Good old Rev, Anderson thought; he fought for me right to the last ditch, only there wasn’t any fighting to do. He became aware that Angela was speaking. “I beg your pardon.”
“I said don’t you think this is a miserable way to spend a birthday?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not exactly gay company.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t suppose you like me at all, though, do you?”
“Certainly I do.” As much, he said to himself, as I like any girl or woman.
“I’ve always liked older men. I mean, you’re fairly old, aren’t you?”
“In my thirties.”
“That’s what I mean.” They shuffled round and round. A crooner sang:
I never said thanks
For that lovely weekend,
Those few days of heaven
You helped me to spend…
“I never did hear such a soppy old song,” sang Angela. “Did you?”
“Perhaps not. It was popular when I married my wife.”
“Oh, you’re married. Where’s your wife?”
“She died this month.”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard about you.”
“What have you heard?”
“Only that you were upset, behaving oddly, couldn’t forget her. I bet I could make you forget her.” She moved closer to him.
“Behaving oddly?”
“Excuse me cutting in on you.” Anderson felt himself pushed away. Angela giggled and slipped into her stepfather’s arms. They swayed together, making the beast with two backs, the single and intolerable beast, in the deeply shadowed room. In the very darkest recesses of the room, in the deepest double beds of shadow, Anderson thought, what secrets might be drawn forth by this sickly music and this sweet warm wine? He stood with one arm on the mantelpiece and, with a slight alcoholic drowsiness, watched the beast swaying.
The lights went on. The recesses were exposed to light. The whole room was rich with it, yet strangely the effect was that of a torch shone directly at a face in sleep. The sleeper turns and twists, but he has been speared firmly by the hook of light; and behind the torch he knows there is a judge’s hanging face. So, wrenched from their private dreams and lusts, Anderson and VV and Angela blinked and rubbed their eyes and stretched like figures dropped from a congenial extra-terrestrial existence into the real unpleasant world. The cause of the translation, Mrs Vincent, stood in the doorway. She still wore the dark sack, but her hair was disordered, and Anderson saw with dismay that she had been crying. She strutted slowly, like a breastless pigeon, into the room, infecting them all with her overpowering sense of guilt and shame. Anderson, certainly, waited expectantly for some final pronouncement to drop from her tongue, some word that would make plain the nature of the lotus-land into which they had inadvertently strayed. He found it incongruous that the word she finally ejected like a stone from her lips had a positively banal appropriateness. “Disgusting,” Mrs Vincent said, and without warning dropped with firmly closed eyes on to a convenient sofa.
Her faint, however transparently simulated, had the effect of jerking into action the three figures who seemed set in their surroundings like flies in amber. Angela darted off once again into the kitchen. VV, crying “Her salts, her salts…” ran out of the door that led to the hall. Anderson, left alone with the recumbent figure, rather feebly patted its cold, long hands which showed no awareness of his touch. The application of smelling salts to the narrow nostrils, and the pouring of brandy between the colourless lips, however, proved more effectual. As suddenly as she had dropped down Mrs Vincent, with rather the effect of a jack-in-the box, sat up and stared at the three faces bending over her. She spoke, but only to Anderson, as though the scene she had interrupted proved a theorem long argued between them. “You see.”
But as she straightened Anderson straightened also, so that the effect of her confidence was lost, “I must be leaving, I fear. An appointment.” VV also straightened and nodded to Anderson, as though in relief.
“An appointment,” Angela said mockingly. “It’s not an appointment; it’s a lovely party. I heard you say so when I was in the kitchen. And you won’t take me. Why won’t you take me?”
Mrs Vincent, whose comments at this time had the merit of brevity, ejected another stone, this time dissected straight at Angela.
“My daughter,” she said witheringly.
“And why shouldn’t he take me?”
“You should be in a reformatory,” Mrs Vincent said faintly.
“You only think so because you’re repressed. You look through keyholes. You ought to be in a home.”
“Ha ha ha!” Mrs Vincent’s falsetto laughter was positively frightening. She dropped her voice, most effectively, to a conversational level, as she said; “A period in a reformatory school would do you a great deal of good. I shall make inquiries—”
“They’ll put you in the loony bin,” screamed Angela. She began to dance round her mother, rolling her head idiotically, flapping her hands, and chanting: “The loony bin, the loony bin, they put her away in the loony bin.” Anderson and VV left the room unnoticed. Anderson put on his coat in silence, while VV ran his hands through his hair over and over again, saying: “Sorry, sorry, I’m really awfully sorry.”
“Say goodbye to your wife and stepdaughter for me.”
“I’ll see you downstairs.” When they stood in the vast gilt hall that was the entrance to the flats, VV sighed. “A problem child.”
“There are no problem children,” Anderson quoted sententiously. “Only problem parents.”
“And stepparents?”
“And stepparents.”
“I must go back there. We don’t seem to have had a chance to have our chat, do we?” VV took Anderson’s hand and gripped it. “I’m sorry about the way everything’s turned out.”
“That’s all right.”
“I hope it’s a good party.” VV stood on the steps, waving good-bye. He looked extremely forlorn,
7
Adrian and Jennifer Pollexfen had a tiny mews house at the back of Portland Place. They were the constituent elements of a firm named Pollexfen and Pollexfen, and in that capacity called themselves “Design Consultants.” They were prepared, for a suitable fee, to design in a modern manner anything from a teapot to a motorcar, an electric toaster to a radio-gram, a hockey stick to a new range of cosmetics. The occupation is one recently discovered, but once discovered quickly seen to be indispensable to industry. It will be readily appreciated that the design consultant has an honoured place in the advertising profession, and also that each design consultant will be likely to have his particular variation of style. All design consultants, of course, adhere, in their fashion, to modern conventions: but some are still old-fashioned enough to be stuck in a Le Corbusier doctrine of fitness for purpose, while others have passed beyond that to the belief that some form of ornamentation, or even of free idea association in design, is permissible. The particular distinguishing feature of Adrian Pollexfen’s style was that he managed to make the most disparate objects look like pieces of sculpture by Henry Moore. “UBD,” Adrian would say, which being interpreted meant “Unity plus Beauty equals Design”; and he would point to the teapot with its hollowed centre and its lid strongly resembling one of the pinheads to be found on Moore’s gigantic figures; to the surprising radio cabinet which had dials for breasts and was divided at the crutch; to the abstract shapes he had designed for Mary Magdalen cosmetics. Jennifer added the weight of an enormous mass of statistical information to Adrian’s artistry on the drawing board, she was very ready to show the design development of a particular article since its invention, and to analyse the reasons for the various modifications of existing shapes in historical, economic and artistic terms. Jennifer, it was said by the unkind, first blinded prospective clients with science and Adrian then slew them with charm. The Pollexfens were great party givers. They were anxious to be intimate friends with as many people as possible; and it is well known th
at there is no better way of being intimate friends with people than by introducing them to other people at parties.
Anderson wondered, as his footsteps rang on the cobble-stones, what he was doing here. Why did Elaine want to speak to him? What could she possibly have to say that was important? In the dark mews the Pollexfens’ house was a block of light. A kind of subdued hum came from it, a medley of sounds such as one might expect to hear at the recording of a meeting at the Tower of Babel. Anderson went up the narrow staircase, giving a glance at the alcoves on either side where Pollexfen designs were displayed under perspex; the electric iron like a recumbent woman, the double-headed refillable shaving tube which squirted brushless cream from one head and talcum powder from the other, the toys resembling elemental human figures. At the top of the stairs Jennifer Pollexfen met him, her round face grave at usual, her hair hanging down her back in two long pigtails. They had met once or twice before, but he was surprised by the warmth with which she greeted him. Anderson looked at the thick wedge of humanity behind her, and was reminded of the pictures he had seen of American football.
“There’s someone you’ll like to meet,” Jennifer Pollexfen said. “But a drink first. We’ll have to fight, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t mind about a drink. I’d hoped to see Elaine.”
“She’s about somewhere,” Jennifer Pollexfen said vaguely. “But let’s–” He could not hear the next words for, beckoning him to follow, she threw herself, pigtails waving behind her, into what seemed the most crowded part of the scrum. Surprisingly, it parted for her; arms were withdrawn, legs seemed to bend away as though made of plasticine, and miraculously they came out into a backwater occupied by a square-headed man with cropped hair and a grey beard who stood munching a sandwich from a paper bag. Jennifer Pollexfen beamed with the consciousness of achievement; her round face was rosy. She spoke, but the words were inaudible, until Anderson suddenly heard “Professor Protopopoff.” He extended a hand and the Professor, stuffing his sandwich into the bag and the bag into his pocket, squeezed the hand in a powerful grip and grinned as widely as a cat. When Anderson looked round Jennifer Pollexfen had vanished, swallowed up in the scrum. The Professor was talking, but the noise around them was so great that Anderson could not hear a word he said. This failure in audibility by the Professor was like a break in the sound track of a film – except that the break involved the Professor alone, for all around them the sound track was only too plainly audible. A beefy young man at Anderson’s side had obviously just made a joke. He roared with laughter. “Ha ha ha,” he yelled, and dug at Anderson with his elbow at each roar. “Ha ha ha,” cried a girl in poison green and a man in an egg-yellow pullover. The three of them rocked gently before Anderson’s eyes. And then suddenly the Professor’s sound track was working. In perfect English, but with a slight accent, he said: “…of the syntagma.”
“I beg your pardon.”
The professor was perfectly audible. “I said that, for me, a syntagma is a grammatically free group of signs correlating a determining with a determined term in a binary structure. Now, from the mnemonic point of view –” his eyes rolled alarmingly – “from the mnemonic point of view, a partial syntagma of discourse is a complete mnemonic syntagma if by a mental association it can be reduced to a sentence, of which the determined term is the subject.”
“Oh.”
“Take advertisement.”
“What?”
“I say take advertisement. That is a virtual syntagma, is it not? And yet it is reducible to—”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Anderson said; “I’m looking for somebody.”
“But, Professor—”
“I’m not a professor. My name is Anderson.”
“You are not Professor Protopopoff? The grammarian? No?” The grey-bearded man looked extremely offended. “You have been trying to make a fool of me.” He turned his back on Anderson and took out his paper bag again. Anderson lowered his head and charged into the crowd. But the bodies that had parted before him when he had followed Jennifer Pollexfen’s pigtails now seemed to have taken an obstinate quality of resistance. At one point his way was blocked by two men with enormous stomachs which swelled out of their bodies like balloons. A long way above these touching balloons their mouths were opening and shutting; below, the balloons were supported on spinet-like trousered stalks. For a moment Anderson was seized with a desire to drop down and crawl beneath that bridge of stomachs. Instead he stared angrily at the men and said “Excuse me.” The two heads, as he spoke, seemed to diminish, the stomachs to expand threateningly; then normality returned, the men were men and their stomachs were merely sizeable, and he pushed a way between them. At another time, and quite unexpectedly, he found himself transformed from the outside to the inside of a conversational group. He had been beating on them unavailingly with apologies, with “Would you let me pass” and “Excuse me please,” with unnoticed shoulder taps and unsuccessful sidelong shuffles. They seemed not to notice his existence. And then suddenly he was in the middle of them, a drink was pushed into his hand, he drained it with a confused impression that it was something unusual, and received another, he was clapped on the back and the chatter, instead of moving away from his ears, was all aimed directly at him.
“So this bastard said to old Jock, he said, every well-read man reads The Economist.”
“And then Jock says, well, I’m as red a man as most, and e con o mist comes over my eyes when I see that paper.”
“And this bastard says I tell you frankly, Jock, I don’t think you’re pulling your weight.”
“Weight, Jock says, weight, you could do with losing some weight, and I tell you what, says Jock, you’ve lost me. You know what you can do with your job, says old Jock.”
“Trust old Jock.”
“He’s a lad is old Jock.”
“Stay out the month, the bastard says, and old Jock said I’ll not stay a single day.”
“Swept up the things from his desk, packed them in his briefcase.”
“Raised two fingers to Smallbeer, the managing director.”
“Turned Smallbeer’s secretary over on her desk and whacked at her with a slipper.”
“Kissed the telephone operator good-bye.”
“Said a soldier’s farewell to the Art Department.”
“Blew a raspberry at Production.”
“Cocked his leg up as he walked through Space.”
“Wished Research joy of it.”
“Walked down the street to Rafferty, Hay and Pilkington and got a job at another five hundred a year.”
“Taking the lung tonic account with him.”
Anderson drained the second glass, said “Hurrah for old Jock,” and flung himself at a gap in the circle of figures surrounding him. The figures parted and he was through, but not with a clear passage, for now he bumped against another enormous mass of flesh. A voice said: “Hey there, Andy, watcher doin’ to y’r ol’ pal Amos.” The mass of flesh, great hands and thighs, large feet, blubber face with small twinkling eyes, was resolved into Fletchley.
“Fletchley!”
“My ol’ pal Andy’s lookin’ a little the worse for wear.” With his hands round Anderson’s waist, clasping him with the insistence of an anaconda, Fletchley sniffed the glass which Anderson still firmly held. “Dat ol’ debbil Pernod’s bad ol’ debbil,” he said, and shook his head.
“Where’s Elaine? She said she’d be here.”
The comedy was wiped away from Fletchley’s face. The corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of stage misery. “Gone.”
“What do you mean? Gone home?”
“Oh no, she’s not gone home. She’ll never go home again, Andy boy, she’ll never go home again.”
“She’s left you, then?” Anderson asked brutally. He now had Fletchley not only in focus but in colour, the bluish bags under the eyes, the pasty white cheeks, a hint of carbuncle on the nose.
“She says she’s left me, but she’ll never
leave me. That’s one thing Elaine could never do to her old Fletch. She always comes back. She’s been here tonight. Now she’s gone again, but she’ll come back.”
“Then where is she?”
“At this moment, old boy, she’s probably careering round Regent’s Park in a taxi, making love to a young man. Film star – not a star, that is, but film actor. Good looking. Young. Got everything. She deserves everything; she deserves the best, and what’s she got? Me?” Tears were in Fletchley’s eyes. “But I want you to know, Andy, that I’m not jealous. Whatever I may have said or done, it wasn’t done in jealousy.” The great drops of liquid overspilled the lids, surmounted the bags beneath them, and coursed down Fletchley’s cheeks. He put out his tongue and licked at them.
The realization of Fletchley’s condition made Anderson feel fully sober, although he was not in any case suffering from drunkenness in any easily recognizable form. His speech was clear, his mind normally, perhaps even abnormally, active; the room and the people in it had now settled into what was almost a state of slow motion. He could observe in detail every movement of a hand, every flicker of expression. His perceptions seemed to be sharpened so that, for instance, the colours of Fletchley’s suit, a close-woven herringbone, stood out with extraordinary distinctness. He put out a hand and touched the cloth, and a remarkable improvement in his tactile sense was also apparent; his fingers rubbed against material not to be classified simply as rough or smooth but identifiable, rather, in terms of emotion. This, Anderson seemed to realize, was the way in which life itself should ideally be apprehended. What stirs in my stomach at the touch of this cloth? What subliminal urges move me when I feel fur? What words can taste buds find in richness of cream? Softness, indeed, and richness – how inadequate they were.
“Words,” he said to Fletchley, “are not feelings.”
“What’s that, old boy? I didn’t quite catch.”
“Richness, softness, what do they express? What do any words? Not feelings. Words were deceivers ever. The true feelings lie here.” Anderson placed his hand on the top button of his waistcoat.
31st Of February Page 14