Читать книгу Carnival - Compton Mackenzie - Страница 5

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JENNY reached the age of two years and a few months without surprising her relatives by any prodigious feats of intelligence or wickedness. But in Hagworth Street there was not much leisure to regard the progress of babyhood. There was no time for more than physical comparisons with other children. It would be pleasant to pretend that Jenny gazed at the stars, clapping a welcome to Caesiopea and singing to the Pleiades; but, as a matter of fact, it was not very easy to regard the heavens from the kitchen window of Number Seventeen. I should be happy to say that flowers were a joy to her from the beginning, but very few flowers came to Hagworth Street—groundsel for the canary sometimes, and plantains, but not much else. The main interest of Jenny's earliest days lay rather with her mother than herself.

The visit of the three old aunts roused Mrs. Raeburn to express her imagination at first, but gradually assumed a commonplace character as the months rolled by without another visit and as Jenny, with a chair pushed before her, learned to walk rather earlier than most children, but showed no other sign of suffering or benefiting by that grim intervention. Perhaps, when she pushed her wooden guide so quickly along the landing that chair and child bumped together down every stair, her mother was inclined to think she was lucky not to be killed. Anyway, she said so to the child, who was shrieking on the mat in the hall; and in after years Jenny could remember the painful incident. Indeed, that and a backward splash into the washtub on the first occasion of wearing a frock of damson velveteen, were the only events of her earliest life that impressed themselves at all sharply or completely upon her mind. Through time's distorted haze she could also vaguely recall an adventure with treacle when, egged on by Alfie, she had explored the darkness of an inset cupboard and wedged the stolen tin of golden syrup so tightly round her silvery curls that Alfie had shouted for help. The sensation of the sticky substance trickling down her face in numerous thin streams remained with her always.

People were only realized in portions. For example, Ruby O'Connor existed as a rough, red hand, descending upon her suddenly in the midst of baby enjoyments. Alfie and Edie were two noises, acquiring with greater nearness the character of predatory birds. That is to say, in Jenny's mind the intimate approach of either always announced loss or interruption of a pleasure. Her father she first apprehended as a pair of legs forming a gigantic archway, vast as the Colossus of Rhodes must have loomed to the triremes of the Confederacy. Better than kisses or admonitions, she remembered her mother's skirt, whether as support or sanctuary. The rest of mankind she did not at all distinguish from trees walking. She was better able to conceive a smile than a face, but the realization of either largely depended upon its association with the handkerchief of "peep-bo."

Seventeen Hagworth Street was familiar, first of all, through the step of the front door, which she invariably was commanded to beware. She did not grasp its propinquity from the perambulator, for, when lifted out of the latter and told to run in to mother, it was only the step which assured her of the vast shadowy place of warmth and familiar smells in which she spent most of her existence. Of the smells, the best remembered in after-life was that of warm blankets before the kitchen fire. Her only approach to an idea of property rested in the security of a slice of bread and butter, which could be devoured slowly without wakening Alfie's cupidity. On the other hand, when jam was added, the slice must be gobbled, not from greediness, but for fear of losing it. This applied also to the incidental booty of stray chocolates or paints. Her notion of territory was confined to places where she could sit or lie at ease. The patchwork hearthrug, which provided warmth, softness, something to tug at, and, sometimes, pieces of coal to chew, was probably her earliest conception of home, and perhaps her first disillusionment was due to a volatile spark burning her cheek. Bed struck her less as a prelude to the oblivion of sleep than as a spot where she was not worried about sucking her thumb. Perhaps her first emotion of mere sensuousness was the delicious anticipation of thumb-sucking as Ruby O'Connor propelled her upstairs with the knee, a sensuousness that was only very slightly ruffled by the thought of soap and flannelette. Suspicion was born when once she was given a spoonful of jam, whose melting sweetness disclosed a clammy sediment of gray powder, so that ever afterwards the offer of a spoon meant kicks and yells, dribbles and clenched resistance. Her first deception lay in pretending to be asleep when she was actually awake, as animals counterfeit death to avoid disturbance. Whether, however, she had any idea of being what she was not, is unlikely, as she did not yet possess a notion of being. Probably "peep-bo," when first practiced by herself, helped to formulate an embryonic egotism.

The birth of light on summer mornings kindled a sense of wonder when she realized that light did not depend on human agency. Later on, dawn was connected in her mind with the suddenly jerky movement of the night-light's luminous reflection upon the ceiling, at which she would stare for hours in meditative content. This movement was always followed by the splutter and hiss of the drowning wick, and her first feeling of nocturnal terror was experienced when once these symptoms occurred and were followed, not by morning light, but by darkness. Then she shrieked, not because she feared anything in the darkness yet, but because she could not understand it.

The sensations of this Islington baby may have resembled those of a full-grown Carib or Hottentot in their simple acceptance of primary facts, in a desire for synthetic representation which distinguishes an unsophisticated audience of plays, in that odd passion for accuracy whose breach upsets a habit, whose observance confirms dogs, children and savages in their hold upon life.

As was natural for one more usually occupied with effects than causes, Jenny took delight in colored chalks and beads, and probably a vivid scarlet pélisse first awoke her dormant sense of beauty. The appearance of this vestment was more important than its purpose, but the tying on of her "ta-ta"—at first a frilled bonnet, later on a rakish Tam o' Shanter—was clapped as the herald of drowsy glidings in cool airs. She would sit in the perambulator staring solemnly at Ruby, and only opening her eyes a little wider when she was bumped down to take a crossing and up to regain the pavement. Passers-by, who leaned over to admire her, gained no more appreciation than a puzzled blink, less than was vouchsafed to the sudden shadow of a bird's flight across her vision.

Then came hot summer days and a sailor hat which enrolled her in the crew of the H.M.S. Goliath. This hat she disliked on account of the elastic, which Alfie loved to catch hold of and let go with a smacking sound that hurt her chin dreadfully; and sometimes in tugging at it, she would herself let it slip so that it caught her nose like a whip.

These slow promenades up and down the shady side of Hagworth Street were very pleasant; although the inevitable buckling of the strap began to impede her ideas of freedom, so much so in time that it became a duty to herself to wriggle as much as possible before she let Ruby fasten it round her waist. Perhaps the first real struggle for self-expression happened on a muddy day, when she discovered that, by letting her podgy hand droop over the edge of the perambulator, the palm of it could be exquisitely tickled by the slow and moist revolutions of the wheel. Ruby instantly forbade this. Jenny declined to obey the command. Ruby leaned over and slapped the offending hand. Jenny shrieked and kicked. Edie fell down and became involved with the wheels of the perambulator. Alfie knelt by a drain to pretend he was fishing. Jenny screamed louder and louder. An errand-boy looked on. An old lady rebuked the flustered Ruby. The rabbit-skin rug palpitated with angry little feet, Ruby put up the hood and tightened the strap round Jenny, making her more furious than ever. It came on to rain. It came on to blow. It was altogether a thoroughly unsatisfactory morning.

"I'll learn you, Miss Artful, when I gets you home. You will have your own way, will you? Young Alfie, come out of the gutter, you naughty boy. I'll tell your father. Get up, do, Edie."

At last they reached Number Seventeen. Summoned by yells, Mrs. Raeburn came to the door.

"Whatever have you been doing to the children, Ruby?"

"Lor', mum, they've been that naughty, I haven't known if I was on my head or my heels."

The interfering old lady came up at this moment.

"That girl of yours was beating your baby disgracefully."

"No, I never," declared Ruby.

"I shall report you to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children."

"That's right, Mother Longnose, you'll do a lot," said Ruby, whose Irish ancestry was flooding her cheeks.

"Were you whipping Jenny?" inquired Mrs. Raeburn.

"I slapped her wrist."

"What for?"

"Because she wouldn't keep her hands off of the wheel. I told her not to, but she would go on."

"I shall report you all," announced the old lady.

This irritated Mrs. Raeburn, who replied that she would report the old lady as a wandering lunatic. Jenny's right to act as she wished was in the balance. The old lady, like many another before, ruined freedom's cause by untimely propaganda. Mrs. Raeburn plucked her daughter from the perambulator, shook her severely, and said: "You bad, naughty girl," several times in succession. Jenny paused for a moment in surprise, then burst into yells louder by far than she had ever achieved before, and was carried into the house out of reach of sympathy.

From that moment she was alert to combat authority. From that moment to the end of her days, life could offer her nothing more hateful than attempted repression. That this struggle over the wheel of a perambulator endowed her with a consciousness of her own personality, it would be hard to assert positively, but it is significant that about this age (two years and eight months) she no longer always spoke of herself as Jenny, but sometimes took the first personal pronoun. Also, about this age, she began to imagine that people were laughing at her, and, being taken by her mother into a shop on one occasion, set up a commotion of tears, because, she insisted, the ladies behind the counter were laughing at her, when really the poor ladies were trying to be particularly pleasant. When Jenny was three, another baby came to Hagworth Street—dark-eyed, puny, and wan-looking. Jenny was put on the bed beside her.

"This is May," said her mother.

"I love May," said Jenny.

"Very much, do you love her?"

"Jenny loves May. I love May. May is Jenny's dolly."

And from that moment, notwithstanding the temporary interruptions of many passionate quarrels, Jenny made that dark-eyed little sister one of the great facts in her life. This was well for May, because, as she grew older, she grew into a hunchback.

Two more years went by of daily walks and insignificant adventures. Jenny was five. Alfie and Edie were now stalwart scholars, who rushed off in the mornings, the former armed, according to the season, with chestnuts, pegtops or bags of marbles, the latter full of whispers and giggles, always one of a bunch of other little girls distinguishable only by dress. About this time Jenny came to the conclusion she did not want to be a girl any longer. But the bedrock of sexual differences puzzled her: obviously one vital quality of boyishness was the right to wear breeches. Jenny took off her petticoats and stalked about the kitchen.

"You rude thing!" said Ruby, shocked by the exhibition.

"I'm not a rude thing," Jenny declared; "I'm being a boy."

"And wherever is your petticoats?"

"I frowed 'em away," said Jenny. "I'm a boy."

"You're rude little girl."

"I'm not a girl. I won't be a girl. I want to be a boy." Jenny darted for the street, encountering by the gate the outraged blushes of Edie and her bunch of secretive companions.

"Did you ever?" said the ripest. "Look at Edie's sister."

Boys opposite began to "holler." Alfie appeared bent double in an effort to secure a blood ally. He lost at once the marble and the respect of his schoolfellows. His confusion was terrible. His sister skirtless before the public eye! Young Jenny making him look like a fool!

"Go on in, you little devil," he shouted. He ground his teeth.

"Go on in!"

Ruby was by this time in pursuit of the rebel. Mrs. Raeburn had been warned and was already at the gate. Alfie, haunted by a thousand mocking eyes, fled to his room and wept tears of shame. Edie broke away from her friends, and stood, breathing very fast, in petrified anticipation. Jenny was led indoors and up to bed.

"Why can't I be a boy?" she moaned.

"Well, there's a sauce!" said Ruby. "However on earth can you be a boy when you've been made a girl?"

"But I don't want to be a girl."

"Well, you've got to be, and that's all about it. You'll be fidgeting for the moon next. Besides, if you go trapesing round half-dressed, the policeman'll have you."

Jenny had heard of the powers of the policeman for a long time. Those guardians of order stood for her as sinister, inhuman figures, always ready to spring on little girls and carry them off to unknown places. She was never taught to regard them as kindly defenders on whom one could rely in emergencies, but looked upon them with all the suspicion of a dog for a uniform. Their large quiescence and their habit of looming unexpectedly round corners shed a cloud upon the sunniest moment. They were images of vengeance at whose approach even boys huddled together, shamefaced.

Mrs. Raeburn came upstairs to interview her discontented daughter.

"Don't you ever do any such thing again. Behaving like a tomboy!"

"Why mayn't I be a boy?"

"Because you're a girl."

"Who said so?"

"God."

"Who's God?"

"That's neither here nor there."

God was another shadow upon enjoyment. He was not to be found by pillar boxes. He did not lurk in archways, it is true. He was apparently not a policeman, but something bigger, even, than a policeman. She had seen His picture—old and irritable, among the clouds.

"Why did God say so?"

"Because He knows best."

"But I want to be a boy."

"Would you like me to cut off all your curls?"

"No—o—o."

"Well, if you want to be a boy, off they'll have to come. Don't make any mistake about that—every one, and I'll give them to May. Then you'll be a sight."

"Am I a girl because I'm pretty?"

"Yes."

"Is that what girls are for?"

"Yes."

This adventure made Jenny much older because it set her imagination working, or rather it made her imagination concentrate. Reasons and causes began to float nebulously before her mind. She began to ask questions. Gone was the placid acceptance of facts. Gone was the stolid life of babyhood. Darkness no longer terrified her because it was not light, but because it was populated with inhabitants both dismal and ill-minded. At first these shapes were undefined, mere cloudy visualizations of Ruby's vague threats. Bogymen existed in cupboards and other places of secluded darkness, but without any appearance capable of making a pictorial impression. It was a Punch and Judy show that first endowed the night with visible and malicious shadows.

The sound of the drum boomed from the far end of Hagworth Street. The continual reiteration of the pipes' short phrase of melody summoned boys and girls from every area. The miniature theater stood up tall in a mystery of curtains. Row after row of children was formed, row upon row waited patiently till the showman left off his two instruments and gave the word to begin. Down below, ineffably magical, sounded the squeaking voice of Punch. Up he came, swinging his little legs across the sill; up he came in a glory of red and yellow, and a jingle of bells. Jenny gazed spell-bound from her place in the very front row. She laughed gayly at this world of long noses and squeaking merriment, of awkward, yet incredibly agile movement. She turned round to see how the bigger children behind enjoyed it all, and fidgeted from one foot to the other in an ecstasy of appreciation. She laughed when Punch hit Judy; she laughed louder still when he threw the baby into the street. She gloried in his discomfiture of the melancholy showman with squeaky wit. He was a wonderful fellow, this Punch; always victorious with stick and tongue. His defeat of the beadle was magnificent; his treatment of Jim Crow a triumph of strategy. To be sure, he was no match for Joey, the clown. But lived there the mortal who could have contended successfully with such a jovial and active and indefatigable assailant?

Jenny was beginning to see the world with new eyes. The kitchen of Number Seventeen became a dull place; the street meant more to her than ever now, with the possibility of meeting in reality this enchanted company, to whom obedience, repression, good-behavior were just so many jokes to be laughed out of existence. How much superior to Jenny's house was Punch's house. How delicious it would be to bury dogs in coffins. But the clown! After all, he could have turned even Jenny's house into one long surprise. He summed up all Jenny's ideas of enjoyment. She heard Ruby behind her commenting upon his action as "owdacious." The same unsympathetic tyrant had often called her "owdacious," and here, before her dancing deep eyes, was audacity made manifest. How she longed to be actually of this merriment, not merely a spectator at the back of whose mind bed loomed as the dull but inevitable climax of all delight.

Then came the episode of the hangman, and the quavering note of fear in Punch's voice found a responsive echo in her own.

"He's going to be hanged," said Ruby gloatingly.

Jenny began to feel uneasy. Even in this irresponsible world, there was unpleasantness in the background.

Then came the ghost—a terrifying figure. And then came a green dragon, with cruel, snapping jaws—even more terrifying—but most terrifying of all was Ruby's answer to her whispered inquiry:

"Why was all that?"

"Because Punch was a bad, wicked man."

The street so crudely painted on the back of the puppet-show took on suddenly a strange and uninviting emptiness, seemed to stand out behind the figures with a horrid likeness to Hagworth Street, to Hagworth Street in a bad dream devoid of friendly faces. Was a green dragon the end of pleasure? It was all very disconcerting.

The play was over; the halfpennies had been gathered in. The lamplighter was coming round, and through the dusk the noise of pipe and drums slowly grew faint in the distance with a melancholy foreboding of finality.

Jenny's brain was buzzing with a multitude of self-contradictory impressions. For once, in a way, she was glad to hold tightly on to Ruby's rough, red hand. But the conversation between Ruby and another big girl on the way home was not encouraging.

"And she was found in an area with her throat cut open in a stream of blood, and the man as did it got away and ain't been caught yet."

"There's been a lot of these murders lately," said Ruby.