by Gerald Kersh
As he left the telephone booth Pym could feel his heart beating. He wished that he was better dressed. Now say—merely for the sake of talking—just say something impossible came to pass and circumstances arose in which it became necessary to take off his clothes in Joanna Bowman’s presence. His underpants were torn and frayed and there was a hole in his left sock … Thinking about embracing Joanna, Pym realised that there was nothing in the whole world that would give him deeper pleasure—always excepting the production of a great and famous novel. That went without saying. He knew that there was not the remotest possibility of his making love with Joanna at such short notice: that she had invited him to her flat in order to hammer home the point that a woman is as good as a man. She was a pricker of masculine vanity. He could almost hear her coolly incurious voice saying: I suppose you imagine I invited you to my place to make love to you? Well …
Still, it was a nice thing to dream about—a pleasant little Bank Holiday for the imagination—and he really was uneasy, remembering his shabby underpants and the hole in his sock. There was something peculiarly sordid about a hole in a man’s sock.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PYM knew the name, although he had never seen the face, of a man who was also thinking about clothes, in a near-by barber’s shop—the foolish, crooked-souled little man who was proud to be known as American Henry. This poor frustrated fellow had spent most of the money he had ever got, on smart clothes. Most of his dreams had been of clothes. He had plunged into dirty water and dived to the bottom of the world in search of slick suits and bright shirts. Most of his eighty-nine hundred hours of wakefulness in prison had been filled with anxiety for the clothes they had taken from him before locking him up for twenty months; and when they released him and let him dress up again he was choked with happiness, because he was free—free to wear fine clothes.
He had gnawed his fingernails in anguish because, having spent his share of the swag in buying the things he loved, the police had not given him time to soil the cuffs of the pale blue silk shirt with the Barrymore Roll Collar, or crumple the burgundy pure silk tie as worn by Adolphe Menjou. The pale blue New Yorker athletic singlet and shorts patterned with poinsettia blossoms were almost as good as new; he had never had a chance to display them to a lady friend; he had not even had the pleasure of admiring himself in them, because the police had picked him up two hours after he left the American shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. There, too, were the shoes, bright yellow under the instep and scarcely soiled at the soles: he had found courage, after a drink or two, to strut into an ancient establishment in St. James’s that made boots for crowned heads and ask a gentleman in a high collar if there was anything they happened to have that might fit him. As it happened, they had one pair of wild boar-skin shoes in an exceptionally small size, into which he squeezed his feet. That pair of shoes cost him ten guineas—two guineas more than the suit, which was the best that money could buy at short notice ready-made. It was a powder-blue double-breasted suit draped (as the salesman had assured him) in the American style. He remembered that, putting out his little narrow foot, he had pulled up his trouser-leg and made the most of his socks for which he had paid fifteen shillings. What had the nobility and gentry got that he had not? The shoes were a little too tight then. The gentleman in the high collar said so, but he had replied: “They’ll give. They’ll give all right. I sort of got kind of stranded, if you understand what I mean. You know how it is with these goddamn railways. God knows what they do with your god-damn luggage. I’ll make do with these for a bit.”
“Will you wear them now, sir?”
“Well, yes, I think I will.”
“And these … sir?”
“Oh, sort of chuck ’em in the garbage can.”
“Yes, sir. With pleasure.”
“When I’ve got time I want to come back and order a dozen, maybe two dozen pairs of your shoes.”
Having paid, he went out. In the window of an antique shop in Jermyn Street he saw something that made him stop: a tie-pin set with a large pearl. This pearl, which was shaped like an onion, seemed to be blown out of the bowl of a tiny gold bubble-pipe. He went in, asked the price, paid thirty-three pounds twelve shillings, and walked out, strutting and kicking out his feet. His sharp, protruding chin came between him and his pearl, so he paused to look in the window of a book shop; saw himself from head to knees, and walked away. He was in Jermyn Street, a man about town, wearing a silk shirt with the Barrymore Roll, shoes by Belgrave, and a museum-piece of a tie-pin with a pearl as big as his little fingernail stuck in Adolphe Menjou’s tie of burgundy silk. Near Piccadilly Circus he bought a walking stick with an ivory knob; looked for a long time at his own reflection in a silversmiths’ window, and went away to buy a genuine Vicuna-hair overcoat for sixteen guineas. It made him look twice his size. After this his gloves appeared inadequate. He took them off, stuffed them into his pockets and bought another pair, obviously hand-sewn.
Then, well-dressed, his pockets full of money, he went to show himself about town. He strolled to the Pimlico Bar in Rupert Street, sauntered in, manipulating his ivory-knobbed stick. Two of the boys and three of the girls were there. He shrugged and hitched the belted coat into position, advanced a pace or two, felt a gentle pressure on the upper half of his left arm and turned with a sudden sinking of the heart to confront a big man in a fifty-shilling overcoat. This man had a pale face like a pudding, colourless eyes, and short hair. A quiet voice, calm and full of scorn and pity, said: “Hullo, do you mind if I have a word with you?”
“What about?”
“Would you mind if we discussed that outside?”
He saw then that there was another man standing just behind him; a dark, heavy-jawed man wearing ungentlemanly boots and a mackintosh. This man took him persuasively by the elbow and urged him out of the public house while the man in the fifty-shilling coat opened one of the swinging doors with an ironical bow.
“Say, what the hell is all this?”
“All right, Harry. You know. You know!”
“I don’t know what the god-damn hell you mean!”
The first man said: “I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest, Harry, and it’s my duty to tell you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used as evidence against you.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Nobody ever does, Harry. Come along and don’t waste my time.”
There was a discreet car waiting. In half an hour he had been charged and locked up, accused of having helped a crook called Three-Fingers Laylock to get away with a safe. Three-Fingers and three other men were also under arrest—all of them more or less skilled craftsmen. One of them, Australian Toddy, was a first-rate engineer, an ex-armourer, a deserter from the Navy. Another, whose real name was Gabriel, but who was called Pulley, was an expert finder of points of balance—a man who could take a grand piano downstairs without scratching its surface. Three-Fingers had been a motor mechanic. The fourth, nicknamed Keyster, a bull-headed dog-faced man with hands like skinned rabbits, knew all about locks: at the tip of every finger he had something as sensitive as a dog’s nose.
They borrowed a one-ton van which they plastered with advertising matter; went to their destination, dressed as workmen; got out, shouting and laying down planks; went in, in broad daylight, carried out the safe, and drove away with it. Three-Fingers organised the affair. American Henry drove the van; he got off lightly.
When he was sentenced he muttered: “God damn it, I never did have any luck ever since Zoe turned me in, that cow!” He had served a short sentence a little while before, for living on the earnings of a prostitute named Maria Puccini, otherwise known as Zoe. She had disappeared: someone had said that she had married a man from Hull, but no one really knew.
*
Now American Henry saw, with relief, that his light hair, of which he was inordinately proud, was growing long again, so that the waves were coming back. After a haircut, shave, fricti
on, and face massage, he felt better, but still he was worried. He needed money; he needed clothes; and he did not know where to turn. His expensive shoes were still elegant, but his hat was no longer new. There was a spot of grease on one of the lapels of his coat. He was uneasy.
Having paid the barber he went to Briquette’s Café in Soho and ordered a ham sandwich and a cup of white coffee, knowing that after he had paid his bill he would have only ten shillings left. While he bit his way through the four triangles of the sandwich he watched himself in one of the spotted mirrors. The austerity of life in prison had refined him. He considered himself with approval. His was a clear-cut face, and if the skin happened to have crept a little nearer to the bone, there was no harm done.
But he needed money.
He had finished his coffee and all but the crusts of his sandwich, when a big man came into the café and nodded at him. He went to the counter and took a handful of large chocolates wrapped in silver paper—the ones they used to call Cioccolato Baci that have little amorous mottoes printed on slips inside. Then he walked slowly to American Henry’s table, sat down, ate a chocolate, and—without moving his lips—said: “Well, Harry? How’s the Big Shot?”
“Fiddling along.”
“How long since?”
“Since what?”
“Since you know what. Nobody told me you were around.”
“A few weeks.
Something had happened to the big man’s face: his nose and mouth were horribly scarred. The lobe of his left ear was missing and on the left-hand side of his jaw there was a ragged white cicatrice. And yet this man had the air of a businessman; a decent, sociable, prosperous man of affairs, honourably injured in an honourable war. He was dressed like a good bourgeois in blue serge, and wore a heavy old-fashioned watch-chain on his comfortable convex stomach. His thick hairy hands were half covered by honest linen cuffs, and his hat was a severe, unindented grey homburg. American Henry, who would not have been seen dead in such a hat, was ill at ease in the presence of this middle-aged man. He said:
“Well, Leo, how’s every little thing?”
Leo smiled and said: “Harry, don’t be surprised when you find out that Three-Fingers is looking for you.”
The little man’s face became white and glossy as candle-grease, but he said: “Ah, my old pal. Glad to see him. Jesus, four or five years from now, maybe! I wish to God it was four or five minutes.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the Keyster wanted to say how-do-you-do to you, too, Harry. And the Australian. And Pulley too, sonny-boy.”
He said this in such a way that American Henry had to moisten his lips before he replied: “Good pals. Glad to see ’em, drunk or sober, any hour of the day or night.”
“You’d better make it day, not night, Harry,” said Leo, offering him a cigarette. “What’s the matter, Harry? What are you so shaky about? A thick night?”
“I’ll say I had a thick night!” said American Henry, laughing a little too loud. “No, but honest to God, Leo—what do you mean, Three-Fingers’ll be glad to see me? I don’t get it.”
“You’ll get it all right. Oh yes, you’ll get it. Good and proper, little man.”
“What do you mean? Get what?”
“It,” said Leo, smiling.
“What for?”
Still smiling with his torn lips, but speaking with menace, Leo said: “You wouldn’t happen to know who shot off his mouth, would you, Harry?”
“By Christ, I’d murder the bastard if I knew!”
“That’d be suicide, Harry. There’s a law against it.”
“I’d like to see the son of a bitch that called me a nark! Jesus Christ Almighty, I’d murder the bastard who called me a pigeon!”
“Well, Harry, you’d better get ready to murder Three-Fingers, Pulley, the Australian, and Keyster.”
“Harry Fabian never squeals—I never said a word.”
“I never said you did, Harry. Only a little bird told Three-Fingers. I know what liars little birds are, but there it is. A friendly word of warning, that’s all; just a friendly word.”
American Henry Fabian bit his lips and muttered: “Another frame-up. I swear on my mother’s grave I never opened my mouth. Christ knows I’m no squealer. Me, a pigeon! Me! Didn’t I go up with the others?”
“Have I said you didn’t, Harry? Only not for anything like as long, you know. And that little bird I told you about….”
“I can prove——”
“—Go on, go ahead and prove.”
Fabian was silent until the waitress had brought more coffee, and then he said: “Leo. Listen. As a matter of fact the trouble is I can’t prove.”
“I know you can’t, Harry.”
“I’m as innocent as that ash-tray, I swear on my mother’s grave!”
“Don’t be silly, Harry. Your mother never had a grave.”
Swallowing this insult Harry Fabian said: “Look, Leo, what I want to do is, get myself a bit of dough and scram out of the country. There’s nothing doing in this country any more. It’s dead. There’s no money about.”
“Speaking of not talking,” said Leo, carefully sifting sugar into his coffee, “what’s that I hear about a lady friend of yours who got a carpet for a typewriter?”
Fabian sweated. “Jesus, Leo!” he said, “ask yourself the question! There am I, fresh out. So this dame gives me this typewriter to hock, and she says it was given to her by some steamer. So I hock it for her. Just put yourself in my position, Leo. What would you have done in my place? Got another lagging? All I said was, the machine wasn’t mine—nothing more, I swear it on my father’s soul.”
“You never had a father, and he never had a soul, Harry.”
“I’ve been a good friend to you, Leo,” said Fabian, “I’ve put thousands in your pocket. You got no right to talk to me like that, Leo. God Almighty, Leo, even if you believe those god-damn dirty lies—Christ above, even if you believe I could be such a god-damn rat as to squeal—who gains by it? You gain by it, Leo. If it was true. Just say it was true. There was another thousand to come. Okay. Three-Fingers is away for a bit, and so are the others. Anything might happen. They’ll never get that thousand. By rights I’ve got a hundred and fifty quid to come. Jesus God, Leo, you ought to thank me on your bended knees instead of insulting me. Look,” he said, inspired, “let me have a hundred.”
He might have been telling an exceptionally funny story: Leo put down his cup and shook with laughter. He coughed, beat his breast and rolled in his chair, gasping and coughing.
“I’ve got a proposition,” said Harry Fabian.
“Go on?”
“I need a stake. I got a proposition, I swear on my—I give you my oath, I got a proposition.”
“You always did have prospositions, Harry. What have you got this time?”
“It’s a proposition. I can’t tell you more. You just got to trust me.”
“I wouldn’t trust you, Harry, if you were sitting on your mother’s grave with your father’s soul up your sleeve and your pocket full of diamonds. But I tell you what … You tell me something, and I’ll think about letting you have a stake.”
“Well, what?”
“Take a walk along the street with me and I’ll tell you.”
Harry Fabian put down half-a-crown for the cups of coffee and the sandwich, and followed Leo out of the café, with a jaunty swagger and a heavy heart.
“What is it, Leo?” he asked.
Leo had stopped to stroke a tabby cat. “What’s that, Harry?”
“What was it you wanted to know?” asked Harry Fabian.
Leo looked at him blankly, and said: “Know? Know what?”
“You said you’d stake me if I told you something,” said Fabian.
“Did I? I’ll tell you something, little man—you’re getting good at repeating what people said. You’re getting better than a shorthand notebook.”
“Cut my throat if—”
“Go and cut
your mother’s throat,” said Leo, still smiling. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“You wanted to ask me something,” said Fabian.
“Walk along here,” said Leo, leading Fabian into a quiet turning. “Now tell me—what was it you wanted to tell me?”
“You wanted to know something.”
“What did I want to know? Make it quick.”
“Would it be about some white paper-money?”
“How much?”
“A fifty-pound note and eight hundred in fivers and tenners. Is that it?” asked Fabian.
“Who’s got it?”
“Would I get my hundred and fifty now?”
“Who said anything about any hundred and fifty?”
“I’ve got to have a hundred, Leo.”
“If it’s worth it, we’ll see. Come on, now: who did Three-Fingers give it to, that money?”
“It was a fifty-pound note, seventy ten-pound notes, and twenty fivers,” said Fabian.
“I know. Go on.”
“It was eight hundred and fifty pounds——”
“In big notes. Go on, Harry, who’s got it?”
“You know me, Leo,” said Fabian; “they couldn’t get anything out of me with red-hot pincers. You know me, by Christ—I’d god-damn well tear my tongue out with a plumber’s wrench before I dropped a single solitary word. And there you are, where does it get you? Where the hell does it get you to be a strictly honourable guy? You know me, Leo——”
“—I know you all right. Save it for your girl friend. Come on, let’s have it. You know where that money is, and I know you know.”
“Leo, for the love of Jesus, put yourself in my shoes,” said Fabian, in agony.
“Little man,” said Leo, stopping to stroke another cat and grunting with the effort, “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a half-share in the Bank of England. Not if you double-cross me, little feller. You know what’ll happen to you, don’t you, sonny boy?”
Fabian dabbed at his cold wet face with a silk handkerchief.
“You’re shaking, little man. So would I if I were you,” said Leo. He had picked up the cat and was tickling it under the ears. “Nice pussy, nice little pussy.”