Fellow Passenger (18 page)

The proprietor of the bicycle shop said:

‘Gawd, you are in a mess, ain’t yer?’

That entitled me to be short with him. I could trust my cockney dialect enough to answer:

‘Never seed a sweep before?’

After that, with grunts and monosyllables, I made him parade his bicycles for me. I bought one which he had not had time to enamel and renovate. It worked, and it had two wheels and a brake; that was all you could say for it. It cost four pounds.

On my disreputable bicycle I went to the ironmonger’s, keeping to my part of an uncommunicative man in a filthy temper. I made a play of examining his stand of second-hand brushes at the entrance to the shop.

‘‘Ere!’ I called to him rudely. ‘I’ll ‘ave them three!’

He came out from behind his counter and looked me over. He took me without question for a sweep. That was reassuring. As soon as I was in connection with brushes, the very slight difference between soot and coal dust, which, all the same, the human eye unconsciously perceives, became unnoticeable.

‘Fifteen bob,’ he said. ‘Or you can ‘ave the lot for two quid if they’re any use to you.’

The lot looked far more imposing, for in the bundle was a set of those rods which fit into each other to push the brush up the chimney. The brushes were too mangy to be of value to any sweep but me. However, I had no intention of mixing with professionals, and a good bundle would look workmanlike to the public.

‘Thirty bob,’ I said.

‘Thirty-two and a tanner,’ said he.

I closed at that. With the brushes and rods came a couple of straps. I pushed my bicycle round the corner before fixing the bundle to it, for it was probable that the ironmonger knew how it should be done, and would spot me as an amateur if I did not follow the custom of the trade.

I bicycled west along the Embankment with a very open mind. I was untraceable unless I made a gross mistake, and I had about eight pounds ten of the barman’s money still in my pocket. But my disguise could not be permanent. I had to sleep somewhere, and presumably sweeps washed before sleeping. They would certainly have to before taking a bed at any sort of lodging-house.

It was soon plain that if I had had the faintest notion how to sweep chimneys, I might have followed the trade till my beard grew. I was hailed three times before I left Whitechapel. I also discovered that a sweep is a talisman. Half-wits try to touch him for luck. He suffers the same secretive and insulting pokes as a hunchback.

It pleased me to cycle past Scotland Yard, and then along Pall Mall and St James in order to pass the club which I had proudly joined in 1938 and used uncommonly little ever since. After crossing Piccadilly I turned up into Hanover Square, and the luck descended where it was most wanted - on the sweep himself. There was a wedding under way at St George’s: carpet, awning, a packet of old bitches waiting on the ropes, and an immaculate usher on top of the steps to keep the ring clear for the bride.

Hanover Square weddings must be rare in August. Perhaps the bride and bridegroom could not decently delay marriage any longer. But I don’t think so. The bridegroom looked as if his mind was set on anything but his poppet. It’s more likely that they got the whole fashionable outfit cheap out of season. The usher, resplendent but baggy in morning coat and striped trousers - surely the Latin habit of marrying in evening kit is more sensible? At least every guest possesses it and doesn’t have to hire a pair of pants and pray that they have been disinfected - this usher, arrayed by some Solomon in all his glory, shouted to me with a whoop of joy and rushed me up the steps just before the bride emerged. To think that a sweep should pass at that moment! I even had to kiss the little honey on her cheek. I could have done with her lips. She reminded my starved imagination of Dr Cornelia in court, shy but resigned. The recollection that such things were, was an added incentive towards acquiring as soon as possible the appeal, limited though it might be, of a clean face.

I was offered a quid for that job. The bridal party were all obviously rolling in money, so I looked grateful but respectfully disappointed - modelling myself, so far as coal dust permitted, upon the attitude of the Corps of Commissionaires when collecting a sixpenny tip from a trouser pocket which looked good for a bob. The usher produced another quid. I could have kissed him, too.

I crossed Oxford Street and rode into Regent’s Park, where I set myself and my bicycle down on the grass. I had made some progress since the bench on Tower Hill five hours before. I was no longer Howard-Wolferstan; until I drew attention to myself, no police on earth could make the connection between me and him. But I had come to a dead end. Ride out of London and sleep rough till my beard grew? I didn’t like it. The travelling itself was so likely to arouse comment. A sweep had to have a home. He could not be dirty before breakfast and dirty after working hours - or only at the cost of telling continual lies which sooner or later must arouse the interest of police.

I determined to observe Bloomsbury - not the totem worshippers of professorialism, but the large-hearted visitors of colour. It was, I remembered, another frontier between the dark- and the light-skinned. Arabs, Africans and Indians poured from its institutes into the streets of London, with growing knowledge of how to spend the taxpayer’s money while continuing to buy his vote. Among these students of political economy I hoped to find a fancy dress.

It cost me a lot of worry and self-suggestion to remain quite still by my bicycle at the south-east corner of Gordon Square. I reminded myself that I was waiting for a customer, that I was a bookmaker’s runner in my spare time, that I was summing up from the outside a mass of chimneys for which I had just contracted. But it was no good. I fidgeted. I could not compass the all-embracing stare of the working man who at the moment does not happen to be working.

Several gentlemen from far Asia and Africa passed me. Mosy they were dressed in unimportancies; but occasionally there was a robe or a fine, outlandish hat as prescribed by national pride or religion. I spoke to two of them. They laughed nervously and quickened their pace. At last there appeared a magnificent Sikh, his head topped by a superb turban, and his natty grey flannel suit covered as far as the lapels by a black cascade of beard and whiskers. In answer to my interested examination of him, his liquid brown eyes looked at me with a sympathy which was unusual between strangers of different race and very different occupation. It was the sort of look that I myself might have given to some delicate young Indian rejoicing in the effect of her sari upon Gordon Square - doubtful but definitely interested.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, ‘but if I was to want a ‘at like yours, where could I buy one?’

He answered me with another question.

‘Don’t you say in England that a sweep is lucky?’

‘There’s them as thinks so,’ I replied. ‘Wish I could ‘ave a bit meself.’

I was taking risks with my stage cockney. I assumed that he could not tell the difference between the genuine and the false.

‘What do you want a pugaree for?’

‘Sweeps’ Annual Outin’ and Fancy Dress Ball.’

‘I need luck,’ he said. ‘I’ll lend you an old one. Come about ten. Here’s my address.’

‘I’ll be dirty, sir. Got a late job to-night.’

‘At the worst - I have a bathroom,’ he smiled, still holding me with his peculiarly gentle look.

It seemed an odd remark. Who was I, however, bred in the cheerfiil barbarisms of Christendom, to decipher the motives and manners under that mass of hair? With American Indians I was at home; but that half-understanding of imperial Indians, which every educated Englishman unconsciously acquires from his reading of fiction and government publications, I did not possess. I was aware that I myself had contributed to any misunderstanding there might be. A man compelled, as I was, to make unconventional enquiries must expect unconventional replies or none at all. My opening moves, whether as sweep or Michael Bassoon, frequently met with an absolute ‘yes’ or ‘no’ which prohibited further conversation. There is little point in recording rebuffs. I number only the serenities.

My Punjab aristocrat - for that he certainly was - passed on with a slight bow and smile, leaving me with four empty hours to employ. I walked with my bicycle into the grubby district beyond King’s Cross, and bought myself a large meal at an eating-house. It was surprisingly solid and good. To eat well in the London of to-day one must, I think, pay thirty shillings or two; between these extremes lie lakes of custard and gravy, deserts of processed meat and cheese. I could not visit a cinema in my filthy condition, so I settled down in the bar of a small pub. Even there the landlord told me pointedly that I could have a wash at the back if I liked.

Before calling on the Sikh, I explored the neighbourhood of his lodgings. They were in a quiet, shabby street off the Hampstead Road, and most of the houses had notices of
Apartments
or
Bed and Breakfast
in the windows. It looked the right district for an exotic foreigner who had not much money, or, more likely, was not allowed by his politicians to take it abroad. Among the basement walls and bushes of a bombed site I took off my coat and trousers, and gave them such shaking and brushing as I could. The dirt of hands and face had, of course, to remain.

A little after ten I rang the bell, and my host, who lived on the ground floor, opened the door. His sitting-room, in the lay-out of its standardized furniture, was much what the outside of the house led one to expect. His small bedroom, however, gave a startling impression of blood-red and gold. The curtains and the cover of the divan bed must have been importations of his own.

He offered me whisky and a cigarette. He was not, he explained, permitted by his religion to take either himself. He also offered me a bath, which I turned down on the grounds that his landlady would not approve.

Opening a cupboard in his bedroom, he showed me three of his pugarees, wound on some kind of framework and ready for use.

‘Choose which you like,’ he said. ‘You can return it when you come again. But what are you going to wear with it?’

‘The old woman’s dressing-gown,’ I answered.

‘Are you really a sweep?’

‘O’ course I am!’

‘Yet you can’t help speaking like an educated man occasionally, and you have very beautiful hands.’

I silently blasted him and his acute perception. I was out of my depth. His eyes, less accustomed, perhaps, than ours to be taken in by a mere exterior, had spotted my one mistake. My nails were full of coal dust, but they were long. I hadn’t had much time, and one can’t think of everything.

‘I’ve been inside,’ I answered sulkily. ‘They trained me as a sweep.’

It was, I think, evident to both of us by this time that we did not share all each other’s tastes. Yet the first charge of sympathy which had passed between us in Gordon Square had reality, we were both opportunists, feeling out quick and devious ways to our ends.

‘What did they put you away for?’ he asked. ‘False pretences? Blackmail?’

“Ouse-breaking.’

He was a most disconcerting panther of a man. He weighed me up, smiling and thinking behind his Assyrian thicket of hair. His eyes shone with an emotion which was either sheer feline cruelty or a sense of mischief, and they never left mine. We might have been a couple of tom-cats, staring at each other motionless in a backyard, and communicating only by imperceptible changes of position.

‘You ought to have a beard for your fancy-dress ball,’ he said. ‘Would you like one? With no chance of being caught?’

‘I’m going straight now,’ I told him. ‘There’s money in this trade.’

‘Enough?’ he asked. ‘Or was William Morris right when he prophesied that the most unpleasant jobs would be the best paid?’

‘Never eard of ‘im!’

‘Ever
‘eard
of the Sikhs?’ he asked, emphasizing my inefficient assumption of an accent which did not belong to me.

I dropped it forthwith. He refused to be taken in, and it seemed to be complicating the battle — whatever the battle was - unnecessarily.

‘All I know is that you may not shave or cut your hair -like Samson,’ I answered.

He said that was all I needed to know, and went on to tell me a most scandalous story. A co-religionist of his was also interested in fancy dress. It was his pleasure to masquerade as a woman, so he had preserved his long, black hair, while shaving of his beard and whiskers. In order to give no offence to the faithful during the more normal occupations of his post-graduate fife, he had acquired a magnificently fitted false set. I was to be the chosen instrument of heaven which would enter his room while he slept and cause his whiskers to vanish. He would then be solemnly visited by representatives of his family and religion, and shown up as a backslider.

‘There is no danger,’ added my Sikh. ‘Even if he sees you, he dare not tell the police.’

I did not want a beard. I could buy one myself for the Sweeps’ Annual Outing and Fancy Dress Ball, now that I had invented it, without arousing any suspicion whatever. What I did want was an excuse for wearing a beard, a setting for it so natural that no one would bother to wonder whether it was false or not. A Sikh turban would do admirably.

‘But suppose he sleeps in his whiskers?’ I objected.

‘You pull them off.’