After a bit I got dressed and made up carefully and put the mink on and I was ready to get back. 'Call me a taxi,' I said, and he did, ringing up the desk and asking very nicely in this lovely plummy voice of his. And he kissed me gently, which was considerate of him, me just having made up. 'Tomorrow?' he said. I said I'd see. I looked at the lovely oyster watch Howard had bought me and saw it was only twenty to one. I'd be in nice time to heat up a tinned steak and kidney pudding and boil some potatoes and we could have lunch at the usual time.
When I was on my way home in the taxi, Miss Glass, I giggled at that, I remembered that I'd forgotten to ask Red, as I was to call him, what was this secret thing that Howard had asked him to do, something to do with him being a poet and writer or something. Howard wouldn't tell me, I knew that, you could never get round Howard. So I would have to see Red tomorrow to find out what was going on. I've always hated people having secrets.
Chapter 16
But I didn't see him next day nor any day after that till the day we left for London, Howard and I smart, me minky, with all this very new and posh pigskin luggage or whatever it was, with the taxi waiting outside the door. It was up to me to see him, really, and get in touch, not the other way round, and he didn't really try to get in touch. That would have been difficult, anyway, because Howard and I were out nearly all the time these last few days, out at night too, eating, Howard hiring a self-drive Bentley, no it wasn't a Bentley it was a silver-grey Merc, whatever that is, because he said the time was over now for me doing the cooking. It was on the day we left for London that Redvers Glass turned up with his bit of luggage, to be, as he put it, a sort of day-and-night-watchman. He turned up late, so Howard said, but we were in plenty of time for the train and what were a few bob as far as the taxi ticking away was concerned? When Red entered our house he gave me a sort of smouldering look and I went again a bit like jelly at the knees and I had trouble in swallowing and I was sure Howard could see a sort of heart-beat in my neck racing away. Howard handed over to Red a big envelope that was sealed and said, 'Right, you get down to that, you should find it fairly interesting, and turn it into a nice poem that can be published in some paper when the time comes, and I'll tell you when the time comes, so that the whole world can know.'
'What is this? 'I said. 'What's going on? '
'Never you mind,' said Howard with a kind of very sad grin. He was a queer sort of man altogether, having all the money any man could ever want and yet looking really sad. I didn't have any clue to the sadness, because we'd had none of this talking in his sleep or switching all the lights of the house on for a long time now. Perhaps it was the rich food, I thought, or the more drink we'd been having lately since we got rich ourselves. Red said to me:
'This is like secret sailing-orders, sweetie.' He shouldn't have used that word, not with Howard there, but Howard took no notice, cleaning his nails with a match, instead of using a nail-file which he could afford hundreds of. 'My little assignment,' said Red. 'To turn dross into poetry.' And he turned on me a sort of burning tight-lipped smile so that I felt this wobbliness all over again. Howard said:
'We'd best be going. Right, now. Glass. I've paid the rent in advance, you see, and I think you'll even find a bit of food in the larder, and the milk and papers will go on coming every day, so you'll be all right there. You get on with the writing of your own thing in the mornings and in the afternoons get on with this other job. And in the evenings don't make too much noise, because you're supposed to be nice and quiet in council houses, this not being like Chelsea. Not that it makes all that difference, those buggers next door having an electric guitar going some nights with the volume turned up.' I didn't like this bossiness and this swearing and calling him Glass. Mr Glass, yes. Redvers or Red, yes. But not just the surname, like that. But there was no doing anything with Howard really. But Red just smiled and said all right. And so we went off, but Red very cleverly managed to kiss me on the neck when Howard started going out first with the luggage, the taxi-driver helping him. He whispered, 'You never came. But it's not all over, is it? Send me a card, write to me.' But all I could do was to smile in a sad sort of way.
My feelings were all mixed-up, I suppose. Every night I'd been lying in bed and I'd been sort of haunted by some of the things that had happened in that room at the Swinging Lamp. I find this very hard to explain, but when you're with a man like that he isn't a man any more, he's just a lot of sounds and a smell and a weight on you. I used to think that remembering things was really a matter of your brain, but this time it was parts of the body that kept on remembering. I was now sort of split and I knew it would be very dangerous to let my feelings run away with me, which would mean running away from Howard. But I can well imagine somebody being ready to give up everything for the sake of that particular thing. I mean, there's little enough in this life, really, and you only find it worth living for the odd moments, and if you think you're going to be able to have those odd moments again, then it makes life wonderful and have a meaning. You might have thought it had a meaning before, like I did, but this was something new and it made everything else seem a bit dim, somehow. Anyway, it was really a very good thing we were off on this holiday, from the point of view of not doing something which everybody would think of as silly and wicked, certainly Mum and Pop would, who we'd seen for a short time to say good-bye the day before, and Mum had cried to see us well-dressed and living it up. 'No, my girl,' I had to keep saying to myself, 'don't get silly. He's only a scruffy poet, and there's more in life than that, and he didn't say a word about love, which is what Howard feels for me and I feel for him.' That's what I kept saying to myself. And how handsome Howard looked and what a good man he was. And there was Red, scruffy and drinking a lot, and anyway he'd only been in my life no more than a couple of days. It was an obsession, that was what it was, an obsession, and when I'd remembered that word I felt a lot better.
Not to make too long a story out of it we got to London and got to this very large hotel by the park in the middle of London, by taxi, of course. It's amazing what clothes do for you, really. If I hadn't had my mink I would have felt really small and all out of place walking into that huge entrance hall full of svelte women and cigarry men, with our pigskin luggage being carried in and the commissionaire saluting when Howard handed over a ten-bob note to him. As it was, I saw nobody there with a mink like mine, but I saw plenty having a good look, and I even think I heard somebody say, 'This is her third husband,' as if I was a filmstar, but they might have been talking about somebody else. I got the shock of my life, no perhaps I didn't knowing Howard, when I found out that we were booked in in a suite that cost fifty pounds a day. You just think of that, very carefully, and you'll see how ridiculous having a lot of money really is. Because if people couldn't afford to pay that amount, well, it stands to reason they'd have to charge much less for it. It was a lovely set of rooms, there's no doubt about that, but I'm sure it wasn't worth what we were paying for it. There was concealed lighting and air-conditioning and a gorgeous bathroom, also a cocktail cabinet to which Howard had some bottles brought to fill it up. But in the meantime we had to have some champagne and it had to be the right year too, and the waiter bowed very low and said that would be done. And now Howard turned on his happy sort of smile and said:
'Well, girl, I always said, didn't I? I always said that one of these days we'd go as high as it was possible to go, didn't I? Well, here we are.'
'Yes,' I said. 'But what are we going to do?' He didn't quite understand what I meant until I explained. What I meant was really so what? There we were, living it up, but what different things were we doing except having somewhere nice to live and nice things to eat and drink? What were we going to do? That was what I wanted to know. Howard said:
'Well, tonight we shall have dinner downstairs in the restaurant here, and after that we shall go to the theatre.'
'What to see?' I said.
'It's a play very well noticed in The Times,' said Howard in his lo
fty, Timesy, sort of way. 'Called One Hand Clapping. It's a play dealing with the decay and decadence in the world about us, very witty.'
'Called what?'
'One Hand Clapping.'
'That's a silly sort of a name,' I said. 'How can you have just one hand clapping? You've got to have two, haven't you? I mean, there'd be no noise, would there, with just one? You've got to have two to make any noise.' Then I clapped my hands together and I had to giggle, because, as it might be in that harem they have to advertise Fry's Turkish Delight on the TV, the door opened and the waiter came in with champagne, as though I'd been some big Eastern lady clapping for the servant to come.
'It's from Zen Buddhism,' said Howard. 'It's something you have to try and imagine.' He gave the waiter five bob and the waiter looked at it as if some bird had done something in his hand, and then he walked out. That shows you, doesn't it? If they'd charged only two pounds for this suite, which was about what it was worth, he'd have been very glad of a tanner. And the champagne tasted very cold and a bit vinegary, but I didn't say anything. I didn't have a chance to say anything, because Howard was still going on, saying, 'It's a way of getting in touch with Reality, you see, proceeding by way of the absurd.' Poor boy, it was the old photographic brain at it again. 'Like imagining thunder with no noise and a bird flying with no body or head or wings. It's supposed to be a way of getting to God.' I didn't much like the sound of this play at all, but Howard knew best.
We had our dinner downstairs in the restaurant of the hotel, and, do you know, I really enjoyed it. It was a nice-looking sort of restaurant, with concealed lights and lovely white napkins and tablecloths, and at some tables things were sort of going up in flames, and there was a strong smell of like Christmas pudding, but Howard said they were cooking things in brandy. I had a lovely piece of fish and afterwards a very nice very cold wobbly sort of pudding. Then there was Green Chartreuse and coffee. I can't remember what Howard had, but it was a big plateful. I felt lovely and warm. Then we got a taxi and we went to this play. I was a bit disappointed with the theatre, because it was very small, and somehow it seemed to me that now we had plenty of money we should only have big things, like some big pantomime in a big theatre, but of course the pantomime season hadn't started yet. There wasn't a cigarry smell in this theatre, either, nor were there boxes, like at the old Bradcaster Empire. But we had the best seats, so Howard said, these being in the front row. When the curtain went up, what should it be but some young people in a very dirty-looking flat, with washing hanging up, and a girl ironing in her underclothes. And that scene didn't change once, it was the same scene from beginning to end of the whole play. What the play was about was about everybody being very unhappy because they'd got their education paid for by the government, or something, and there was no war on for anybody to fight in, or something like that. One of the actors looked very much like Red, dressed like him too, and he kept swearing all the time. That made me start daydreaming about Red and it made me twitch a bit, so that Howard looked at me in a strange way. He didn't really like the play, you could see that, and I thought the whole thing was horrid. Here we were with a lot of money, and our first night in London as very rich people had to be spent watching people in a dirty little room with washing hung up and kippers forked out on to plates.
I should have been quite happy to be back in our little house in Bradcaster, sitting by the fire watching the TV. But then there was this question of Red and I was very confused. I felt that I'd sort of got on a bus going to a place I didn't know, and the bus wouldn't stop. I didn't know what I wanted. Perhaps what I wanted was things as they were before. But I didn't want that, either. A bit of excitement had come into my life. I almost felt like crying with a sort of grief and hitting out at people, but plenty of that was going on on the stage.
Chapter 17
I suppose during that week in London Howard must have spent and given away easily a good thousand quid, and perhaps a lot more. He got sort of desperate about giving me a good time and kept saying, 'You are enjoying this, aren't you, love? Say you're enjoying it,' so I had to keep on saying yes. But what really can you do with money after you've got a certain amount? Some of the things in London we went to see, like the National Gallery and the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, don't cost anything at all. There's a limit to the amount you can eat and drink, and on one occasion that week I was really sick. We'd had dinner somewhere very posh, with a bottle of Burgundy 1952 or 1953, I forget which, but Howard said they were both good years. My dinner had been a very large pork cutlet, more like a joint really, covered with a very thick rich almost black sauce, and with braised celery and potatoes fried like little sticks. It was very nice. But in the middle of the night I started dreaming about being sick, then I woke up and had to dash to the bathroom to really be sick. Howard was very kind and considerate, but he was also worried-sounding, saying, 'Dear oh dear. I did want you to have a good time, but I've only made you sick, that's all I've done,' over and over again. 'All right,' I said. 'Forget it.' And I crawled back to bed and didn't have any trouble going back to sleep, being sort of drugged with what we'd had to drink and absolutely dead-beat. In the morning I wasn't awake till ten and I felt lousy, but they brought coffee up and that made me feel a bit better. But this was living it up.
Howard went out that morning on his own, leaving me to laze around in my beautiful new peignoir, and when he came back he looked a bit glum, so I said, 'What's the matter?'
'Oh, nothing,' he said. I said:
'Come on, tell us all about it. I can see there's something gone wrong somewhere. Have you put all the money on a horse that went down the drain?'
'No,' said Howard. 'I got picked up by the police, that's all. I went round, you see, this morning, trying to do a bit of good, and nobody seemed to want a bit of good being done to them.' He looked very embarrassed and quite hurt. 'I went round with five-pound notes, giving them to the poor.'
'You did what?' I said.
'Giving five-pound notes to London's poor, an act of mercy and charity.'
'Oh, no,' I said, and kept on saying it. Then I said, 'But how can you tell who the poor are?' It was really amazing, some of the things that Howard could get up to, there was no limit, just no limit at all. I said, 'There aren't any poor nowadays, are there? I mean, since the war everybody's become well-off, haven't they, and isn't that what all the trouble's about? I mean, like in that play we saw the other night?'
'There must be a lot of people needing money,' said Howard. 'That stands to reason, the newspapers being full of advertisements about distressed gentlewomen and refugees and so on. Well, I don't see why you should have to give your money to some organisation that swallows up all the money in salaries for secretaries and so on. It seemed to me it was best to give money like they did in the old days, personally like, to them you see in the streets who need it.'
'Oh, Howard,' I said. 'And what did you do?'
'Just that,' said Howard. 'I went through the streets and gave a five-pound note here and there, and some said I was barmy and others said I ought to be ashamed giving away counterfeit money. And then I saw what I thought was a distressed gentlewoman--'
'What's that?' I said.
'Oh,' said Howard, 'some old lady who's known better days and has had lots of servants but now hasn't got them any more and has to do without. You're supposed to be able to tell them by the clothes they wear, very old smart clothes, and by the way they speak, genteel. Anyway, I saw one of these, as I thought, just off a street called Surrey Street, which is by the Embankment, and I went up to her and said here was a little donation and tried to hand over five pounds, but she started screaming she was being assaulted and insulted and so on, and then the police came along and said "What's all this here?" Then they took me to the station and I tried to explain, and they said "You'd better watch your step." Then they asked me where I lived and I said here at this hotel and they thought I was trying to be funny. So one of them rang up to see if there was a M
r Shirley staying here and was told yes. Then they seemed to think I was just a nice mad sort of person but they warned me to stop doing these charitable acts, but they didn't say no when I gave a hundred quid to their benevolent fund, or whatever it's called. It was different after that, with "Yes, Mr Shirley" and "Thank you very much, sir," but I noticed the sergeant holding one of the five-pound notes up to the light to see if it were real. They're a rotten lot,' said Howard in a disgusted sort of way.
Well, it seemed to me that Howard couldn't be trusted out on his own, so I made up my mind not to do anything that would make me sick or incapable of going out with him any more. But now the week was almost at an end, because the day after tomorrow we had to fly to New York and to really begin our holiday. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like it much, but I was in a funny position all round. When I thought of our little home in Bradcaster, I couldn't help seeing Redvers Glass there working at the living-room table and before I knew where I was I was on the rug in front of the fire with him, and that wasn't right at all. I was sort of lost. I supposed the only thing to do was to keep moving and hope that I'd get over it, for it was really only something physical. The money would all be spent or given away, and I'd even be willing to get rid of my mink if we could be sure of getting what I wanted, namely to be back where we were before, me working at the Hastings Road Supermarket and Howard on some job or other, and just the two of us, happy and only well enough off for a bottle of Cyprus sherry in the sideboard. But I couldn't stop coming back to seeing that things had changed and things always changed and you couldn't stop them, and you just had to push on and push on.