by Gerald Kersh
Fabian said: “Take off some of them heavy outdoor garments,” and pulled down one of her stockings.
She had never met such a fascinating man. A little later she said: “No, but ooky-da-wook!” and giggled.
“You see?” said Fabian, severely; “now this is just the wrong sort of time to get on the god-damn giggle with a dumb-cluck crack like that. Now listen….”
Presently she said: “Tell me—do you love me?”
“Now there you are again,” said Fabian. “Whaddaya want a guy to say? You don’t ask such questions, dope! You say: ‘Oh, darling, darling, I do love you, darling! Darling, why are you so wonderful? How did you learn to be such a sweet lover?’—Jesus, you’ve got a lot to learn!”
He spoke like a schoolteacher, but felt like the man of whom it had been said: If he fell into the River Thames he’d come up in a dry suit of clothes, with a pocketful of fishes.
“Do just what I tell you,” he said, “and you’ll get that ermine coat. See? Do just like I tell you, get it?”
“Whatever you say.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
STILL thinking about the hole in his sock Pym went back to the office. The Features Editor was in an abominable temper. “Well, what is it?” he said.
“I rewrote that story along the lines you suggested,” said Pym. “I didn’t use two syllables where one would do, and there isn’t a semi-colon in the whole thing. Short, sharp, staccato—a sting in every sentence—just like a boxer with a punch-ball … rat-at-at, rat-at-at. Pithy. Factual. Gutty. Human.” Pym spoke with irony. “Brusque, snappy, quick and bright as an electric spark. Okay?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That story.”
“Look here,” said Steeple, “are you under the impression that you’re the only man trying to write for this paper? Have you somehow got the idea that they employ me to be your guide philosopher and friend? Has it ever occurred to you that once in a while I might have something better to do than improve my mind with your Tone Poems? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I’ve got to look at stuff from everybody in the world? But that’s how these people are,” he said, in a bitter apostrophe, looking at the palm of his right hand, “give ’em an inch—just give ’em an inch, and they take a mile. Why can’t you wait a couple of days, the same as everyone else does? Why should you get preferential treatment—you with your Resonant Prose?”
“I followed your advice,” said Pym, with an injured air, “and I was anxious to know how it had turned out. That’s all. If I’m bothering you I’ll go away. If you said that I was to come upstairs just so as to let off steam on me, I’m not having any of it. Give me back the story and go to hell. It would have been more gracious to send it down with a boy. I’d rather have a formal rejection slip—I’ve had plenty of those anyway.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said Steeple, rubbing a corrugated forehead with a nervous hand, “but you don’t know what I have to put up with. Story, story, story … You mean that market story. Well, I read it.”
“You read it, and you found that somewhere I used a word of two syllables. You haven’t time to give me a little talk on construction, and syntax, and all that sort of thing, so give me the bloody thing back and have done with it.”
“No, as a matter of fact, this one’s all right. I can use this one.”
“I’ve got dozens more in mind.”
“Good, good. Smack ’em in. But simplify, simplify. Make ’em more human. You understand? Human. More incident, more story. More immediate value. For instance: you talk about vegetables—cabbages, savoys, lettuces, rabbit food in general. Why don’t you tie that kind of thing up with something? For instance: there’s some talk of an infectious disease in clover. You know, clover—it puts back nitrogen into the the soil. A thing like that could be dramatic. You say, for instance, just say that there was a real epidemic of that sort of thing. All the clover dies. All the grass dies. There’s nothing for the animals to eat. No roots to hold the soil. Top soil turns to dust, and dust storms destroy the world. It’s not a bad idea, when you come to think of it,” said Steeple, brightening, and making a note on a scribbling pad. “If you have the right approach, you know, you can see the end of the world in a cabbage. You put forward the theory, and it makes, as a matter of fact, a bloody fine story.”
“There’s another man,” said Pym, still angrily, “who has been looking into the Mosaic Disease of the tobacco leaf. As I see it, the Mosaic Disease is caused by crystals—but these crystals are not like any other crystals—they can reproduce. They can give birth. Take that to its logical conclusion and there you are: the world invaded by crystals. A great ball of washing-soda rolling in space.”
“That’s right. You’ve got the idea. Find out more about it.”
“And my story?”
“I can use that one. I’ll pay you ten.”
“Look, would you mind if I drew the money now?”
“All right, I’ll give you a note to the cashier. But I wish you wouldn’t. They don’t like it.”
“How about having lunch with me to-morrow?”
“Can’t manage it. Lunching with General Baker—tank expert.”
“The day after?”
“Out of the question: I’ve got to eat with Professor Sack-man who knows all about molybdenum. Stuff they call ‘Molly-be-damned’—they put it in steel—civilisation would crash without it. Modern warfare would become impossible.”
“When, then?”
“… After that I’ve got this geezer who calls herself Madame Sparrow, the rejuvenation woman: old charlatan, if you ask me, or more likely a plain crank. Some time next week perhaps. There’s your note. Good-bye. And remember—keep it crisp—actual, factual, snappy, human. So long.”
Pym left the cashier’s office with a hop, a skip and a jump, and went to a hosier’s shop in Fleet Street where he bought a pair of beautiful woollen socks, a noble tie, and a pair of bright blue artificial silk underpants. Then he went to the public baths in Endell Street and bathed luxuriously in very hot water.
After this he felt capable of anything except work; so he telephoned Rockwell Gagan and said: “Hullo, Rocky. What news?”
“Johnny, old boy old boy old boy, the best news you ever had in all your life. Can you come right up?”
“I daresay I could manage it.”
“You’ve got the address—Brow House, South Street, Park Lane, Park Lane—got it?”
“I’ll come along.”
*
Rocky was wearing a satin smoking jacket with a long gold-tasselled sash. There was pink sticking-plaster on his forehead and a broken vase in the fireplace. Sissy, wrapped in an iridescent green dressing-gown embroidered with golden beetles, was reclining on a chaise longue, sipping a golden drink.
“About that play of yours,” said Rocky.
“I told you before, it isn’t a play of mine.”
“All right, Pym old son old son old son, Mary Greensleeve’s play then, you old fox!”
Sissy said: “You know, darling, I’m quite sure you were making up all that about her being an old woman, and dead, and all that.”
“You wrote it yourself, you old fox!” roared Rocky. “You old genius, you old genius, you old genius! … He had me in mind, darling, and he wrote it himself. Didn’t you, you old liar? Admit it, old son old son old son!”
“I’ve told you already I didn’t, and there’s an end of the matter.”
Sissy Voltaire said: “Well, whoever wrote it, dear, it’s your property, isn’t it?”
“It was given to me, yes, Miss Voltaire; so I suppose it’s my property. I thought you were only joking,” said Pym, “when you said you were interested in it the other day. Do you still seriously mean to tell me——”
“—We’re crazy about it,” said Rocky, “we’re raving mad about it, aren’t we, darling?”
“Frantic! I cried all night,” said Sissy. “It’s … it’s so perfect. It makes one believe in, in reincarn
ation. That woman might have been me! And the vicar! I can hardly believe he isn’t drawn from my husband. And that cheap comedian, that great big idiot whom she takes out of the gutter (kiss me, darling)! It couldn’t be better. The great, big, tall, dark, handsome, virile, dirty parasite … (kiss me, Rocky) … the third-rate cross-talk idiot who shows her the meaning … (kiss me again as if you really mean it, dear love; oh, I do love you, I do I do I do!) … and whom she picks up out of the gutter, and makes a man of! And you’ll desert me too, won’t you, Rocky, you rotten parasite—won’t you, darling? You will, you will! I know it. No, but to talk business, Mr. Pym. (Tickle me here, just under this ear.) To talk business,” said Sissy Voltaire, with a sigh, “I want an option on this play of your girl friend’s.”
“What do you mean by an option?” asked Pym. Rocky said: “We pay you such-and-such a sum of money to reserve the right to buy the play in such-and-such a time.”
“What do you mean by we?” said Sissy Voltaire.
“Oh, all right. Miss Voltaire pays you a certain sum for the right to consider the play with a view to putting it on within such-and-such a time.”
“Oh, really? How much?” asked Pym.
Sissy Voltaire cut short an amorous nuzzling of Rocky’s cheek and said: “I’ll give you fifty pounds for a three-months’ option.” Then she refreshed herself with a bit of his thumb.
“I take it this option means that for three months you have first refusal of the play. Is that it?”
“You’ve got it old boy old boy old boy,” said Rocky. “—Hi! That hurt, darling!”
“Hurt? You cheap bastard, I’d like to cut you into little bits and give you to the cat, I love you so much,” said Sissy Voltaire.
Pym said: “When you say fifty pounds, I suppose you mean fifty pounds in cash, on the nail?”
He supposed nothing of the sort, in point of fact, and was half-stunned with amazement when Sissy Voltaire said: “But, of course.”
“That’s only option money, old son old son old son,” said Rocky. “All being well, when we—when Sissy—takes up that option, then you get another sum of money in advance, and you get a contract—five per cent of the takings. Shall I tell you something? It’s the easiest way in the world to make a fortune. Look at Bernard Shaw. Look at Somerset Maugham. Look at … look at any of them. Well? How about it?”
“Well, I accept, of course.”
“Well, what are you looking so sick about?”
“He wants a drink. Stop strutting up and down and showing off, and give him a drink, you idiot,” said Sissy.
“I didn’t know I was looking sick,” said Pym. “It came as a bit of a surprise to me, that’s all.”
“Here, old son old son old son, catch hold of this and let’s drink to it!”
They drank solemnly to the success of That We May Not Weep, and then Sissy Voltaire went to a little papier maché and mother-of-pearl desk and returned with ten five-pound notes and a piece of paper, which Pym signed. Now he had nearly sixty pounds. This was a vast and important sum of money. He had always told himself that if only he could lay his hands on fifty or sixty pounds everything would become simple: he could take a cleaner, quieter room, sit down uninterrupted, and in six weeks hammer out a masterpiece. Yet, as he put the money in his pocket, a strange, oppressive unhappiness took possession of him. He said: “Oh dear, poor little Mrs. Greensleeve! To think that she hawked this piece of tripe up and down the town all those years, and then——”
“—What do you mean, tripe? It’s a masterpiece, you fool!” said Sissy Voltaire.
“Did I say tripe? I’m sorry, I meant masterpiece,” said Pym. “Well, that’s that. Thanks very much. When shall I get in touch with you?”
“How do we get in touch with you?” asked Rocky. “He’s a man of mystery. Johnny’s got some woman tucked away somewhere. He won’t let anybody see her, Sissy darling—Johnny’s insanely jealous, that’s the trouble with Johnny.”
“Jealousy is a sign of true love,” said Sissy. “I admire him for it. This big lout isn’t jealous, Johnny. If he came in and found me in bed with you he’d just sit down and read a magazine.”
“Now, darling.”
Pym said: “I’m moving to a quieter place, you see. I’ll let you know my address in the next two or three days. Well, I’d better be going now. Thanks again, and I’ll see you soon.”
As he closed the door, Sissy said to Rocky: “Come here!” And Rocky said: “Yes, darling.”
Pym reached the street in a state of profound melancholy. The first considerable sum of money that had come his way had been earned by Mary Greensleeve, and his masterpiece remained unwritten.
He crossed the road and went into the park, inhaling the autumnal odours, and thumbing the bank notes in his trousers’ pocket; sat on a twopenny chair, and looked at the cloudy golden sunset. In this sunset he felt that he was caught and fixed for ever like a fly in amber. His gold became red, the red grew grey like cold iron. Night was coming down, shutting out the sunset, like a furnace door. To-night there would be no moon: everything would be black, with a threat of approaching winter. Yet the glow of the day stayed with Pym for a little while, in spite of his melancholy. He felt—God knows why—that he had caught a glimpse of something immeasurably vast, unfathomably deep, and grand beyond human understanding. He said to himself: “If the night seems to be dark, it will be because the beauty of it has blinded me.” He knew then that the world of men is made up of particles, like the grains of a dust storm or the drops of a deluge, too small to count or separate, too fast to identify, but joined in a unity too great to comprehend.
A wind began to blow and Pym got up and walked to the road. The glow was dead. Pym was confused and sad. Life bewildered him. He remembered that even in the tiniest thing there is more than the sum of its known parts; that you may count the tears and never know the grief; mark every leaf yet never know the tree; record the throbs, and still be a stranger to the heart. Yes, the glory eludes us and the dream evades us: it is here and yet it is not here, like a half-forgotten song. He said to himself: “We also are like scattered seeds trodden into the dirt and waiting, cold and blind. What can a seed know of the thing to come? If an acorn could think, it would be tormented by a dream of blue sky and green leaves, and wonder why it was trodden down, humble in the dust and alone in the world.”
Pym walked across the grass in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. No man, he thought, had ever been less proud of the money in his pocket. It made him uneasy: it made him think of the hungry old humiliated woman, dying in agony of body and mind, buried by a cut-price undertaker in a suburban grave-yard. The money was hers; she had made it. But Reason told him not to be a fool: What do you want to do? Go along to the cemetery, exhume her, and bury it with her? She gave you that play of her own free will after making you promise not to let her be buried in a pauper’s grave. Take it, and cut out this maudlin sentimentality. Sit down, get back to work, write that good book you are always talking about, and grow great. Since you are so damned touchy on this subject, put up a little gravestone—or a big one if you like, with angels on it, and compose her a nice epitaph.
Reason was interrupted by a terrible scream. Pym stopped. He was standing, now, in the shade of one of the trees that line the Walk that leads to the bandstand. Two women were fighting with fists and nails, teeth and feet, fearful curses and filthy imprecations. One of them was tall and fat, and the other was short and thin. Neither of them could have been less than fifty years old. Even as he stopped, the words ran together and became a babble. Their rage was too great for words. The big woman picked up a green-painted iron-framed chair and swung it at the head of the little one, who caught it dexterously in both hands and wrenched it away. Then, snarling and spitting, screaming like a lynx, she hooked herself on to the big woman and they rolled in the dust, while another woman, about sixty years old, danced about them like a referee, wringing her hands and crying: “Don’t Maggie! Don’t. She’s not worth it I tell yo
u! Why can’t you talk it over?”
They did not hear. The little woman was bleeding from the nose; and the big woman’s scalp was marked with a raw red patch—a lock of her grizzled hair was clutched in one of her opponent’s bony little hands. The noise brought the young couples out of their amorous trances. They came running from the shadows, made a crowd, and looked on. Two policemen, clumsily running in their heavy boots, broke through. But the women had gone berserk. One of the policemen staggered back with a red scratch on his cheek, and his helmet fell off. Someone in the crowd laughed derisively, and everyone else laughed. Two more policemen came. One of them blew a whistle. They caught the big woman and held her by the arms; but the little woman, tearing off her clothes, threw herself down, kicking and writhing, sobbing and screaming, like a woman in an epileptic fit, until a man came with a stretcher, and they strapped her down and carried her away. The big woman went quietly, weeping bitterly, and saying, between sobs: “I’ll kill ’er, I’ll kill ’er!”
“What’s it all about?” asked Pym.
The elderly woman, the referee, shook a deprecatory head, pursed her lips, and said in an affected voice: “These girls! I don’t know, some of them seem to have no pride at all, making exhibitions of themselves like that.”