by Will Self
An impression of the bashed boiled-egg face of the big clock, and of the gentlemen petrified on their plinths – Audrey sees the pipe organ of Parliament, hearkens to its maddening fugue . . . She looks down at her freckled hands, lying once more in the lap of her shabby dress, ’ow they shake with palsy. Her father tenderly places a bag between them, the rumpled paper, cloth-soft. She withdraws a bonbon reeking of acetone and presses it to her bloodless lips – then tastes the pear essence as it bashes her teeth. – You ’ad a little turn there, m’dear. His solicitude is more troubling than his contempt. They are on a motor ’bus that shudders up Whitehall – a leather hanging strap tap-taps against his bowler, he pats her hands, the action as involuntary as hers. He speaks of the ’bus and its route from Victoria to the Bank, but Audrey cannot hear him that well for her hands have twisted into claws that scrabble on the mounds of her thighs, back and forth, over and over, in a pattern that cannot really be a pattern – since it is never repeated. The unstoppable movement towards the city’s central lodestone is affecting, Audrey notices, her father’s elocution: aligning the wayward consonants, repelling the colloquialisms. – As I was saying before, Audrey, Mister Phillips is now making a fuller commitment to Albert – he’s to board at Woodford. Mister Phillips has arranged it all with the Drapers, while he himself will pay for his books . . . his sporting equipment and suchlike. Well –? This is not, she realises, a question – it’s more akin to a chairman’s patter between turns, and so begs the question, What’s coming next? She sees Albert as Mister Phillips must have, spottin’ ’im in Anderson’s, the tall youth’s bulging grey eyes running down the column of figures scrawled on a bill – tu’pence for this, ha’pence for that, thru’pence for the Eccles cake – his severe mouth pronouncing the total instantly. His family are, of necessity, familiar with Albert’s prodigious calculating ability, his pals too: they call him Datas, after the music-hall mental prestidigitator. Just as his father has his moniker shouted after him in the street, so Datas Death has his own salute, Am I right, sir? Although unlike the genial Datas on stage, there’s no jocularity to Albert’s correctitude. He is rigid in all things, disdaining brawling, yet looks fit to kill if he’s accused of having funked it by failing to answer a question or complete a computation. Now the days are balmier he strips to the waist in the hugger-mugger of the backyard – having obtained a copy of Sandow’s Magazine, he performs the exercises it describes using Indian clubs he has made by sawing up old railway sleepers. — Datas is not Stanley’s hero, but Enigmarelle, the Man of Steel – he desires to be a mechanical man with an engine hammerin’ in his belly and smoke spurtin’ from ’is mouf an’ nose . . . I’ve never been up on a motor before! is Audrey’s answer, shouted over the rattle-bash that reverberates through the saloon. Her eyes skitter to the back platform, fall from it to the pattern of crushed droppings-on-tarmac that unrolls there. Try as she might, she cannot will the grunting ’bus aloft, up from the congeries of cabs that mesh into a millipede inching its way from Whitehall into Trafalgar Square. Audrey cannot – yet Stan flies whenever he wants: he positions her beside him in front of their mother’s new cheval glass and tips it back to fling them suddenly, silver, skywards . . . Stan says: In twenty years’ time everyone will be an aeronaut, Colonel Cody will perfect his war kite and there’ll be gazetted aeroplane services connectin’ all the cities of the Empire. Airships’ll carry the heavy freight that goes now by sea: pig iron, coal, Canadian wheat. They’ll anchor up above the Pool of London and the air will be fick with their hawsers – the stevedores’ll operate movin’ beltways high as cranes. See! Up we go, Aud! And again he tips the glass so the flame-haired girl and the bat-eared boy lift off, suddenly, silver, skywards . . .
Getting down at Charing Cross, still sucking her pear drop, Audrey turns from the sooty black drainpipe of Nelson’s Column to be put upon by PHOSPHERINE THE REMEDY OF KINGS and PLAYER’S NAVY CUT, momentarily sandwiched between two sandwich men, and once freed engulfed by the hubbub of the afternoon crowds – clerks and shop-walkers released for their half-day dodge and jig across the road. One snappy chappie pops under the very shafts of a growler – the cabbie flicks his whip, but the three ladies behind chandeliers wrapped in muslin disdain to notice. Bloody oaf! Her father’s oath rises above the charivari as he upbraids a ragamuffin the worse for drink who cavorts about an organ-grinder. A few paces on Audrey looks back at this man’s pillbox hat, his torn and filthy scarlet tunic – he is an old soldier, who hops on an ashplant, the empty leg of his trousers flapping — but Sam Death won’t be caught napping, he weaves through the throng along the Strand, then wheels Audrey round to join a queue who are taking their turn to peer in the eyepiece of a kinetosocope plunked down beside the foyer doors of the Old Tivoli. Her head ducked into this commedia, she sees a pretty Colombine pirouette around a capering ape – Might I escape? – her gyration not smooth but jerking forward, then back, the double-exposure of the film depicting a meeting with her transparent double. The title card slots in: Miss Lottie Farquhar, Appearing Nightly in ‘Darker Delights’, Stalls Seats for a Limited Period, 5/6d., Fully Electrified, fssschk-chk-fssschk-chk . . . His paw on her again. P’raps it’d be agreeable to you if we were to take the back way? Audrey wonders what errand can it be that her father runs for Arnold Collins, his inferior – one he has always treated with amused contempt? The tip of his umbrella fingers the joins between the cobbles as they cross the corner of Covent Garden, ignoring the leather-aproned porters lounging against the empty crates, ignoring the rotten fruit underfoot and the arabs scrabbling for it – the dusk is massing in the corners of the square, lyin’ in wait. Little Dublin, he remarks casually as they cross Drury Lane. Every third store-front is boarded up with heavy planks, some scrawled with crim’ sigils, although why? There’s nuffink ’ere to avaway. The narrow entries to the godforsaken courts are blocked off with timber bulwarks, and through a gap in one Audrey sees the limewashed ghost of a dwelling, some of the condemned tenants standing in front of it, their faces and clothing creased with dirt – they are, she understands, too weak wivunger to be dangerous. One boy her own age who lolls in a doorway wears no trousers – no pockets . . . no pockets t’pick – his man-sized shirt torn up past his hips, an idiot grin slitting his potato head. The final shard of the boiled sweet snaps between Audrey’s teeth. They simper, the three little maids . . . Women of the unfortunate class, Death chews this phrase over before spitting it out more coarsely: Wimminuv ve un-for-tun-ate class, they’ll sell their selves for thru’pence, tu’pence or a loaf of stale bread . . . One makes as if adjusting something in her bodice: a corsage that’s invisible. Audrey feels her bubbies prickle and the sweat-damp shift still wadded between her thighs. I don’t need no Snowdrop Bands, I need the double-you-see – there are no words to say this, a year or so ago, yes, but not now. Beyond the pub hatch where the whores have gathered the street ends in another timber bulwark – this one two storeys high and plastered with the pink cheeks, golden curls and frothing white suds of hudson’s soap. To the right of the hoarding a cranny leads into a long, narrow lane, the carriageway barely wide enough for a cart, the shop-fronts to either side antiquated, their many-paned and thick-mullioned windows plastered wiv ’udson’s dirt, as are their horizontal shutters, some of which have been let down to form the basis of stalls. Up above are more wooden bafflers tilting out obliquely from the buildings — Audrey breaks step. – Those? Death is amused by what’s pricked her curiosity. Those’re mirrors, Audrey, t’catch a slice of the ’eavens and chuck it in the winder. ’Course, anyone peeping down from on top could see a body steppin’ inter ’er smalls . . . Who is he, my father? As they go on, the hush she had not been aware of deepens, the never-ending snarl of the city streets tails away into a single bark tossed from jaws to jaws: a solo motor horn yelping.
The alleyway scores deeper into the damp clay. Halting, her father takes a small leather-bound volume from the stack of books on a stall – and, as he lifts it to his face, the cover fa
lls open to expose marbled endpapers, then drops off altogether, along with several leaves that swipe their way to the ground. At once a white head pops up from behind the stall, the Mad Mullah! turns out to be a mousy man, his turban wound out of an Indian shawl, and when he’s hauled up his pince-nez from the length of its black ribbon and clipped his nubbin innit he sees Death clearly. Oh, it’s you, Rothschild, he wheezes wordy notes – he has swallowed the consumptive’s harmonium. Audrey’s father gestures with the broken book. – I shall, of course, recompense you for any loss, Mister Fellowes. The mousy man plays a mournful chord: Why bother, eh? This’n – he gestures in turn – all done for now an’ gone, done up proper, done up prop— and there’s another pump on the pedals, he oughtn’t to run on so, ’e ain’t got the breff. Mister Fellowes is tieless, his collar unfastened, his Turkey throat gobbles, in the dark recesses of the shop a caged bird fluttercheeps. — Death utters this: As the papers have it, there’s substantial com-pen-say-shun available along the way for those who’ve longer leasehold . . . and freehold, naturally. For the first time Audrey notices her father’s ponderousness when he speaks proper. She blushes – and to hide her confusion takes a book from the pile on the stall, Sermons of the late Reverend Simon Le Coeur, D.D. A little friend o’yourn, is she –? She has attracted the bookseller’s leer. Samuel barks, Yes, a special little friend! He grabs her shoulder and twists her upright, pulling everything tight. Tell me – his grip tightens – has Mister Beauregard ceased trading yet? The mousy man runs his fever-pink eyes the length of Audrey, from top to toe, before answering disdainfully: Beauregard won’t cease ’til the wreckers’ ball drops on that fucking garret – not that ’e ain’t made his ’rangements, fixed up premises with some shonks on the Mile End Road. Death lifts the beetle carapace of his bowler, runs a hand over his damp pate. In that case, he says, I will ascend – he has some, ah, merchandise for Brother Collins –. Mister Fellowes coughs, retches, spits derision: While you’ve some fer ’im inall! This is a statement of fact, accompanied by the retrieval of a waxed paper, its unfolding, the savage poking of a pinch of snuff into his nostril. Hm . . . Death mutters . . . mebbe. He hooks his umbrella over his left arm and gropes deep in his trouser pocket. Audrey stands wrung out and abandoned. ’Ere – he presses a thru’pence into her palm, hard – you’ll find a coffee shop along aways. Sit tight wiv a cuppa anna slice, I’ll come after yer inna bit. The mousy man’s sneeze follows her down the road, heff-heff-heff-p’shawww! – she turns back once but her father has already disappeared.
A cake sits on a tin stand in the window of the coffee shop, which otherwise is indistinguishable from the rundown book dealers flanking it. Audrey looks at the cake black as coke on its dirty paper doily. A sign beside it contends TEN OUNCE CHOPS 6D., CUTLET 5D., FRIED ONION 1D. That’s all. A man comes from within to stand in the doorway – wound tightly into his apron, he’s the same shape as the milk churn he sets down. He has thick black curly side-whiskers and below his red cheek a redder goitre rests on his Gladstone collar. A barefoot piker boy comes limping along the lane, his cap pulled right down, the sleeves of his man’s jacket rolled right up – his arms are all striped lining. In one hand he holds a skinned rabbit by its ears and, stopping by the coffee shop man, he raises it bloody socket where its guts were but says nothing. The man shakes his head: Inna pig’s arse. The boy limps on. Cummin an’ eat befaw we boaf starve . . . It’s a while before Audrey realises he’s addressing her, and then she complies. There’s nothing much to the coffee shop – four pew seats, two rickety tables – everything is coated with the brownish patina of tobacco smoke, grease and ingrained dirt. The gaslight and the geyser are confused in one another’s piping – both are lit. The man asks Audrey what she wishes for, and while he is absent in the back the geyser heats up and begins to steam – droplets condense on the ceiling, then fall, one hissing on the gas-mantle. It’s raining inside . . . She opens her hand: the thru’pence has impressed a portcullis on her palm. The man comes back with a mug of tea and two slices of bread and marge, sliced diagonally. I dunno why I does vat, he says, looking at the droplets swell and fall, but I allus do. He turns the key in the pipe and the geyser pops off. Could I –? Is there –? There can be no mistaking surely the reason for her discomfort . . . He points offhandedly and says: Jakes is out back. She goes and finds a lean-to against the kitchen wall, beyond it another section of the two-storey-high timber bulwark, and beyond this the wreckers’ ball hangs in the foggy dusk, a black moon. When she returns, he’s lit the geyser again, and, as she nibbles the slices and sips the tea, he stands erect by the matchboard counter, head up, massaging the goitre while doggily listening to its rising notes . . . there’s no ’arm innim. All that’s left are crumbs, smears, dregs . . . still her father does not come. Abruptly, Audrey rises from the pew – the man gives her a penny and two farthings change, which she holds so tightly as she walks back up the road that the metal discs replace her knuckles, Enigmarelle, the Man of Steel. There’s no one about except a tall gent inna topper who reminds her of an illustration she’s seen of Bransby Williams the ’personator, so cross-hatched is he by shadow. Fellowes’s shop is shuttered — tapping fearfully on the door, she is relieved when it swings open, so scurries in to the smell of mouse droppings, cat’s piss and the ammoniacal residue of birds. Inside there is no illumination at all – only different strengths of darkness, the black bat night brushing against her. She mounts the stairs to the accompaniment of a concerto of creaks – one flight, a second, a third and a fourth – then peeks along a landing at eye-level, to where bright white light leaks from beneath a closed door. She hears – in there – a sharp intake of breath, h’heurgh! and a piggish grunt. Her belly seethes with glow worms — last month Mary Jane fixed me up with cotton pads and an itchy belt sewn from hemming tape. When Audrey pointed out to her the advertisement in the back of a Free Library book – Sanitary, Absorbent, Antiseptic, Available from All Drapers – her mother snapped: What d’you fink we are? but not unkindly. A cord that stretches taut from her tummy-button along the landing and under the door draws her in with each h’heurgh! every piggish grunt. She barges the door with her shoulder and collapses into a room lit brilliantly by clear bulbs under shades of frosted glass. In front of a floor-length nankeen drapes an aspidistra in a hammered-bronze pot, beside this a chaise-longue covered in green velvet, on this the skinned rabbit what the piker ’ad its glistening dead legs sticking up from a mess of petticoats. Standing with his back to Audrey, a bare-arsed man does something to the rabbit’s belly, guttin’ it –?
– No, no, no! That won’t do! A florid man with pomaded hair, in his shirtsleeves and a fancy embroidered waistcoat, comes out from behind a kinematographic apparatus set up in the tapering corner of the attic. No, no, no! he cries again – his expression is mad and guileless – this ’ere girlie’s torn it –! Mister Beauregard? Audrey ventures, but the red-faced man ignores her, his regard is fixed. — When Audrey turns back there’s no coney, only a girl a little older than her who sits on the chaise buttoning her bubbies into her bodice. The girl’s hair is up apart from a few stray locks, and atop its nondescript mass sits a lady’s toque complete with magenta-dyed ostrich feathers. There’s no bare-arsed man either, only Audrey’s father, who’s standing there in his long rabbit-skin coat and buttoning up gloves I’ve never see before. He doesn’t acknowledge his daughter but raises his bowler to Mister Beauregard, says, O-vwar, m’dear, to the girl and, retrieving his umbrella and a brown paper parcel from behind the drapes, conducts Audrey unceremoniously from the room. They are borne down the stairs on the wave of electric light – its crest breaks on the blank street. There is no sign of Fellowes – only his name fading across the tops of the shutters. – All this – Samuel Death strikes with his umbrella at the complicated dinginess of the Jacobean frontage – will be gone wivvin weeks . . . He sounds neither regretful nor cheered by the prospect. I do not know ’im who leads her on through streets shuttered by the massive timber bulwarks, wor
king their way through the condemned rookery to the purlieu of Waterloo Bridge, where, through a gap, they can see the workings: navvies’ picks thrust handle-first in grave-fill, beside this Calvary a slough of despond wellin’ over with night-time and the drowned-corpse smell of the river. Why, Audrey longs to ask him, have they stuck bills on the insides of the hoardings? For surely navvies aren’t likely customers for Beecham’s Powders or a GUARANTEED 7 HOUR PASSAGE FROM Tilbury to Cherbourg. There will be, Samuel says, a grand booleyvard runnin’ norf t’Olborn, the newest street in Lunnun town, with the nobs pacin’ up an’ pacin’ down . . . an’ there’ll be a tunnel connectin’ to the bridge for the trams runnin’ under a twenny-storey buildin’ that’ll ’ave business premises, an arcade of posh shops, theatres . . . This, Audrey realises as they go through the Saturday evening drowse of Lincoln’s Inn, is his gift: this tour of the city about to be swept away, and this portrait of an orderly city of the future. – At Chancery Lane the boys are crying Bulgarian Massacre! and there’s a feverishness to the tipsy clerks gathered round a sandwich stall. Finally, it is night. The wreckers’ ball has turned and dropped, the air fills with dust, fog, smuts . . . thickening with dark droplets, I dunno why I does vat – but I allus do . . . as the passengers rise up from the Underground station dewy mushrooms sprout alongside the old timber house fronts of High Holborn. — This, I recall, Audrey says: the glacé silk and the oiled cotton of the covers, so many of them – and t’were only a little drizzle . . . It ish, Gilbert Cook says sententiously, to the petit-ourgeoishie of London what a fetisssh is to an African primitive – he manipulatessh it, speaksh to it, forgetsh it at hish peril, for, should the shky godsh choosh to show their dishpleasure, he will be losht without hish portable shelter. Conshider thish, Audrey, when Crushoe – that quinteshenshial petit-bourgeois – is cashtaway, the firsht implement that he makesh for himshelf ish an umbrella! This speech would be hard to tolerate were Gilbert not bare-arsed – he has no shame, and this is more satisfying to Audrey than anything they do to each other: his insouciance, standing there rinsing out the prophylactic device in the rose-patterned bowl, pulling it between the mangle rollers of his chubby little fingers so that the water spurts. It reminds her that it was instruction that formed the greater part of his seduction: he described how she should insert the pessary beforehand – and then after use the syringe to sluice herself out while squatting above a different bowl. Audrey had admired Gilbert Cook for this commitment to the technical aspects of free love, far more than his written advocacy thereupon. – Admired him for this – and for his abjuration of all jealous sentiments. I tell you, m’dear – he said on that first occasion, as he curled his hand to simulate her vagina and spoke of how to exterminate the troubleshome spermatozoa – not sholely sho that I may enjoy your delightsh without, um, complicationsh – although I do fervently wish to enjoy them, and on thoshe termsh preshishely – but in order that you may enjoy shimilar, or in all probability far greater onesh, with whomshoever you choose. His teacherly approach to the exercise of deflowering her had been what I needed, the hot suffusions of shame and guilt coming first, and then, in response to his instruction, she found herself left free to enjoy – that first time as well – his demonstration. Yet, despite the vigour with which he impressed upon her his vision – that the shex relashion ish all about ush, if diffushed, and that we do not do it, either like pershonsh or animalsh, but attract it, like lightning-conductorsh – Audrey was appalled to discover herself after their second liaison exhibiting all the symptoms of a love-struck moon calf, some diaphanous Daphne or vapid Venetia, who cared nothing for the New Dawn of womankind, but only the old and poetical ones. Now, setting the slug down, he comes to sit beside her and says, Tell me, why d’you shpeak of thish inshident now – of your father’sh conshorting with proshtitutes and their pornographersh – ish it becaushe we have jusht . . . fucked? Audrey strokes the green damask of Venetia Stanley’s chaise-longue and runs a finger around one button, then a second. No, she says eventually, no, Gilbert, it’s not that . . . it’s . . . How she loathes Venetia Stanley without ever so much as having clapped eyes on her. Try as she might to prevent herself, Audrey has asked him whether their relation is physical – although he disdains the idea: Venetia? M’dear, she’s a baby, she’s shwaddled in the eternal childishnessh of wealth, shponged and pampered by her nurshing maids and wet nurshed at houshe parties . . . That may be so, yet for Audrey the closeness between the society lady and the socialist is insupportable, especially here, where a portrait photograph of her attired as Diana the Huntress stares down from a nearby whatnot . . . it’s the umbrellas. Aha, the umbrellash, the fruitsh of your laboursh. He mussav a way of fixin’ ’em – his dentures – because holding forth in drawing rooms or public meetings his tone is full and loud as sounding brass, while at such times as these, at his ease, divested of his clothing, his hair dishevelled, comes this endearing lishp. She counters: I don’t make umbrellas, Gilbert, or brollies, or garden tents, or portable pavilions for the bloomin’ beach – I’m a typewriter, I make words. Such words: Dear Sir, in respect of your order of the 15th instant, I regret to inform you that we are unable to supply the precise numbers of the Peerless and the Paragon models that you requested due to Fox’s tardiness in fulfilling our own order for their patented Aegis frames. As I know you appreciate, all Ince & Coy umbrellas are finished to the highest standards and employ the Aegis frame as a matter of course due to their superior quality and efficiency. We are consigning by carrier a gross of the Peerless pro tempore, together with an hundred of the Paragon, and will endeavour to complete your order at Fox’s earliest convenience. I remain your obedient servant, A. De’Ath, Expediting Clerk, on behalf of Thos. Ince. An initial will suffice, Miss De’Ath – so said Appleby, the crabbed and querulous senior clerk – some of our customers may not be so tolerant when it comes to the matter of female employment . . . More tolerant than you, I’d wager! Appleby is senior only to Audrey, the two occupying the garret above the Bishopsgate premises, he seated on his stool at an old-fashioned high desk under the dormer, while she is thrust under the attic’s slope, up against the mouse-gnawed wainscot. Her Sholes is mounted on its small table, and each time she returns its carriage with the inbuilt treadle mechanism she is forcibly kerchunggg! reminded that this is women’s work: sweated, menial, repetitive. Although the truth is that her actual responsibilities exceed his – Appleby, in his grisly old suit and soured linen collar, is a makeweight, kept on by Ince’s out of gratitude for service tendered long since. He scratches at the accounts, wages and inventory books. Each Friday he totters to the bank accompanied by a sturdy boy armed with a cudgel — and he conveys to Audrey only the faintest outline of the matters to hand, leaving her to endow them with the necessary materiality. All the letters, all the memoranda, all the advertisement copy – such words her hands make, inverted into claws that scrabble about on the keys of the Sholes, over and over, in a pattern that cannot really be a pattern since it is never repeated.