The Song of the Flea (40 page)

Fabian looked at her closely, shutting one eye. He had whiled away considerable time looking in shop windows and was not unaware of what things cost. He had been about to say: “What the hell do
you
want?” But he said: “Why, Win, honey! Jesus, I been looking for you all over. I didn’t know where to find you. I wanted to sort of apologise in case you thought I was a little bit offhanded with you last time you
dropped in. Hell, I felt bad after you’d gone. I said to myself: ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘what sort of manners will she think I got?’ Come right in and sit down, honeybunch. Hell, well, you know how it is—a guy gets worried and sort of on edge. I was waiting for a transatlantic call from Walt Disney, and it was late. And … Hell, I guess you understand … But, Jesus, kid, you look like a million dollars. What’ve you been doing? Robbing a bank? Look at that coat! Let me look at you!” said Fabian, holding her by the shoulders at arms’ length and looking at her with the dazed air of a man who has seen pure beauty and is blinded. “Gee, but you’re swell!”

“As a matter of fact,” said Win, “since we have in a way been friendly, I came to say good-bye to you.”

“Siddown,” said Fabian. “Whaddya mean, good-bye? I don’t get that good-bye. I don’t like the sound of good-bye.
I
Don’t
Like
The
Sound
of
Good-bye.
I wrote a song about that once. Where d’ya think you’re going?”

“Oh, I thought it might interest you to know: my stepfather’s dead and, as a matter of fact, he’s left me all his money.”

“Good for you, kiddo, good for you! I couldn’t be more pleased, so help me God, if he’d left it to me. How much?”

“Oh, about fifty thousand pounds.”

“Did you say pounds? Did I hear you say fifty thousand pounds? Is there that much money left in the world?”

“I suppose there must be. I’m going to the south of France. As a matter of fact I thought you’d like to know, so that you could set your mind at rest and know that I’m not going to be a nuisance to you any more.”

American Henry Fabian sweated again. His face was wet but his mouth was dry, and he had to drink some water before he could say: “Jesus, I wish you all you wish yourself, Win honey. But hell, I wish you wasn’t going away. To hell with your lousy god-damn money. To hell with it! What I want is you. Okay. Well, hell, I guess you got a right to walk out on me. I guess I’m no good. I never brought you any god-damn luck, honey, I guess. I’m glad you got a break. On my mother’s grave, I couldn’t be more delighted if it happened to me. But I want you to know I’m sorry about the way I treated you the
other day. Don’t think unkind thoughts about me. I was just all wound up. And I want you to know, wherever you are, that I’m with you in the spirit, kid: in the spirit I’m with you; because if you want to know—there’s no harm in saying it now—you’re just about the only woman I ever had any sort of deep feeling for. Jesus, I’ve known one or two dames! But you … Oh well, skip it, skip it. Good-bye, kid, and good luck.”

He held out an open hand, which Win prepared to take, languidly, with a drooping wrist. “It was so nice having known you,” she said.

“I can’t ever forget you,” said Fabian, “only say you forgive me.”

“Silly! But of course!” said Win. Then his little wiry hand snapped at her wrist like a mousetrap and, jerking her towards the divan, he said: “Something to remember you by. Jesus, kid, just this once, for the last time before we part.”

A few minutes later Win said: “Oh, Harry, you know you really were awfully wicked to me, as a matter of fact.”

“What d’ya think I was apologising for, honey? I didn’t sleep for three nights after I was sort of rough with you. You know what? You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

“Tell me what, Harry.”

“You’ll laugh at me.”

“I won’t, word of honour.”

“Scouts’ honour?”

“Um …”

“I wouldn’t ’ve said this, but I got so god-damn miserable that d’you know what I did? I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin tablets, so as to kill myself. But they didn’t work, and here I am, honey, loving you more than ever, and there you are going away forever. Jesus, Jesus Christ, I wish to hell I was dead and buried! Listen, honey, d’you remember a song called ‘What Good Am I Without You’? I more or less wrote it. It says what good are days without sunshine, what good are skies without blue, but all alone on just nothing what good am I without you? Jesus, honey, I wish to hell you didn’t have to go!”

“As a matter of fact, Harry, I think I’m going to sort of miss you. I do like you when you’re nice, as a matter of fact.”

“You’ll miss me! Jesus, that’s funny! She’ll miss me. I won’t miss her—oh no! You know what, honey, now we’ve got together again I don’t want to let you go. What the hell! Why the hell shouldn’t you and me go together? Just you and me. Christ, but I could show you a good time!”

“Do you really want to?”

“Do I really want to?”

“All right.”

“Now I’ve found you again,” said Harry Fabian, “I’ll be god-damned if I let you go. I’ve got some money too. You and me, we’ll go and have dinner together to-night, and you stay right here with me. Okay?”

“Yes.”

They talked seriously of economics. After dinner, in the taxi that was taking them back to Wardour Street, he said:

“And one thing more, kid. For the love of Jesus don’t trust these god-damn old-fashioned chiselling lawyers. You can take it from me for a fact—I know ’em, and they’re no god-damn good. They put on an act. I know, and you can take it from me they put on an act. They try to look like Queen Victoria; they make themselves to look dead respectable so as to get your confidence. ‘Oh, pray, dear lady, allow me to do your business for you’ … and before you know where you are,
bonk!
They’ve got you in their power, and all you’ve got is down the drain,
swish,
like that! Bang it goes. Cupp? Scabbard? Did you ever hear of them before? I thought not, and no more did I. Cupp and Scabbard! Now look, if you want a proper lawyer, go to Luck and Marmora. You mark my words, I wouldn’t mind betting every god-damn cent I got in my pocket that this guy Scabbard is going to start trying funny business. Investments. You’ll see. Now Jackie Luck could pull you out of a hole full of mud and you’d still be clean. Cupp and Scabbard! Jesus, honey, you got no business sense. Did it occur to you to ask who he was, this Scabbard? Did you look at his papers, this
goddamn
Scabbard? Honest to God, loveliness, you’re the sweetest kid in the world but you ain’t fit to look after yourself—you’re too gentle and trusting. Listen, kid, you know how crazy I am about you. I guess that was why I got tough with you that time—because
I was so crazy about you. Me, I don’t want nothing. That business deal I was telling you about, so it came off, and I’ve got dough. Why don’t you let me look after you for a bit till you find your own feet? Oh, I’m not on the chisel, remember! I got dough of my own. Look——” said Fabian, thrusting a hand into his hip pocket. “—Well, never mind. But listen, kid, I’ve handled big money in my time, and I’m a business man. Why don’t you let me sort of advise you?”

When she was with Fabian, all the strength went out of Win. He had betrayed her, and dealt with her as dirt. Therefore she loved him. She said: “I’ll do whatever you say, Harry darling.”

“You won’t regret it, honey, I swear on the grave of my mother. Okay,” said Fabian, briskly, “you’ll do whatever I say. I say you and me go home first of all.”

She giggled and pressed her nose into his ear.

“But look, loveliness—let’s you and me make kind of a sort of honeymoon of all this. Don’t let’s go to that dump of mine. Let’s just you and me be alone together in a decent spot. Let’s go to a
real
hotel. I sort of want to see you where you belong, if you get what I mean…. Oh look: it’s too late for me to cash a cheque, and anyway I’m kind of impatient to be all alone with you, if you get what I mean. Have you got any dough on you, by any chance?”

She opened her bag and gave him a handful of pound notes, and they passed the night in a second-rate but heavily carpeted hotel near Piccadilly.

*

She worshipped him. Fabian, to Win, was everything that a man should be—quick, clever, adroit, elegant, ruthless. He took her to meet the solicitor, Jackie Luck, who was also known as Lucky Jack. He, too, was a fascinating man. Unlike Scabbard, he was young and gay, and he had a Ronald Coleman moustache. Luck wore a black coat and striped trousers, but, unlike Scabbard, he wore his coat tight and his trousers loose. He cracked jokes and took Win and Fabian to lunch, and they drank champagne and old brandy. When they talked to Luck about Mr. Scabbard he was non-committal. In an enthusiastic
voice he said: “Ah yes, there you’ve got a good solid,
old-fashioned
firm. I daresay your stepfather must have had a high opinion of them Miss Joyce. Of course we all have a high opinion of Cupp and Scabbard. Speaking for myself, by the way, and I don’t know what makes me think of it, I have a passion for old boats. Just for my own amusement I like to play around in smooth water (you must come to my place at Maidenhead some time), to play around in smooth water with little sailing boats; good old slow sailing boats. I wish you’d come and spend a week-end one of these days. Any time about three weeks from now. I have to go to New York on business for a few days. But of course, if I want to go a long way fast, much as I love the old sail I won’t rely on it for
that!
Oh no. For quiet backwaters, yes. But in a rough sea … What was I saying? Oh, yes; Cupp and Scabbard. They’re a good firm, an old firm, well-established and still floating. But … However. Coffee?”

Thus, Jackie Luck took charge of Win’s money, and she went with Fabian to Monte Carlo. There, in the lobby of the Hotel Tataresco, Fabian saw a slender blonde whose face, he thought, was not unfamiliar. She was dressed in white, and wore emeralds, and she looked at him in passing as a motorist glances at a milestone. She was accompanied by a languid middle-aged man in a blue blazer with gold buttons.

Fabian asked the porter: “Who is that lady?”

The porter said: “That is la Vicomtesse de la Tour de Percé, monsieur. The gentleman is Monsieur le Vicomte.”

Fabian gave him a fifty-franc note and went away, angry. “
Vicomtesse!
” he said, gnashing his teeth, “Vicomtesse! After all I done for that girl!”

That night he and Win went to the casino and lost a large sum of money. Win was worried, but he said: “The hell with it, loveliness! Lucky has just bought us some Iceland Rayon. We’re in on the ground floor. They got a sort of moss, better than silk. And then there’s a guy, a scientist, so he’s discovered a way of getting the gold out of sea water. Now let me tell you….”

S
O
dreamy Annie the servant girl, and the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé, and the spiv Fabian, and the slut Win achieved their heart’s desire. But Pym was still in trouble.

“What the hell am I to do?” he asked Shirley Brush, with a helpless gesture, “what am I to do?”

“I told you what to do, and you didn’t do it,” said Shirley Brush. “I warned you, and you paid no attention. You wanted to be heroic. It’s an expensive business, being heroic. It’s beyond your means. All right; take the consequences. If I told you once I told you fifty times exactly what would happen if you acknowledged indebtedness to Cicero Greensleeve. I warned you, I pleaded with you; but no. You said: ‘I don’t play that kind of game. Let him have his few pounds back.’ I asked you how you were going to let him have his few pounds back, but you wouldn’t listen. You thought he’d be satisfied with the thirty pounds you had left. You don’t know much about men. I warned you that to attack was the best way to defend yourself in this case. I told you so. I say it without shame: I
told
you so. And
this
,” said Shirley Brush, angrily shaking a typewritten letter, “this is the result. Well, now what advice can I give you that you’re too heroic to take?”

“Do you mind if I look at that letter again?”

Brush threw the letter across the table and said: “Learn it by heart. Have it framed, for all I care.”

Pym shouted: “The man is a pig! What he says here is, good God, that he is in receipt of my letter enclosing thirty pounds on account of a hundred and fifty pounds I owe him. ‘In receipt’—Christ, how I hate lawyers! I don’t mean you: I mean the way they talk. And this intolerable squirt goes on to say that he considers himself as being in no way indebted to me for my unwarrantable interference in the matter of his deceased mother’s burial. You get that ‘deceased’—legal caution! Otherwise people might think that he was a party to having her buried alive.
Unwarrantable interference! What a swine! What would happen if I went along to his office and——”

“—And gave him a punch on the nose? Well, he could get you for assault. I daresay you’d get away with a fine of forty shillings.”

“I haven’t got forty shillings!”

“Then keep away from Cicero’s office and if you meet him stick your hands in your pockets.”

“But I can’t pay him.”

“Then don’t. He’ll sue you. When you get into court, offer half-a-crown a month.”

“I haven’t got half-a-crown a month!”

“Oh, he’ll do his best to make you find it. You’re in a queer position, don’t you see. You might, of course, claim an agent’s fee for handling that play. We might try that.”

“Would that be of any use, do you think?”

“You never can tell. It might. In any case it would give us time.”

“Time for what? Time to do what?”

“Time to think and time to breathe.”

Pym cried: “I don’t want any time to think! I don’t want any time to breathe! I don’t want anything to do with these bastards! I will
not
put myself in the position of a tout—I’ll be damned before I play bloody lawyers’ tricks … I beg your pardon.”

“That’s all right. But what
will
you do then?”

“I don’t know. I’ll pay him his dirty money.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I only need time to pay.”

“Then let us drag the thing out and dispute it point by point; play for time—time to think, time to breathe, time to pay, whatever you like to call it … time, breathing space.”

“And get in deeper and deeper,” said Pym. “I’m going to owe you a bill too, remember.”

“I won’t press you for that.”

Pym said: “I seem to be under some kind of curse. Whatever I do and wherever I turn I seem to find myself under obligations to people. I’m always in debt for money, or indebted for favours.
I’m sick and tired of it. I hate it. I won’t have any more of it. I’ll fight this my way. I’ll give that pig his money, and if I can’t I’ll go to jail. I’d rather be in a stone jail with four walls than be as I am. And how am I? In a maze—a thousand prisons. All right, I’ll go to prison.” Pym remembered that night in Bow Street. “I’ll be locked up behind a door with a little shutter in it … in a nice little quiet cell. All right, I’ll go to prison—and I can tell you that that would be an escape as far as I’m concerned!”

(As Pym said this he thought that
Breaking
Into
Prison
would be an excellent title for a book.)

“Better think it over,” said Shirley Brush.

‘There isn’t anything to think over. If I can pay, I’ll pay. If I can’t, I won’t,” said Pym. “Even Greenslceve can’t get blood out of a stone.”

“No, because there isn’t any blood in a stone. But he can get sparks out of a stone. He can knock the fire out of a stone. He can get a groan out of a stone. He can make your life a misery. Why not be sensible and fight fire with fire—set a thief to catch a thief, and let me handle Greensleeve for you? No need to worry about fees; I can wait; I always do. One of these days you’ll pay me with interest.”

“No thanks, God bless you. I think I’d rather get out of this silly mess on my own.”

“You’ll pay, or you’ll fight, if you start any silly business on your own.”

“I’ll pay
and
I’ll fight!”

“Young man, young man,” said Shirley Brush with sadness and affection, “I see that you must dree your weird alone. Plough your lonely furrow, then. But … between friends … from an uncle, as it might be … let me lend you a few pounds.”

Pym could not speak, so he shook his head and shook the solicitor’s hand. Something had him by the throat. People were such pigs. People were such angels. He gulped, and grinned, and waved a hand and went out.

God
set
me
free!
he said, pinching away a couple of starting tears.
Make
me
straight
and
strong,
O
Lord!
Cut
me
loose
from
Pym!
I
am
an
ox
with
as
many
masters
as
there
are
men
and
women
in
the
world
—
a
castrated
slave
with
sawn-off
horns,
and
nothing
but
blind
and
hopeless
yearnings
that
remind
me
of
what
I
am
not
… Then he thought of Proudfoot, and of all the wise things that Proudfoot had said so solemnly with his hand on his book—and his book of newspaper cuttings; and falling into a sullen anger against himself Pym cursed himself for a fool. Reason, coming out of the hole in which it slept with one eye open, pounced like a spider and said:

Come,
come,
come
now!
What
’
s
the
use
of
being
angry?
What
does
your
puerile
rage
contribute
to
the
wretched
condition
you
have
imposed
upon
yourself?
Yes,
imposed
upon
yourself.
You
want
to
be
a
Creator.
You
want
to
make
great
works.
You
are
held
back
by
grinding
poverty.
Yet
every
opportunity
that
comes
your
way
you
cast
aside.
You
are
half-way
through
a
novel,
probably
a
successful
novel
—
certainly
a
novel
that
will
open
certain
doors.
Thirty
pounds,
carefully
laid
out,
would
see
you
through
to
the
end.
But
what
do
you
do?
Not
only
do
you
throw
away
your
thirty
pounds
but
you
involve
yourself
in
a
hundred
and
twenty
pounds
of
debt
into
the
bargain.
You
are
no
Creator,
you
poor
fool,
because
you
are
soft,
and
the
Creator
must
be
hard.
In
the
case
of
a
man
of
genius
the
end
justifies
the
means.
Your
stupid,
your
pigheaded
fussiness
over
tiny
points
of
honour
is
nothing
but
vanity,
mean
and
selfish
vanity.
You
believe
that
you
have
it
in
you
to
enlighten
and
entrance
the
world
for
five
hundred
years.
You
believe
that
you
can
make
goodness
interesting
and
beauty
popular,
and
you
aspire
to
the
dignity
of
a 
Standard-
Bearer
on
the
left-hand
of
militant
Truth.
Yet
you
drop
everything
for
a
whim;
a
fancy,
a
Boy
Scout’s
conceit.
You
are
unworthy.

Pym said to Reason:
I
see
the
point
in
what
you
say.
I
don’t
know
exactly
how
to
answer
you,
but
although
you
are
right,
I’m
convinced
that
you’re
wrong.
I
obey
my
instincts,
and
I
am
as
God
made
me.

Reason said:
God
did
not
make
you
to
obey
your
instinct,
Brother
Pym,
but
to
follow
the
Instinct
beyond
your
instincts.
Go
on
then,
follow
your
instinct.
Go
to
Cicero
Greensleeve’s
office
and
strangle
him
—
go
to
the
cemetery
and
dig
up
the
rotting
corpse
of
old
Mrs.
Greensleeve
and
throw
it
into
the
arms
of
Decimus
Greensleeve
saying:
“Pardon
me,
I
have
unwarrantably
interfered
with
your
mother’s
funeral
arrangements;
allow
me
to
hand
her
her
back
to
you”
—
Go
to
the
hospital
and
jump
into
bed
with
Joanna
Bowman
…
Go
on,
follow
your
instincts
because
you
are
as
God
made
you!
Go
ahead,
follow
your
instincts
into
the
gutter,
down
the
drain,
along
the
sewer,
and
out
to
the
open
sea,
and
take
yourself
and
all
that
God
gave
you
away
into
the
dark
with
the
rats
and
the
dung
and
the
abortions
wrapped
in
newspaper.
Vain
man
!
You
have
been
given
the
power
to
make
things.
But
no;
you
want
to
be
a
hero.
As
if
I
did
not
know
that
you
have
got
it
all
out
of
books,
cheap
romances!
…
Well,
all
right.
You
have
had
your
little
blind
man’s
holiday.
Now
wake
up
and
listen
to
me.
You
can
go
to
Proudfoot
at
this
very
moment
and
get
two
hundred
and
fifty
pounds
for
writing
that
woman
Weissensee’s
silly
book.
And
with
two
hundred
and
fifty
pounds
you
can
go
away
and
write
two
masterpieces.