Читать книгу Here's Luck - Lennie Lower - Страница 10

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By eight o'clock, our quiet little party had, thanks to my son's efforts, swelled to the proportions of the crowd that gathers around the spot where the body was found.

There were the Boys: a crowd of immature dance-hall thugs who ran mainly to legs and reactionary suits. There, was Sadie and a boy friend, and a girl friend and her boy friend, and the barman and the chief chucker-out at Flannery's. The milkman was there with an alleged female of the ultra-modern type, who could not be definitely placed as a boy or a girl and was best classified as a Boil. People I did not know kept coming in, in bunches. I tried to count them but they moved about too much. I don't suppose there were more people on the MAYFLOWER.

Everyone, it seemed, had brought their music-books for what reason I do not know, seeing that they had only ukeleles to play. The giggling and guffawing made the house sound like a large aviary being ravaged by bloodhounds. And the singing!

There was one girl who had been accused of being able, to sing in the early stages of the orgy. Arraigned before a jury of panting ukelele players, she blushingly admitted that some people said she had a good voice but she was not so wonderful, really. After the usual assumption of bashfulness, and the orthodox statements as to not having brought her music, and having a bad cold she consented to sing. The Boys, who had urged her to sing, then left in a body headed for Flannery's side door, with three suit-cases.

The girl sang "The Last Rose of Summer."

By some extraordinary fluke of an outraged glottis, she caught a high note on a neap tide, and held it. Like a draught-horse stalled with a heavy load on a hill, she held it. I shut my eyes and thought of knocking-off time at the steel-works and foggy nights on the harbour. Growing mottled in the face as Nature asserted herself, she was at last compelled to relinquish the note with a gasp and, amid a storm of applause, she finished off in a hoarse baritone.

"By cripes!" cried the milkman, slapping me on the back, "you wouldn't hear better than that at the Gaiety!"

Which was quite true. I've been to the Gaiety.

That priceless boon, "the life of the party," was a particularly virulent specimen. The Boil told me in a confidential whisper that he was such a character. The things he said! And the too-perfectly-funny-for-words things he did!

"Gee! I remember once," she said, ashing her cigarette on my coat-sleeve, "he blew up a balloon and sat on it. You should have seen the look on his face. Laugh! I thought I'd die!"

For once, I felt old.

I looked around for Stanley and failed to find him; neither could I see Maureen. I rose to my feet as the noble strains of "Pipe Ma Baby's Goo-goos" rose in the quivering air, and after a search secured a bottle of gin, two glasses and some ginger-beer, and lifting the eyebrow to Steak, headed for the front door.

"My gawd!" she said, following me out and seating herself on the gas-box beside me. "Does this happen every night?"

"Don't talk to me, Daisy, not for a while, anyhow."

"I understand, honey," she said.

"Take ginger-beer with it?" I asked.

"I hate ginger-beer."

I threw the ginger-beer away.

"I regard gin purely as a medicine," I said, filling the glasses.

"Absolutely," she replied, tersely.

We sipped quietly.

"You know—I like you, Jack. You're restful," she sighed, and leaned her head against my shoulder.

I felt rested, too. Some women affect men like that. They have the mother instinct without being mawkish; I felt that if I had laid my troubled head on Daisy's lap and said, "What a —— of a world this is," Daisy would have said, "Absolutely."

Once a man reaches the forties he needs feminine company. Some men, indeed most men, like something young and fluffy, but I am not like that. I like a sensible woman. Not one of these hard, practical women, but a woman who, doesn't giggle. A woman of the world who has had a couple of black eyes in her time is the best company for a man in his forties.

I liked Steak.

I filled the glasses and put them down on the floor.

"Daisy," I said, "I'm a married man. My wife has left me; Stanley is my son and I'm going on for forty."

I had made a clean breast of things—practically.

She patted my hand. "I guessed most of that but thought you were a widower. Divorced, are you, Jack?"

I nodded glumly.

"Don't worry over things that happened long ago, honey," she said, smoothing my hair. "Did you like her very much?"

"I always respected her," I answered gently, "until—"

"Don't tell me if it hurts you, Jack?"

"She ran away with a commercial traveller. Lord knows where they went to. I tried to find her. I heard that he ill-treated her—Ah, well!" I picked up our glasses.

"Some women don't know when they're well off," she exclaimed. "A fine man like you—! Thanks, Jack. Here's luck. Don't forget that there are more fish in the sea and quite a few pebbles left on the beach."

We quaffed.

"My word!" said Steak, after a pause, "what a row those galoots are making inside!"

"Bedlam!" I exclaimed.

"Absolutely."

I put my arm around her and we snuggled up. There was nothing wrong in it. Everything was all right. My wife had left me. Certainly, she had given me the impression that she would be back shortly, but the fact remained that she wasn't with me. And here was a woman, a friend, who understood me. Was I to insult her by spurning her affection? I think I am too much of a gentleman for that.

The noise of the party was increasing, a thing that I had not considered possible. They were stamping their feet, and singing, "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here." A very ancient and easily remembered song of some fifty-three verses, if I remember rightly. Extremely popular at smoke concerts and lodge meetings. I had got used to the monotony of the bellowing, much the same, I suppose as factory workers get used to the noise of the machinery, and was feeling comfortable and almost drowsy when Temple, who lives next door, came to the gate.

"Gudgeon!" he barked, "what's all this damned uproar! Do you know it's nearly midnight?"

"It's Stanley's party," I answered in the soft voice that turneth away wrath. "It's his coming-out party."

"Coming out! Well, the sooner he emerges the better. It's a damn riot! Is he coming out in a tank?"

"Be nice, Temple. Be nice. You were a boy yourself once."

"I'll admit it," he shouted. "But there was no insanity in my family. I hope," he added, glaring at the doorway, "that when he comes out, he comes out on his ear!"

"Miserable old cow!" said Steak, as he bounced off.

"You can't take any notice of a man like that," I explained. "He's a fool. He said I looked old."

"Rot!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "He's mad."

That was a sympathetic, yet sensible observation.

I could see that Daisy was a smart, sensible woman. When I had told Agatha about Temple's ridiculous remark, instead of laughing heartily, she had said, "Quite right, too. Of course, you're getting old. You can't stay young for ever. You, with your hair parted in the middle and your tight-waisted coats and dynamite ties!"

It set me thinking.

It just shows the difference in women.

But then, every woman is different from every other woman; like finger-prints; and just as the dissimilarity in finger-prints leads to many a man's downfall, so with women. Some men think that because they have produced certain effects with some women by some particular method, they can do it at any time with any other woman, like the application of mathematical and chemical formulae. It is not so. It is decidedly not so. You may live comfortably with Jekyll for a long time, but sooner or later you are confronted with Hyde. No man can understand women for the quite ordinary reason that they don't understand themselves. In this they are similar to a lot of other animals. There is no mystery and no secret. If there had been, it would have been blabbed long ago. Solomon had more than his share of wives but he had to give it up at last and admit that a good woman was above rubies. And I think I have biblical backing when I say that Solomon knew his way about. It is not my wish to be considered a cynic. I like women. But the man who runs the circular saw cannot be called a cynic just because he realizes that it is a saw. Similarly, the man who puts a guard-rail around his machinery does not distrust the machinery, he only realizes his own fallibility.

My train of thought was interrupted by a smothered snort from Daisy. She shifted her head on my shoulder and mumbled something.

"Eh?" I said.

She was asleep. Never before or since have I met a woman so divinely conversationless. It is a sad fact that very few of them will refrain from speech when they see that a man wants to think; they imagine that he is either neglecting them, or thinking of some other woman, or merely sulking. I must have dozed, myself, shortly after that because the next thing I remembered was Flannery's barman carrying out the Boys and stacking them on the pavement. The girls had evidently gone home earlier. Sadie's boy friend came through the door on all fours, asserting that he was a cat, and mewing and enjoying himself immensely. The milkman emerged swaggering ponderously as though the best qualities of countless milkmen had been merged in him. He flung the gate open with a sublime gesture of dignity, marched out on to the pavement in massed formation, and fell into the gutter.

"Are they all out?" yelled the barman.

Artie, Flannery's chucker-out, loomed on the doorstep.

"Z'all out. Posilivly norar one lef'!"

"Lock up, then."

"Hold on!" I cried. "I want to get in."

"Can't geddin. Ish after hours."

"But I live here!" I protested.

"Zame ole tale."

I caught him by the sleeve. "Look here, Artie. I must get in, and I can't if you snap that lock."

He eyed me suspiciously.

"Well," he said after a pause, "I'll lesher go in this time but be kefful comin' out. Doan led anyborry see yer carryin' it."

"Come on, Artie," called the barman.

"Comin'," he answered, and rolled toward the gate.

"Now you be kefful!" he added, turning to me.

The barman caught him by the arm.

"I'm comin'!" he said testily. "Godder tellim-kefful." They weaved their tortuous way up the street, Artie pausing now and then and exhorting the surrounding air to be very careful.

I grasped Steak by the shoulder and shook her.

"All right," she mumbled, "just half a glass."

She awoke at last and I left her to search for Eggs while I procured a taxi. Eggs had taken a fancy to some vases and pictures, and the wrapping of them delayed their departure, but after promising to phone me in the morning they rode away.

The chilly air heralded the approach of a new morning before I rolled into my disordered and broken bed and slept. If some of us were granted a glimpse of the future, most of us would remain asleep indefinitely, but no matter how battered, we must stand up to every round; so when the gong went in the morning I was on my feet and shaping up to another day.