by Dylan Thomas
‘My bills.’ ‘My doilies.’ ‘My willow-plate.’
Ronald Bishop went out on to the platform.
‘Be seeing you, Ron.’
Ronalf Bishop’s face was flushed with the embarrassment of not noticing him.
One pleasure is, Samuel said to himself, that I do not know what I expect to happen to me. He smiled at the waitress behind the counter, and she stared away at once as guiltily as though he had discovered her robbing the till. I am not so innocent as I make out, he thought. I do not expect any old cobwebbed Fagin, reeking of character and stories, to shuffle out of a corner and lead me away into his grand, loud, filthy house; there will not be any Nancy to tickle my fancy in a kitchen full of handkerchiefs and beckoning, unmade beds. I did not think a choir of loose women immediately would sing and dance around the little tables, in plush cloths and advertised brassieres, as I walked into London for the first time, rattling my fortune, fresh as Copperfield. I could count the straws in my hair with one hand.
Hush! I know you, he said, cheater at Patience, keyhole peeper, keeper of nail-clippings and ear-wax, lusting after silhouettes on Laburnum’s blind, searching for thighs in the Library of Classical Favourites, Sam Thumb in the manhole prying up on windy days.
I am not like that at all, he said, as the man with the birthmark came over to his table and sat down opposite him.
‘I thought you were going,’ the man said. ‘You told me you were going. You’ve been here an hour now.’
‘I saw you,’ Samuel said.
‘I know you saw me. You must have seen me, mustn’t you, because you were looking at me,’ the man said. ‘Not that I want the twopence, I’ve got a house full of furniture. Three rooms full to the ceiling. I’ve got enough chairs for everyone in Paddington to have a sit down. Twopence is twopence,’ he said.
‘But it was twopence to the waitress, too.’
‘She’s got sixpence now, hasn’t she? She’s made fourpence clear. It doesn’t do any harm to you just because she thinks you were trying to nip it off her.’
‘It was my sixpence.’
The man raised his hands. The palms were covered with calculations in ink. ‘And they talk about equality. Does it matter whose sixpence it was? It might have been mine or anybody’s. There was talk of calling the manageress,’ he said, ‘but I put my foot down there.’
They were both silent for several minutes.
‘Made up your mind where you’re going when you move out of here?’ the man said at last. ‘Because move you must, some time, you know.’
‘I don’t know where I’m going. I haven’t any idea in the world. That’s why I came up to London.’
‘Look here,’ the man said, controlling his voice, ‘there’s sense in everything. There’s bound to be. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to carry on, would we? Everybody knows where he’s going, especially if he’s come by train. Otherwise he wouldn’t move from where he took the train from. That’s elementary.’
‘People run away.’
‘Have you run away?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t say it. Don’t say it.’ His voice trembled; he looked at the figures on his palms. Then gently and patiently he began again. ‘Let’s get the first thing straight. People who have come must go. People must know where they’re going, otherwise the world could not be conducted on a sane basis. The streets would be full of people just wandering about, wouldn’t they? Wandering about and having useless arguments with people who know where they’re going. My name is Allingham, I live in Sewell Street off Praed Street, and I’m a furniture dealer. That’s simple, isn’t it? There’s no need to complicate things if you keep your head and know who you are.’
‘I’m Samuel Bennet, I don’t live anywhere at all. I don’t do any work, either.’
‘Where are you going to go, then? I’m not a nosey parker, I told you my business.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He doesn’t know,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘Don’t think you’re anywhere now, mind. You can’t call this place anywhere, can you? It’s breathing space.’
‘I’ve been wondering what was going to happen. That’s what I’ve been discussing with myself. I came up really to see what would happen to me. I don’t want to make anything happen myself.’
‘He was discussing it with himself. With a boy of twenty. How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
‘That’s right. Discussing a question like that with a boy just out of his teens. What did you expect to happen?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps people would come up and talk to me at the beginning. Women,’ Samuel said.
‘Why should they talk to you? Why should I talk to you? You’re not going anywhere. You’re not doing anything. You don’t exist,’ he said.
But all Samuel’s strength was in his belly and his eyes. He should veil his eyes or the marble-topped counter might melt and all the clothes of the girls behind them peel away and all the cups chip on the shelves.
‘Anyone might come up,’ he said. Then he thought of his fine beginning. ‘Anyone,’ he said without hope.
A clerk from the Crescent a dozen doors away; a cold, ordinary woman from Birmingham, driven off by a wink; anybody, anybody; a deacon from the Valleys on a mean blind, with his pocket-book sewn in his combs; an elderly female assistant on holiday from a flannel and calico shop where the change hums on wires. Nobody he had ever wanted.
‘Oh, anyone of course. Janet Gaynor,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘Marion Davies and Kay Francis and …’
‘You don’t understand. I don’t expect that kind of person. I don’t know what I do expect at all, but it isn’t that.’
‘Modest.’
‘No, I’m not modest either. I don’t believe in modesty. It’s just that here I am and I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to know where to go.’
Mr. Allingham began to plead, leaning across the table, pulling softly at Samuel’s collar, showing the sums on his hands. ‘Don’t say you don’t want to know where to go. Please. There’s a good boy. We must take things easy, mustn’t we? We mustn’t complicate things. Take one simple question. Now don’t rush it. Take your own time.’ He gripped a teaspoon with one hand. ‘Where will you be tonight?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll be somewhere else but it won’t be anywhere I’ve chosen because I’m not going to choose anything.’
Mr. Allingham put the knotted teaspoon down.
‘What do you want, Samuel?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t know.’ Samuel touched his breast pocket where his wallet was. ‘I know I want to find Lucille Harris,’ he said.
‘Who’s Lucille Harris?’
Then Mr. Allingham looked at him.
‘He doesn’t know,’ he said. ‘Oh, he doesn’t know!’
A man and a woman sat down at the next table.
‘But you promised you’d destroy him,’ the woman said.
‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it,’ the man said. ‘Don’t you worry. You drink your tea. Don’t you worry.’
They had lived a long time together, and had grown to resemble one another with their dry, bunched faces and their nibbling mouths. The woman scratched herself as she drank, as she gripped the edge of the cup with her grey lips and shook it.
‘Twopence she’s got a tail,’ Samuel said in a low voice, but Mr. Allingham had not noticed them arrive.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You have it your own way. And she’s covered all over with fur.’
Samuel put his little finger in the neck of the empty bottle.
‘I resign myself,’ Mr. Allingham said.
‘But you don’t understand, Mr. Allingham.’
‘I understand enough,’ he said loudly. The couple at the next table stopped talking. ‘You don’t want to make things happen, don’t you? I’ll make them happen all right. You can’t come in here and talk to me like you’ve been talking. Lucille Harris. Lucy da monk!’
The man and the woman began whispering
. ‘And it’s only half-past one,’ the woman said. She shook her cup like a rat.
‘Come on. We’re going.’ Mr. Allingham scraped back his chair.
‘Where to?’
‘Never you mind. It’s I’m making things happen, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t get my finger out of the bottle,’ Samuel said.
Mr. Allingham lifted up the suitcases and stood up. ‘What’s a little bottle?’ he said. ‘Bring it with you, son.’
‘Father and son, too,’ the woman said as Samuel followed him out.
The bottle hung heavily on his finger.
‘Where now?’ Outside in the roaring station.
‘You follow me. And put your hand in your pocket. It looks silly.’
As they walked up the slope to the street, Mr. Allingham said, ‘I’ve never been with anybody with a bottle on his finger before. Nobody else has ever had a bottle on his finger. What’d you want to put your finger in the bottle for?’
‘I just pushed it in. I’ll be able to get it off with soap, there’s no need to make a fuss.’
‘Nobody else has ever had to get a bottle off with soap, that’s all I’m saying. This is Praed Street.’
‘It’s dull, isn’t it?’
‘All the horses have gone away,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘This is my street. This is Sewell Street. It’s dull, isn’t it?’
‘It’s like the streets at home.’
A boy passed them and shouted ‘Ikey Mo’ to Mr. Allingham.
‘This is 23. See? There’s the sign, 23.’
Mr. Allingham opened the front door with a key. ‘Second floor, first on the right.’
He gave three knocks. ‘Mr. Allingham,’ he said, and they walked in.
The room was full of furniture.
Plenty of Furniture
1
Every inch of the room was covered with furniture. Chairs stood on couches that lay on tables; mirrors nearly the height of the door were propped, back to back, against the walls, reflecting and making endless the hills of desks and chairs with their legs in the air, sideboards, dressing tables, chests-of-drawers, more mirrors, empty bookcases, washbasins, clothes cupboards. There was a double bed, carefully made, with the ends of the sheets turned back, lying on top of a dining table on top of another table; there were electric lamps and lampshades, trays and vases, lavatory bowls and basins, heaped in the armchairs that stood on cupboards and tables and beds, touching the ceiling. The one window, looking out on the road, could just be seen through the curved legs of sideboards on their backs. The walls behind the standing mirrors were thick with pictures and picture frames.
Mr. Allingham climbed into the room over a stack of mattresses, then disappeared.
‘Hop in, boy.’ His voice came up from behind a high kitchen dresser hung with carpets; and, climbing over, Samuel looked down to see him seated on a chair on a couch, leaning back comfortably, his elbow on the shoulder of a statue.
‘It’s a pity we can’t cook here,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘There’s plenty of stoves, too. That’s a meat-safe,’ he said, pointing to one corner. ‘Just under the bedroom suite.’
‘Have you got a piano?’
‘There used to be one,’ he said. ‘I think it’s in the other room. She put a carpet over it. Can you play?’
‘I can vamp. You can tell what tunes I’m doing, easily. Is the other room like this?’
‘Two more rooms, but I think the piano’s locked. Yes, there’s plenty of furniture,’ Mr. Allingham said, looking round with distaste. ‘Whenever I say “That’s enough now,” in she comes with her “Plenty more room, plenty more room.” She’ll find she can’t get in one day, that’s what’ll happen. Or she can’t get out; I don’t know which would be the worst. It gets you sometimes you know,’ he said, ‘all this furniture.’
‘Is she your wife, Mr. Allingham?’
‘She’ll find there’s a limit to everything. You get to feel kind of trapped.’
‘Do you sleep here?’
‘Up there. It’s nearly twelve foot high. I’ve measured. I can touch the ceiling when I wake up.’
‘I like this room’ Samuel said. ‘I think it’s perhaps the best room I’ve ever seen.’
‘That’s why I brought you. I thought you’d like it. Proper little den for a man with a bottle on his finger, isn’t it? I told you, you’re not like anybody else. Nobody else can bear the sight of it. Got your cases safe?’
‘They’re there. In the bath.’
‘You keep your eye on them, that’s all. I’ve lost a sofa. One more suite and I’ll lose my bed. And what happens when a customer comes? I’ll tell you. He takes one peek through the door and off he trots. You can only buy what’s on the top at the moment, see.’
‘Can you get into the other rooms?’
‘You can,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘She takes a dive in, head-first. I’ve lost all interest in the other rooms, myself. You could live and die in there and nobody’d know. There’s some nice Chippendale, too. Up by the skylight.’
He rested his other elbow on a hallstand.
‘I got to feel lost,’ he said. ‘That’s why I go down to the buffet; there’s only tables and chairs there.’
Samuel sat on his perch, swinging the bottle and drumming his feet against the side of a bath mounted yards above the floor of mattresses. A carpet behind him, laid out flat and wide along the air, having no visible support, bore a great earthenware jar dangerously upon the backs of its patterned birds. High over his head, in the tall room, a rocking-chair balanced on a card-table, and the table’s thin legs rested on the top of a cupboard standing up straight among pillows and fenders, with its mirrored door wide open.
‘Aren’t you frightened of things falling? Look at that rocking-chair. One little prod and over she comes.’
‘Don’t you dare. Of course I’m frightened,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘If you open a drawer over there, a wash-stand falls down over here. You’ve got to be quick as a snake. There’s nothing on the top you’d like to buy, is there?’
‘I like a lot of the things, but I haven’t any money.’
‘No, no, you wouldn’t have money. That’s right. Other people have money.’
‘I like the big jar. You could hide a man in that, have you got any soap for my finger?’
‘Of course there’s no soap, there’s only washbasins. You can’t have a bath, either, and there’s five baths. Why do you want a jar big enough to hide a man in? Nobody I’ve ever met wants to hide a man in a jar. Everybody else says that jar’s too big for anything. Why do you want to find Lucille Harris, Sam?’
‘I didn’t mean I wanted to hide a man in it. I mean that you could if you wanted to. Oh, a man I know told me about Lucille, Mr. Allingham. I don’t know why I want to find her, but that’s the only London address I kept. I put the others down the lavatory in the train. When the train was moving.’
‘Good, good.’ Mr. Allingham put his hand on the thick, white neck of the naked statue, and tightened his fingers.
The door opened on to the landing. Two people came in, and climbed up the mattresses without a word. The first, a fat, short woman with black hair and a Spanish comb, who had painted her face as though it were a wall, took a sudden dive toward the corner behind Samuel and disappeared between two columns of chairs. She must have landed on cushions or a bed, for she made no sound. The second visitor was a tall, youngish man with a fixed smile; his teeth were large, like a horse’s, but very white; his glistening fair hair was done in tight curls, and it smelt across the room. He stood on a spring mattress just inside the door, bouncing up and down. ‘Come on, Rose, don’t be sulky,’ he said. ‘I know where you’ve gone.’ Then, pretending to see Samuel for the first time, ‘Good gracious you look like a bird up there,’ he said. ‘Is Donald hiding anywhere?’
‘I’m not hiding,’ Mr. Allingham said. ‘I’m by the statue. Sam Bennet, George Ring.’
George Ring bowed and bounced, rising a foot from the mattress.
He and Mr. Allingham could not see each other. Nobody could see the woman with the Spanish comb.
‘I hope you’ve excused the room to Mr. Bennet,’ George Ring said. He bounced a few steps in the direction of the hidden statue.
‘I don’t think it needs any excusing, Mr. Ring,’ Samuel said. ‘I’ve never seen such a comfortable room.’
‘Oh, but it’s terrible.’ George Ring was moving up and down rapidly now. ‘It’s very kind of you to say it’s comfortable, but look at the confusion. Just think of living here. You’ve got something on your finger, did you know that? Three guesses. It’s a bottle.’ He shook his curls and laughed as he bounced.
‘You don’t know anything yet,’ said Mr. Allingham’s voice. The heavy bouncing had shaken down a carpet on to the hallstand and he was hidden as though in another, lower room. ‘You don’t know anything about him. You wait. What are you bouncing for, George? People don’t go bouncing about like a ball as soon as they come into a room.’
‘What don’t I know about you?’ In one leap George Ring was standing directly below Samuel, craning up his curls.
‘He doesn’t know where he’s going, for one thing. And he’s looking for a girl he doesn’t know called Lucille.’
‘Why are you looking for her?’ George Ring’s head touched the bath. ‘Did you see her picture in the paper?’
‘No, I don’t know anything about her, but I want to see her because she’s the only person I know by name in London.’
‘Now you know two more, don’t you? Are you sure you don’t love her?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘I thought perhaps she might be a sort of Holy Grail. You know what I mean. A sort of ideal.’