The Slaves of Solitude (13 page)

Amongst such regulars the ice would at last be broken: conversations would be started: and from these there would gradually and timidly arise bench-companionships of the extremest pathos. Two
old ladies, beginning by talking about the weather, would go on to compare their respective boarding-houses, the times of meals, the amenities, the food, the quiet. From this they would proceed,
from day to day, to disclose their motives in living in what way and where they did, their former manner of life, the doings of their near relations, what they considered their real background as
opposed to the illusory and temporary background of their present abode. Soon, with a feeling of having found a detached and intelligent listener, met under novel circumstances totally different
from those in which they would converse with anyone in the boarding-house from which they came – with a feeling of being out of school, as it were, or of playing truant with someone from
another school – they would begin to look forward to these apparently casual meetings, would at last come shyly to a tacit acknowledgment that they met regularly, would be found in their
places on time, speaking of being ‘early’, or ‘late’, even gleefully and conspiratorially of ‘keeping’, with a bag or newspaper, each other’s
‘seats’.

Or again, two old men, at first hostile and suspicious, would learn to tolerate each other – in retrospective travel pursuing each other, if necessary through the medium of distant family
connections, to the ends of the earth – in the matter of past institutions, personalities, directorships, or sporting events and techniques, sticking at each other’s throats with
unwearied resource – but at last hammering out a gruff mutual respect tempering dislike. Or, yet again, an old lady might enter into the same sort of relationship with an old man – an
ex-military man from India perhaps – to whom she would listen, Desdemona-like, charmed and impressed, at last walking back with him in the direction of the town and parting from him with an
almost emotional feeling of having conversed with a ‘gentleman’, and being gratified by this fact both for its own sake and because she, unlike anyone in the establishment where lunch
awaited her, was able to understand and meet such an individual on an equal footing. For nearly all who lived in the boarding-houses of Thames Lockdon were conscious of having descended in the
world, of having arrived where they were by a pure freak of fate, and of courteously but condescendingly acting a part in front of their fellow-boarders.

Just as the great world was oblivious of what went on in Thames Lockdon Park at this time of day, so were these old people oblivious of what went on in the great world – oblivious, in
particular, of what took place, and had taken place only the night before, on the actual seats, and hallowed corners of seats, in which they now sat in so demure a way. Though distantly appraised
of the scandalous behaviour of the American soldiers with the shop-girls of the town, which was indeed a matter of common gossip, such was their blindness, or rather psychological remoteness from
such things, that the thought never flashed across their minds that each morning, they were entering, and complacently occupying, the front stalls of the very theatre of these misdemeanours. Had
such a vision of the truth and the night before ever entered their heads, and had the full story been revealed in detail, they would have shunned in horror and disgust a locality which in fact they
regarded as belonging solely to themselves and bearing a peculiar respectability owing to their morning visitations. The Americans and shop-girls were similarly in the dark as to what went on in
the day, but were on their part devoid of scruples: and the river flowed on by night and day indiscriminately.

This morning Mrs. Barratt, walking a little further than usual, unwittingly sat down on the same corner of the actual seat always instinctively chosen by the Lieutenant when disposed to kiss
Miss Roach fervently and at length.

With Miss Steele and Mrs. Barratt respectively in the town and the Park, with Miss Roach avoiding him like the plague, and Mr. Prest about his business, Mr. Thwaites had on fine mornings no one
to boom at in the Rosamund Tea Rooms, and spent much of the time writing embittered letters in the Lounge. These, after he had put on his overcoat and cap, he took round to the Post Office and
posted in the most acid way. He passed pillar-boxes on the way, but did not trust them, as not going to the root of the matter.

After this he would return to the Rosamund Tea Rooms, where he would prowl restlessly, and whence he would, perhaps, make one or two rapid, tigerish excursions into the town, to make an enquiry,
to buy something, or to change a book – invariably tying the assistants into knots, and, in the ironical pose of a stupid man, saying he was
so
sorry, no doubt it was
his
fault,
entirely.

By a quarter to one he was back in the Lounge, impatient, after so long an interval, to wield again the boarding-house rod, and hopeful of the return of Mrs. Barratt, Miss Steele, or Miss Roach,
but not of Mr. Prest, who never appeared in the Lounge before meals, and who was nearly always the last to sit down in the dining-room.

Mr. Prest was, in fact, the black sheep of the boarding-house, and this not only in Mr. Thwaites’ estimation.

CHAPTER FIVE

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T
HOUGH
speaking, when he did speak, with a ‘common’ accent, and dressing in a ‘common’ way,
Mr. Prest seemed to have no ambition to force his company upon the others, and kept himself very much to himself. This curious contradiction, combined with the fact that he was known to indulge in
the totally alien and eerie practice of drinking beer locally, had earned him the reputation of being ‘funny’, ‘strange’, ‘odd’, ‘queer’. Though too
quiet in his manners, and too seemly in his comings and goings, to give offence, he was yet regarded as being somehow beyond the pale. A silence fell as he entered the dining-room, and people found
themselves staring at him, seeking to discover his secret.

A big man, nearing sixty years of age, Mr. Prest had a resonant and beery voice, and a face of that pugilistic cast which is acquired by certain music-hall comedians as well as pugilists: it is
almost as though they bear the marks of eggs, vegetables, and dead cats thrown at them on Saturday nights in their strenuous past. In Mr. Prest’s face, in fact, was to be found his secret: as
‘Archie Prest’ he had long ago topped bills in provincial pantomimes and been featured with some distinction in London and provincial Variety.

The Rosamund Tea Rooms knew nothing of this precisely, though it was rumoured amongst them that he had at one time been on, or connected with, ‘the stage’ – a rumour which only
added to their fear and displeasure. Mr. Thwaites, for a long while unable even to pass the time of day with him on a staircase with civility, had finally sent him to Coventry absolutely, and the
other guests, though without active malice, would have seemed to have taken their cue from Mr. Thwaites.

The Rosamund Tea Rooms, thus almost unanimous in its attitude of superiority towards Mr. Prest, was incapable even of the conjecture that Mr. Prest, on his part, had any attitude other than a
humble and negative one towards the Rosamund Tea Rooms. But this, in fact, he had, looking, as he did, upon the Rosamund Tea Rooms with the supreme, leisured, and assured contempt of a cultivated
man for Philistines of the most fearful type – with the disdain of an original and educated person who had seen life for smalltown ignoramuses too confined and paltry in their outlook to take
seriously for a moment – and regarding the Rosamund Tea Rooms, indeed, as a sort of zoo, containing easily recognised types of freak animals, into which an ironical fate had brought him.

Mr. Prest was too polite, and indeed too innately modest and tolerant, to let this be seen; and so this curious turning of the tables, whereby the Rosamund Tea Rooms was in reality being sent to
Coventry by Mr. Prest, remained unsuspected.

The mistake arose, of course, from the inability of the Rosamund Tea Rooms to perceive that all it looked upon as being symptomatic of Mr. Prest’s ‘commonness’, Mr. Prest
himself looked upon as the very backbone of his culture: that his own upbringing and manner of life, his music-hall history, his achievements, his traditions, his friends, the fact that he had been
associated with and could still call by their Christian names many well-known stars both of the past and present, speaking, if he went to town, their liberal and racy language in public-houses, and
understanding their professional jokes – that all these things were to Mr. Prest reasons, not for faint opprobrium, but for complacence and pride.

Mr. Prest was, however, conscious of never having fully succeeded in life, of now belonging to the past, of being in more or less enforced retirement, and of being utterly unknown as a
personality outside a circle of acquaintances in London which diminished year by year. He was, therefore, a miserable man – his sense of failure and futility showing in his demeanour. He had,
in fact, something of the character and manner, as well as the external semblance, of a certain sort of ex-pugilist – an air of having been battered silly by life, of submissiveness to
events, of gentleness, of willingness to please, of dog-like gloom and absent-mindedness as he floated through the day.

Two or three times each month Mr. Prest was missing at his place in the dining-room for lunch and dinner, and was not seen till the next day. The guests would be silently forewarned of these
absences by a complete change in the aspect and carriage of the solitary man at breakfast – by the smart lounge suit which replaced the plus-fours or loose tweeds which he normally wore, by
the stiff white collar and glistening tie – an air of freshness and rejuvenation. Mr. Prest was going to town, and could be seen, soon after breakfast, on his way to the station, wearing a
tight-fitting overcoat with heavily padded shoulders, a bowler hat and leather gloves, and looking, on the whole, rather more than less ‘common’ than usual.

The Rosamund Tea Rooms had no idea of what Mr. Prest did in London: nor did he have any specific business or know exactly himself how he was going to spend the day, which would actually be
devoted to nothing apart from the pursuit of fraternal companionship in the atmosphere of the past.

With this object in mind he would invariably be found, at about twelve o’clock, in some bar off Leicester Square, Charing Cross Road, or St. Martin’s Lane, sipping at his beer and
hoping for the best. With people of his profession, he knew well enough, there were fashions and crazes for certain public-houses – which gained or lost popularity either mysteriously or
according to the movements of the premises of certain theatrical agents, managers, or shows in their vicinity – and with these migrations and fashions he found it hard, in his retirement and
comparative isolation, to keep up. For this reason he would sometimes be lucky, but at other times very much otherwise, going with high spirits and confidence into a bar which a month or so ago had
been filled with a delightful assembly of old friends and the cream of his one-time profession, only to find the place forlorn and all but empty, doing a feeble trade with alien customers. Then,
thinking that perhaps he had arrived too early, he would wait patiently, and order another beer, finally, with feigned detachment, asking the barmaid whether so-and-so was ‘coming in’
or was ‘about these days’, or whether someone else had ‘been in lately’ – the barmaid answering him indifferently and with total lack of comprehension of his spiritual
needs.

At other times, when he expected least, most would come his way. At the moment of entering he would be hailed by a friend, or swept into a circle of familiars amongst whom he took his turn, with
mounting gaiety, in buying rounds of drinks. On these occasions one thing would lead to another, one public-house would lead to another, movements would be made from place to place where the
‘crowd’ was known or reputed to be, introductions would be made, friendships would revive, or blossom, and Mr. Prest, in his old element, now completely elated rather than dejected by
his own yesterdays, meeting on an equal footing and talking of professional matters with famous men of the immediate moment, with people of the same stature as a Trinder, an Askey, or a Fields,
would go from strength to strength. Lunch would be taken late and noisily upstairs in some public-house known to the crowd he was with: in the afternoon he would go to a show, or to the pictures,
or to tea in the dressing-room of a friend in work: and in the evening he would be once again in the bars, taking up assignations he had made at lunch. The last train brought him in at about
ten-thirty to Thames Lockdon Station, whence he would emerge into the blackness, full of drink, certainly, but fuller still of the day behind him, of the friends and celebrities he had met –
the ‘grand scouts’ as he called them – of the humour, humanity, spaciousness, and grandeur of that manner of life as opposed to the inhibited and petty provinciality of the
riverside town. At such moments he held Thames Lockdon and the Rosamund Tea Rooms in more profound and philosophic scorn than ever. If he staggered occasionally, or even tripped, as he walked back
from the station by the same way taken each evening by Miss Roach, it might well have been due to the black-out, and in any case he always pulled himself together in time to make a noiseless and
dignified entrance into the Rosamund Tea Rooms, whose guests remained in complete ignorance of his condition and sentiments in regard to themselves.

2

For Mr. Prest there were other days in London when, though alighting upon the right bar in the West End at the right time, something would go wrong. His friends would be
there, but busy in discussion, or not to be greeted in the usual way because talking to strangers, or with their backs to him, or inaccessible owing to the crowd, or, if at last encountered
squarely, compelled to drink up their drinks and go off elsewhere. The stars, also, would be present, but keeping, today, in their own orbits, far away at the other end of the bar, surrounded by
possibly hateful or contemptible satellites.