Читать книгу Forward from Babylon - Louis Golding - Страница 6

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At no time did Philip find the society of his coevals congenial; the society at least of the young males of his age; which was an element in his composition not, I venture, to be crudely dismissed as one form or another of priggishness.

Whatever the defects were of Philip's education, and these were not inconsiderable, he was never warned to have no truck with Barney of next door because his father was a presser and rigidly banished collars from his wardrobe, excepting on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on which occasion a waterproof collar did annual service with much éclat; nor were fogs of dubiety sedulously created around Mr. and Mrs. Lavinsky, whose premarital relations were, it was rumoured, not free from stain.

Yet inherently Philip held himself aloof from all the "lads" in Angel Street. He felt, not consciously and certainly not in defined words, that everything coarse and cruel in the architecture of Angel Street had taken hold of their spirit. There was as much of the frankly and repulsively animal in them as in the sharp-ribbed cats who chattered obscenely on the walls. He felt at times when he saw the boys slithering along the roofs that fragments of the very roofs, steeped in grime and dirty rain as they were, had detached themselves and become animate.

He turned with relief to the latest "poetry" he had been taught; in the reverberant recessions of rhythm the boys were rolled over and sucked down like pebbles in an ebbing tide. The fustian of "Horatius" gave him unmeasured delight, and soaked in the yellow flood of Tiber he would forget the malodorous imminence of Mitchen.

But in the girls of Angel Street he satisfied his need for human companionship. They did not bandy the filth of gesture and word which were the traffic of the boys and which turned him sick, made him faintly but dismally aware of yawning abysses of uncleanness hidden from his feet.

So he would sit with the girls at their doorsteps while the boys shrieked in the entries. The girls were a willing audience for his declamations of verse; they accepted Kaspar's reiteration of "But it was a famous victory" with sympathy and evident pleasure. When they realized the full implications of the question,

Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair, A tress o' golden hair, O' drowned maiden's hair?

they took out their handkerchiefs and wept.

Philip was sitting among the girls cutting out from the advertisement pages of magazines pictures of ladies with artificially perfected busts. The pictures thus obtained were inserted among the leaves of books and the custom of the possessors of pins was solicited. Three pricks among the pages of the books were allowed, with whatsoever bounty fell to the adventure.

Philip had never quite decided which was the happier state—the being endowed with pictures of many well-busted ladies, or the possession of many pins. The latter at least held the prospect of a service he might render to his mother, to whom a stock of pins should, he presumed, be an inestimable boon. But opulence in pins meant a dearth in busted ladies—a barren state of affairs only to be remedied by a fresh outlay of capital.

A "gang" came by whooping. "Gang" was a popular word in the vocabulary of Angel Street. It was sinister with warnings of Red Indians crawling on their bellies from the pampas beyond Doomington Road. It evoked images of Red Signs found on the necks of the murdered daughters of millionaires.

"Yah! look at Philip Massel!" a voice jeered from the "gang." Philip shivered. He disliked the "gang," he had no point of contact with it.

"Stick-to-my-muvver-an-don't-touch-me!" the voice continued. The girls were silent, for chivalry was not a predominant trait in the psychology of the "gang." Jessie still bore a black eye inflicted by Barney in unequal war. It was Barney took up the cry:

"Philip Massel, Queen-of-the-Girls!"

This was a slogan which appealed to his comrades. "Philip Massel, Queen-of-the-Girls!" they reiterated shrilly. Philip's face was pale. His hand trembled as he cut the pictures. The bust of the next lady he delimitated sadly belied the merits claimed by the advertisement.

"Oo—oo! 'Oo kissed Jessie in the back entry?" Barney howled.

"Philip Massel, Queen-of-the-Girls!" the rest sang in choric delight. Oh, the black cavernous lie! Was Jehovah silent? Philip's eyes blazed. He flung his scissors down with a crash. The further side of Angel Street rose and sank as he rushed towards Barney. The rules of the ring had not yet been studied in Angel Street. Murderously he buffeted his fists against Barney's abdomen. Barney turned green and subsided. The rest of the "gang" jumped upon Philip and were comfortably pummelling him when Reb Monash appeared on the scene. Mrs. Levine had lost no time in informing him that a brawl was in progress. Reb Monash had no doubt it involved those of his scholars who were already scandalously late for chayder.

The "gang" wilted before him. At his feet lay Philip, gasping and bleeding.

"Feivele at the bottom of it!" he thundered. "Oh, a credit thou art to thy race! An eight-year old, and this is the sum of thy knowledge! Come then, I will instruct thee!" and he led Philip sternly home by a familiar grasp of the brachial muscle between finger and thumb. Jessie picked up the scissors ruminatively and turned the pages of the Strand Magazine.

The idea shortly after occurred to Philip that some compromise with his sex ought to be possible. It occurred simultaneously with the appearance in his library of a new type of American hero. He was now able to read without difficulty the "bloods" which described with impartial gusto sandbaggings in the Bowery and the slaughter of travellers conducted by Poncho-clad desperadoes in the Argentine. Lurid as the "gang" was in behaviour, their literature was still extremely tepid. Intellectually, they had not outstepped Lady Kathleen's tender limits as laid down in her Books for the Bairns, whereas Philip's heart had for months hovered and exulted with the hearts of fully-fledged errand boys, twelve and fourteen years old.

But a new hero had crossed the Atlantic. He was in soul much more turbulent than the heroes of the conservative school. His morals, purely, be it understood, in order to achieve a virtuous end, were even more elastic. The terror of his name was even more astounding. But all his villainous qualities were kept strictly below the surface, though, of course, his assistants were as coarse-grained and blasphemous as tradition demanded. His manners were so exquisite that hotel-keepers did not presume to ask for the payment of their bills. When he slipped from his chambers to undertake a midnight escapade, he would insert into one pocket his revolver, into another a silver-mounted bottle of hair-oil. Whilst his minions were grappling with the objects of his displeasure and bullet shots ripped across the shack, he would lift the wick of the lamp in order to manicure his nails. His speech was so full of gracious evasions that—that, in short, he completely captured Philip's heart.

Here was a mode of making artistic capital out of those very qualities of the young men in Angel Street which so revolted him, whilst at the same time he would himself accentuate those features of aloof refinement for which they had dubbed him "bouncer," a word particularly repugnant to him, accentuate them actually amid deference and applause.

How, then, was a reversal of the Angel Street relationships to be effected? Philip hardly knew. His first discovery was the gratifying fact that on a certain non-physical plane the "gang" regarded him with a measure of positive awe. Not only was he the son of his father, but he had the Kabbalistic faculty of uttering rhymes, a faculty which influenced them precisely as a barbarian village might be influenced by a medicine-man's incantations. His uprising against Barney had not been barren of result, though the fierce splendour of it had been mitigated somewhat by the parental sequel.

But most of the battle was won when, by a stroke of fortune, Philip, for whom a new hat was long overdue, was supplied with a sample of the head-gear associated with captaincy from time immemorial. His new hat was dowered with a shiny peak and a ribbon splendid with the legend "H.M.S. IMMACULATE," and when pressed slantwise over Philip's left eye gave him an air of authority not generally associated with his small face. A certain calm persuasive eloquence, assisted by a number of "alleys," both "blood" and "conker," vastly advanced his cause. He read, finally, certain convincing passages from the career of the Dandy Dave by which not only was Philip Massel's claim to be his European representative rendered incontrovertible, but it was proved also that any actual immersion of his own person in the filth of affairs was as unbecoming to Philip's new dignity as to the dignity of Dandy Dave.

The character Philip now assumed was undoubtedly a composite affair. Dandy Dave was predominant, but it was not immune from the vocabulary and behaviour of pirates, explorers, trappers and other species of emancipated men. The trapper element did not persist, as shall be rendered credible.

"Do you see that skunk?" Captain Philip exclaimed to Lieutenant Barney one day.

"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Lieutenant Barney, "Aye, aye, sir!" being, in fact, Lieutenant Barney's only and final achievement in the diction of romance.

The "skunk" was a notorious piebald cat even at that moment slinking with a torso of fried fish along the yard wall of an empty house where the "gang" was foregathered.

"'E must be captured! We shall sell 'is 'ide to the next ship wot calls at yonder port!"

An exciting chase, which extended over two days, followed. On the evening of the second day the corpse of the piebald cat was laid at Captain Philip's feet.

"Wot now, Captain?" said Lieutenant Barney, whose wavering loyalties had been steadied only an hour ago by the gift of an india-rubber sucker. Philip's heart fluttered a little unquietly. In the mere abstract conception of chase there had been much of the poetical. In the presence of the dead cat the fogs of illusion thinned. Shame tugged at his heart-strings. But the faultless figure of Dandy Dave stood before him. With little knowledge of the implication of his words, "Flay 'im!" he said harshly. "The merchants call this morn!"

Lieutenant Barney inserted a broken blade below the fringe of the cat's eye. He tugged. Philip looked down. The hideous mess which ensued spattered Philip's brain like a pat of filth. He ran quickly from the yard and was violently sick for many minutes. … The trapper aspect of Captain Philip's authority did not again assert itself.

Behind the Bridgeway Elementary School extended a huge and desolate brick-croft. Here the "gang" frequently undertook expeditions to the Himalayas and the two Poles. Volcanoes were discovered and duly charted. Wide lakes of clayey yellow water were navigated. It was a point of honour with the "gang" that the lakes must be definitely crossed from border to border, not merely circumvented. But while the "gang" miserably splashed along and drew their clogged boots to the further side, Captain Philip serenely walked the whole way round and from his dry vantage encouraged his men to safety. It would never do for the Doomington counterpart of Dandy Dave to smirch his own limbs alongside of the vulgar herd.

The last episode in the captaincy of Philip was the Liberation of Princess Lena, the immediate inspiration of which was the gallant rescue by Dandy Dave of the daughter of the President of the American Republic from a cellar below the very basement of the White House.

Lena Myer lived in Angel Street and kept irregular hours. The days of her flirtations had already begun. When she returned one evening it was arranged that the "gang" was to seize her, gag her, and carry her away to the stable of the lemonade works adjacent to the wire factory—whither Lieutenant Barney had discovered a secret entrance. Here for the space of an hour she was to be bound to a support. The clattering of horses was to be heard in the courtyard and Captain Philip, sweeping in magnificently, was to cut her bonds, lay her captors in the dust and deliver her with a flourish to her distracted parents.

Of course, Lena herself was not to be informed of the somewhat negative part reserved for her. She had already attained her "stuck-up" days, but her beauty and her father's wealth, (he was a barber), evidently cast her for the situation.

All fell out as arranged. As she entered the darkest patch of Angel Street a black mass fell on her, choked her with rags, and bore her kicking furiously to the stable, where she was fastened to a wooden support. Many desolate minutes passed, during which her moans struck so heavy a chill into the hearts of the desperadoes that at last they removed the rags from her mouth. Immediately such a foul stream of imprecation fell from her virginal lips, that the bloodthirsty gang withdrew trembling towards the spider-webbed walls. She threatened them venomously with the vengeance of her admirers. Some one made a tentative advance in her direction. She uttered a piercing scream and he recoiled with knocking knees. The "gang" had experienced fights with "gangs" from other streets; the "gang" even had compassed the discomfiture of a policeman. But a situation like this, where the incalculable feminine threw all their generalizations into rout, left them shorn of philosophy.

"Jem Cohen 'll 'ave your eyes out, yer rotten lot 'er lice!" said the maiden delicately.

A clatter in the yard beyond the stable, cunningly caused by the play of two slates on the cobbles, produced sudden silence. Captain Philip! A tremendous wave of dislike for Captain Philip swept over his supporters! Nobody but a "bouncer" like that Philip Massel could have involved them in so unnatural a situation. By crikey! They'd show him, by jemmy, wouldn't they just!

Philip rushed into the stable's darkness.

Rigid with hate, Princess Lena lay taut against her support. With a fine curve Philip drew the captainly knife. The braces-and-rope fetters fell from the lady's limbs. With the hiss of an escaping valve, Lena threw herself upon the astounded hero. Two great scratches ripped redly down Philip's cheeks.

"Take that an' that an' that' an that!" she howled as she thumped him, bit him, scratched him, tore his hair. Then her nerves gave way, and she sank to the ground, all of a heap, sobbing.

Beyond a scowling, laughing, shaking of fists, the "gang" had remained passive hitherto, but the moment Lena subsided, with convulsive unanimity they fell upon their captain. When at length the sated gang emerged from the stable, there was no superficial point of resemblance between Dandy Dave and the quivering youth moaning lugubriously in the darkness.

Philip had not yet found a key to the Happy Life. His experiment among the young gentlemen of Angel Street had doubtless been foredoomed to failure. He was not of them. He had been a "bouncer" and would, in their eyes, remain a "bouncer" unto the world's end. They realized cunningly how he winced when they shouted filthy words after him. Their experience with Lena Myer had widened their vocabulary, and they filled the air with enthusiastic impurity as he passed by. He was approaching his ninth birthday, but still the little girls of Angel Street gave him his one illusion of society.

School, too, filled him with leaden ennui. Miss Green's class was only a memory of his later infancy. Miss Tibbet, his present teacher, was a hopeless automaton. She wore masculine boots and impenetrable tortoise-shell spectacles. When she opened her lips, sound issued; when she closed her lips, sound did not issue. Her personality was capable of no further differentiation. Nothing happened. A waking sleep buzzed in her classroom like a bluebottle.

For his years he was early in Miss Tibbet's class. There was something about him which much endeared Philip to the young ladies of ten and eleven who sat in the same benches. The emotion at first was one of somewhat elderly amusement and compassion. But when Jane Freedman declared herself in love with him, it became a universal discovery that Philip lay wedged between the split sections of every heart. They brought offerings to him—cigarette cards, jujubes and raw carrots, (Philip had an unholy appetite for raw carrots). One day Jane Freedman waylaid him with a large lump of pine-apple rock.

"Kiss me, and it is yours!" she said. It was a very large and inviting piece of pine-apple rock; it had only been slightly sucked, not more than a taste. He kissed her.

The other girls promptly waylaid him with larger pieces of pine-apple rock. The whole thing really was very unpleasant. On the other hand pine-apple rock had its compensation. Yet Philip developed a great distaste for humanity. Boys, at one extreme, were more unclean than cats, (cats being the predominant fauna of Angel Street, they were a useful starting point for all philosophy). Girls, at the other, were more sentimental than fish. Pine-apple rock began speedily to pall upon him.

School was wearying beyond words. Not a chance gleam of gold filtered through the pall of cloud. Miss Tibbet's mouth opened; then it closed. It would have been an incident, even if you could have seen her eyelids blink beyond her spectacles. She taught poetry as she taught vulgar fractions. A mad impulse began to seize upon Philip. He must separate his own lips further, wider, more hilariously than ever Miss Tibbet was capable. Then to deliver himself of one prolonged shout—no more. One prolonged shout which would cleave a path through the clouds of monotony wherethrough the dizzy horses of adventure might come tumbling from the spacious blue winds beyond. Not a shout of pain or of desperation. A shout merely from the whole capacity of his lungs, a human shout, a challenge of the body in ennui.

His lips opened trembling. Miss Tibbet's spectacles swept blankly towards his face. He bent down over his paper. The impulse waxed within him and became a passion. He began to say to himself that the whole future of his life depended upon his courage. If he did not open his lips and yell he would be one thing. If he did open his lips and yell, he would be another thing, and a bigger, freer thing. One day he stretched his jaws to make the effort. The back of his mouth was crammed with sand. He lifted his hand as if to hide a yawn.

A mystic conviction took possession of him. If he had any value, that shout would be achieved. But its agent would be something greater than himself. Prepared or unprepared for it, the shout would come, if he was worthy.

It was a very hot afternoon. Miss Tibbet croaked at the blackboard like a machine. A desultory dog was barking somewhere with insensate yelps. The geranium before the closed windows drooped in the heat. Flies were droning aimlessly.

A huge shout swept suddenly into every corner of the room, slapped Miss Tibbet's face like the palm of a hand. There was an intense silence. All eyes turned to Philip's face, which was flushed furiously red, unhappy, exultant.

"Philip Massel, stand up!" He shuffled to his feet.

"Was it you who made that noise?"

"Yes, Miss Tibbet!"

"Why did you make that noise?"

"I don't know!"

"Did somebody stick a pin into you?"

"No!"

"Did anybody stick a pin into Philip Massel?"

No reply.

Here was something entirely beyond Miss Tibbet's experience.

"Will the monitors keep order, please, while I take this boy to the head master!"

Philip knew that sooner or later he would burst into tears. But a great load was off his mind. He was free, he was free! For one moment of dizzy elation a pang of that emotion struck him which long ago made him tremble on a locker in Miss Green's room before the fateful question—"Tell me, Philip, which would you rather be, Jew or Christian?" The sheer poignancy passed, but something of his elation remained, even in the cadaverous sanctum of the head master.

Mr. Tomlinson sat ominous in his chair as he listened to Miss Tibbet's recital.

"Why did you behave in that disgraceful way, Philip Massel?"

"I—I—don't know, sir!"

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know, sir!"

"Are you sure it wasn't a pin?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Are you in pain?"

"No, sir!"

"Am I to understand that … " But Philip's shoulders were shaking. Big tears rolled down his face. He hid his face in a dirty, frayed handkerchief. He heard Mr. Tomlinson and Miss Tibbet whispering overhead.

"The heat … " said one.

"Yes, I should think … the heat. … "

"You may go home, Philip Massel!" said Mr. Tomlinson. "Tell your mother to put you to bed at once. Say I told her she must keep you quiet. Don't come to school to-morrow if your head is aching. … And never let it happen again, young man! Understand that!"

Philip withdrew. A grin mingled maliciously with his tears.

A day or two later he was standing contemplatively against the playground wall during the interval, when he observed Harry Sewelson approaching. Sewelson, though he was about a year older, was in Philip's class. He lived in a draper's shop some minutes along Doomington Road. They had had no commerce hitherto. Philip made a new friend with extreme difficulty, and though he realized that there was a quality in Sewelson, a keenness in his grey eyes, which distinguished him from the rest, there was a garlic vulgarity about him, a strongly-flavoured bluster, which, he had learned from Reb Monash, was inseparable from Roumanian Jewry.

"I say!" declared Sewelson, "I bet you I know what was the matter on Tuesday! I bet I know why you gave that shout!"

"Bet you don't!" Philip replied. He was vaguely proud of the complex of motives which had induced him to behave in so baffling a manner.

"Nobody pricked you!" Sewelson asserted.

"Right for once!" Philip agreed.

"And you weren't ill! I bet I know!"

Philip looked up curiously.

"You just wanted to!" Sewelson whispered in a somewhat melodramatic manner. "You felt you just had to. You couldn't get away. You were sick and tired!"

Philip's brown eyes looked up shyly, with a certain pleasure, with a certain distrust, into the grey eyes before him.

"You're right!" said Philip. "It wasn't my fault!"

"I say," Sewelson said, after a pause. "I say … " Then he paused again.

"Yes?" asked Philip.

"I say, what about being pals?"

Philip blushed slightly. "Let's!" he said.

They walked down the playground with linked arms.

"Oh, yes!" accepted Philip innocently. "I do think Miss Tibbet is a narky bitch!"

"Carried nem-con!" exclaimed Sewelson, proud of his elegant introduction of a foreign tongue.