The seagulls graze past us, dive into the eddies, hover over the mist, cry, twirl around… The sun’s rays shine brighter, strike the two banks, the giant wall of docks, the enormous brick rows, glisten in yellows, mauves, blaze on the window panes, cascade, trickle down along the shores, the sludge, flow back into the current, scatter in a brilliantly shimmering trail…
Ah! It’s fairy magic, pure and simple! Nobody’ll deny it! I ask Sosthène what he thinks. He didn’t want to go into it. It was too cold on the parapet for him, and I was too worked up, he was shivering, his nose solid mauve. Virginia was shivery too… Ah! Now big rivers give me a thrill! they fire my imagination… I go into ecstasies at the sight of flowing water…
Still, I was cold too, damn it!
“A grog!” I propose… “A grog!”
I knew a small saloon in Blackfriars, real close, a hop-skip-jump.
“Do you want to ruin my stomach completely?”
Pig-headed jerk.
We head up to Fenchurch Street… I find my pub, I can still see it, just opposite the Belle Sauvage, the small courtyard with the sign. You see the “belle sauvage” in question, stark naked and nicely stacked, dancing with sprays of feathers all over her body, on her ass, her head, her tits… A period piece. Sort of like the Colonel with his kooky thing for masks… It gets me to thinking. What kind of shape is our future taking?… Some prospect!… Now that it occurs to me, where’s that goofy bastard farting around these days?… What’s he cooking up?… Why didn’t he come back? I run through it all in my mind!… What about his plan?… And that phone call? And the note from the Yard?… Maybe he was the instigator?… What the hell was this all about in the end?… A nasty business… I was guessing myself to death… I had to keep my trap shut… otherwise I’d worry the girl some more… plus it was too delicate, her relative, her uncle… who was naturally a lousy creep… a geezer with the hots… a filthy human being… She couldn’t deny it, could she, my fragile precious darling. I kissed her again a little… I kept kissing her more and more… Such things aren’t done in public bars. I couldn’t snap out of my muddle, didn’t know what tack to take. A whole slew of problems on top of my shattered nerves, plus my personal troubles with the Consulate and others… Ah! Shit, enough already! I give Virginia another kiss… Ah! Not a damn thing was working out at all! Rough going at every turn. And she, my poor precious! Knocked up! my fairy! My affection! And me the father! Some father! A champ! Sosthène let me stew over our rotten lot, he felt real comfortable in the pub! He poured himself tea with rum, one small carafe after another… and he wasn’t much of a drunkard either… he was acquiring a taste for the hard stuff… ever since his awful fright.
“I thought you didn’t like liquor!”
“You upset me, that’s the only reason!”
A tear wells in his eye. The quick-to-cry type. So I was the one causing him grief… Oh! The nerve of the guy!… The heartless son of a bitch!
A big act.
“You going to drink everything?” I ask. “The whole seven pounds fifty?”
He’s miffed. We leave.
Back on the sidewalk.
A bolt from the blue.
“Hey, Prospero Jim! That’s the guy we ought to look up!”
Curlers mentioned him the other day on the bench in front of the Leicester… He’d opened up another joint according to Curlers… on the other side of the Thames… with his insurance dough… a “saloon” for workers, a dockers’ snack bar, just a simple canteen, who’d have ever thought!… Not even close to a full-service inn… that bomb business didn’t go over too well with the insurance company… they hadn’t reimbursed the total costs, just a small fraction… But old Prospero Jim was a sweet-talker, he had a real way with words, plus useful connections in every quarter, in all the docks, workshops, with practically every single crew that travelled the coast as well as overseas, and in customs – he knew a big shot! Ah! If he wanted to get involved! He’d get us out of our jam in no time. This sudden idea gave me a new burst of hope.
“What if he had some little trick – hey, listen to this, it’s great – for getting us over to Ireland? Completely on the hush-hush, top secret, you name it? Something down in the hold for us three? Wouldn’t you like that, Virginia?”
You bet she went for that right away! The idea was to wander the world. She couldn’t ask for more. Adventure didn’t scare her. Sosthène neither. But how were we going to go about it? What angle would we take for starters? Where’d we get the dough? The papers? He was worrying himself sick over piddling details.
No sooner said… then off! Fucking hell! Let’s hunt up this Prospero! Track down this acrobat! Got to cross back over the entire bridge! First things first, it might be located out that way… past the elevator factory, past Blackfriars and the Depot, the dry dock, right after the reservoirs where the shore rises, where the narrow streets twist and turn, the skewered rows of cottages, the thousands upon thousands of doors with knockers, geraniums as far as the eye can see, the whole jumble of bricked-in dead ends, Holborn Commons, Jelly Gates, grey mazes crawling with brat broods, constantly darting between your legs, commotion, stray junk, hoops, pots, racket, kids worming in everywhere, cheeping as they hop along on one foot, thumbing noses, somersaulting, boom! Leapfrogging! Girls, boys, head over heels! Plunk! In the gutter! The sudden explosion of life sweeps you off your feet! Splatters you with such lively joy! The sunshine strikes you full force, burns your heart with delight, the slimy walls, the magic alleyways, girls with hitched-up skirts, tawny-haired misses, tow-topped urchins! Youth in all its rough-and-tumble rambunctiousness, frenzy! Frenzy! Gambolling for all eternity! To die like this, totally swept away by youth, joy, swarms of children! Complete happiness! The crowning joy of England! So pure, so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so divine! Titillating daisies and roses! Ah! I’m elated! Ah! I’m intoxicated! I forget what I’m after! I lose my way! Prospero! Prospero! Your canteen! We’ll find you! Even if you’re hidden under the shores, huddled down in a sewer, with the rats, and contraband! You won’t get away any more! Quick, ask for directions! From this passer-by… that other one… at that house… around the whole neighbourhood… Excuse me? Nobody knows! Here’s the Dingby… the ruins… still left as is… mud, ashes, beams. At last we find a chatterbox… actually happy to remember that he just might have heard something about Prospero being back on the opposite shore… another trip across the bridge!… A wooden building supposedly… The Moor and Cheese was its name… We’re off again… Tooley Street… A quick ferry… Here we are… Jamaica, the large outer dock… twenty yards to the right we run into it… It’s as big as an honest-to-God warehouse, immense, ugly, black, awful, an enormous building at the end of the towpath, right opposite the water… There’s the sign with the words “The Moor and Cheese, Prospero proprietor”… No mistake, this is the place all right. I push open the door. No surprise. He saw us coming. He must have been watching from his counter.
“Hi, how you doing?” No explanations…
“So,” I go, “back on your feet?”
“Oh,” he answers, “sort of…”
Playing it safe.
I don’t press.
“This here’s Sosthène,” I introduce him, “a true friend! And this is Miss O’Collogham… Can you serve us up something hot? This river of yours is an icebox!…”
It was real draughty inside his place too, not sealed too tight, the north wind gusted through every wall… Just some patched-up warehouse. In the middle, a huge black wooden chest, with the counter on top. Kerosene lamps on the tables. Duckboard covering every square inch of the floor as on a ship. It could hold quite a crowd, enough chairs for a regiment.
“Say, you’ve got more elbow room than at the Dingby! Fact is, you’ve expanded! You must be having quite a time, huh?”
I act friendly.
“Oh! it comes and goes!” he confesses… “I don’t turn away customers. But every once in a while, you know how it is, there are bombs!�
�”
I think to myself: he’s going right at it!
I thought he meant Boro… no, he was talking about the Zeppelin bombs that had fallen on Cabbell Street… the night before last… A low-flying Zeppelin… Floating very quietly over London… in full glare of the lighthouses… Targeting the St Katharine Docks… the complete rundown was in the Mirror…
“Hey, you can take out insurance!”
An off-the-cuff comment, no harm intended.
Rubs him the wrong way.
“Insurance against crime is what I need! Nobody’s insured against crime!”
“You saying that for my benefit, Prospero?”
“Oh! For everybody’s…”
Digging up the past.
I don’t press, back off, didn’t want any trouble.
We came on other business. His canteen was empty… two-three customers at one end… the big rush would be later on in the day, he explains to me even so, when the crowd rolled up from the docks, the stevedores, the entire workforce at the big four-o’clock break in the action… Then the place turned into an instant mob scene. Right now they were on the job, slogging away, bats out of hell in the holds, working at lightning war speed, the crews slaving on top of each other! Every which way with full dump trucks, with cranes, ships drawn along the quays, whistles blowing, steam shooting, the crews hauling ass, pivoting, swarming, crawling, streaming into the holds, hordes of rats, rummaging, shouldering, digging their hooks into the goods, starboarding, tipping up trunks, dizzy whirl of hoists, charging along, stowing on tenders, hauling the ropes taut! Ready! Set! Go! The locomotive lets out a whine, carries off… Two-three cargos to unload along two-three rows plus two-three others with each ebb tide, two-three thirty-five-man crews in six-eight-hour shifts, what a circus, what an earsplitting din!… Smoking day and night!… And the word for the pace is ferocious! No lazy slugs around there! At killer speed! not a dry hair from the St Katharine Docks to London Pier. No thumb-twiddling! All the stops pulled out! The mob lavished with tuppence an hour. You could see the docks from Prospero’s place, a full view from his fanlight, the activity, the winches.
“No snoozing down on your wharf, I’ll say! You’re not kidding you pack them in… They must come up from the wharf thirsty as hell! You’re going to be able to buy yourself a pub big as this!…” sweeping my arms wide as the Thames… “When this is all over!…”
Never had I seen so many guys slamming around so much stuff, crates, barrels, scrap metal, grain meal, caravaning from every side, charging down into the black holes of the holds, clanking against ballast tanks, catching with winches, murderers! Grinding the winch up something awful! Breaking off all its teeth! The chain snaps! Whips out! The whole thing comes crashing down! Brraang! The old tub lets out a gasp! Its huge paunch thunders! Boom! The nasty accident knocks through the belly, the entire skeleton… Prospero’s joint quakes…
Maybe this doesn’t interest you… please accept my apologies… So anyway, I was on the part where I was feeling out Prospero…
“They blow in from all over, look at that! Did you see that?… Brisbane? Australia?”
The very boat right under his window just sitting there, you could see the name: Brisbane Australia. A cargo of wool and frozen meat. He sighs, gives a vague answer.
“Oh! Australia’s tho nithe! They got othtriches! Theep! Ithn’t that right, Mademoithelle?…”
He had a lisp.
Another sigh…
“There’re people from all over… people who never come back…”
Giving us a routine.
“Well!” I go, the guy’s getting on my nerves. “So you don’t know of anything?”
I get right to the point.
“Anything what?”
“A trip, damn it! For getting the hell out of here!”
I spelt it out.
“You a detherter?”
“No! No! I’m not! Discharged!”
“Mixed up in anything?”
“Sort of… but nothing too bad…”
If only he knew all the ways.
“And the old man and her? Taking them with you?”
“It’s not what you think…”
I know what he’s thinking.
“Where do you want to go?…”
“Where there’s no Matthew…”
“Don’t like him?”
“No…”
“Makes two of us…”
At least we have one thing in common.
“Got a passport? How about the geezer? The kid?”
“There’re ways to find them…”
“The kid got any relatives?”
He was wary of me, my fly-by-night ways…
“Where you off to, friend?”
True, it was a snap decision, but there wasn’t any time for hemming and hawing… He was an all-right guy!
“Well?” I ask.
“Well, you’ve got a few screws loose!”
Exactly.
“You plunge ahead! Charge right along! You don’t give a damn! Don’t you know there’s a war on, lamebrain? That you just don’t go traipsing around the world like that? Wherever you take a fancy? That it’s prohibited everywhere? Haven’t you heard?”
Ah! I knew that! Old news! He was wiggling off the hook, that’s all.
“My congrats, Mademoiselle! Bravo! An explorer! You’re going to take in a country or two! Passepartout!* The King of the Road!”
He was pulling my leg, just his style, picking fights in front of the ladies, grabbing the spotlight as always, his old habit…
I hold my tongue… Now’s not the time… I want to keep him talking.
“All right, you don’t like doing favours!…”
“Me, do favours?”
He jumps back. A conceited peacock…
“Ah! Now just hold on! Listen up, Mr Fancy Pants, Prospero has done more huge favours than you’ve got moustache hairs! A gazillion more! Only you show up and take him for a fucking idiot with your hare-brained scheme! Like it’s as easy as taking a piss! Leave the country! Leave the country! Epilepsy on the brain! Il signor is packing off with minors! Plus grandpops! Plus what else?”
I pushed him to the boiling point. He was lisping angrily.
“Would you like me to give you a round of applause?”
He was playing dumb.
“Course not! Course not! You know damn well! I’m asking you for a ship! Not the moon!… You know, headed to Australia, for instance!… Any ships like that around?… No?… Are they so incredibly extra-special?”
“A journey! A journey! Listen to that, Christ Almighty! And what about dough! You expecting a free ride now?”
Ah! Good point! That shut me up! I’d forgotten! Scatterbrain! Completely slipped my mind! Clean out! That’s a fact! Well, just those seven pounds fifty! What the girl swiped! A drop in the bucket for Australia!…
“Ferdinand! Eeeyouu are marvellous! Marvelllous! A prizewinner! Signor Escampetta! Clandestina! Nulle peso! Thee leeemeeet!”
He laughed so hard he started coughing… wiggling his eyebrows… winking… applauding.
“Unbelievable!… Unbelievable!… The girlfriend! The acquaintance! Customer! The whole gang! Off we go! Signor! Pougadinos! Signor Pougadinos! Signor Penniless Zero!”
He saw Sosthène as our mark. Pretty far off the mark, I’d say…
“Mademoiselle çou bambino, he’s got a bad case of Fourgnioule! Fourgnioule! In love! Burning up in the oven!”
He screwed his head around like that…
“Sicko, my boy! Sicko!”
He wasn’t putting me off the track, his two-faced posturing wasn’t bluffing me… meanwhile he said nothing…
“Dish us up a little broth if you don’t have any java ready. Don’t you have better things to do than holler at us? What’s the matter, beef stew off the menu?”
I knew what came out of his kitchen… quick meals at any time, broth with a pinch of salt, pickles, tripe. He had everything in his scullery at
the other side of the small courtyard. We went over for a look at his grub, his cold cuts, sandwiches, sausages, simmering Irish stew… We all paid our compliments, and from the heart too, our mouths watering. Honoured to have a taste. Prospero was a louse, but not a cheapskate, his friends had free rein. Back in those days it was the done thing, an open-hearted come-one-come-all attitude. From the first mouthful you never stopped till the pots were licked clean. A plate for every man, and down with the pigs! Nobility, in its own way. Never any questions. I’d have croaked twenty-five times over, and in a snap, a dog-hungry derelict, if not for the pimps of St John’s, their helping hand in the nick of time! So now at some thirty-plus years distance I’m just paying them their due, giving them a generous bow, I would have gone belly up ages ago, I wouldn’t be the writer I am today, with a sentimental streak, if I hadn’t found them so palsy-walsy and all back when. It’d be a shame. I’d have got done in by the fog, coughed myself to death. I held on by sponging off them, for ever and ever. Back in those days, like at the Leicester for instance, we ate potluck, whatever was put in front of us, round-the-clock service, morning, noon and night. No song and dance about setting fifteen-twenty extra places, give or take a few… A nice crowd would always show up, around noon, just roll in, who knows from where, a motley crew, starving to death… hookers, cousins, some relatives or other, some stray pimp, or street survivor, a bookie, a mystery man, a manicurist, and in the wee hours for a light supper even an entertainer, the stocking seller, somebody’s sister’s john, two-three sloshed characters who dozed off right on top of the table, and tarts between tricks, in and out, one last quick bite, to plug in the gaps. From Upper Soho to Tilbury, from Albert Gate to the Leicester, and in every knock shop in between, the grub-slingers never had a minute’s rest. An endless procession of legs of lamb, fattened chickens, Chester hams! No stinting over chow. Only the very best! Plus you had to see the atmosphere! Sheer agonies of appetites, ravenous enough to scoff down a dog. Women who’d been streetwalking for hours on end, pacing around in the icy fog, would walk in pale as ghosts, dead famished. They needed to put something in their bellies. A simple stroll through the damp air was all it took to set our heads spinning. Prospero understood perfectly, we made a slap-up meal of his sausages, followed by minced pork in mustard sauce.
London Bridge Page 47