The Song of the Flea (29 page)

“Once,” said Sherwood, with a grin.

“Have I ever failed
you?
”

“Have it your way,” said Sherwood, “I still think you know more tricks than a wagonload of foxes.”

“I know more tricks, my dear fellow, than ten wagonloads of foxes. I know the law as few men on this earth have ever known it. Be guided by me and we’ll make tens of thousands—
legitimately
at that. Don’t worry. Pym will do as I tell him to do. I’ve got him like this,” said Proudfoot, squeezing an empty matchbox with such force that it broke in his hand. “Mark my words. Have a drink.”

“Isn’t it a bit early to start knocking it back as hard as this?” asked Sherwood.

“Yes, my dear fellow, it is a bit early. But you know me, I
believe. Drunk or sober, have you ever come across any man born of woman whom I couldn’t handle?”

“All the same, it might be a good idea to go easy on that stuff just for a bit, just until we get started, don’t you think?”

“As you say, my dear fellow, it might be a good idea in general. I should advise anyone else to take your hint. But I am so constituted that this stuff has not the slightest effect on me. In fact, since you drag the subject up, it clarifies my mind. So if you won’t, I will. Your very good health!”

Sherwood watched his partner as he threw back his head, gulped his drink, and put down his glass noisily with a lordly gesture; and he thought:
I’m
not
so
sure
about
that
“clarifying”
part.
He
clarified
himself
just
a
little
bit
too
bloody
much
with
that
stuff,
once
upon
a
time
…
And
so
did
I.
But he said nothing. He was still convinced that Proudfoot was one of the three greatest men of the age. The other two were Ivar Kreuger and Thomas Paine Sherwood, both of whom, like Proudfoot, had been the victims of malignant fate. He also had a great respect for Alphonse Capone but regretted that that public character had recourse to violence, which he detested.
Incidentally
, if Sherwood had had the choice of a wife he would have chosen Lily Langtry, and if, in lawful wedlock with the Jersey Lily, he had begotten a son, he would have wanted him to be a great master of words, like Roget, whose
Thesaurus
he had learned by heart in jail.

“I’ll have one too, just a small one,” he said.

*

Pym hurried away to Battersea to look at his new home. There was a stuffed sofa upon which masterpieces might be conceived, and two easy-chairs to match, in which one might lie back and talk about them; a little oak table upon which masterpieces might be written, and a big divan upon which a toil-worn master might sleep and dream of masterpieces. The lavatory was good enough for Shakespeare. The bath was a better bath than Chaucer ever had. There was a Dickensian quality in the gas stove. In the kitchen cupboard the previous tenants had left the best part of a packet of salt, a good tablespoonful
of tea in a tin box painted with Chinese landscapes, and three quarters of a packet of pepper; part of a jar of mustard pickles, only slightly mildewed, and a small quantity of perfectly good Worcester sauce in a bottle. There were knives, forks, spoons, three tin-openers, and one of those little steel trestles upon which our fathers used to rest the great two-pronged forks with which the Sunday joints were carved. Pym found six glasses, all different; four cups, eight saucers, nine plates of interestingly odd shapes and sizes, a big brown teapot, and a little blue teapot-lid. There were fifteen ashtrays printed with brewers’ and distillers’ advertising matter—a collector had lived here, a collector and a humorist, for on the bathroom wall just above the fixture that was supposed to hold the toilet paper, he had fixed a little sign which he must have unscrewed from a railway compartment. It said:
To
stop
the
train
pull
chain
downwards.
Penalty
for
improper
use
£5. He must have been a brave man to help himself to a thing like that; and a resourceful man too, for he had made a bookcase out of an orange box, tastefully painted red. The flat was full of delightful surprises. In the bathroom cabinet, which was of white painted metal blotched with rust, there were thirty-two used razor blades, with which Dostoevsky himself might have sharpened pencils; three aspirin tablets in a perfectly good bottle, admirably designed to fit the waistcoat pocket; a collapsible tube with at least two good squeezes of shaving cream left in it, and a generous quarter of a bottle of lysol.

Pym chuckled with sheer delight, and went out shopping.

He went to Woolworths, that kindly institution, and a bought a big tin kettle, a set of carving knives, a new frying-pan, some soap, and—he never knew why—an electric torch that went into the breast pocket on a clip like a fountain pen. (Years later he found this in a bootbox full of buttons, nails and unidentifiable bits of metal, and sat for two hours wondering what made him buy it.) He spent a mad quarter of an hour in the nearest grocery shop, spending like a paid-off harpooner in a saloon after a two years’ voyage. He bought pork-and-beans in prodigious quantities, sardines, anchovies, tinned milk in case of emergency, orange juice in case of thirst, tinned strawberries,
strawberry jam, strawberry jelly, strawberry blancmange, tinned steak-and-kidney pudding, boxes of cheese, tinned plum pudding, a tin of paté de foie gras, coffee packed in an airtight tin, four tins of pineapple chunks, two tins of pineapple rings, a tin of crushed pineapple, a tin of pineapple juice; six tins of corned beef, three tins of stewed beef, two tins of spiced beef, on tin of devilled beef and a bottle of Beefo. As an
afterthought
he added a pound of sausages, a pound of butter, a pound of tea, and a pound of cooking fat. Then, on his way out, he stopped and spun round like a man shot between the eyes, ran back and ordered six tins of herrings in tomato sauce, three tins of herrings in mustard sauce, two tins of Norwegian brisling, and a bottle of anchovy sauce. Even then he was not satisfied, for, looking into the window—he could not tear himself free from this fascinating shop—he saw a display of tinned soup. Having ordered six tomato, four bouillon (no, make it five), three mulligatawny, two mock turtle, two chicken and one beef broth, he stopped out of shame; but hesitated again and said: “Oh, and three of those tins of marrow-fat green peas … and if you don’t mind, I want this delivered immediately, in about ten minutes.”

“Deliver it about six this evening if you like, sir.”

“That’ll be fine. Oh, and you’d better let me have two tins of spinach. That’ll be all, I think.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, yes, how silly of me! I better have a pound of that bacon.”

“Ham, sir?”

“I suppose I’d better have a pound of ham. Oh-oh, yes—and a pound of sugar,” said Pym, “and now that really is the lot.”

Ten seconds later he returned, blushing, and said: “I forgot. A pound of bread—I mean, a big loaf of bread, one of those large loaves over there. Oh, by the by, is that cake any good? Better send a pound. Ah, yes, I see you have beer. Will you send me one of those quarts? No, better make it six.”

It occurred to Pym that he was a man with a flat, now, and people might turn up. It was a good thing to have something
in the house to offer people when they turned up, he thought, as he went to Busto’s for his typewriter.

*

“Busto,” said Pym, “before I go I want to tell you that of all the unmitigated old bastards on the face of the earth, you just about take the cake.”

“You tellin’ me?” said Busto. “Keep it! I ’eard-a it before.”

“Often, I bet,” said Pym.

“Sure.
I
care what you think? You think a-what you like, I think a-what I like for you. I don’t care. You go to ’ell your way, I go to ’ell my way. Okay?”

Pym said: “All the same, Busto, one can’t help somehow liking you—you’re such an
unmitigated
bastard; you’re such a thorough-going, hundred per cent, undiluted, dyed-in-the-wool, yard-wide, intransigent bastard. You’re such a cast-iron bastard. One knows where one is with you. You’re a bastard with no nonsense about you.”

Pym was drunk with joy. Busto looked at him without emotion and said: “Sure. Okay.”

“And d’you know what? If the pubs were open I’d ask you to come out and have a drink with me.”

“I give you a drink,” said Busto.

Pym was shocked into silence. Busto, impatiently tapping the floor of the passage with one of his shapeless feet said: “You
wanna
drink?”

Pym nodded. Busto nodded too, and beckoned. They went downstairs into the basement. Busto thrust a cracked teacup into Pym’s hands and filled it with something from a bottle. “Drink,” he said.

“And you?” asked Pym.

Busto made a gesture with the bottle, put the neck of it to his lips, swallowed noisily two or three times, sighed, and said: “Cheerio.”

Pym emptied his cup, holding his breath.

“Whasa matter? Wine,” said Busto.

“Thank you, that was very good indeed,” said Pym, retching and gasping.

“Where you goin’?”

“I’m going to live in Battersea. I have a self-contained flat.”

“You come into-a money?”

“I’m settling down to do some work.”

“Writin’ alwiz?”

“Always writing.”

Busto looked at Pym for several seconds; then he distorted his face so that he seemed to be smiling and said: “I tell you: you’ll a-be back. I’m a bastard? Okay. You’ra bloody fool. You’ll a-be back. What for you writin’? What you make? What you do? Where you get? Don’ be silly. Give it up, cut it out. Don’ be silly.”

“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” said Pym, “but what with one thing and another I hope I’m saying good-bye and not
au
revoir.
Here’s my address in case of letters. Good-bye, Busto.”

“A
rivederci,”
said Busto.

Then Pym went to Battersea, and spent nearly an hour placing his typewriter in a certain position, and arranging the chair upon which he proposed to sit and work. The groceries came and he made a great display of the tin cans in the kitchen. This display was so beautiful that he could not leave it. He played. On walls of tinned fruit he built battlements of bully beef. He boiled a kettle, made tea, and ate cold
steak-and-kidney
pudding out of a tin, lying on the sofa in front of the gas fire.

He had never before had two rooms, a kitchen, and a lavatory all to himself.

Now was the time to work.

He put a sheet of paper into the typewriter, lit a cigarette, and settled himself. He adjusted the margin with the meticulosity of a biologist with a microscope, and began:

The
…

Two hours later he was still sitting at the little oak table, with five sheets of paper torn out and thrown on the floor between his feet. There lay
The,
on top of an
In
spite
of.
There was an
Although,
a
Notwithstanding,
and an
As
he
walked
… The house sounded empty. The typewriter made too much noise. The table vibrated, the vibrations went into the floor, and the
rafters drummed out a
,
pas
de
charge
at the end of every sentence. Pym felt something of the terror that overtakes the forester on a lonely plain. He went into the kitchen and decided that he did not love it now as he had loved it at first sight. The lavatory worked or did not work as the mood took it. He opened a tin of strawberries. They were pulpy, insipid, and soaked in thin syrup; a mass of pips and purple mud. He poured the rest of them into the lavatory and pulled the chain. Somewhere in the bowels of the house something groaned; a pipe made a sucking noise, and the pan regurgitated a wad of newspaper upon which, still legible, was printed an advertisement for washing powder. Pym pulled the chain again. Sweating and shaking he watched, while strawberries and syrup, water and paper and excrement rose up and up. He rushed into the kitchen, picked up a saucepan and returned in a panic. The tide was still rising. He turned back his shirt-sleeves and waited. From an
incalculable
distance came a gurgle and a groan. The water receded, Pym pulled the chain again and everything disappeared. He smoked a cigarette before he went back and he pulled the chain quickly and sidestepped, half expecting that something horrible, something very old, would leap up to disgust him. But nothing happened. The cistern tinkled like a cistern in a Persian poem, and the water at the stained mouth of the outlet was crystal clear.

Pym said: “Ah!” He went to the bedroom, undressed, and returned with a book and a cigarette. Having finished the cigarette he put out a hand, fumbled found nothing, and groaned like a damned soul.

He had remembered everything but toilet paper. The book was only a sixpenny book with advertising matter at the back. All the same, Pym did not like to mutilate books. He went to bed in a bad temper. One of the springs of the divan had grown loose—it protruded from the middle of the mattress. Pym rolled away from it and slept. Later, when the night was darkest, he awoke with a pain in the side. Another spring had come up to meet him. Exploring the bed with his hand he found that it was full of wayward springs. He remembered that he had forgotten to buy a clock. There was no moon. He wished
he had never been born. In the morning, when he awoke, looking about him, Pym was convinced that he had talked himself into renting the most detestable flat that man had abandoned since all the sons of God shouted for joy.

He took the half-filled packet of damp salt out of the kitchen cupboard and hurled it out of the window, and he rolled his five rejected sheets of paper into a tight ball and threw that away too—into the lavatory, where, he felt, it belonged. Later he had to dig that ball out with his bare hands.