The Song of the Flea (34 page)

“As a matter of fact,” said Win, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Coincidence, eh? Life is like that, isn’t it? Life just don’t mean a thing, does it? There we are both in the same boat. Literature is a mug’s game,” he said, hitching up his bundle of secondhand copies of
Vogue,
Startling
Detective
and
Snappy
Stories.

Then he went briskly in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Win, remembering that American Henry Fabian lived in Wardour Street, decided to try her luck there. It was twenty past twelve: she had tried twice before to find him at home. Fabian slept late: he was there when she came.

*

He said: “For Sweet Jesus, what the hell do
you
want?”

Fabian was ready to go out. He was elegantly dressed in a brand new suit of pinkish cheviot and a silk shirt.

“I did so much want to say hello to you, Harry, because … well … I just came to say hello to you, Harry.”

“Okay. You said hello. Beat it.”

“Harry!” said Win, wet-eyed, with a catch in her voice, “I want to talk to you. It’s such a long time since I talked to anybody worth talking to.”

“Okay then, you can come in if you like, but make it snappy, will you? I got a date with a film distributor. I got to see a man about an animated cartoon, so make it snappy.”

In his room Fabian fixed his hat more firmly over his right eye and made certain adjustments to the brim. He had taken to wearing his hat like Bing Crosby—jauntily, casually, in a devil-may-care way, as if he had absent-mindedly clapped it on to his head in the dark. This could not be achieved without trial and error, and patience. He squinted at himself and turned the hat a fraction of an inch to the right, like a biologist at the
fine-adjustment
screw of a microscope.

“Don’t you look beautiful?” said Win.

I
T
was only a few days since a man called Clipp had stopped Fabian in Cranbourne Street and said: “Look, Harry; got a pound?”

Fabian said: “What for?”

“I want the loan of a pound.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Fabian, half closing one eye and opening the other wide. “I wish I had a pound for every time I wanted the loan of a pound.”

“Be a sport, Harry,” said Clipp, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find a pound.”

“You don’t know what
you’re
going to do if you don’t find a pound,” said Fabian. “Who lends
me
pounds? Jesus, the money I’ve loaned to every layabout in this god-damn town! And what have I ever got but the double-cross? Go and fiddle your own god-damn pound, Clipp, and stop worrying me. What am I? Henry Ford? John D. Rockefeller? Do I pick money off trees?”

“I know you had a rough time, Harry, but I’ve always been your friend.”

“I haven’t got no friends, and neither have you. Skip that bull. On your way, little feller.”

Fabian had got
little
feller
from Leo, and used it now whenever it was expedient. Clipp knew this, and smiled. “Make it half a nicker,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

“Lend me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something, Harry.”

“
You’
ll
tell
me
something?”

“You give me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something.”

No one knew how Clipp lived. He collected bets for a
bookmaker
on the street corners between Attenborough’s pawnshop in Wardour Street and the French pub in Dean Street.
Everybody
knew him. He was all things to all men. There was nothing Clipp would not do. Sometimes he assisted a peanut vendor; sometimes he helped to distribute picture postcards.
Occasionally he pretended to be a racing tipster. He was so petty, so ridiculously small of body and soul that he was not regarded as a human being. In the underworld he was a Gulliver in Brobdingnag; women exchanged shameful secrets and performed messy and malodorous functions in his presence. Petty criminals, habitual whisperers and talkers in mysterious sign-language forgot that Clipp was there when they laid out guttersnipe strategies. He was conspicious, yet he remained unobserved, like gaudy wallpaper in a familiar room. Everyone knew him (or thought they knew him) but nobody knew the colour of his eyes. How old was he? … How many buttons are there on a policeman’s tunic? What clothes did he wear? … How many eyelet holes are there in a postman’s boot? Clipp was a fixture and a fitting. He was sat on, leaned against, spat into; used as a receptacle for dust and ashes; employed as a runner of errands, a carrier of messages; a stooge and a
laughingstock
. If a coward wanted someone to hit, he hit Clipp. If a beaten harlot wanted to express her loathing for mankind she remembered that Clipp was in a way a sort of man—at least he was not a woman—and she abused him. He had no feelings to hurt: a few small coins settled everything. He was an animated pig-nut; something next to nothing in the centre of a shell as hard as stone. He was a backside to kick, and a dirty hand into which you threw your small change. If you spat into his beer he would drink it, and he would smoke your chewed cigar-butt with enjoyment.

Fabian gave him five shillings and said: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, here you are. But if it’s a horse, Clipp, you know where you can stick it. I know all about your lousy horses, little feller. I don’t want a horse. I had one for breakfast.”

Clipp said: “If you want a horse, put your shirt and your grandmother’s drawers on Sweet Caporal in the 2.20 to-morrow at Doncaster. I know it for a fact—it’s on the job. But that wasn’t what I was going to tell you. If you really want to know
something,
make it half a nicker and I’ll tell you.”

Clipp grinned and winked. Fabian gave him two more
half-crowns
and said: “There you are, that makes half a nicker. Go on, spit it out, little feller—not that I’m interested.”

“Thank you very much, Harry, I appreciate that. You’re one in a million, Harry—apart from being the best dressed man in the West End. One in a million! Now let me tell you something. You know the Australian?”

“So what?”

“Well, you know his brother?”

“I never knew he had a brother. Why?”

“Oh, he’s got a brother all right. He calls himself Dicky Dart. You know Dicky Dart? He used to be a scrapper.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty, little feller, what the hell do I know about these lousy slap-happy leather-pushers?”

“Well, Dicky Dart’s just come up from Brum, and he wants you.”

“He wants me? What the hell for?”

“Well, somebody passed Dicky Dart the word, and he wants you. He wants to have a word with you. You know what I mean by a word? He wants to have a nice quiet chat with you, just you and him, all alone. See what I mean? You know Dicky Dart, if you get what I mean. Even the Brummagen mob was afraid of Dicky. Well, so now you know, Harry—Dicky Dart wants you.”

“I don’t get it,” said Fabian, “I never did anything to him. Jesus, I don’t know him!”

“Somebody passed him the word about his brother, the Australian. There’s no love lost between Dicky and the Australian, but Dicky wants to see you as a matter of principle, just for a nice quiet chat.”

“What harm did I ever do the Australian?” cried Fabian.

“I don’t know, Harry, but there you are; that’s the way it is.”

“Nuts! I don’t give a good god-damn!”

“I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all. Dicky said—I’m only repeating what Dicky said—Dicky said you wasn’t worth hanging for, and you wasn’t worth ten years. He said he’d just give you the boot until your own mother wouldn’t recognise you and break a few of your arms. He said he might sort of accidentally kind of scratch one of your eyes and kick you in——”

“—Scram, little feller! Who gives a good god-damn? It’s a misunderstanding.”

“That’s what I thought at the time. Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the word, in strict confidence. Take it or leave it: you know best. And I’m much obliged to you for these four tosheroons,” said Clipp, jingling the ten shillings in his pocket.

Clipp sidled away and disappeared, and Fabian killed time in crowded places until Katusha, who was now known as Russian Katty, came to report. She had accommodated three clients and had already earned nine pounds.

“Now you see, kid,” said Fabian, “you see for yourself whether I was right or wrong. Didn’t I tell you all along? Stick by me and I’ll put a gold spoon right in your kisser. But listen—don’t you kind of get sort of fed up with this lousy city? Don’t you sort of feel it’d make a kind of change to get the hell out of it?”

“I like it,” said Katusha. “You meet such interesting people.”

“Interesting people? Jesus, kid, you call
these
people interesting? I want to take you to Hollywood. I want you to
get
some place. Hell, I’ve got to admit I made a mistake coming here. Jesus, there’s nothing for me to do here. Christ, kid, I want to get the hell out of it. Frankly speaking, I don’t mind telling you I’ve sort of had just about enough. Let’s pack everything up and scram out of it, and go to Hollywood. Christ, a girl like you—you’d be in the bright lights inside of six months. I could introduce you to the right people. Whaddaya say? How’d ya like it?”

Now every prostitute between Hyde Park Corner and
Cambridge
Circus knew Harry Fabian and had discussed him freely with Katusha. A girl called Star had told Katusha how Harry Fabian, living on the earnings of a girl called Zoe, had made love to her one night when Zoe, having been arrested, was in a cell under Vine Street Police Station. Another girl said that Fabian was a rat, a rat and a liar; he came of a Cockney family and was no more American than Neville Chamberlain; and he had given her a horrible disease.

Yet Katusha said: “Could we really go to Hollywood?”

“On my mother’s grave. Only, look—money’s going to be tight, kid, till we get over there to the Coast. So we’ve got to get some scratch. We’ve got to dig for it. I want everything we can
lay our hands on, because I’m so fed up to hell with this town I want to get the hell out of it. Okay?”

“Take it all,” said Katusha, in her most Russian voice.

Fabian said: “Oh, no. Oh, no no no! Oh, Jesus,
no!
What d’ya take me for?” He took seven pounds. “Take it
all?
Jesus Christ Almighty, you don’t know
me!
Don’t I realise that a girl needs shoes and stockings and panties and things? And where d’you get that
take
it?
D’you think I want your lousy money? I don’t want your lousy money! I don’t want your god-damn money. This is for you more than for me. And that’s what I mean when I say
work!
Work like hell, kid, because the harder you work the sooner we’ll get the hell out of this lousy city. Jesus, what a crummy town this city turned out to be!”

Fabian added the seven pounds to a hundred and twenty pounds in a secret wallet. For the first time in his life he was saving money. Looking at the carefully arranged banknotes, he loved them. But a hundred and twenty-seven pounds was an awkward sum. He took away two pounds and made it a hundred and twenty-five; and bought a pair of extra-special silk-web braces for a guinea in Bond Street. It was true that he needed money to get out of London, and that he was very anxious to go a long way away. Still, Russian Katty, with her youth, her beauty, and her credulity, was worth her weight in gold anywhere.

*

“Don’t you look beautiful? Oh, you
do
know how to carry your clothes,” said Win.

Harry Fabian, having arranged his hat, tightened his tie and said: “Well, what is it? What d’you want?”

“Harry, you know where I’ve been, don’t you?”

“Well?”

“You know why I went where I went, don’t you?”

“You got a carpet, three months, for a typewriter. That’s all I know. So what do you want me to do about it?”

“I’ve been very ill, Harry. Oh Harry, Harry darling, you don’t know how ill I’ve been. As a matter of fact I nearly died. If it hadn’t been for the doctor, I
should
have died. He saved my live with a blood transfusion.”

“Look, I’m a busy man. What do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to you, Harry. It’s such a long time since I talked to anybody worth while.
Please
be nice to me.
Say
something nice to me. As a matter of fact, Harry, I’m terribly unhappy.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. It’s about that typewriter. You know who I took it for, don’t you, Harry darling? Oh Harry, Harry, you know I took it to give it to you, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Jesus Christ!” cried Fabian, looking at the ceiling, “take a dame out of the gutter and she bites the hand that … Listen. Scram, will you? You bring me bad luck.”

“I won’t scram,” said Win, crying. “I won’t. I’m hungry. I’m starving. I went to prison for you. And I won’t scram, I tell you I won’t!”

“Stop it. Shut up, for Christ’s sake. What is it you want?”

“I’m ill. I’m hungry and I’m miserable. Help me, Harry, for God’s sake help me!”

“Hungry, are you?” said Fabian.

“I haven’t eaten for two days,” said Win.

Fabian opened her bag, took out her purse and emptied it into his left hand. “All I’ve got,” he said, counting quickly, “is fourteen and sixpence. Here’s five bob for you. Go and get yourself something to eat.” He put back five shillings into the purse and dropped nine and sixpence into one of his pockets. “Now scram. Go and get yourself some spaghetti. Get the hell out of here, you dirty little double-crossing chiseller—I’m busy.”

“Give me back my money or——”

“—Or what?”

“Or I’ll call the police.”

Fabian closed his left eye, took careful aim, and slapped her face with his bony right hand. Before she recovered from the shock he slapped her with his left hand; took her by the collar, dragged her to her feet, and kicked her.

She said: “You’re hurting me.”

Pushing her towards the door Fabian said, dispassionately:
“Hurt you? By Jesus, I’ll tear your god-damn legs off and tie them round your neck, you bitch! Scram!”

“Give me back my money!”

“You haven’t got any money. You just told me you didn’t have the price of a meal and I gave you five shillings. I can prove it. Get the hell out of here. I’m a busy man. You worry me. Scram!”

“Give me back my money!”

“Here’s something to go on with,” said Fabian, and slapped her again. Then he opened the door and pushed her out into the street.

Before the door closed she said: “Don’t do this to me, Harry darling—I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Will you? I’m glad to hear it. I say scram—so god-damn well scram,” said Fabian, and closed the door. He readjusted his hat and went out. Win was waiting for him.

“Harry, darling Harry, please give me back my money,” she said.

“Oh, your money. What was it I gave you just now?”

She said: “Five shillings. But you’ve got another ten shillings of mine.”

“Ah-ah! Oh yes, I see. Well, look——” said Fabian, taking some paper money out of his pocket, “—give me that five bob.”

He took the five shillings from her damp palm, put them in his pocket and said: “
Now
will you scram?”

“You thief! You mean little thief!”

“Go to hell.”

“I’ll call a policeman!”

“Fooey!” said Fabian, with a contemptuous wave of the hand.

Half-stunned by shock, Win went in the direction of
Cambridge
Circus. Her cheeks still tingled, and one of her teeth had started to ache. A heavy, warm autumnal rain began to fall and she took shelter in a doorway, just before the downpour. It rained as if the sky, having lost patience with piddling little routine drizzles and showers, wanted to empty itself of a whole winter’s rain at one go, and be done with it. Win wept without restraint and then, when she wanted to blow her nose, she
discovered that she had lost her handkerchief and wept harder still. She wanted to die. But the rain stopped abruptly and she walked on. She went to Busto’s and asked for Pym. Busto said: “’Im? ’E’s a-gone.”