Adventures in the Skin Trade Page 5

  “You’ve got a bottle on your finger,” she said.

  “There, you see, everybody notices. Why don’t you take it off, Sam? It isn’t a decoration, it isn’t useful, it’s just a bottle.”

  “I think my finger must have swollen, Mr. Allingham. The bottle’s much tighter now.”

  “Let me have a look at you again.” Mrs. Dacey put on a pair of spectacles with steel rims and a hanging chain. “He’s only a baby.”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “Ikey Mo, the baby farmer.” She walked carefully to the back of the shop and called, “Polly, come down here. Polly. Polly.”

  A girl’s voice called back from high up the house, “What for, ma?”

  “Come and get a gentleman’s bottle off.”

  “It sounds like a Russian composer, doesn’t it, darling?” George Ring said, at the door. “What a marvelous dress, you look like a murderess.”

  He sat down next to Samuel.

  “I couldn’t get Rose to move. She’s going to lie there all day in a tantrum. Do tell me what’s happening, everybody.”

  “It’s that bottle again,” Mr. Allingham said, “Why didn’t he put his finger in a glass or something? I don’t know what he was poking his finger about for in the first place. It’s an enigma to me.”

  “Everything’s an enigma to you. You can’t understand the slightest touch of originality. I think it must be awful not to have any imagination. It’s like a sense of humour.”

  “I’m just saying that not to be able to go in and buy a bottle of Bass without having to leave with the bottle on your finger seems to me like a kind of nightmare. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Samuel heard Mrs. Dacey’s daughter running downstairs. Then he saw her hand on the edge of the door. In the second she took to push the door open and come in, he made her a hundred faces; he made her talk and walk in all the disguises of his loves at night; he gave her golden hair, black hair, he knew that she would be gypsy-skinned and white as milk. Polly come and put the kettle on with your white, slender, brown broad hands, and see me waiting like a grenadier or a caliph in the mousey cubicle.

  “It’s like one of those nightmares when you’re playing billiards and the cue’s made of elastic,” Mr. Allingham said.

  In came a girl with a long, pale face and glasses. Her hair was not any of Samuel’s colours but only dark and dull.

  “Go and help to pull his bottle off,” said Mrs. Dacey.

  Polly sat down on the table and took his hand. “Does it hurt? I’ve never done it before.” She pulled at his finger.

  “I hope you won’t ever have to do it again, either,” Mr. Allingham said. “I don’t care if I haven’t got any imagination. I’m glad I’m like I am without anything on my finger.”

  Polly bent over Samuel’s hand and he saw down her dress. She knew that he was looking, but she did not start back or spread her hand across the neck of her dress; she raised her head and stared at his eyes. I shall always remember this, he said to himself. In 1933 a girl was pulling at a bottle on the little finger of my left hand while I looked down her dress. It will last longer than all my poems and troubles.

  “I can’t get it off,” she said.

  “Take him up to the bathroom then and put some soap on it,” said Mrs. Dacey, in her dry, neat voice. “And mind it’s only his bottle.”

  George Ring said as they got up to go, “Scream if you want. me, I’ll be up in a wink. She’s the most terrible person, aren’t you, darling? You wouldn’t catch little George going up there all alone.”

  Polly led the way upstairs.

  “I’m not complaining,” Mr. Allingham said, “I’m just making a statement. I’m not saying it isn’t all as it should be. He’s got a bottle on his finger and I’ve got a tooth in my pie.”

  His voice faded.

  3

  Someone had drawn the ragged curtains in the bathroom to shut out the damp old day, and the bath was half full of water with a rubber duck floating on it. As Polly closed and locked the door birds began to sing.

  “It’s only the birds,” she said. She put the key down her dress. “You needn’t be frightened.”

  Two cages hung from the ceiling.

  But Samuel had looked frightened when she turned the key and put it away where he never wanted to find it, not when the room grew suddenly like a wood in the tangled shadows of the green curtains.

  “It’s a funny place to have birds,” he said.

  “They’re mine.” Polly let the hot water run and the birds sang more loudly as though they heard a waterfall. “Mr. Allingham comes here for a bath on Wednesdays and he says they sneer at him and blow little raspberries all the time he’s washing. But I don’t think he washes very much. Doesn’t Mr. Allingham make you laugh too?”

  He expected her to be smiling when she turned to him, but her face was still and grave, and all at once he saw that she was prettier than any of the girls he had made up in his mind before she opened the door downstairs. He distrusted her prettiness because of the key. He remembered what Mrs. Dacey had said when Mr. Allingham asked where Polly was. “Up to no good.” He did not think she was going to put her arms around him. That would have been different. If she tried to put his head under the water he’d shout for George Ring and up he’d come like a horse, neighing and smelling of scent.

  “I only locked the door because I don’t want George Ring to come in. He’s queer. He puts scent all over his underclothes; did you know that? The Passing Cloud, that’s what we call him. The Passing Cloud.”

  “You didn’t have to put the key where you put it, though,” Samuel said. “I might push you down and fish for it, I might be that sort.”

  “I don’t care.”

  If only she would have smiled at him when she said that. But she looked as though she really did not care whether he pushed her down or whether he sat on the edge of the bath and touched the duck with his bottle.

  The duck floated in circles on the used, greasy water.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  ‘Mine’s Mary. But they call me Polly for short.”

  “It isn’t much shorter, is it?”

  “No, it’s exactly the same length.”

  She sat by his side on the edge of the bath. He could not think of anything to say. Here was the locked door he had often made up in stories and in his head, in bed in Mortimer Street, and the warm, hidden key, and the girl who was willing for anything. The bathroom should be a bedroom and she should not be wearing glasses.

  “Will you take off your glasses, Polly?”

  “If you like. But I won’t be able to see very far.”

  “You don’t have to see very far, it’s only a little room,” he said. “Can you see me?”

  “Of course I can. You’re right next to me. Do you like me better now?”

  “You’re very pretty, I suppose, Polly.”

  “Pretty Polly,” she said, without a smile.

  Well, he said to himself, here you are, here she is without any glasses on.

  “Nothing ever happens in Sewell Street.” She took his hand and let his finger with the bottle on it lie in her lap.

  Here you are, he said, with your hand in her lap.

  “Nothing ever happens where I come from, either. I think things must be happening everywhere except where one is. All kinds of things happen to other people. So they say,” he said.

  “The man who was lodging next door but one cut his throat like this,” she said, “before breakfast.”

  On his first free day since he was born Samuel sat with a loose girl in a locked bathroom over a teashop, the dirty curtains were drawn, and his hand lay on her thighs. He did not feel any emotion at all. O God, he thought, make me feel something, make me feel as I ought to, here is something happening and I’m cool and dull as a man in a bus. Make me remember all the stories. I caught her in my arms, my heart beat against hers, her body was trembling, her mouth opened like a flower. The lotus of Osiri
s was opening to the sun.

  “Listen to the old birds,” she said, and he saw that the hot water was running over the rim of the washbasin.

  I must be impotent, he thought.

  “Why did he cut his throat like that, Polly? Was it love? I think if I was crossed in love I’d drink brandy and whisky and crême de menthe and that stuff that’s made with eggs.”

  “It wasn’t love with Mr. Shaw. I don’t know why he did it. Mrs. Bentley said there was blood everywhere, everywhere, and all over the clock. He left a little note in the letter rack and all it said was that he’d been meaning to do it ever since October. Look, the water’ll drip right through into the kitchen.”

  He turned it off. The birds stopped singing.

  “Perhaps it was love, really. Perhaps he loved you, Polly, but he wouldn’t say so. From a distance.”

  “Go on, he had a limp,” she said. “Old Dot and Carry. How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Well, nearly.”

  “No you’re not.”

  Then they were silent, sitting on the bath, his hand in her lap. She trailed her pale hand in the water. The birds began again.

  “Pale hands I love,” he said.

  “Beside the Shalimar. Do you, Sam? Do you love my hands? That’s a funny thing to say.” She looked dully at the long, floating weed in the water and made a wave. “It’s like the evening here.”

  “It’s like evening in the country,” he said. “Birds singing and water. We’re sitting on a bank by the river now.”

  “Having a picnic.”

  “And then we’re going to take our clothes off and have a swim. Gee, it’ll be cold. You’ll be able to feel all the fish swimming about.”

  “I can hear the 47 bus, too,” she said. “People are going home to tea. It’s cold without any clothes on, isn’t it? Feel my arm, it’s like snow, only not so white. Pale hands I love,” she began to sing. “Do you love me altogether?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I feel anything like that at all. I never do feel much until afterwards and then it’s too late.”

  “Now it isn’t too late. It isn’t too late Sam. We’re alone. Polly and Sam. I’ll come and have a swim with you if you like. In the dirty old river with the duck.”

  “Don’t you ever smile, Polly? I haven’t seen you smile once.”

  “You’ve only known me for twenty minutes. I don’t like smiling much, I think I look best when I’m very serious, like this.” She saddened her eyes and mouth. “I’m a tragedienne. I’m crying because my lover’s dead.”

  Slowly tears came to her eyes.

  “His name was Sam and he had green eyes and brown hair. He was ever so short. Darling, darling, darling Sam, he’s dead.” The tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Stop crying now, Polly. Please. Stop crying. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  But she was crying pitifully.

  “Stop it, Polly, pretty Polly.” He put his arm around her shoulders. He kissed her on the cheek. It was warm and wet. “Nobody’s dead, Polly darling,” he said. She cried and moaned his name in the abandon of her made grief, tore at the loose low neck of her dress, threw back her hair and raised her damp eyes to the birds in their cages and the cracked heavens of the ceiling.

  “You’re doing it fine,” he said in despair, shaking her shoulders. “I’ve never seen such fine crying. Stop now, please, Polly, please, while you can stop.”

  Ninety-eight per cent of the human body is water, he thought. Polly Dacey is all salt water. She sat by his side like a flood in an apron.

  “I’ll do anything you like if you’ll only stop,” he said. “You’ll drown yourself, Polly. I’ll promise to do anything in the world.”

  She dried her eyes on her bare arm.

  “I wasn’t really breaking my heart, silly. I was only depicting. What’ll you do, then? Anything? I can depict being glad because my lover’s not really dead, too. The War Office made a mistake.”

  “Anything,” he said. “I want to see you being glad tomorrow. You musn’t do one after the other.”

  “It’s nothing to me, I can do them all in a row. I can do childbirth and being tight and—”

  “You do being quiet. Do being a quiet lady sitting on a bath, Polly.”

  “I will if you’ll come and have a swim with me. You promised.” She patted her hair into place.

  “Where.”

  “In the bath. You get in first, go on. You can’t break your promise.”

  George Ring, he whispered, gallop upstairs now and bite your way through the door. She wants me to sit with my overcoat on and my bottle on my finger in the cold, greasy bath, in the half-dark bathroom, under the sneering birds.

  “I’ve got a new suit,” he said.

  “Take it off, silly. I don’t want you to go in the bath with your clothes on. Look, I’ll put something over the window so you can undress in the dark. Then I’ll undress too. I’ll come in the bath with you. Sam, are you frightened?”

  “I don’t know. Couldn’t we take our clothes off and not go in the bath? I mean, if we want to take them off at all. Someone might came in, it’s terribly cold, Polly. Terribly cold.”

  “You’re frightened. You’re frightened to lie in the water with me. You won’t be cold for long.”

  “But there’s no sense in it. I don’t want to go in the bath. Let’s sit here and you do being glad, Polly.”

  He could not move his hand, she had caught the bottle between her legs.

  “You don’t want to be frightened. I’m not any older than you are,” she said, and her whispering mouth was close to his ear. “As soon as you get in the bath I’ll jump on top of you in the dark. You can pretend I’m somebody you love if you don’t like me properly. You can call me any name.” She dug her nails into his hand. “Give me your coat, I’ll hang it over the window. Dark as midnight,” she said, as she hung the coat up, and her face in the green light through the curtains was like a girl’s under the sea. Then all the green went out, and he heard her fumbling. I do not want to drown. I do not want to drown in Sewell Street off Circe Street, he whispered under his breath.

  “Are you undressing? I can’t hear you. Quick, quick, Sam.” He took off his jacket and pulled his shirt over his head. Take a good look in the dark, Mortimer Street, have a peek at me in London.

  “I’m cold,” he said.

  “I’ll make you warm, beautifully warm, Sam.” He could not tell where she was, but she was moving in the dark and clinking a glass. “I’m going to give you some brandy. There’s brandy, darling, in the medicine cupboard. I’ll give you a big glass. You must drink it right down.”

  Naked, he slipped one leg over the edge of the bath and touched the icy water.

  Come and have a look at impotent Samuel Bennet from Mortimer Street off Stanley’s Grove trembling to death in a cold bath in the dark near Paddington Station. I am lost in the metropolis with a rubber duck and a girl I cannot see pouring brandy into a tooth-glass. The birds are going mad in the dark. It’s been such a short day for them, Polly.

  “I’m in the bath now.”

  “I’m undressing too. Can you hear me?” she said softly. “That’s my dress rustling. Now I’m taking my petticoat off. Now I’m naked.” A cold hand touched him on the face. “Here’s the brandy, Sam. Sam, my dear, drink it up and then I’ll climb in with you. I’ll love you, Sam. I’ll love you up. Drink it all up then you can touch me.”

  He felt the glass in his hand and he lifted it up and drank all that was in it.

  “Christ!” he said in a clear, ordinary voice. “Christ!”

  Then the birds flew down and kicked him on the head, carefully between the eyes, brutally on each temple, and he fell back in the bath.

  That was all the birds singing under the water, and the sea was full of feathers that swam up his nostrils and into his mouth. A duck as big as a ship sailed up on a drop of water as big as a house and smelt his breath as it spurted
out from broken, bleeding lips, like flames and waterspouts. Here came a wave of brandy and birds, and Mr. Allingham, naked as a baby, riding on the top with his birthmark like a rainbow, and George Ring swimming breaststroke through the open door, and three Mrs. Daceys gliding in yards above the flowing ground.

  The darkness drowned in a bright ball of light, and the birds stopped.

  4

  Voices began to reach him from a great distance, travelling in lavatories in racing trains along a liquid track, diving from the immeasurably high ceiling into the cold sea in the enormous bath.

  “Do you see what I see?” That was the voice of the man called Allingham, who slept under the furniture. “He’s taking a little dip.”

  “Don’t let me look, Donald, he’s bare all over.” I know him, Samuel thought. That’s George Ring the horse. “And he’s ill too. Silly Sam.”

  “Lucky Sam. He’s drunk, George. Well, well, well, and he hasn’t even got his bottle off. Where’s Polly?”

  “You look over there,” Mrs. Dacey said. “Over there on the shelf. He’s drunk all the eau de cologne.”

  “He must have been thirsty.”

  Large, bodiless hands came over the bath and lifted him out.

  “He’s eccentric,” Mr. Allingham said, as they laid him on the floor, “that’s all I’m saying. I’m not preaching, I’m not condemning. I’m just saying that other people get drunk in the proper places.”

  The birds were singing again in the electric dawn as Samuel fell quietly to sleep.

  III. FOUR LOST SOULS

  He sank into the ragged green water for the second time and, rising with seaweed and a woman under each arm and a mouthful of broken shells, he saw the whole of his dead life standing trembling before him, indestructible and unsinkable, on the brandy-brown waves. It looked like a hallstand.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but a warm wave rushed in.

  “Tea,” said Mrs. Dacey. "Tea with plenty of sugar every five minutes. That’s what I always gave him and it didn’t do a bit of good.”