by John Moore
“Slips,” said Faith shortly.
The Wardrobe Mistress interposed:
“I always said there’d have to be slips. He doesn’t understand materials. How can we make twelve slips in eight hours and do all the other last-minute jobs to the costumes?”
Everybody started talking at once. The girls who had been taught verse-speaking enunciated with great clarity, “Pink knickers, my dear!” “And a most extra-ordinary bra!” The Drama Lady wailed “Indecent! But indecent!” The Wardrobe Mistress called heaven to witness that in the midst of this crisis the so-called Dress Designer had gone fishing. A post-office messenger pushed his way through the crush and handed Stephen a bundle of telegrams, which he unthinkingly stuffed into his pocket without opening them. One of the verse-speakers with beautiful elocution said: “My sweet, I felt like a Circassian in a slave-market being Eyed.” Only Faith remained silent, a small oasis of quietude in a howling wilderness.
Councillor Noakes, steering himself through the crowd of girls with gentle but well-directed pushes and prods, reached Stephen’s desk at last and stood before him.
“This is serious,” he said.
How in the world had Noakes contrived to mix himself up in this? He had probably been hanging about on the Bloody Meadow waiting to see the young women have their photographs taken. The pink knickers must have pleased him, thought Stephen grimly.
“We must particularly guard against any scandal,” Noakes went on, as if it had been Stephen’s fault. “I rely on you, my boy. Sans reproche, remember. Our Festival must be sans reproche”
The telephone rang and Faith answered it.
“Bloody Mary’s got a rash,” she said shortly. “She thinks it’s measles.”
Nobody took any notice, and Councillor Noakes continued:
“These are young girls, Stephen. Young girls. We are, in a sense, in loco parentis. It is unthinkable that we should cause them to make an exhibition-—”
Suddenly Stephen felt that he couldn’t stand Councillor Noakes for one minute longer. A sense of the fatuous absurdity of the Festival and all its works utterly overwhelmed him. He had been subject, ever since he was a child, to such flurries of unreasonable panic. As a small boy he would sometimes rush out of the house and carry the burden of some secret fear or shame into the woods, desiring only to hide himself, running blindly until he tripped and fell. Later he had learned to rationalise and control these impulses. But to-day he was overtired and overworried, and when the sudden panic came it caught him off his balance.
So he fled: not precipately, as he had done in childhood, but with dignity and decorum. A bad headache and a touch of the heat, he explained; a few minutes in the fresh air and he would be all right again. He bowed to the Drama Lady, smiled at Faith, brushed aside Councillor Noakes’ solicitous arm, and got himself to the door. He closed it gently behind him and set off up the street. He walked very fast, despite his lame leg, not caring which way he went, seeking only solitude; and as he walked he tried to calm himself with a childish formula that had lain half-buried in his memory for thirty years or so: “Whatever happens, they can’t shoot me.” As a boy of seven, reluctantly trudging towards the day-school which he loathed and feared, he had invented the formula and found it extremely effective. At sixteen, out first ball in his first house-match, he had gleaned some crumbs of comfort from it as he walked back seven leagues or so towards the pavilion in which the prefects sat with pitiless faces. The last time he had used it was in the air over Thessaly in the moment before he dropped through the hole in the floor of the aeroplane. “Whatever happens, they can’t shoot me.” And then suddenly he had realised that they could, and probably would. The joke seemed so funny that he had laughed aloud, and with the laughter dying on his lips had plunged into the dark night. Polly, who followed him, had been immensely impressed by his laughter, and Stephen had never told him the reason for it. “Of all the crazy guys,” said Polly. “Say, what were you laughing at? Was it you thought maybe your chute wouldn’t open, or were you thinking of mine? Of all the crazy guys!”
But now the formula was valid once more. They couldn’t shoot him, whatever happened on Monday night.
Stephen was calm again when he encountered Mr. Handiman: calm enough to wonder what had thrown the little man into such a state of agitation and to notice with surprise his haggard expression and tormented eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Tasker, please, can you help me? You haven’t seen Mr. Oxford anywhere? Or Mr. Timms? It’s most important.”
“I haven’t seen them,” said Stephen. “But I can make a pretty good guess where they’ll be. The Ramping Cat or the Lamb or the Red Lion.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Handiman.
“The Lamb’s likeliest, at this time of day.”
“Oh, dear. You see I don’t—well, to tell the truth I’ve never—never actually gone into a bar,” said Mr. Handiman. “But it’s urgent, so I suppose I’ll have to. The Lamb, you think? Well, thank you very much.”
“And if they’re not there try the Lion.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Handiman toddled off towards the Lamb, which was just round the corner in a side street. Stephen, now quite recovered from his foolish panic, decided that he needed a drink before he risked any further discussion of young women’s underwear with Councillor Noakes; so he turned into the cobbled courtyard of the Red Lion.
Florrie was decorating her bar with bunches of balloons, which John Handiman had given her, and with red and white roses, which she had paid for out of her own pocket. Her questing glance darted to and fro about the room as if she were a bird in spring-time examining an unpromising thicket to see where it could build a nest. Her actions were like a bird’s too, as she plucked a spray of white rambler roses from the pile on the counter, fluttered round the room with it, and finally set it up behind the notice which said, THE PASSING OF BETTING-SLIPS IN THIS BAR IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. Timms, meanwhile, though not exactly passing betting-slips, was extracting them from his pockets and sorting them into neat little heaps on the counter, while Mr. Oxford leaned back in his corner and discoursed with Florrie on the subject of kindness to animals.
“One can become very attached to a dumb brute,” he was saying, as Stephen came in; although, to tell the truth, the only dumb brutes he was attached to were exceedingly abstract, being represented by symbols such as “5/- Doub. S.P. Urst Park 2.30” in his little black notebook.
“I was real sorry for that poor old lady,” said Florrie. “Good morning, Mr. Tasker. We was talking about that donkey in the paper this morning. ‘Bashful Toto Scorned Fame,’ it says. Real pathetic. Half-pint for you, sir?”
Stephen felt in need of something stronger than beer, so he ordered a large pink gin. As she mixed it, Florrie continued:
“My first husband, now, grew very fond of a lioness, but it turned treacherous, and one night at a circus it went for him and had to be destroyed. Believe it or not, Mr. Tasker, although it had tried to bite his head off, when they shot that lioness my husband cried like a little child. And though we was only just married by no means could I console him.”
While she was speaking, Old Screwnose came slinking into the bar, and as a matter of form Timms concealed the betting-slips with his elbows. Screwnose looked at the balloons and sniffed. “Making the place look like a pally de dance,” he said, and immediately began to cross-examine Florrie about the loss of a whole batch of ashtrays which, it appeared, had mysteriously and simultaneously disappeared from her bar a week ago.
“You don’t tell me they had wings and flew,” he said nastily.
“They was only little bits of tin, anyhow,” said Florrie, as if this made them more airworthy.
“It was those Buffaloes,” said Screwnose, edging towards the door; for he always made certain of his line of retreat before risking an argument with Florrie. “I feel quite sure in my mind it was that Buffaloes’ Outing which came in a charabanc last Wednesday. And to-day it’s the fishermen, and all next week it’s the Festi
val. Mark my words, by Saturday you won’t have an ashtray left.”
He withdrew, and Florrie, shrugging her shoulders at his departing back, observed with large tolerance:
“It takes all sorts to make a world. It’s not drinking, I dare say, that makes him so miserable.”
“Never a drop has passed his lips, they tell me,” said Mr. Oxford, not without awe.
Florrie nodded gravely.
“None of my husbands were what you’d call moderate men,” she said. “Ambrose—that was his professional name —slipped into the habit of fortifying himself against the lions, and George used to say he could understand horses and stars better when he’d had a few, and my last, Bertie, he used to punish the whisky something dreadful. And yet, if I had my time over again, I’d never marry a teetotaller. There’s something slinky about teetotallers; you can’t hear ’em coming upstairs.”
She looked up from the glass she was polishing and it was clear from her expression that you could have knocked her down with a feather, for on the threshold of her bar, with the door just closing behind him, stood a notorious teetotaller indeed. The expression on Mr. Handiman’s face was that of a city-dweller who finds himself by some strange chance set down in a savage jungle. He glanced to right and left as if he expected to be assailed by the arm’d rhinoceros and the Hyrcan tiger; or at least as if he expected to witness scenes of devilment and debauchery. The quiet decorum of the place seemed to surprise him, and after a moment’s hesitation he advanced more confidently towards the bar.
Florrie, meanwhile, stood ready with the brandy bottle; for it was her experience that only in cases of severe and indeed mortal sickness would such a strict teetotaller as Mr. Handiman enter a public house. Mr. Handiman, however, when Stephen asked him what he’d have, timidly requested a lemonade; and clutching the glass in a hand that was obviously not much used to holding glasses, he went across to Mr. Oxford, with whom he began a conversation in urgent whispers. Florrie tactfully raised her voice as she discoursed to Stephen on the subject of her last husband and his peculiar hobby.
“—And when he’d finished the bottle,” she said; “well, punished it, that was always his word, Florrie, he’d say, looking quite ashamed like, ‘I’ve been punishing the whisky again’—then he’d ask for a kettle of boiling water and he’d steam off the label ever so careful and stick it in his scrap-book.”
Stephen, who was beginning to enjoy himself, bought Florrie a port and himself another pink gin. Florrie went on:
“But in the war there was too many brands, you see, and he overdid it. They had gaudy labels such as I’d never seen in fifty years in the Trade, all about dewy glens and mountain mists and there was one with a picture of a dying stag on it, called Twelve-Pointer. Now ’tis my belief as that Twelve-Pointer killed my husband; for it was the last bottle of whisky he ever drank. Pleased as Punch he was to find it, because he said it made his hundredth brand. And when I came back from work that night he said quietly, ‘I’ve been punishing the Twelve-Pointer, Florrie, I’m afraid.’ But he didn’t have the heart to steam the label off it. I got the doctor to him in the night, and next day he died.”
Florrie heaved a tremulous sigh. Stephen observed a brief silence to the memory of Bertie and the bottle of Twelve-Pointer, and heard Mr. Oxford, whose whisper would in lesser men have been described as a hoarse shout, saying:
“Not a bet, not a bet, Mr. Handiman: what you mean is a little investment.”
“That’s it, investment,” squeaked Timms.
There was the sound of notes being counted; and Mr. Oxford said to Timms out of the corner of his mouth: “Two hundred pounds to a fiver, Mr. H. Put that down careful, ’cause we’ll have to lay it off.” He turned to Mr. Handiman.
“Shake on it,” he said; and Mr. Handiman, unaccustomed to these formalities, shyly put out his hand. A moment later he took his leave and scurried out of the bar like a bolted rabbit.
Mr. Oxford swallowed his whisky, licked his lips, and said at last:
“It will out. You cannot keep it down. It’s like rubbub beneath a concrete floor; it always comes up in the end.”
“What does?” asked Stephen.
“The Englishman’s natural desire to ’ave a little flutter,” said Mr. Oxford, beaming. “Spite of laws, spite of Ministers, spite of Methody. You cannot keep the Englishman down.”
“Tradition!” exclaimed Timms, as one who had made a startling discovery.
“As you say, old man, tradition. ‘Earts of hoak! And where should we be, I ask you, if we had not got that tradition? We’d never ’ave ’ad a little flutter at Mons; we’d never ’ave ’ad a little flutter at Dunkirk. Winnie’d never ’ave ’ad ’is bloody great gamble on invading Normandy. In other words, old man, if it weren’t for the Englishman’s ’abit of ’aving a little flutter, we’d be down the plug-’ole, all of us!”
Delighted with this logical conclusion to his argument, Mr. Oxford called for drinks all round; and although Stephen was well aware that he ought to go back to his office, where Faith was dealing single-handed with whatever fresh catastrophes the past half-hour had brought, he allowed himself to be persuaded to have a third glass of gin. He was already feeling the beneficial effect of the first two, for his panic had entirely vanished and in retrospect the affair of the transparent dresses seemed to have been very funny indeed. Councillor Noakes was no longer repellent, but was a figure of minor comedy; as dear old Florrie sensibly said, it took all sorts to make a world. Even last night’s rehearsal had been funny, thought Stephen, if one looked at it in the right way; and to-night’s promised to be funnier still. In a mood of unwonted devil-may-care he swigged his gin and, since it was now his turn, ordered another round. While he was doing so Lance came into the bar, followed shortly by Mr. Gurney, who as soon as he saw him playfully poked him in the stomach with his umbrella, crying, “Naughty! Naughty! I have found you out!”
“What have I done now?” said Lance.
“I went to the rehearsal last night. You can’t pull the wool over my old eyes.”
“Well?”
“Young man,” said Mr. Gurney, “you made up those folk-songs.”
Lance, in considerable embarrassment, gave Stephen a sideways look.
“Well, not exactly. Say if you like that 1 improvised on an old theme.”
“Oh, don’t imagine I’m blaming you,” grinned Mr. Gurney. “A man who’s been in the old furniture trade as long as I have knows that many a forgery is better than the original. And sometimes,” he added thoughtfully, “the forgeries are harder to produce.”
Stephen, who as producer should have been shocked by Lance’s admission that the folk-songs weren’t genuine, was surprised to discover that it merely endeared Lance to him by betraying a new, mischievous and original aspect of his character. For now, after four gins, he was aware of comedy stirring all round him, in the corvine croak of Mr. Gurney, in the rich pomposities of Mr. Oxford, in Timms’ diminuendo squeak, in Florrie’s tales about her three husbands. Surely, he thought, she is the Wife of Bath reincarnated! And there came into his mind the perfect motto for her:
And Jesu Crist us sende
Housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe-a-bedde,
And grace to overbyde hem that we wedde.
He was so pleased with the aptness of the quotation, and the accuracy of his memory, that his heart warmed to Florrie, and when in her old-fashioned way she said, “It’s my turn to stand treat now,” he felt that it would be discourteous, cavalierly, it would be downright un-chivalrous in the face of such a friendly gesture to refuse her; and since Florrie had been brought up in the Trade, in which the greatest sin is to be niggardly in hospitality, she poured him out a very large one, with which most daringly he drank a toast to her fourth marriage: “for you’ve done the hat-trick, my dear Florrie,” he said in a voice that was curiously unlike his own, “and upon my word, I believe you’ll bowl another man out yet!”
Florrie’s large bosom heaved with pleasure, quive
red and fluttered as if some eager bird were imprisoned in it. Stephen was now comfortably leaning on the bar in the attitude of one who had been there for a long time and proposed to remain there much longer, and she rose up before him like a mountain—no, there was a suggestion of cragginess about mountains, like a huge hill of Cotswold, Stephen thought, composed of the kindliest convexities which ran together towards the summit and suddenly fell away in a steep escarpment on the other side. Splendid and spendthrift she must have been in her youth, thought Stephen:
And I was yong and Jul of ragerye,
Stiborn and strong, and joly as a pye.
He had a keen sense of history and of the continuity of English things; and perhaps this sense was sharpened by drink, for as Florrie turned away to serve him with another gin—Mr. Gurney had called for a round—and as he contemplated the steep scarp of her back, broad and rippling beneath the black lace dress, he said to himself, “She is the Wife of Bath indeed. In each generation she is born again. These are the true, the only immortals—she and Falstaff, Doll Tearsheet, Bottom, Shallow, Pistol, Nym, the Wellers, Mr. Micawber. They are omnipresent and ubiquitous. You could always find them, somewhere in England, if you knew where to look. They, and not poor little whimsy Peter Pan, are the ones that never grow old!” Into the midst of these confused but fascinating speculations burst the voice of Mr. Oxford booming, most aptly, the word “Tradition,” and Stephen was struck by the percipience of Mr. Oxford, who through a haze of whisky was nevertheless able to distinguish eternal truth. A lovable fellow, thought Stephen; and Timms was only slightly less so. He moved across the bar towards them.