Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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At six o’clock Hazzard took down the violin and bow, and wrapping them in a piece of black cloth such as working tailors use, put on his hat, locked his door and descended the stairs.

Ruth Avery, idle at her window, heard him go down the stairs, and leaning out saw him appear in Roper’s Row. Already she had come to associate the hour of six with the emerging of that little black limping figure into the passage below. There were the evenings when he carried that black affair under his arm, and the evenings when he wore an overcoat and a white scarf. She supposed that the overcoat concealed something, which it did, a second-hand dress suit bought at a second-hand clothes shop in Red Lion Street. Challenged to imagine what the piece of black cloth might hide, she remembered the violin that she had seen hanging on the wall, and so allowed herself to wonder whether he gave a part of his evenings to playing in some orchestra.

Roper’s Row had no roadway. It was a broad, paved passage lined with shabby little shops that sold fruit and groceries, and fish, and old clocks and prints and oddments, and newspapers, stationery, and second-hand books. At six o’clock it was full of children playing and shouting, and getting in the way of their elders, but Hazzard took no notice of these youngsters. Shouting children roused in him unhappy memories. He walked fast, keeping his eyes upon a distant greenness that were the trees in Gray’s Inn, for Roper’s Row was fortunate in having an open space and trees both east and west of it. The planes of Gray’s Inn balanced the plane trees of Red Lion Square.

Hazzard varied his route. Sometimes he used the Clerkenwell Road; on other evenings he followed Gray’s Inn Road, and working his way across to Myddelton Square, turned down into St. John Street. In St. John Street stood a public house, “Bunch of Grapes,” and Hazzard, entering by a side door painted in brown to imitate grained wood, and walking along a dark passage, emerged into a big bare room behind the bar. Here, on a little raised platform, he joined a red-faced man with a banjo, and a hunch-backed little fellow who played the flute. The three of them formed the “Bunch of Grapes” orchestra, hired by an enterprising proprietor for the benefit of his clients.

The banjoist was in charge. He had a succulent, red face, and a voice that rolled oleaginously from under a fair, drooping moustache. He sang music-hall songs, and sentimental songs, and dirty ditties when the room and the audience had grown warm and well oiled. He always led off with three taps of the right foot, a clearing of the throat, and a “Now then—gentlemen.” The flutist was never seen to smile. He sat there rather like a little wizened monkey, blowing at his flute with an air of dark melancholy. Hazzard, with the smell of beer and sawdust and hot humanity in his nostrils, and his violin tucked under his chin, observed life with a kind of ironic gravity. The banjoist’s name was Bangs; he had glutinous movements, an eternal smile, and an exuberant good humour. He was very popular with the men and the women who sat at the wooden tables covered with American cloth. Always he was addressed as Mr. Bangs.

“Tell us a tale, Mr. Bangs.”

And Mr. Bangs would tell a tale, pulling the ends of his big and drooping moustache, and winking one blue eye, and striking occasional and dramatic or suggestive notes on the banjo. He had an arch way of plucking at the strings when producing an innuendo.

“That’s where they pulled down the blind”—or “So—I ordered a bathin’ machine—for two.”

The laughter in the room was like a hot breath laden with alcohol. Hazzard would sit with his violin across his knees and watch those gargoyle faces. Little Lardner the flutist would close his eyes and rock gently on his chair. He appeared to withdraw himself into abstracted meditation; but at the end of one of Mr. Bangs’s stories, and in the midst of the splurge of laughter, he would come to himself with a hissing sound, a breath drawn in sharply through closed teeth.

“Silly swine——”

Sometimes there was dancing. A man and a woman would get up and face each other, and looking each other in the eyes with a kind of smeary and set smile, go through movements that were like Bangs’s voice, glutinous and strangely deliberate. To Hazzard they suggested people trying to move their feet in a medium that had the consistency of treacle.

For his share in the evening’s entertainment he received half a crown and a glass of beer. He would return to Roper’s Row, wash out his mouth, put his head in cold water, and sit down to read till midnight.

Other evenings that were more civic and decorous took him to Dando’s Hotel in Fleet Street, and at Dando’s Hazzard handed round tomato soup, roast and vegetables, apple tart and custard, to the middle classes instead of providing music for the masses. Dando’s was much used by clubs and fraternities for their weekly, monthly, or yearly dinners. They were very hearty occasions, with much oratory, and Hazzard, who had cultivated an ascetic stomach, used to wonder how such well-fleshed people could manage to eat so much. Also, having a rather fantastic fancy, he would see in the diners so many rounds of beef or roast legs of mutton dressed up in white collars. But he was kept very busy on such evenings. It was “Waiter” here—and “Waiter” there, and the room was badly ventilated. He sweated. Often he would go back to Roper’s Row with a wet shirt and an aching head, but with a few shillings in his pocket.

A fellow “occasional” at Dando’s, who was a packer of books during the day, had put Christopher up to the happy method of extracting tips.

“Don’t be in a ’urry, my lad. Wait till they’re warm. If they’re whiskyish, wait till the whisky’s got ’em. Then—you go and lean over confidential like and whisper, ‘ ’Ope I’ve looked after you to your satisfaction, sir.’ ”

Hazzard had a purpose and a passion that were stronger than mere superficial pride. He would bend and utter those words, “I hope I have looked after you, sir, to your satisfaction.” In nine cases out of ten the tip was produced, and Hazzard would pocket it with a little ironic and grave smile. Probably no diner-out ever suspected him of irony, or of being what he was or what he would be.