Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  ‘Come back to supper,’ Robert suggested; ‘I expect Miss Middles-borough will have enough.’

  Russell became uneasy.

  ‘No, I don’t think I’d better come in,’ he said.

  ‘Why on earth not? What’s wrong?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know; she may not like it, and, besides, my mother will be expecting me.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd; of course you’ll come back.’

  Robert led the way down the hill and got out his key to open the front door. As they stood on the doorstep Russell seemed to get really uneasy. He held his handlebars restlessly, as though about to spring on to the bicycle and disappear.

  ‘I’d better come another day when I’m expected,’ he said, looking about him almost wildly.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ asked Robert. ‘Do you expect to be eaten alive as soon as the front door’s opened?’

  ‘No, it’s not that, but she may not like your bringing a complete stranger into the house.’

  ‘What do you mean? You are hardly a complete stranger to me now; and, anyhow, how is Miss Middlesborough to know that we have not been friends since childhood, and, even if she did know, is it her business to inquire into her lodger’s friends and acquaintances? What a peculiar guilt feeling you’ve got about everything.’

  ‘Oh, I have, I have—I can’t help it. I can’t bear meeting strangers. I always think they’ll be suspicious of me.’

  ‘Then how did you pluck up enough courage to talk to me?’ Robert asked abruptly.

  ‘I get mad moments when I have to say something to someone and I just thought you seemed approachable.’

  ‘But it was dark and you could hardly see me.’

  ‘Oh, that didn’t matter—I just felt it.’

  Robert pushed open the door and went into the kitchen to tell Miss Middlesborough about Russell.

  Supper had already begun, and when they went into the dining-room the curate was already sitting at the table with the three women.

  His eyes went straight to the crosses on their foreheads. Then he looked down and pretended to notice nothing. Robert was again about to sweep his off with the back of his hand, but he suddenly felt this to be cowardly and mean. He sat through the rest of the meal, acutely conscious of the sign on his face.

  Russell hardly spoke all through the meal. When the others left the room he looked across at Robert with relieved dog-like eyes.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs and drink our coffee in my room,’ said Robert. He picked up the cups and led the way.

  They both lay outstretched on the bed and only raised their heads to drink.

  ‘You’ve got your room up rather nicely,’ Russell conceded, ‘but don’t you think you need a chair or two, for state occasions? It’s all right for us to lie on the bed, but you can’t be on the bed with everyone, now can you?’

  ‘Well, you see, I asked Miss Middlesborough to let me have my own furniture in my room and I’m gradually collecting it. I go to all the junk shops I can find. One day I’ll come back with the most beautiful chairs you’ve ever seen; until then everyone must be content to lie on the bed—even Queen Mary and the Pope—I don’t mean together, of course.’

  Russell took something out of his breast-pocket and held it above his head.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Robert.

  ‘It’s a picture of me as a soldier-boy.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Robert interestedly, holding out his hand.

  Russell jerked the picture out of reach, then changed his mind and handed it to Robert.

  ‘Don’t I look odd!’ he said shamefacedly.

  Robert saw a stolid-looking Russell wearing his inert, animal expression. The skin over his face seemed very shiny and tight and glowing. He wore riding-breeches; his legs were encased in puttees; a little spur caught the light at the heel of the clumsy boot. His outstretched hand clutched the rim of a pot of ferns and all his buttons glistened against the ancient photographer’s background of painted balustrade and distant hills.

  ‘Where did you have it taken? The decor’s absolutely period perfect. But for you, it might be a carte-de-visite of 1870,’ Robert said.

  ‘It was a queer little shop in Chatham of all places,’ Russell told him; they had the most amazing fancy pictures of sailors saying goodbye to their sweethearts—the sailors seemed to be hugging them to death, like grizzly bears.’

  ‘You look very smart in those breeches, but didn’t you even get one stripe? I can’t see anything in the picture.’

  ‘No, I was no good at all,’ Russell said hurriedly.

  ‘But what made you join the Army in the first place?’ asked Robert.

  ‘That scout master we met at the Queen’s Hall really did it. He said that it was a fine manly life and that I would get my musical training at the same time; but it didn’t work, it didn’t work. It was hopeless.’ Russell turned over restlessly and buried his face on the tattered old Indian shawl which had once been worn by Robert’s great-grandmother.

  After a little he looked up, his face red and sticky.

  ‘Would you like the bloody silly photograph? I don’t want it,’ he jerked out, anxiously looking into Robert’s face.

  ‘Of course I would; I’d love it. I’ll stick it up on the Adam’s mantelpiece and it’ll give just the necessary note of vulgarity,’ Robert said gaily, without thinking, then he suddenly had qualms and added, ‘I mean the whole scheme of the ferns and the marble balustrade is so lovely and common, isn’t it?’

  Russell did not understand and was quite evidently hurt. He got up and tried to snatch the photograph back, but Robert cried out and told him not to begin brawling again, so he went to the door in dejection and Robert heard him run all the way down the stairs and slam the front door.

  ‘Now I’ve done it,’ thought Robert. ‘What a fool to give offence by being flippant and brainless!’

  He took the photograph up and looked at it again minutely. It suddenly struck him as almost unbearably sad and touching. The feeling did not seem to emanate from poor Russell alone. It seemed to hover round the porcelain jardinière and the cracked painted canvas as well.

  Very carefully he put it in the corner of his Victorian rosewood worktable and shut the drawer.

  VII

  Robert saw the alderman’s robe in one of the junk shops he visited. It was hanging on a rusty hook with some beaded loincloths and a soldier’s felt-covered water-bottle.

  ‘How much is this?’ he asked, fingering the crimson damask and the brilliant violet satin lining.

  ‘Fifteen shillings to you, son,’ said the pleasant-mannered Irishman. ‘My partner’s out or he’d charge you more.’

  ‘The gold braid’s rather tarnished, isn’t it?’ said Robert disparagingly.

  ‘Why, all you needs is a drop of petrol and your old toothbrush and that’ll come up fine,’ the man said.

  ‘May I try it on?’ Robert asked. ‘I want something for a fancy-dress ball.’

  ‘This is the very thing, the very thing for you.’ The man unhooked the dusty garment and put it as it was over Robert’s shoulders. The gilded epaulettes hung some way down his arms. They both laughed.

  ‘It’s for a fat old man, full of turtle soup,’ the dealer said, ‘but it’ll suit you fine if you take the epaulettes off and wear it as a long robe to your ankles.’

  Robert beat him down to twelve-and-six and went off with the brilliant bundle under his arm. He shook it out at home and brushed it well. It had hardly been worn at all. Taking his nail-scissors he cut the threads that held the epaulettes; then he put the robe on and fastened a heavy belt round his waist.

  ‘It’s obviously medieval,’ he thought, ‘but what am I going to wear on my head?’ He went down the stairs, still in his robe, and opened the kitchen door. Miss Middlesborough started back in surprise and he asked her if she had anything that might look like a medieval hat. She ferreted in an old cabin-trunk in the cellar and brought out a black and white fur cap.
/>   ‘That’s it, that’ll be marvellous,’ Robert cried, taking the cap excitedly.

  ‘And what about these old feathers—would you like those, too?’ Miss Middlesborough asked, holding out two black ostrich plumes and one purple.

  ‘What a wonderful head-gear I shall have!’ laughed Robert.

  He went back to his room and fastened the feathers on to the front of the cap so that they swept back over his ear. He looked at his face in the glass and wondered what it was he lacked. ‘I know,’ he said at last, ‘it’s a beard—I need a purple beard.’

  He hurried out to the nearby barber’s where the theatrical things were sold. He bought a plaited tail of violet hair and some spirit-gum.

  As he opened the front door again he heard Hope’s voice. He was in the kitchen, talking to Miss Middlesborough.

  ‘Ah, here he is,’ Miss Middlesborough said when she saw him. ‘I was just telling Mr Hope that I thought you’d gone out.’

  ‘Come and help me with my clothes,’ said Robert. ‘I’m sure you’re an excellent needleman.’

  Miss Middlesborough held up a sparkling ribbon of diamante and gold. ‘Is this any good to you as well? If so, you may have it with pleasure.’

  Robert could not resist it, although he did not know how he would use it.

  ‘I know,’ Hope said after a pause; ‘a jewelled dagger! We’ll make one out of wood and stick the diamante on. Oh, won’t you be romantic!’

  ‘Lovely, lovely,’ shrieked Robert. ‘Come upstairs at once and get going on the dagger. You are going to be useful.’

  All that afternoon they worked. Hope carved the dagger out of an old ruler and then encased it in silver paper, tying the diamante down the front as the final touch to the jewelled scabbard. Robert was delighted. He ran about the room half naked, asking Hope what he thought should be worn underneath the robe.

  ‘Being split to the navel, it’s rather revealing, especially when one sits down,’ he said doubtfully.

  Hope looked round the room and saw the black and white dressing-gown on the back of the door.

  ‘Wear that,’ he said decisively, ‘then you’ll have double sleeves and double skirts. The effect will be much richer, the black and white will peep out through the crimson, and you’ll be perfectly safe too. Of course, if you still feel nervous you could wear shorts under the whole thing—perhaps you’d better, people do get rather rough sometimes.’

  ‘You don’t mean that they tear the clothes off one’s back, do you?’ asked Robert in alarm.

  ‘They don’t exactly debag people, but they sometimes seem to think that a sweet disorder in the dress is rather attractive.’

  ‘No one shall touch me,’ said Robert with more firmness than he felt. He went to the cupboard and pulled out a pair of khaki shorts. Pulling them on, he buttoned them up and belted them securely.

  ‘That’s right, get your armour-plating on!’ Hope called out derisively.

  Robert sat down in front of the glass and started to put on the violet beard. He dabbed his jaw delicately with the spirit-gum and stuck on the fluffed-out strands one by one.

  ‘Build it up slowly, as you would a clay model,’ Hope said with approval.

  When the beard was fixed, Hope trimmed it to a square, almost Assyrian shape with the nail-scissors.

  ‘You’ve no idea how grotesque you look in nothing but a purple beard and khaki shorts,’ he said. He got up and moved towards the door. ‘Now I must go, for I’ve got to put my own clothes on—see you at the dance.’

  Robert finished his dressing and looked at himself in the glass. The unnatural purple, the crimson, the fur, the plumes, the sparkling dagger, excited him. His cheeks were red.

  The supper-bell rang and he went downstairs. As he opened the dining-room door the three women gave little gasps and cries of astonishment, but the curate remained very pointedly silent. He seemed to notice no difference at all in Robert’s appearance; in fact he did not find him worth looking at at all.

  Robert escaped as soon as possible, and, muffling himself in an old voluminous raincoat, he hurried to the bus stop determined to ignore all cat-calls and rude noises from the passers-by.

  Nothing happened; he reached the top of the bus with only the conductor’s ‘Coo! Purple Christ!’ ringing after him. The lavatory at the art school was full of people changing or readjusting their clothes. Billings was entirely naked except for a tiny loincloth of imitation leopard-skin. With his jutting-out chin, straight nose, wide-apart eyes and delicately thin, withered leg, he looked like a mixture of Narcissus, from an old painting, and one of those photographs of emaciated children, from a patent-food advertisement. He was singing, as ever, hissing the words through his white, clenched teeth. The little Welshman was also in a state of undress, but he was about to don a French sailor’s jacket and a cap with the red pom-pom on top.

  They all groaned and exclaimed when Robert fully displayed himself in his elaborate get-up.

  ‘Why purple, Sonny?’ someone asked. (This hateful name had spread.)

  ‘Purple for perversity and passion, of course,’ said the little Welshman. ‘Oh, doesn’t he look wicked!’

  Billings tweaked the feathers and stroked them, quoting Rabelais’s ‘First I Wiped Me with a Feather’ in a high falsetto.

  ‘Don’t you dare do anything of the sort,’ said Robert fiercely, and everyone burst out laughing.

  At that moment Hope entered, dressed as a sinister harlequin, with his black hair drawn back under a skullcap and his body encased in a skin-tight covering of coloured lozenges. He was heavily made-up, so that the rough skin, where he shaved, looked pitted. The white deadness of the face and the crimson mouth made Robert think of eighteenth-century actresses who poisoned themselves with their white-lead cosmetic.

  There was a silence for a moment in the lavatory. People seemed to be surprised, almost shocked, by Hope’s appearance. Indeed there was something macabre and Edgar-Allan-Poeish about him.

  ‘Darling,’ someone cried out at last in imitation female voice, ‘you shouldn’t have chosen that maquillage; Arden’s “Summer Bloom” would have suited you so much better!’

  Hope smiled mechanically; he was clearly annoyed. Robert hurried to join him.

  ‘Aren’t they appalling?’ he said. ‘They’ve got no imagination. They’ve been trying to wipe themselves with my feathers too.’

  Rude guffaws, exaggeratedly hearty, echoed after them as they made their way down to the hall.

  Billings and some other students had decorated the place with red and white striped awnings and huge cartoons, strongly reminiscent of pictures like Picasso’s Guernica; so that the whole effect was of some grizzly fair ground, where half-dismembered bodies and screaming mouths met the gaze at every turn. The painting was slovenly and unmeaning; great dried cakes of the distemper sprinkled the canvas like mountains on a relief map.

  Robert saw Madge and Jane sitting alone on the edge of the dance floor.

  ‘We’ve just arrived, Sonny Boy,’ Jane said hurriedly. Robert looked at their evening dresses.

  ‘Why aren’t you in fancy dress?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Oh, we hate dressing up; besides, you’ve more than made up for us, with all your purple whiskers and crimson damask!’

  ‘How dreary and Kensington to come in evening dresses when you’re supposed to dress up!’ He looked at them with distaste.

  Jane jumped to her feet. ‘You shall pay for that by dancing with me,’ she said. She whirled Robert off, making his robe fly out in a bell shape. Hope was left looking at Madge. She was no friend of his, and he hated dancing. He turned away rudely and abruptly and walked up to the band, where he asked if he could play the piano when the pianist was tired.

  Jane was soon tired of dancing with Robert. He wanted to dance energetically and perhaps somewhat grotesquely, whereas she wanted to be squeezed lovingly by some great man. Robert understood her needs, and they made him feel uneasy. She was not the right partner.

  ‘Sonny, I
can’t follow your steps and you’re treading my silver shoes into powder; let’s sit down,’ she said at last.

  ‘It was entirely your own idea that we should dance,’ he said unpleasantly. He led her to one of the wooden chairs and left her without another word.

  The hall was filling up. Parties of strangers were arriving and blinking their eyes rather dazedly at the decorations. ‘What’s it supposed to be?’ he heard one ask.

  ‘Don’t know, mate,’ came the merry Cockney answer; ‘looks to me like as if the young students had got it up to look like a cannibal butcher’s shop.’

  ‘It’s modern art,’ someone else said repressively and knowingly.

  Robert looked up and found the Cockney speaker staring at him.

  ‘Couldn’t you get her to do your fancy steps?’ the man asked sympathisingly. It was clear from his easy gay manner that he had been drinking.

  ‘Oh no, she didn’t want to dance with me,’ said Robert meaningfully.

  ‘Come here and I’ll show you a thing or two I learnt out East and in the States.’ The man caught hold of Robert and started to bend him about and kick his feet into various positions.

  ‘I’ve just come off a ship,’ he explained, ‘and you learn a lot of steps in all those foreign dives.’

  Finding Robert an apt pupil, he pulled him to him, clapped their bellies together and started to prance and sway in the most extravagant but masterly way. Alarmed at this unorthodox behaviour, Robert looked about him wildly; but by this time the dancing had become rather original in all corners of the room, threes and fours dancing in rings, holding hands, like fairies or children; sedate couples of thoughtful-looking women gave a sense of stability; and frolicsome men and boys reminded one of dogs and puppies leashed together.

  ‘You’re not bad at following,’ said the man as they swayed and shimmied through the crowd. ‘If you want your partner to know what you’re going to do next, you must hold her as tight against you as you can; then she can feel every little twitch of your body all the way down,’ he added solemnly.

  ‘That might be rather awkward,’ said Robert absently; then he pulled himself up and smiled at the man. Their steps were becoming more and more intricate and flamboyant. Robert sweated as the man manipulated him with such vigour. ‘This is how people ought to dance,’ he thought, ‘with all of their bodies and souls—they shouldn’t just shuffle and wriggle.’