The Frightened Man (28 page)

Denton put his face close to the mass. ‘Dog hairs,’ he said. ‘Looks like there’s a lot of Rupert in there, too.’ He straightened. ‘You mean to say this contraption actually got this stuff from our floors?’

‘Every bit.’ Atkins dropped the mass into a waste-basket and then began spreading newspapers, on which he dumped more from the tube as he talked. ‘This thing
works
, Colonel. It sells itself. Trust me. Every young matron behind every front door in every new terrace in London wants one of these the moment I open that door and show her the results. Magic!’

‘You’re already peddling it?’

‘I’ve made a few experimental visits in Maida Vale and associated areas.’ He held up a hand. ‘On my evenings off !’

‘Well don’t use “effluvia” when you sell it, or they’ll think you’re saying something naughty.’ Denton picked the device up, saw that it had a sucker-like mouth that rested on the floor. At the other end was an oar-shaped wooden handle attached to a shaft that ran down into the metal tube. It was in fact a simple pump - push the handle down, a plunger descended, forcing air out through two valves; pull it back up and the valves closed and a weak vacuum was created at the mouth. Denton pumped it a couple of times, saw why Maude was sweating. ‘The new matrons are going to get damned tired,’ he said. He pumped again. ‘The handle’s wrong - who wants a handle in line with the shaft when you have to pull? You want something at right angles, like a shovel handle.’

Atkins shrugged. ‘We got a price on some oars. Of course, we intend to refine the product as the company grows.’

‘How much have you got in it?’

‘Ten pounds - fifty per cent share.’

Denton put the mouth down on the carpet, pumped twice, felt a suction that drew the end of the carpet off the floor. He handed it to Maude, who had collapsed in a chair. ‘Makes more sense to put an electric motor in it.’

‘We thought of that already,’ Atkins said with a hint of getting one over. ‘Won’t work - to pull the handle up, you need a great thing like a derrick working at the back.’

‘You don’t need to pull the handle up. There are rotary pumps, aren’t there?’

Atkins stared at him, then took out a notebook and a pencil and scribbled. ‘Good idea, Captain. Mind -’ he held up the pencil - ‘it was given freely in conversation! Maude here’s a witness - no royalty or percentage due for it.’

Denton grunted and turned back to the morning’s mail. More bills. A quick survey of them told him that he owed more money than he had. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. His real concern was paying the women who were working for Mrs Johnson. If he hadn’t bought this house, he’d be all right. Or if he’d been able to finish the book that was due, he’d be all right. Or if somebody owed him money—

He grabbed the wet overcoat from the fire screen. ‘I’m going out!’ he shouted down the room.

‘You’re soaking wet!’

‘It suits my mood.’ He clapped the wet hat back on his head and was off.

Money, money, money.
He went into the Domino Room for the first time since Wilde’s funeral and nodded to a few people he knew but headed straight towards the Glasshouse Street side. It was Frank Harris he wanted - he intended to get his reimbursement for the Paris trip.

‘Been looking for you,’ Denton said, sinking into a chair. Harris was sitting alone at a small table, staring at an empty brandy glass.

Harris looked up. It seemed to take him a couple of seconds to realize who Denton was; then his usual look of malevolence vanished and the corners of his eyes crinkled. Denton’s face must have told him everything, because Harris frowned, then shrugged and grinned. ‘I have some money for you,’ he said.

This was so surprising that Denton thought Harris must think he was somebody else. His prepared speech of appeal and outrage stuck in his throat.

Harris began to pull money from various pockets and drop it on the table. ‘Took up a collection. To cover your expenses in the Paris expedition. People surprisingly generous. You sent flowers, did you? Damned good of you to go at all - can’t have you out of pocket—’ He grinned. ‘Actually, I think you’ll do rather well out of it—’

‘The flowers were as ugly as anything I’ve ever seen, but at least they were flowers. The card said, “Form the writters and artistes du Café Royale” - with an e.’

‘Was the funeral dreadful? Was it all terribly Catholic and
French
?’

Denton told him about the almost empty church, the miles-long ride to the cemetery.

‘Well, I’m grateful. Oscar liked to get his Johnson into funny places, but he was an
artist
!’ Harris pushed the crumpled notes and a pile of coins across the table. ‘Genius forgives everything.’

‘That’s what people say about Wagner.’

‘You’re not a Wagnerite?’

‘Lot of people screaming at each other in German. Pretentious horseballs.’

‘Don’t let Shaw hear you say that. You get along with Shaw?’

Denton was stacking the notes, mentally counting as he started to sort the coins, thinking he could pay off the shilling-apiece R. Mulcahys. ‘He’s delighted to meet me every time we’re introduced.’

‘Doesn’t remember you?’ Harris laughed. ‘Bit of a snob, actually. Typical Fabian - help the working-man, bring culture to the middle class, but Oh, please, don’t introduce me to one of them!’

Denton ordered a coffee and told Harris he was in a foul mood because he’d about run out of direction in his murdered-tart business, and he’d spent a dismal afternoon in a home for unwed mothers; meanwhile, he was counting money and checking off in his head the bills he could now pay.

‘Go back to writing.’

Denton made a face. ‘Actually, I’ve got an idea that might pay, thought you might like to buy it. Spent the afternoon at this God-awful place where the murdered girl had her baby. No wonder she preferred the streets - I’ve seen better prisons. I’ve
worked
in better prisons!’

Harris got his hungry look. ‘Anything in it for me? An exposé, something of that sort? I’m between magazines right now but I’m starting a new one, a society mag, in the spring. This suitable?’

‘Would take some digging.’

‘Getting down in the night soil and raking out diamonds? Like the man in
Pilgrim’s Progress
? Upper class love that, so long as they’re not expected to do anything.’

‘Pregnant women being worked like slaves, would that entertain them?’

Harris shook his head. ‘Social reform, not a good idea for my audience. They want something that they can tut-tut over before they have their after-dinner belch.’ Harris played with the foot of his wine glass. ‘Sex in it?’

‘Well, the women got pregnant, didn’t they? But there’s exploitation, injustice, ill-treatment—’

Harris shook his head. ‘Maybe if we got somebody inside. Maybe a woman journalist, posing as in the family way. Nice angle, that, actually.’ He signalled to a waiter. ‘Have another?’

‘The Café gets its linen done there. You could buttonhole Oddenino, get him to tell you what he pays. They’re making money, and the women aren’t getting it.’

But Harris wasn’t listening. ‘Actually, I could write it myself under a female pseudonym. I wrote as Mrs F. B. Strether a couple of times; I could resurrect her. I always saw her as a middle-aged woman with glasses and a huge
embonpoint
. Somebody younger for this, though - “How I Was Enslaved by My Unborn Babe,” by Elsie Dampknickers
.
“Your Clean Linen is My Dirty Secret - Chained to a Mangle by a Moment’s Indiscretion!”’ He banged on his glass for a waiter. ‘Sounds rather fun. You’d supply the eye-witness account of the deplorable conditions in this workhouse, and I could fabricate a couple of pathetic tales from recent inmates, with some titillation about how they got - do you say “knocked up”? In my days in Chicago people did. Wouldn’t need to put somebody inside, in that case. Might even pick up one or two of the post-partum graduates with a well-placed advert, in fact. But maybe not worth it. Get into trouble, advertising for women. Slant it towards the solid middle class - much moral indignation about child labour and the rights of women, “even women and girls who, though fallen, deserve better of England.” Eh? Catches the tone, you think? Maybe
Pearson’s
would take it. I’ll give you, let’s say, ten per cent for the idea and the information.’

‘I could write it myself.’

‘Not your manor, Denton; you haven’t got the properly low touch. Fifteen per cent?’

‘Half,’ Denton said, pocketing more than twenty pounds and admitting to himself that Harris could write such a piece better than he could.

‘That’s an unkind cut.’ Harris hunched over his empty glass. ‘A quarter.’ He glared at Denton. ‘Not in advance, you understand. What’s this about, then? You on your uppers, Denton?’

Denton shrugged.

‘Then let’s talk about something more your line: the new mag might lay out a few pounds for something about this murder that fascinates you so. Or what about this attack you suffered? Fellow stabbed you, didn’t he? Have to treat it in a genteel fashion - gentleman astonished by lower-class lack of civility. Invasion of your premises, working-class brute, collapse of civilization. Eh?’

‘Actually, he tried to
kill
me. Twice in one night.’

‘“Famous Author’s Night With a Monster”, something like that?’

‘You make it sound as if we went to bed.’

Harris waved a hand. ‘Scare the knickers off the well-to-do - if it could happen to you, it could happen to them.’ He smiled at the fresh glass that finally appeared in front of him. ‘Actually, if you’re hard up, there’s a market for a, shall I say, more
specific
account of your girl’s murder. Something, shall we say,
graphic
. Not for a, mmm, press you’d recognize - rather special, by subscription, your own name wouldn’t go on it - but spiced up with a few scenes of the right sort - first-person account of her early experiences, properly moist descriptions of what your man saw through his peephole on several occasions, then the gory murder - “What Mulcahy Saw.” Mmm. Nice. I’d take only ten per cent.’

‘Pornography, in short.’

‘Well, what’s in a name, Denton? We mustn’t think ourselves too grand for other forms of art when we’re hard up. It is art, you know - what is it if it isn’t art? It has its laws, its forms, its necessities.’

‘Old men in bedrooms with their tongues hanging out.’

‘And not just their tongues. Old
and
young, Denton, middle-aged and juvenile. What a sheltered life you’ve led!
All
men, my friend,
all
men. Pornography is simply what we all think but few dare to put on paper.’

‘I know a woman who says that all men hate women.’

‘We do! Yet we can’t live without them! They have that magical thing, that locus of fantasy, the monosyllable that begins with C, and
we want it!
We must have it! And they hide it, protect it, make us scrape and plead and marry them to get at it - and we hate them for it! The only workable relationship between men and women is prostitution; the only revealing literary form is pornography. The woman who told you that we hate them is very wise - do I know her?’

Denton hesitated; there was the usual proscription against discussing women, plus some personal distaste in this case. ‘A woman named Janet Striker.’

‘Oh, I know of her! Formidable woman. Remarkable. Rather like the Hindoo whatsit - the thing that rolls over you—’

‘Juggernaut.’

‘That’s the one. Janet Striker, my God. A virago with a halo. However did you meet her?’

‘She took me to the Humphrey this afternoon.’

‘Yes, her line - saving women from men. Unwed mothers our speciality. Hopeless, but no more so than Fabianism.’ Harris drank, his eyes now rather red, his voice rising as he warmed up for the argumentative stage of his evening. ‘It’s
all
hopeless. It’s all going to crash, Denton! All this do-gooding, all this genteel putting of plasters on suppurating sores. Crash! Down it’s all going to come - you, me, magazines, pornography - out with us, I say, good riddance. Down come all the old ways of doing things, all the hypocrisy, all the good intentions, all the pretence that gentility is anything but greed tinted golden - there’s a fall coming, a plunge into an abyss - inevitable! Some cataclysm, some disaster - pestilence, famine,
war
! It’ll all be over in a quarter of a century!’

‘That’s pessimistic.’

‘On the contrary, I’m an optimist. It can’t go on.
We
can’t go on. Look at the hellhole you just visited - and that’s supposed to be for some greater good! Look around you - look at England’s
artists
. Dear God, Jesus laughs - artists! Art should be the hope of creation, and what do we have? The RA! Alma-Tadema! Composers who’ve never heard a minor key in their lives - little nightingale farts about their
feelings
while contemplating bloody nature! Poets with their lips pressed to the warm buttocks of privilege! Henley - dear God - “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”!’ He held up his fists like a strong man, braced his head and back like a hero on a horse. ‘Dum-dede-dum-dum dum de-dum! All the rhythm of a drunkard tupping a slattern in an alley.’ He shook his angry head. ‘Let it end! New art - we must have new art that’s jangled, mysterious, incantatory, wondrous - paintings that don’t have subjects, poems that don’t scan, novels about life as it’s never been—!’ He glared at Denton. ‘You don’t believe a word I say.’

‘I have an editor who wants me to write a book about vampires.’

‘Editors will be the first to be swept away!’ Harris laughed; Denton joined in. ‘How would twenty-five pounds do for the rights to the baby-factory idea plus an article for the new mag on your night of horror?’

‘In advance?’

Harris laughed again.

Denton got to his feet then, muttering about having to go; he could take only so much of Harris when he started to rant. After several long seconds, Harris said, looking away from him, ‘It’s all coming to an end. It has to. All going to crash.’ He looked up. ‘Indignation’s no good, Denton. The Fabians, the do-gooders, the reformers - not a hope! We need a revolution.’ He lifted his almost empty glass. ‘Or another drink.’ He waved at a waiter.