He sucked in again a whalish breath—peremptory, final, a breath that washed his hands of it all—and then, while the room was closing down on me and the future began to unreel its weary road, he added in a more reflective tone, both tender and sad:
‘Nice set-up lad too. Got a lovely rose garden. Out on the North Circular, she says. Lovely roses, she said.’
*
I never saw her again. It took some pains to avoid this, for I began to see a lot of George and Kay and Norbert. George I had already met again once after that Sunday tea-party. He himself had telephoned me—of his own accord!—and we had taken a drink together. It was then, as early as then, that the fourth stage in my relationship with those three began. First they had been too perfect, then perfect, then imperfect: now, through these last imperfections, there formed with familiarity a more settled knowledge of them, and with it a liking. As I knew them better, they became rounded and lovable. Familiarity bred no contempt—it was otherwise, strangeness and fear had bred the contempt. As we grew more intimate, our imperfections bred affection—we became people of no mould, unpredictable always beyond a few superficial mannerisms.
They told me about Desirée. She was happily settled, and Arthur her husband was a very decent fellow, a metallurgical chemist. I liked to think of Desirée going about their evening meal, the smell of cooked meat drifting out over the garden and mingling its promise with the other succulence of the roses. He, in his sober suit, his fingers just not touching a rose, experiencing for charmed evening minutes the poetic exaltation—full and visionary as any artist’s—that comes to a man who has grown his plant. And she, aproned among the clean white dishes, her eyes on the figure pursuing its soundless progress through the garden. I avoided them for fear, as with the others, of growing too much to like the bastard.
Impatience
‘BEAT it off away now,’ said the Dropper, ‘blow.’
‘Sod you for a start‚’ Sally said.
‘You too, darling.’
‘——!’
With these remarks the two men withdrew, each a little, neither too much.
In that lovely winter weather, quiet with the first hunter’s thrill of fog, sharp and curiously calm, London rose clear of long-leaved September and curled towards its fires, saw the curtains drawn over yellow windows, walked swifter among the daylit greys, dreamed through the petrol hurry of horse-leather and the evening street-lamp. Toys reddened in the shops. A church-bell no longer echoed its summer air—but now engraved the dark cold night. Black leaves gave up their wet mysterious smell. And in the ornamental districts a mist hazed the trees, graceful arches and the classic porticos of great mansions stood softly severe—it was not a white mist but silver grey beneath a red low sun, and one looked around suspiciously for the rime that was not yet there.
But the feeling struck different in the streets behind the Circus—Beak, Brewer, Lisle in their narrow grime feared winter. All those who would every day stand on corners prepared themselves to shiver, they looked up to where the chilly haze of the sky fogged down at the brown brick housetops, they saw vegetable scraps and litter in the gutters lie cold and severe, no longer moving meat for flies. Chestnut men were coming back, the Italian fruitfulness of barrows gave way to mahogany winter fare of dates and nuts and oranges. These streets were not good in winter, they smelled of raw smoke, wind blew through frayed clothes, no trees gave them grace.
The café door was closed on the Dropper and Salvatore Page. Urn-steam clouding the window patched out the street. Separately, they drank their middle-morning tea. Dropper Culbertson crunched with long straight lines of teeth a dough of pastry blooded with jelly-bright jam. Sally Page ate nothing, he sulked, and in the silence now and then gave a mince of a twist-up to his shoulder, raised his chin a little like a woman offended. Culbertson fumed. His long mouth with lip mud-coloured as his face munched up and down—it was a line of lip so thin as to appear toothless above a great square bony jaw. Each wanted to be out and back to his shop, each lingered to appear not to hurry.
Matters between these two had come to a head. From the first, they had not met well. And this perhaps had affected their feeling for each other ever since. One evening Culbertson had been taking a stout and roll-mops with a big man he was close to, a man for whom he sometimes moved stuff and at other times leant his muscle. One of the boys had come in the bar with Salvatore Page. They had sat next door at the counter, and Sally had soon got going with the Dropper’s big man, his valuable friend and boss. Sally was small, with sleek dark hair and thick clownish eyebrows, and his flexible mouth, humorously and charmingly resilient, could talk with the fluency and something of the note of a woman. He seldom seemed to think, the words poured out, he was easy and wiry and never at a loss, he perked always and seemed never to need to relax. He was popular among the boys, and despite his size and an effeminate nature he was a tough customer to cross. He was a barber.
The Dropper also had a cut-and-shave saloon. Both were owner-barbers: they kept their own small shops, they cut hair each day, but the shops were as much a cover and a source of other business as a means of steady income when things happened to be quiet. They were not in essence competitors, their shops lay far enough apart, but the fact of a similar profession, instead of giving common ground, had the effect of souring them further. And when at that first meeting Sally with his way claimed easily and instantly the attention of the Dropper’s boss, and furthermore made him laugh, Dropper Culbertson felt a deep sulk of envy in his stomach. What the hell did this bleeding little queen think he was after? Sodding it on his territory? Not bloody likely! But in spite of one or two meaning remarks Culbertson made, Sally persisted. When they parted, he was on excellent terms, sinuous and hearty, with the Dropper’s friend. As soon as he had left the Dropper had said something civil to his friend, civil but disparaging of Sally, And that man had swung round at him and shut him up. He asked him why he didn’t smart up his own —ing line of talk instead of talking out of his —ing ——? For this Culbertson had never forgiven Sally.
The Dropper was a tall hard broad man, with a square jaw and a cropped head and small eyes wreathed in wrinkles made from squinting but not laughing. He looked a conventionally brutal man, but he dressed and kept himself fastidious. He had an uneasy reserve, deep in his big frame there was somewhere a bubble caught up. He spoke from the corner of his mouth, looking away as if for the boss on the corner, knifing a whisper always of conspiracy. Words stuck in his throat. He was sourly envious of the ease of such as Sally: and with his male size he despised the ladylike little fellow. He was called the Dropper because of his eyes. They were small, watering always, letting water as if they would dissolve. He fed them regularly with drops. He used an eyebath—but never the same one twice. The bathroom in his flat was full of them—rows of dark blue glass cups, boxes full of them. He was terrified of getting chance grit in his eyes if he washed and used the same one twice. To disguise his defect, he wore hexagonal rimless spectacles, such as jazz musicians often wear: in his long padded smooth coat he might have been a trumpet-player. He was known to do things to night-watchmen, unnecessarily, that do not bear repeating.
Months had passed, and it turned out that neither man in fact trespassed on the other’s business affairs. In each establishment the racing whispers passed from barber to customer, the key-men came in for their morning shave and held court, and at night various outside jobs were attended to—but the shops were far apart, the clientèle stayed separate. However, socially brought together by common acquaintances, and sometimes by a similar choice of entertainment, the two found themselves meeting. They found themselves favouring the same café, they met at dance-halls, they noticed each other in queues for the moving pictures. They came up against each other as the strange new word comes up against the reader—a word often read but unnoticed before, but once recognized recurring with strange superstitious significance: just so, Sally and the Dropper had always visited these same places, but had un
til now glossed each other over. Sally returned all the Dropper’s dislike—for he was sensitive and quick to understand contempt, and in any case Culbertson was a symbol of all the big men who throughout his life had sneered at Sally’s small graces. Once or twice he had been told this was no more than an expression of envy—but telling did no good, he was against such men.
So for months the poison gathered—until on the previous Sunday it had made a head. They had both gone to a tea-dance in the same West End hotel. On Sunday the wealthy Jewish population of the East End came to that place, and for the afternoon the restaurant and the lounges were heavy with a pantherine oriental suspense. It was exactly as if a thick perfume hung and drugged the place: not unpleasantly, but drowsily, heavily. Richly dressed in styles more decorative than a northern city prescribes, the guests sipped their tea, smoothly danced, and moved from one table to another. The women with their beaked noses wore hats of fabulous overhung design; voluptuous of shape and exquisitely painted, they sat on chairs but seemed more to be lolling back on soft divans. The arrogant and pomaded men stalked about in high self-confidence, minds moving fast behind scornful eyes, bodies poised slow except for a ceaseless sculpting of hands. Culbertson sat alone at a table with his lady, a large longfaced woman with a short male haircut and the grim look of a wardress. Sally sat with a large group of Jews—and the Dropper knew that, though the fellow was Maltese, he would join the others in speaking derisively of the Dropper and his girl as a couple of goys. He sat there in a desert of anti-Aryan scorn.
It was when the dancing was over, and when the vestibule and the swing-doors strutted with overcoats and furs, that trouble occurred. For Culbertson, wanting to be away quickly, chose to pass over the commissionaire and walk a hundred feet up the street and wait there for a taxi. The taxis mostly came from that direction, and he congratulated himself on getting in first and outwitting the lot of them.
But then Sally came out with a group of friends, and they all started to stroll in the same direction. What the Dropper was doing was evident, he stood alone with his woman right on the kerb. And now these others dawdled up the same way, five abreast on the pavement. Passers-by had to skirt into the gutter as the crowd of them laughed and talked at the tops of their voices, rolling as much as walking, boastful lords of the pavement. In the cold outside air, with its winter mist and its deserted Sunday air, they looked curiously like a summer strolling crowd—with their trim moustaches and padded shoulders and spotless pale wide American hats. They came right up to where the Dropper stood. They sauntered unswerving until one of the men was right up against Culbertson—but the Dropper did not move off the kerb, and the man had to hesitate and blunder aside. Even, then, linked to the others, he was dragged off balance and brushed roughly up against Culbertson.
Just then a bus, tall and red and lighted, came busying up along the kerb. A few seconds of rattle and confusion and it was gone, the broad smooth Sunday road was empty again—but the Dropper saw what made him wild. That other lot had walked ten yards further up—and now also stood there waiting for a taxi and laughing among themselves. He swore and began to walk towards them. With childish grim determination he was going to cheat them exactly at this game and place himself a few yards beyond them. If necessary, he would do this all the way down the Dilly.
But just then he saw there was a taxi coming, squat, black, and front-lit like an ambulance. Sally jumped off the kerb and waved, waved his arms wide so his overcoat flapped like a flag, piped out high—and got it. Culbertson was also off the kerb and waving. But when he came up the others had all crammed in, and the taximan shook his head. He swore again and got his hand on the doorhandle to wrench it open—when the taxi jolted off sharply and a united burst of laughter muffled at him from inside.
It is well known that most people in the world can support hate because they can hate back—but that few people can bear the more devastating dangers of ridicule. Ridicule promotes a fifth-column, a self-espionage. Even if there is nothing to be laughed at, even if the ridicule is obviously mistaken—nevertheless, the doubt in a man’s character rises to provide a target from his private list of insufficiencies. And so from the moment that laugh came from the taxi the Dropper’s dislike of Sally congealed, he stood and by the kerb silently murdered him.
His lady did not help. From her large tough face came a curiously prim voice, her down-turned lips moved small like a bird’s.
‘Well, I don’t know. I really don’t know. Some people know how to look after a girl….’
The Dropper turned his head to her, he more hung his head round at her, not moving his shoulders. She stopped talking.
*
That had been Sunday, now this was Monday only when the two men stood angry with their tea. But the night had slowed down some of the Dropper’s anger, he had taken much of it out on that lady he went with: but still deeply, rawly he knew he must bide his time. Among the boys it was not the custom to use violence unless some business transgression merited it. When a territory or a job was affected, or on occasions of disloyalty—there was no one hesitated to use a razor or kick the offender nearly dead. But this very stringency of method kept down casual fighting. It made a mess, a useless feud might be propagated and no commercial object was gained. And in any case, it was foolish to choose the daylight. And alone, without preparation, without a friend to gang it up.
For some of these reasons the Dropper restrained himself. Let him ride, he muttered into his cake. But he knew at the same time that this was going to be hard, he was going to have a job keeping a hold on himself—for that little incident of the taxi, which might have happened at any time, had in fact taken place the day before today, which was the day of an annual and important event, a competition of haircutting sponsored by an influential firm of dressing manufacturers. Culbertson knew Sally would be there, and Sally’s table was placed near his. He felt he could skate over the whole affair—but the matter growled trouble. It growled throughout the afternoon, long after he had taken another cake and watched with satisfaction Sally leave the café first, long after the bare lights were turned up in his clean white saloon, long after he had cleaned and brightened his instruments and packed them in the portable bag.
Over the wide parks night fell, and the breath of winter came misting more keenly the shapes of trees and the pallid plaster houses. Pavements and shop-windows shone clearer, swept with cold: motors glinted warmly home, crowds hurried to the warm light of the underground or the convivial warmth inside packed and lighted buses; and here and there one saw the lonely contemporary figures of men in dinner-jackets beneath mackintoshes, and of women in coloured evening-dresses beneath short day coats, both trudging out to dinners and dances. How stimulating was this air of bright-lit winter closing in! Stamped on it in every unconscious heart was the date, somewhere in the future, of Christmas week. Without that, the prospect of the dark months would have been formidable: with it, the first months of winter seemed a prelude to a light period somewhere among the darkness ahead.
But again—none of this quality of London’s life penetrated behind the Circus. And it was in one of the narrow streets, where here and there an upstairs light showed curtainless the toil of a tailor’s overtime, where thin-doored cafés sided with bright blue-lit windows of wireless accessories and the curtained restaurants that sold to shiftless gourmets twice-cooked foreign foods, where there was no fresh smell of winter but a raw brown cold—it was in one of these narrow streets that a lighted doorway attracted that evening some sixty or seventy men who disappeared inside, each grasping a bag or a case, to the curious festival that beckoned them.
Culbertson set out his instruments and saw that Sally was placed obliquely from him two places to one side and over the intervening line of mirrors. Three long trestle tables ran the length of the hall, from door to judges’ platform, with a shallow fence of mirror along the centre of each. And now the barbers taking part in the competition stood in rows, like guests about to take their places
at a banquet, each behind his allotted chair. Or more properly the barbers were like flunkeys serving the chairs—for now the real guests arrived, men picked at random from the pubs and streets and cafés, and the barbers pulled the chairs back for them as they went to their allotted places. These guests were no ragged lot—they were simply odd men with not much to do who had been taken with the idea of a free haircut.
Up on the platform the advertising manager of the hair-cream company sat with his henchmen to either side. On a green baize table in front of them stood the silver cups, a pile of diplomas, and a jug of water. They talked amicably at their ease, there was nothing yet to be done.
Then the order to begin was given, and the hall filled suddenly with the snick-snicker of scissors. A glass-topped hall, like a billiards hall or a gymnasium, and the scissoring echoed up among the thin iron rafterwork and the dirty glass panes like the restless fluttering of a zoo-house of birds. Shaded lights hanging on long cords drew a garish glitter from the white coats of the barbers, their silver instruments, the mirrors: while high up and away the bare walls and the roof danced with giant green shadows.
The barbers talked less than usual to their customers: but habit overcame them, and soon there began a quiet warmth of chatter beneath the sharper sounds of clipping and cutting. Quiet chatter—except for Sally. Sally’s voice, high-pitched and delighted, cut clear above all other noises round the Dropper’s table. Sally was in his element. It was an exhibition, and he was delighted to take his part. He talked ceaselessly to the head propped dummily in front of him, his voice snaked up and down and round, and indeed it seemed to bob about like a bright light on the other side of the Dropper’s mirror, never stopping, bobbing and giggling and dancing, so that the Dropper’s ears began to hum with it and he rattled his scissors in hard fury.
The Stories of William Sansom Page 26