Umbrella (12 page)

– No, I didn’t mean thoshe wordsh either, Audrey . . . For a man who supposes himself in thrall to the progress of the labouring classes, Gilbert has a most
extreme aversion
to work itself, in all its forms, except for the production of his own words . . . I meant the wordsh you have sent forth in that frail barque, the Ardent, on to the world’sh watersh. In the shadows of his shirt his penis
hunches
ringed by rolled skin-folds
bamboo stuck in you
. At the Ince workshop, in back of Old Commercial Street, the piece workers,
Jews and Jewesses mostly
, cut the silk and gingham, oil it, stretch it, sew the finicky
loops and sleeves, then feed in the ribs and attach the handle –
Vwar-la!
another Peerless or Paragon or elegant ladies’ walking umbrella. Over and over they do it, their strange and sallow faces also
oiled
and
stretching
– hands
chapped
and
chafed
, covered with bunions in winter – summer brings the stench from the fish stalls in Black Lion Yard, but always there is the high reek of
poultry
.

It is a paltry thing, Gilbert, she says, rising to pull up her petticoats and roll up her stockings. Snap! goes one garter. A paltry thing, and taken only by those that assent to its contents already, read, I believe, not even by them. Snap! There is a silver tray with cut-glass decanter and soda siphon. Audrey lightly touches the fluted neck, the cool grooves – she picks up a pin and begins to fold strand upon strand of her
red raffia-work
. The window is masked by a heavy drape, but beyond it she knows stand the high-gabled houses with their triplets of
artistic
windows, while beyond them lie the embankment and the river
sweating
its
noxious vapours
– she pictures the lurid swirl of tannery waste caught in its sluggish flow. – I shall have to go. – Musht you? – Yes,
yes
– back to Missus Phelps in De Beauvoir Town, back to tinned Gong soup heated up on the oil stove, back to the airy sensation of falling to sleep without the
deadweight
of Father, Mary Jane, and the rest
. . .
She steps into the
respectable
embrace of her shirtwaist, buttons it, moves to the drapes, parts them. Down below a motor-taxi rattles by the kerb, Venetia Stanley –
it can be no other
– stands withdrawing coins from the beady security of her purse. She has come from tea at the Dorchester, Audrey imagines, or a piano recital at the Bechstein Hall – and she has no cares beyond
the troublesome proliferation of her purple plumes upon the hats of her inferiors
. . .
Turning, Audrey says decisively, I should like to hurl a brickbat through her dear friend’s window – through all his bloody windows! Gilbert has taken upon himself flannel underwear
none too clean
. She will not venture, he says, to dishturb us, but jusht in case . . . He uncrooks the arm of the Victrola with one hand, while expertly winding it with the other. His face swells
monstrous
in the beaten tin horn as the melody sings though the hiss. Thought is a melody, Audrey thinks, while the body is an inert mechanism of
cogs, springs, chains and ratchets
. . .
His hands are on her neck, her fingers are hooked in her bootlaces . . . – No, really, Gilbert, I must go. He claps his hands to his thighs. Ha! Well! Sho may it be, he says, and looks about for the
exasperation
of his trousers. Shall I shee you on Thurshday at the meeting? I believe Shtanley will alsho be attending . . . He knows of their
disagreement
– a word too flimsy to contain the violence of their falling-out. Didddle-di-diddle-di-diddle-di-di-di! The pretty trills from the phonograph scatter before her rage,
resurrected
: Stanley, who, despite his waywardness, will, she knows, be martyred. Stanley, his lissom arms outstretched, his palms pierced by the tips of the steel ribs, his ankles
bound to the umbrella post by an India-rubber ring
. So to Cook, Audrey is emphatic: Stanley comes not for George Lansbury, or the car-men, or any principle ’soever. He is in thrall to that fine lady and her pimp – my brother has no position, he’s all but disowned by our father –. She stops, hearing the shh-ching of the drapes being drawn in the drawing room below – the Victrola, which went off
half cocked
, has
diddled
to a halt. Her lover views Audrey appraisingly throughout the awkward business of buttoning himself up. He completes his costume with a cigarette – he smokes a brand called Logic,
one shilling for a box of twenty-five!
You love him, Cook says amazed. You love him more than any other – more than your shuffaragette friensh, more than our schocialisht comradesh, more than –. He is a shapeless
tweed bag with a
smoky drawstring
. . .
Suddenly, she grabs him and pushes him backwards, thrusting her hot face against his bare neck. She feels the cold trickle of her love between her clenched thighs. I love you, Gilbert, she pants, I love you. Audrey knows this is no
romantic felicity
, or
brazen fortitude
, but
revolutionary: And all around the slaves do dwell, Who are called to labour by a bell
. . .
–
And you love me, Gilbert, don’t you – she shakes him – you love me too! His shoulder has snagged the copper teat of the light switch and they look up at the electrolier curling over their heads, look up and are
smitten by the incandescing clapper in its frosted bell
. Beyond this lamp there is another, and beyond that one a third – and so on, a great profligacy of illumination that draws Audrey’s eye along the curved roof. Sam Death explains how the electricity is
jenny-rated
way over west in Wood Lane, and how there are
substayshuns
all along the route of the railway, where this strange fluid is subjected to still more mysterious refinement before being piped down into the tunnels to feed the lamps and the middle rail at their feet, which, unlike the
evilly gleaming sisters
that flank it, is
dull
and neglected. Audrey cannot
stay wivvim
– she knows this doesn’t matter. — Her father speaks of the Greathead shield not on her behalf but on behalf of an absent other . . .
Am I right, sir?
The air crackles ozone
a celluloid dickey rubbed on velveteen
. . . at her feet are others’ feet:
spattered
spats and high-heeled boots
dainty as cake decorations
. Audrey tries hard not to stare at the lady and gentleman: she with her hands lost in her muff and a fever spot on each painted cheek, he, lifting his watch by its chain, tapping the platform with his cane, pushing up the brim of his topper. Then the same again: mechanical, unthinking. Stan
only ’ad the one lead soldier
, a pith-helmeted bugler in scarlet tunic and tartan trews, he lifted up his battered bugle to his chipped lips, tootled,
lifted ’is battered bugle to ’is chipped lips an’ tootled
. There was a big bolt through each of his shoulders and there was Stan’s little big finger
makin’ ’im do it
. The train is coming, straining up the incline shaped by the underside of the Fleet’s irrelevant banks. Rothschild Death raises his voice to shout about planned extensions and a turning circuit buried beneath the Uxbridge Road. He sounds proprietary enough to be an investor in – A southern extension, ’owsabout that, Or-dree, then we’d be tunnelin’ our ’ole way ’ome, snug as –. The engine explodes from its ’
ole, a shell fired by a dreadnought
that cruises far below in the
brown earthsea
. Its lamps send
deffrays
lancing along the tiles, while Audrey hears the
paddin’
between her own ears as she listens to the roar of its trajectory. Although she knows it cannot hit them, she grabs the arm from which the parcel destined for Arnold Collins hangs by its loop of twine. – Fine companion you are! Her father exults in her fear, draws her near – from under his furry arm Audrey watches, appalled, as the platform with its cargo of buckram and boaters and nodding plumes slides away behind the row of yellow-lit windows. Seated beside her father, she sees not the advertisement card
REDFERN’S RUBBER MATS FOR THE OFFICE
, above the rushing darkness into which the carriage sinks, then rises to another crest at British Museum Station, then sinks once more. Her hands are back in her lap and they tap-tap-tap with the clack of wheel on steel – but Audrey remains detached, bobbing in her seat as the train surfaces at Tottenham Court Road, at Bond Street, at Marble Arch, where, her head clamped in the
eyepiece
of the window, she is compelled to see through her own diaphanous self to the electrified fssschk-chk-fssschk-chk as the platform pulls away again, this time its display more various:
tailors’ dummies
hung about with Ulsters and macintoshes
shared by two
, the full skirts hiding
Little Titch
on
a pantomime horse
. . .
in between are arranged
in no particular order
an oil stove, a steamer trunk, pearl-handled Colt revolvers in an open display case, a selection of travelling rugs, a hat stand hung about with moabs, a writing desk with a stuffed raven set upon it, a toy train set that is this very underground railway made
awfully small
, a hassock embroidered with the Prince of Wales’s crest, a pianola, an indicator board ringing for service
in every room
, a probang, an electroplated punch bowl, Malacca canes fanned out on a Mackinaw, a regimental table piece in the shape of a sepoy shooting a tiger, a toaster, an electric lamp, a fondue set, a patented ‘Galvanic’ weight-reduction belt, an electric blanket, a stereo cassette deck –
whatever that may be
. Audrey can hear the disembodied voice – sweetly covetous – naming these things as they are shuffled before her, but the kinetoscope is difficult to focus on when she is
so constrained
. . . a barbecue! His and hers dressing gowns and a cuddly toy! The voice finishes on a triumphant note, synthetic sounds swell to make the shape of music, and an invisible audience shapes its hands to make applause
. . .
this fiendishness will be
Albert’s doing: a brace
adjusted so as to force her to stare up at the ceiling, its screws
threaded in the bone
to either side of her eyes.
This
. . .
kinema film
his doing as well: a means of torture
. The brace presses Audrey’s face into a
muzzle
that smells of old sweat – her legs are bound
in a single leg of some
tartan trews
, her hands must
loosen the chuck, switch the bit and turn the wheel
by touch alone – she feels the fuse cap
drop
into my lap
. . .
the lines in between the ceiling tiles converge sickeningly
but it’s
not so bad
. . .
she isn’t like Gracie, who’s been in the Danger Buildings
too long – poor Gracie
, who shared a cubicle with her in the Plumstead hostel and who also received
Cristobel’s message to join in the war effort and once the workers were with them to rise in the reddy dawn. Poor Gracie, who doesn’t know me, who’s demented, whose skin is still canary-yellow – are they putting Trotyl in her food?
In the early years Audrey had been happy to assist – to coo, bill and generally calm them before their
psychoetheric reordering