Читать книгу England, Their England - A. G. Macdonell - Страница 8

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Next day Donald started to collect material for his book, and he decided to make a beginning with a study of Mr. Hodge and his circle of friends. It was comparatively easy to find them every day, for Donald soon discovered that there was a definite tendency among them to rendezvous at one or other of the many taverns of Fleet Street between the hours of 11.30 A.M. and 1.30 P.M., and he found that with a little perseverance he could usually run them to earth. Once he had done so, he had only to perch himself unobtrusively upon a high stool on the outskirts of the group, and he could listen as long as he liked to the conversation of a brilliant circle of Englishmen. But the oftener he sat upon his high stool, drinking the small tankards of beer which were lavishly thrust upon him, and occasionally standing a round of drinks himself, the less he discovered about the genius of the English race.

Sometimes he tried, very timidly, to turn the conversation to subjects which would afford an opportunity for these men to illumine themselves and their race, but each time the result was a failure. It was not that they consciously dried up or avoided the mild traps which Donald baited for them. It was rather that one or other of them was absolutely certain to say something flippant about any subject within fifteen seconds of its being introduced, and the moment one became flippant they all became flippant, and the conversation fell into a chaos of laughter.

There was only one occasion on which Donald met a man who was not only prepared, but was eager, to talk seriously, and it cannot be said that Donald learnt from him anything that helped to clear up the fog in which he was groping.

It happened that one morning Donald entered the Dragon hostelry in Fleet Street at about a quarter to 12 and found one of Mr. Hodge's group leaning moodily against the counter. He was a man of about thirty-five, a thick-set man of medium height, with a red face and red hands and an irresistible combination of vitality and impertinence. Donald had met him once or twice but had hardly ever spoken to him. The man recognized him, however, in a gloomy sort of way, and said, "Have a drink. Flaming fish! but this is a stinking country."

"A half-pint of bitter," said Donald nervously. He was nervous partly because he thought the man looked positively ferocious, and partly because, for the first time since he had acquired the Fleet Street habit, Donald saw that he would have to bear a responsible part in the conversation.

"A half-pint of bitter," said the man across the counter to no one in particular.

"A half-pint of bitter," he repeated in a louder voice, and then, in a sudden whirl of rage, he seized an enormously thick walking-stick, or rather cudgel, which leant against the counter beside him, and struck the counter a terrific blow which set the glasses jumping and rattling, and shouted, "Stinking fish! Is there no one here to serve a gentleman?"

A man in a black coat and striped trousers came up and said severely:

"You can't do that here, sir."

"Can't I, by God!" was the spirited reply of the red-faced man, and he struck the counter another resounding blow. The managerial-looking person smiled a forced and sickly smile, and faded away.

"Scum!" said the red-faced man. "Filthy, lousy, herring-gutted, spavin-bellied scum!"

Donald was surprised.

"What on earth is spavin-bellied?" he enquired.

"A disease of horses, common in all fog-ridden, disgusting, beer-drinking countries."

"But I've never heard of it," protested Donald.

"Do you know anything about horses?" demanded the man.

"I've done a good deal of farming——" began Donald, but the other interrupted him.

"Then in God's name let's talk about something else. Do you prefer crocodile or suede for fog-horn containers?"

"For what?" faltered Donald.

"For fog-horn containers. I've just lost mine beside the Mitcham Gasworks, and I've put an advertisement in the Dog-Lover's World and also in the Battersea and East Putney Philatelist to say that the Finder may keep it." He gazed at Donald with tragic intensity.

Donald's brain began to go round in circles.

"But surely that was a waste of money," he began. "I mean, was it necessary to advertise, and why in a philatelic newspaper—I mean——"

The red-faced man looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

"You think the Amalgamated Assistant-Laundrywomen's Gazetteer and Boomer would have been a more attractive medium?" he asked lugubriously. Then he suddenly brightened, and went on before Donald could collect himself sufficiently to say anything: "You are going to dispute my implied suggestion that any medium can be attractive. I think you're perfectly right. I hate all spiritualists myself." He guffawed loudly and shouted: "Beer! Steward, porter, miss, two gallon mugs of your perfectly beastly beer. What! no gallon mugs? God! What a country. All right. Two pints." He turned again to Donald. "I can't think why any of us live in this foul land. You can't get decent beer. You can't get decent food. You can't buy soft roes on toast after 8.15 P.M. or hard roes on biscuits between midday and 3.15. You can buy grated carrots after 11 but not mashed carrots, or sliced carrots or pinched carrots——"

"What is a pinched carrot?" asked Donald faintly.

"A carrot that has been pinched, of course," was the answer, in a tone of dignified reproof. "You can buy orange marmalade at dog-fanciers' shops, but not lemon marmalade. You can get synthetic Burgundy out of penny-in-the-slot machines in all tunnels under the Thames, but not synthetic Bordeaux. In short, England is a country of madmen, and only madmen live in England."

There was a pause in the conversation while the man lowered his tankard of beer down his throat, and ordered two more, and waved aside Donald's proffered money.

"This is on me," he said. "It is the anniversary of Roland's death in the Valley of Roncesvalles. The world came to an end on that day. It has never really existed since. We must drink to my fellow-countryman who saved Europe in the Pyrenees a thousand years ago, just as that other fellow-countryman of mine saved Europe in the marshes of St. Gond on the River Marne in 1914."

"Do you mean Sir John French?" asked Donald.

The red-faced man became apoplectic. He swelled like a frog and his eyes appeared to become bloodshot. A queer, hoarse croaking issued from his lips. At last he managed to say, "I mean Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France," and he stood to attention.

"I beg your pardon most profoundly," said Donald in great distress. "I had no idea—I mean your English is so perfect—is it really possible that you are a Frenchman?"

"My family name is Hougins," replied the man with superb dignity. "And there were Hougins in the Channel Islands a good long time before Duke Robert of Normandy cast his eyes upon the tanner's daughter."

"No wonder that you are proud of your descent," twittered Donald, anxious to make up for his unfortunate error, "and of your fellow-countrymen too."

"Yes," replied Monsieur Hougins, "when I consider how the French Army, the French nation, alone, single-handed, met the whole power of Germany, resisted it, drove it back, and finally destroyed it, I think I am entitled to be a little proud."

"Single-handed?" said Donald, puzzled.

"Practically single-handed," replied Monsieur Hougins negligently. "There were some English troops on our left wing, I remember, and a Portuguese division somewhere in the centre, but I can't recall any others. Were there some Belgians?" He wrinkled his brow.

Donald began to feel angry.

"What about the British Navy?" he demanded.

"Ah yes, ships, to be sure," said M. Hougins, as if he were talking about toys to a child. "There were ships. They fought a battle too, so far as I can recollect the facts."

Donald's warm retort was fortunately never uttered, as Mr. Hodge and a bevy of talented youth came pouring at that moment through the swing-doors of the bar. Half an hour later Donald found the opportunity to ask Mr. Hodge about the singular Frenchman. Mr. Hodge laughed.

"Frenchman?" he said. "He's no more French than I am. That's only Tommy's lunacy."

"But he said his family name was Hougins."

"So it is, in a sense. It's Huggins. Tommy Huggins, and he comes from Bolton. His great-grandfather was Mayor of Bolton about a hundred years ago."

"But he sneered at the British Army," protested Donald.

Mr. Hodge laughed again.

"That's a favourite pose of his," he said. "He went to the War as an infantry Tommy and performed prodigies of valour."

Donald went home thoughtfully. The problem which Mr. Davies had set him to answer was deeper and darker than he had ever imagined. Indeed, if Mr. Huggins was a representative Englishman, the problem was utterly insoluble. After some hours of concentrated thinking, Donald came to the conclusion that he must dismiss the pseudo-Channel Islander, and everybody like him, from his considerations. Mr. Huggins must be a freak. If he isn't a freak, thought Donald, if all Englishmen are like that, I shall go mad. So, greatly relieved, he wrote down Mr. Huggins as a freak and made up his mind to see as little as possible of him in the future. But if Donald had finished with Mr. Huggins, Mr. Huggins had by no means finished with him.

Donald was due at Godalming station at midday on Saturday, to be motored thence to Ormerode Towers, and at a little after 10 o'clock that morning he was standing in his room in Royal Avenue in a state of some perplexity. It was the packing that was the trouble, for he did not know what he was likely to need in addition to his evening clothes. While he was still puzzling over each individual item of his scanty wardrobe, he heard a loud shouting in the street, and, putting his head out of the window, saw that the great-grandson of the Mayor of Bolton, and descendant, perhaps, of a long line of Channel Islanders, was standing below.

"Hell's eggs!" cried Mr. Huggins as he came up the stairs, "but this is a flamingly lucky chance. I was roaring down the King's Road just now, pushing buses aside and stamping great holes in the pavement, when I saw a shop which advertised Corsican wine. Look!" he shouted, pushing his way past Donald into the bed-sitting-room and producing a bottle of wine from each side pocket of a disreputable overcoat, "Fleur de Maquis, by the bones of the Ramolinos. What are you hanging about for? Jump to it, lad, jump to it."

"Jump to what?" asked Donald. He found it difficult sometimes to follow Mr. Huggins' conversational methods.

"Corkscrew, boy; corkscrew and glasses."

"But we can't drink at 10 o'clock in the morning," Donald protested feebly.

Mr. Huggins stared at him in amazement.

"Got a touch of the sun," he observed in a meditative way. "Very rare thing in London in early May. Must write to the Lancet about that," and he pulled out a huge note-book and made an entry. Then he went back to the door and roared down the stairs, "Hi! Mother Hubbard! Gloria Swanson! Garbo! Bring two corkscrews and a glass. Or two glasses and a corkscrew. Whichever you like."

Gwladys, all of a flutter at the powerful masculine voice, came pattering upstairs with a tray, while the doors of the other bed-sitting-rooms opened an inch or two, and nervous spinsters put out their heads to see if anyone was offering murder, arson, or rape.

Mr. Huggins poured out two tumblers of Fleur de Maquis and drank one at a single gulp and refilled it.

"By the sun of Austerlitz!" he cried, "but that is the stuff. Hallo! What are you doing here?" and he gazed round at the confusion of haberdashery. Donald explained his difficulty, and Mr. Huggins immediately drank off his second tumbler and became portentously serious.

"It's a very, very lucky thing for you," he said, "that you've got me here to advise you. I am probably the most expert adviser on week-end procedure between Staines and Burton-on-Trent; or, if you look at it from another angle—which you are fully entitled to do if you want to—" he added in a burst of generosity, "between the Vale of White Horse and Walton-on-the-Naze. People tell you one thing and people tell you another. But I'll tell you right. Now take Bill Hodge. He goes to week-end parties in his football shirt and white flannel trousers and pumps, and sends out the footman on Sunday morning to knock up the local chemist for a razor. Not right, Cameron, not right."

Mr. Huggins shook his head lugubriously and refilled his tumbler, and then uncorked the second bottle of Fleur de Maquis.

"Then there's Guy Mitcham—you know Guy? Ah! well, you haven't missed much—he takes a pale-blue dinner-jacket and diamond studs for the evening, and Jodhpurs for the daytime though he's never been on a horse in his life. And Bobby Southcott, the boy novelist, takes a cold ham in case he gets hungry between meals, and a book on birth control."

Mr. Huggins' queer sense of humour was beginning to lose command of itself under the mellowing influence of the warm South, and he went on in a kind of sing-song chant: "Verona Mimms, lady novelist, only takes a cold ham. She's younger than Bobby, but she's more experienced. Wilhelmina Poddleton, lady novelist, takes a lock of Freud's hair and a sea-green velvet gown. Ernestine Bunn, lady novelist, takes Young Woodleys and goes home sad on Mondays. Ravenna Rust, lady novelist—I say, Cameron, what on earth are you talking about?" he exclaimed with some warmth and slipped suddenly to the floor, where he remained as if nothing had happened.

"I hope you don't mind my interrupting you," he went on, "but I am in rather a hurry as I have an important engagement. I have to sit up to-night with a sick friend."

"But don't you think—I mean, don't let me keep you—if your friend is unwell." Donald was distressed at the thought that he might be trading upon Mr. Huggins' good nature.

"Oh, he's all right now," responded that gentleman airily. "He won't be sick until he knows that I'm going to sit up with him to-night. To return. Pass me the Fleur. Thank you." He settled himself comfortably against a table leg. "Cameron, be guided by me. The crux of the week-end is the servant. Do you follow me?"

"N-no. Not quite."

"I should have thought I had made my explanation fool-proof," said Mr. Huggins severely, "but apparently I haven't. Listen carefully. Get at the rich man's servant before he gets at you. Treat 'em rough and they're lovely. Treat 'em humble and they're hell. Attack, attack, attack, as my famous fellow-countryman observed at the something or other. You can fool all the lackeys all the time. That's what Foch told Aimée Semple McPherson at the Oddfellows Ball. Good-night, old chap. Thank me another time," and Mr. Huggins fell asleep with his head upon one of Donald's three clean dress-shirts.

"But you haven't told me what clothes to take," cried Donald in despair, shaking him vigorously. Mr. Huggins woke up and struggled uncertainly to his feet.

"I will now recite," he remarked a little thickly, "that soul-stirring, tear-provoking epic, 'The Dog that took the Serum to Alaska.' Hullo! what's all this? My dear chap! Why didn't you ask me before? Clothes! that's the problem. And I'll give you the solution. Take all the clothes you've got. The more the better. Take one suitcase; the butler sneers, the footmen giggle, the under house-parlourmaids have hysterics. Take fifty and they'll treat you like the Duke of Westminster."

"But I've only got two small suitcases," objected Donald plaintively. "I brought all the rest of my things from Scotland in a trunk and a valise. Besides, some of my things are so old that I couldn't possibly take them."

Mr. Huggins was seized with demoniac energy. He drained off Donald's glass. He routed out the two small suitcases. He rushed out of the house and roared at a passing taxi so that the windows shook, and rushed back in ten minutes with twelve second-hand suitcases that he had bought at a shop in Sloane Square, and a bundle of enormous labels and a pot of red paint, and started to pack all Donald's belongings into them. Donald's protests were overridden tempestuously. For instance, when he pleaded almost tearfully, "I can't take a pair of grey flannels with a hole in the knee," the invincible Mr. Huggins whipped out a pair of scissors and instantly converted the trousers into shorts, exclaiming as he did so, "There you are! Shorts for otter-hunting. Put them in the otter-hunting suitcase."

An old football outfit was packed with the description, "Beagling kit." A battered bowler hat, two frayed dressing-gowns, a broken umbrella, odd shoes, books, newspapers, bits of rope, ornaments dearly beloved by Gwladys and her mother, photographs and pictures, were all crammed into another suitcase and labelled by Mr. Huggins "Amateur Theatricals," and one entire suitcase was filled with old newspapers and solemnly corded up and sealed and labelled, in huge scarlet letters, "Despatches; Secret." It was useless for Donald to protest, for Mr. Huggins paid no attention to him whatsoever. Nor was it possible to escape from this appalling accumulation of luggage by depositing it in the cloakroom at the station, for Mr. Huggins insisted upon accompanying him to the station himself, and caused poor Donald agonies of embarrassment and confusion by engaging two porters to carry the Secret Despatches, in addition to two others for the remaining packages, and by addressing Donald deferentially but loudly, all the time as "Excellency." Nor were Donald's apprehensions allayed by the last mysterious whispered words of his self-appointed and unwanted ally as the train steamed out, "I'll fix that bloody butler. Trust me."