The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 30

  But long before that Morley had waylaid Miss Amsterdam, who was first down. Miss Amsterdam was a dark-haired Hollander, possibly a descendant of the Spanish occupation. Most of her was covered with long dark hairs – but her face shone out from among the cropping like a lovely pale brown moon. She came hurrying down the stairs, and was already across the hall, between the ever-open cocktail-bar and the ever-empty lounge, almost to the door, handbag swinging like a third buttock, before Morley could stop her. But he came striding on with great actor’s strides, calling: ‘Excuse me! Miss … Miss … ?’

  ‘Call me Amsterdam.’

  ‘Oh? … Well, by all means …’

  Leading her aside into the lupined lounge, he made an unclean breast of it all. The word ‘roofless’ that he had by chance brought up to thaw Mrs Laidlaw provided his key to a happy simulation of the truth. It conjured the pitiful idea of ‘roofless’ ladies, it implied an open door and an open heart to all the travel-stained abroad in the night in this his native country. He explained the hotel furnishings as mementoes of his own travels, his tours – off-handedly stressing, as a condiment of glamour, his place in the theatre – and finally begged Miss Amsterdam to excuse this whole misunderstanding that might so easily be taken as an impertinence on his, a bachelor’s part. Would she convey this to the other ladies, would they understand?

  Miss Amsterdam’s brown round lovely face went this way and that, it made shapes of surprise and petulance and tenderness and excitement – then finally all broke up into a wild pudding of laughter. Brown pudge of cheeks crinkling, eyes gone, brows ridged, red mouth neighing never-seen underteeth – no more now than a big brown baby howling agonies of wind.

  Slapping one hand across that mouth, and the other over her stomach, she tripped her lovely legs upstairs. And Fred Morley was left waiting – for was this laughter or hysteria? – on his uneasy tenterhooks.

  From upstairs silence.

  A long silence. A silence in a lonely downstairs when the upstairs is full but behind closed doors. Creaks of silence, rafters loaded with words.

  But – ten minutes later all was over. On the landing a door burst open and laughter, like water from a thirsty tap, laved out and down the stairs. Morley heaved a long and blessed relief.

  With the laughter came the ladies – all six, all smiles. They milled in and stood in a semicricle round old Fred Morley, who rose and gravely bowed. Miss Amsterdam broke instantly.

  ‘Mr Morley – I have told all the girls all you have told me and all of us girls have agreed together you are a kind and a big sweet.’

  ‘We thank you,’ dimpled Miss Rotterdam, a round blonde cheese of a girl.

  ‘Comme c’est infiniment drôle …’ giggled Clermont-Ferrand, who, in trousers and a checked shirt, but with a wicked fringe and a golden anklet, appeared to be a woman on two levels or layers – a check-shirt cowgirl of St Germain enclosing a Nana of more liberal boulevards.

  ‘Such a dinner!’ sighed with wondering shakes of her head the practical Miss Nuremburg. This one, who held the annual title, comic to the English but a beautiful reality to the German, of Miss Sauerkraut, had in her pallid tall glory exactly the texture of that well-prepared vegetable. A dab of rotkohl would not have harmed her cheeks.

  Miss Civitavecchia took a deep breath and began, palms outstretched: ‘Ma – ma Mi – a!’ And went on, for a long time, expending in a tumult of Italian the full breath of her bosom. On the solid foundations of a Roman body she carried the small head of a snake: it was as if some Laocoon had been fused with the bust – the bust is meant – of a great – and great is intended – Roman Empress.

  So Fred Morley stood overwhelmed by this crescent before him of beauty, smiles and gratitude. He felt, and for the moment was, loved. A pleasant sensation. But, as an Englishman, he was embarrassed … and through the glow of pleasure his instinct was to escape by offering them all a drink. This last was on his lips – when Miss Great-Belt at last spoke up.

  Miss Great-Belt was plainly the most beautiful of all. Her present title embraced that royal reach of sea separating the Danish islands of Fünen and Zealand, and no dimension of her own. She was a dark red-head. Her skin white over lilac. Her eyes deep dark blue. Her whole face the face of a cat – round high cheekbones, nearly no nose, many small teeth curving in a long smile like the dream of a bite: yet all squared into the face of a girl. How could she have become so? Copenhagen is a great seaport through which have passed many strange fathers. Whatever … there she was, a brilliant cat-faced red-head, who might bite, who might smile, and who now was the only one to say a disaffected word:

  ‘How much do we owe?’ she said.

  Practical? Or battle-cry? Fred Morley’s interest quickened. Confused by the compliments of the others, which made those ladies into no more than lovely willing sisters, his well-tried nose sniffed Woman. For the first time one among those beauties stood out separate.

  ‘I had hoped,’ he instantly said, ‘that in the circumstances you would accept my hospitality?’

  Miss Great-Belt looked him calmly in the eye.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, serene and ominously composed, ‘but that is impossible. Would you please be so kind as to tell us the charge?’

  Of course, all the others had now to agree with her. All their various voices rose to insist. They chattered to each other and at Morley and he could not say a word. But he kept his eye on Miss Great-Belt. She had taken out her powder-puff and with aggravated unconcern dabbed her nose: he noticed with rising spirits that she used no mirror. It was a gesture. It meant war.

  Finally it was settled that the ladies paid Morley a reasonable sum per day. Later he telephoned the Town Hall to ask whether he might take in paying-guests. The clerks, for the town was overcrowded, were delighted. He arranged for service and food – after all, he said to himself, it would only be for two or three days. Then, much later, when all this was fixed, asked Miss Great-Belt personally whether he might escort her round the town.

  ‘No,’ was the answer. With a straight look between the eyes.

  All that was on the Thursday. The Contest was scheduled for the Saturday. For three in the afternoon at the Pier Aquadrome.

  Thus, for these girls, there was much to be done. Much final furbishing. Polishing, paring, depilating and all the other many measures of massage and exercise necessary to bring tissues of flesh and hair – Fred Morley was heard with a weary chuckle later to say – to scratch. For in the course of these operations old Morley’s eyes were opened.

  Overnight the calm of his bachelor ménage was transformed. Those girls worked themselves hard. The rooms, the corridors, the bathrooms drifted in a dry flood of cosmetic cartons: balls of cotton-wool and paper tissues mated with blonde, brunette and auburn curlings in every corner: powder flew everywhere, made solid marble shafts of the sunbeams: oil and cream made each empty surface – every table, every shelf – a viscous adventure.

  Masseuses and masseurs – brisk women and strange men – came and went: Morley, to lighten the load on his new temporary staff, and because he spent much time nervously wandering and waiting downstairs, answered the door to a ceasless stream of such visitors and the slick peremptory drivers of delivery vans. He tried as far as possible to avoid going upstairs. Things upstairs were too strange. He had found Miss Clermond-Ferrand sitting with her head in her beautiful hands and each elbow cupped in the half of a lemon. Across the landing there had whisked a blue kimono topped by a face plastered livid dry pink, with hollows it seemed where the eyes might be and naked lips huge now as a clown’s, a face terribly faceless – too late he had seen that this might be Miss Great-Belt. Then Miss Rotterdam, in a bathing-dress, had come bumping across the landing on her bottom, and vanished into the bathroom: no hands nor legs, she had explained en route – a question of stomach muscles. Miss Sauerkraut liked to lie on the balcony on half a ping-pong table, head-downwards. Miss Civitavecchia he had found carefully combing the long black beards that hung from her armpits
, a peninsular speciality: unlike Miss Amsterdam, who took no such Latin pride in the strong growth of dark hair that covered most of her – it seemed that whenever he asked for her the answer came: ‘Upstairs shaving.’

  So Morley remained downstairs.

  He sat there with a whisky and soda, half impatient, half-amused, but more simply apprehensive of what else might come. He sat listening, cocking his head anxiously at the bumps and scufflings that came from above, and answering the doorbell.

  But above all the question of Miss Great-Belt lightly, but persistently, tormented him. He was quite conscious of his middle years, and of her youth – yet after all was he not Frederick Morley, the idol of a thousand hearts? He felt affronted: a smile perhaps, a gracious gesture would have been enough to appease him. But this – what was it called – snootiness! Beyond the Fred Morley in him, the male rose in combat. Something must be done.

  Yet was this attitude of hers exactly snooty? He wondered whether it might run deeper. It lacked the proper coquetry. It was the result, perhaps, more of a solid and almost matronly composure unusual in a so strikingly beautiful young girl. She had an air of remarkable self-containedness. When she walked, it was always with a sense of destination: she knew where she was going. When she carried parcels, one felt those parcels would never be undone in a flurry but would each await its proper time. There was a feeling of unhurried process about her. Though she bore the fiercely beautiful face of a cat, she was phlegmatic – but then perhaps a cat is, despite some appearances, the most phlegmatic of animals?

  Later that evening – it had been a beautiful, if indeed a long day – he watched her leave the house arm-in-arm with Miss Sauerkraut. Their summer dresses clung coolly in the evening air to what must have been naked bodies, and the tall swanlike Sauerkraut served only to emphasize Miss Great-Belt’s warm pliabilities. The two paused outside the door, then turned one way down the westering front. Two youths in padded flannels detached themselves from the group that lounged now always discreetly over the road from his front door, and at a suitable distance followed, eyes intent, mouths whetting for the whistles that would come.

  The cavalier rose in Morley; but he quieted it. Then, pair by pair, he watched the others go. Each was followed by two, sometimes three, of the watching gentlemen. And then he was left alone in the house. At last – peace. He breathed a great sigh of peace. But to himself, and for himself. It was a false sigh. He knew that in a very few minutes the house would feel too empty. And so it did. He wandered for some time from room to room fingering things, sitting for a while here and then there. But he kept thinking of all those who had left, so young and expectant, to enjoy the evening – and he began to feel his years. That would never do. His bachelordom had taught him all about self-commiseration – and it was his custom to guard against it. He selected a hat, a curl-brimmed panama, pale but not too pale for evening wear, and left for the Club. The stolid usuality, the pot-belly of male companionship was what he needed.

  The Yacht Club was not much frequented by yachtsmen. A few faded photographs of old racing-cutters spinnakered across the cream-painted, nautically planked walls. Well-polished brass shone here and there, and to seaward one wall of the lounge was given to good white-framed observatory glass. However, it was now a place mostly of comfortable horsehair where members, the elect of the town, might come and drink.

  The warm fruity smell of gentlemen at ease greeted Fred Morley as he entered the lounge: tobacco smoke, fumes of whisky and port, horsehair and something else – starch, red flesh, woollen underpants? – ballooned out its bouquet of security across the Turkey carpet. Here at last was escape from all feminine essences! He rang the bell for a drink and, giving a wink or a nod to various members couched in the horsehair, joined a group at the further end.

  ‘Why if it isn’t Fred!’

  ‘Come in, Fred – we was just about to ’ave a round of Kiss-in-the-Ring.’

  For it had already got about that Fred Morley had some young ladies staying in his house. Young ladies of the theatrical profession, it was presumed.

  Those who now addressed Fred were a mixed bag of the livelier, wealthier citizens of the town – a couple of aldermen, a big butcher, a retired military man well-invested in beach and fairground concessions, the local brewer’s brother-in-law. They were an affable, energetic, powerful lot. As far as they were allowed, they ran the town – not too unfairly. Mixed of the professional and tradesmen’s classes, they forgot such differences in a close-masonry of well-to-do malehood; they even included some of the now not so well-to-do, on grounds that they had once been so – those only were excluded who had not yet come solidly up in the world. They were a cut above those other bantering gentlemen who in the first place had sent his six guests to Morley – yet they too always affected a jovial banter among themselves.

  For some time Fred Morley sipped his whisky and warmed his marrow at the hands of these gentlemen. Then a Mr Everett Evans came in. Everett Evans, since he was an alderman, a prosperous draper and a local bright spark, had been appointed chairman of the judicial committee that was to sit upon the Beauty Queens. Conversation had already turned upon this coming event. Morley had kept his mouth immaculately shut. But now Evans himself had come in.

  ‘Hallo, hallo – look who comes here!’ called this group of men.

  ‘What you having, Everett?’ they then said.

  ‘Large bicarbonate and soda, thank you,’ answered Mr Evans.

  ‘For Evans’ sake!’

  ‘That’s just what. For the sake of poor Evans’s poor belly, that’s what.’ He paused and looked mystified. Then: ‘Know what I’ve been drinking last twenty-four hours?’

  They had fallen into amused, expectant silence. Evans’s chin went out, he looked at each of them accusingly, then let his eyes bulge as he blurted:

  ‘Barium.’

  ‘Barium?’

  ‘No lie. Barium. Little white glassfuls of bloody barium.’

  ‘What the hell … ?’

  ‘First they strip you. Then they put you in a kind of a smock affair, apron you might call it – with bloody lacing up the back. They let you keep your socks on – but them laces! Bows all down the back, bows all over your arse come to that.’ He paused for breath, the others were looking startled.

  And then he went on: ‘That’s the start of it. So you’re left there all buttons and bows reading your old copy of Punch. Then they say come in, and in you go in a big dark black room and then you get your barium. Whole glassful. First thing down your gullet for twelve hours. Metal, it is. Tastes like ice-cream carton.’

  Another breath:

  ‘Then they do you.’

  ‘Do you?’ The gentlemen leaned forward, uneasy. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Take your photo. The old X-ray.’

  Now breaths of relief, tittering. But Evans raised his hand.

  ‘No laughing matter, I tell you. Ulcers, that’s what I’ve got. Stomach ulcers. You know when I’ve been feeling bad these last months – since Christmas like? The old sawbones says he’s worried I might have something proper dicky down below and sends me along to this hospital for the photo. Well, they found ’em all right. Ulcers. No lie.

  ‘And what’s more I got more photos to be took – taken like. And ‘ow the ’ell I’m going to look all these bathing bellies in the face I don’t know.’

  Everett Evans looked down sadly into his glass of soda. Little bubbles raced up at him, burst at him.

  ‘Day after tomorrow it is. I can’t do it. Someone’ll ’ave to stand in for me.’

  He looked up suddenly and glared round the company.

  ‘Well?’ he said vicious, ‘any offers?’

  All those men now looked at each other nervously. They simpered. Not one but secretly would have loved being up lording it over so many Beauties. But there had been too many jokes about the ‘Bellies’ already, each man saw himself up there on the platform blushing and being laughed at. So now all began rapidly to mumble excuses – jolly
excuses, for seriousness would be suspect. ‘The old woman’d never forgive me.’ ‘What – me with a grown-up daughter?’ ‘Think of my poor old heart.’

  Except for Morley. Through Morley’s mind there flashed a sudden sunlight. Here it was – on a platter! Here was the prize for Miss Great-Belt! And he – with a courteous smile – presenting it! She’d eat out of his hand! He gave a great cough.

  They all looked at him. He said nothing, coughed again, looked particularly at no one and nothing.

  It worked.

  ‘The very man! Why did no one think?’

  ‘Love’s young dream! Be like falling off a log, eh, Fred? Busman’s holiday.’

  Everett frowned at him, the only one severe: ‘Well, Fred – how about it? I can fix it—’

  ‘Mm,’ Fred said, looking out through the big marine windows. The sea was dotted here and there with little boats. Their sails took the last evening sun. He did not see them. ‘I don’t know that I’m doing anything that afternoon, nothing special …’

  ‘I’ll fix it then, Fred.’ Everett pressed his lips, fixing, together.

  ‘We–ell—,’ mused Fred.

  ‘But,’ said the one man there who knew, ‘is this right? With some of them staying there in his house?’

  ‘What!’ This was news. They all dug him in the ribs – with their eyes, their great laughing teeth. ‘Old rascal!’ ‘There’s a dark horse!’

  ‘Yes,’ Fred sighed, more than ever casual, ‘I’ve got six of them.’

  ‘Safety in numbers then,’ hissed Everett Evans, ‘that fixes it.’

  ‘But,’ said that one man again.

  ‘Now look ’ere,’ Evans exploded, ‘Fred’s had more skirt in ’is life than you’ve ’ad ’ot dinners. Think six little bellies mean a thing to Fred? You’re off your rocker! I tell you I can fix this easy.’