by John Bowen
*
Fog in Wardour Street at one-thirty in the morning. The great offices of the film companies are dark, though high in the air a misty yellow blur of light would spell pathe if it could. Street lamps mark, but do not light the way. Then light spills out on to the pavement from one of the buildings of the street. The Club Afrique is open. Stepping from the north towards that spilled light comes a negro woman with platinum blonde hair, looking like the negative of a photograph. She swirls into the Club Afrique without glancing at Peter Ash, who stands there on the pavement, watching her. A sallow man in a belted raincoat comes out of the fog behind her. He has smuts on one cheek, and a dark moustache, dank with fog. He dithers for a moment before the entrance to the Club Afrique, and then makes off back to the north.
Peter Ash walks on, idling in the fog, and turns left at Broadwick Street. An old man stands at the corner of Broadwick and Berwick Streets, an old man respectably clad in overcoat and hat, not one of your tramps dressed in sacking whom Peter Ash has seen picking through basement dustbins for the evening papers. This is an old man of some substance, though not much. He has been standing in that spot for nearly an hour, to Peter Ash’s certain knowledge. He does not speak; he approaches nobody. Only, as one draws close to him, his head begins to wag up and down like that of a mechanical doll. He wears rimless glasses, and the fog glistens on burst capillaries in his cheeks. He has wrapped a woolly muffler round his throat against the cold, and one end trails down his back, jerking in time as he nods his head.
Into Berwick Street. The barrows of Berwick Street Market have all been drawn away. A juke-box is to be heard in the direction of Oxford Street, and Peter Ash walks towards the music. The juke-box sings, What Do You Want, If You Don’t Want Money? Peter Ash does not know what he wants. If he knew, he would have it, and be at home by now. Light again, and the juke-box at its loudest. The Lazy T coffee-bar is open. Fog has found its way inside the Lazy T with every opening of the door, and has condensed on the windows, so that the couples inside look as bored and dead as passengers in the Tourist Lounge of a long-drowned ocean liner. He turns, and walks back down Berwick Street, passing the old man for the third time that night, and the sudden appearance of Peter Ash sets the old man nodding again, as if only a footfall were needed to start the mechanism.
Then a gap in the fog, and two people standing there, clearly illuminated by the street-lamp. The girl is a whore, surely, in that make-up and those heels? The man stands just behind her, against a wall. He is in his early twenties, and wears jeans and, even in that weather, only a T-shirt under his leather jacket. He has a black patch over one eye. His hair is dark; his eyes slant down; in spite of her heels, he tops his girl by nine inches. The word “animal” comes unbidden to Peter Ash’s mind. The man carries a small white leather handbag with a strap. But that, of course, would belong to the girl.
How odd that she should be in the street, now that the streets of London have been cleaned up by Act of Parliament! Only the boys are in the streets nowadays, and they keep close to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Shaftesbury Avenue, with sidetrips to Trafalgar Square one way, and Green Park the other. The girls are not to be found on the streets now. Instead tiny points of light over certain bell-pushes in the quieter streets of Soho announce to the cognoscenti, “Colette, 2nd floor”, “Model, 1st floor”, “Young Model, Top floor”.
A black patch. A dark, an animal way of standing there beneath the street-lamp. Her protector? But why in Berwick Street?
Peter Ash has moved on into fog again. In Brewer Street, a sudden smell of fish. A woman in dark clothes stands in the doorway of a delicatessen. “People! Listen!” she mutters, “People! Listen to me!” in an Italian accent. Peter Ash hurries on and does not listen. In Old Compton Street a man stands, examining the stills of Town of Lust outside a Members-Only cinema; he has to look very close because of the fog; his nose is against one of the stills, and his behind protrudes into the pavement. The coffee-bars in Old Compton Street are closed, and the shutters have come down over wine and cheeses and charcuterie. In Lisle Street again a man rapt before a window—so rapt they are, the Night People, at what they see in the windows of shops. He is chewing his finger-nails, and staring at a bank of radio components, his gaze caught and held (as it seems for ever, unless the Prince should come through thorns to his rescue) by a sign that reads, “Full Bridge Metal Rectifier. 24 volt. 6 amp. 22/6.”
Time passing. A tiredness at the back of the legs. An unwillingness in Peter Ash to enter any of the coffee-bars still open, and rest. Two fifteen. He has been swimming through fog towards a light, and suddenly it disappears. Are the lamps going out all over Soho? But it was only a chemist’s sign, which some automatic doohickey has turned off, and there is the luminous envelope of the street-lamp still ahead. Berwick Street again. The old man nods. This is where the fog lifted, but there is no lifting now, and suddenly, without his realizing that anybody is there, he has come again upon the man with the black eye-patch. The man does not speak. He has not changed his stance, still relaxed and watchful, the pelvis a little forward, the weight evenly distributed. But now the man is alone. He still carries the white leather handbag, but the girl has gone. Peter Ash has stopped at the sight of the man with the eye-patch, but now walks on slowly. He draws level. It becomes difficult to move his feet forwards, but very slowly he does so; it is as if the fog around the man with the black eye-patch has become viscous, and holds Peter Ash to a pace that can hardly be said to be movement at all. The man looks at Peter Ash. He does not speak. He does not smile. His expression does not change. Simply, it includes Peter Ash.
Peter Ash forces himself forwards, and, once he has passed the man, finds that he can move more quickly. He hurries on down Berwick Street. He is trembling, feels weak, and stops at the bottom of Berwick Street to recover. Nobody is by. The fog is silent. But out of the silence he hears a sound, and it is the sound of feet approaching, one after the other, relaxed and easy and unhurried.
Imagination!—people of that sort wear crêpe-soled shoes, so that even if the man were following him, Peter Ash would not hear him. But that thought brings no reassurance. He goes quickly back towards Piccadilly Circus, where the lights will make the fog luminous, and there will be people, and taxis in case he should wish to go home. He reaches Great Windmill Street, where the boys for sale crowd a Snack Bar, spinning out cups of tea before returning to the street. A hesitation. Should he go in for the warmth and company? But he is embarrassed. He has no place in that freemasonry. He goes on to Trafalgar Square. All along the parapet at the north end of the Square are figures in ones and twos, gazing at the empty benches below, and out towards the fountains which they cannot see. These figures, as one walks along behind them, appear out of the fog like statues in a row. Peter Ash stops for a while, and becomes a statue in his turn, arms resting on the parapet, body leaning forward, staring out into the fog towards Nelson and the fountains. A sound beside him. A match strikes. He thinks his heart will stop. But it is only one of the other statues which has moved up a step or two to stand beside him. Peter Ash moves a little away, and hears footsteps approaching from the right.
North again. A policeman with an Alsatian dog comes out of William the Fourth Street and turns up St. Martin’s Lane. Peter Ash follows; policemen are protection, and defy footfalls. But the policeman hears Peter Ash, checks, stops, and allows Peter Ash to draw level and pass him. Perhaps the policeman, also, does not care to be followed in the fog? Peter Ash turns back again to Leicester Square, to the Open-All-Night Barbecue, and stands in line for soup. The time is three in the morning, and the Open-All-Night Barbecue is by no means crowded. There are empty tables all around; Peter Ash may sit where he will. The man with the black eye-patch is sitting at a table in the corner, the white leather handbag on the seat beside him. He takes it from the seat, and places it on the table, leaving the seat for Peter Ash.
They sit side by side in silence. Peter Ash finishes his soup. The man wit
h the black eye-patch takes a packet of Woodbines from the pocket of his leather jacket, takes a cigarette himself, and offers one to Peter Ash. Peter Ash, who usually smokes Gauloises filter-tips, takes a cigarette from the packet of Woodbines, and the man strikes a match on the table, and lights it. Nothing is said. The cigarettes are smoked, and the man stands. Peter Ash follows him from the Open-All-Night Barbecue. The man with the black eye-patch goes north up Wardour Street. Peter Ash says, “Where are we going? We can take a taxi,” but the man does not reply. They turn left, then right, and are in Berwick Street. They turn left again, then right, and seem to be in some kind of yard behind an office-block, too far from the street-lamps for light to penetrate the fog. “This’ll do,” says the man with the black eye-patch.
Peter Ash cannot any longer see the man except as a shape in the fog. The man puts out his left hand to Peter Ash, and draws it caressingly over the back of Peter Ash’s head and neck, as if he were exploring the geography of it. By that action, Peter Ash is brought close to the man, pressed against the coarse denim of his jeans and the leather of his jacket. Peter Ash is quiet under the man’s hand, like an animal which is stroked and gentled into obedience. The man’s left hand softly searches and finds a place at the back of Peter Ash’s head, and the man’s right hand is brought swiftly from behind his back to strike that place with the white leather handbag, which is filled with such iron weights as you may find any day on a greengrocer’s barrow in Berwick Street Market. Peter Ash falls forward like a calf poleaxed by a butcher, and the man holds him by the collar of his raincoat.
No trouble from Peter Ash. The man with the black eye-patch lowers him against a wall, opens Peter Ash’s raincoat and jacket, and takes a wallet from an inside pocket of the jacket. He takes a wallet, and the ring from Peter Ash’s finger, and the watch from Peter Ash’s wrist. He feels the cloth of Peter Ash’s jacket between finger and thumb, hesitates for a moment, and then decides. He strips Peter Ash of his raincoat, his suit and his shoes, and leaves him there, unconscious and ludicrous in shirt and underwear, propped against a wall in the cold and fog of a November night, while nearby at the junction of Berwick and Broadwick Streets, the old man with the muffler nods and nods his head at the Night People who pass, nodding the night away until the dawn.
6
The End of a Search
On the day Lucy died, Mrs. Halliday decided that action could not be put off any longer. It would have been better, as she now clearly saw, to have used Lucy while Lucy lived. As soon as it had become obvious that Lucy was pining, Mrs. Halliday should have put on her coat, and carried Lucy round to Ovington Square for a reunion with Fred. One reunion might happily have put Norah Palmer in mind for another; at the least, Mrs. Halliday would have reopened a kind of communication, and made, perhaps, a weekly visit with the cage. Now Lucy’s death furnished a less happy occasion, nor could it be repeated. All must be told in the one interview.
She chose Saturday morning, when Norah Palmer would probably be in, and arrived to find Norah Palmer in the kitchen, wearing a housecoat over pyjamas, drinking coffee and reading her way through the Fridays before tackling the week-end shopping. “I came to see you; I hope you’ll excuse it,” Mrs. Halliday said, looking around for Fred. “It’s Lucy, miss. She’s pined away entirely.”
“Lucy? … Oh—Lucy.” But Fred had been dead a long time. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Halliday,” said Norah Palmer. “Fred was eaten by a hawk on the roof. Would you like some coffee? It’s still hot.”
“No, I won’t stay.” But this was formula. Norah Palmer had already poured the coffee. “If you’ve poured it, then,” Mrs. Halliday said. “I suppose we don’t want to waste it, do we? But I won’t take my coat off. I just came over to tell you.” She sat on a hard chair, and sipped coffee which Norah Palmer had forgotten to sugar. Perhaps she should have prepared her part in this conversation instead of leaving it to chance and the occasion. “We should never have separated them birds, miss,” she said. “It’s been nothing but pine, pine, pine since you left the flat.”
“Since Fred left, surely?” Lucy had never shown affection for Norah Palmer, and Mrs. Halliday could not be suggesting that Peter Ash himself was pining.
Mrs. Halliday said, “I don’t like change. I never have. That’s my nature.” They sat in silence for a while. Mrs. Halliday said, “You begin with the changes, and you can’t tell where it will stop. You don’t know what you’re going to get, do you? Like my married sister went to one of those council flats in Lisson Grove, not thinking. But she had to give it up. It was her feet, you see. The doctor says they’ll never be any good. Not as feet.” The kitchen at Ovington Square was considerably smaller than the kitchen at Beaufort Street, and Squad had skimped on the fittings. Mrs. Halliday said, “Of course you’ve got a nice place here. I can see that.”
“It’s not really mine, I’m afraid, or I’d do something with it. It belongs to somebody I know at work.”
“Oh yes?” Mrs. Halliday said. “I had to wrap her in newspaper, and put her in the dustbin. You can’t cremate them, you see; it’s not like dogs. Mr. Ash, he never took any notice of that bird, not after….”
Norah Palmer said, “How is Mr. Ash? Keeping well, I hope?”
This was Mrs. Halliday’s opportunity, but she found she could not take it. She sat there, letting her coffee cool in the cup, and her face took on a sullen expression, and words, which were not for her a commodity usually in short supply, had gone right out of stock, she found. “My Chucky loved that bird.” She said.
“Shall I warm your coffee up?”
“No, I can’t stay.” This, if repeated, as it had been, was no longer a social counter, but a statement of intention. “I only came to tell you about that bird. I didn’t know if you mightn’t be wanting the cage for Fred. You haven’t got the space for it here, though, have you, really? I’m surprised you can find room for your own things.” She finished her coffee, and stood up. “I keep things as nice as I can,” she said. “Mr. Ash, he’s not home as much as he used to be. He goes out more in the evenings.” She stepped from the kitchen into the hall of Squad’s top floor. “You’ve just got the two rooms, then?” she said.
“And kitchen and bathroom. It’s all I need. I really hardly use the living-room.”
“Yes…. Well,” said Mrs. Halliday, finally, sadly, with a consciousness of failure that was strange to her, “I can’t stay.” She took a step towards the door, while what was to be told fought its way up through layers of reluctance. At the door, she turned and faced Norah Palmer. “You come back, miss, before he gets into trouble,” she said, and went quickly down the stairs.
*
The waste! The waste! She had given Peter Ash nine years of her life, and now all was worse than before. She should never have begun it, never have interfered. You come back, miss, before he gets into trouble. She knew well enough what sort of trouble. The waste! Their home in Beaufort Street, all that good taste, all that comfort without self-indulgence, all the things they had chosen together, with the notion sometimes explicitly stated that by the accumulation and arrangement of things is personality shown, all the books, the Swedish glass, the curtaining and cushion covers, the lamps, the carpets—all that she had left behind (she had brought so little with her, rather than destroy what had been built), now reduced to the level of an anonymous hotel room—“It’s nice here. You’ve got a nice place here.” “Yes, it is quite nice.” The waste!
Peter Ash—what did she care for Peter Ash in himself? But she had acquired him (to avoid avoidable waste) and made him. She had taught him so much. She had watched him grow, and watered him, and added a little Plant-Aid in the summer months, and he had put out leaves and begun to be a sort of public person, and all that was now liable to be pulled up and swept away; it would need no more than some trivial, squalid paragraph in the News of the World, because Peter Ash was not big enough, would never be big enough in himself to ride that kind of thing. He would have to resign from The Living Arts
, and outside The Living Arts he was nothing. The waste! She didn’t care what he did and with whom. It wasn’t worth caring about, that sort of thing; it wasn’t important or serious. She cared only that so much of her own work would end in nothing.
You come back, miss…. How could she? She had not wanted to go. Peter Ash had pushed her out, and by that selfish act had not only undone nine years of work, but had left her, Norah Palmer, defenceless. A defenceless woman. Oh, she had a job, and could deal well enough with any of the perils of Pauline, but in every important way she was defenceless, wide open to love and pity and to the old. There was now no possible reason why Norah Palmer’s mother should not move from Chard to London, and take a little flat somewhere, which they would share. The arrangement with Squad was temporary; that was obvious. Norah Palmer might jog along in Ovington Square comfortably enough for one year or two, but in time she would want a place of her own—and she did; she ached for it. Well then, Norah Palmer’s mother could sell her equities easily enough to buy a long lease or the freehold of some tiny Georgian house, and she would make this over to Norah Palmer by deed of gift so as to avoid death duties, and just keep one room for herself in it. They would be company for each other, Norah Palmer and her mother; they would have great old chats together when they felt like it, and would share the housework. If later on, Norah Palmer were to marry, which wasn’t—they might just as well face it like sensible women—likely except in the way of a marriage by agreement in middle age, though Norah Palmer’s mother, she was bound to say, had heard that these often turned out surprisingly well, and after all, on the Continent of Europe … and indeed India, with all that child-bride nonsense…. but anyway if Norah were to marry, her mother would move out of the tiny Georgian house at once, and make no bones about it. Norah Palmer’s mother had never approved, and never would approve of in-laws living together in one house; it was a certain way to quarrel. Being near was another matter; in-laws within reach could be helpful to a married couple. So if Norah Palmer were later on to marry, Norah Palmer’s mother would move out jolly pronto to some little flat nearby.