She cannot be the only one. That would be too hard. But then everyone is the only one. Which is also too hard.
Be still, she thinks. This is what mercy feels like.
It’s why we have love poems. Because nothing can be said.
THE PORCHESTER BATHHOUSE FOR GENTLEMEN, MAIDA VALE
10.16 a.m.
Steam hits his face in a scald of wet cloud. As he limps through the atrium, careful on his stick, easing a measured way towards the damp wooden bench by the wall, the mist-wreathed figures of the other men seem like statues, totems in a dream of the East.
Wet tiles drip. Hot coals hiss. Eucalyptus in the air, an aroma of sandalwood and spruce. Ten men are in the room, all naked, most conversing, but this being England the conversation is of the weather, which, it is agreed, might well be worse. The weather is working hard this morning.
Beyond the tiles, out in the world, there are hurricanes, bombs and strikes, but it is understood, without anyone ever making it clear, that those subjects are generally better avoided by the naked, like the split infinitive by careful writers.
The fat masseur waddles in, bath-sheet around his astonishing midriff, bundle of twigs at the ready. He is so obese that his belly looks like a deployed parachute; his Rubenesque hips and breasts glint with oil. Would anyone care for a schmeiss?
Why not, one gentleman says, as though this possibility has arisen unexpectedly, is a pleasant surprise, now laying himself face down on the wet, hot bench like a recently caught salmon on a slab.
Water is splashed on the stones, the mist gushes hard. The masseur begins spanking him smartly with the bundle of tied twigs, now with the wrapped-up towel, now again with the twigs, while the muttering about the possibility of April showers continues and is peaceably passed about the cell like a hookah. The moans of the City gentleman arise from time to time, as the masseur subjects him to surely painful kneading. At one point the groanings become hard to be inscrutable about. ‘If it’s worth doing at all,’ another gentleman, an insurance agent, says, ‘a thing is worth doing thoroughly.’ Watchword of an Empire on which the sun never sets.
Next it is the turn of the author of several forgotten novels, elderly fellow who trundles about in a wheelchair and rarely says much, funny sort of Arish-English accent. Lives in a charity home around the corner. Used to work in the West End. Must have a story or two to tell but keeps to himself. They say he knew Wilde and Ellen Terry.
Poor old cove’s in a bad way, body going to ruin. Suffered a stroke in February, his fourth. Bit shaky. Forgets the odd word. Gets mixed up. But must be acknowledged he’s a tough bird, here every morning, shine or rain. Can’t be easy but he doesn’t like to be offered assistance. Stubborn sort of coot. That’s a Pat for you, of course.
After the schmeiss, a sit in the frigidarium, and he dresses again, which these days takes time and concentration. He gives a tip – it’s never much but he gives it every day – to the young man on duty at the Front Desk and wheels himself out of the Porchester Bathhouse. So wonderful to feel properly clean.
His forearms are aching as he turns onto Queensway but that is only to be expected, he has fallen out of the habit of exercise lately. Today will go some way towards rectification. And the morning, if chilly, is fresh.
O, the little patisseries, the perfumed steam from the Turkish baths still hanging hotly about his clothes. A gang of rough navvies flailing at the road with their picks, while the foreman, cig in mouth, bawls blasphemies. That street-girl on the corner. The peal of the bells from St Stephen’s. The mope-faced Greek barber in his dirty little shop. A nun jingling a collection box for the hungry.
The sight of the street-girl stirs memories of the Ripper times. Terrible that they never caught him, he is probably still alive, could be anyone. The little Greek barber, the foreman of the navvies, one of those naked men back in the bathhouse. Might have struck again afterwards, almost certainly did before. As a Londoner of that season, you carry these things. There will never be anywhere to put them down.
Passing Whiteley’s, he is careful to glance away from the windows of the bookstore. He doesn’t like to be reminded, too many hurts, disappointments. It is important to remain afloat, eyes on the horizon, always. The past is a drowning madman; throw him a rope, he’ll pull you in.
Startled. He brakes.
Ahead of him on the pavement, in a shelter at a bus stop, the piano teacher, her long black old-fashioned coat, a filigree of sunshine around her. But when he blinks and looks again, she is an old man with an umbrella. Strange. Just a trick of the light.
Sweating a bit now. Strange prickles in the scalp. The grey light of London, so restful. He pictures himself and the other residents having supper together tonight, all bemoaning their failing livers, kidneys, hearts. ‘The organ recital’, Tom calls it.
Ahead is Hyde Park. He crosses near Moscow Road. A young woman helps him, takes the wheelchair’s handles, pushing. While he isn’t ungrateful, he would rather she didn’t. If she must, he would rather be asked.
It doesn’t do to be a baby. He doesn’t require assistance. At the same time, what can one say? The road to hell may indeed be paved with good intentions but, at this age, any paving is a consolation.
Elegant cavalry horses parading on the Row, flanks sleek and moist. Lovers in the bowers of the rose gardens. Little boys on their way to school in their bat-like robes. A pretty guardsman standing sentry in his pretty wooden box, like a toy made large in a dream.
A brass band gathering beneath a trades-union banner. Two schoolgirls dawdling by the fountain. O it would do a body good, a morning like this, to be alive, in the zhoosh of London.
Ellen’s word. Zhoosh. A funny part of her charm, those words she’d invent to fill gaps. Gullyfluff: the debris accumulating in the bottom of a lady’s handbag. Bippy: an attractive-looking young man of even more than average stupidity. Foozler: a person not to be trusted.
Dear old Len. Whatever happened? Lost touch, don’t know why. Wonder if she’s still working, if she ever thinks of the old days. Heard she was living in Somerset.
He stops beneath a plane tree, smokes half of one of the four cigarettes he can afford to have today. Would be pleasant to have a newspaper now, why didn’t he bring one? Next time he will. And a hip flask.
Keats and gin in Hyde Park, and the soothe of throaty smoke. A consummation devoutly to be wished.
He waits. Time to kill. But it doesn’t want to die. Still an hour before the picture-house opens.
He wonders what will be showing today, maybe a newsreel or a Greek tragedy. Perhaps he’ll truckle down to Speakers’ Corner, listen a while to the extremists? But no, it’s too early, there’ll be nobody there. They’ll still be in bed with their fervencies. He finds it a token of England’s mellowness that lunatics are tolerated in public, given places in parks, like fountains.
Tired, a bit abstracted by the steam and the hard massage, he can’t face the magazine of crossword puzzles in his overcoat pocket. He looks at his watch. Only seven minutes have passed. Feels a year. Strange hunger and thirst. A cold breeze blows across from Kensington, raising an aroma from the trees, from the grass, from the sedge of the lake. He takes a sheet of filched notepaper from his inside jacket pocket –
THE WILLOUGHBY HOME FOR GENTLEFOLK OF ABRIDGED MEANS
15 & 16 Brickfields Terrace, London W2
– and begins to write.
Dearest mouse
My darling Flo
Dear Florence
Old girl,
Please forgive my spidery scrawl of more than usual ghastliness. Find I can’t manage at the ruddy machine this morning, fingers a bit stiff and pins-and-needles, but nothing to be concerned about, just the cold weather. You may utter hard words at my calligraphy, dear poppet, but in a way it is not a bad thing to write by hand because one has to think about it and go more slowly don’t you find? There. Now. I am pausing. For breath.
I was thinking about sponges the other day, how they live i
n the sea. Do you think the sea would be far higher if they didn’t?
Lovely to have received your thumpingly long and newsy letter. Hope all continues well for you in Dublin and that you are feeling a little better and over your chill. It is a damp old town of drears and old maids and foozlers but you are correct, they celebrate Easter with more intensity over there, with perhaps a residual je ne sais quoi of the druidic?
I used to love hearing those very forlorn bells you mention from the Roman Catholic church in Fairview, they were cast in Italy, isn’t their musicality just wonderful, so orotund and sonorous. It (the RC church) was consecrated in the year I turned eighteen. I remember, on my way home from a shatteringly dull lecture that evening, seeing the great procession, like something out of Chaucer, an exultation of bishops and choristers in their stiff, heavy robes, monks solemnly swinging thuribles, deacons carrying statues of the saints and virgins. Isn’t it queer? Everything is there for ever if one knows which room to look in – or opens the door in error while searching for something else. Why then, you go into the room and a whole world is there. Like diving under the sea.
One elderly Czar-looking fellow, I suppose an archbishop or other holy wiz, was holding aloft a golden book with a jewel-encrusted cover, another carried an ostensorium or what I think the Roman Catholics call a monstrance, you know, the circular vessel in which the Eucharistic host is displayed for veneration. A plump cardinal (he might have been?) with an exquisitely corrupt face was being hefted along on a bier. And the glorious clouds of incense. And a veritable army of rather terrifying axe-faced nuns. Quite wonderful.
Given that the whole gaudy had been got up to celebrate the coming back to life of a chap that had been dead, the feeling was somewhat austere, delightfully so. I liked that.
Along the streets the local people had congregated and were singing a hymn, the men doffing their hats as the holy persons and holy objects processed past, the women kneeling, heads lowered:
Faith of our fathers, living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword.
It being Dublin, there was a great throng of poor people from the slums, many of the children and even some of the men barefoot, their feet actually bleeding, so that one couldn’t help but reflect on the contrasts of the occasion. I remember mentioning it to poor Father that evening at suppertime. His reply comprised one spat word. ‘Papists.’
A good man in many ways but eaten into by hate. Always sad to see.
I’m glad you went over, old girl, especially since, as you say, neither of your great-aunts may last long now. It is important to make a good effort with elderly relatives. For you to be there at the end will bring great comfort.
Heard a good joke the other day and meant to store it up for you, but now I have forgotten it. Bother. Mind like a jellyfish this morning. It will come back to me.
Saw a splendid moving-picture at the Scala on Thursday last, about the royal tour, entitled ‘Our King and Queen in India’. Outside the theatre some disrespectful person had inserted a ‘Y’ before the title. I liked seeing the Indians’ faces. They reminded me of Dubliners.
Otherwise a quiet month here. But all well as can be expected. I am sitting in a cosy rug by a nice warm fire in the dayroom as I write these words, and am being plied with buns and steaming cups of strong tea. The table is groaning with ices, apples and biscuits, lemon pie, jugs of hot chocolate. Everyone here is very warm-hearted and kindly. I feel at home and want for nothing.
Many old chums from theatre days and other idlers have been calling to see me. Hart Crane visited last evening and we had a good old chat about the glory times, and later today I am meeting Shaw. He is giving me luncheon at the Pen Club in the Strand. (There’s fancy, I hear you say.) He does rather bore on at one about socialism and all the rest of it and, since taking up ardent vegetarianism has become more violent. But he means well.
So, you are not to worry about me at all, everything is rosy o’grady. I do not like to think of you being in any way concerned, as you were in your last letter. I am feeling right as the mail and am happily going about without the wheelchair these days and generally chipper and hearty. I don’t know myself.
What else to tell you, old girl? Let me see. Oh, the pitmen’s strike has ended, I am glad to say that they got what they wanted. Imagine having to strike for the right to be paid for working two miles beneath the ground. Isn’t it wonderful to think of the great ship arriving in the Cove of Cork from Southampton, what a hooley they shall have, be the hokey. It will be a special mischief and delight to all Corkonians that the mightiest vessel the oceans have ever seen did not call to Dublin but proceeded instead to what they feel is the true capital. Their self-regard, like the ship, is unsinkable.
Matron is talking darkly of inflicting a cellmate on me but I don’t know if she shall. I should be happy to shove up a bit in the stalls for another old carthorse, but my room is mighty small so his would need to be a leprechaun’s bed. But perhaps jolly to have the company, someone to bore? What do you think?
I long to see you again, my dearest. Let me know when you are coming back.
A Romanian girl who teaches piano has been coming in now and again to play for us old duffers in the evenings, she is uncommonly good. Field. Beethoven. Chopin, so on, the melancholy end of the forest, perhaps. But sad music is cheering in its way. It has been agreeable to befriend her a little, she seems lonesome and somewhat withdrawn, in need of a friend. She and I sometimes have a nice talk by the fire or she comes in to read to me. I tell her not to look back, but forward, always. Loneliness is a terrible thing.
Well, dear girl, the ladies are saying it is time for morning coffee, so I shall bid you adieu and be in touch again soon. In the meantime, your ever loving—
‘I say, you old nuisance, what idleness are you at?’
When he looks up towards the voice, he is amazed to see a smiling, thin-faced young man in the tight-fitting tweeds of a dapper fellow-about-town. So like Florence, the shy grin, the animal grace. For a moment he wonders if he is dreaming.
‘As I live and breathe. Noel – my dearest boy.’
‘Guten Morgen, honoured Pops of the charioteers. You are looking ruddy royal. Like Boadicea in a bowler.’
‘But, heavens, what are you doing here and at this hour of the day? Why are you not at your work? Is something wrong?’
‘The mighty overlords of the Triple Shield Assurance Company can spare one of their toiling minions for an hour or two. Wanted to see my old Popsicle, spend a little time.’
‘But how did you know where I was? You look wonderfully bright-eyed.’
‘That was detective work if you like, regular Sherlock Holmes caper. I calls to the Willoughby, they sends me round to the bathhouse. Cove at the bathhouse saw you trundling towards Queensway. Which made muggins here reckon you were planning one of your interminable sits in the park, no doubt giving yourself pneumonia as blumming usual. So I jumped a hansom to the Kensington side and hiked it back on Shanks’s pony.’
‘What a lovely surprise to see you.’
‘They told me you hadn’t been eating again. The coves at the Willoughby.’
‘They exaggerate.’
‘“Appetite of a sparrow and he’s up all night.”’
‘Nonsense.’
‘“Won’t associate wiv the other residents, keep to ’isself, never leaves ’is room.”’
‘Balderdash.’
‘We are going to proceed, you and I, to a place of repast, and I am going to feed you up like a foie gras goose.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘So jolly to see your frown. Didn’t want you to be alone today, old Pops.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. There is nothing special about today.’
‘You know well what I mean. I saw it mentioned in The Times. Difficult business this afternoon, don’t say it won’t be, there’s a love.’ He approaches, kisses his father’s forehead, tucks in the blanket. ‘I have a very fair idea of what c
ourse you’re plotting, mein Vater, a certain event commencing at three of the clock this aft? Thought you could stand a little companionship, that’s all.’
‘What news, then, dear lad? Yes, push me a while would you, my arms are tired.’
‘Wonderful news, Father, I am in love.’
‘You are in love every time I see you. With a different girl.’
‘Searching for the right one, that’s all.’
‘You are searching with notable extensiveness.’
‘One does one’s duty.’
‘Heard from your mother since? She is still with Great-Aunt Lucy in Dublin. Yes, the path through the rose gardens.’
‘Her last letter made me howl, such an operetta of complaints about Dublin life. The dirt, the impudence, the rudeness of porters. Some chappie name of Larkin has the dockers riled up. No manners any more, no one knowing his place. Do you know, I often think that’s why Mummie goes to Ireland at all? To apply the perfect brake to her happiness.’
‘It’s so long since I have been there, I remember very little.’
‘Great-Aunt Lucy says no good will come of allowing the natives self-government.’
‘Great-Aunt Lucy has been saying that since about 1732.’
‘She says spite is as plentiful in Dublin as are the spa-waters in Switzerland.’
‘Push a little harder, can’t you, Nolly? You are a third my ruddy age.’
‘But I am more beautiful than you, Father. That saps an awful lot of my strength. I say, look at that saucy girl over there, what an absolute masher.’
‘I am a little long in the tooth for that sort of sightseeing, if you’d be so good.’
‘Shall we see if she has an older sister? Or a Great-Aunt?’
‘Push on.’
CHARING CROSS STATION
Shadowplay Page 29