The Song of the Flea (26 page)

Pym walked across the grass in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. No man, he thought, had ever been less proud of the money in his pocket. It made him uneasy: it made him think of the hungry old humiliated woman, dying in agony of body and mind, buried by a cut-price undertaker in a suburban grave-yard. The money was hers; she had made it. But Reason told him not to be a fool:
What
do
you
want
to
do?
Go
along
to
the
cemetery,
exhume
her,
and
bury
it
with
her?
She
gave
you
that
play
of
her
own
free
will
after
making
you
promise
not
to
let
her
be
buried
in
a
pauper’s
grave.
Take
it,
and
cut
out
this
maudlin
sentimentality.
Sit
down,
get
back
to
work,
write
that
good
book
you
are
always
talking
about,
and
grow
great.
Since
you
are
so
damned
touchy
on
this
subject,
put
up
a
little
gravestone
—
or
a
big
one
if
you
like,
with
angels
on
it,
and
compose
her
a
nice
epitaph.

Reason was interrupted by a terrible scream. Pym stopped. He was standing, now, in the shade of one of the trees that line the Walk that leads to the bandstand. Two women were fighting with fists and nails, teeth and feet, fearful curses and filthy imprecations. One of them was tall and fat, and the other was short and thin. Neither of them could have been less than fifty years old. Even as he stopped, the words ran together and
became a babble. Their rage was too great for words. The big woman picked up a green-painted iron-framed chair and swung it at the head of the little one, who caught it dexterously in both hands and wrenched it away. Then, snarling and spitting, screaming like a lynx, she hooked herself on to the big woman and they rolled in the dust, while another woman, about sixty years old, danced about them like a referee, wringing her hands and crying: “Don’t Maggie! Don’t. She’s not worth it I tell you! Why can’t you talk it over?”

They did not hear. The little woman was bleeding from the nose; and the big woman’s scalp was marked with a raw red patch—a lock of her grizzled hair was clutched in one of her opponent’s bony little hands. The noise brought the young couples out of their amorous trances. They came running from the shadows, made a crowd, and looked on. Two policemen, clumsily running in their heavy boots, broke through. But the women had gone berserk. One of the policemen staggered back with a red scratch on his cheek, and his helmet fell off. Someone in the crowd laughed derisively, and everyone else laughed. Two more policemen came. One of them blew a whistle. They caught the big woman and held her by the arms; but the little woman, tearing off her clothes, threw herself down, kicking and writhing, sobbing and screaming, like a woman in an epileptic fit, until a man came with a stretcher, and they strapped her down and carried her away. The big woman went quietly, weeping bitterly, and saying, between sobs: “I’ll kill ’er, I’ll kill ’er!”

“What’s it all about?” asked Pym.

The elderly woman, the referee, shook a deprecatory head, pursed her lips, and said in an affected voice: “These girls! I don’t know, some of them seem to have no pride at all, making exhibitions of themselves like that.”

“But what were they fighting about?”

Her face was like a painted walnut. She replied: “Pitches.”

“Pitches? What pitches?”

She simpered. “A stranger here? … You see, us girls sit on chairs along here. You see, most of us have our Regulars, so we always sit on the same chair, so they know exactly where
to find us when they want us. Well, Maggie has sat on that chair for five years to my certain knowledge. But Sheila won’t let anybody live, you know. She’s selfish. She comes early and takes the other girls’ chairs. And you saw what class of girl she was. Mad Sheila. But I will say this for Maggie, she’s not afraid of Sheila. Maggie has a Regular who gives her ten shillings. Well, Sheila tried to get Maggie’s chair. One thing leads to another, you know. It seems that they came to blows. Are you a stranger here?”

“Not exactly.”

“Are you feeling lonely?”

“No, not a bit lonely.”

“Ten shillings?”

“No.”

“You’re such a nice-looking boy, I wouldn’t mind going with you for nothing, only I’ve got to live, you see.”

“Here’s your ten shillings,” said Pym. “Good-bye.”

She took the ten-shilling note, looked at him resentfully, said “Thank you” in a ladylike voice, and went away to her chair.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” said the last of the remaining policemen to Pym.

“Lovely,” said Pym.

“I’d have to be pretty hard up before I was seen dead with one of them. As a matter of fact, you’d have to be in a pretty bad state before you touched one of them with a barge pole—a disinfected barge pole.”

“Who are they? What are they?” asked Pym. “I mean—I know what they are, but how do they get that way?”

“Why,” said the policeman, “a lot of ’em are respectably married women. Husbands in regular jobs. They go on the bash for a little bit of extra pin money. There’s one round here that wears glasses! Most of them are just old tarts. That big one, Maggie, she used to be pretty good-looking twenty years ago. But you know what they are—they never save a penny, and sooner or later, well—there you are.”

“Lovely,” said Pym.

“Yes, bloody lovely, isn’t it?” said the policeman.

As Pym walked to Joanna Bowman’s flat near Victoria, he prayed:
“Oh
Lord!
Thrust
me
into
the
furnace
—
hammer
me
flat
—
grind
me
down
—
beat
me
into
a
surgeon’s
knife
and
let
me
cut
some
of
the
rottenness
away
from
this
sick,
suffering
world!”

*

Joanna Bowman said: “If you don’t mind roughing it, I’ll make an omelette.”

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t rather go out to eat,” said Pym. “I have a suspicion that you’re being diplomatic so as to save me money. I’ve got some money now. No, not the fiver I borrowed from Proudfoot. I haven’t broken into that—I’ve got that here in my pocket. It goes back to Proudfoot to-morrow.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t so much a loan as an advance on what they wanted to pay me for the job they wanted me to do. But I’m not going to do the job.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“They want me to put that woman Weissensee’s muck into attractive English,” said Pym, indignant at the thought of it.

“I must say you sound as though you don’t altogether approve of it. I’ve never read any of it myself.”

“I should think not!”

The horror in Pym’s voice amused her. “Are you afraid it would corrupt me?”

“I don’t think anything could corrupt you. But it’s the sort of stuff that makes you feel unclean. It makes you feel sick. I should feel embarrassed, somehow, to see a woman reading it.”

“But it wouldn’t embarrass you to see a man reading it?”

“No, not quite so much—now don’t start asking me why not, because I don’t know.”

“I see that you’re quite an old-fashioned boy at heart.”

“I am, I suppose. I hate dirt, scientific or otherwise. As I see it, shit by any other name smells no sweeter … I even don’t like to use that word in the presence of a lady. It’s in my nature to want to protect women. All right: old-fashioned.”

“I believe I dislike dirtiness as much as you do,” said Joanna Bowman. “It disgusts me too, you know—dirtiness, I mean, not honest dirt. I suppose you’ve seen what they call ‘feelthy peectures’?”

“An old gentleman showed me some when I was young,” said Pym.

“Filth, eh?” said Joanna.

“Uncleanliness,” said Pym, “filth, as you say. Dirtiness. There really is a difference between dirt and dirtiness. Dirt is what you dig in and turn over to plant things in. Dirtiness is what clean people scrub away.”

“Misplaced matter,” said Joanna.

“No: matter that has no right to a place anywhere—stuff that sneaks into any crack that’ll hold it, and needs to be scraped away. You can call pus in a pimple dirt, can’t you? You can call wax in your ears dirt, or you can call what you find in a tramp’s trousers dirt, or you can call what you blow out of your nose dirt. Call them anything you like. But are they misplaced? No, by God, no! They’re exactly where they belong … where they belong if you won’t lift a finger to wipe them out.
Misplaced
matter,
my foot! Dirt!”

Joanna said: “On the whole, you’re not far wrong.”

“Well then—away with it! Down with dirt!” cried Pym.

“Shake,” said Joanna Bowman, offering her hand. “But don’t try to save me from the ‘facts of life’; don’t protect me. I won’t stand for that.”

“There are facts of life that shouldn’t be facts of life. Being sick is a fact of life. But you try to suppress it—you try not to be sick at the dinner table, for example; and still being sick at the dinner table is what you might call a fact of life. In any case I am not trying to protect you.”

“I’d rather be sick at the dinner table than die a ladylike death of ptomaine poisoning in the ladies’ lavatory. In any case,
I see no earthly reason why women should be protected. As a matter of fact they never are protected. They do most of the protecting; even when they’re being protected they’re doing most of the protecting.”

While they were eating the omelette Joanna said:

“Men! Why wasn’t
I
born a man? If I’d been born a man I’d have been a
man.
But as it is I’m what they call a Weak Woman. I don’t like men.”

“And women?”

“I don’t like women either. I don’t like myself for being a woman. I don’t like anybody. I wish I could be about fifty people at the same time. Then I’d show you how men and women ought to be. I wish there was a third sex. I’d rather be something else. Miserable creatures! All my life I’ve been hoping to come across someone I didn’t despise. I never have. Every now and again I’ve thought I’ve met somebody I could talk to as an equal. And I’ve been wrong, wrong every time. When I was a kid I admired my father; but by the time I was twelve I recognised him. He was a soft fool and my mother could twist him round her little finger. So I got around to admiring
her,
and she was even softer and even more of a fool, because
he
could twist
her
round his little finger. And then I thought I had some sort of respect for my husband. He was no good either.”

“You have a husband?”

“Yes. A sort of bulldog. A pig-headed, silly bulldog … one of those weepy, whimpering, whining, bulldogs.”

“I like bulldogs.”

“So do I—I love them. But I won’t let them own me. I’ve always been terrified of emotional ties.”

“You didn’t love your husband, then?”

“Yes, I believe I did, at first, at least.”

“Not for long?”

“For a little while—until he began to whimper. I thought I loved him for just about as long as I believed he was one of those iron men that you read about—one of those self-contained, strong, not-too-silent men. It was all right until he fell in love with me. Before I knew where I was he was making sacrifices
for me. It didn’t take any time at all. Things came to a head quite soon: he started telling me about how he’d stayed in England for my sake instead of going to China. He was a metallurgist. There was a big job of some sort waiting for him in China, and he’d wanted to go to China. But he didn’t go. He stayed behind for the sake of the Little Woman … Me.”

“What happened then?”

“Why, what do you think happened? I said: ‘You must be an absolute bloody idiot. You are telling me that you wanted to go to China, but you didn’t go to China for
my
sake. You know perfectly well that you’re lying. If you’d really wanted to go to China, you’d have gone—and you know it. What you really wanted to do was stay here. You must know me well enough to know that China, or anywhere else, would suit me down to the ground. I despise people who try to make me feel guilty about this kind of rubbish. I don’t like you any more. Go to China; go to hell. Go away. As far as you and I are concerned, it’s all over. Good-bye.’”

“And since then you’ve been alone?”

“And intend to
stay
alone—I’ve had enough of being pushed around. I live my life the way I want to, without interference from anyone.”

“You’re profound and you’re beautiful, but still you’re a fool. Who lives alone? What’s the use of men without women? What’s the point in women without men?” said Pym.

“What’s the point in women
with
men merely for the sake of convenience? What the hell is the use of a combination where the woman despises the man and the man wants a mother? He’s
had
his mother! Why must men always be rushing back and back? Why don’t they want to be fathers instead of sons? Alone, you say; live alone, you say. Well, when I live alone, at least I’m living with my equal,” said Joanna. “I’m so tired of living with babies.”

“I’m no baby, Joanna.”

“I shouldn’t be inviting you to bed with me if I thought you were. I like you, Pym.”

“Are you inviting——”