Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (12 page)

‘There’s a big place they got there,’ she went on. ‘It’s called the Casino Der Paree.’

‘Oh yes. I heard of that.’

‘Oo, it’s a big fine place! An’ it ain’t half funny inside. An’ you never saw such shows! All them girls coming on half naked. I call it shocking. I do.’

He was baffled by what appeared to be her strangely discrepant standards, but felt elatedly indulgent towards her ingenuousness.

‘They do,’ she insisted, as though he wasn’t going to
swallow it too easily. ‘They come on half naked. Breasts an’ all. . . .’

‘Sure of it,’ said Bob.

‘An’ when you get the programme from the girl,’ she threw out, with grave irrelevance, ‘you have to give her a tip.’

‘M’m,’ said Bob. . . .

There was another pause. It was felt that Paris had been succinctly described.

‘But what I really didn’t like was the Cruelty,’ she added. ‘Them whipping those poor horses like that. You know, I don’t really
like
them foreigners, say what you like. An’ I always used to say so, even when I was there.’

‘Shouldn’t call ’em foreigners,’ offered Bob, amiably. ‘Not when you’re in their own country.’

But this was too much for her. She looked at him.

‘Well,’ she said with sweet reasonableness. ‘They
are
– aren’t they?’

He decided not to cope with her logic. ‘Well – what about another drink?’ he said.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. Not now.’

‘O
H – SURELY YOU
can stay just for another quick one?’

‘No – can’t, I’m afraid – really.’ She looked at him. ‘Sorry. . . .’

So it had really come to this. She was being positively tender with him! She was ‘sorry.’ He marvelled at himself and at her.

‘Well, if you can’t you can’t, I suppose,’ he said, with the friendly air of a man who grins and bears it. ‘Where’ve you got to be now?’

‘Oh – I got to go down Leicester Square way.’

‘Oh.’

He noticed that she made no attempt to tell him what her
business was, and that quite inexplicably he did not quite dare to ask her. This wasn’t such a nice evening as the other one, was it?

‘Well . . .’ he said, and they rose, and went out into the air.

It was a quarter to eleven. His evening, evidently, was at an end. A futile thing, petering out here – an unrounded and incomplete evening – without the stamp either of having spent it with her or without her. But her own evening, apparently, was ahead of her: she had merely had him in parentheses. He felt like a child being suddenly banished, at a crucial moment, to bed; and was filled with every kind of dissatisfaction and irritation.

‘Can I walk down with you, then?’ he said. It was all he could say.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Certainly.’

Certainly!
But she had broken him in now. He was only grateful. All that mattered was that he had prolonged his evening by five or six minutes. They walked on in silence. He watched her face, as she looked at the traffic, and was reminded once more of her desirability. He again saw people looking at them.

They were nearing Leicester Square. Like the child being banished to bed, he tried to get a sweet before going. He would regard a sweet as full compensation. He asked for it.

‘So you haven’t had a very bright time since I saw you last?’ he asked, in a sympathetic voice, endeavouring, in the little time he had, to beat up their original tender understanding.

But there were no sweets for him. She smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You asked me that before, didn’t you?’

She did not say it insolently, but she had made a complete fool of him. Also it dawned upon him, for the first time, that she was no fool. She had a clear memory, and a perfect apprehension of situation. Had she meant deliberately to be unkind, or was she just putting him in his place for conversational fatuousness? He was hurt, but past the desire for revenge. He wanted his sweet.

‘Yes,’ he said, making it clear that she had hurt him. ‘But I only wanted to know.’

She relented. ‘Well, anyway,’ she said, ‘you’re quite right. I’ve never had such a rotten time.’

He put his sweet in his mouth and relished it. ‘Oh well, it’s a funny life,’ he tried. . . . ‘It is,’ she said. ‘An’ my landlady’s a funny landlady, too. . . .’

‘Rent again?’

She smiled an affirmative. ‘I got to get two pounds somewhere before to-morrow night,’ she said.

‘Oh dear. That’s bad.’

It was now all rather strained. They were both conscious, perhaps, of the fact that he was having his sweet – that these confidences were now almost mechanical. They were entering Leicester Square.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘When’ll I be seeing you again?’

‘Any time you like, dear.’

That was better.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a ’phone where I’m staying now. Or I can use it, anyway. It’s downstairs. Why don’t you ring me up one day?’

He breathed a vast relief. She had a ’phone. At any rate she was now at his mercy. At any rate she could not elude him. She was accessible at the end of a line, and he could indulge his whim and pleasure in the matter of ringing her up. She could not now stampede him into an undesirable meeting. He had her just where he wanted her. It was a lovely and satisfactory evening after all.

‘A ’phone?’ he said. ‘Oh – that’s fine. What’s the best time for getting you?’

‘Oh – any time, really. In the morning’s best perhaps. Will you ring me up one day then?’

‘Certainly I will.’ (It was his turn to do some Certainly-ing now.) ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll ring you early next week, shall I? What about Monday? P’raps you might come in an’ see me before then, though.’

‘Well. I
might
. . . . But it’d be best if you rang me – in case I couldn’t. I don’t want to
Say
, like – when I couldn’t – like I did before – do I?’

‘No. That’s right. Come in if you can, but anyway I’ll ’phone you Monday. Who do I ask for?’

She smiled again. ‘You ask for Miss Jennie Maple,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you the number.’ She stopped and commenced to fumble in her bag.

(Maple! He had never conceived of her as a thing possessing a surname. Who and what were her progenitors – Mr. and Mrs. Maple? An unimaginable family.)

‘Here you are,’ she said, and handed him a slip of paper with her address and ’phone number. The address was in Doughty Street. They walked on.

‘Oh, I know that,’ he said. ‘That’s just off Theobald’s Road, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. So you’ll ’phone me on Monday, will you?’

‘That’s right.’ They were the soul of cordiality. The memory of their quibblings earlier in the evening had faded from the minds of both. She was completely captivating, he thought – completely captivating, and accessible by ’phone. What more could he ask for?

And all at once, in the gladness of his new security, he was inspired with a project which arose partly from a pure resurrection of his old feelings of pity and generosity, but mostly, perhaps, from a desire to make assurance doubly sure, as it were, and to rivet again what was already so firmly riveted. He offered her some more money.

‘And what about this rent of yours?’ he said. ‘Can’t help you with that?’

They were still walking along. ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘
You
haven’t got the money.’

‘Yes I have. Or I can manage it anyway. Come on. I’ll give you a pound to help pay it off with.’

‘You won’t do nothin’ of the sort,’ she said. ‘I can
get
the money – if I take the trouble. It’s
my
mess I’m in – not yours.’

‘Yes. But it’s not exactly a pleasant way of gettin’ it,’

(‘It’s certainly
not
,’ she admitted. . . .)

‘An’ so you might just as well let me give it you. Just this time. Come along now.’

She was silent, as they walked along. They were now in
Coventry Street. He looked at her face. She was so damned pretty. She was looking ahead with a kind of contemplative wretchedness. . . .

‘Come on,’ he urged. . . . He felt the same strange thrill he had felt before. It was almost as though he were making love. . . .

‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘Have you got one an’ threepence?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Well you give me that. Then I can get some lunch for certain in the morning. I can get fish an’ chips for that. An’ some for my friend, too. It’s just one an’ threepence. You give me that.’

They had now reached Rupert Street, and were walking up it in sheer inadvertency. He stopped.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you one and threepence.’

He felt in his trouser pocket, and at the same time in the inner pocket of his coat.

‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Here’s your one and threepence. An’ here’s something to wrap the fish an’ chips in.’

It was a pound note. He put it into her hand, and she did not resist him.

‘Oh, you mustn’t,’ she said, and looked up at him. . . .

‘Go on. That’s all right. And I’m goin’ to ’phone you up on Monday morning. About eleven. That all fixed?’

‘Yes.’ She was still looking up at him. ‘An’ I don’t know why you’re so good to me.’

‘I’m not good.’ He felt a bit of an ass, and took her hand in departure. ‘Only helping where I can. Eleven o’clock, then – Monday. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ she said, still holding his hand. ‘Eleven o’clock.’

And then, all at once, out of the blue – out of the blueness of her round, concerned eyes looking up into his, she hesitated, as though not knowing in what spirit it would be taken. . . . The next instant she had kissed him, lightly and briefly, and yet with an extraordinary trueness and tenderness, full upon the mouth, and was hurrying away – simply tearing away, and not looking back. . . .

He was stupefied and inexplicably happy. He walked up Rupert Street.

The absolute naïveté of the thing – the childish artlessness and directness – the freshness and chastity of it! Was it supposed to be a reward? And did she suppose he had desired it? He could well believe it. Such a thing would only enhance its glorious ingenuousness. Or was it just impulsive and sexless affection? He could well believe that, too. . . . Or was it, perhaps, love? . . . Whatever the answer, her simplicity remained to baffle and delight him.

The kiss of a wicked woman – the kiss of Sin. . . . The sweet, brief, virginal kiss of Sin! A miraculous and exhilarating contradiction! It remained on his mouth like a touch of violets. There had never been such a kiss in the history of the world.

Expanded again with yet another of those moods of terrible soul-conceit and self-congratulation to which he was so subject, Bob went straight in to have another drink before closing time. . . .

There was a large and rather turbulent crowd in the house he chose, and after a while he cooled down a bit. Nevertheless, over his beer he reviewed the whole evening with glowing satisfaction. He had snatched it from despondency, at the last moment, and made it a triumph.

Why he was so taken up with all this, and what his next move was in this so original and bewitching relationship, he did not know. And, since the telephone had entered into it, he had no need to know at present. He had her at the end of a line, and could think it all over during the week-end.

The way she got money out of him, of course, was simply staggering. To-night he had spent another pound. But he did not grudge a penny of it. It was as cement. With it he had made the already secure ground of her obligation to him doubly secure. He had now no apprehensiveness.

But what apprehensiveness could he have? None surely – since the girl meant nothing to him. It was, then, a pound greedily, almost sybaritically, spent – just to fortify his soul with rampart after rampart against the invasion of those
insignificant little distresses he had experienced earlier in the evening.

Now, he honestly believed, he had won her heart for good and all. Not that he had any desire to win her heart. Doing so was merely a little acquired luxury, but one which he was finding difficult to do without. The thing, frankly, was diverting him.

And her virgin’s kiss. . . . Oh yes – it was a pound well spent all right. That kiss would have been worth five pounds. Indeed, it was priceless.

N
EXT MORNING, FULL
of well-being and on the Brass, Bob came to a new theory of Money. He was shrewd enough to see that his eighty pounds was not really lying at the Bank. Long ago embraced in oceans of money and credit, it existed merely in his mind and that of the Midland – had no reality. The whole thing being, then, purely arithmetical and immaterial, if he drew from the sum he would not be subtracting anything from a lump of money, but simply changing his mind about what he possessed – revising his mental attitude towards his own wealth. This he was willingly prepared to do. He was prepared, for instance, henceforward to regard himself as a man with seventy-five pounds behind him instead of eighty.

That all this was great sophistry he was aware, but that would be instantly compensated for by his having in his hands, in crisp notes – five pounds to do whatever he liked with. Since his youth at sea, he had never had such a sensation, and he was stimulated beyond measure by the idea. He would go down and draw it this afternoon.

That this caprice was inspired by the prospect of his ’phone call on Monday he was also aware. He wanted enough money when he saw her next. But why did he? What was going to
happen when he did ring her? He had, as yet, no idea.

That night, at peace with all the world, and with five pounds in his pocket, he spoke rallyingly to Ella across the crowded bar.

‘I see your Friend’s at the pictures this week?’ he said.

‘My Friend?’ said Ella. ‘Who’s my Friend?’

‘Richard,’ said Bob.

‘Richard,’ said Ella. ‘Who’s Richard?’ But she knew perfectly. He was alluding to Richard Dix. And indeed, Richard Dix was her Friend – if that was a proper epithet to use in connection with her romantic and aesthetic responses towards this actor. At night Ella dreamed submissive dreams of Richard Dix. For although Ella, in her heart of hearts, was a placid and efficient girl, she also worshipped at the shrine of pure beauty and romance. And in Richard Dix both these forces were incarnate.