When Turgis returned again to the earth’s surface, he plunged at
once into the noise and litter of High Street, Camden Town, and then
turned up the Kentish Town Road, for he lodged in Nathaniel Street,
which lies in that conglomeration of short streets between the Kentish
Town Road and York Road. He was rather later than usual, for this
new Golspie business was having its effect even on Saturday morning,
and so he walked quickly for once. He was ready for dinner and he
knew that dinner would be ready for him. On Saturdays and Sundays,
his landlady provided dinner as well as breakfast, and, indeed, was
not averse to laying out a bit of tea, too, if that should be called
for, Turgis having been with her now for eighteen months and having
proved himself to be--by Nathaniel Street standards, which are based
on a bitter knowledge of this world--a good quiet lodger, sober, and
punctual in his payments. During the week, he had, officially, nothing
but breakfast in the house, and had to shift for himself for his other
meals, which followed a descending scale of luxury every fortnight,
beginning with the alternate week-ends when he was paid. Thus, every
other Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Turgis was well fed, and every other
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, he was comparatively half starved. At a
pinch, however, his landlady would always give him a little supper.
They were all friendly together. They had to be, for they all used
the same back room for meals. The bed-sitting-room that Turgis had
at the top of the house, so small that the iron bedstead, the yellow
washstand, the three deal drawers, the lopsided and groaning basket
chair, and the little old gas-fire, a genuine antique among gas-fires,
made it seem uncomfortably crowded with furniture and fittings, was
no place in which to feed. It did not like being sat in, resented the
sight of a cup of tea and a biscuit, and the presence of one good
plateful of roast beef, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and gravy, would
have completely finished it.
Number 9, like all the other houses in Nathaniel Street, was small
and dark, and its gloomy little hall was haunted by a mixed smell of
cabbage, camphor, and old newspapers. Turgis never noticed this smell,
but on the very rare occasions when he visited some other and less
odorous house, then he noticed the absence of it, his nose declaring at
once that it had found itself in an unfamiliar atmosphere. Now he hung
up his hat and coat and marched straight into the back room. There he
discovered his landlady, who, having finished dinner, was enjoying a
cup of tea by the fire. She was not enjoying this cup of tea, however,
in an easy leisurely fashion; she was sitting, almost tense, on the
very edge of the chair; and she had something of the air of a cavalry
general between two phases of a battle.
Mrs. Pelumpton had every right to such an air. She was a short and
very broad woman, with a mop of untidy grey hair and a withered apple
face, and it was easy to see that all her adult life had been one long
struggle, and that unless she suffered a paralytic stroke or was driven
out of her wits, she would die fighting. In her presence, progress
seemed the most absurd myth. If Mrs. Pelumpton could have been turned
into the wife of a marauding viking or one of the women following
Attila’s horde, she would have felt she had been given a well-earned
rest and would have been astonished at, perhaps horrified by, the
sudden colour and gaiety of life.
As soon as she saw Turgis she put down her cup and, as it were, jumped
into the saddle again. She placed on the table two covered plates, her
lodger’s dinner, meat and vegetables under one cover, pudding under the
other.
“I’m a bit late to-day, Mrs. Pelumpton,” said Turgis, settling down.
“Well, I said to myself you might have been or you might not, according
to whether that clock’s gone and got fast again, and it might well have
done that, the way he’s been playing about with it.”
“About quarter of an hour fast, I make it--might be twenty minutes.”
“And that,” said Mrs. Pelumpton very decisively, “is what comes of
messing about with it. ‘Leave it alone,’ I told him. ‘Clocks isn’t in
your line.’ Not that quarter of an hour’s going to hurt anybody in this
house--except Edgar, and he’s got his own watch with proper railway
time on it.” Edgar, her son, who also lived in the house, worked on the
railway down at King’s Cross. Turgis rarely saw him.
“That’s a nice bit o’ meat you’re having there, Mr. Turgis, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Pelumpton continued, after taking a noisy sip of tea and then
staring over the cup at him. “Chilled, that is. You’d have thought that
was English if I hadn’t told you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would, Mrs. Pelumpton.”
“Well, I won’t deceive you. It isn’t. It’s chilled. And it all depends
on the picking. Take what they offer, and you don’t know where you are.
You’ve got to look about a bit and pick it yourself. They know me now.”
And here Mrs. Pelumpton produced a short triumphant laugh. “They know
me all right. ‘Pick where you like, Ma,’ he always says to me. ‘Oh,
I’ll watch it,’ I tells him. ‘I’ll watch it.’ And I do.”
“That’s the style. It’s a very nice dinner, Mrs. Pelumpton.”
A certain shuffling noise indicated that the master of the house,
the messer-about with clocks, Mr. Pelumpton, was now approaching.
Mr. Pelumpton moved very slowly, partly because he suffered from
rheumatism, and partly because he was a man of great dignity. To look
at him, at his slack and dingy figure, at his watery eyes, bottle nose,
ragged and drooping grey moustache, to mark his leisurely air, was to
imagine at once that Mr. Pelumpton was one of those men who do not work
themselves but merely see that their wives and children work for them.
But this was not the truth. Mr. Pelumpton did work, as his talk would
quickly inform you. He was a dealer. He had no shop of his own, but he
had some vague connection with a shop, where an astonishing variety of
second, third, or fourth hand goods were sold, owned by a friend of
his. He passed his time in a dusty underworld in which battered chests
of drawers and broken gramophones changed hands and the deals were
in shillings and the commission in pence. He interviewed parties who
had for sale a cracked toilet set or an old bicycle or five mildewed
volumes of _The Stately Homes of England_. He could sometimes be found
in the humblest auction rooms, ready to bid up to half a crown for
the odds and ends. Every Friday he became a _bona-fide_ merchant by
making an appearance in Caledonian Market, where, on that grey and
windy height, he stood beside a small but very varied stock, consisting
perhaps of a Banjo Tutor, two chipped pink vases, a silk underskirt,
a large photograph of General Buller, five dirty tennis balls, a
zither with most of the strings missing, and the _Letters of Charles
Kingsley_. Dealing thus in things that were only one remove from the
dustbin, Mr. Pelumpton did not contrive to make much money, and indeed
he had been dependent for some time on Mrs. Pelumpton and Edgar; but,
on the other hand, you could not say he did not work. He was in the
second-hand trade, in the buying and selling line, a legitimate dealer,
and took himself and his mysterious business with enormous seriousness.
If he was not doing very well, that was because trade was so bad. Mr.
Pelumpton had all the deliberation and dignity of an antique merchant
prince. He smoked a foul little pipe, liked a glass of beer, was a
great reader of newspapers, and always talked in a very solemn and
confidential manner. Like many dealers and Caledonian Market men, who
have drooping moustaches, very few teeth, and a confidential manner, he
softened all the sibilants, putting an “h” behind every “s.” There is
no doubt that a dealer who can only say “Yes” is not in such a strong
position as the dealer who can draw it out into a mysterious “Yersh.”
Mr. Pelumpton was essentially a “Yersh” man.
He now advanced very slowly into the room, carefully seated himself by
the fire, took out his evil little pipe, looked at Turgis in a watery
fashion, nodded solemnly, put back his pipe, and waited for somebody to
ask him something.
“Well, did you catch him in?” his wife inquired. Mr. Pelumpton was
always having to slip round the corner to catch somebody in, even if he
had only just finished his own dinner.
“Out till five,” replied Mr. Pelumpton. “And a shaushy ansher for me
trouble.”
“Who’s bin giving you a saucy answer?”
“Hish mishish,” said Mr. Pelumpton, “if it ish hish mishish. ‘Can’t
expect to find ’im in on Shaturday arfternoon,’ she shaysh to me.
‘You’ll excuse me, mishish,’ I told her, ‘but in my bishnish, you’ve
got to work Shaturday arfternoon shame ash any other arfternoon.
Yersh,’ I told her, ‘an’ Shunday arfternoon too, if you’re not
careful.’ Jusht telling her politely, shee? All right, what doesh she
shay to that? She shaysh, ‘Well, we’re diff’rent ’ere, shee?’ and then
shlamsh the door in me faysh.”
“The cheeky monkey!” cried Mrs. Pelumpton indignantly. “I’d slam it in
_her_ face if I’d anything to do with her. It’s downright ignorance,
that’s what it is. There’s people round here has no more idea ’ow to
behave than a--a--a parrot.”
“Ar, well,” Mr. Pelumpton continued, philosophically, “we’ve got a lot
to put with in our bishnish. And you can take that from me, Mishter
Turgish. But if the shtuff’sh there, we don’t mind. All in the day’sh
work, shee?”
“After something good, Mr. Pelumpton?” Turgis inquired.
“That’sh right. A lovely piesh he’sh got to shell--a shideboard--oh,
a lovely piesh, it ish--only wantsh a bit of polishing and it’sh good
enough for anybody, that piesh ish, fit for a palash. I can’t ’andle it
myshelf, not ash trade ish now, but I know who can. It’sh a commission
job.”
“That’s the idea,” said Turgis, with vague approval. He was a youth who
liked to agree with his company, not because he felt kindly disposed
towards other people, but simply because it was less trouble to agree
and applaud. He really thought Mr. Pelumpton a ridiculous old bore.
“Now that’s one thing I’ve always wanted,” cried Mrs. Pelumpton. “A
sideboard, a proper nice sideboard, cupboards and all, and room for
everything. Mahogany, I’d like.”
“Ah, that’sh what a lot o’ people would like. They’re fetching good
money them thingsh are. Show me a good shideboard, a sholid piesh--not
sho much of your shtuff about it, Mishter Turgish----”
“What’s his stuff, for Heaven’s sake?” Mrs. Pelumpton demanded. “He
hasn’t got any stuff, have you, Mr. Turgis? What you talking about,
Dad?”
Mr. Pelumpton took out his pipe for this, and looked very reproachfully
at his wife. “What am I talking about? I’m talking about what I know,
that’sh what I’m talking about. ’Ow many pieshesh of furnisher have
been through my handsh? Thoushandsh. All right then. Don’t I know the
trade? Ho, no! Ho, no! I don’t know the trade.” Then he pointed his
pipe at Turgis, who was very busy with his treacle pudding, and then
said very slowly, very solemnly: “Veneersh. You know what them are.
Well, that’sh hish shtuff. Am I right, Mishter Turgish?”
“That’s right,” said Turgis. “That’s what we sell at our place, Mrs.
Pelumpton. Veneers for furniture, and inlays, and all that. ’S’matter
of fact, I don’t have anything to do with ’em personally, ’cos it isn’t
my particular job, but that’s what we sell all right.”
“Well, I never did!” Mrs. Pelumpton was filled with honest wonder at
a world in which so many different things were bought and sold. “And
I never knew that. Thought you was in an office, down in the City,
y’know--a clurk.”
“Sho he ish,” her husband assured her, “but that’sh what hish firm
shellsh. He told me long shinsh, didn’t you, Mishter Turgish. Well, ash
I wash shaying, show me a good shideboard, a sholid piesh, and I’ll get
you what you like for it--in reashon, in reashon, y’know. Trade may be
bad. Trade _ish_ bad. But for shome thingsh you ’ave a shteady demand,
that’sh what you ’ave--a shteady demand. Where we’re feeling it in our
bishnish ish in the shmall thingsh----”
Mr. Pelumpton was now settling down to a good long monologue, but he
reckoned without his audience, both of whom knew these monologues too
well. His wife, seeing that Turgis had finished, pounced upon his used
plates and bore them off, with a bustle and clatter that brought a
frown to her husband’s face. He now tried to buttonhole Turgis, who was
lighting a cigarette. “Now you take me, Mishter Turgish,” he began.
But Turgis refused to take him; he had taken him too often before; and
now he promptly escaped upstairs, to his own room. It is difficult for
a room to be both stuffy and cold, but this room contrived it somehow,
and offered you the choice, if you chose to interfere with it, of being
still stuffier or still colder. Turgis, who preferred stuffiness to
cold, lit the gas-fire, that tiny antique, which so deeply resented
being called into service again that it exploded with an indignant
bang and then wheezily complained every other second. After the last
breath of raw November had been driven out of the room, Turgis took off
his collar and his shoes and stretched himself out on the bed. First,
he read all the advertisements in his newspaper, which specialised
on Saturdays in the mail-order business. There was a whole page of
these advertisements, offering everything from Orientally perfumed
cigarettes to electric belts for rheumatism, and Turgis carefully read
them all. In public he pretended to be very knowing and cynical about
advertisements, but in private he was still their willing victim, and
nearly every shilling he spent, whether on clothes, drink, tobacco,
or amusement, was conjured out of his pocket by the richest and most
artful advertising managers. Perhaps that is why his suits bagged so
soon, his shoes soaked up the rain, his cigarettes shredded and split,
and his amusements failed to amuse.
When he had done with the newspaper, he took from the mantelpiece
(and he could do this without getting up from the bed) the latest
issue of a twopenny periodical that was devoted to the films, though
more especially to the film actors with the longest eyelashes and the
actresses with the largest eyes. He spent the next half-hour staring
at the photographs in this paper and reading its scrappy paragraphs,
not with any particular enthusiasm. Turgis was not really a film
enthusiast. He knew nothing about camera angles and “cutting” and all
the intricacies of crowd work, and never in his life had he seriously
compared one film with another. He could laugh at the comic men with
the rest, but he did not fully appreciate the clowning on the screen,
simply because he had not a very strong sense of humour. No, what drew
him to the films was the fact that he and they had a common enthusiasm,
they had both a passionate interest in sex. In those dim sensuous
palaces, filled with throbbing music and shifting coloured lights,
Turgis the lover entered his dream kingdom. You could say that the
money he paid at their doors was silver tribute to Aphrodite, to whose
worship the Phœnicians of the Californian coast have built more temples
than ever the old Phœnicians of Cyprus did; and for a few moments,
as he sat in the steep darkened galleries, Turgis would be shaken and
then intoxicated by the golden presence of the goddess as she flashed
through with her train, Eros and the Hours and the Graces, though of
all that retinue only two remained with him, to see him home, Pothos
and Himeros, shapes of longing and yearning.
The paper slipped from his fingers. His eyes closed; his jaw dropped
a little; and his head turned on the pillow, so that the light of
the gas-fire, now coming to life in the dwindling daylight, for the
window was no brighter than a slate, played faintly but rosily on his
features, the pleasant width of the brow, the nose that had missed
masterfulness, the round chin that fell away, and as his breathing grew
more regular and he slipped into unconsciousness, that light brought
something at once grotesque and sad, the red gleam and deep shadow of
some Gothic tragedy, into the little room. And for an hour or so Turgis
slept, while Saturday went rattling and roaring on, gathering momentum,
through the dark little abysses of brick and smoke outside, the streets
of London.