by Dylan Thomas
A whole wet hour to waste in the crowds. I watched the queue outside the Empire and studied the posters of Nuit de Paris, and thought of the long legs and startling faces of the chorus girls I had seen walking arm in arm, earlier that week, up and down the streets in the winter sunshine, their mouths, I remembered remarking and treasuring for the first page of ‘The Merciless Ladies’ that was never begun, like crimson scars, their hair raven-black or silver; their scent and paint reminded me of the hot and chocolate-coloured East, their eyes were pools. Lola de Kenway, Babs Courcey, Ramona Day would be with me all my life. Until I died, of a wasting, painless disease, and spoke my prepared last words, they would always walk with me, recalling me to my dead youth in the vanished High Street nights when the shop windows were blazing, and singing came out of the pubs, and sirens from the Hafod sat in the steaming chip shops with their handbags on their knees and their ear-rings rattling. I stopped to look at the window of Dirty Black’s, the Fancy Man, but it was innocent; there were only itching and sneezing powders, stink bombs, rubber pens, and Charlie masks; all the novelties were inside, but I dared not go in for fear a woman should serve me, Mrs. Dirty Black with a moustache and knowing eyes, or a thin, dog-faced girl I saw there once, who winked and smelt of seaweed. In the market I bought pink cachous. You never knew.
The back room of ‘The Three Lamps’ was full of elderly men. Mr. Farr had not arrived. I leant against the bar, between an alderman and a solicitor, drinking bitter, wishing that my father could see me now and glad, at the same time, that he was visiting Uncle A. in Aberavon. He could not fail to see that I was a boy no longer, nor fail to be angry at the angle of my fag and my hat and the threat of the clutched tankard. I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners.
‘Same again, miss.’ She was middle-aged. ‘One for you, miss?’
‘Not during hours, ta all the same.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Was that an invitation to drink with her afterwards, to wait at the back door until she glided out, and then to walk through the night, along the promenade and sands, on to a soft dune where couples lay loving under their coats and looking at the Mumbles lighthouse? She was plump and plain, her netted hair was auburn and wisped with grey. She gave me my change like a mother giving her boy pennies for the pictures, and I would not go out with her if she put cream on it.
Mr. Farr hurried down High Street, savagely refusing laces and matches, averting his eyes from the shabby crowds. He knew that the poor and the sick and the ugly, unwanted people were so close around him that, with one look of recognition, one gesture of sympathy, he would be lost among them and the evening would be spoiled for ever.
‘You’re a pint man then,’ he said at my elbow.
‘Good evening, Mr. Farr. Only now and then for a change. What’s yours? Dirty night,’ I said.
Safe in a prosperous house, out of the way of the rain and the unsettling streets, where the poor and the past could not touch him, he took his glass lazily in the company of business and professional men and raised it to the light. ‘It’s going to get dirtier,’ he said. “You wait till the ‘Fishguard.” Here’s health! You can see the sailors knitting there. And the old fish-girls in the “Jersey.” Got to go to the w. for a breath of fresh air.’
Mr. Evans the Produce came in quickly through a side door hidden by curtains, whispered his drink, shielded it with his overcoat, swallowed it in secrecy.
‘Similar,’ said Mr. Farr, ‘and half for his nibs.’
The bar was too high class to look like Christmas. A notice said ‘No Ladies.’
We left Mr. Evans gulping in his tent.
Children screamed in Goat Street, and one boy, out of season, pulled my sleeve, crying: ‘Penny for the guy!’ Big women in men’s caps barricaded their doorways, and a posh girl gave us the wink at the corner of the green iron convenience opposite the Carlton Hotel. We entered to music, the bar was hung with ribbons and balloons, a tubercular tenor clung to the piano, behind the counter Leslie Bird’s pretty barmaid was twitting a group of young men who leant far over and asked to see her garters and invited her to gins and limes and lonely midnight walks and moist adventures in the cinema. Mr. Farr sneered down his glass as I watched the young men enviously and saw how much she liked their ways, how she slapped their hands lightly and wriggled back, in pride of her prettiness and gaiety, to pull the beer-handles.
‘Toop little Twms from the Valleys. There’ll be some puking to-night,’ he said with pleasure.
Other young men, sleek-haired, pale, and stocky, with high cheek-bones and deep eyes, bright ties, double-breasted waistcoats and wide trousers, some pocked from the pits, their broad hands scarred and damaged, all exultantly half-drunk, stood singing round the piano, and the tenor with the fallen chest led in a clear voice. Oh! to be able to join in the suggestive play or the rocking choir, to shout Bread of Heaven, with my shoulders back and my arms linked with Little Moscow, or to be called ‘saucy’ and ‘a one’ as I joked and ogled at the counter, making innocent, dirty love that could come to nothing among the spilt beer and piling glasses.
‘Let’s get away from the bloody nightingales,’ said Mr. Farr.
‘Too much bloody row,’ I said.
‘Now we’re coming to somewhere.’ We crawled down Strand alleys by the side of the mortuary, through a gas-lit lane where hidden babies cried together and reached the ‘Fishguard’ door as a man, muffled like Mr. Evans, slid out in front of us with a bottle or a black-jack in one gloved hand. The bar was empty. An old man whose hands trembled sat behind the counter, staring at his turnip watch.
‘Merry Christmas, Pa.’
‘Good evening, Mr. F.’
‘Drop of rum, Pa.’
A red bottle shook over two glasses.
‘Very special poison, son.’
‘This’ll make your eyes bulge,’ said Mr. Farr.
My iron head stood high and firm, no sailors’ rum could rot the rock of my belly. Poor Leslie Bird the port-sipper, and little Gil Morris who marked dissipation under his eyes with a blacklead every Saturday night, I wished they could have seen me now, in the dark, stunted room with photographs of boxers peeling on the wall.
‘More poison, Pa,’ I said.
‘Where’s the company tonight? gone to the Riviera?’
‘They’re in the snuggery, Mr. F., there’s a party for Mrs. Prothero’s daughter.’
In the back room, under a damp royal family, a row of black-dressed women on a hard bench sat laughing and crying, short glasses lined by their Guinnesses. On an opposite bench two men in jerseys drank appreciatively, nodding at the emotions of the women. And on the one chair, in the middle of the room, an old woman, with a bonnet tied under her chins, a feather boa, and white gym-shoes, tittered and wept above the rest. We sat on the men’s bench. One of the two touched his cap with a sore hand.
‘What’s the party, Jack?’ asked Mr. Farr. ‘Meet my colleague, Mr. Thomas; this is Jack Stiff, the mortuary keeper.’
Jack Stiff spoke from the side of his mouth. ‘It’s Mrs. Prothero there. We call her Old Garbo because she isn’t like her, see. She had a message from the hospital about an hour ago, Mrs. Harris’s Winifred brought it here, to say her second daughter’s died in pod.’
‘Baby girl dead, too,’ said the man at his side.
‘So all the old girls came round to sympathize, and they made a big collection for her, and now she’s beginning to drink it up and treating round. We’ve had a couple of pints from her already.’
‘Shameful!’
The rum burned and kicked in the hot room, but my head felt tough as a hill and I could write twelve books before morning and roll the ‘Carlton’ barmaid, like a barrel, the length of Tawe sands.
‘Drinks for the troops!’
Before
a new audience, the women cried louder, patting Mrs. Prothero’s knees and hands, adjusting her bonnet, praising her dead daughter.
‘What’ll you have, Mrs. Prothero, dear?’
‘No, have it with me, dear, best in the house.’
‘Well, a Guinness tickles my fancy.’
‘And a little something in it, dear.’
‘Just for Margie’s sake, then.’
‘Think if she was here now, dear, singing One of the Ruins or Cockles and Mussels; she had a proper madam’s voice.’
‘Oh, don’t, Mrs. Harris!’
‘There, we’re only bucking you up. Grief killed the cat, Mrs. Prothero. Let’s have a song together, dear.’
‘The pale moon was rising above the grey mountain,
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I strolled with my love to the pure crystal fountain,’
Mrs. Prothero sang.
‘It was her daughter’s favourite song,’ said Jack Stiff’s friend.
Mr. Farr tapped me on the shoulder; his hand fell slowly from a great height and his thin, bird’s voice spoke from a whirring circle on the ceiling. ‘A drop of out-of-doors for you and me.’ The gamps and bonnets, the white gym-shoes, the bottles and the mildew king, the singing mortuary man, the Rose of Tralee, swam together in the snuggery; two small men, Mr. Farr and his twin brother, led me on an ice-rink to the door, and the night air slapped me down. The evening happened suddenly. A wall slumped over and knocked off my trilby; Mr. Farr’s brother disappeared under the cobbles. Here came a wall like a buffalo; dodge him, son. Have a drop of angostura, have a drop of brandy, Fernet Branca, Polly, Ooo! the mother’s darling! have a hair of the dog.
‘Feeling better now?’
I sat in a plush chair I had never seen before, sipping a mothball drink and appreciating an argument between Ted Williams and Mr. Farr. Mr. Farr was saying sternly: ‘You came in here to look for sailors.’
‘No, I didn’t then,’ said Ted. ‘I came for local colour.’
The notices on the walls were: ‘“The Lord Jersey.” Prop.: Titch Thomas.’ ‘No Betting.’ ‘No Swearing, B——you.’ ‘The Lord helps Himself, but you mustn’t.’ ‘No Ladies allowed, except Ladies.’
‘This is a funny pub,’ I said. ‘See the notices?’
‘Okay now?’
‘I’m feeling upsydaisy.’
‘There’s a pretty girl for you. Look, she’s giving you the glad.’
‘But she’s got no nose.’
My drink, like winking, had turned itself into beer. A hammer tapped. ‘Order! order!’ At a sound in a new saloon a collarless chairman with a cigar called on Mr. Jenkins to provide The Lily of Laguna.
‘By request,’ said Mr. Jenkins.
‘Order! order! for Katie Sebastopol Street. What is it, Katie?’
She sang the National Anthem.
‘Mr. Fred Jones will supply his usual dirty one.’
A broken baritone voice spoiled the chorus: I recognised it as my own, and drowned it.
A girl of the Salvation Army avoided the arms of two firemen and sold them a War Cry.
A young man with a dazzling handkerchief round his head, black and white holiday shoes with holes for the toes, and no socks, danced until the bar cried: ‘Mabel!’
Ted clapped at my side. ‘That’s style! “Nijinsky of the Night-world,”there’s a story! Wonder if I can get an interview?’
‘Half a crack,’ said Mr. Farr.
‘Don’t make me cross.’
A wind from the docks tore up the street, I heard the rowdy dredger in the bay and a boat blowing to come in, the gas-lamps bowed and bent, then again smoke closed about the stained walls with George and Mary dripping above the women’s bench, and Jack Stiff whispered, holding his hand in front of him like the paw of an animal: ‘Old Garbo’s gone.’
The sad and jolly women huddled together.
‘Mrs. Harris’s little girl got the message wrong. Old Garbo’s daughter’s right as rain, the baby was born dead. Now the old girls want their money back, but they can’t find Garbo anywhere.’ He licked his hand. ‘I know where she’s gone.’
His friend said: ‘To a boozer over the bridge.’
In low voices the women reviled Mrs. Prothero, liar, adulteress, mother of bastards, thief.
‘She got you know what.’
‘Never cured it.’
‘Got Charlie tattooed on her.’
‘Three and eight she owes me.’
‘Two and ten.’
‘Money for my teeth.’
‘One and a tanner out of my Old Age.’
Who kept filling my glass? Beer ran down my cheek and my collar. My mouth was full of saliva. The bench spun. The cabin of the ‘Fishguard’ tilted. Mr. Farr retreated slowly; the telescope twisted, and his face, with wide and hairy nostrils, breathed against mine.
‘Mr. Thomas is going to get sick.’
‘Mind your brolly, Mrs. Arthur.’
‘Take his head.’
The last tram clanked home. I did not have the penny for the fare. ‘You get off here. Careful!’ The revolving hill to my father’s house reached to the sky. Nobody was up. I crept to a wild bed, and the wallpaper lakes converged and sucked me down.
Sunday was a quiet day, though St. Mary’s bells, a mile away, rang on, long after church time, in the holes of my head. Knowing that I would never drink again, I lay in bed until midday dinner and remembered the unsteady shapes and far-off voices of the ten o’clock town. I read the newspapers. All news was bad that morning, but an article called ‘Our Lord was a Flower-lover’ moved me to tears of bewilderment and contrition. I excused myself from the Sunday joint and three vegetables.
In the park in the afternoon I sat alone near the deserted bandstand. I caught a ball of waste paper that the wind blew down the gravel path towards the rockery, and, straightening it out and holding it on my knee, wrote the first three lines of a poem without hope. A dog nosed me out where I crouched, behind a bare tree in the cold, and rubbed its nose against my hand. ‘My only friend,’ I said. It stayed with me up to the early dusk, sniffing and scratching.
On Monday morning, with shame and hate, afraid to look at them again, I destroyed the article and the poem, throwing the pieces on to the top of the wardrobe, and I told Leslie Bird in the tram to the office: ‘You should have been with us, Saturday, Christ!’
Early on Tuesday night, which was Christmas Eve, I walked, with a borrowed half-crown, into the back room of the ‘Fishguard.’ Jack Stiff was alone. The women’s bench was covered with sheets of newspaper. A bunch of balloons hung from the lamp.
‘Here’s health!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Where’s Mrs. Prothero?’
His hand was bandaged now. ‘Oh! You haven’t heard? She spent all the collection money. She took it over the bridge to the “Heart’s Delight. “She didn’t let one of the old girls see her. It was over a pound. She’d spent a lot of it before they found her daughter wasn’t dead. She couldn’t face them then. Have this one with me. So she finished it up by stop-tap Monday. Then a couple of men from the banana boats saw her walking across the bridge, and she stopped half-way. But they weren’t in time.’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘We got a pair of gym-shoes on our slab.’
None of Old Garbo’s friends came in that night.
When I showed this story a long time later to Mr. Farr, he said: ‘You got it all wrong. You got the people mixed. The boy with the handkerchief danced in the “Jersey.” Fred Jones was singing in the “Fishguard.” Never mind. Come and have one to-night in the “Nelson.” There’s a girl down there who’ll show you where the sailor bit her. And there’s a policeman who knew Jack Johnson.
‘I’ll put them all in a story by and by,’ I said.
One Warm Saturday
The young man in a sailor’s jersey, sitting near the summer huts to see the brown and white women coming out and the groups of pretty-faced
girls with pale vees and scorched backs who picked their way delicately on ugly, red-toed feet over the sharp stones to the sea, drew on the sand a large, indented woman’s figure; and a naked child, just out of the sea, ran over it and shook water, marking on the figure two wide wet eyes and a hole in the footprinted middle. He rubbed the woman away and drew a paunched man; the child ran over it, tossing her hair, and shook a row of buttons down its belly and a line of drops, like piddle in a child’s drawing, between the long legs stuck with shells.
In a huddle of picnicking women and their children, stretched out limp and damp in the sweltering sun or fussing over paper carriers or building castles that were at once destroyed by the tattered march of other picnickers to different pieces of the beach, among the ice-cream cries, the angrily happy shouts of boys playing ball, and the screams of girls as the sea rose to their waists, the young man sat alone with the shadows of his failure at his side. Some silent husbands, with rolled up trousers and suspenders dangling, paddled slowly on the border of the sea, paddling women, in thick, black picnic dresses, laughed at their own legs, dogs chased stones, and one proud boy rode the water on a rubber seal. The young man, in his wilderness, saw the holiday Saturday set down before him, false and pretty, as a flat picture under the vulgar sun; the disporting families with paper bags, buckets and spades, parasols and bottles, the happy, hot, and aching girls with sunburn liniments in their bags, the bronzed young men with chests, and the envious, white young men in waistcoats, the thin, pale, hairy, pathetic legs of the husbands silently walking through the water, the plump and curly, shaven-headed and bowedbacked children up to no sense with unrepeatable delight in the dirty sand, moved him, he thought dramatically in his isolation, to an old shame and pity; outside all holiday, like a young man doomed for ever to the company of his maggots, beyond the high and ordinary, sweating, sun-awakened power and stupidity of the summer flesh on a day and a world out, he caught the ball that a small boy had whacked into the air with a tin tray, and rose to throw it back.