The Song of the Flea (39 page)

“Oh, shut up,” said the girl called Mimosa, to whom he was telling his troubles, “shut up, you and your doing things for people.”

She was a tall, strong, big-boned woman with dyed red hair. Looking at her with calculation, he said: “Mim, one of the things I like about you is, you sort of understand me.”

Mimosa, a cynical woman, laughed heartily and said: “You’re a liar. I understand you all right, but you don’t like me for it. I know you. You’re a ponce like all the other ponces, and you want to ponce on me. Well, just you try it, that’s all.”

There had been a time when Fabian feared nothing. Now a word could quell him. But he said: “Oh, the hell with it! What’s the hellish use of argument, I mean to say—what the hell?” And he went back to 802, Wardour Street, ashamed, saying to
himself
:
Oh
Jesus
!
What
the
hell
has
come
over
me
?

As he walked he looked quickly left and right; and wondered whether his capital was enough to take him to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or Canada. There was no doubt that human nature was human nature, north, south, east and west; but he wanted to have enough in his pocket to make a front. The thought of the hundred and twenty pounds in his wallet cheered him.
God damn
it,
he thought,
Jesus
damn
it,
I
got
where
I
am
from
nowhere.
Hell’s
bells,
a
guy
like
me
——

He put his hand to the inside breast pocket of his coat to reassure himself.

The pocket was empty. Then he remembered that a man known as Dipsy had engaged him in conversation on the corner of Bateman Street and had told him a funny story, pushing and
slapping him and writhing in an ecstasy of delight. Dipsy said:

“Look. So there’s two old men, see? Couple of Jews. Get it? One says to another: ‘So listen already vat you look like is already not vat you are, already. So listen: I’m going along der Mile End Road, so I’m smoking already a cherry-wood pipe so comes der up a man and says to me—
Stanley
Baldvin.
See? Mistaken identity!’ So …” Dipsy banged him in the chest, slapped his bottom and clung to him, chuckling—— “So this other old geezer says to this geezer: ‘Ha! You call dis mistaken identity? Look so yesterday, so I go to der Rivoli Picture-Palace mebbe it could be eleven o’clock in der morning. So I take an eightpenny seat, and so I go to sleep. Comes eleven o’clock at night and so der attendant comes already vid his torch shining already in my face and he says—
Jesus,
are
you
still
here?
By me dat is mistaken identity.”

It must have been at this moment when, screaming with laughter and slapping him, Dipsy got Fabian’s wallet.

Fabian wanted to kill Dipsy, but he had no strength left, no energy. He went back to Wardour Street and fell on his back upon the odoriferous, stained divan, crying to heaven: “What mug said there was a God? I could murder the god-damned mug that said there was a god-damned God!”

He had three pounds five shillings in his right trousers-pocket.

*

It was not hate so much as a desire to compel his attention. Win wanted to believe in Fabian as an agnostic wants to believe in God. She desired only evidence of his personal attention.

Having cashed Pym’s cheque she took a room at the Golden Rose Hotel in Percy Street and sat in the bars and cafés of Charlotte Street looking for old friends. She was hungry for company, especially male company, after her weeks of
incarceration
; for she was amorous as a small, sighing blonde can be amorous—in a moist, sloppily avid, undetachable way. It is easy enough for any woman to find some man who is not unwilling to go to bed with her. But if a woman happens to need a man—lover, policeman, taxi-driver—she may whistle for him and hear nothing but her own voice. Win was lonely
and wretched, irritable, fidgety on the edges of chairs. If you happened to be sitting at table with her, her plump knee was where your knee was. She had cigarettes now, but never matches, and when you gave her a light you had to drag your hand out of the grip of her fingers. She developed a tendency to whisper confidentially, so that her lips touched your ear, if you were a man; and it was reasonable to assume that in conversation she would manage to find something that needed emphasis in the region of your knees.

She still had seventeen pounds of the money Pym had given her when, one morning in
The
Fitzroy,
a young man named Eddy said, with a giggling laugh: “Oh look, darling—I say, you wouldn’t—ha-ha—by any chance be known by the name of Winifred, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, my name
is
Winifred, as it happens, Eddy.”

“No, darling, but seriously—you’re not going to tell me your middle name is Victoria? On no, come along now, that would be just a little bit too grim.”

“What would you say if I told you that my middle name
was
Victoria, as a matter of fact?”

“W.Y.B.M.A.D.I.I.T.Y.?”

“What does that mean?”

“Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?”

“All right.”

“Well, that’s what it means, ha-ha-ha! W.Y.B.M.A.D.I.I.T.Y.: Will You Buy Me A Drink If I Tell You? You owe me a drink. Well, if you’re Winifred Victoria Joyce, do you happen to be related to some grim old gentleman called Rudyard Mellish?”

“Why, that’s my swine of a stepfather.”

“What will you give me for G.N.? … No, all joking apart, darling, Good News. Are you really Winifred Victoria Joyce, related to the late Rudyard Mellish—
quel
nom
?”

“
Late?
”

“No, I mustn’t be a tease. Look, here it is in the
Daily
Telegraph
,” said Eddy, showing her a folded newspaper, “Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah …
If
Miss
Winifred
Victoria
Joyce
will
communicate
with
Messrs.
Cupp
and
Scabbard,
92,
High
Holborn,
she
will
hear
something
to
her
advantage.
Really, you know, I ought to get commission.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Win, and tears began to creep down her cheeks. “Still, that’s my name and there couldn’t be two Rudyard Mellishes. Oh, poor darling! Oh, who would have thought it! Oh Eddy!”

“There, there, darling, don’t cry. Wasn’t he awfully
well-to-
do?”

“I don’t know, I suppose so. He must have been. Yes, of course he was.”

“I was under the impression that he was a sort of grim old miser, a perfect scroogie-woogie. You know—‘Merry
Christmas
? Bah! Humbug!’ And it does say ‘something to your advantage’, so don’t cry.”

“Oh, I know it’s silly of me, Eddy darling, but I can’t help my feelings. Oh, I know he was an absolute swine to me and more or less kicked me out of the house like a dog, and when I came out of prison, as a matter of fact, when I was ill and starving and horribly cut-up about my poor little baby, he practically laughed in my face … but I can’t help my feelings. As a matter of fact he was an absolute rotter and a frightful old hypocrite, as a matter of fact, him and his absolute bitch of a housekeeper. Housekeeper! No, I don’t believe he’s dead. As a matter of fact, that sort of person lives forever, like tortoises,” said Win, wiping her eyes. “Eddy, won’t you come with me? I’m so frightened.”

“Cupp and Scabbard! It is rather a grim name, don’t you think?”

But Mr. Scabbard was a dry, kindly little old man; a
slow-moving
, deliberate-speaking, respectable family lawyer of the old school. His mouth opened and closed weightily like the iron door of his old-fashioned safe. He said. “You must bear your bereavement with fortitude, Miss Joyce, with fortitude. Your stepfather was a good man, a very good man. It is sad that men like him must leave this world, but that is the way of all flesh, Miss Joyce. Mr. Mellish made this will”—Mr. Scabbard pointed to the document in question, which was hand-written—“shortly after he married your mother.”

Win said: “Poor mummy! Oh, poor darling! And now I’ve got nobody at all!”

“May I offer you my handkerchief, Miss Joyce … Not at all, not at all. A glass of water? Or a cup of tea? No? Well, compose yourself, and let us proceed. Mr. Mellish made his will, very providently, shortly after he married twenty years ago. Apart from the sum of two thousand pounds to the Architects’ Benevolent Society, his ivory chess set and one thousand pounds to his dear friend and opponent Vice-Admiral Rodney Pope, and two thousand pounds and his personal Sévres porcelain breakfast-set to his faithful and loyal housekeeper Mrs. Frances Moore, your stepfather left everything to his wife, to revert after her decease to his stepdaughter Winifred Victoria Joyce. I can congratulate you, therefore, Miss Joyce, on the inheritance of a very considerable property indeed—a great sum, a great
responsibility
, for so young a lady.”

“Is it much?” asked Win.

“His net personalty is estimated at about forty-seven thousand five hundred pounds.”

“Did you say forty-seven
thousand?
”

“Forty-seven thousand five hundred and sixty-seven pounds ten shillings, to be precise. Your stepfather was a very prudent man, who made a point of knowing what he had and what he did not have. I wish there were more like him.”

“But you don’t mean to say that he’s left me all that money?” said Win.

“Here is the will,” said Mr. Scabbard, “you must, of course, read it for yourself. There are also certain properties, viz., Biglands, his house; his library, furniture, carpets, etc.; an extremely valuable collection of china; eighty-two acres of land … but there is a condition there.”

“What condition?” asked Win, taking an anxious face out of Mr. Scabbard’s handkerchief.

Mr. Scabbard soothed her by saying: “Nothing serious, nothing but a very proper condition. The land is yours on condition that you do not cut down the old oak trees on the northern boundary. I take it that you are not interested in cutting down old oak trees, so that need not bother you, Miss
Joyce…. There are also five cottages that bring in about a hundred a year in rent. You are a fortunate young lady, Miss Joyce, a wealthy young lady. I congratulate you on your good fortune, and hope that you will use your money as wisely and as well as Mr. Mellish did.”

“Oh, I will, I will!” said Win.

“I can, of course, if you wish, advance any sum within reason for your immediate needs,” said Mr. Scabbard.

“Oh, Mr. Scabbard, I wish you would. I’d be ever so grateful. As a matter of fact I haven’t a bean. You see, I need clothes, and things, and as a matter of fact I haven’t got a thing in the world except what I’m standing up in.”

“Oh dear, oh dear; that will never do. Poor young lady. Well, shall we say a hundred pounds to be going on with? And of course if you wish for credit for any purchases you may want to make, you can have the account sent to us.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Scabbard. I can’t tell you what it means to me. Though as a matter of fact,” said Win, weeping again, “I’d rather have daddy than all the money in the world….”

Eddy, suffocated with wonder, had not said a word. From time to time he had made little inarticulate noises. But when they were in the street he exclaimed: “Forty-seven thousand pounds! My God! You’re an heiress, darling!”

“Well, he couldn’t take it with him, and I suppose his
conscience
was troubling him,” said Win. “And did you get that bit about the oak trees? He knew perfectly well how I hate to have trees right under my nose. As for his Mrs. Moore….”

Eddy coughed and said: “I say, Win darling, I don’t suppose you could manage to lend me a few pounds?”

Win said: “As a matter of fact, Eddy darling, I can’t just at the moment. I’ve got things to buy, and as a matter of fact I’m terribly in debt. I’ve got all sorts of debts to pay—I’ve been starving like a dog, and borrowing right and left, and I’ve got debts to pay. But as soon as things get settled—there might be a mistake, or some catch in this somewhere—I’ll give you some money with pleasure.”

“That old man said you could run up bills, you know.”

“I know, but as a matter of fact I hate running up bills. I
want to get away from all that sort of thing … borrowing, running up bills. As a matter of fact, Eddy, it’s against my nature. But I tell you what, I can let you have a pound if you like.”

Even Eddy had his pride. He said: “Keep your pound.”

“Oh no, Eddy darling, have a pound! After all, you did, as a matter of fact, help me out by coming with me.”

“Keep your forty-seven thousand pounds,” said Eddy, walking away. Win called a taxi and went to Bond Street: she had shopping to do. While the taxi driver growled at the world and the cab shuddered at the traffic lights, she dreamed dreams of vengeance. Pym had thrown her out into the street; Loulou had humiliated her; there was scarcely a man or a woman among all her friends who had not refused to do something for her. But God had delivered her enemies into her hand. Fabian had slapped her face and kicked her out. He, too, should pay.

So it happened that Fabian, who had been lying on his divan, smoking cigarettes and cursing his luck, heard a peremptory knocking at his door. He had been thinking of the Australian. Something that felt like chilled-steel pincers seemed to close inside him. He felt a dampness on his face. His first impulse was to lie still and keep quiet. But he was ashamed: he had been a brave man, once—in his way. He got up and went to the door. His hand was so wet that he had to wipe it on the seat of his trousers before he could turn the door-knob and open the door; and then he saw, not the Australian nor the Australian’s brother, but a beautifully-cosmeticised young woman with exquisitely dressed bright blonde hair, wearing an expensive caracul coat.

“What——” he began.

“Hel-lo, Henry, as a matter of fact I jus came to say good-bye,” said Win.