ENGLAND, THEIR ENGLAND
CHAPTER XV
During the early spring months of that year Donald was very busy. He had collected enough notes about England and the English to fill fourteen large exercise-books, and he decided that it was high time to start putting them together in some sort of shape before making any more expeditions to collect new material. He would continue, naturally, in his daily round to keep his eyes open for happenings or sayings or sights which would throw further light upon the extraordinary problem in front of him, and to miss no opportunities during his spare time of adding to his notes. But he laid down a schedule of working hours and rigidly adhered to it, giving up the visits to Fleet Street, the week-end parties which cut into Fridays and Mondays and completely annexed Saturday mornings, and the afternoon visits to Museums and Galleries and other sights of London. Only the evenings were kept completely free from work. At 5 o'clock Donald shut his note-books for the day. Sometimes he spent the whole evening strolling about the streets, looking at the people and the shops and the buildings, and trying to assess the quality or qualities in each district that distinguished it from the rest, and seeking for the descriptive adjective or phrase for each. Sometimes he spent evenings in trying to find the exact line which divided one district from another, to delimit, for instance, the frontier between the Preference-Shareholder District of South Kensington and the Faded Refinement of the dwellers in Earls Court; or the boundary that divides the Zionism of West Hampstead from the Pen Club of Well Walk and Keats Grove; or the exact spot where the influence of Nude Picture Post Cards in Praed Street wanes before the empurpled major-generals of Petersburg Square.
Once Donald went to see greyhound racing, one of the latest of English sports, and one of the kindliest. For there is no tearing to pieces of a tired fox by sixty dogs, nor do the followers of the chase pursue their quarry out to sea in boats as the intrepid stag-hunters of Kent and the West of England are wont to do, thus bringing themselves within the scope of the musical petition for those in peril on the sea. Nor do greyhound racers, when horse and hound and even motor-boats have failed, polish off their animal with a machine-gun, a weapon that stag-hunters handle with all the dexterity of a Chicago gangster and with a good deal less risk of reprisals. But these followers of the nimble greyhound have one little trick in common with the more virile, danger-loving sportsmen of Kent and the western moors. For when the quarry has been captured intact, it is taken back and used again. The only real difference between the mechanical hare of the tracks and the carted deer of the moors is that there is no way of proving for certain that the mechanical hare really enjoys being hunted —which, as everyone knows, is the fact with the carted deer.
Another small piece of evidence of the kindliness of greyhound racing that Donald noticed was a specially equipped amusement park for the children, whose mothers were fully occupied in backing their fancies at the ring-side. A sand-pit, a couple of swings, a see-saw, and some rocking-horses provided occupation for the older children of three or four years of age, while the younger ones were kept happy and amused in their prams by the lovely lights of the so-called stadium, filtering most intriguingly through the smoke of fags and cheap cigars, and by the good-humoured shouting of the bookmakers, with whom their mammas were doing business, and by the clear, loud voice of the announcer, until well past 11 o'clock at night.
On another evening Donald paid a shilling to watch a professional billiards match near Leicester Square, but he found it rather dull. For one of the players never had to play a difficult stroke—each stroke in a break of 1161 was so easy that Donald, whose highest break was 27, made in the hospital in Edinburgh, was quite confident that he could have made it—and the other player had such amazing good luck that after two or three ordinary strokes the balls happened to run together in a heap beside one of the cushions, and he then proceeded to tap them about with such pussy-like velvetiness that he scored 1641 in no time. All the while the audience sat and smoked and stared in impenetrable silence, the professional who was out of action lay back on an uncomfortable chair and gazed at the ceiling, while the only sound was the monotonous Cockney drone of the marker: "Five hundred and two, five hundred and four, five hundred and six, five hundred and eight, five hundred and ten," until Donald began to wonder if the words "five" and "hundred" existed, and if so, whether they meant anything. The break came to an end unexpectedly with a failure to pot a ball that was lying on the very edge of a pocket, a stroke that Donald could have made blindfolded and using the long rest.
But the two great functions of the winter, so far as Donald was concerned, were the dance at Lady Ormerode's house in Eaton Square, and Esmeralda's party at the Hôtel Joséphine. There were about five hundred people at Lady Ormerode's and not much space for dancing, as the room only held three hundred. But nobody minded. The house was packed. The noise of the chatter was deafening. Crowds of people danced. Crowds of people sat on the stairs and smoked cigarettes. Donald, who knew very few of his fellow-guests, leant against the wall near the foot of the main staircase and counted that at one moment the smoke of a hundred and seventeen cigarettes was ascending simultaneously, sixty-five of which were being smoked and fifty-two were unextinguished stubs, lying upon the white-painted stairs and burning neat black holes in the red carpet.
In the supper-room he met Esmeralda d'Avenant, all in black except for a pair of scarlet and paste earrings and a white gardenia upon one shoulder, superbly beautiful as ever. She was surrounded by a group of men. The moment she saw Donald come in, she cut ruthlessly through the circle and came straight across to him.
"I must have the next but two and the two after that, Donald," she cried impetuously. "I want to talk to you."
An agitated outcry of protest arose from the abandoned swains. She turned on them in a flash and smiled brilliantly. "Can't help it, darlings," she said. "I adore you all, but business is business." Donald was too paralysed to do anything. He was caught in the web of the glittering spider. The fatal kindliness of Mr. Huggins had overtaken him once more. He felt despairingly that when Esmeralda did discover, as she was bound very soon to discover, that he had no connection of any kind with Hollywood or Elstree or any other film-producing centre in the world, her annoyance would be very great. Donald felt that Esmeralda was just the sort of person who might express very great annoyance with extreme measures, even with physical violence. In the days of Sir Lancelot and the Troubadours it was considered a great compliment if a Lady condescended so far as to inflict a physical injury upon a Knight. But in these sordid days of rationalization and universal suffrage the outlook is different, and Donald was very anxious to avoid the danger of receiving, in public, a quick hook to the button from that white and exquisite, but undeniably muscular, right arm of Esmeralda.
He therefore smiled wanly and muttered something about the delight that he would experience in dancing the next but two and the two after that with her, and fled in anguish to the upper part of the house, where he found a deserted balcony looking out over the square. It was an L-shaped balcony, for it was at a corner of the house, itself a corner-house, and Donald hid himself in the furthest obscurity of the arm of the L that was invisible from the inside. He leant over the iron railing and mopped his brow and watched the traffic swirling up the cross-streets from the direction of Victoria, hooting madly as it neared the square and then skidding all over the place as it met the traffic that came hooting and swirling down the centre of the square. Donald grew quite absorbed in the sight. Over and over again an accident was only averted by inches. Cars waltzed gracefully into safety; lorries slipped sideways out of danger; pedestrians fled screaming; and the air was filled with the squeaking and grinding of brakes, the blaring of electric horns, and the shouting of angry drivers. But it was too good to last, and after twenty minutes of miracles a long, low sports car struck a stately limousine, laden with pearls and diamonds, fair and square at right angles below the water-line, just as the torpedo struck the bullion-carrying s.s. Egypt off the coast of Ushant in 1916.
The limousine rose on one side, hovered in the air, and then heeled over and sank upon the pavement. A motor-bicycle which had been taking the natural advantage of its speed and its rider's skill to pass the limousine at fifty-five miles an hour on the wrong side at a blind corner, swerved on to the pavement to avoid the mighty wreck, touched the top of it and bounced clean over it full-pitch into a coffee-stall, which was being pushed by its owner to its stance in Battersea.
The torpedoing sports car, as if aghast at its unexpected feat, backed suddenly away from its prostrate victim into a lorry and the lorry swung round into a glazier's van. The glazier's van, to judge from the Homeric crashes that immediately followed, seemed to contain most of the Alexandra Palace, and in a second the road was strewn feet deep with splintered glass, cups and saucers, ham sandwiches, sausage rolls, tyres, pieces of twisted metal, packets of cigarettes, coffee-urns, bits of wood, and a great variety of odds and ends such as tweed caps, spanners, buttons, and oil-cans, and the whole was instantly fused into one harmonious broth by a flood of petrol, oil, water, tea, and coffee.
It was an entrancing spectacle. Donald watched the motor-bicyclist emerge with a penny bun so firmly stuck in his eye that it required a pair of pincers to extract it; he saw the face of the coffee-stall keeper, who was standing in complete silence, as if his powers of language were not adequate to do justice to the situation; he listened with admiration to the lorry-driver's theories about the parentage of the young man who was driving the sports car, and to the glazier's theories about the after-life that he would allot to the lorry-driver should the Almighty give him a free hand; and finally he watched the brave souls who volunteered to dive into the sunken limousine in order to rescue the bullion, and, if possible, the passengers. It was not until the crowd, which had sprung up through the paving stones of the deserted streets, completely obscured his view that Donald realized with a gasp and a sort of clutch at his heart, that at least three-quarters of an hour had passed since he had taken refuge on the balcony, and that certainly the next dance but two and probably the next two after that were by this time over. But worse was to follow. He was no longer alone upon the balcony. At some time or other during his absorption in the drama below, other people had found his retreat, and the voices of a man and a woman were clearly audible from the other arm of the L. Nor was that all. For the first few words that came round the corner were: "You see, if we got married."
Donald's first idea had been to push his way past them and escape from the unpleasant position into which he had got himself. But at those words he shrank back again. It was surely better to eavesdrop a passionate proposal of marriage than to interrupt it. So long as he was undiscovered, the former could do no harm. Heaven only knew how many lives might not be ruined by the latter. This might be the lover's only chance to make his declaration—he might be sailing early next morning to North Borneo. This might be the psychological moment when the strains of the Blue Danube, together with the frosty full moon and Pommery 1919, had just tipped the scale against a life-time of bachelorhood. Another lover might be waiting for the next dance to try his luck with her. A seductive adventuress might even now be hanging about downstairs to try her luck with him. No. Interruption was impossible. Donald shrank back and tried to hold his breath.
"You see if we got married," went on the man's voice, "we wouldn't be so badly off. I've got three hundred of my own, and I get four hundred from the shop; that's seven hundred, and you've got two-fifty—do you think you could sting the old man for a bit more than two-fifty?"
"Might squeeze another hundred," said the girl's voice, cool, precise, steady. "Not more. He doesn't part easily."
"That's rather grim," said the man.
"Yes, and what makes it so damned grim," said the girl, "is that Father and Mother are both about a hundred and eighty, and they've got no business to hang on to four or five thousand and dish me out a grim little handful of pence."
"Yes. That is damned grim. Still it leaves us a thousand."
"A thousand doesn't go far," pointed out the girl. "You can't get a service flat under five hundred."
"The grim thing is," said the man, "that one can't possibly live anywhere else except in a service flat."
"Good God, no," replied the girl. "You can't see me grimly ordering the meals and darning your grim socks, can you?"
"Good God, no."
"Then for God's sake, be practical. Five hundred for the flat leaves five hundred for everything else."
"That's a rather grim prospect," said the man gloomily. "And I'm damned fond of you, Slick."
"And I'm damned fond of you, Crabface."
"But still, five hundred for everything else——"
"No good," she said decisively. There was a pause, then she went on, "I tell you what I'll do. I'll put it up to the centenarians that it's high time they cut themselves down a bit. They can't enjoy themselves any more, so they ought to pass it on to those who can. If they shove on another three hundred, I'll take the risk and have a shot at it, Crabface."
"Good egg," replied the gentleman.
"But anything under three hundred, nothing doing."
"That's O.K. by me, Chief."
"Right. Shall we beat it? I've got the next with Snootles."
"Right. So long, Slick. All the grimmest."
"All the grimmest, Crabface."
Donald was alone on the balcony. He went slowly down the stairs. At the foot Esmeralda was waiting with shining eyes and a radiant smile on her warm, red cupid's-bow.
"Oh, Donald," she said huskily, "you are the sweetest pet in the world. Do you know that you've won me two hundred pounds!"
Donald blinked. Esmeralda continued to look at him very much as the older soldiers of the Grande Armée must have looked at the Emperor Napoleon. Donald felt that if he had pinched her ear at that moment she would have fallen upon her colossally insured knees on the stone floor, and thus caused great agitation at Lloyd's.
Instead he murmured, "How have I done that?"
"Because I bet 'Snarks' Muggleston and Tony Spratt and 'Becher's' Boldingham that you'd cut my three dances. And they were so sure of my S.A. that they jumped at it, and so I've won all round—a lovely compliment from them, and two hundred pounds, and—" her famous smile vanished and her famous look of wistfulness succeeded it, "another slap in the eye from you." She smiled again and added, "I think you're fascinating."
Donald was just offering up a short prayer that this might be the end of the conversation, and of the whole episode, for already three or four pretty men were hovering near, waiting to pounce upon the lovely creature the moment she gave the slightest indication of having finished with her film magnate. But who should roll up at that very instant—red, rollicking, and beautifully dressed—but Mr. Huggins himself. Mr. Huggins had none of the diffidence and tact of the group of pretty men, for he committed the unheard-of atrocity of interrupting Esmeralda at a tête-à-tête with a cheery shout of:
"Esmeralda—what ho! Cameron—what ho! Huggins—what ho! As fine a looking trio as there's been seen since the bishop took the two typists to Frinton-on-Sea during Septuagesima. Keep the fun clean, girls and boys, that's all I ask. Cameron, I didn't know you knew Esmeralda,—divinest of ladies that ever played the soubrette in the musical version of Hamlet."
"Lunatic!" said Esmeralda graciously. She liked Mr. Huggins because he was not the same sort of type as "Snarks" Muggleston, and Tony Spratt and "Becher's" Boldingham. "Of course, I know Mr. Cameron. But he's cruel and hard-hearted and he won't give me a job."
"The low fiend of Hell!" shouted Mr. Huggins indignantly. "Won't give you a job? I'll give you a job myself in my factory at Waterlooville, where I have the State monopoly for the manufacture of left-foot gum-boots for men who have lost their right legs and live in marshy districts. Won't give you a job, indeed, the dirty sweep!"
"Thank you, Tommy," replied Esmeralda, "but I'd sooner have a job in Mr. Cameron's film."
Mr. Huggins, of course, had entirely forgotten all about the disinterested efforts which he had made to smooth Donald's path at Ormerode Towers, and he stared in amazement. Donald shuffled his feet and felt exceedingly uneasy. Esmeralda flouted was one thing—she seemed to like being flouted; Esmeralda deceived would be a very different affair, he felt.
Tommy Huggins shook a warning forefinger at her.
"Don't, for Heaven's sake, fall for that ancient dodge, darling," he implored. "The bogus film magnate is the oldest and most hackneyed of all the tricks. Cameron, I'm ashamed of you! Trying to seduce an innocent girl like this with your old-fashioned methods. Don't stutter at me, sir. I am shocked. If you feel you must seduce Esmeralda, if you owe it to your little old mother, or to the flag we all revere, or to the tradition of your dear old school, to seduce Esmeralda, at least use up-to-date methods. There's nothing annoys me so much as slovenly craftsmanship. Please don't stammer like that. The truth is that you've had too many easy successes and you're getting slipshod. This handsome youth, Esmeralda, has been for years the Lothario of Wolver hampton. His dark name has even extended into the outer suburbs of West Bromwich. Cave-man stuff, you know. A slap across the ear with a wet halibut, catch you by the ankle and the seat of the pants and chuck you into a passing tram-car. That's his style. And before you know where you are, he's offering you cream buns in an A.B.C."
Esmeralda's eyes twinkled. "That's all you know, Tommy."
"But I tell you Cameron's not a film man. Are you, Cameron?"
"Well, I—er——"
"There you are! What did I say? Confirms every word I've spoken. And if you want to know what his profession really is, he is Baccarat Instructor at the Mount Carmel Tabernacle in the Harrow Road."
"Thank you," said Esmeralda, and she turned her main batteries upon Donald.
"Are you a film magnate, Donald?" she asked.
"No," he replied firmly. It was high time to end all this. The group of furious hoverers had increased to nine, and they were beginning to look dangerous.
"Are you quite, quite sure?"
"Yes."
Esmeralda sighed.
Then, "Will you come to my party?" she whispered. "Next Monday at the Joséphine."
"I'm afraid I——"
"Oh, Donald, you couldn't be as cruel as all that!"
"I don't mean——"
She laid an ivory hand upon his sleeve.
"You will come?" The words were hardly audible.
"All right," said Donald sulkily.
Esmeralda smiled brilliantly and rejoined the hoverers.
"Come and have a drink," said Mr. Huggins.
"Go to hell," said Donald.
