Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  'Eleanor! Eleanor!'

  This was the nightmare of his childhood. He wanted to wake up and find himself in the lighted streets, with Eleanor safe beside him.

  'Eleanor! Eleanor!'

  He was near the laboratory wall again, groping his way along the wall. He found her tugging impatiently at the door. But the displacement of the -wall had already pinned it. It would not open, though she set her foot against a fallen brick and pulled valiantly.

  Eleanor. Come away. Come away, you little fool.'

  He tried to wrench her hands from the knob, and she, furious at his interference, turned round on him.

  'Let go. Damn you - let go.'

  Then, when he seized her by the arms and with a quick schoolboy trick snatched her away, she shouted, 'Get away -even if you're afraid for yourself. Let Hugh and me get in.'

  But at that moment there was a new sound above the creaking of the brickwork and howling of the wind. Like the crack of a whip, the dry mortar let go its hold, and for a moment it seemed as though all the darkness before them stirred and shifted. It was such an extraordinary sight that Eleanor stood gaping, watching the black night move in front of her eyes. Then with an unexpected blow, Roger sprang on her and pushed her roughly to the ground, himself spread-eagled on top of her, sheltering her struggling, kicking body below his own, as with a thunderous roar, the wall went down in front of them.

  It had, of course, fallen away from them on top of the laboratory, but a few odd bricks dropped into the factory, one hitting Roger on the ankle. They lay quite still, their mouths full of dust. The roaring seemed to continue for about half an hour, though really it only lasted a few seconds. It was followed by a complete and terrifying silence.

  Then, very cautiously, Roger began to move. Eleanor, surprised and indignant, still squirmed with reassuring vigour underneath him. The dust was settling, and the wind, as though thankful to rest for a minute after its unprecedented triumph, held its breath.

  'Are you all right? Did I hurt you? I do apologize,' cried Roger, helping Eleanor to her feet.

  'My mouth's full. I know now what it is to bite the dust,' coughed Eleanor. 'I suppose it was the only thing to do. Oh, poor Hugh! Do you think it's smashed everything?'

  As the dust settled, another and much lower profile of wall was arranging itself against the clear star-spangled sky. Roger looked round, coughing and blinking,

  'We must get out of here. Before anything else - ugh!' For he stepped on to the ankle that the brick had hit, and found it gave way beneath his weight. He would have fallen if Eleanor had not seized his arm.

  'What's the matter?'

  'I think something hit my foot I'm quite all right, You go on. I'll follow.'

  'Nonsense. We'll go together. Lean on me." Anything seemed better than remaining in that place; he limped forward, leaning on her arm. They found Macafee staring ruefully at the ruin.

  'I'm terribly sorry. The wall's gone,' said Eleanor. 'Oh, Hugh, you mustn't go back there. It's no use. You can't see anything in this darkness, and you can't save anything if you could. And it's not safe.'

  It certainly was not safe, and though they all felt rather stupid standing there in the wind, there was clearly nothing else to do.

  'Well, what do we do next'3 asked Eleanor.

  Roger pulled out his watch, but it was too dark to see and he had no matches.

  'Well, we'd better get out of here, anyway. I suppose the next thing to do is to tell die police,"

  'Police?'

  'Well, isn't that what you do when a building falls in?'

  He started hobbling towards the street. The pain in his foot had subsided, so that when he stepped on it he could feel nothing but a dull pain from the knee downwards. Macafee and Eleanor walked one on each side of him.

  It was curious to come out into the placid normality of the lighted street. What with the noise of the wind, and the

  isolation of the old chemical works, nobody in Annerley appeared to have noticed that the gale had blown down a whole huge factory wall. All that noisy tumult and drama had not disturbed a single citizen.

  Under a street lamp, Eleanor, Hugh and Roger looked at each other. All three were covered with mud, and brown as gypsies with brick dust, from which their red-rimmed eyes blinked foolishly.

  Roger found himself suddenly obliged to sit down on the pavement with his back against the lamp-post. His ankle had begun to hurt intolerably, yet he felt elated rather than distressed.

  It was at this moment that two policemen, rolling along with the majestic dignity of their profession, came upon the trio.

  'Hullo. Hullo! What's this? What's this?' they asked.

  Roger, remembering the responsibility of his cloth, sat up and tried to brush some of the dust out of his eyes, but he was covered with mud, he had lost his hat, and his clerical collar, having come unfastened, stood upright behind one ear.

  'Ah, a very opportune arrival, sergeant,' he began in his formal Oxfordish voice. 'We were about to seek your aid. There has been a slight accident.'

  Then, suddenly, Eleanor saw the absurdity of his pompous manner, and began to laugh, and Roger, though he had not felt amused until that moment, burst out laughing too, and rocked helplessly against the lamp-post.

  'Come, come,' said the policeman, turning to Macafee as the one apparently sober member of the trio. 'We can't have this here, sir. You'd better tell me what's happened.'

  'He's not drunk,' the Scotsman declared gruffly, 'he's hurt his foot. There's been an accident. The wind's blown in my factory wall. We were coming to report it.'

  Macafee's sobriety was more convincing than Roger's laughter, but the policemen were still a little incredulous until Eleanor and Macafee escorted the fatter one through the gap in the hoarding and showed him the ragged outline of the factory. After that final gust, the wind was quieter. In the street they hardly noticed it. Convinced at last, the policemen became helpful and almost animated. They took down pages of particulars from Macafee, and offered to look at Roger's crushed foot. At first he was reluctant, feeling shy in front of Eleanor, but when she brushed aside his scruples as nonsense, and herself got down on her knees to remove his boot, he at once preferred the attentions of the police, and in order to get rid of Eleanor, suggested that she and Hugh should go in search of a taxi.

  The policemen, glad of a little distraction from their dull night promenade, and anxious to display their skill in first aid, inspected Roger's foot, and pronounced it to be nastily bruised,

  'In fact, I shouldn't wonder if there isn't a bit of something broken here,' said one of them, sending little jets of pain up Roger's leg.

  'No, I shouldn't wonder, either,' agreed Roger amiably. 'Well, we'd all better go home.'

  But by the time Eleanor returned with a taxi he had been able to picture the housekeeper's dismay at finding an invalid on her hands in the Clergy House, and consented readily enough to be taken to the local hospital. He wanted Eleanor to go back to her club, but she declared herself to be wide awake. So in the end it was agreed that Macafee with one policeman should go to report upon the damaged factory, while the other escorted Roger and Eleanor to the hospital.

  'Of course, it's perfectly absurd, going to hospital for a bruised ankle,' argued Roger in the taxi, 'but if one's going to be a nuisance at all, I suppose one is better there. In any case, a hospital seems the proper and artistic conclusion to such an evening.'

  'What an evening!' Eleanor said. Roger could imagine to himself in the darkness how her eyes shone, and how her cheeks were bright with excitement. 'Oh, what an evening! But poor Hugh! I can't bear to think of all his lovely cameras and projectors smashed.'

  'Well, we did save the films,' Roger consoled her.

  They drifted into silence, as the taxi bumped and rattled down the gusty streets. At the main entrance of the hospital the policeman left them to go in search of the night-porter.

  Roger, a little beyond himself with pain and shock and excitement, turned to Eleanor
. Suddenly it seemed to him as though all the evening's events fell into their proper place. He felt tremendously confident and happy.

  'I want to apologize for the way I behaved in the factory. I was grossly rude. But I was frightened for you,' he began in a polite conversational voice.

  'It was perfectly all right - rather funny really. I suppose you saved my life. I'm very grateful.'

  'You needn't be. You know, of course, I love you.'

  'You what?'

  'I love you. I don't want to bother you about it, but it may explain a little why I was so savage when I was afraid you might be killed.'

  'Oh,' said Eleanor very softly. 'Oh.'

  'I had not really meant to tell you,' he continued with conversational equanimity. 'But it occurred to me that no other explanation of my conduct was rational, and really there is no reason why you should not know. I mean, you see, loving a person puts one under a definite obligation to them. I have got so much happiness from simply knowing that you are in the world, that I naturally should be glad to have any chance of repaying it. Of course, I realize that this can mean nothing to you,' he went on, arguing with a sort of fierce good humour. 'But sometimes it might be convenient to know that there is somebody in the world who would give all he possesses for the chance of serving you. I'm not suggesting that there is anything I can do. But just in case.'

  'Oh - er - thank you,' she said flatly.

  'It's very good of you to bother with me. Now I promise not to refer again to this unless you choose. And now ought you really to be waiting here? You must be frightfully tired?'

  'Oh, I'm perfectly all right. I wouldn't have missed it all for anything - the wind, I mean. But I see our friend the policeman coming back with a whole retinue of stretcher-bearers and whatnots.'

  'Good. Excellent. Oh, by the way, if you happen to be seeing Miss Denton-Smyth within a day or two, would you be so awfully good as to tell her why I can't go round to-morrow? I think she was expecting me,'

  'But, of course, she'll have to hear about all this. She'll probably come rushing round to see whether you're still alive. She thinks the world of you, you know. Poor Caroline!'

  Chapter 6 : Clifton Roderick Johnson

  §1

  earlier that same evening Clifton Roderick Johnson, proprietor, manager, secretary, tutor and director-of-studies to the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing, led his four pupils to the window of his Essex Street Office and bade them contemplate the view to their left.

  'There,' he boomed, thrusting his vast head and shoulders through the window and gesticulating towards Essex Stairs. 'There's a bit of old London. That's Romance. That's Beauty.' He withdrew his body and one by one the clerk from Islington, the maiden lady from a Bayswater boarding-house, the retired jeweller from Streatham and the young woman from Barnes, who wanted to be like Pola Negri, strained their necks to look upon Romance and Beauty, then followed him back to their table. This was the Tutorial Glass in Scenario Suggestion, Course II, a class which Mr. Johnson gave his pupils to understand was the most subtly advanced and select of all his classes, a class at which He Himself presided, and to which only his most promising pupils were admitted The Chosen Four, who sat gaping at the deal table covered with apple-green casement cloth and ink splashes, thought that they were the star students chosen from a clientèle of some hundreds, who in a larger, ruder, less eclectic hall heard words of wisdom from Mr. Johnson's Staff. They did not know, and indeed it is only fair to add that at the moment Mr, Johnson hardly remembered, that they were the sole pupils whose fees of six guineas, cash in advance, had been paid into the school account. They did not know, and indeed Mr. Johnson hardly knew, that their lecturer who spoke so confidently of technique, cuts, drama and royalties had himself been able to sell for performance only one scenario and a set of captions.

  Johnson was certainly feeling good that evening. Ideas flooded his mind so fast that they almost choked him, and the four pupils had no sense that they were being defrauded of their money's worth.

  'Write down in your note-books, and engrave upon your memories,' roared Johnson, 'that you should never waste a good view. Every view looks picturesque from some angle. The dullest life gives scope for spot-lights somewhere. Bearing that in mind, let's turn to the Home Exercise. Got that view of the Essex Stairs in your heads? Right. Fire away. Design five different scenes suitable for

  (a) Silent films

  (A) Talking films

  (c) Colour - talking films against the background of the Essex Stairs - making use of

  The movement up and down the stairs

  The teashop door half-way up the stairs

  The view of the Embankment from the stairs

  The busy life of Essex Street at the top. Think of Essex Street - movement - traffic - City life - street musicians— proximity to Fleet Street — Press — Strand — Law Courts —Temple - Business Offices. Then think of the Embankment — River - Romance — Roaming - London the biggest Port in the World — Gateway to the unknown — New London - Old London. Now think of different moods for a scenario.

  Comedy - light - spring - love - pathos - human - sentiment. An April shower - primroses or violets sold on the pavement - a girl runs to shelter under Essex arch. The young man shelters too.

  Farce - a chase - fat Jew hawker - absconding up and down the steps - cars parked by embankment gardens - motor-cycle - try to ride cycle down the stairs - fat woman at bottom selling toy ducks.

  Tragedy - hero leaving the Law Courts - disgraced alone - all lost - river suggests flight - suicide - peace - between the indifferent hustle of the Strand an' the eternal peace of the river -

  That no lives live for peace That dead men rise up never — er — er That even the weariest river winds somewhere home — down? home to the sea.

  Look it up. Look it up. Always verify your quotations -Remember that a little verse goes a long way in sentimental comedy, drama, or tragedy - Keep it outa crook stuff an' farce.

  (d) Historic - that's the fourth - look up history costume stuff.' What would happen on Essex Stairs? You gotta find out how old the Stairs are - what happened there. An' what could have happened there. Remember that film history deals with possibilities rather than facts. Local colour — time colour. Keep it vivid. Pep it up with a bit o' farce. Love story an' so on. Keep your love stories light, without any sex in them. I'm gonna talk straight. You're not kids, nor'm I. Man to man. The public wants good strong human interest, but it doesn't need Sex. Give clean humour. Don't mind riskin' a tear or two. What do we take the Missus to the Movies for but to give her a good cry, eh? But keep it strong an' keep it simple. Now send me in those synopses before next Friday; write on one side of the paper only an' don't forget a penny-halfpenny stamp. That's all.' He dismissed the class with much hand-shaking and salutation. 'Well - good night - So-long - Cheerio. Good night, Mr. Simpson. 'Night, Miss Brodie. 'Night, Miss Elloway. 'Night, Mr. Loram. Good night.'

  The pupils snapped up their dispatch-cases. They fumbled for their umbrellas, and off they went, clattering down the steep stone steps, chattering: 'Well, wasn't he good this evening?' 'Mustn't it be marvellous to have all those ideas?' Even Loram, the jeweller, with masculine restraint, conceded, 'Brilliant fellow. Very. Expect we shall hear more of him one day.' Whatever else Johnson might do for his pupils, he certainly gave them a sense of vitality. His enormous physical gusto invigorated them. He made them feel that life was full of exciting possibilities; he made them feel that they were in close contact with a cultured mind.

  In his search for culture and beauty, Johnson had acquired almost every kind of outline and selection that modern publishers' advertisements could recommend. On his shelves were Outlines of History, Science, Philosophy and Religion; Literature was served up to him in the Hundred Most Famous Stories of the World, in the Thirty-Seven Forms of the Plot, and the Dictionary of Literary Characters. He knew the characteristics of Mr. Micawber and Paul Dombey without having read a word of Dickens. He could adorn his tales
with classical allusions and paint his morals from great fiction of the Continent. All modern labour-saving devices for recognizing allusions to Cervantes, Bellerophon, Cicero and Ella Wheeler Wilcox lay at his elbow, and if in the course of his headlong gallops through history, science, literature and religion, he sometimes misplaced an island, or swept an artist or composer into the wrong century. who among his audience was to question him? And, if challenged, had he not his perfect justification?

  'Dates?' said Johnson. 'What are dates? An arbitrary division of time invented for the convenience of unimaginative men. 'Smy belief that in the future you'll never stop to bother about the date of this A.D. or that B.C. If you want facts an' dates, hop along the Strand to Somerset House, You'll get 'em there. You'll get nothing else. Dead stuff, I say. Dead stuff. I give you living knowledge. I give you Beauty — The Eternal Quest. The Eternal Question. I give you the key to the Universe. Culture —'