Umbrella (10 page)

An impression of the
bashed boiled-egg
face of the big clock, and of the gentlemen petrified on their plinths – Audrey sees the pipe organ of Parliament, hearkens to its maddening fugue . . . She looks down at her freckled hands, lying once more in the lap of her shabby dress, ’
ow they shake with palsy
. Her father tenderly places a bag between them, the rumpled paper,
cloth-soft
. She withdraws a bonbon reeking of acetone and presses it to her bloodless lips – then tastes the pear essence as it
bashes
her teeth. – You ’ad a little turn there, m’dear. His solicitude is more troubling than his contempt. They are on a motor ’bus that shudders up Whitehall – a leather hanging strap tap-taps against his bowler, he pats her hands, the action as involuntary as hers. He speaks of the ’bus and its route from Victoria to the Bank, but Audrey cannot hear him that well for her hands have twisted into claws that scrabble on the mounds of her thighs, back and forth, over and over, in a pattern that cannot really be a pattern – since it is never repeated. The unstoppable movement towards the city’s central
lodestone
is affecting, Audrey notices, her father’s elocution: aligning the wayward consonants, repelling the colloquialisms. – As I was saying before, Audrey, Mister Phillips is now making a fuller commitment to Albert – he’s to board at Woodford. Mister Phillips has arranged it all with the Drapers, while he himself will pay for his books . . . his sporting equipment and suchlike. Well –? This is not, she realises, a question – it’s more akin to a chairman’s patter between turns, and so begs the question,
What’s coming next?
She sees Albert as Mister Phillips must have,
spottin’ ’im
in Anderson’s, the tall youth’s bulging grey eyes running down the column of figures scrawled on a bill – tu’pence for this, ha’pence for that, thru’pence for the Eccles cake – his severe mouth pronouncing the total instantly. His family are, of necessity, familiar with Albert’s prodigious calculating ability, his pals too: they call him Datas, after the music-hall mental prestidigitator. Just as his father has his moniker shouted after him in the street, so Datas Death has his own salute,
Am I right, sir?
Although unlike the genial Datas on stage, there’s no jocularity to Albert’s correctitude. He is
rigid in all things
, disdaining brawling, yet looks
fit to kill
if he’s accused of having
funked it
by failing to answer a question or complete a computation. Now the days are balmier he strips to the waist in the hugger-mugger of the backyard – having obtained a copy of Sandow’s Magazine, he performs the exercises it describes using Indian clubs he has made by sawing up old railway sleepers. — Datas is not Stanley’s hero, but
Enigmarelle, the Man of Steel
– he desires to be
a mechanical man
with an engine
hammerin’
in his belly and smoke
spurtin’
from
’
is mouf an’ nose
. . .
I’ve never been up on a motor before! is Audrey’s answer, shouted over the
rattle-bash
that reverberates through the saloon. Her eyes skitter to the back platform, fall from it to the pattern of crushed droppings-on-tarmac that unrolls there. Try as she might, she cannot will the grunting ’bus aloft, up from the congeries of cabs that mesh into a
millipede
inching its way from Whitehall into Trafalgar Square. Audrey cannot –
yet Stan flies
whenever he wants: he positions her beside him in front of their mother’s new cheval glass and tips it back to fling them
suddenly, silver, skywards
. . .
Stan says: In twenty years’ time everyone will be an aeronaut, Colonel Cody will perfect his war kite and there’ll be gazetted aeroplane services connectin’ all the cities of the Empire. Airships’ll carry the heavy freight that goes now by sea: pig iron, coal, Canadian wheat. They’ll anchor up above the Pool of London and the air will be fick with their hawsers – the stevedores’ll operate movin’ beltways high as cranes. See! Up we go, Aud! And again he tips the glass so the flame-haired girl and the bat-eared boy lift off,
suddenly, silver, skywards
. . .

Getting down at Charing Cross, still sucking her pear drop, Audrey turns from the
sooty black drainpipe
of Nelson’s Column to be put upon by
PHOSPHERINE THE REMEDY OF KINGS
and
PLAYER’S NAVY CUT
, momentarily
sandwiched
between two sandwich men, and once freed engulfed by the hubbub of the afternoon crowds – clerks and shop-walkers released for their half-day dodge and jig across the road. One
snappy chappie
pops under the very shafts of a growler – the cabbie flicks his whip, but the three ladies behind
chandeliers wrapped in muslin
disdain to notice. Bloody oaf! Her father’s oath rises above the charivari as he upbraids a ragamuffin the worse for drink who cavorts about an organ-grinder. A few paces on Audrey looks back at this man’s pillbox hat, his torn and filthy scarlet tunic – he is an old soldier, who hops on an ashplant, the empty leg of his trousers flapping — but Sam Death won’t be caught napping, he weaves through the throng along the Strand, then wheels Audrey round to join a queue who are taking their turn to peer in the eyepiece of a kinetosocope plunked down
beside the foyer doors of the Old Tivoli. Her head ducked into this commedia, she sees a pretty Colombine pirouette around a capering ape –
Might I escape? –
her gyration not smooth but jerking forward, then back, the double-exposure of the film depicting a meeting with her transparent double. The title card slots in:
Miss Lottie Farquhar, Appearing Nightly in ‘Darker Delights’, Stalls Seats for a Limited Period,
5/6
d., Fully Electrified, fssschk-chk-fssschk-chk
. . . His
paw
on her again. P’raps it’d be agreeable to you if we were to take the back way? Audrey wonders what errand can it be that her father runs for Arnold Collins, his inferior – one he has always treated with amused contempt? The tip of his umbrella fingers the joins between the cobbles as they cross the corner of Covent Garden, ignoring the leather-aproned porters lounging against the empty crates, ignoring the rotten fruit underfoot and the arabs scrabbling for it – the dusk is massing in the corners of the square,
lyin’ in wait
. Little Dublin, he remarks casually as they cross Drury Lane. Every third store-front is boarded up with heavy planks, some scrawled with
crim’ sigils
, although
why? There’s nuffink
’
ere to avaway
. The narrow entries to the godforsaken courts are blocked off with timber bulwarks, and through a gap in one Audrey sees the limewashed ghost of a dwelling, some of the condemned tenants standing in front of it, their faces and clothing creased with dirt – they are, she understands, too weak
wivunger
to be dangerous. One boy her own age who lolls in a doorway wears no trousers –
no pockets
. . .
no pockets t’pick
– his man-sized shirt torn up past his hips, an idiot grin slitting his
potato head.
The final shard of the boiled sweet snaps between Audrey’s teeth. They simper, the
three little maids
. . .
Women of the unfortunate class, Death chews this phrase over before spitting it out more coarsely: Wimminuv ve un-for-tun-ate class, they’ll sell their selves for thru’pence, tu’pence or a loaf of stale bread . . . One makes as if adjusting something in her bodice:
a corsage that’s invisible
. Audrey feels her
bubbies
prickle and the sweat-damp shift still wadded between her thighs.
I don’t need no Snowdrop Bands, I need the double-you-see
– there are no words to say this, a year or so ago, yes, but not now. Beyond the pub hatch where the whores have gathered the street ends in another timber bulwark – this one two storeys high and plastered with the pink cheeks, golden curls and frothing white suds of hudson’s soap. To the right of the hoarding a cranny leads into a long, narrow lane, the carriageway barely wide enough for a cart, the shop-fronts to either side antiquated, their many-paned and thick-mullioned windows plastered
wiv
’
udson’s dirt
, as are their horizontal shutters, some of which have been let down to form the basis of stalls. Up above are more wooden bafflers tilting out obliquely from the buildings — Audrey breaks step. – Those? Death is amused by what’s pricked her curiosity. Those’re mirrors, Audrey, t’catch a slice of the ’eavens and chuck it in the winder. ’Course, anyone peeping down from on top could see a body steppin’ inter ’er smalls . . .
Who is he, my father?
As they go on, the hush she had not been aware of deepens, the never-ending snarl of the city streets tails away into a single bark tossed from jaws to jaws: a solo motor horn yelping.

The alleyway scores deeper into the damp clay. Halting, her father takes a small leather-bound volume from the stack of books on a stall – and, as he lifts it to his face, the cover falls open to expose marbled endpapers, then drops off altogether, along with several leaves that
swipe
their way to the ground. At once a white head pops up from behind the stall,
the Mad Mullah!
turns out to be a mousy man, his turban wound out of an Indian shawl, and when he’s hauled up his pince-nez from the length of its black ribbon and clipped his
nubbin innit
he sees Death clearly. Oh, it’s you, Rothschild, he wheezes
wordy notes
– he has swallowed the consumptive’s
harmonium
. Audrey’s father gestures with the broken book. – I shall, of course, recompense you for any loss, Mister Fellowes. The mousy man plays a
mournful chord
: Why bother, eh? This’n – he gestures in turn – all done for now an’ gone, done up proper, done up prop— and there’s another
pump on the
pedals, he oughtn’t to run on so,
’e ain’t got the breff
. Mister Fellowes is tieless, his collar unfastened, his Turkey throat
gobbles
, in the dark recesses of the shop a caged bird
fluttercheeps
. —
Death utters this: As the papers have it, there’s substantial com-pen-say-shun available along the way for those who’ve longer leasehold . . . and freehold, naturally. For the first time Audrey notices her father’s ponderousness when he
speaks proper
. She blushes – and to hide her confusion takes a book from the pile on the stall, Sermons of the late Reverend Simon Le Coeur, D.D. A little friend o’yourn, is she –? She has attracted the bookseller’s leer. Samuel barks, Yes, a special little friend! He grabs her shoulder and twists her upright, pulling everything
tight
. Tell me – his grip
tightens
– has Mister Beauregard ceased trading yet? The mousy man runs his fever-pink eyes the length of Audrey,
from top to toe
, before answering disdainfully: Beauregard won’t cease ’til the wreckers’ ball drops on that fucking garret – not that ’e ain’t made his ’rangements, fixed up premises with some shonks on the Mile End Road. Death lifts the beetle carapace of his bowler, runs a hand over his damp pate. In that case, he says, I will ascend – he has some, ah, merchandise for Brother Collins –. Mister Fellowes coughs, retches, spits derision: While you’ve some fer ’im inall! This is a statement of fact, accompanied by the retrieval of a waxed paper, its unfolding, the savage poking of a pinch of snuff into his nostril. Hm . . . Death mutters . . . mebbe. He hooks his umbrella over his left arm and gropes deep in his trouser pocket. Audrey stands
wrung out
and abandoned. ’Ere – he presses a thru’pence into her palm,
hard
– you’ll find a coffee shop along aways. Sit tight wiv a cuppa anna slice, I’ll come after yer inna bit. The mousy man’s sneeze follows her down the road, heff-heff-heff-p’shawww! – she turns back once but her father has already disappeared.