm and a thick white scarf wound round his neck, he looked a combination of oarsman, bank clerk and musician.
He smiled at Robert, then pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. They were both a little nervous of each other.
‘I’m so glad you’ve turned up,’ Russell said.
‘Didn’t you expect me to, then?’ asked Robert.
‘Oh yes—but you never know—you might have been stopped, or you might have changed your mind.’
They climbed on top of the bus and sat, again, right in the front. The journey down the Old Kent Road began.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Robert, when they saw the gleaming river with the strings of lights reflected in it. ‘Wouldn’t it be awful to dive into the black water now and swim about amongst the stone piers? Do you think they’ve got barnacles on them? Or do they only live in the sea? Think of the black mud too, at the bottom and at the edges—yards deep so that you sank right up to your neck!’
‘Why think of it if it’s so nasty?’ asked Russell.
‘I don’t know; I always do when I cross the river at night. If I’m walking, I often imagine that a person just in front of me is going to jump on to the parapet, stand there on the fat stone balusters just for a moment and then fall outwards, rigidly, like a ruler. I imagine the splash coming sickeningly late after the fall. I wonder what I would do in such a case, whether I could ever pluck up courage to jump in after the would-be suicide. Then I imagine that I have done this and that the person is clutching at me frantically and drowning me as well.’