The Underside

by H. R. F. Keating

  He took every sort of risk and could scarcely believe it when he continued to escape unharmed. Yet he never counted on going scot-free and observed his scatheless state with mild surprise. Only once or twice did a sudden fear of disease overtake him and cause him to hide away in whatever private corner he could find where there was light enough and examine himself tremblingly for telltale bleb or soreness. But he never found anything. He seemed to share in this, by extraordinary chance, all the famous luck that Captain Harnett had so often boasted of.

  So he went crazily letching from one secret experience to another. He slept with an opium whore once, a vision-sodden wretch with grey lips and languid eyes, amid the vapid bitterish odour of the smoke from her pipe and those of the two Lascar sailors lying moonily in the same tiny room. He tried a pipe himself too, but it gave him nothing of what he sought. He slept with the billhook-faced Jessie in St Giles, and not simply because drifting back there one day he found that Kitty was no longer at the house. But it was at the St Giles house that he refused the only two harlots he rejected in the whole of the time. Once he pretended not to hear a brisk overture from the dumpily respectable Rosy—a week or so later he heard that she had finally opened her coffee-house and abandoned the profession she had worked at so coolly—and more than once he made excuses not to accept easy invitations from Mulatto Mary.

  He could never be clear why exactly he continued to postpone—he was certain that his excuses were no more than postponements—adding this one particular motte to his hardly to be numbered tally. It was not fear: he feared nothing now. It was not disgust: that only sharpened his appetite. But it was something, something definite enough for him to be in no doubt about refusing whenever she would casually propose ‘going on the bed’ with him.

  But everything else that came his way, everything that he heard talk of, in these weeks he accepted with eagerness. One night in a den near Bluegate Fields he took a young girl who had been offered as a stake at cards in a game between a circle of thieves. He led her outside to the back, bent her over a pile of old upended baskets and took her dog fashion. More than once he slept with two whores together, egging them on to every trick that his imagination could invent.

  Yet he was not absolutely wholly committed. At times he saw this, and flung himself with even hotter fury into the mire because of it. But he did not quite sever every connection with the world of order and regularity. He never attempted to realise all his monetary assets and visited his stockbroker on several occasions. He went too to his bank.

  He returned to Gillingham Place only once more however. It was some nine or ten days after his first visit and again he had needed money and clothes. But something alerted him, perhaps only poor young Billy’s evident unease in his presence. And when on leaving he noticed leaning against the nearest end pillar of Blackfriars Bridge, a spot that commanded a good view of his door, a big smooth-faced fat man dressed in fear-somely respectable black whom he had already observed lounging there as he went in, he guessed at once that someone was spying on him. It was plain what must have happened, he thought. Elizabeth after a day or two without hearing from him would have sent round. She would have heard young Billy’s story of his first mysterious return. She would have consulted Sir Charles sooner or later. And Sir Charles would have called in an inspector from Scotland Yard. There would have been little such an individual could do but to set a watch.

  Luckily for him—something to be said for the observing eye of the artist—the watcher had been somewhat conspicuous. He let him follow for a quarter of a mile or so, a prominent drifting big black balloon, as he walked in the direction of the City and his bank. And then he used the towering fane of St Paul’s as a convenient many-exited place in which to throw him off.

  Yet at the bank he made no arrangements to take as much gold with him as he had to his account. He simply withdrew a sum that he calculated would last him for a fortnight or so and went. Afterwards, on the way across to St Giles again, he told himself that it was a sensible precaution to venture into such dangerous parts with no more than the minimum convenient sum on him. But he knew that this was an excuse he was making to himself only. He wanted, though he would not acknowledge it, a lifeline still. He ought to be beyond taking sensible precautions.

  Yet he was utterly surprised, felt himself indeed almost faint with shock, when in Lombard Street one day, towards the middle of May, as he stood watching the banker’s clerk pouring the gold he had asked for from his copper shovel on to the scales, and looked at the heavy ledgers all round the massively decorated walls, the thick bundles of notes in the drawers below the broad polished counter, ten pound, fifty pound and hundred pound, suddenly a familiar voice broke in on him.

  ‘Godfrey. So I’ve found you.’

  It was Sir Charles.

  Idiot, he cursed himself when his first paling shock of dismay had passed. Idiot. I ought to have recalled that he banks here. It’s why I do so myself. Fool. Fool. Fool.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he managed to say at length, in a terrible parody of the easy man-about-town. ‘How pleasant to meet you.’

  ‘No, Godfrey, it won’t do,’ Sir Charles said gravely.

  His generally smiling face, under the scanty brushed-across hair, was sadly serious. But there could be no doubt about the resolution in it.

  ‘No, my boy, now that I’ve found you, you owe us an explanation. Or if it would be impertinent of me to ask one for myself and Augusta I must certainly ask one for Elizabeth.’

  Godfrey bit his lip.

  ‘I know, sir. And— And there’s nothing really I can say.’

  Sir Charles looked at him with a shrewd light in his pale tired eyes.

  ‘I take it that it’s a woman?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir.’

  It was hardly the truth. But the truth could not be told. Not because the facts were not recountable. But because he himself could not fathom out any reason behind them.

  ‘I hinted as much to Elizabeth,’ Sir Charles said. ‘I felt that a girl like her might understand, though she could not condone, behaviour of that sort.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘My boy, she was distressed. Bitterly distressed.’

  ‘I know that she would have been, sir.’

  ‘And could you tell her nothing? Not send a letter, any sort of letter? Give her something to let her persuade herself into believing that it was not something in her? Eh? Eh?’

  Godfrey hung his head.

  ‘I know that I ought to have done.’

  ‘My boy, she has been ill.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you still will not provide me with an explanation?’

  ‘Sir, if there was one that I could give, I would. Believe me, sir.’

  ‘And are you going to walk out of this place and disappear again? Is that it?’

  There was an ice-edge of anger in Sir Charles’s voice that Godfrey had never, no matter under what trying circumstances, heard in him before.

  He had nothing to say.

  Sir Charles drew himself up to his full modest height.

  ‘Tomorrow is Derby Day, my boy,’ he said.

  ‘Derby Day, sir?’

  A look of blank astonishment appeared on Sir Charles’s face.

  ‘You mean to tell me that you did not even know that? You’ve not been abroad, have you? In Africa? Somewhere like that?’

  ‘No, sir, no. It was just that I have not been thinking of the days or the time.’

  Sir Charles looked at him without speaking for a moment. Then he gave a quick sigh.

  ‘Very well, then, listen to me. Tomorrow is Derby Day. I had persuaded Elizabeth to make the trip with us. We thought perhaps the air, the bustle … Well now, you are to come too. D’you understand? I require it of you. You are to come, and during the course of the day we fix on a date for the wedding. We fix on it, or we hear no more about it. And, damn it, no more about you.’

  He stood there, a good three inches below Godfrey’s h
eight, back straight as a ramrod, eyes levelled, and he delivered his challenge.

  For one short second Godfrey stood mute. Then he grabbed at the heaven-sent lifeline.

  ‘Yes, sir. Very well then, you may expect me.’

  ‘Good. We leave from Brook Street at ten. Good day to you.’

  ‘Good day, sir.’

  He spent the rest of that day in his studio, sitting for almost all of the time in his tall armchair, his hands gripping its sides as if he was clamped into it like some prisoner secured there while his captors made up their minds whether to shoot him or not. And he was a prisoner, though he was his own captor.

  He had taken a hansom back to Gillingham Place and he had cursed at the driver for not getting through the tangled City streets fast enough. They had arrived at last in a fine rattle of speed and he had taken the stairs at a run and had flung himself then into the chair and had held fast to the arms.

  He was convinced that if he once loosed his grip he would go back to St Giles, find ample eager Mulatto Mary and with her spiral ever downwards for what was left of his life. So he forced his fingers to dig into the horsehair of the chair arms and keep him there. He sat and, rather than let himself think, clung instead for hours to one repeated thought. ‘I have said I will go to the Derby tomorrow.’

  Why had he said it? If the choice had been put disinterestedly before him, he had no doubt which way it would have gone. To continue that downward-plunging blackness-seeking life he had led since the day Herr Pohlmann had unwittingly shown him that he had failed hopelessly in the Venus Verticordia to live the life that Elizabeth was? Or, to take up again that life, to strive upwards towards the light? There would have been no havering. He would have plumped in an instant for downwards.

  But he had been tricked, tricked by Fate. To have Sir Charles suddenly appear at his side, someone he had held in front of himself since boyhood as a model of all that was simply admirable and true. To have Sir Charles come from nowhere and tackle him in the straightforward way that was his own. That was altogether too much.

  Yet had he not all along wanted really to be tricked in some such manner? Had he not, plotting against himself, arranged more than one possible ambush to be sprung by the forces from the world above? The bank? Walking through the West End streets on occasion? Going to his stockbroker? And once when he had seen his hair needed cutting—concern over the length of his hair and living in St Giles—had he not gone all the way to March’s? He had. He had. And did this not mean that he did not truly want to pursue that mire-seeking course he had seemed so set on?

  He shook his head in bafflement.

  A moment later Billy, with plain wariness, peered round the edge of the door.

  ‘Was there anything you was a-wanting, Mr Mann, sir?’

  ‘No. No, Billy. Yes. Wait. The easel. Push it against the wall, boy.’

  ‘Yus, sir. Right you are, sir.’

  The casters, left for so long in the same position, squeaked abominably as Billy leant his weight to the heavy easel.

  ‘No, you little fool. Not that way. With the picture to the wall, you idiot. And hurry.’

  ‘Yus, sir. Yus, Mr Mann. Yus, guv’nor.’

  Billy left the room at a scuttle.

  Godfrey sat on, the lamp unlit, as the darkness of early summer slowly invaded the room.

  Was he really going to go to Brook Street next day? To be there by ten, all ready to accompany the Bosworths down to Epsom? Dressed in his grey frock-coat with his grey silk hat jauntily on his head? And a flower in his buttonhole too? Even that? He would get it from the flower-girl at the corner, the one with the soft Irish accent that reminded him of Lisa. Lisa.

  But no. No, he must not let his thoughts stray in that direction.

  His thoughts must never stray down that path again. Yet how could they not? They had done so even when he had been in the highest flush of his love for Elizabeth. He had deserted her then. On the very night that he was to have asked her to marry him. And again he had deserted her when, in spite of everything, she had led him to the point where he had asked her that question at last. He had deserted her twice. What was there to make him think that he would not do so again? That he could at all prevent himself doing so again?

  And if he was to do it, what fairness or justice was there in allowing Elizabeth to think that he was once more hers? If, indeed, she would do that. Was Sir Charles not being somewhat high-handed in summoning him to the Derby with her? Would she not have something to say about it?

  A sudden sweaty flush spread over him as he conceived the notion that Sir Charles might confront Elizabeth with him next day without notice. But no, he could not do that. He would warn Elizabeth, and she would make up her mind whether she wanted to see him or not. And if she did not? Surely then he would not have to go through the mockery of going down to see the race and pretending to be delighted with the outing and the sport?

  No, Sir Charles would send a message.

  He sat expecting a messenger, or a footman in a cab with a note, for two solid hours. No one came. The latest time he had fixed on, in a series of frenzied hypothetical calculations, ran out. And he had to admit that Sir Charles had had ample time to tell Elizabeth that he would be of the Epsom party next day, and that she had accepted his presence.

  Could she really do that? Well, Sir Charles had said that she had been greatly distressed. And that must mean, in plain terms, that she loved him. And that she had continued to love him. So she would welcome him at ten next morning. She might feel that he had a heavy weight of explanation to give. But fundamentally she would be delighted to see him.

  And therefore he ought to be delighted at the prospect of seeing her, to long to go back with her to that sunny world he had left.

  He leapt up then and strode across to the window to peer up at the nearly dark sky and try to determine what the weather would be next day. If it was going to rain, or even snow as it had done on some Derby Day if he remembered aright, then it would be a sign that the sunny world had gone for ever.

  But the sky was clear. A faint star pricked into light, the Evening Star, the planet Venus, and turning as much as he could he saw the last of a long red glow fading in the west. Red sky at night, the shepherds’ delight.

  He sent Billy out to get him something to eat then, and as soon as he had had it undressed and went to bed. He told himself that he would not sleep, that he had too much in his mind. But within minutes he fell into a profound unconsciousness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  At ten minutes to ten next morning he was in Brook Street. Outside the Bosworth house their barouche stood, gleaming splendidly in the hazy sunshine, open to the air, ready for the journey. The four matched horses were stamping nervously from time to time with sudden shivers passing over their magnificent limbs, almost as if they knew not simply that an outing was in prospect but that this was a day of days.

  Then, just as he reached the steps of the house, two footmen, calves gleaming in their yellow silk stockings, came up the area steps manoeuvring between them an immense picnic hamper. He watched them in a state of anaesthesia.

  He had been in the same dreamlike trance all the morning, in carrying out the processes of shaving himself with all possible closeness, of dressing in fresh clean shirt and underlinen, in stiff grey trousers, light summer waistcoat and grey frock-coat smelling faintly of lavender, of eating a roll even and drinking a cup of coffee, of getting himself to Brook Street. He had woken hypnotised by his act of will of the day before. He was going to go to the Derby, with the Bosworths and Elizabeth. That was a fact, sure as the rising sun. There was nothing that had to be done about it.

  The door in front of him opened. The butler recognised him, told him that the party was assembled in the morning-room, led him there, announced him and left him facing Lady Augusta, marvellously resplendent in a huge crinoline of white and salmon pink with hat and parasol to match, and, in a much modester dress of pale blue and white with for once some evidence of ho
ops in the skirt, Elizabeth.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘Good morning, Godfrey,’ Elizabeth and Lady Augusta echoed, as if they had seen him even the day before.

  ‘Glad you’re in good time,’ Sir Charles added, every bit as matter-of-fact. ‘Can’t make too early a start, you know. All the carriages on the road, let alone the costers’ carts and the omnibuses.’

  And they continued for a few minutes more to pat commonplace remarks back and forth. Yet, Godfrey thought, what else was there for them to do? He had said the great thing that was to be said without any words: he had presented himself here at the stated hour. Later there must, of course, come the time when he and Elizabeth would face each other and somehow he would have to tell her what had happened. But at this moment there was certainly nothing to be said.

  Nor could he have said anything. He felt himself wrapped still in the cocoon that had formed itself round him from the moment that he had made his so-unexpected promise to Sir Charles in the bank in Lombard Street.

  And, in any case, within a few minutes the butler returned to tell them that everything was ready for the departure. They went down, entered the barouche and disposed themselves for the twenty-mile trip.