The Song of the Flea (33 page)
Read The Song of the Flea Online
Authors: Gerald Kersh
“Be damned if it is.”
“—And at the end—perhaps you notice—she says something about managing to struggle along, and not having quite lost good looks; and something about making several useful friends in the prison I sent her to.
I
sent her to! I went and I almost fell on my knees before one of these bohemian fellows to keep her out of prison. I paid out money, I pulled strings to keep her
out of prison. Pope, if only she’d wanted to be honourable and decent she could have done whatever she liked, if only for her dear mother’s sake. But she doesn’t want to. She hates me. ‘Eat your little cutlet in peace with your Mrs. Moore’ she says.
My
little cutlet!
My
Mrs. Moore!”
“Young feller, this isn’t a thing to upset yourself about.”
“It may not be. You’re accustomed to dealing with people, Pope. Tell me: why not?”
“Why, look at the postscript.
Do
not
attempt
to
find
me,
she says. She protests too damn much. ‘You can’t communicate with me because I have no home. The only address I have is Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office’ she says. Bah! She’s inviting communication, you mark my words. All this ‘weak and penniless’ and whatnot! Bait, bait, Mellish—bait, young feller! Take my advice, don’t be impressed. You can take one of two courses. Send her a letter to her Charing Cross Post Office, enclosing a ten-pound note for immediate expenses and offering her a hundred a year if she behaves herself—or ignore her absolutely. Mark my words, young feller, a gel who writes a letter like that is determined to be a thorn in your flesh anyway. Stop looking so hipped, and make your mind up. Send her a few pounds and wait and see.”
“I don’t like to think of the girl with the mark of the jail on her. Say I send her twenty-five pounds to buy clothes with an offer of ten pounds a month as long as she keeps out of trouble? You know the world, Pope. Advise me.”
“Damn generous,” said Admiral Pope.
“Then I’ll do that … Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office. Poor girl, poor girl! Will you excuse me, Pope, while I write a note? Did you see what she said about having good looks and useful friends? If you don’t mind I’ll send this at once…. I have only about twenty pounds in cash here—will you lend me five pounds, Pope?”
“Of course. But register it.”
“Naturally I’ll register it. But——”
When they sat down to eat, the admiral said: “What’s this, hey? Lamb cutlets?… Why, what the blazes? I’ll be damned! God bless my soul, cold beef!”
“There are some cutlets for you, Pope. Somehow I don’t seem to fancy cutlets to-day.”
The old admiral trembled with indignation, and his eyebrows and beard seemed to bristle as he said: “What? What?” He could not live without swearing, but disapproved of blasphemy and indecent language. “What! By the seven snotty orphans and the nine blind sons of Brian Boru, do you mean to say that you’re going to let that damn bit of hysterical claptrappery come between you and your cutlets? By the Lord Harry, fifty thousand madwomen might pelt me with fifty thousand pages of poppycock before I’d concede one iota of cutlet! Don’t be a damned fool, Mellish. Be a good boy and eat your cutlet.”
“No, I’ll have cold beef to-day.”
Mr. Mellish picked up a square inch of beef on his fork, and put it to his lips, but took it away again and said: “Ten pounds a month. Two-pounds-ten a week … Tell me, Pope, in your considered opinion, is that reasonable?”
“Reasonable, young feller? Reasonable? More than generous. Much more than generous.”
“She’s her mother’s daughter, Pope. It’s my duty to look after her. I wouldn’t want to have on my conscience——”
“—To the Dickens with your conscience—to the Thackeray with your thundering conscience, Mellish! If a woman won’t go straight on fifty shillings a week, fifty pounds a week won’t make an honest woman of her. Mark my words. I know. I knew a seamstress who hanged herself by the neck until she was dead—hanged herself on a yard and a half of clothes line—rather than commit adultery. And I knew a countess with ten thousand a year in her own right who gave herself to a nigger. If a hundred and twenty pounds a year won’t keep a gel honest. a hundred and twenty thousand a year won’t. Eat your cutlet.”
“If she did something desperate, how could I ever forgive myself, Pope?”
“She won’t do anything desperate, set your mind at rest.”
“You think two-pounds-ten is enough, then?”
“Beyond one iota of a shadow of a doubt. Come on, young feller, have a cutlet.”
“As a matter of fact, Pope, I haven’t any appetite.”
“Just this little one.”
“As a matter of fact I don’t feel any too well. You eat it, Pope. Please eat it. I only want a bit of cheese and a biscuit.”
“Here’s to your very good health,” said the admiral, raising his glass of claret.
Mr. Mellish moistened his lips with the wine and sat playing with his glass.
“Eat your cheese.”
“Don’t think me discourteous, Pope, but I really can’t. I think there must be something wrong with my stomach.”
“I have yet to come across a situation that was improved by any man’s starving himself to death, you know.”
“I ate a great deal at breakfast time.”
“Ha!”
*
The old gentleman sent twenty-five pounds in banknotes to Miss Winifred Joyce, Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office. He wrapped the money in a hastily scribbled note:
… It was neither just nor kind of you to write to me in such a bitter vein. Surely you will realise, on reflection, that, in my small way, I have endeavoured to do everything in my power to assist you. You must know that I exerted myself to the uttermost in the hope of averting your recent calamity. If my efforts were in vain I beg you to believe that it was not because of any lack of effort on my part. You must not labour under the delusion that I have anything but affection for you. When you are quite calm you will, I am sure, regret having said all the terrible things you said in your letter to me. They wounded me more deeply than you will ever know. I tell you this, not that you may reproach yourself when you realise that you have done a foolish but well-meaning old man an injustice, but to assure you that I deserve your better opinion. I enclose twenty-five pounds. If you will let me have your address I shall see to it that you receive ten pounds on the first day of every month. This, I hope, may help you to
find your feet. I am sure that in spite of this little contretemps you will settle down and do well yet.
Your S
TEP
-D
ADDY
.
Win went every day to the post office in Charing Cross Road. In her loose way she had always referred to this office as the Charing Cross Post Office; but the Charing Cross Post Office is in Duncannon Street. Therefore she never received Mr. Mellish’s letter.
Two weeks later he received a letter in a ready-stamped post office envelope. It was written on telegram forms.
… I suppose I ought to have known. What a fool I was ever to write to you at all. I shall always hate you because you are a cruel, miserly, mean, thoroughly rotten, treacherous, deceitful, dirty old man. I despise you, and hate myself for ever having liked you. Mother hated you too. She only married you because she thought you would look after me, but you only married her for sexual reasons. I shudder at the thought!!!! You will laugh when you get this letter, and tear it up, and go on stuffing yourself with your cutlets and sleeping with your Mrs. Moore. But if there is a God he will punish you!!! But there isn’t a God. If there was a God how could he let a rotten beast like you live in comfort, rolling in money and making a pig of yourself with your cutlets and your Mrs. Moore while I am compelled to sell my body on the streets? I am glad Mother is dead, and I wish she had fallen down dead the day before she married you. She cried and cried as if her heart would break, because she hated you, you disgusted her! It was only for my sake she married you, and I wish that I had never been born, because if I had not been born, Mummy would not have married you, and then she would not have died of a broken heart, you Miser, you Beast!
W
INIFRED
J
OYCE
.
Mr. Mellish had been waiting for a letter from his
stepdaughter
. He opened this and read it before he ate his breakfast. Mrs. Moore screamed when, having read it to the end, he
crumpled it in his right hand, and fell back, drawing up his knees so that the tray crashed to the floor. She called the doctor. Later the admiral came, carrying four hot-house peaches and a concoction of old brandy and the yolks of fresh eggs.
“What do you think you’re playing at, young feller? Pull yourself together.”
Mr. Mellish looked at him, but did not speak.
“Hurry up, young feller, take hold of yourself. I’ve thought up a new opening … Pawn to Queen’s Bishop three. Let’s have the board up and try it out, what? Hey?”
Mr. Mellish could not speak.
Later the admiral said to the doctor: “There’s nothing seriously wrong, of course?”
The doctor shrugged: “Mr. Mellish is no longer a young man,” he said. “He must be very careful, very very careful. The least excitement might be dangerous.”
“But I should have thought Mellish was sound as a bell.”
“Appearances are often deceptive. When the arteries harden up and the heart gets tired, it’s as well to look out for yourself.”
“That little bitch!” said the admiral, with such vehemence that he made the doctor jump.
*
He referred, of course, to Win, who was sitting in a café in Charlotte Street drinking coffee and hoping that some old friend might come in and offer her a meal or even lend her some money. She had fifteen shillings, and could not imagine what she would do when that was gone. She was worried and angry; the most ill-used victim of man’s injustice since Hagar.
A woman came in and pretended not to see her.
“Why, hello, Loulou!” said Win.
“Win darling, how nice to see you. How are you?”
“Pretty awful.”
“You look fine.”
“I feel absolutely dreadful. Sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk to me. You don’t know what a relief it is to meet someone you can talk to.”
“Well, it’ll have to be a pretty quick one,” said Loulou,
grudgingly, “I haven’t got much time. I’ve got a date.” When they were sitting she asked, in a confidential undertone: “How was it? They tell me it isn’t really as bad as people make out.”
Win laughed without mirth. “They ought to try it and see,” she said, bitterly. “It was absolutely frightful. The wardresses are absolute beasts—but absolute bitches, Loulou darling. And the food is vile. I couldn’t eat for ten days, you know … And then as a matter of fact, it wasn’t only the food, you know, Loulou darling—it was the misery, the injustice of it all. What have I done to be cooped up with thieves and prostitutes?”
“Well, if you took away the thieves and prostitutes round here, Win darling, the pubs would be empty and there’d be nobody left to talk to. Personally, I don’t mind thieves and prostitutes myself, as long as they’re amusing.”
“… And then I was so ill. I was going to have a baby, you know. I did so want to have that baby, Loulou. Oh Loulou, I did want that baby!”
“What for?”
Win could not answer that. She said: “I don’t know. I just wanted it.”
“Why, what would you have done with it when you got it?”
“I don’t know, I’d have managed somehow.”
“How?” asked Loulou, who was a quick, bright, practical little woman.
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, I’m all muddled in my head as a matter of fact. I suppose it’s just as well. I wish I’d died too. And my stepfather has been an absolute beast, Loulou, as a matter of fact. It half chokes me when I think of it.”
“Then don’t think of it, darling.”
“How can you help thinking of these things, Loulou?”
“Have it your own way, Win darling.”
“After all,” said Win, pretending to laugh. “I mean, why should I bore you with my troubles?”
“I don’t know. Why does everybody bore one with their troubles? Go on, bore me with your troubles—I don’t mind, bless you.”
“No,” said Win, bravely, “you tell me about yourself.”
“I’ve got a job. Guess what?”
“Oh, Loulou darling, I’m so happy for you! Do tell me,” cried Win, clapping her hands.
“I’m a demonstrator. You know those sixpenny lipsticks and rouges and stuff they sell in Woolworths? I demonstrate ’em. I make myself up with the muck to show people how good it is. The idea is that if they spend eighteenpence they can look just like me.”
“Oh, not in films?”
“Films? I’ve made exactly six pounds out of films in five months.”
“I do so admire you, Loulou darling. Nothing ever seems to get you down. I do so wish I had your strength of character. You are awfully strong, aren’t you? I do wish I was like you, Loulou; oh, I do, I do!”
Loulou looked at her with an understanding eye, finished her coffee quickly, and said: “I’ve got to be going.”
“As a matter of fact, Loulou darling, there’s something I wanted to ask you. As a matter of fact it’s rather urgent——”
“—I tell you what; I’ll be around to-night or to-morrow. Tell me all about it then, eh? I’m one of the world’s workers,” said Loulou, talking fast and gripping her bag tightly under her left arm. “Cosmetic workers of all lands, unite, you have nothing but your virginities to lose and not a damn thing to gain. See you soon. Bye-bye.”
“I’ll walk to the corner with you.”
“Not going to the corner. I’ve got to fly. Be seeing you around, eh?” said Loulou; and the door slammed behind her.
Win visited two or three other cafés frequented by people she knew. She met only one old acquaintance, a little bookseller who lived by selling back numbers of American magazines. As soon as she greeted him his night-bird’s instinct warned him. that he was in danger. He said: “Hello there, Win. Glad to see you around again. How’s things with you? With me they’re lousy. How’re you fixed? I’ve got to get some stock. I’m pretty ribby just now. I don’t suppose you could manage to let me have a couple of pounds till Friday?”