Читать книгу Here's Luck - Lennie Lower - Страница 3

Table of Contents

It is absolutely ridiculous to call a man of forty-eight old. A restricted vocabulary might account for such a remark, and then of course there are people whose observations are superficial and even frivolous.

Temple, however, is a man who is never frivolous and I was astounded when he said it.

"Gudgeon," he said, "you're getting old."

"I'm not old!" I protested.

"You look old!" he insisted.

That was a lie. I pride myself on my looks. I have not a grey hair in my head, and numerous acquaintances have favourably remarked on my appearance. I am perhaps, a little under medium height, but then mere height is nothing. Notice the relative importance of Napoleon and the giraffe. I have been called fat by envious persons less kindly treated by nature and there was one who at the height of his jealousy called me "Barrel."

I am not a vain man, but in my own defence I quote a remark made by the girl in Flannery's saloon bar to a f riend.

"I like," she said, "his ruddy, clean-shaven, ingenuous face; and he has such a splendidly mature figure and manly bearing."

That, I think, should be sufficient. If, however, I say IF there is the slightest excuse for a remark such as Temple made there is only one excuse for it. It is not age. It's worry.

It's Stanley—and if there is anything within the ken of man more calculated to bring a man's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, it, whatever it is, is not human.

Stanley is about eighteen or nineteen, I am not sure which, but looks much older than his years. He is taller and thinner than I but otherwise resembles me as closely as can be expected these days. His face can look positively cherubic on occasion, but this makes no difference to the fact that he can be a fiend from the blackest pit when he likes. I've had a lot of trouble with him. A few weeks ago he was at that stage where he had given up the idea of being a pirate, engine-driver, or chief rescuer in the fire brigade, and wanted to be a poet. He has altered greatly since, but I would much rather rear a platypus than a boy. Problems innumerable beset the conscientious father, but the greatest problem of all is to know in what trade or profession the boy will be best fitted to support his old father at a later date.

The medical profession, of course, suggests itself immediately. I have no yearning to have Stanley descend to the familiarity of listening-in to the heart-throbs of the vulgar, and punching people in the ribs and asking if it hurts. Neither do I wish to stand on one leg with my mouth open and say ninety-nine, as I would undoubtedly be compelled to do if he were training for the medical profession. His mother would see to that. Furthermore, judging by the number of divorce cases that doctors become entangled in it would seem that the only way some of them can keep their names untarnished is by the application of a little metal-polish to their brass plate. And whatever else Stanley is, I want him to be untarnished. That is to say, he'd be fool enough to get caught.

I could make a lawyer of him. He really has a talent in that direction. He comes home in the small hours of the morning with an iron-clad alibi and even the wife can find no chink in his armour of excuses. He is a fountain of fluid eloquence. I'm a bit that way myself: it runs in our family. Still, admitting that lawyers are quite all right in their place, the trouble is to find the place.

There is the Church. Somehow I don't think he is fitted for it. He hasn't heard the call, so to speak. It seems to be a weakness of his, this deafness to calls. Every morning I have to go to his room and pull the bed-clothes off him before he shows any signs of life. This despite the fact that his mother has shouted herself black in the face at the foot of the stairs and his aunt has battered the paint off his door. He did show some interest in the subject of the revision of the prayer-book. His suggestion was to insert cross-word puzzles on alternate pages with blank leaves interspersed here and there for sketches and notes to be passed along to fellow sufferers during the sermon. He can be wooden-headed, dull and entirely lacking in imagination when the mood seizes him, and taking into consideration these assets, I had hopes of a brilliant career for him in the army, but unfortunately he is flatfooted, so his other qualifications go for nothing.

I could, I suppose, put a stiff collar on him, give him a pair of gold cuff-links, a cigarette-holder, and a couple of fountain-pens and incarcerate him in a warehouse; to emerge at the expiration of his sentence as a business man: a successful business man: a man who has won the right to put his thumb in the armhole of his vest and look over the top of his glasses and grunt. Or I could start him off in the Public Service. There he could remain for about forty years in a more or less comatose condition and later be dismissed from his position of Temporary Casual Supernumerary Class II clerk with a pension. The pension would not be sufficient to keep me and I could not bear the thought of filling in forms, LX2, A3, Folio 9716Q in quadruplicate, digging up birth certificates, writing out references for him and getting his finger-prints taken in order to get him on the waiting-list.

I have read of fathers cutting their sons off with a shilling arid casting them into the world with a clout in one ear and a lot of invaluable advice in the other. And the sons have become celebrated Lord Mayors, bushrangers, politicians and big business men. Worked themselves up from newsboys to a position where they can sign cheques for thousands without having to flee the country immediately. I have thought over this arrangement of cutting him off with a shilling—but I cannot spare the shilling. Anyhow, he'd be bound to make a mess of things. And then there's this poet business. He's in love. He generally is, more or less.

I thought there was something wrong when he started cleaning his teeth every hour and oiling his hair and walking stiff legged about the house to preserve the crease in his trousers. I had the wife give him the onion test and when he said he didn't care for onions while his eyes glistened and his mouth watered—I knew.

"Who's this knobby-kneed, enamel-faced giggler you're going out with?" I asked him kindly.

It's always best to be tactful when a boy is like this. They're very sensitive in the moony stage.

We had a bit of a session—a "go in" as they call it. I tried to reason with him. I explained to him about women. I showed him a portrait of his mother as she was when I married her and left the rest to his imagination.

I explained to him, that if ever he found himself getting serious with a woman, if he bashed his head against a nearby wall for about ten minutes instead, he'd feel better for it in the long run. I told him that if he bought himself a hair-shirt and a loud-speaker he would be just as comfortable as if he was married.

It was useless.

"I love her, father," he said.

Just like that.

"I wish I were a poet, father, that I might describe her to you," he murmured lying back on the bed in a kind of rapturous swoon.

That's how the poet idea started.

"Her teeth are like pearls."

"I understand," I said, "mouth like an oyster."

"Her hair—"

"Clipped and stuck to her cheek-bones with saliva."

He ignored me.

"I have basked in the sunshine of her smile—"

"That how you got sunburnt on the back?" I asked.

"Gazing into her eyes—eyes like two deep wells—"

"Well! Well!" I said. Rather smart, I thought, but he looked up at me, and, well sort of looked up at me and looked down on me, if you understand what I mean.

"Knees like a retired Highland piper, I suppose," I said, just to regain my composure.

"Her lips!" he muttered, gazing rapturously at the door-knob.

"Ah! her hips. Explain about her hips, my son."

"I said lips, father, not hips," he said disdainfully.

I was a bit disappointed. Still I suppose, I couldn't expect—anyhow he's young yet, and I always was his pal and confidant, more or less. Lord knows, life is dull enough. Anyhow he insisted that it was "lips" he said, so I let it go at that.

It was then that he brought out the poem.

He got up from the bed as though in a trance, there was a glazed look about his eyes, he even forgot about the crease in his trousers as he bent to get the poem from underneath the linoleum.

"If I show you this, father, will you swear by all you hold sacred to keep it secret?" he asked.

His voice has not yet decided whether it is a tenor or a baritone, and he had to change over half-way through. It sounded very emotional. I was rather surprised at the form of the swear. When he had wanted to be a pirate he used to ask me to swear by the blood of my ancestors. Later, after he had been reading some book or other, it had to be done by the beard of the profit. What the devil the beard of the profit is, I don't know. I haven't seen so much as a whisker of a profit in the last few months. Money is close in the city and I haven't noticed its proximity in the suburbs. However, after thinking for about three seconds on all I held sacred, I swore.

Then he showed me the poem. I read it out aloud.

When I gaze into her eyes,

I see blue skies,

And mists arise,

Her lips, blood-red

From Psyche bled,

Set up a singing in my head.

Her little nose—

"I haven't finished it," he said, twisting one foot round the other.

I pondered for a while.

"Her little nose she loudly blows," I suggested.

"She doesn't!" he cried.

"Untidy little brat. Surely—"

"Father! You must not speak like that of my future wife!" he cried; something after the old pirate manner.

This knocked me. I didn't expect it. Even a man who has been married twenty years can still be surprised at things occasionally. I was astonished. He had certainly rung the bell. Mentally I gave him the choice of a kewpie doll or an aluminium saucepan.

"Wife!" I gasped.

"My wife. My mate," he whispered reverently.

"Hey!" I said. "Hold off! Finish. D'you hear me? That's enough. Wife! Pah!"

His mouth fell open a little.

"To think that I should have reared a son," I cried; "dandled him on my knees, listened to his childish burblings, bought him toffee with stripes on, let him ruin my razor shaving a lot of lather off his face; been friend, Roman, countryman to him, and then—and then—he tells me to my face, without a blush or the batting of a solitary eyelash, that he will sell his birthright for a mess of facecream!"

I sank down on the bed, overcome.

"To leave his poor old father to push a peanut cart with a whistle on it in his old age, while he keeps a woman supplied with shoes, hats, grievances and pet dogs!"

I buried my face in my hands.

"Father!" said Stanley hoarsely. "Father—Ar! I say—father!"

I remained prostrate. This was the first real opportunity I'd had of trying out his mother's tactics, and I wasn't going to throw it away.

"Father!" he cried theatrically, "I will go away and try to forget! I will give her up and go away. Away—away!" and he tottered out of the room and stumbled down the stairs.

I sat up. The next thing to do to carry the experiment to a conclusion was to lie on the bed motionless and claim weakly that I had a splitting headache and that I forgave everyone, poor downtrodden creature that I was. However there was no one to look at me so I lit my pipe instead. I could hear Stanley downstairs talking to his mother—making trouble. How much, I never guessed but knowing what a young hound he was I began to feel perturbed. Stanley is a hound.

I could hear his aunt's voice too. His aunt is my wife's sister I'll admit, and no doubt she would make some paralysed deaf mute a good wife—but I'll say no more. After all, blood is thicker than water. But then so is soup, and even water is of some use when you can't get anything else—but still, I will say no more.

Never let it be said that I ever said anything derogatory of that parrot-brained Gorgon.