Читать книгу Here's Luck - Lennie Lower - Страница 5

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Where in this world will you find anything more sustaining, more inspiring, more satisfying, more invigorating, more absolutely culminating and fulfilling than steak and eggs? Nowhere.

As I said to Stanley at the Greek restaurant, after we had given our order: "Stanley, when the poor sailor returns from foreign lands, from long, lonely cruises, from sleepless nights and toil-filled days; when at last he sets foot in his home port—what does he do?"

"Gets drunk," said Stanley.

The boy was right.

"What does he do next?" I asked.

"Father, I'm surprised at you talking about that. You know very well what—"

"No," I cut in firmly, "I don't mean that; I mean, well, damn it all he orders steak and eggs, doesn't he?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, why didn't you say so at first? Trying to confuse your poor old father!"

"What," I continued, "does the explorer do when he returns to civilization after long months in the jungle—what does he crave?"

"Steak and eggs."

"Right. When the starving wanderer, lost in the desert, first starts to lose his reason; what does he see?"

"Steak and eggs."

"What does the acquitted co-respondent rush for as soon as he leaves the divorce court?"

"Steak and eggs."

I was satisfied. I leaned back in my chair and gazed around me. Two young women of the gimme type were gazing with bright, lizard eyes at our table.

"Who are those girls over there, Stan?" I asked.

"Steak and eggs," replied Stan in a flat, toneless voice.

I looked at him. He was staring straight in front of him with the rapt look of a crystal-gazer.

"Thinking of little Oyster-mouth?" I asked gently.

"Blah! Women!" he said in a tone of utter disgust. Almost I expected to see him spit on the cruet, as I believe they do on the Continent. The steak and eggs arrived and I gazed at my plate. A succulent slab of steak sprawled across it. Two blonde eggs gazed back at me in a warm, friendly, frizzled manner. I forked one.

"I was thinking how much it would cost to buy a motorbike and side-car!" said Stanley, stroking his steak with his knife. "One big enough, that is to say, strong enough, to smash another motor-bike and side-car if they happened to bump into one another."

"Attend to your fodder," I said severely.

He champed at his steak for a few minutes, then waving the cruet about in front of me to attract my attention he whispered, "Eh, dad! Who are those two girls over there? They keep looking over here."

I raised my face from my plate.

"They, it would seem, are known to their intimates as Steak and Eggs. The one with the red hair I should say is Steak, and the one with the legs, is Eggs."

This seemed to puzzle him for a while, but he came at me again.

"But who are they, dad?"

"They are Gimmes," I said, "their names I do not know."

"Gimmes?"

"Gimmes. Yes, Gimmes. Gimme this and gimme that. Human leeches. They'd extract a fur coat from a marble statue of Harry Lauder. Don't smile or we're lost."

It was too late. He had smiled.

"I think I'll go over to that table, dad," he said. "Would it look funny if I took my steak and eggs with me?"

"Siddown," I growled.

"But, father—"

"Don't call me father. D'you hear? Call me Jack."

"Orright."

I looked across to the other table. They smiled.

I slightly raised one eyebrow, an accomplishment of which I have always been proud and which is, I believe, practised a great deal in diplomatic circles. I then looked back at my plate and ate on. I could see that Stanley was straining at the leash. He looked at me with bright eyes like a water spaniel waiting for his master to throw the stick into the pond. I should not have been at all surprised if he had jumped up on me and barked.

"Go on," he urged, in a hoarse whisper, "go on, Jack." One thing about Stanley, he's swift on the intake, even if he is a bit premature on the exhaust stroke. You don't have to tell him anything twice—except when it involves physical effort on his part. I finished my meal, drank a little Worcestershire sauce and called the waiter.

"Mm—mm, mm—m—mm—mm ah mm?" I asked.

He nodded. "Two shillings a cup," he said.

It was after hours.

"We'll be over at the other table," I said.

"The ladies also mm—mm?"

I nodded and he shuffled off.

"Come on, Stanley," I said, pushing my chair back. "Come with Jacky."

He beat me to the other table by a head.

"Haven't I seen you before?" he burbled.

Of course, he is only young.

I bowed slightly, and with the courtly air for which I am renowned among my friends, said, "Pardon our intrusion, but would you ladies care for a snifter?"

"A he-man," said Steak.

"Balm of Gilead!" said Eggs, gulping. "Bring the mat in with you and shut the door."

I indicated Stanley.

"This is a young friend of mine, Stan. My name is Jack."

"Smith?" inquired Steak.

"Of course. Sit down, Stan."

"I want to sit next to Eggs," said Stan in a whisper that could be heard for leagues.

We exchanged places and remarks about the weather.

"When," asked Steak, "is le garcon coming avec les snifters?"

No one can spring that stuff on me and get off with it.

The waiter rolled up with a trayful.

"Mon homme," I said, turning to him in a confidential manner, "honi soit qui mal y pense?"

"No, sir," he replied, shaking his head, "not a drop of it left in the place."

"Mais done," I said resignedly.

It's a pleasure to meet an intelligent waiter.

Steak was squashed, anyhow, and Stanley regarded me with additional respect.

I dawdled over my cup. At two shillings a time, it pays to dawdle.

Eggs had got one in below the belt on poor Stanley, by asking him if he had ever been a bull-fighter. He reminded her so much of a bull-fighter she used to know. Same fierce, handsome face, same dark mysterious eyes. Stanley was roped in and eating out of her hand. I remarked that I had done a bit of bulling, myself, at odd times, and she replied that she could quite believe it. I was rather taken with Steak. She was the sort of woman that grows on you. Her name was Daisy.

She had red hair and blue eyes, and a wide mouth. Not a hard mouth, but a mouth that knew its way about. Her figure was rather good, with the legs a little on the thin side. She had a lot of tiny wrinkles near her eyes. On the whole, pleasing.

Eggs was a beautiful chemist's blonde. Scientifically made up, low slung in the body, with the merest suggestion of an eyebrow on either side of an otherwise vacant forehead. Big eyes she had, and an excellent leg. Excellent. We got on well, the four of us.

"Jack," said Stanley at last, "I have just asked Maureen to come to the fight." Maureen was Eggs.

Seeing that LE GARCON had by this time recupped the party three times at my expense and I was now twenty-four shillings out, I sat down on the fight suggestion. I explained that I quite understood that the ladies would not care to be present at the brutal buffeting of poor boxers, who perhaps had fathers and managers and trainers and various other people to keep out of their meagre earnings, and had to bash each other and lie down for ten seconds, to get a living. Steak supported me. She went further. She said she would much prefer a theatre, with a quiet little supper afterwards and perhaps a little car ride out to the beach after that. It was then that I suddenly discovered that I had forgotten to lock the safe in my office. I paid the bill, apologized, and hurried out, shouting to Stanley that I supposed I would meet him some other time and to drop in any time he was passing.

I waited on the corner, two blocks away, and presently he came along, mumbling to himself.

"That was a dirty trick, Jack," he said when he came up to me. "Fancy leaving those two poor girls—"

"Never mind about the 'Jack.'" I snapped. "Remember I'm your father."

He was quiet after that till we got down to the Stadium, half an hour later, and the fight all over. We walked home from there and I lectured him all the way. It was just like playing the bagpipes—sheer waste of time. In the middle of a really fine bit—I was working up to something about the Divinity that shapes our ends and a bird in the bush gathering no moss in time—he said: "Father; do you think I look like a bull-fighter?"

It's hard.

Then he wanted to know how he could become a bullfighter. Whether there were any correspondence colleges that taught bull-fighting. Humouring him, I explained how the bull-fighters started as calf-chasers and he commenced talking about Maureen and I had to explain that I meant the leather-covered ones; and then went further and told him how they worked up from calf-chasing to cow-punching, and from cow-punching to bull-fighting; and by that time we were nearly home.

The lights were all out when we got to the house, and I guessed that the wife was in bed, fostering a headache, and Gertrude was at the police-station getting out a warrant for my arrest for abducting and murdering Stanley.

I got the door open beautifully but Stanley, the fool, shut it so that it clicked.

"Who's that?"

It was Argus. Agatha. The wife.

"It's only me and Jack," said the fool Stanley.

I lifted him in the back of the neck and tramped over his body into the bedroom. Four or five hours after I got into bed I got used to the drone of Agatha's voice, and fell asleep. It doesn't sound much, just to say, "I fell asleep," but married men will understand.

What a wonderful thing is sleep! Knits up the ravelled sock of care, restores the tissues; the greatest post-jag pick-me-up ever shaken together. You never feel a dirty taste in your mouth, or a headache, when you're asleep: it's only when you wake up. It is, no doubt, Nature's greatest gift to man, only, as in most cases, Nature hasn't gone far enough. If one could only fall asleep when one liked! To be able, when "Where have you been till this hour of the night?" and "What do you mean by coming home in that condition?" are fired at you, to drop off to sleep immediately!

Ah! priceless boon—withheld.

Still, sleep is a wonderful thing.

As I have remarked to my friend Temple: If it were not for sleep, how the hell could we keep awake?