Читать книгу The Mulberry Empire - Philip Hensher - Страница 18

LONDON, IN MAY.

At any other place in the world, late May would customarily be termed spring, and call forth the songs of birds, and the gambolling of infant mammals, and their attendant poets to sing their praises in the approved manner. Here, in London, in the fourth decade of the last century but one, there are no birds, or only ones so very brown and grey and drooping it is as if their native colours are all washed out with the incessant rinsing which falls from the London skies, birds which make no noise but an occasional croak to clear their throats of dirt. There are no lambs for the poets to celebrate, but only the usual London dogs, lying, their limbs curled up, at every street corner, too dejected to do anything but raise their heads in mild supplication at every passing boy’s kick, too far gone in hopelessness to make any noise but a quiet moan, like the wind in a loose pane. You may be sure that the month makes no difference to them, or only in that the earth they find themselves licking ceaselessly off their pelts is dry like dust, or wet like mud. There are poets, it is true, here in London, in the fourth decade of the last century but one, and they write, it is true, about spring and lambs and birds. But to do so, I suppose, they are obliged to shut their eyes against the city they live in, and make something up.

London knows no seasons; knows nothing of spring or summer or winter. It knows nothing but two seasons: Dust, and Mud. Now, at this moment, in May, we seem to be getting towards the end of Mud. Mud settled in more than six months ago, and has shown no sign of taking its leave just yet. The streets have settled into their pristine ooze, and if there be any bedrock beneath the vast sucking mass which London is proud to call a street, no one pretends any longer to know. Anything dropped in the street is instantly swallowed by London and its mud, and is never seen again; a prayer-book, a ring, a hammer, a cloak; all fall to the ground and are forever lost, deep in the mud and slime and filth of the London street. Once a poor musician let his bassoon fall, not far from Seven Dials; the mud deprived him of his livelihood, and the family, tragically bassoonless, now must beg for their merest sufficiencies, there, outside Mrs Lirriper’s drapery shop. Once, as mothers tell their naughtier sons, a small boy let go of his mother’s hand while crossing the great swamp of Piccadilly, and, untethered, sank to the bottom of the mud, never to be seen again. Soon, it is to be hoped, the weather will improve, and Mud be succeeded by Dust, though it seems unlikely that any poet will want to sing the praises of that modern season. When that happens, everything changes; the sounds of the city alter from the obscene sucking and splash and brown drain-gurgle of one half the year, to the dry crackle and quiet thudding of the other half. Those who cannot leave the city will start to complain, not of the wet and chill ceaselessly rising around their ankles, but the dry choking heat which gets into the throat, and strangles the Londoner all day and all night.

But if it is true that London knows no seasons, that, perhaps, is because it knows only one Season. It is here, in May, that we find ourselves; here, standing with the linkboys and the cutpurses and the crossing-sweepers, each unpromising youth with the tools of his unpromising trade, standing and gawping at the slow procession unfurling before them, at this hour of early dusk in late spring. It is the height of the Season, and also, nearly, the end of it – a paradox more often stated than relished. The linkboys and cutpurses and crossing-sweepers stand just where Piccadilly turns into Park Lane, and watch the procession before them, silently or raucously calling out, according to their temperament. Up Piccadilly comes a succession of carriages, each a closed black box on wheels, shiny and locked, drawn, mostly, by two black horses, for all the world as if the cashboxes of Threadneedle Street had, with one voice, cried, ‘Enough of the City!’ and, equipped each with a pair of plate-faced footmen and a set of wheels, set off to see if what they had always heard of the West End and its Court could possibly be the case. Up Piccadilly come the melancholy cashboxes, and, at the corner, you can see, as they turn, the whinnying wheels and hooves pulling free of the mud, that each, too, contains a treasure.

The linkboys cry out, with ridicule or amazement, at what they see. At this corner, the inhabitants of each carriage lean forward, and look out. Because here, you see, at this corner, lives the Duke, the old victor of Waterloo, and everyone is curious about the Duke’s habits, and will, on passing from Piccadilly into the Park, lean forward in the hope of a brief glimpse of the great man. It is a hope which is often gratified; the Duke is a man who likes to show himself, and strolls, daily, in the Park to accept the homage of strangers. But tonight, there is nothing to be seen. If the inhabitants of the carriages sink back with a minor disappointment, their evenings indefinably clouded now in some way, we have not been disappointed; because now, with the linkboys and the cutpurses, we have caught a marvellous glimpse of a lady or two. Out of the funereal darkness of the inside of a carriage, for all the world like the glitter of a black cashbox being flung open, a glistening white face appears, bathed and almost certainly scented, a white face which allows you to dream of the white flesh, the dream of white lace and silk almost certainly hidden underneath the dark cloak, and, most marvellous of all – something which forces even the wiser cynics of the observing mob into an awed silence – the unmistakable deep glitter of diamonds, brought from the far East for no reason but to decorate these cool, lovely, clean faces. Everywhere else in the city – everywhere else in the great world, as far as the linkboys know – is mud and filth, and these white faces with their bright white light of diamonds shine like unaccustomed, unimaginable virtue.

They flash in the gaze of the street observers for one second, these costly faces, and then move on in their stately way. Where are they all going, all in the same direction? Why, they are going out, naturally, because this is the Season, and in the Season it does not do, if you are of a certain level in society, to stay at home. It is required of you to put on your least comfortable clothes, ones fitted neither for a London cold nor a London heat, and go and sit for a few hours with people you know nothing of and care nothing for, drawing what satisfaction you may from the fact that when you leave to go home, outside there may be poor people who may be prepared to gawp, who, you hope, are eaten up with envy of you; because if no one in London envies you in your party-going plight, it is hard to see why you should continue the exercise.