Читать книгу Here's Luck - Lennie Lower - Страница 8

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It was somewhere about midday when I awoke, creaking in every joint. The sunlight streamed through the laundry window and a cat that had been eyeing me speculatively from the sill, leapt out of sight as I sat up. Outside in the street a dealer pleaded plaintively for empty bottles, rags, bags and old iron. Stanley was audibly asleep. I tossed a billet of wood gently on to his face, and he sat up clawing the air and gazing around wildly.

"Go and get my bath ready," I ordered.

"Go and get it yourself," he replied sulkily and fell back into his blanket.

"Stanley," I said, "is this obedience? Is this friendly co-operation? Is this looking after me? Did they teach you nothing when you were a Boy Scout?"

"Didn't have anything about baths in the Scouts," he mumbled.

I reached for another slab of wood.

"Aw, don't be silly, dad," he protested, raising his head from the pillow. "You're all right. You don't want a bath—you're clean."

"Stanley," I said, reasoning with him, "wouldn't it be easier and nicer for you to get my bath ready than to have to explain to Eggs how you got your face busted open through a piece of wood accidentally falling on it?"

He sat up, making savage, noiseless motions with his mouth.

"That's a good boy," I murmured, lying back on the floor, "and when you've done that, get the breakfast ready—and if what you are saying is what I think you're saying—don't say it."

He staggered to his feet and lurched out the door. In some respects Stanley is like his mother, bad tempered when getting up or when asked to do any little thing. I had not dozed off exactly, but was in that blissful state when one is neither awake nor asleep, when I heard a bumping noise coming from upstairs in the vicinity of the bathroom and a wild, panicky yell from Stanley.

"Father! Father!"

I leapt to my feet, trod on an upturned nail that protruded from a fragment of the dressing-table, and rushed for the stairs.

"Father! Father!" came a despairing wail.

"Coming, boy!"

Taking too many steps at a time, I fell, crashed against the banister and rebounded on to my shin on the stairs. Clenching my teeth, I limped rapidly to the landing.

"Father!—Oh, there you are."

"Quick, boy! What is it?"

He surveyed me curiously as I stood panting on one leg, holding my shin.

"Your bath is now ready," he said coldly.

Mouth open I stared at him as he brushed past me and calmly descended the stairs. As though stunned, I watched him till the top of his head disappeared from view and then hobbled dazedly into the bath-room and sat on the edge of the bath. There are occasions when the English language, noble though it is, is inadequate to express one's feelings. Often I have yearned for the ability to speak Sanskrit, but strange though it may seem, I have never since uttered a word to Stanley about this so-called joke of his. It was beyond even physical expression, and I remained for months with this inhibition gnawing at my bosom until I saw a specimen of post-impressionist art entitled, "Picture of Workman Falling off Scaffolding." Gazing at it, I felt a load drop off my mind. I had been expressed.

Perhaps a psychologist could have relieved me at the time. I believe that once they get you hypnotized they relieve you of everything you've got, but as it was, even the warm bath failed to soothe my stricken faculties and, having bathed, I doddered downstairs like an old man. And yet fools who never had a son burble of the blessings of fatherhood!

Stanley was blithely humming the collection of sounds usually associated with the fox-trotting bouts. He stopped as I came in.

"What's for breakfast?" I asked dully.

Reassured, he made a more or less tuneful assertion that he wanted to go back to Dixie to see his mammie in the cotton-fields and then added that we had burnt bacon and toast to look forward to.

"Am I then condemned to finish my allotted span on a diet of burnt bacon and toast? Isn't there any other damn thing beside that?" I inquired.

"The trouble with some people," said Stanley, stamping on a piece of blazing charcoal that had once been bread, "is that they're too well fed. There's an onion behind the gas-stove if you're feeling fastidious."

I turned wearily to the wash-tubs where I had left my coat and hat the previous night. They were gone. I turned and raised my eyebrow at Stanley: "My coat and hat?"

"Oh, yes. They got burnt last night," he explained, "the fire was going out and I couldn't reach the wood, without getting up, and I just accidentally knocked your coat down—and it sort of fell on the fire and—er—caught alight."

"And the hat?"

"Well, a hat is not much good without a coat, is it?"

Supporting myself with one hand on the wall, I made my way out of the room in silence. Even if I'd had a gun I could not have shot him. Hard to understand, I know; but living with Stanley has made me like that. When he strikes, he strikes me powerless.

"Where are you going?" he called out.

"To Flannery's," I gulped in a choked sort of voice, and closed the door behind me. Beer is a food as well as a drink, so I went to Flannery's for breakfast. The girl, Sadie, was behind the bar.

"Morning, Mr Gudgeon, beautiful morning this morning, nearly lunch-time too and I'm getting hungry. Hear you've been having some trouble, what is it whisky?"

I nodded weakly. Sadie is a nice girl, but there are occasions when a man's sick, when a little silent sympathy, a little loving kindness, a little understanding pat on the cheek, goes farther than mere cheerfulness. I gulped my drink and drew a deep breath. Spirit called to spirit.

"Sadie;" I said. "Flex the fingers, massage the little biceps and stand by the beer pump. If that bracelet is going to get in the way, take it off. I want action."

A foaming pint-pot thumped wetly on the bar as I spoke and I clasped it by its big friendly handle, raised it, and the stuff swooped down my throat bearing a message of hope to my dejected internals. I replaced the pot, empty, on the bar and sighed one of those deep, satisfactory sighs that seem to start from one's boots, gather all the little cares and troubles on the way, and from the mouth dissipate them in the air.

Back came my replenished pot.

"You look worried, Mr Gudgeon," said Sadie kindly. "You're so pale."

"If paleness is a sign of worry, Sadie, I ought to be transparent. I'm sick."

She clucked sympathetically.

"Poor boy. Why doesn't your wife look after you? S'shame!"

I put my empty pot down.

"Mr Flannery is sick, too," she said, whisking it away.

"Worry?" I said.

"No. Whisky," she replied, slapping her offering down before me. "Mugs of it! Drinking with some old fool as silly as himself."

I shook my head in a manner which I hope conveyed disgust.

"Madness," I said.

"You described it. Another? I'll have to be off to lunch presently but I'll miss your company," she said, trailing off softly.

I am not dense.

"I'd like to be able to take you somewhere for lunch," I said in a tone of yearning, "but I'm not dressed for it and by the time I got home and changed, your lunch hour would be nearly over."

"What a pity," she sighed, straightening her shingle.

Strange, the lure I have for women. Sex appeal, I suppose.

"Oh, by the way!" I cried. "I'd almost forgotten it. We're expecting company to-night. Want some liquor. Say, four of lager, one small gin"

"Is this in addition to Stanley's order?" she cut in.

"Stanley's order?"

"M'm. He was up here late yesterday afternoon." She was turning the pages of a book as she spoke.

"Here it is. Two dozen lager, six best gin—large, two claret, two sherry, two—"

"That'll do!" I cried, clutching at the counter. "I don't want to hear any more."

"It's going to be some party," she said, closing the book and gazing brightly at me. "Only a few people too. Just nice."

"Would you like to come?" I asked, mastering my emotions.

"Too right I'm coming!" she responded with a happy gurgle. "Stanley said he'd be real disappointed if I didn't come and bring a few friends." She leaned over the counter and tapped me caressingly on the nose with one finger. "P'raps I'll get better acquainted with my little fat sheik," she whispered. She whisked away, pausing at the cash register, and turning, waved one lily-white hand. "Toodle-oodle!" she cried, and was gone. I closed my eyes and groaned. How much—Oh, how much was two dozen lager, six best gin large, and two of everything else, like Noah's ark! I clutched my hat and, turned toward the door. "Goin', Mr Gudgeon?" called the barman. "Yes," I muttered. "Going—going."

"Ar, well. See y' t'night at the party," he yelled, as I hobbled out on to the pavement.

Like a weeping mother going to the electric chair, I set my face toward home and Stanley.

Stanley...If I'd known what that party was going to start I'd have gone the other way.