Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (30 page)

After this there was another blank, and his next memory was of staggering along Shaftesbury Avenue in search of Jenny, and not finding her. . . .

After this the world never ceased, for one moment, to swim around Bob. He remembered that he had another drink near the Palace – that he smashed a glass there – that he was made to put sixpence in a charity box for smashing it – that on coming out he was instantly accosted by two harlots, of the
most revolting nature, and that they dragged him along to the ‘Globe.’

He remembered that they talked across him and made a great fuss of him and asked him if his intentions were (from their own point of view) honourable. He remembered having no intentions at all, but asking how much they wanted. He remembered they asked for a fiver, and he remembered replying that he had never heard of such a thing. He remembered offering them with embittered impudence, sixpence. He remembered that they were much too greedy to be affronted, and obviously thought that he was drunk and easy game. He remembered delighting in the thought that they thought him drunk, and taking enormous pleasure in fooling them. He remembered this going on for an hour – their patience being inexhaustible. He remembered them at last asking him what he was going to do for wasting their time. He remembered coming out, and their clinging to his arms each side. He remembered at last giving them a pound – ten shillings each – to be rid of them. By this time he had lost all sense of money. Only the conviction that he was not yet drunk and abandoned, and that he must at all costs become so – only the diabolic fancy that tonight he was saying good-bye to his past life – that he must spend and spite himself without stint or regret, obsessed him.

He remembered, almost immediately afterwards, falling in with another woman, of a more superior character, and she took him down below the Criterion. He remembered that she said she came from America (though she was true Irish really) and was all for Fairness. . . . Life wasn’t Fair. It wasn’t Fair, for instance, that when she was trying to come to England with some other girls – and there was questions about them getting in – it wasn’t Fair that
she
should be let through – and none of the others – just because she was a doctor’s daughter. . . . It wasn’t Fair, was it? Those girls were as good as
her
– weren’t they? Just because she was a doctor’s daughter, it wasn’t Fair, was it? No, said Bob, it wasn’t Fair. . . . And an unfair world, full of unfair people, with unfair waiters rushing around between unfair tables, swam about Bob. . . .

She somehow passed from his life (for ever), and his next memory was of sitting in the little Café bar in Soho. It was the one to which Jenny had brought him, a week ago, and he had come here in search of her. The Jew gang was still at the bar, as though it had never moved, and its leader was in conversation with him. He was feeling vaguely flattered. . . . The tight-suited and virulent young men breathed beer over him, and were showing him a trick with a knife. . . . One of them had his arm round his shoulder, and was entreating him, in ecstatic tones, to watch. . . . It was a real Beaut, he said. ‘See that side?’ said the conjuror. ‘Yes,’ said Bob. ‘An’ see that side?’ ‘Yes.’ Lightning twists took place. . . . ‘An’ you see that side. . . .’ ‘An’ you see that side. . . .’ Bob’s head fell forward in a giddy universe of knife sides and Jew boys. . . . ‘Very good,’ he said at last, and stumbled out. . . .

And then, miraculously, he had met Prunella (of all people) and was giving her a drink at a bar. . . . But he could hardly see her to talk to, and could hardly pronounce any of his words. He kept on trying to murmur something about Jenny, but he either could not hear, or could not piece together, the sense of her replies. . . . She was saying something about Jenny – about her having been blind drunk ever since coming into twenty-five pounds. . . . But he did not know what she meant. How had she come into twenty-five pounds? . . .

Also Prunella kept on telling him, with an idiotic irrelevance, that he was drunk himself, and that he had better go home. He knew that, fundamentally, he was in full possession of his senses, and could not understand why she kept on bringing it up, dragging it in. . . . He thought it was probably because she was drunk herself.

And then he was calling for more drinks. . . . And then, for some obscure cause, they could not get any more drinks – because of some failing on his part. . . . And then suddenly he was out in the street again, and Prunella was growing absurdly insistent about something else. . . . She was staring into his face and talking about his money.

Money. Money. Money. . . . She wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘You’re money mad,’ he said. . . . She was asking how much
he had brought out with him. She wouldn’t leave him alone. ‘Twenty-five pounds,’ he said. ‘Twenty-five pounds . . . .’ And still she wouldn’t leave him alone. . . .

And then another harlot had appeared on the scene, and a queer little man who looked like a paper seller, and they were all conferring about him under a lamp-post. ‘It’s them Jew boys,’ he heard the other harlot saying. ‘That’s what it is. It’s them Jews.’ And they all went on talking. Jews. Jews. Jews. Money. Money. Money. They were all mad. He wanted to go to sleep, and tried to. . . .

And then he felt himself being punched on the back, and pinched in the arm, and he heard them crying: ‘Wake up, wake up, there’s a copper! A copper, kid, a copper! Wake up!’ And he could only think of some dreadful kind of Penny, and wondered what it was all about.

And all at once he was looking into the level grey eyes of a policeman, with a yellow moustache. . . .

And he suddenly realized that he was drunk, and stood up, supported by Prunella, and faced the level grey eyes and the yellow moustache. . . .

And then the policeman had gone on, and they were all saying that he was better now, and he was wondering why they were all being so kind to him. . . . And then they were all standing at a corner, and Prunella was giving him five shillings – putting it into his waistcoat pocket. He could not make out why. . . .

And then he was alone with the little paper man, and he asked where he was being taken. . . . And he was told he was being taken to bed. . . . And he suddenly thought it would be a good idea to go to Brighton, and asked if they couldn’t both go down . . . and the little man, with a kind of unnecessary and relentless terseness, said that they couldn’t. . . .

And then all at once, he was in a bare place with wooden passages, and facing a queer man seen through an aperture, at a pay desk . . . . And his companion was removing one of the half crowns which Prunella had given him, and putting it down for him. . . . And he was picking up his change, together with a slip of yellow paper. . . .

And then he was walking up some wooden stairs, and was in a bare, square, wooden room, lit by one hanging electric bulb in the centre. . . . And up against the walls, all around this room, about a yard distant from each other, were narrow beds. . . .

And he was taking off his clothes, by one of these beds, and so was the little man. . . .

And then he was in bed. . . . Very comfortable, though the sheets were rather damp. . . . And the light was still on, and he wondered why it was. And he wondered what on earth it could all be. . . .

And nearly all the other beds were occupied. And some of the people in them were snoring, and some, every now and again, were murmuring in their sleep. . . . And one man cried out in his sleep, and was silent. . . .

And then the light suddenly went out (he saw that it must be worked from below) and he was in complete darkness. . . .

And then, after about a quarter of an hour, the light suddenly went on again. And he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

And there entered a dirty old man, with no collar, and bursting boots, and a matted grey beard – of the type that stands in the gutter and says ‘God bless you, Sir,’ whether you have given him anything or not. . . .

And then the truth dawned upon Bob.

The old man got into bed. There was a pause of a few minutes. . . . The light again went out. , . .

In the darkness he saw it all. He had got drunk. All his money had been stolen. Prunella had lent him five shillings. He had been brought to a doss house to sleep. Jenny did not love him, and this was the first day of his holidays.

Glad to know, he went to sleep.

P
OSSIBLY ONE OF
the most peculiarly depressing situations in the world is this: to be a waiter who has once had eighty pounds, to have fallen incontinently in love with a blue-eyed young prostitute of twenty-one, to have arranged to meet her at Victoria so as to go away on a holiday with her, to have waited for an hour for her without result, to have decided to get wildly drunk, to have succeeded, to have had every penny of the last of your money stolen by a gang of Jews, to have been got to bed by the charity of another prostitute and a friendly paper seller – and, finally, to wake up, trembling with cold, in a doss house, at the black bitter hour of half-past five, and slowly divine that all this has occurred. Indeed, this situation is almost without parallel in its power to inflict unhappiness.

And when, in addition to all this, this situation is aggravated by the fact that your mouth resembles sand paper of the most vindictive nature, that your ears are singing, that you are dying of thirst in the darkness, and that you dare not move your head an inch for fear of being sick, the situation is so hard as to be almost unbearable, and if only there were an instrument of death at hand it would not be borne.

This was at half-past five. Hoping obscurely (and he knew not why) for the dawn, Bob maintained one position, put his hands to his head – as though praying – as though indicted by life for his sins and folly – and submitted to the passing of an hour. . . .

At last, in the blackness of his darkness, his ears sang no more, and he listened to the unearthly functionings of existence near by. . . . Outside, in what seemed to be a mews below, a lorry was being loaded. In the darkness men, every now and again, cried to each other; heavy boots rang on hollow pavements, thudding packages were dropped. . . .

Someone, eventually, began to use a hose. . . . Pails clanked amid a cool and intermittent hiss. . . . Two men argued with each other, for a long while, in low and grumbling tones. . . . This was London at half-past five in the morning, and the
occupations and ways of men were indeed unfathomable. . . .

Within the room London’s defeated slept. . . . Slept and snored, in an extraordinarily violent way, as though grasping angrily at oblivion. . . . One groaned. . . . Another began, with quiet, clear, yet unintelligible articulation, to express himself. . . . Another’s breath was a recurrent whistle. . . . Nearly all snored, and the only one awake banged ferociously at his pillow. . . . The peace of despair was here unknown: sleep revealed the truth, and the angry souls of the downtrodden complained and raged in dreams. . . .

At last dawn, through a window opposite Bob, gave intimations of her approach – the dark and patient staging of herself. He lay on his back and watched – as patiently. . . .

Half an hour passed, and at last a sign was given – a little rent of silver light torn in the stormy blueness of the heavens. Thereafter she advanced, or rather imperceptibly occurred, before the patient Bob. She occurred fixedly, calmly, aloofly – a reminder of all the dawns, and the hopeless fate of man. A sight appalling in its silence and grief. . . .

All sounds below suddenly ceased. . . . Even the dreamers made less noise, and, for the first time, London really seemed asleep.

Tears of sorrow and dissipation filled Bob’s eyes. . . . Reading his own fate in the sky, he sensed something too vast, profound, and inconsolable to be malignant; and the tears, half of self pity, half of dissipation, flowed.

He honestly believed he was glad. For it was all over now. There was no doubt about that.

Chimney-pots, of the glowing blackness of soot, stood like a comic, defeated army of soldiers, fantastically caparisoned, before the horizon. . . .

Another pail clanked. . . . A window shrieked open. . . . Somebody began to beat a mat. . . . One of the sleepers woke, punched his pillow, and subsided again greedily. . . . It was day.

What now? He could go to ‘The Midnight Bell,’ he supposed. They would always welcome him there. Ella, the
Governor, the Governor’s Wife. They had always been so good and friendly, and he had played them so false. With his inner passion, his secret life, he had thought to deceive them – but they would take him back. He would have to get the Governor to advance him some money. There was no doubt that he’d get it. If possible, he would start work again at once. . . .

What story could he tell them – how account for his return? He would have to tell them something near the truth. The thought gave him relief. He so sorely needed confession. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got in with a bad lot lately,’ he would say, and they would forgive and understand.

These thoughts flowed through an unmoving head that watched the dawn. . . . At last he sat up, and looked at the bed on his left. The little paper seller slept peacefully. Over the little paper-seller’s bed was spread his heavy but threadbare overcoat, his coat and trousers – to give him warmth. . . . Bob looked for his own clothes – and found them spread similarly over his own bed. That must have been done for him last night. He had no memory of it. There was a great deal of rough tenderness about. . . .

Under his pillow he found the change from the five shillings Prunella had given him. . . . Under his pillow, as a precaution against robbery – another service. He would have liked to thank the little man, but he didn’t want to wake him. . . .

He must get out of here.

His head reeling, he got out of bed and shivered into his clothes. He found that he was still wearing his shirt, collar, and tie. He was glad of this, and soon ready. . . .

The streets were darker than he had supposed, and very cold. He did not know where he was, except that he was in Soho, but soon found Old Compton Street. He passed the little café bar, where he supposed he had been robbed, and saw that it was shut. . . . He entered Shaftesbury Avenue, and made for Lyons’ Corner House, where he might get some breakfast.