Extravagant Strangers, page 12
‘We’d better get you home quick, Dave. Come on, let’s go down the Tube.’
He straightened up suddenly. ‘You raving bonkers or something? What do you think would happen if I went down there like this? Some nosy parker’d be sure to … Tell you what, we’d better split up. The way those coppers looked at us, let’s not take any chances.’
‘What are you on about, splitting up? I can’t leave you to make it home by yourself. Not like this.’
‘Oh, wrap up. What do you think I’ll do, pass ruddy out or something?’
‘But your back.’
‘Bugger my back. I’m not going to bleed to ruddy death. Look, I’ll catch a bus to Leytonstone and take the Central line from there, okay? One of us by himself is fine, but together we’re sure to have them staring as always.’
‘Okay, Dave, okay.’ From the set of his mouth I knew he’d made up his mind. No shifting him.
‘But I’ll wait and see you on the bus.’
‘What for? Go on, scarpa before those coppers come back.’
‘Mum will want to know what’s up if I go in alone.’
Tell her I’m seeing a bird home and I’ll be in shortly.’ He grimaced with the pain, but made an attempt to smile. ‘Better keep an eye out for me, though. Go on, hop it.’
He walked across to the bus shelter, stiffly, like those toy soldiers in the comics, and stood holding on to one of the shiny metal posts. I went and stood just inside the station entrance to watch until his bus arrived and he climbed on, going upstairs. Even after it rolled away I stayed there, stiff with fear and confused, the whole rotten evening a heavy lump in my stomach. Please God, just let him get home safe. Please. He looked so white and scary, like that time long ago when as kids we’d been messing about on the diving-board at the swimming baths and he’d slipped off and belly-landed on the water. The attendant had fished him out white and limp like a broken doll.
‘If you’re going some place you’d better hurry, mate,’ someone said behind. ‘There’s one just in.’ It was the ticket collector. I showed my ticket and rushed down the stairs to the train. Jumping on the train, I nearly lost the ticket. It fell out of my hand and landed on the edge of the platform. I picked it up and put it away in my pocket. The return half Upminster to Piccadilly Circus. That’s where we’d planned to go tonight and listen to some jazz, where we should have gone if we hadn’t changed our minds.
I sat down between a bearded student and a fat, elderly woman with a fat little boy on her lap, and closed my eyes, wishing desperately that I could open them again to find that the night hadn’t really happened and I’d only dreamed all those terrible things. But the fear and worry followed me deep inside my mind wherever I tried to hide, real as the cold sweat I could feel running down my face and neck and alongside my ribs.
‘Look, mummy, the man’s crying.’
I opened my eyes to see the little boy twisted around in his mother’s tight grip, pointing a pudgy finger close to my face, his eyes wide with surprise. With a quick, accurate movement his mother smacked his hand down, but he continued staring, his eyes swivelled around until I thought they’d pop out. He had a tiny mole near the right side of his mouth, just like Dave’s. Oh God, let him be okay. Just this once. He was always the tough one. I might even reach home to find him there ahead of me.
‘Young man, are you all right?’ The woman was speaking, pulling me back to the time and place beside her.
‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine,’ I told her, trying to avoid looking at the four eyes from the two fat heads which seemed perched recklessly one on top of the other. All along the opposite seat eyes seemed to be watching me, so I closed mine. Perspiration was running down my face and into my mouth. I wiped it with my handkerchief, smelt the rank smell and right away remembered I’d wiped my hands on it after feeling Dave’s back. I opened my eyes to see if anyone had noticed. Seeing the wide streaks nearly made me sick. I pushed it into my pocket, thinking about Dave, wanting him to be okay, to reach home safe, even ahead of me. Oh God, oh Jesus God, please, please. Oh Dave.
‘Something the matter, young man?’
I kept my eyes shut tight, not answering her. Why the hell didn’t she mind her own ruddy fat-arsed business and leave me alone? God, it was only supposed to be a bit of a giggle, just knock him about a bit and push off. If the bloody fool hadn’t got hold of Dave we’d have just given him a few and been out of it, but the bastard just wouldn’t let go. Bloody Spades. They had it coming to them. After all, our Dad hadn’t done anything to them, yet they’d jumped him and beat him up. And him always on about how they were human beings like anyone else and why shouldn’t they come here, the only reason was they wanted work and why not. And if things had been different and there was plenty of work in their countries with good pay lots of English would be rushing over there. Well, what the hell good had all that talk done him? He’d had nothing to do with the riots in Notting Hill. He was coming home from the building site in Ladbroke Grove when they jumped out of a car and beat him up. Put him in hospital for nearly three weeks, and not a ruddy policeman in sight to lend a hand.
When he came home he wouldn’t talk about it. Not to us, not to Mum. Funny thing, though, we were watching television one night and there was this Spade come on and right away our Dad got up and switched the set off. Didn’t say anything, just switched off as if he couldn’t bear the sight of that black face.
The first time we got one of them was at Brixton. We’d heard so much about them living up there, and this Saturday night we’d gone up West, having a wander around, and we saw this bus with Brixton on the front and Dave said how about it and we jumped on. There were only a few of them in the High Street but too many other people about. Perhaps as soon as it was night they disappeared into wherever they lived. We walked about for a while but it didn’t look as if anything would turn up, then out of a side street this fellow came, in a hell of a hurry, his overcoat collar turned up around his ears and hands stuck in the pockets. As he passed us we noticed the black face and glasses. We waited until he’d gone a few steps then turned and followed. He turned by that big shop with the Bon Marché sign. There wasn’t anyone else in sight so we caught up with him. As Dave punched him I tripped him up, flat on his face. He rolled over and then we saw he was old, with not a single tooth in the wide open hole of a mouth. Lying there squinting up at us, probably couldn’t see much since his glasses had fallen off. Not saying a word.
Funny thing about them. They’d either fight back, or just be there and take it, but they’d never run or shout for help, as if they didn’t expect anyone to help them anyway.
Then there was that time we’d come out of Lancaster Gate Underground and were going up Bayswater Road on the Park side when we passed this one, standing by himself as if he was waiting for somebody. Dave said let’s take him and we turned back, but the Spade must have guessed what was up because just as we reached him he pulled a knife. Must have had it in his pocket. Just flicked open the blade and stood there looking at us, nobody saying a word. So we left the stupid bugger standing there and went about our business. We couldn’t figure how he’d guessed.
This night after work Dave had said let’s go and have a little fun. We often went up West, sometimes two or three times a week, mostly Friday or Saturday nights. Better than going to the local hop or even Romford. We’d go up to Soho to the Kaleidoscope or somewhere like that, drinking coffee or Cokes and listening to jazz. Sometimes we’d meet up with some birds, mostly students, chat around with them, then catch the last train home. We caught the District Line, intending to change at Charing Cross for Piccadilly, but at Aldgate East we just got off the train, not talking about it. When the train reached the station Dave got up and I just followed him out.
Mum was always talking about the way we did things together. She said we were born with caul, or something like that. We even had the toothache and colds at the same time and our Dad used to laugh and say, one sneeze and the other wipe. But even they couldn’t really understand about us. Like the time at Infants’ school when Dave had gone out to the toilet and cut his penis with the old razor-blade he’d found, and I’d suddenly started screaming for no reason at all and they’d gone out and found Dave, standing there in the toilet not saying a word, blood over everything …
At Bow Road the fat woman and her son got off and two Spades got on, both in the stiff blue Underground uniform. One of them took the seat where the fat woman had been, the other standing near him, holding the overhead strap. I didn’t want to watch them, but they were whispering and laughing. I couldn’t help looking. The one standing was young, strong-looking, light glinting from his eyes and teeth. I wondered if the other one looked like him, the one we left lying in the road. Funny thing, I didn’t give a damn about him, or these two, but thinking of them I remembered Dave, and the cold sweat started again.
‘Man, the woman bawled.’ The Spade sitting near me was speaking, his voice clear, but sounding a bit strange, like the way Welsh people speak, as if they really want to sing.
‘So, what happened? You stopped?’
‘You kidding?’
‘Well, what?’
‘Put my hand over her mouth so the neighbours wouldn’t hear, and the bitch bit me.’
Laughter bubbled out of them.
‘Man, you’re lucky.’
‘Lucky? How come?’
‘Might have been something else.’
Again the laughter from deep inside them. Just between them. Secret. I hated those two, remembering Dave and the way that other bastard had knocked me about, I’d like to push a knife into their backs and really give them something to laugh about. The one standing looked across at me and the smile disappeared from his face as if he could read my thoughts. I could feel the other turn to look at me. Hatred for them was like a slow trembling deep inside. At the next station some passengers left and the Spades sat together opposite me. I closed my eyes so as not to have to look at them.
Lawrence Durrell
[1912–90]
Lawrence George Durrell was born in Julundur, India. His parents were colonials of Irish and English descent. Accounts of his somewhat eccentric childhood (as well as his bohemian early adulthood) can be found in affectionate detail in his zoologist brother Gerald’s autobiographical books. Educated in England at St Edmund’s College, Canterbury, Durrell’s subsequent working life was characteristically eclectic. In his own words, he ‘hymned and whored’ in London, with jobs ranging from jazz pianist and composer to automobile racer and real-estate agent. In the 1930s he began what was to be a long and close correspondence with Henry Miller. Miller’s own erotic novels greatly influenced Durrell’s work, and when a manuscript of Durrell’s failed to pass the British obscenity regulations Miller suggested that Durrell publish his now-infamous Black Book (1938) in Paris. Ironically, this work examines what Durrell calls ‘the English Death’, or the sterility of British society.
Durrell supplemented his writing with schoolteaching and employment in various diplomatic posts, both during and after the Second World War. He spent much of his life on islands in the eastern Mediterranean; by the time The Black Book was published, he had moved to the Greek island of Corfu. He served as a Foreign Service press officer during the 1940s and early 1950s in Athens, Cairo, Rhodes and Belgrade, and was a lecturer and the director of the Institute for the British Council in Cordoba, Argentina, from 1947 to 1948. In the 1950s he acted as the director of public relations for the British government in Cyprus. In 1957 he moved to Provence, France, and became a full-time writer.
Durrell was a novelist, dramatist, short-story and travel writer, translator, editor and critic; yet he considered himself to be principally a poet. His first book to be accepted by a major publisher was the collection of verse A Private Country (1943). His early poetic work blends traditional Western lyric forms with Mediterranean sensuality. These poems are included in the compilation Collected Poems, 1931–1974 (1980). Durrell the poet is often overlooked, and the work commonly regarded as his chef-d’œuvre is the fictional opus The Alexandria Quartet.
Comprising the volumes Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958) and Clea (1960), the Quartet is an experiment with structure. It uses Einstein’s space-time continuum to question our perception of reality, examining the same events from a multitude of different perspectives. Durrell frequently employed his Baroque sensibilities and a Joycean absence of plot to explore the theories of Einstein and Freud. But his flamboyant language was seen by some critics as excessive, and Durrell was often cited for his overblown metaphors and lack of subtlety.
Sappho (1959) is one of Durrell’s several verse plays. It uses classical myth, dramatic principles and blank verse to explore the contemporary notion that traditional beliefs can hinder the pursuit of knowledge. Such irony seemed to be central in Durrell’s life, for while he lived for the most part in the eastern Mediterranean, enjoying a tangential relationship with Britain, he was perfectly aware that British people made up a large part of his readership. His expatriate status greatly influenced his work and he himself openly acknowledged a ‘love-hate’ relationship with Britain.
Durrell married his first wife, Nancy Myers, in 193 5; the two divorced in 1947 and Durrell was remarried in the same year to Tyvette Cohen, whom he later divorced. He had a daughter from each union, Penelope Berengaria and Sappho-Jane respectively. In 1961 he married Claude Marie Vineenden, a writer, who died in 1967. He married his fourth wife, Ghislaine de Boysson, in 1973. Durrell lived with her in Provence – wearied by his travels and perhaps by his turbulent personal life as well – in reclusive fashion. He died in 1990.
Durrell found it difficult to take Britain’s grand conception of herself seriously. For him Britain would always be a stuffy, comically self-important country. His contempt is evident in ‘London at Night’ (1969), in which he bemoans this grubby, unsensual city that clearly holds no attraction for him: it is neither an exciting place of multicultural possibilities, as it was for Conrad, nor a crucible for investigation, as it proved to be for Orwell.
London at Night
(Walsh in Bloomsbury)
Some nights, when sleep was impossible, and he had lain awake for hours watching the yellow pools of light on the ceiling as they flickered, and listening to the growing quiet of the streets, he would get up out of his bed and stand at the window. The café opposite stayed open until three o’clock and through the steamy glass of the swing-doors he could see the groups of men and women sitting round the marble-topped tables drinking coffee; mostly tall, sallow Jews, he noticed, with long dark overcoats and rakish hats; their clothes were padded out about the shoulders to give them the appearance of physique which they did not possess. And the women, mostly Euston Road bawds, with their loud market-place voices and disease fast hollowing out their eyes and melting down their features. Across the clear sound of voices in the silent street he caught clear scraps of words, unfinished sentences which hung for a moment in the air of the darkened room, and disappeared, leaving only the ghost of meaning in his watching mind. And from this polyglot crew of ruffians and bawds, lustrous Jews who waited in the shadows of every street-corner, and loud-mouthed taxi-drivers who drank tasteless coffee as they awaited late fares, some few he selected as worthy of remembrance. He knew from habit the times of their appearance, and waited to see them come down the street and shoulder their ways into the steamy den. At eleven, for instance, a tall negress walked through the street, limping with fatigue but with a face cocked up to the sky. She hummed a song as she passed in a low, nasal voice, very melancholy but not displeasing, and, surprisingly, held a beautiful silvery-coated whippet on a lead, which followed her softly, its arched body taut and docile. Every night, as she passed, she stopped at the entrance of the café and pushed the swing-doors aside, peering around at the seated people as though seeking someone; but she never went inside, only turned back each night with a little shrug of annoyance and continued her walk. Later, shortly after two, there appeared the figures of two men, one tall and powerful, the other smaller, but sturdily made. The larger was always without a hat, and his face was small and twisted with knobs of curly hair trained back across his poll. His shoulders were large enough for him to do without a padded overcoat. His companion was dark but in a more pallid, Israelite way and carried a huge, ebony-handled stick which seemed thick enough to house the blade of a sword. They walked slowly, with a kind of nervous nonchalance, and always stayed in the café until a quarter-past-three when they both swaggered out and called a taxi to them from the cab-rank at the corner of the road. They seemed never to speak to each other.
Some nights when he found it impossible to sleep he would dress and go out for a walk in the streets, slowly treading out the deliberate sound of his feet upon the pavements, smelling the stale night smells and hearing the noises, and imagining himself in a new world – a world of which half-silence and fear were the keynotes. The stale earth in the window-boxes, sterile and exhausted, unwilling to put forth more small flowers for the dust to choke, had a sharp, rancid smell that mingled with the stale odours of basement kitchens. When he walked thus, in a land where noise was so sharp and disturbing, he found himself able to notice things and comment on them, compare and associate groups of ideas. Even if the nearer silence was unbroken there was the great purring sound of distance, the mighty pouring of blood through the arteries of the city that was never silent. He wondered how many diverse sounds, how many different causes, went to make up this giant uniform growl of silence; the gurgle of water in the underground sewers, the wailing of sirens on the river, the swishing of the late trains as they moved out on their journeys, the groan of an early cart as it crawled down through the city, the chatter of the prostitutes at the street corners, the drone of taxis, the scratching of paper as it drifted upon the pavements – all these were absorbed and became components of that blare of silence; even the small flat sound of his feet upon the pavement was absorbed into it, and made a millionth part of the activity. Sometimes he would stand quite still and strain to distinguish the separate sounds of the vast orchestra – strain until his head ached for those indistinct sirencalls, the roar of trains, but he could never distinguish anything; always a nearer sound would break down his effort, laughter from the next street, or a cry from some shuttered window.
