The Song of the Flea (36 page)

Looking at a seagull, she wished that she had been hatched out of a pure, loveless egg. She wanted to be alone, upheld by her own white wings, somewhere between air and water, out of sight of land, in the middle of a grey sea. She wanted to find herself in some crack in a remote rock, blanketed in herself, warmed by her own heat, alone and at peace.

But when she reached the front door of the house in which she lived a hoarse voice said: “Jo! Once and for all, Jo. This is once and for all. I want one word with you, one final word, once and for all.”

It was Tom Swan, her husband. She said: “You want one word? All right then; here it is—
No
.”

“Who is it you’re in love with now?”

“Nobody. Go away.”

“But there’s somebody else. I know there is. I know it. I tell you I know. Isn’t there?”

“What has it to do with you if there is?”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Well, Tom, good night.”

“I’ll kill
you,
Jo.”

“Kill me or don’t kill me, but for God’s sake stop moaning about it. And take your hands off me, will you, please?”

“Is this your last word?”

“I’ve told you a thousand times already.”

“Oh, Jo, Jo—where do you keep your heart?”

“Oh Tom, Tom—where do you keep your head?”

“You can see how I’m suffering. It makes you happy,” said Tom Swan. “You want me to suffer. You want me to be unhappy. It makes you feel clever when you make me miserable.”

“Look, Tom: I’m somebody—a person, a woman. You want me. I don’t want you. So you impose your sufferings on me. You want me to make a martyr of myself for the sake of your well-being. You want me to stop being myself so that you haven’t got to be miserable. You want me to be miserable for you. Well, I won’t. Just because you want me—so I’m heartless because I don’t want you? Tom, you may go to the devil.”

“You said you loved me once.”

“I don’t love you, Tom.”

“You said you did.”

“I thought I did. But I don’t. Poor Tom, dear Tom, if I hurt you I’m sorry. But be sensible, for God’s sake. What’d be the
use if I went back to you? I couldn’t be more than just patient with you, even if we were together again. And you’d eat your heart out trying to make me love you; and the more you tried to make me love you the more you’d get on my nerves. No, no, no, Tom—break it up once and for all. I never wanted to be unkind to you. I know I’ve hurt you. I’m as sorry as hell, Tom. But positively,
no.
”

“You’re in love with somebody else.”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

“You are!”

“The point is, I’m not in love with you; and I’m not going to live with you.”

“You’re in love with somebody else!”

“So will you be, Tom. Just be patient.”

“I won’t let you be in love with anybody else,” said Tom Swan.

“
Let
me? But how could you stop me? Be reasonable, Tom. Even if I went back to you to-night, how could you stop me being in love with the policeman on the corner, or the milkman, or the Prime Minister, or the postman, or Clark Gable? How?”

“I won’t let you, Jo. I swear I won’t let you.”

“Good night, Tom,” said Joanna Bowman,

Her husband took from his hip pocket one of those sheath-knives that are sold in the novelty-shops for five shillings—something like a hunting knife, with an imitation-leather handle. “Does this convey anything to you?” he said.

“I rather think you’re going completely out of your mind. Go and sleep it off. Good night.”

“I daresay you think I wouldn’t use this.”

“I don’t think, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t give a damn what you would or wouldn’t do. Only go away and leave me alone.”

“Oh Jo, Jo, I can’t live without you. Jo, can’t you
understand
that I can’t live without you?”

“And can’t
you
understand that I can’t live
with
you? Do please stop making such a fool of yourself. Please get out of my way and let me go to bed.”

Tom Swan said: “I swear to God, I’d see you dead at my feet before I’d think of you in somebody else’s bed. Yes, by God in heaven I would! When I think of all we’ve … No, by God in heaven—you won’t! When I think of somebody else being … No, no, oh Joanna, dearest one … oh please, please, please, please!”

“Please, Tom, do go away.”

“But I love you.”

“What right have you to persecute me just because you love me? If I loved you and you didn’t love me, would I persecute you?”

“My God, how I hate you! God, what a rotten woman you are! I never thought it possible for a woman to be so beastly,” said Tom Swan.

“How typical,” said Joanna, “how beautifully typical of a man! ‘I hate you, I loathe you, I detest you, I want to kill you, you’re mean, you’re cold, you’re beastly, you’re rotten … Oh please, please, please, please, come back to me!’ Now for the last time, go away. Nothing you say or do will ever make any difference. You know me well enough to know that when I say a thing I mean it and dynamite wouldn’t move me. And your crying and whimpering only makes me all the more determined never, never, never to have anything more to do with you. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Jo, I’d rather kill you than think of you with somebody else. And I wouldn’t care if they hanged me. I wouldn’t give a damn. They’d save me the trouble of hanging myself. I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t come back to me.”

“Why,” cried Joanna, “how dare you? How dare you insult me by thinking that your little threats could possibly intimidate me into doing something I didn’t want to do? The vanity of it! The conceit of it! The presumption! To threaten
me!
”

She threw back her head and laughed. The laugh ended in a strangled hiccup as the knife went in up to the hilt under her ribs.

Pym arrived breathless half a minute later and saw Joanna lying on her back in the half-shadow beyond the light of the street lamp outside her door.

A policeman was there already, blowing a whistle, and a crowd was gathering.

“Wheee! Listen to the flutes!” said a small, monkey-faced man, dancing with delight. “The flutes—listen to ’em!”

Police-whistles were blowing a hundred yards away, in the Vauxhall-bridge Road. Tom Swan, running madly into the dark, had been knocked down by a one-ton truck loaded with potato-crisps in square tins. The driver of the truck was trembling in the doorway of a bookshop. The road was littered with tins.

“
Ukh-ukh!
”
said Tom Swan, coughing himself to death.

*

In the small hours of the morning Pym went to the Westminster Hospital and said: “The lady who was killed in William and Mary Square this evening … I want to give her these——” He held up an enormous bunch of ill-assorted dying flowers which he had bought from a pleasantly surprised costermonger.

The man on duty smiled at him in a fatherly way and said: “The young lady wasn’t killed. So she’ll enjoy your flowers all the more, you see.”

“Did I hear you say
not
killed?
” cried Pym.

“You mustn’t shout, sir. No, she wasn’t killed. She’s alive.”

“Is she badly hurt?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Later Pym learned that Joanna Bowman was in a critical condition but was as comfortable as she could be in the
circumstances
. He went home, exhausted. All the lights in the flat were on, and the gas fire was roaring, white hot, in the
sitting-room
. Win was asleep on his bed; she was wearing one of his new shirts. He took hold of her by a wrist and an ankle and dragged her to the floor where she sat up and said: “Johnny darling, you frightened me!”

“Dress and get out.”

“But Johnny, get out where?”

“Dress here in two minutes or dress in the passage. Two minutes.”

“But where am I to go?”

“Just go. Damn you,” said Pym, shaking a fist under her nose, “if it hadn’t been for you….”

His anger gagged him. Win looked shrewdly at his face, and said: “Yes, Johnny.” She left hurriedly, and was in the street when the first birds, delivered from the perils of the night, were singing at the dawn.

P
YM
did not go to bed. He paced the floor, savagely cursing Win and hating himself for ever having pitied her. He spat with disgust and opened the window. The room seemed to stink of her, as if she had lived there for years. Wherever he turned he found evidence of Win. Win’s fine blonde hair was in the comb. Win’s coarse mouse-coloured hair was in the safety razor. Win’s bright lipstick was on the pillow. She had laddered one of her stockings and thrown the pair away in a corner of the bathroom. The white scum of Win’s ablutions was in the hand-basin; and there were further traces of Win in the toilet—she was one of those women who can never in any circumstances make
anything
work. She had squeezed his toothpaste tube in the middle and he had a morbid suspicion that she had used his
toothbrush
. He threw it out of the window. Had she been playing with his typewriter again? He looked toward the table and felt all the blood in his body rush to his heart, leaving his skin cold and loose. The typewriter was not there. “I’ll murder the bitch!” he shouted; and then he remembered that he had put it on the pavement when he knelt down beside Joanna Bowman, and had left it there. All thought of it had been shocked out of his mind.

“What have I done to deserve this?” he said, to the ceiling.

The ceiling was silent. He answered himself:
What
have
you
done
to
deserve
this?
Everything.
You
born
fool!
You’re
like
a
whorish
idiot
of
a
girl:
she
goes
home
with
the
local
Casanova
and
says:
“You
mustn’t
do
anything,
mind.”
Then
she
takes
all
her
clothes
off
because
he
says
he
only
wants
to
have
a
look
at
her
for
artistic
reasons.
“But
you
mustn’t
do
anything
wicked,
mind.”
Then
they
lie
down
together,
because
he
wants
company,
as
he
says.
“All
right,
but
mind,
you
mustn’t
take
liberties.”
And
then
when
she
finds
herself
three
months
pregnant
she
howls:
“What
have
I
done
to
deserve
it?”
…
Everything,
everything,
you
godfor
saken
bloody
idiot
!
Everything
to
deserve
all
this
and
a
thousand
times
more!
So
take
it,
you
son
of
a
dog,
take
it
and
like
it!

And Pym kicked himself—literally, he kicked himself in the left leg.

After that he drank tea and read the morning paper, still walking about the sitting-room. There was talk of atrocities in Middle Europe, and of the possibility of war. Pym thought then that a war was just what he wanted. If there was a war he might have a little peace. He yearned for the sublime
irresponsibility
of the private soldier who has nothing to do but his duty and nothing to lose but his life. He wanted to be in a barrack-room, where a man can be left alone for a little while to wrap his sore mind in the warm blanket of a weary body and forget the world.

“Let there be a war. Who cares?” he muttered, turning the page. Then he saw a photograph of Sissy Voltaire under the headline:

The story, which was written by a woman, was full of pathos. In a common lodging house in one of the poorer quarters of London, a little old lady dressed in grey, clean but threadbare, fastidiously neat in spite of her poverty, had burned herself to death trying to warm her poor old cramped hands at a fire made of her love letters (carefully cherished for many years) soaked in paraffin. They had warmed her poor old heart, and now they were to warm her poor old hands. Yet these cherished love letters brought about her destruction in the end, because she set fire to her neatly-darned clean-but-well-worn clothes and was so grievously injured that (with a tender smile on her clean
but worn old face) she died, giving certain papers to a certain young man who happened to be near her at the time, and begging him with her dying breath to give them to Sissy Voltaire, the famous actress. This poor well-worn but clean and tidy packet of papers proved to be a script of a play, the merit of which Miss Sissy Voltaire instantly recognised. And now Sissy Voltaire and the promising young comedian Rocky Gagan were going to put the play on at the Pegasus Theatre. Miss Voltaire had said that it was a work of pure genius, calculated to pluck the heartstrings. It contained some of the most humorous and the most tragic passages that had ever been written for the stage. It was a comedy, yet how sad, how frightfully sad it was! …

Pym pushed the paper away. There was something like a mist in his head. Somewhere in all this there was secreted, like a gall-bladder, a dark green seed of ineffable bitterness which—if he could get his fingers on it—he would tear open; and then, by God, he would turn the over-sweetened stomach of the world!

*

They told him, at the hospital, that Joanna Bowman had had a disturbed night but was as comfortable as could be expected. He said: “I should like Miss Bowman to have a room of her own. I’ll pay for it. If you like, I can pay in advance, now. I believe that if a patient has a private room one may visit her at any time within reason? Is that so? … Would it hurt her to be moved?”

“It can be done.”

“But she isn’t going to die?”

“Now you really must be patient. Everything that can be done is being done. You can’t do any good at all by worrying.”

“I want everything done that’s humanly possible,” said Pym. “Absolutely everything. Never mind what it costs. I’m responsible. I’d like her to have a private room. I want her to have everything possible. My idea is that she might get better rather quicker if she had a little room of her own, if that could be arranged. Can I see her, now?”

“Yes, you can see her if you like, but you mustn’t excite her.”

Joanna Bowman was lying still, looking at the ceiling. Pym
approached on tiptoe, holding his breath, and put on the table by her bed six hothouse peaches packed in sawdust, and a little pineapple. The sister of the ward took the bunch of roses he had brought and smiled at him. Joanna looked at him without moving her head, and whispered: “Hullo.”

“Hullo, Joanna.”

“How are you?” she asked. “You look absolutely awful.”

“The point is, how are
you?
”

“Not too bad. That fool stuck his toy Scout-knife into me.”

“I know. I got there just a bit too late.”

“Couldn’t even do this properly. Poor man!”

“They said you weren’t to talk too much or excite yourself.”

“This is nothing. I’ll be up again in a few days. Don’t worry about me.”

“Doesn’t it hurt like hell?”

“Only when I laugh.”

The sister came in with the flowers in a tall graduated glass. “There now,” she said, putting them where Joanna could see them, “look at the lovely roses the gentleman brought you.” She was a short, strong, curiously curved, healthily ugly woman whose round flat face with its long, spiky nose reminded Pym of a sundial—a sundial that looks toward heaven and turns its own shadow to a useful purpose. Time, he thought, had no more power to spoil that face than the shadow of the gnomon, in passing, can scratch the bronze. He broke off one of the roses and put it in her cap.

“Now you look like a Spanish dancing girl,” he said.

“You go away,” said the sister. “That’s quite enough for to-day. Go on, off you go. Out you go.”

“I’ll see you again soon, Joanna,” said Pym.

“If you like. Oh, Pym.”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for the roses.”

When he was gone the sister said: “What a nice gentleman. You’re a lucky girl.”

“He’s not so bad, Carmen.”

“Carmen?” said the sister. Then she remembered the rose in her cap, and took it away with an embarrassed smile. That
evening she pressed it between the leaves of a large, profusely illustrated presentation copy of the poems of Keats which had been given to her by a dying student. She had never found time to read it. The leather spine of this volume was cracking with the pressure of dried-up flowers and grateful letters for which it was a repository. She liked Pym for his devoted attention to Joanna Bowman, and she liked Joanna for her stoic acceptance of pain. They refreshed her. She knew that she had been brought into the world to be patient with the sick and the suffering, but she loved people for whom she did not have to feel sorry. She asked Mr. Stone, the surgeon, when Joanna Bowman might be moved, and he said: “Oh, I don’t know. The girl’s as strong as a bullock. She got a nasty dig in the ribs, but she’ll pull through all right, sister. Shift her.”

Pym put down ten guineas as evidence of solvency and good faith, and they carried Joanna Bowman to her private room.

But Pym was in trouble again.

*

His typewriter had disappeared. Pym had hoped (for he had faith in human honesty) that the man or woman who had found it would say: “It is a very nice typewriter, and I am strongly tempted to walk off with it and keep it. But who knows? It may belong to some poor author who hopes to get his living out of it. I will therefore take it to the nearest police station.” This is what Pym would have said to himself if he had found a portable typewriter. He would have resisted even the little temptation to borrow it for a day or two for fear that the owner, crazed by his loss, might do something desperate.

He was quite sure, therefore, that he would find his
typewriter
waiting for him at the police station. But the sergeant shook his head and said: “Nope, sorry, no typewriters. Remember the number?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you let me have the number and we’ll send out a note about it. I daresay somebody or other just helped himself to it and went and flogged it at a typewriter-shop or a pawnshop…. Number?”

The sergeant took up a pencil, but Pym said: “Oh, no! Thanks all the same. No more of that for me. Let’s give it up as a bad job; write it off.”

“Please yourself. It’s your typewriter.”

Then Pym went to a shop in St. Martin’s Lane and paid twelve guineas for a brand new typewriter of the latest pattern. It had everything—large clear type, tabular key, margin release, the four French accents, several mathematical signs and an asterisk; and it was fitted with a silencer, so that instead of chattering it whispered. People might be sleeping in the same room with you while you, the insomniac genius, beat out a masterpiece; and this astounding machine would let them sleep. He loved it as soon as he saw it. “That one,” he said; but the startled salesman could not stop his sales talk, and pointed out the strength and the beauty of the typewriter—the type-bars made of a special alloy compared with which steel was mere plasticine—the platen roller that came right off at the pressure of a button—the touch adjuster, by means of which the keys were adjusted to any hand. Did you hit your machine great swinging blows like Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom? Touch the touch adjuster. Did you finger your keys like a six-year-old girl secretly exploring the soft, pulsating part of her new-born brother’s skull? Touch the touch adjuster. In either case—
smack!
—down went the word, cleancut as God’s
commandments
chiselled into the stone tablets that Moses made and broke….

“—And look,” said the salesman, “if you want to get to the underneath part, all you need to do is just press this little thing here, push sideways, lift, and there you are. No screws,
everything
simplified. See? Push—lift. Let it down, and it clips right back into position. Immovable. Try it and see.”

“All right, I see. I’ll have that one.”

“We can put your initials on the cover—that’s a waterproof cover—with no extra charge, sir.”

Pym thought that it would be a very good thing to own a beautiful typewriter like this, with
J
.
P.
in gold on the cover. But he remembered his cigarette-case. He was rich, and in spite of all the devils in hell and Fleet Street he was going to be
richer still. Yet he said: “No. Leave it as it ‘is.”

“Brushes? Oil? Special plastic cleaner? Paper? Carbon? Files?”

“Nothing more,” said Pym. He wanted to take his machine home and play with it.

At home he took off the cover and typed the sentence about the fox that jumped over the lazy dog. What the salesman had said was true: the typewriter made no noise. At first, Pym was amused and delighted by this. Then it irritated him. This prostitute-by-vocation of a typewriter took in a great, crashing, bold sentence and degraded it to something sly and confidential. All things to all men, with her touch adjuster, she looked out of the corners of her eyes and talked half-audibly out of the corners of her mouth.

He was trying to love and understand this quiet, enigmatic typewriter when, at ten o’clock on Monday morning, a
gentleman
came to see him—a plump, pale man with bold yet cowardly blue eyes, whose manner, compounded of impudence and vigilance, made Pym think of a pederast behind the veil of the steam in a Turkish bath. Instinctively, Pym hated him. He seemed to be gloating over a furtive triumph, like a waiter who has just spat in your soup. Pym read, on his card, that his name was Cicero Greensleeve and that he was a solicitor.