by Evelyn Waugh
Two hours later I rang up. “No,” he said, “there’s no news. I said I’d telephone you if there was.”
“But what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of lull.”
“But she’s all right, isn’t she? I mean they’re not anxious.”
“I don’t know. The doctor’s coming again. I went in to see her, but she didn’t say anything. She was just crying quietly.”
“Nothing I can do, is there?”
“No, how could there be?”
“I mean about lunch or anything. You don’t feel like coming out?”
“No, I ought to stay around here.”
The thought of the lull, of Lucy not speaking, but lying there, in tears, waiting for her labour to start again, pierced me as no tale could have done of cumulative pain; but beyond my sense of compassion I was now scared. I had been smoking a pipe; my mouth had gone dry, and when I knocked out the smouldering tobacco the smell of it sickened me. I went out into Ebury Street as though to the deck of a ship, breathing hard against nausea, and from habit more than sentiment, took a cab to the Zoo.
The man at the turnstile knew me as a familiar figure. “Your lady not with you today, sir?”
“No, not today.”
“I’ve got five myself,” he said.
I did not understand him and repeated foolishly, “Five?”
“Being a married man,” he added.
Humboldt’s Gibbon seemed disinclined for company. He sat hunched up at the back of his cage, fixing on me a steady, and rather bilious stare. He was never, at the best of times, an animal who courted popularity. In the cage on his left lived a sycophantish, shrivelled, grey monkey from India who salaamed for tidbits of food; on his right were a troup of patchy buffoons who swung and tumbled about their cage to attract attention. Not so Humboldt’s Gibbon; visitors passed him by—often with almost superstitious aversion and some such comment as “Nasty thing”; he had no tricks, or, if he had, he performed them alone, for his own satisfaction, after dark, ritualistically, when, in that exotic enclave among the stucco terraces, the prisoners awake and commemorate the jungles where they had their birth, as exiled darkies, when their work is done, will tread out the music of Africa in a vacant lot behind the drug store.
Lucy used always to bring fruit to the ape; I had nothing, but, to deceive him, I rattled the wire and held out my empty fingers as though they held a gift. He unrolled himself, revealing an extraordinary length of black limb, and came delicately towards me on toes and fingertips; his body was slightly pigeon chested and his fur dense and short, his head was spherical, without the poodle-snout of his neighbours—merely two eyes and a line of yellow teeth set in leather, like a bare patch worn in a rug. He was less like a man than any of his kind and he lacked their human vulgarity. When, at short range, he realized that I held nothing for him he leapt suddenly at the bars and hung there, spread out to his full span, spiderish, snarling with contempt; then dropped to the floor and turning about walked delicately back to the corner from which I had lured him. So I looked at him and thought of Lucy, and the minutes passed.
Presently I was aware of someone passing behind me from the salaaming monkey to the troup of tumblers, and back again, and at either side peering not at the animals but at me. I gazed fixedly at the ape, hoping that this nuisance would pass. Finally a voice said, “I say.”
I turned and found Arthur Atwater. He was dressed as I had seen him before, in his raincoat, though it was a fine, warm day, and his soft grey hat, worn at what should have been a raffish angle but which, in effect, looked merely lopsided. (He explained the raincoat in the course of our conversation, saying, “You know how it is in digs. If you leave anything behind when you go out for the day, someone’s sure to take a fancy to it.”) “It is Plant, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I never forget a face. They call it the royal gift, don’t they?”
“Do they?”
“Yes, that and punctuality. I’m punctual too. It’s a curious thing because you see, actually, though I don’t make any fuss about it in the position I’m in, I’m descended from Henry VII.” There seemed no suitable answer to this piece of information so, since I was silent, he added suddenly, “I say, you do remember me, don’t you?”
“Vividly.”
He came closer and leant beside me on the rail which separated us from the cage. It was as though we stood on board ship and were looking out to sea, only instead of the passing waters we saw the solitary, still person of Humboldt’s Gibbon. “I don’t mind telling you,” said Atwater, “I’ve had a pretty thin time of it since we last met.”
“I saw you were acquitted at the trial. I thought you were very fortunate.”
“Fortunate! You should have heard the things the beak said. Things he had no right to say and wouldn’t have dared say to a rich man, and said in a very nasty way, too—things I shan’t forget in a hurry. Mr. Justice Longworth—Justice, that’s funny. Acquitted without a stain!—innocent! Does that give me back my job?”
“But I understood from the evidence at the trial that you were under notice to go anyway.”
“Yes. And why? Because sales were dropping. Why should I sell their beastly stockings for them anyway? Money—that’s all anyone cares about now. And I’m beginning to feel the same way. When do you suppose I had my last meal—my last square meal?”
“I’ve really no idea, I’m afraid.”
“Tuesday. I’m hungry, Plant—literally hungry.”
“You could have saved yourself the sixpence admission here, couldn’t you?”
“I’m a Fellow,” said Atwater with surprising readiness.
“Oh.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“I have no reason not to.”
“I can prove it; look here—Fellow’s tickets, two of them.” He produced and pressed on my attention two tickets of admission signed in a thin, feminine hand. “My dear Atwater,” I said, “these don’t make you a Fellow; they’ve merely been given you by someone who is—not that it matters.”
“Not that it matters! Let me tell you this: D’you know who gave me these?—the mother of a chap I know; chap I know well. I dropped round to see him the other evening, at the address I found in the telephone book. It was his mother’s house as it happened. My pal was abroad. But, anyway, I got talking to the mother and told her about how I was placed and what pals her son and I had been. She seemed a decent old bird. At the end she said, ‘How very sad. Do let me give you something,’ and began fumbling in her bag. I thought at least a quid was coming, and what did she give me? These tickets for the Zoo. I ask you!”
“Well,” I said, with a tone as encouraging as I could manage, for it did seem to me that in this instance he had been unfairly disappointed, “the Zoo is a very pleasant place.”
At this suggestion Atwater showed one of those mercurial changes of mood which later became familiar to me but which, at this stage of our acquaintance, I found rather disconcerting, from resentment to simple enthusiasm. “It’s wonderful,” he said, “there’s nothing like it. All these animals from all over the world brought here to London. Think what they’ve seen—forests and rivers, places probably where no white man’s ever been. It makes you long to get away, doesn’t it? Think of paddling your canoe upstream in undiscovered country, with strings of orchids overhead and parrots in the trees and great butterflies, and native servants, and hanging your hammock in the open at night and starting off in the morning with no one to worry you, living on fish and fruit—that’s life,” said Atwater.
Once again I felt impelled to correct his misconceptions of colonial life. “If you are still thinking of settling in Rhodesia,” I said, “I must warn you you will find conditions very different from those you describe.”
“Rhodesia’s off,” said Atwater. “I’ve other plans.”
He told me of them at length, and because they distracted me from thinking of Lu
cy, I listened gratefully. They depended, primarily, on his finding a man of his acquaintance—a good scout named Appleby—who had lately disappeared as so many of Atwater’s associates seemed to have done, leaving no indication of his whereabouts. Appleby knew of a cave in Bolivia where the Jesuits, in bygone years, had stored their treasure. When they were driven out, they put a curse on the place, so that the superstitious natives left the hoard inviolate. Appleby had old parchments which made the matter clear. More than this Appleby had an aerial photograph of the locality, and by a special process known to himself, was able to treat the plate so that auriferous ground came out dark; the hill where the Jesuits had left their treasure was almost solid black; the few white spots indicated chests of jewels and, possibly, bar platinum. “Appleby’s idea was to collect ten stout fellows who would put up a hundred quid each for our fares and digging expenses. I’d have gone like a shot. Had it all fixed up. The only snag was that just at that time I couldn’t put my hands on a hundred quid.”
“Did the expedition ever start?”
“I don’t think so. You see a lot of the chaps were in the same position. Besides old Appleby would never start without me. He’s a good scout. If I only knew where he hung out I should be all right.”
“Where used he to hang out?”
“You could always find him at the old Wimpole. He was what our barman called one of the regulars.”
“Surely they would know his address there?” I kept talking. As long as I was learning about old Appleby I had only half my mind for Lucy.
“Well, you see the Wimpole’s rather free and easy in some ways. As long as you’re a good chap you’re taken as you come and no questions asked. Subs are paid by the month; you know the kind of place. If you’re shy of the ante, as we used to call it, the doorman doesn’t let you in.”
“And old Appleby was shy of the ante?”
“That’s it. It wasn’t a thing to worry about. Most of the chaps one time or another have been shown the door. I expect it’s the same at your club. No disgrace attached. But old Appleby’s a bit touchy and began telling off the doorman good and proper and then the secretary butted in and, to cut a long story short, there was something of a shemozzle.”
“Yes,” I said, “I see.” And even as I spoke all interest in Appleby’s shemozzle faded completely away and I thought of Lucy, lying at home in tears, waiting for her pain. “For God’s sake tell me some more,” I said.
“More about Appleby?”
“More about anything. Tell me about all the chaps in the Wimpole. Tell me their names one by one and exactly what they look like. Tell me your family history. Tell me the full details of every job you have ever lost. Tell me all the funny stories you have ever heard. Tell my fortune. Don’t you see, I want to be told?”
“I don’t quite twig,” said Atwater. “But if you are trying to hint that I’m boring you . . .”
“Atwater,” I said earnestly, “I will give you a pound just to talk to me. Here it is, look, take it. There. Does that look as though I was bored?”
“It looks to me as though you were barmy,” said Atwater, pocketing the note. “Much obliged all the same. It’ll come in handy just at the moment, only as a loan, mind.”
“Only as a loan,” I said, and we both of us lapsed into silence, he, no doubt, thinking of my barminess, I of Lucy. The black ape walked slowly round his cage raking the sawdust and nut shells with the back of his hand, looking vainly for some neglected morsel of food. Presently there was an excited scurry in the cage next to us; two women had appeared with a bunch of bananas. “Excuse me, please,” they said and pushed in front of us to feed Humboldt’s Gibbon; then they passed on to the grey sycophant beyond, and so down all the cages until their bag was empty. “Where shall we go now?” one of them said. “I don’t see the point of animals you aren’t allowed to feed.”
Atwater overheard this remark; it worked in his mind so that by the time they had left the monkey house, he was in another mood. Atwater the dreamer, Atwater the good scout, and Atwater the underdog seemed to appear in more or less regular sequence. It was Atwater the good scout I liked best, but one clearly had to take him as he came. “Feeding animals while men and women starve,” he said bitterly.
It was a topic; a topic dry, scentless and colourless as a pressed flower; a topic on which, in the school debating society, one had despaired of finding anything new to say—“The motion before the House is that too much kindness is shown to animals, proposed by Mr. John Plant, Headmaster’s House”—nevertheless, it was something to talk about.
“The animals are paid for their entertainment value,” I said. “We don’t send out hampers to monkeys in their own forests.”—Or did we? There was no knowing what humane ladies in England would not do—“We bring the monkeys here to amuse us.”
“What’s amusing about that black creature there?”
“Well, he’s very beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” Atwater stared into the hostile little face beyond the bars. “Can’t see it myself.” Then rather truculently, “I suppose you’d say he was more beautiful than me.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, since you raise the point . . .”
“You think that thing beautiful and feed it and shelter it, while you leave me to starve.”
This seemed unfair. I had just given Atwater a pound; moreover, it was not I who had fed the ape. I pointed this out.
“I see,” said Atwater. “You’re paying me for my entertainment value. You think I’m a kind of monkey.”
This was uncomfortably near the truth. “You misunderstand me,” I said.
“I hope I do. A remark like that would start a roughhouse at the Wimpole.”
A new and glorious idea came to me. “Atwater,” I said, cautiously for his oppressed mood was still on him. “Please do not take offence at my suggestion but, supposing I were to pay—as a loan, of course—would it be possible for us, do you think, to lunch at the Wimpole?”
He took the suggestion quite well. “I’ll be frank with you,” he said. “I haven’t paid this month’s sub yet. It’s seven and sixpence.”
“We’ll include that in the loan.”
“Good scout. I know you’ll like the place.”
The taxi driver, to whom I gave the address “Wimpole Club,” was nonplussed. “Now you’ve got me,” he said. “I thought I knew them all. It’s not what used to be called the ‘Palm Beach’?”
“No,” said Atwater, and gave more exact directions.
We drove to a mews off Wimpole Street. (“It’s handy for chaps in the motor business Great Portland Street way,” said Atwater.) “By the way, I may as well explain, I’m known as Norton at the club.”
“Why?”
“Lots of the chaps there use a different name. I expect it’s the same at your club.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said.
I paid the taxi. Atwater kicked open a green door and led me into the hall where a porter, behind the counter, was lunching off tea and sandwiches.
“I’ve been out of town,” said Atwater. “Just dropped in to pay my subscription. Anyone about?”
“Very quiet,” said the porter.
The room into which he led me was entirely empty. It was at once bar, lounge and dining room, but mostly bar, for which a kind of film-set had been erected, built far into the room, with oak rafters, a thatched roof, a wrought iron lantern and an inn-sign painted in mock heraldry with quartered bottles and tankards. “Please don’t take this wrong,” I said, “but I’m really interested to know what was the resemblance you saw between your club and the room where we talked in mine?”
“You can’t compare them really, can you? I just didn’t want to seem snooty. Jim!”
“Sir.” A head appeared above the bar. “Well, Mr. Norton, we haven’t seen you for a long time. I was just having my bit of dinner.”
“May I interrupt that important function and give my friend here something in the nature of a snorter.”—
This was a new and greatly expanded version of Atwater the good scout—“Two of your specials, please, Jim.” To me, “Jim’s specials are famous.” To Jim, “This is one of my best pals, Mr. Plant.” To me, “There’s not much Jim doesn’t know about me.” To Jim, “Where’s the gang?”
“They don’t seem to come here like they did, Mr. Norton. There’s not the money about.”
“You’ve said it.” Jim put two cocktails on the bar before us. “I presume, Jim, that since this is Mr. Plant’s first time among us, in pursuance of the old Wimpole custom, these are on the house?”
Jim laughed rather anxiously. “Mr. Norton likes his joke.”
“Joke? Jim, you shame me before my friends. But never fear. I have found a rich backer; if we aren’t having this with you, you must have one with us.”
The barman poured himself out something from a bottle which he kept for the purpose on a shelf below the bar, and said, “First today,” as we toasted one another. Atwater said, “It’s one of the mysteries of the club what Jim keeps in that bottle of his.” I knew; it was what every barman kept, cold tea, but I thought it would spoil Atwater’s treat if I told him.
Jim’s “special” was strong and agreeable.
“Is it all right for me to order a round?” I asked.
“It’s more than all right. It’s perfect.”
Jim shook up another cocktail and refilled his own glass.
“D’you remember the time I drank twelve of your specials before dinner with Mr. Appleby?”
“I do, sir.”
“A tiny bit spifflicated that night, eh, Jim?”
“A tiny bit, sir.”
We had further rounds; Jim took cash for the drinks; three shillings a time. After the first round, when Atwater broke into his pound note, I paid. Every other time he said, “Chalk it up to the national debt,” or some similar reference to the fiction of our loan. Soon Jim and Atwater were deep in reminiscence of Atwater’s past.