England Made Me (19 page)

Lyons in Coventry Street would be open, Anthony thought, and after breakfast it was always possible to find somewhere; there was an hotel off Wardour Street, innumerable rooms above the foreign cafés to be hired by the hour, not romantic, not very clean, but one could always be happy given the girl, given the bed; some people would count themselves lucky without a flat on the North Strand. He dug his nails into his palm in a spasm of longing for the tea urn, the slattern with the clean towels, the stacks of English cigarettes. He thought: I was a fool to leave; if I had waited I could have found a job; no one could down me there: I knew the ropes.

‘They won't let us in?'

‘No, they won't let us in.'

‘There's nothing to do, I suppose, but go back.'

‘Wait here,' he said, ‘I'll try a tip.' He followed the man with the broom and presently found him outside a small detached building at the end of the terrace. No, the man said, he couldn't show him the palace; he hadn't the keys. If he came back in an hour . . . but he had the keys of the theatre if they cared to see that.

The small theatre had been left exactly as it was in the eighteenth century. The royal seats were still surmounted by their crowns, the long claret benches were labelled and reserved for the dead, for the ladies-in-waiting, the gentlemen of the bedchamber, the barber and the perruquier. Anthony and Loo sat down, and in the wings of the small deep stage their guide began to pull the ropes which worked the old elaborate scenery. Blue and white clouds puffed out like Cupids' bottoms descended round the worn arm-chair used by Venus or Jupiter in masques and operas. He turned out the lights and made the thunder roll. Dust rose and fell.

Anthony said: ‘We've got to find some place to go to. If we were in London –'

‘Or Coventry.'

‘What did you do in Wotton-under-Edge?'

‘We had a car.'

All the scenery began to move sideways, and a faded elegant flower garden appeared in jerks from the wings. Sitting side by side on a bench once occupied by the royal barber and the court chaplain, they felt their legs touch and press; they strained towards each other through their clothes; they felt physically ill with the want of a bed. A trap shot up on the stage and the guide appeared suddenly from below. Everything, he said, was in working order as on the day when it was made, then vanished again. They heard him stumbling about under the stage.

‘I've got it,' Anthony said, ‘we'll go and see Minty.'

‘Who's Minty?'

‘He's a journalist. A lonely devil. We'll pretend we've come to breakfast. He'll know of somewhere we can go to.'

‘You do want to go with me?' she asked with an absurd air of formality. ‘I don't want to drive you into it.'

‘There's nothing I want more. It'll be just like home.'

‘It's good for one.'

‘Oh,' he said with a sudden sense of coldness, of unfamiliarity, of the stone building round the lakes, water, water everywhere, and the stiff men bowing to each other over schnaps, with a nostalgia for easy friendships, for a language he understood, for the guardsmen in the Park, the cars waiting for pick-ups, the shop girls and the saloon bars, ‘I wish you were staying or I was going. Kate's a careerist. She doesn't understand. I can be happy with so little' – whisky with a splash, a copy of
Razzle
, the Paddington hotels and the club under Lisle Street, not this: the millionaire, the steel and glass, the incomprehensible statue. ‘If only I could come with you.'

‘It's not respectable what you are doing. I do wish it was something respectable.'

‘After you've gone I shan't know a soul.'

‘I daresay it's better like this. We don't want to start a relationship.'

‘Why not?' Anthony said. ‘What's wrong with a relationship? Don't be a snob. I like you and you like me. Why shouldn't we go on seeing each other till we are tired of it?'

‘A relationship's so limiting,' Loo said. They kissed, and into their kiss crept the desperation, the hunger of departure, the sadness of railway stations; one was going and one was staying; a holiday was over; the fireworks were dead on the grass, other people were watching the pierrots and curling of an evening in their glass shelter on the front, and one had done nothing more complete than this kiss. You have my address, the slamming of doors, write to me, the waving of a flag, we'll meet again, and the smoke blowing between. She took her mouth away. ‘So limiting,' she said again uncertainly. He looked for her mouth and missed it; her cheek tasted salt. ‘Oh, damn it bloody all,' she said, and ‘Excuse my language,' with an attempt at flippancy.

What an odd thing, he thought, what the hell of an odd thing to happen to me. He said hopelessly: ‘Will you be back next year?'

‘Not a chance,' she said. ‘This is the holiday of a lifetime for the old people. Unless Krogh makes their fortune. They've put a little money into Krogh's since they've been here.'

‘He pays ten per cent.'

‘It'll have to be fifty per cent before they come here again.'

Their guide rolled the thunder a second time. Then he began to pull up Venus's chair; it dangled for a while on frayed ropes above the boards, then shot above the clouds and disappeared. ‘Time's short,' Anthony said, ‘and we are wasting it.'

‘I know what that means,' Loo said.

‘Well, you don't mind, do you?'

‘Of course I don't. It's healthy, isn't it?' She became unreasonably bitter. ‘It's a whole six months since Wotton-under-Edge.'

‘For God's sake,' Anthony said, ‘forget Wotton-under-Edge.'

The road unwound the other way; it seemed a long distance to have come for so little reason. They had each had a coffee and Loo had drunk a cherry fizz; nothing had happened. ‘We've wasted two hours,' Anthony said.

‘Well, we're both young,' she said. She sat in a corner well away from him, with her knees drawn up; they jolted her chin as the car shook. ‘This time next year –'

‘Where will you be?'

‘I expect we'll go to Bournemouth.'

They stopped at a shop and bought some sandwiches. Loo carried the parcel. Anthony hated to be seen with one.

They were tired before they reached the third landing in Minty's tenement, and they paused and panted beside a window. They could see all the way down the street to the water's edge; they could hear the tram-bells ringing across the lake from near the central station, the slapping of the water against the quays. Then they climbed up another floor. Minty's card was nailed on his door with a drawing-pin. Mr F. Minty. They looked for a bell and couldn't find one, so Anthony banged on the door with his hand.

‘I wonder what F. stands for,' Loo said.

Minty opened the door and Anthony explained: ‘We've come to breakfast.'

‘Really,' Minty said, ‘this is a great pleasure. Excuse Minty a moment while he nips in and tidies the bed.' They could hear him pulling at blankets, emptying a wash-basin, padding here and there in his bedroom slippers, shutting a wardrobe door, shifting a chair. Then he rejoined them. ‘Come in. Come in,' he said.

‘Let me introduce Miss Davidge.'

‘Good morning,' Minty said. ‘I'm so pleased, so embarrassed. Do you mind sitting on the bed? Will you have some cocoa?'

‘We've brought some sandwiches.'

‘Quite a picnic,' Minty said. He knelt down and rummaged in his cupboard, and then suddenly remembered. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, the landlady's broken my only cup. I'll have to go down and borrow from the Ekmans.' But he remained on his knees with a tin of condensed milk in his hand. ‘Unless we just drink this. I don't see much of the Ekmans. They mightn't want to lend.' He said brightly: ‘It'll be just like the old days, Farrant.'

‘The old days?'

‘One always had condensed milk in one's tuck-box at prep school, don't you remember? One sucked it through a hole in the lid.' He said suspiciously: ‘I suppose you've never sucked condensed milk, Miss Davidge?'

‘Call her Loo,' Anthony said. ‘We're all friends here. Have a sandwich?' Minty took a knife out of his pocket. It had two blades, a curved instrument for taking stones out of horses' hoofs, and a corkscrew. Its size explained the curious hang of his pocket. He began to jab at the tin.

‘Wouldn't it be easier,' Loo said, ‘to take off the whole lid with a tin opener?'

‘It wouldn't be the right way,' Minty said sharply, ‘and besides, I haven't a tin-opener.' He handed her the tin and eyed her balefully when refusing to suck she handed it to Anthony. ‘Why, really,' he said, ‘are you visiting Minty?'

‘Just for friendship's sake,' Anthony said. He sucked with an air. ‘I wanted to catch you before you began work.'

‘No news?'

‘Not a scrap,' Anthony said, ‘I thought we'd just get together.'

‘Hammarsten's got news. And Pihlström.'

‘We saw them yesterday up at Tivoli.'

‘That's what I meant,' Minty said. He knelt on the floor beside the washstand and said sadly: ‘I knew they'd get hold of you – I suppose you've come here to break it gently. You're going to work for them not for me. They've offered you fifty-fifty.' He took another tin out of the cupboard and shook it close to his ear, then put it back. ‘I finished this one yesterday.'

‘What have they written?'

‘Pihlström says that he left the opera before the end and took a car to Tivoli. Hammarsten says that he went to Tivoli to discuss a theatrical venture, which will be exclusively announced in his paper tomorrow.'

‘Do you call that news?'

‘Everything he does is news.'

‘If that's all you want to know,' Anthony said, ‘it's
Pericles
. He's putting up the money for Hammarsten.'

‘What?' Minty said. ‘For Hammarsten?' He laid down his tin of milk. ‘He's mad. They're all mad, these men with money. They get an idea, and that's that. It might have been you, it might have been me. But it happened to be Hammarsten.'

‘After all, he can do what he likes with his own money,' Loo said.

‘If only it had been me,' Minty said. ‘I've been with him often enough these last ten years.' He went to the door and searched the pockets of his dressing-gown for cigarettes; there were none there, only the fluff you find under beds and a scrap of paper. He read what was pencilled on it aloud: ‘Mem: Canary, cake, gooseberry jam (?).'

‘Have you got a canary?' Loo asked.

Minty said: ‘That must have been five years ago. It sang too much and died. But I wonder why the gooseberry jam. I never liked gooseberry jam.' He crumpled up the piece of paper as if he would throw it away; then he changed his mind and put it back. ‘If I'd had what Hammarsten's got ten years ago –'

‘Me too,' Anthony said. ‘I patented a Winter Hand-warming Umbrella. I only needed capital. It was a sure thing.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Loo said, ‘talk about the present. Don't talk about the past all the time. That's what's wrong with you both. Haven't you got futures?'

‘Frankly,' Minty said, ‘no. We shouldn't be here if we had a future.'

‘Why not? What's wrong with Stockholm?'

‘It's not London,' Anthony said.

‘No, it's not London.'

‘It's a damned sight better than Coventry,' Loo said.

‘Dear child,' Minty said, poking with his finger in the soap-dish. Behind his back they whispered; Anthony bounced the bed. Loo said: ‘I admire a man like that. It's all his own money.'

Minty turned on her; his eyes were damp and burning. ‘It's not his own money. He's a borrower, nothing more than a borrower. We can't borrow because we are not trusted. If they trusted us, we should be Kroghs ourselves. He's only one of us. He has no more roots than we have. But we, we have to live within our means; the banks won't trust us; we count our cigarettes, live where it's cheap, save on the laundry, pick up pocket-money by our wits. You're too young, my dear,' he said, with open malice, ‘to understand these things.' He didn't like girls, he couldn't have said it in words more plainly; tawdry little creatures, other people's sisters, their hats blocking the view at Lord's.

‘I'm not,' Loo said. She fidgeted; got off the bed, moved here and there, measuring the dust on chairs and window-sills and curtain-rods with her finger-tip.

‘Why haven't I got a job?' Minty asked her rhetorically. ‘Why does he have to depend on his sister? Krogh's the answer. Buy Krogh's. It's cheaper, less labour, nearly a monopoly, costs cut down, ten per cent dividends. All the money goes to Krogh and he doesn't employ half the men who were employed in the old cut-throat days. It's Krogh who swells the labour exchanges. Put that down, please,' he said as Loo moved a glass. ‘Please don't touch my spider.'

‘You're just jealous,' Loo said, ‘because you can't make money.'

‘Trust Minty, he won't go on for ever. When he begins to take short-term loans –'

‘Oh, he's not a bad sort,' Anthony said. ‘Loo's right. He's got more guts than we have.'

Minty hiccuped. ‘You've made me all excited,' he said. ‘My stomach. Ever since I was drained.' He hiccuped again.

‘Try drinking out of a glass backwards,' Loo said.

‘Please don't touch my spider,' Minty whispered breathlessly. He counted up to twenty aloud. ‘This isn't much of a party,' he said, ‘I'm not used – if my cup had not been broken – you took me by surprise, and then this about Hammarsten.' He followed Loo with his eyes, maliciously observing every unfortunate point in her appearance. ‘It was good of you to come.' But in his scorched eyes he expressed quite clearly his disapproval of the bad make-up, the cheap pretentious dress, the saucy hat. There were people these days one could not avoid meeting: but one retained standards.