III

The Turgis who came out of 9, Nathaniel Street, later that Saturday

afternoon, was quite different from the youth we have already met. He

was washed, brushed, conscientiously shaved, and he moved briskly. This

was for him the best time of all the week. Saturday sang in his heart.

If the Great Something ever happened, it would happen on Saturday.

The trams, buses, shops, bars, theatres, and picture palaces, they

all gleamed and glittered through the rich murk to-day for him. Even

now, Adventure--in high heels and silk stockings--might be moving his

way. He was making for the West End, for on Saturdays, especially the

alternate Saturdays when he received his pay, he despised Camden Town

and Islington and Finsbury Park, those little centres that broke the

desert of North London with oases of flashing lights and places of

entertainment. These were good enough in their way, but if you had a

few shillings to spend, the West was a great deal better, offering you

the real thing in giant teashops and picture theatres. For this was

his usual Saturday night programme, if he had the money: first, tea

at one of the big teashops, which were always crowded with girls and

always offered a chance of a pick-up; then a visit to one of the great

West End cinemas, in which, once inside, he could spin out the whole

evening, perhaps on the edge of adventure all the time. And this was

his programme for this night, too, though, of course, he was always

ready to modify it if anything happened in the teashop, if he found the

right sort of girl there and she wanted to do something else.

At the very time he was setting out, hundreds and hundreds of girls,

girls with little powdered snub noses, wet crimson mouths, shrill

voices, and gleaming calves, were also setting out--nearly all of them,

unfortunately, in pairs--to carry out the very same programme. Turgis

knew this, or perhaps only a hunter’s instinct led him to where the

game were thickest; but he did not visualise them, luckily for him,

for the tantalising image would have driven him nearly to madness. But

there they were, tripping down innumerable dark steps, chirping and

laughing together in buses and trams without end, and making for the

same small area, the very same buildings, perhaps to jostle him as

they passed. It would have been easier for Turgis, as he knew only too

well, if he too had had a companion, to match all these pairs of girls,

but he had only a few acquaintances, no friends, and, in any event, he

preferred to hunt in solitude, to thread his way through the brilliant

jungle alone with his hunger and his dream.

A bus took him to the West End, where, among the crazy coloured

fountains of illumination, shattering the blue dusk with green and

crimson fire, he found the café of his choice, a teashop that had gone

mad and turned Babylonian, a white palace with ten thousand lights. It

towered above the older buildings like a citadel, which indeed it was,

the outpost of a new age, perhaps a new civilisation, perhaps a new

barbarism; and behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel,

just as behind the careless profusion of luxury were millions of pence,

balanced to the last halfpenny. Somewhere in the background, hidden

away, behind the ten thousand lights and acres of white napery and

bewildering glittering rows of teapots, behind the thousand waitresses

and cashbox girls and black-coated floor managers and temperamental

long-haired violinists, behind the mounds of shimmering bonbons and

multi-coloured Viennese pastries, the cauldrons of stewed steak, the

vanloads of harlequin ices, were a few men who went to work juggling

with fractions of a farthing, who knew how many units of electricity

it took to finish a steak-and-kidney pudding and how many minutes and

seconds a waitress (five feet four in height and in average health)

would need to carry a tray of given weight from the kitchen lift to the

table in the far corner. In short, there was a warm, sensuous, vulgar

life flowering in the upper stories, and cold science working in the

basement. Such was the gigantic teashop into which Turgis marched, in

search not of mere refreshment but of all the enchantment of unfamiliar

luxury. Perhaps he knew in his heart that men have conquered half the

known world, looted whole kingdoms, and never arrived at such luxury.

The place was built for him.

It was built for a great many other people too, and, as usual, they

were all there. It steamed with humanity. The marble entrance hall,

piled dizzily with bonbons and cakes, was as crowded and bustling as

a railway station. The gloom and grime of the streets, the raw air,

all November, were at once left behind, forgotten: the atmosphere

inside was golden, tropical, belonging to some high midsummer of

confectionery. Disdaining the lifts, Turgis, once more excited by the

sight, sound, and smell of it all, climbed the wide staircase until

he reached his favourite floor, where an orchestra, led by a young

Jewish violinist with wandering lustrous eyes and a passion for tremolo

effects, acted as a magnet to a thousand girls. The door was swung open

for him by a page; there burst, like a sugary bomb, the clatter of

cups, the shrill chatter of white-and-vermilion girls, and, cleaving

the golden, scented air, the sensuous clamour of the strings; and, as

he stood hesitating a moment, half dazed, there came, bowing, a sleek

grave man, older than he was and far more distinguished than he could

ever hope to be, who murmured deferentially: “For one, sir? This way,

please.” Shyly, yet proudly, Turgis followed him.

That was the snag really, though. This place was so crowded that

you had to take the seat they offered you; there was no picking and

choosing your company at the table. And, as usual, Turgis was not

lucky. The vacant seat he was shown, and which he dare not refuse,

was at a table already occupied by three people, and not one of

them remotely resembled a nice-looking girl. There were two stout

middle-aged women, voluble, perspiring, and happy over cream buns,

and a middle-aged man, who no doubt had been of no great size even

before this expedition started, but was now very small and huddled,

and gave the impression that if the party stayed there much longer,

he would shrink to nothing but spectacles, a nose, a collar, and a

pair of boots. For the first few minutes, Turgis was so disappointed

that he was quite angry with these people, hated them. And of course

it was impossible to get hold of a waitress. After five minutes or so

of glaring and waiting, he began to wish he had gone somewhere else.

There was a pretty girl at the next table, but she was obviously with

her young man, and so fond of him that every now and then she clutched

his arm and held it tight, just as if the young man might be thinking

of running away. At another table, not far away, were three girls

together, two of whom looked very interesting, with saucy eyes and wide

smiling mouths, but they were too busy whispering and giggling to take

any notice of him. So Turgis suddenly stopped being a bright youth,

shooting amorous glances, and became a stern youth who wanted some tea,

who had gone there for no other purpose than to obtain some tea, who

was surprised and indignant because no tea was forthcoming.

“And mindjew,” cried one of the middle-aged women to the other, “I

don’t bear malice ’cos it isn’t in my nature, as you’ll be the first to

agree, my dear. But when she let fly with that, I thought to meself,

‘All right, my lady, now this time you’ve gone a bit _too_ far. It’s my

turn.’ But mindjew, even then I didn’t say what I _could_ have said.

Not one word about Gravesend crossed my lips to her, though it was

there on the tip of my tongue.”

Turgis looked at her with disgust. Silly old geezer!

At last the waitress came. She was a girl with a nose so long and so

thickly powdered that a great deal of it looked as if it did not belong

to her, and she was tired, exasperated, and ready at any moment to be

snappy. She took the order--and it was for plaice and chips, tea, bread

and butter, and cakes: the great tea of the whole fortnight--without

any enthusiasm, but she returned in time to prevent Turgis from losing

any more temper. For the next twenty minutes, happily engaged in

grappling with this feast, he forgot all about girls, and when the

food was done and he was lingering over his third cup of tea and a

cigarette, though no possible girls came within sight, he felt dreamily

content. His mind swayed vaguely to the tune the orchestra was playing.

Adventure would come; and for the moment he was at ease, lingering on

its threshold.

From this tropical plateau of tea and cakes, he descended into the

street, where the harsh night air suddenly smote him. The pavements

were all eyes and thick jostling bodies; at every corner, the newspaper

sellers cried out their football editions in wailing voices of the

doomed; cars went grinding and snarling and roaring past; and the

illuminated signs glittered and rocketed beneath the forgotten faded

stars. He arrived at his second destination, the Sovereign Picture

Theatre, which towered at the corner like a vast spangled wedding-cake

in stone. It might have been a twin of that great teashop he had just

left; and indeed it was; another frontier outpost of the new age.

Two Jews, born in Poland but now American citizens, had talked over

cigars and coffee on the loggia of a crazy Spanish-Italian-American

villa, within sight of the Pacific, and out of that talk (a very

quiet talk, for one of the two men was in considerable pain and knew

that he was dying inch by inch) there had sprouted this monster,

together with other monsters that had suddenly appeared in New York,

Paris, and Berlin. Across ten thousand miles, those two men had seen

the one-and-sixpence in Turgis’s pocket, and, with a swift gesture,

resolving itself magically into steel and concrete and carpets and

velvet-covered seats and pay-boxes, had set it in motion and diverted

it to themselves.

He waited now to pay his one-and-sixpence, standing in the queue at

the balcony entrance. It was only a little after six and the Saturday

night rush had hardly begun, but soon there were at least a hundred

of them standing there. Near Turgis, on either side, the sexes were

neatly paired off. There were one or two middle-aged women but no

unaccompanied girl in sight in the whole queue. The evening was not

beginning too well.

When at last they were admitted, they first walked through an enormous

entrance hall, richly tricked out in chocolate and gold, illuminated

by a huge central candelabra, a vast bunch of russet gold globes.

Footmen in chocolate and gold waved them towards the two great marble

balustrades, the wide staircases lit with more russet gold globes, the

prodigiously thick and opulent chocolate carpets, into which their feet

sank as if they were the feet of archdukes and duchesses. Up they went,

passing a chocolate and gold platoon or two and a portrait gallery of

film stars, whose eyelashes seemed to stand out from the walls like

stout black wires, until they reached a door that led them to the dim

summit of the balcony, which fell dizzily away in a scree of little

heads. It was an interval between pictures. Several searchlights were

focussed on an organ keyboard that looked like a tiny gilded box, far

below, and the organ itself was shaking out cascades of treacly sound,

so that the whole place trembled with sugary ecstasies. But while they

waited in the gangway, the lights faded out, the gilded box dimmed and

sank, the curtains parted to reveal the screen again, and an enormous

voice, as inhuman as that of a genie, announced that it would bring the

world’s news not only to their eyes but to their ears.

“One? This way, sir,” and the attendant went down, flashing his light.

This was always an exciting moment for Turgis. He might find himself

next to some wonderful girl, as lonely as he was, who would talk to

him, squeeze his hand, let him take her home, and kiss him in the

darkness of some mysterious suburb. The great adventure might begin at

the end of that pointing pencil of light. On the other hand, he might

find himself miserably wedged in between two fat middle-aged people. It

was all a gamble, with the odds heavily against the wonderful girl, as

he knew too well. But still, there was always a chance, and he never

walked down these dark steps behind the electric torch without feeling

a mounting excitement.

The light pointed along a row, and he followed it, pushing past a dozen

indignant knees. The last pair was very stubborn, and he negotiated

them without enthusiasm. He had no luck. Here, on one side of him was

the owner of the knees, an enormous woman, bulging over her seat, and

on the other was a man with a beard and a noisy pipe. And it was too

late to change his place now. Once again the miracle had not happened.

Gloomily he turned his attention to the news film, and not one single

inch or roar of it entertained him. It was followed by a comedy, all

about a lot of silly kids, and he sat there, steadily hating it. He

also hated the enormous woman, who laughed so much that great lumps of

her hit him on the shoulder. He decided, miserably, that he ought not

to have come to the Sovereign. Next time he would give the Sovereign a

miss. Stiff with fat women and men with stinking pipes, that’s what it

was--oh, cripes!--awful hole! And another Saturday night going, gone!

Then came the film of the evening, the star feature, and Turgis soon

began to take an interest in it and found himself lifted out of his

gloom. It was a talkie called “The Glad-Rag Way,” and it was all about

a beautiful girl (and she was beautiful, for she was Lulu Castellar,

one of his favourites) who went to New York to dance in cabarets and

for a time forgot all about her sweetheart, a poor young inventor who

lived in the most dismal lodgings, like Turgis, but, unlike Turgis,

also contrived to have his hair exquisitely waved at regular intervals.

This beautiful girl behaved in the most foolish way. She accepted

presents from rich men with ugly leering mouths; she went out to supper

with them and got tipsy, as well she might, for the whole atmosphere

consisted sometimes of champagne bubbles; she attended parties, very

late at night, in their flats, and though the rooms in these flats

were three hundred feet long and two hundred feet broad, the parties

themselves were undoubtedly intimate affairs, at which a girl was able

to express herself by dancing on the table and throwing off some of

her clothes. Everything this girl wore, every movement she made, only

called the attention of these leering fellows to some part of her

ravishing figure; and even when she herself had stopped making eyes and

smiling at them and undulating round them, with a champagne glass in

her hand, her charming legs still insisted on claiming their notice.

It was obvious that at any moment these rich cads would make their

old mistake, they would assume that she was not a virtuous girl and

would act accordingly, to her astonishment and indignation and shame

at being so misunderstood, so treated. Meanwhile, the young inventor

had received a letter (and you heard him tear it open) asking him to

come to New York to meet three heavy men who had just been barking at

one another about him in the previous scene. It was, as he himself

admitted, his “beeg chaince.”

His train was still roaring across the screen when Turgis, whose

interest had been thoroughly roused, heard a voice say “’Scuse me” and

saw a dim feminine shape that was obviously trying to get past.

“’S’quite all right,” he said affably, withdrawing his knees to let her

pass.

She dropped into the seat on his left, taking the place of the man with

the foul pipe, who must have crept out, towards the other gangway,

without Turgis noticing him. This girl who had just arrived was still

only a dim shape, but he felt sure she was young and pretty.

“’Scuse me,” she whispered again, “but is this the big picture?”

“Yes, it is,” he replied eagerly.

“Has it been on long?”

“No, not so long. It isn’t half through yet, I’m sure,” he told her,

trying to talk as if he were a confidential old friend. “I’ll bet the

best’s coming on.”

“Well, I hope you’re right,” she said, settling herself in the rather

narrow seat and then giving her attention to the screen.

A faint sweet whiff of scent had come his way. His senses did not wait

for any more evidence; they reported at once to his imagination, which

immediately dowered the vague dark figure beside him with all sweetness

and prettiness, not unlike that of Lulu Castellar, who was at the

moment absent from the screen, the young inventor, having arrived in

New York, being barked at by the three heavy men. Turgis took in all

that the film had to offer him, but now he was no longer lost in it;

he was living intensely in the tiny darkened space between him and the

girl. Instinctively, he edged a little her way. Their elbows touched

on the arm of the seat, and even that trifling contact sent a thrill

through him. A little later, his left leg encountered something at

once firm and soft, another leg, a beautifully rounded feminine leg,

and the two remained in contact. This, like the other, may have been

casual, but to Turgis the effect was electric. And then it chanced

that his hand, hanging loose by his side, touched another hand, which

was not withdrawn when it was touched again, this time deliberately.

The two hands now met fairly; they grasped one another, squeezed;

their fingers were intertwined; they sent and received messages in the

dark. Turgis could now regard the graceful antics of Lulu Castellar

with a benevolent detachment. The dream life of the screen was nothing

compared with the pulsating real life of those contacts in the warm

gloom, those little pressures and squeezes that were signals from that

other enchanted world. He did not try to talk to her again. That would

come later. He said nothing, hardly looked her way, afraid lest he

should break the spell.

When the film ended and a kind of soft russet dawn broke as the screen

disappeared behind the curtains, they moved away from one another, and

he did not even catch a glimpse of her face. A great many people went

out, and a great many others came in, but they were not disturbed.

Then the curtains moved again; a soft russet twilight came, only to

fade into darkness; and the programme artfully continued. But would

this other and far more exciting programme continue? His heart bounded

in the new darkness. He leaned towards her again; she did not evade

him; and hand clasped hand again, stickily perhaps now but still

exquisitely, thrillingly. Turgis had not been so happy for months.

It was not until the young inventor’s train to New York was again

roaring across the screen, after the programme had gone round its full

circle, that the girl loosened her hand and began to put on her gloves.

Turgis had been waiting for this moment for some time. When she rose,

he rose too; and she followed him past the indignant knees and up the

stairs. It was when they reached the exit steps, descending into the

real world, that he turned and spoke to her. And he knew instinctively

that they were not now the two people who had been holding hands for so

long in the darkness inside; those two intimates were ghosts now; these

two on the steps, in the light, were strangers and would have to begin

over again. When he spoke he acted upon this instinctive or intuitive

knowledge.

“How did you like the picture then?” he asked, casually.

“I didn’t think it was so very good,” she replied, just as casually.

“I don’t like that Lulu Castellar. Pulls herself about a bit too much,

she does, if you ask me. Might as well have Saint Vitus’ dance and have

done with it. Do you like her?”

“Oh--I dunno--she’s all right,” he muttered. He was recovering from a

horrible shock. This girl was not pretty at all, not even reasonably

good-looking. She was years older than he was, and she was hideous.

He had just caught sight of her face properly for the first time. Her

nose was all twisted and she had a bit of a squint. She was thirty if

she was a day. Oh, hell--what a wash-out! She was still talking, but

he could not bother listening to what she was saying. Sheer vexation

made his eyes smart. He kept pace with her down the steps, mumbling an

occasional “Yes” and “No,” but somewhere inside him was a hot little

angry man who screamed and cursed at everything.

“Well,” she said, when they reached the bottom door, “I’ve got my

sister to meet, so I’ll say good-night to you.”

“Good-night,” said Turgis miserably.

Saturday night was roaring away outside, but for him the heart had gone

out of it. He walked on mechanically, so sorry for himself, so angry

with everything, that he could have cried. His head ached from being

in that rotten balcony so long. There were queer aches in his body

too. Where could he go now? Nowhere worth going to. If you had plenty

of money, evening dress and all that, you could go to restaurants and

night clubs and dance with beautiful girls with fine bare arms. But he

wasn’t in that seam. He’d no evening dress; no money; and anyhow he

couldn’t dance. He couldn’t do anything. No, perhaps he couldn’t, but

he was as good as most of those fat rotten blighters who had the money,

who just went chucking it away while he had to count every penny. Look

at that lot in the big car, with their fur coats and diamonds and white

shirt fronts, probably going somewhere to dance and get boozed up and

God knows what before they’d finished! Swine! He was as good as them

any day. And better--he did do some work. What did they do? It was

enough to make any chap turn Bolshie. He didn’t like the other chap who

lodged at Mrs. Pelumpton’s very much; Park was a dreary, unfriendly

sort of devil, and a Sheeny at that; but he didn’t blame Park for

turning Bolshie. For two pins, he’d turn Bolshie, too. Yes, but what

was the good of that?

All this time he had been walking on and on, through a Saturday night

with the bottom dropped out of it, and now had left the spangled West

End behind him. He stopped at a coffee stall, where several fools

were arguing about nothing as usual, and had two buns and a cup of

coffee--poor stuff it was too, too sweet and nearly cold. As he turned

his back to the counter, he saw a girl, a really nice kid with a red

hat and big dark eyes, smiling in his direction, and he smiled back at

her hopefully, but then he saw her eyes move slightly and the smile

instantly vanish. She had not been looking at him before, when she

smiled; she had been looking at the chap standing next to him, who was

ordering two coffees. And what a chap to be out with, to be smiling at!

If that’s what she wanted, she could have him. One vast sneer, Turgis

moved away, and boarded the first bus he found that would take him to

Camden Town, back to Nathaniel Street with the ruins of his evening.

“’Ad a good time, boy?” said Mr. Pelumpton, now mellow with beer,

as Turgis looked into the back room. “That’sh the way. Yersh. Enjoy

yershelf while you’re young, I shay, and while you _can_ enjoy

yershelf. I did when I wash your age an’ don’t ferget it, boy.” Here

Mr. Pelumpton chuckled and then coughed. “I ’ad a good time and nobody

could shtop me ’aving one.”

“What’s this about you and your good times?” said his wife, popping out

from nowhere.

“I’m jusht telling our friend ’ere that I don’t blame him for enjoying

himshelf while he’sh young, ’cosh I did the shame thing when I wash

young.”

“Ar, you was a wicked devil you was,” said Mrs. Pelumpton, with

reluctant admiration.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” Mr. Pelumpton chuckled. “Lishen to that. Ar well,

boy, I don’t blame yer. Good old Shaturday night. I’ve ’ad ’em. I know.”

“I’ll bet you never had, you silly old fathead,” Turgis muttered under

his breath.

“Only jusht remember thish, boy. Don’d overdo it, that’sh all. Don’d

overdo it. You’re only young wunsh. Enjoy yershelf, if yer like, but

don’d overdo it.”

Turgis looked at him in disgust. “Good-night all,” he said, mournfully,

and climbed the chilling stairs to his room.

So much for Saturday.