by Gerald Kersh
“Just anywhere. What about the George and Dragon? You can get a perfectly good lunch there for one-and-six.”
“I was thinking of Vidocq’s,” said Pym.
“Well, then, stop thinking of Vidocq’s and let’s go to the George and Dragon.”
As they walked down Adam Street Pym, looking sideways at her, said with some astonishment: “Why, you’re nearly as tall as I am!”
“Why not?”
“It’s rare.”
She laughed and said: “Tall men don’t like tall women, do they? They’re bad for that dark male dignity, or whatever they call it, that we used to hear so much about. Nothing to look down at, even physically. Don’t let it bother you. With our shoes off I should probably measure about four inches less than you, if that’s any comfort.”
“What an extraordinary woman you are!” said Pym, not without asperity.
“Don’t tell me why: just let me guess. What an extraordinary woman I am! You ask me to lunch and I say Yes—without chi-chi, just like that—without even pretending to look at a little diary to see whether I’m previously engaged. That’s extraordinary. It would have been ordinary and comfortable if I’d giggled and blushed and twisted my toes and looked at my fingernails and put on one of those coy expressions, and hummed and hawed and said ‘Well’ and ‘Let me see’; and rolled my eyes when I met you and suggested the Savoy or something. As it is, you ask me to lunch. I say Yes, and so we go to the George and Dragon—which is as good as I’m used to—for some Irish stew or Lancashire hot-pot. Extraordinary. Well, God save me from your ordinary.”
“Incidentally, apart from being extraordinary, you sound like an angry sort of woman,” said Pym.
“I’m a tired sort of woman.”
“Tired of what?”
“I’m tired of nonsense. I’m tired of lies, fakes and false pretences. I’m tired of fools, cowards, and weaklings. I’m tired of cheats and swindlers. I’m tired of people who put on acts. I’m tired of people who hide in doorways on the other side of the street. I’m tired of people in general.”
Pym said: “For a woman who’s tired of the things you’re tired of, you’ve chosen a funny sort of place to work in.”
“Have I?” she asked, with real interest. “How’s that?”
“Sherwood is the confidence man—swindler, trickster, cardsharper, anything crooked you like—the twister who last went to jail under the name of Sedley Pryor. Some of the capital behind Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., comes out of what he got for his story. I rather fancy he informed on one or two friends, too. You know—the crook, reformed because he’s lost his touch, doing a bit of the old Judas Iscariot on the side.” Pym was angry: he did not like what she had said about “people who hide in doorways”. “And Proudfoot, speaking of fakers, has perverted more truth in his time than any other man in England. He was Proudfoot the Mouthpiece. I don’t know anything about the rest, but I can’t say I like the look or the sound of them.”
“I’ve only been working there a few days,” said Joanna Bowman, “and I don’t know anything much about them. But you seem to know them all and dislike them pretty thoroughly. And still you’re on the best of terms with them. How’s that?”
After an embarrassed silence, Pym said: “Proudfoot has been a good friend to me.”
They had arrived at the George and Dragon, where they found a quiet table. Pym ordered drinks and food, and hoped that in making her laugh at his whimsical commentary on the misspelling of an item on the menu he had changed the subject of conversation.
But while they were eating the main dish she asked: “In what way has Proudfoot been a good friend to you?”
Pym left a piece of bread half-broken and said: “That’s a long story.”
“I don’t believe it, you know. None of these stories ever are very long—not as stories. One makes them long to make excuses. The stories are short. Only the explanations are long.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Pym. “Explanations are short and stories are long. Proudfoot helped me when I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help myself because I didn’t know how. I got into trouble because I compounded a felony. I compounded a felony because I was sorry for the wrong people at the wrong time. (Proudfoot calls me ‘Sorry Pym’ because I’m sorry for people.) I’m grateful to Proudfoot because I can’t help being grateful; because I see ingratitude as a piggish sort of vice—and I hate it. Ingratitude is the Mark of the Beast. There are explanations; but where’s the story?”
“I daresay you’ve done a good turn or two in your time?”
“I suppose so.”
“Did you expect gratitude?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then you expected to find your Mark of the Beast on your friends?”
“I hoped not to.”
“You didn’t look for gratitude. You were ready for ingratitude. You just said so.
“I suppose so—yes.”
“And yet you regard gratitude as a good thing.”
“Yes, a good thing—a necessary thing. Even dogs——”
“—And you were always grateful?”
“Only too grateful, always.”
“In other words, you make a virtue of it. You say it’s a necessity, yet you make a fuss about it. You believe a man to be a crook, but because he did some little thing for you at a given moment, you are prepared to follow him into crookery. Is that how it is?”
“No, indeed! That is not how it is,” said Pym.
“If it isn’t, what are you doing where you don’t want to be, talking about your friend Proudfoot when his back is turned? What are you doing with his five-pound note in your pocket? Don’t imagine I didn’t recognise your voice when you spoke on the phone before. What were you doing? Chewing a pencil?”
“No,” said Pym.
“You may ask me what I’m doing here. I’ll tell you exactly. I’m a shorthand-typist earning my living. I’ve been working at this job about three days. If I find it in any way offensive, I shall get to hell out of it. That’s where we differ, you and I: I get to hell out of things, you get to hell into things. Now, before I got myself involved with a cheap crook, I’d cut my throat.”
“Without paying your debts?” said Pym.
She said: “What debts? How do you pay the sort of debts you’re talking about? If I had to lie down in the gutter so as to be on the same level as someone before I could pay a debt, I’d think of myself as belonging to that gutter. In any case, I don’t have debts. I’d put my head in a gas-oven before I had debts like that. It’s the old business of losing the whole world rather than your own soul. If these people are what you say they are, why do you think they’re kind? They put a pound’s worth of kindness on an idiot like you as an idiot like you might put ten shillings on a horse—gambling on something to come. Only in your case, there isn’t any gamble—you are a dead cert. A horse can break its leg, but you won’t let them down. Oh no, I know you! You’ll stand up for your crooks, or whatever they are, to the bitter end. You’ll give away all you have. And why?—Because you like to see yourself like something you read about in a book somewhere. I don’t think it’s a good thing to do. I’m tired of this kind of faking. I don’t like it. Don’t do it any more!”
Pym said nothing. The waitress had brought the bill, which amounted to four-and-eightpence. He left five shillings and fourpence.
She said: “All the same, you know and I know that you’ve got Proudfoot’s fiver in your pocket.”
“I have,” said Pym. “My idea was that I wanted to offer you a good meal and a bottle of wine.”
“Did you imagine that would make an impression on me?”
“I wasn’t thinking of making an impression on you,” said Pym. “Make an impression—in clothes like these! Try and fool you with a lunch! My dear lady, a number of things you’ve said about me are pretty near the truth, but don’t let that kid you into believing that you’re right all the time. If I offer anything I like it to be good. If
I play at being host, I do my best to have a satisfied guest. When I asked you to lunch I was under the impression that I had more money in my pocket than I really had. Since you insist on dragging the matter on to the dirty tablecloth, I thought I had a pound note, but I’d forgotten that I’d paid my rent. I didn’t want to cancel the date, and I wasn’t going to humiliate myself. So I borrowed from Proudfoot. And now you know.”
He was angry and uncomfortable now.
She said gently: “Forgive me if I hurt you. I’m the last woman on earth to sit down with at a little friendly lunch. I’m a rotten guest.” And she reached out and squeezed one of Pym’s wrists for a second in a strong cool hand; it was an asexual gesture expressive of friendly sympathy. “I didn’t come rushing out to lunch with you after a two-minutes’ chat because I wanted a free meal, you know.”
“I didn’t imagine for one moment that you did,” said Pym.
“Why, as a matter of curiosity, did you think I did?” she asked.
“Ah-ha! Here we go again! You don’t imagine that I invited you to lunch after two minutes’ conversation with a view to making passes at you and luring you to my divan, do you?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be very extraordinary if that were the case, would it? … No, don’t get angry. That has been known to happen before, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t doubt it, Miss Bowman; but a woman of your high-velocity nickel-plated sharp-nosed-bullet penetration—a woman who has seen so much of people and life in general—a woman like you, ought to have as much common savvy as it takes to tell the difference between a man like me and a gutter-crawling skirt-chaser. Your big bright eyes, lady, ought by now to have informed your big bright brain of the difference between me and the man who makes the date with the waitress or waits outside the Carreras factory when the girls are coming out; or seduces servant girls; or toys with typists.”
“Is there really so much difference?” she asked.
Before Pym had cleared his throat of suffocating indignation, she went on: “No, I don’t think that you’re fundamentally so very much different. Don’t fly off the handle yet! All this is just talk—silly talk. No … I should think you asked me out to lunch for the same reason as I accepted your invitation. I should say you rather liked the look of me and thought that it might be a nice thing to sit down and talk to me—you being a solitary sort of person.”
“I admit I liked the look of you, and I can’t deny that I thought it would be nice to sit down and eat something with you and talk to you,” said Pym; “but I was thinking in terms of a restaurant, not a police court—conversation, not cross-examination.”
“I know: you’d like me better if we chattered about, admiring each other and being polite. But just think of all the bother and all the waste one saves by a few words of straight talk. Ten minutes of straight talk cuts out weeks and weeks of lies and shame and creeping into corners. Didn’t your big bright brain tell you that if you’d said: ‘Come out to lunch; I’ve only got a shilling; let’s have a bit of bread and a cup of coffee’ I’m the sort of person who would have admired you for it? But no, you change your voice over the telephone—you are a very bad actor, by the way—and hide in doorways, and go in for all sorts of unnecessary diplomacy. And it’s so much more comfortable to go directly to the point, as the crow flies. And that’s why I said all that I said about weakness and faking and being crooked.”
Pym could only say: “Remarkable woman!”
“I suppose I am. I try to be an honest woman; but I’ve got so sick of littleness in people that I’ve got brutal in my way of speaking. But I hate to hurt, you know; I’m not cruel by nature.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“There isn’t time now. I have work to do.”
“I seem to remember your saying that stories are short and only excuses are long,” said Pym.
“I don’t want to talk about myself now. I’ll talk about myself next time we meet.”
“Soon?” asked Pym.
“Yes.”
“To-night? To-morrow?”
“I’m not certain until a week-end. Ring me at the office—or would you rather I rung you?”
“I haven’t a telephone. I live …”—Pym swallowed a high stomachful of pride—“I live, as a matter of fact, in Busto’s Apartments, Routledge Street, W.C. It’s a hole, a dump. Where do you live?”
“I live at 9, William and Mary Square, Victoria. I haven’t a telephone, either, so ring me at the office.”
Before they parted, Pym said: “I’m very glad I met you, Joanna.”
“You’d better call me Jo.”
“Your friends call you Jo? Mine usually call me Johnny.”
“No, I just prefer Jo. I don’t like Johnny—I don’t like these tenderised names. What’s the matter with John?”
“Nothing; but if you’re on friendly terms with a man it’s as hard to call him John or Charles or Richard as it is to talk plain English to a baby.”
“The more’s the pity, John. See you soon. Thank you for the lunch—that was a nice lunch.”
When Pym went back to the Sunday Special to collect Dr. Weissensee’s typescript, the porter said: “You back a winner, or what?”
“Winner? What winner?”
“You look as if you just won the Irish Sweep.”
Pym laughed and said: “I just want to nip upstairs and pick up something I left behind this morning.”
The porter said: “That’s all right.” He was an ex-sergeant-major and was notorious for his dour inflexibility; but he knew something of men, and he knew that a happy man is a man to be trusted. “You go on up,” he said to Pym.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AS he opened the door of the big room in which the Features Editor used to sit at a littered desk while he kept an eye upon his department, Pym heard strange noises. A man was crying “Whooo!” in a high falsetto; a woman was screaming, and another man was laughing. Only one typewriter was ticking, and Pym knew without looking that at this typewriter sat Hoffer Blake, a worried old man who wrote and edited a column entitled Give Youth A Chance. Hoffer Blake was typing from morning to night: he was a hack of the old school who had the stunned look of a punch-drunk boxer. He arrived at ten o’clock in the morning, hopping first on his left foot and then on his right; threw himself into his chair, and worked like a madman until seven o’clock, when he went out, drooping in such a manner that one expected to see him pause in the doorway to spit out a tooth and wipe the blood from his nose. Then he went to the Star and Garter for sausages and mashed potatoes and a pint of beer; and it was said that if you rang a glass in his ear he would sit up with a start, remembering the bell that rings when a typewriter platen jerks to the end of a line, and plunge his gnarled fingers into his plate.
Hoffer Blake was hard at work, as usual, but the others had made a group at the Features Editor’s desk. The Woman’s Page Editor, Jennie Tully, was saying: “Well, who would have thought it?”
“Talk about dirt!” cried the Assistant Features Editor.
The Leader Writer, with a grave expression, said: “I have had occasion in the course of my work to read erotica. Yes, as a man whose duty it is to be informed, to know just a little of everything. I am pretty well acquainted with filth; but of all——”
Catching sight of Pym, the Assistant Features Editor said: “Hey, Pym! Come and look at this bit.”
Pym went to the desk and there he saw a thumbed pile of onion-skin paper, closely covered with violet typewriting, lying upon an open manilla file.
“What the hell are you doing with that? I left that here this morning. I came back to collect it. What the hell do you think you’re doing, fiddling about with other people’s papers?”
“You don’t mean to say you wrote this?” said Jennie Tully, with wide-open eyes.
“You?” said the Leader Writer, with horror.
“It isn’t mine,” said Pym. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t even looked at the stuff yet. I
t’s supposed to be part of a book by Dr. Weissensee. They want me to rewrite it. Why, what’s the matter with it?”
“Come and look at this bit,” said the Assistant Features Editor.
Pym read twenty lines, and his face was red as he looked toward Jennie Tully and said: “Good God!”
The Assistant Features Editor slapped his thigh. “What a man! ‘Good God!’ he says. Go on the stage, Pym; go on the stage!”
“This isn’t mine,” said Pym, taking hold of the typescript, jostling the Leader Writer aside and covering it in the folder. “It has nothing to do with me. I swear I haven’t even looked at it—if I had, do you think I’d leave it lying around?”
“Who’s Dr. Weissensee?” asked the Assistant Features Editor.
“I don’t know,” said Pym. “I don’t know anything at all about her or it.”
“Her?” said the Leader Writer.
“A Viennese, a woman: that’s all I know.”
“A woman! A woman wrote that?” said the Leader Writer. “A woman?”
“Name and address, name and address!” said the Assistant Features Editor; while Jennie Tully shook her head and whistled.
Pym said: “I just came in to collect this. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
The Leader Writer said: “I see that you are interested in erotica. I have a friend, a Doctor of Medicine, who has one of the finest collections in England. He corresponded with Havelock Ellis. If I might borrow——”
“It’s not mine to lend, word of honour it isn’t,” said Pym.
“Then if I might copy a few pages …?”
“How can I let you copy pages of someone else’s work?”
“Work!” said Jennie Tully.
“Damned hard work,” said the Assistant Features Editor, “if you ask me!”
“No, please—you must excuse me,” said Pym.
Gripping the manilla file between his elbow and his ribs, he left the office and went out. In the passage he met Steeple, who had been eating and drinking with a general because there was talk of war. Steeple clapped Pym on the shoulder and said: “Come on, come on, come on now! No more Prose Poems, eh? No more Little Gems of Prose, eh? No more Little Flowers of Saint Pym—all right? More story, less adjectives—okay?”