Voice of the Fire

by Alan Moore

  I Travel in Suspenders

  AD 1931

  I travel in suspenders. Selling ‘em, that is, not wearing ‘em. That always gets a laugh. You’ll often find a laugh will kick things off better than anything, whether you’re talking to a client, or young lady. Or for that matter a constable. Do you know, very often in the motor that carries me back and forth from Angel Lane to the assizes I’ll make some remark, you know. Just kidding them along, like, as you do. The other day we passed by this young woman in the street and honestly, the face on her, I’ve never seen one like it. I pointed her out to the young chap that I was handcuffed to. I said, ‘Ah well, there’s no sense looking at the mantel when the fire wants poking.’ As you might suppose, that raised a smile. They’re human just like everybody else.

  I’ve noticed on the corner just across the street from the assizes there’s a Women’s WC that backs on to the big church in the middle there, All Saints. It’s down some steps and you can only see the staircase curving down and round away from you, with white tiles halfway up the wall. I’d like to know what goes on down there, I can tell you. Just imagine, eh, if you could have a look? I close my eyes and I can see it, with them pulling up their pants across their great big bums. I had dreams once, you know, when I was little, about being in the Ladies’ toilets. I was quite a cheeky little monkey even then, you can imagine. There’d be that green muck growing between the tiles and Heaven only knows how it would smell. Like every fanny in the world at once, I’ll bet. Now there’s a thought. I’ll bet you couldn’t find a man who hadn’t entertained it once or twice if he were honest.

  There’s a lot of women come to court sat in the gallery. You’d be surprised, some of the looks I get. I shouldn’t say myself but I’ve got quite a following as if I were a blooming Picture Idol, not that I’m bad-looking in the natural way of things. Of course, I mustn’t do much to encourage them with Lillian sitting there before the dock each day and mooning up at me. It wouldn’t look good, would it, if I were to be seen making eyes at some lass in the back row with my own wife looking on? Not after that commotion with the papers printing what I said to the police, about how my harem keeps me away from home.

  My lawyer Mr Finnemore reckons I put my foot in it with that one, but then he’s not what you’d call a worldly man. To my mind, for the greater part the general public have a soft spot for a dashing rogue, and secretly admire a great philanderer. If they’d had half the fun that I’ve had they’d be glad. Still, it won’t do for Lily to seem too much of a martyr so I must take care and not be caught out, flirting from the dock. There’s a brunette girl, busty little thing, that sometimes comes in on her dinner break and stands there up one corner looking at me. I should like it if she had suspenders on made by the firm I represent, and since they’re not far off in Leicester there’s a good chance that she does. You think about it one way, I’m as good as up her skirt already. How about that?

  Lillian’s already had a lot of sympathy and has been given work down at a shop in Bridge Street here so she can keep herself while she attends the trial. The station where I’m kept in Angel Lane runs right off Bridge Street so we drive up past the shop each morning on my way to court. A little sweetshop as it happens, so it’s just the place for a sweet girl like her. Head over heels for me she is and always has been. Never likes to sit upon my knee, which is my favourite way to hold a woman, but in all particulars apart from that she’s the best wife I’ve got.

  If I should think, I’ll have her bring me up a quarter pound of Menthol Eucalyptus sweets to see if they can ease my throat a bit. All of this giving evidence is making it play up. If I’m not careful I shall have no voice at all before they’re done with me, and then where should I be? There’s a great many people think me quite the best amateur baritone to sing down at the Friern Barnet Social Club in Finchley, where my ‘Trumpeter What Are You Sounding Now’ always goes down a treat. I’ve got a very decent set of pipes on me and shouldn’t want a thing like this to muck them up. I know that men in general often take against a chap who has the lighter type of voice, but ladies by and large seem to prefer it. Wouldn’t do to talk myself hoarse in the dock and spoil all that now, would it?

  He was thrashing like a mackerel, banging on the windshield of my Morris. Not at all a pleasant thing to look at I can tell you, and the noise. You talk about a scalded cat. You’d think he’d be out cold and not know anything about it, but it was the fire. It woke him up. I’ll be quite honest, I can hear it now. It wasn’t even any words you’d take for English it was such an awful racket. Once he kicked the side door open and I thought, ‘Well, that’s it, Alf. You’ve been and gone and done it now.’ Only by then of course the smoke and flames were down him and he’d had his lot. He fell down forward over the front seat with one leg out the car, and that was it. Of course, Joe Soap here stood downwind and didn’t have the sense to move until my eyes were streaming. What a sight we must have been, the pair of us.

  I saw the picture of my Morris Minor that they printed in the Daily Sketch and could have wept. Baby saloon it was, and not that old. I had the thing insured for one hundred and fifty pounds but don’t expect to see a big return from it, things being what they are. Judging from what it looked like in the photograph there wasn’t much left of the blessed thing. The mud-guards were all thrown about like ribs and you could see where all the rubber had poured off the wheels to leave the rims bare. If I ever catch them chaps that stole it, but then no, hang on, that wasn’t true, was it? I made that up. It’s such a job sometimes, just keeping track of everything.

  That was the worst thing about keeping up two wives at once, apart from all the cost involved. It was a strain remembering my story sometimes, I can tell you. All the fiddling little details. Which one I’d told what. With Lillian it wasn’t quite so bad because she’s rather vague by nature and not so inclined to notice if I should slip up, but Ivy now, well. That’s a different matter. It’s not six months since I married her and she’s already quick to pounce upon the smallest thing.

  I married Lil November 1914, so that’s more than sixteen year back now. In all that time, if she’s had a suspicious thought she’s kept it to herself. Even when evidence was put in front of her, such as when I brought her mine and little Helen’s baby to look after — not the one that died, the second one, our little Arthur — even then she took it quieter than a mouse and said that she’d forgive me when I hadn’t even asked her to. Young Arthur’s nearly six now and I’ll say this for our Lillian, she’s brought him up as if he were her own. She’s never shown him any side, not to my knowledge. Like I say, head over heels for me, she is. No questions asked. Hard to believe it’s sixteen years. I missed our anniversary this last November what with all the set-to that we had. I’ll have one of the coppers pop and get her something, if I happen to remember. Better late than never, that’s what I say.

  As for Ivy, I don’t know if it will last for sixteen months, let alone sixteen years. It seemed a good idea when we were wed in June at Gellygaer, though when I say a good idea I mean that she was four months up the spout by then and showing large already, as the skinny ones so often do. God, though, the tits they get on them. It’s almost worth it, having one more mouth to feed so long as you get lovely tits like that to stuff in yours. There now, you see? Another laugh. It’s like I say with laughter, it’s the best thing that there is to break the ice. Everyone feels that much more comfortable.

  But to be serious, with Ivy something told me I was making a mistake from the word go. Not that there’s anything about her I don’t like, but just that you could tell somehow there’d be a lot of fuss involved. You take the last time that I saw her, when I went across to Wales that night directly after my ‘funny five minutes’ out at Hardingstone. Now, as you might imagine, I was in a dreadful tizzy, having lost the car. I’d come out of Hardingstone Lane and stood faffing about there by the end and peering back along the path to watch the two men who had seen me leave the field. I couldn’t spot
them in the dark, although my Morris was still blazing, out across the hedgerows.

  You know how it is at times like that. You feel that everything you do must look suspicious, although half the time you’ll find nobody notices. I went and stood beside the London Road up near the old stone cross they’ve got there, where Queen Eleanor was set down on her funeral procession back to London, and it wasn’t long before I’d thumbed a lorry down, on its way to that very place. I spun a yarn about a lift I’d missed from some well-off old chum who drove a Bentley, and the lorry driver was soon taken in. He drove me to Tally Ho Corner on the Barnet Road and we arrived there about six as it was getting light.

  I told a fellow at the Transport Office there that my own car had been pinched from outside a coffee stall because to tell the truth by then I was quite dozy and forgot that rot I’d said about the Bentley. Still, I’ve got a way with people, there’s a lot of folk have said it, and this bloke was no exception. Put me on a coach, the nine-fifteen for Cardiff, so that I arrived there in the afternoon and caught another bus to Penybryn. I could walk from there to Ivy’s house at Gellygaer and got in about eight that night.

  Well, as I say, there’s always fuss with Ivy. Not that it’s her fault, it’s just there always is, and that night was no different. First of all I had her father, old man Jenkins, buttonhole me in the passageway and ask why it had taken me so long to get there with his Ivy at death’s door with illness and my baby on the way. You know how Taffy Welshman likes his bit of melodrama now and then, and he had Ivy sounding more like Little Nell than anything before he’d done with me. I told him how I’d had my car pinched in Northampton which I dare say I believed myself by then, I’d had to reel it out that often. It’s a funny thing, but on my oath, stood in his passage at that moment I’d forgotten everything about that other poor chap and the fire.

  After I’d gotten past the dad I had the daughter to contend with. Ivy was propped up on pillows in her room and she looked very bad. The baby was due almost any time. No sooner had I sat down on the bed than she was asking when we should move into our new house in Surrey. To be frank, it caught me off-guard and I looked at her gone out. I’d quite forgotten all the business about Kingston-on-Thames that I’d told her and her dad when I was tipsy at our wedding do. Before I could come up with something good she was in floods of tears and telling me I didn’t love her, and how she was sure that I was seeing someone else. Why was I spending all these nights away and so on. You can guess the greater part of it.

  They don’t consider what you might have gone through, do they? Buy me this and buy me that and let’s live somewhere else. Five hundred pounds a year I’m earning now from Leicester Brace & Garter and you might think I’d be well-to-do, but not a bit of it. All of it’s gone on kids or women long before I see a penny of it. It’s the same old story.

  As it stood, although I hadn’t mentioned it to Lillian, I’d planned to sell the house and furniture we had at Buxted Road in Finchley so that I could use the cash to get set up with Ivy and the nipper when it came. Now, you can call me what you like, but I’ve always been softer than I should be when it comes to kids. I’d make a settlement to Lily and young Arthur, naturally.

  Of course, I couldn’t say all this to Ivy without having her fall wise to Lily and my Finchley set-up, so I acted all offended and made quite a fuss about having my car pinched from outside the coffee shop so that it took me eighteen hours to get to Gellygaer. I find it often works if someone gets upset to act as if you’re more upset than they are in return. When you’re a smart chap like myself it never fails, and Ivy was soon telling me that she was sorry that she’d had a go at me, and it was just her nerves, what with the baby due and her so poorly. I said, ‘There now, Climbing Ivy, you can cling to me,’ and when she did I put my hand inside her nighty-top and had a feel. Her tit was hard and heavy with the end part stood out like a football stud. I slept in their spare room that night and I was on the bone just thinking of it, even after all the upset I had during supper, with that neighbour and her bloody paper.

  If I’m truthful it’s my biggest fault, the sex. I’ll tell you, half the time I think of nothing else, and when you’re on your own a lot like me, driving from place to place, it makes it worse. You spend a lot of time with daydreams when you’re up and down the road. Sometimes I’ll have to pull in at a lay-by for a fiddle just so I can think of something else but fanny for an hour or two. I’ve got a catalogue I carry with me in the car with photographs of models in the company range. They’re only little pictures with four of them to a page, and you can only see the women from their tummies to the top part of their legs. You’ll think I’m crackers but to me they’ve all got different characters, and things about the way they stand so you can tell what sort of girls they are. Some of them, they’re the type you know that you’d get on with, and that they’d have decent personalities.

  There’s one that I call Monica. If you look close up at the photograph you can see a light sort of fuzz upon her legs, so I imagine her as blonde. The sort of girl you might find working at the counter in a Post Office, wearing her hair the way they have it now, all straight on top and curled up round the back. She’d look nice in light blue. Her belly button is the kind that’s more upright than wide, so that it’s like a little keyhole in a peach. She’s got one of the newer long-line corsets on that seem to flatter women with more slender hips, which to my mind seems a wise choice and shows she’s more the thoughtful type who takes a lot of care about her clothes. You can tell just by looking at her skin that she can’t be much more than twenty.

  That’s the age, I’ll tell you, when they’re fagged out and fed up with younger lads and start to see the older fellow as romantic. If I could have Monica just hear me do ‘The Cobbler’s Song’ from Chu Chin Chow then I could have her drawers down quick as that. Of all my harem, do you know that sometimes I think I like Monica the best? She doesn’t cost me anything or get me into trouble. I just shoot off in my hanky, close the catalogue and drive away.

  I wasn’t always like this, with the women. Ask my Lily and she’ll tell you: when she knew me back before the War it was as much as I could bring myself to do to give a kiss goodnight, I was that shy. It wasn’t until I’d enlisted in the 24th Queen’s Territorials I had the nerve to go up to a girl and ask her out. The uniform, you see. It made a difference, you can laugh now, but it’s true. I’ve heard women go on and on about how terrible it is the way men fight, but once they see the boots and buttons they’re all over you. They wave you off then stay at home and send white feathers to the conshies. Half the fellows in those trenches wouldn’t be there if not for the way their girlfriends look at them when they’re dressed up for war. Deny it if you can.

  To be quite honest, Lily was the first girl I’d been out with, although I was getting on for twenty. When she first got me to bed I was that green I lay on top of her with my legs open for a time before I realized what I should be doing. In all honesty it wasn’t that successful. Well, I couldn’t get it in and ended up feeling that sick about myself, and when Lil said it didn’t matter that was worse. We never did it right until about a week after we wed. I mean, we’d rubbed each other off and kissed, but that was all, and when we did finally manage it, it was all over in a flash, though that got better as time passed. All told, though I was no great shakes in bed, I think we were happier then, me and my Lillian. It was a shame that we were never blessed with kids, although I’ve made up for it since.

  Four months together, me and Lily had, and by the end of it the How’s-Your-Father, it was smashing. We were that in love, and then, come March in 1915, I was bundled off to France. My God, that was a terror. You don’t know until you’ve been in one. You live in mud and all around there’s lads no older than yourself with half their jaw blown off, and you give up on everything bar doing what you’re told. I’ve seen a horse that had no legs lie shuddering in the muckpit like a bloody seal. I’ve seen men burn.

  I’d only been in
France two months before I caught the shrapnel at Givenchy. Head and leg. The head was worst, apparently, though Muggins here can’t bring to mind a blessed thing about it. Not the moment that it happened or the morning that I’d had before, and not much after. Gone. Clean as a whistle. First thing I knew afterwards was being halfway through a plate of dinner at the hospital. I lifted up a spoon of stringy mash and looked at it, and I remembered that I was Alf Rouse. It was the most peculiar sensation, I can tell you.

  I don’t have the education to explain it but the world seemed different to me after that. I don’t mean that the War had opened up my eyes, like I’ve heard other fellows say. I mean the world seemed different, like as if it was a different world, a stand-in for the real one. How can I explain it? Everything looked wrong. Not wrong, but put together in a hurry as though it could fall apart at any time. The best way I can say it is like when you’re doing art in school, and Miss gives you a sheet of paper first where you can try things out and make a mess, because it’s not the proper picture and it doesn’t matter. When I woke up in that hospital it was like waking up inside the practice scribble, not the picture. Nothing mattered. You could rub it out and start all over. When I think about it, I suppose I’ve pretty much felt that way ever since, though now I’m used to it.

  That was the point where I first got my ‘thing’ about the weaker sex. Of course, for one thing there was opportunity, what with the nurses they had over there. You wouldn’t think to look at some of them, but there was more of that went on than you’d suppose. You see, to all intents and purposes they were the only women over there and they could have their pick. You wouldn’t think they’d feel much like it what with seeing chaps half blown to bits all day, but I could tell a tale or two, believe me. Well, of course, I had a twinge of guilt from time to time regarding Lillian, but nothing that would bowl me over. Like I say, by then things had all sort of flattened out, and nothing that I thought or did seemed to amount to very much. I mean, I know there’s right and wrong, but you come to a point where, honestly, you’re not much bothered.