The Horses' Mouth, page 7
I was laughing at Sara’s expression when she used to look at one of my pictures and try to find out why I’d taken such a lot of trouble to make that nasty mess. When three flat-face cads under the dog’s lamppost at Ellam Street corner turned their dead cod-eyes and packet cigarettes towards me. Their faces said, ‘Look at the old fool, he’s drunk. Shall we push him down the gutter or isn’t he worth it?’
I put out my tongue at them and dodged round the corner. I was still laughing but it was a different laugh. And I said, I mustn’t want to cut out the tripes of such as the Ellam Street corner boys; it’s not their fault that they lack the spirit of prophecy and art. I am upset, in fact; only because I can’t hit them all on the neddy.
Just then I saw the telephone box and went in to try button B. And I thought: what a game to ring up old Hickson again. I rang him up, and he answered before I’d finished speaking his name. A big surprise. So I told him I was the Home Secretary. Put a ball of paper in my mouth. To give the official tone. Told him I had instructed Scotland Yard to set inquiries in motion relative to certain dealings in the matter of the artistic productions of the late Gulley Jimson. The late was a good idea. After all, you wouldn’t expect one of these high officials to know anything about art or artists. He would be acting on a report.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Hickson, and I did the piece again.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Hickson, ‘are you referring to works which I bought after the Exhibition of 1921, or the small unfinished canvases acquired from Mrs. Monday in 1926,’ and he spoke so humbly and politely he might have been a contractor with a battleship to sell. And I thought, Could he really be taken in? For of course, all this telephoning to old Hickson was a bit of a game. He nearly always spotted me, even if he pretended not to. And then he would try to get in a nasty one, on the side. Like telling me to warn myself against being a nuisance. And I would try to give the old man a prod or two, to keep him thinking. After all, he had got those pictures pretty cheap.
But this time he really seemed to be taken in. And I thought it must be the newspaper. Perhaps the Home Secretary really has adenoids; and these big bugs are always on the telephone to someone or other, especially millionaires. So I went on to say that the whole of his transactions re Mr. Gulley Jimson’s artistic output was under the gravest consideration by my technical advisers who took the most serious view of the legal anomalies involved by and for the same. I was prepared, I said, to allow for the time-factor, but I was led to think that according to my legal department, and the appropriate acts, there was at least a prima facie case——
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Hickson. The paper was too big and made me so heehaw that the old man couldn’t catch my words, and said, ‘I beg your pardon’ every minute.
So we went on for some time. And Hickson even asked me to hold the line while he found a letter from Sara which he wanted to read to me.
And I was just putting my hand over the receiver in case he came back too soon and heard me laughing, when there was a tap on the glass. Made me jump a foot. And when I opened, a young chap I didn’t know pulled me out by the arm and said, ‘They’re after you. Plain clothes cop. Been asking down at the Feathers if you had been using their box. Alfred sent me to look for you.’
I didn’t stop to argue. I got out and ran for it. I saw now why Hickson had been so sweet and reasonable and deaf for the last half hour. Been on to the local police station to look round the telephones. Probably sent out the butler to the street phone.
What surprised me, my legs were so shaky. Kept on trembling so I could hardly run. And my head was buzzing round. Why, I said, I’m not upset or anything. I’m not angry with Hickson. Or am I? Funny thing if a chap can get in a state without knowing it. And I was half-way along Greenbank, puffing like a steam ear, when I thought: Why you damned old fool, you’re running right into jug. That’s just where they’ll come for you.
And when I stopped I felt so queer I had to lean against the wall. Heart doing a hanged man’s jig. Knees shaking like an old horse at the knackers. Cheeks jumping up and down all by themselves.
Anybody would have thought I was frightened to death. Funny, I thought, if a chap’s body can be frightened and he not able to stop it. I don’t care a blast for anybody. Let ‘em jug me if they like. Let ‘em put me away for five years—that will about finish me. It’s only what I’ve got to expect. I’m ready for anything. But my face isn’t. It’ll give me away to the first copper. He’ll take me up even if he doesn’t know who I am. Loitering with a face. And I sat down on a garden wall to give my insides a rest.
Surrey all in one blaze like a forest fire. Great clouds of dirty yellow smoke rolling up. Nine carat gold. Sky water-green to lettuce-green. A few top clouds, yellow and solid as lemons. River disappeared out of its hole. Just a gap full of the same fire, the same smoky gold, the same green. Far bank like a magic island floating in the green. Rheumatic old willows trembling and wheezing together like a lot of old men, much alarmed at the turn things were taking, but afraid to say so out loud.
I could do that, I thought. Those round clouds and the island in the sky, heavy as new melted lead. But what’s the good of thinking about it? They’ve got me. For I saw that they had got me. And I began to feel better. That’s that, I thought. They’ve got me. Here, I said to myself, that’s all about it. Who are you to make all this fuss about yourself? Things are moving, that’s all.
‘Hullo,’ young Franklin who drives the grocery van, still in his apron.
‘Hello, Frank.’
‘What’s up? You look bad.’
‘The police are after me.’
‘What have you been doing?’
‘Telephoning.’
‘I should think you’ll get about two years. And serve you about right,’ said young Franklin, getting angry as if he were fighting somebody. ‘You’ve asked for it.’
‘That’s it, Frank. How’s the neck?’
Frank was having trouble with boils. He had a plaster on his neck and was carrying his head all on one side. I like Franklin. He’s about nineteen, and is just getting his first real worries. The girls he fancies don’t fancy him; the ones he fancied last year and doesn’t fancy any more are lying in wait for him with kisses and hatchets. Made a bit on the pools and lost a lot on the dogs. And his best friend did him out of a good job, because he wanted to get married. Three years ago he was a happy corner boy, living like a hog in his dirty little mind. Now he’s been stabbed alive. He’s seeing things. The old woman of the world has got him. Old mother necessity.
She cuts his heart out at his side
To make it feel both cold and heat.
He has a long old pale face like most boys of his age round Greenbank until they grow up and fatten up and give up.
‘Neck,’ he said, ‘what’s wrong with it?’ Getting up another little fight with somebody invisible. ‘It isn’t necks.’
‘Well, how’s the revolution?’
‘Revolution.’ He spat on the kerb. ‘That chestnut. Are you trying to be funny, or is it a joke?’
‘Seen Walter?’
‘I suppose he’s at home.’
‘If he’s at home, it’s no good asking for him. Is it?’
‘Not much.’
A small boy came running along crying so hard that you expected him to turn himself inside out every sob. And when he came into the lamplight you could see he’d cried himself silly; his face was so blackened and swollen that you couldn’t recognize it for a face.
‘Beh-weh-heh,’ he said.
Then he saw us and we looked at him; and he was surprised to find himself under observation. He pulled his face into a face shape, as quick as lightning, and went off without letting out another sound, so quietly and quickly I didn’t know which way he’d gone.
‘Young Dobson,’ said Franklin, ‘been catching it from his ma.’
‘What for?’
‘She married again. Got another kid and it’s a bit queer in the head. So she wallops young Johnny. She’ll murder him some day.’
‘Why doesn’t somebody do something about it?’
‘Why don’t they do something about anything—about Hitler?’ said young Franklin.
The clouds had turned into old mahogany, heavy and solid. The fire underneath had burnt out—nothing left but a yellow streak like a gas flame seen through a kitchen blind. Cabbage-green sky with one star coming through like tinsel behind gauze. And over on the East the blue rising as thick as a forest.
‘Coming?’ said Franklin, who doesn’t like to be alone. And we went along by Greenbank, into Pear-tree Lane, where Walter Ollier lives. Frank rattled the gate to give him the sign. The door opened, and we heard Mrs. Walter screaming at him that if he went out, he needn’t come back. She didn’t want to see him again, so long as she lived. As Walter came down the path, she put her face out of the door and said it all again, so that we could hear.
But we’d heard it all before. Mrs. Ollier was a woman who didn’t like Ollier to go out in the evening, or come back in the morning, or read a newspaper; or to do anything at all. She herself didn’t do anything at all except open tins and smoke cigarettes, and she didn’t like anybody else to do more. She wasn’t on speaking terms with anyone in the world except Walter, and she always abused him. But then, young Franklin said, ‘What would you do if you were a woman of that age without no ideas about nothing, no children, and nothing to do but open tins and smoke cigarettes? But what’s the good of talking, nobody’s going to do anything about it, or anything else either.’
‘A bit nervous tonight,’ said Ollier, apologizing for giving us some embarrassment.
‘Ya,’ said Frank.
‘How’s the boil, Frank?’
‘Boil. What boil?’
‘I thought it was a boil you had.’ ‘Had. Have. What of it? It’s not the first, is it, I’ve always got one, if I haven’t got two.’
‘Been to the doctor?’
‘Doctor? You can have doctors. What do they know? What did they do for your rupture?’
‘Well, they say I’m an exceptional case.’
‘So am I. That’s what they always say. That’s what you’ll die of when your guts get another crick in them. That’s what my ma died of. She was an exceptional case. Nobody’s never seen anything like it before. Ya. Doctors.’
‘It’s a nice evening,’ said Walter.
‘You can have it, Walter. And keep it for an exceptional case.’
But I felt so old I wondered how my legs kept hanging on to my body. And I couldn’t even think of what to do with the blank canvas. My eyes were dead as cod’s and my ears only heard noises.
An aged shadow, soon he Jades,
Wandering around an earthly cot,
Full filled all with gems and gold
Which he by industry had got.
And these are the gems of the human soul,
The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,
The countless gold of the aching heart,
The martyr’s groan and the lover’s sigh.
Well, I thought, I’ve filled a lot of canvases in my time. Quite enough for any man. It’s time I was done for.
And I remembered my father in the little Normandy farm where we went to live, or starve, because starving was cheaper in the Pas de Calais. Painting still more girls in gardens. And a whole room full of them inside. He wasn’t going to be beaten by the wicked world and modern art. How my mother kept him in paint and canvas I don’t know. But she did it even when we hadn’t got shoes to wear. Art came first. Even before the children. But then, it was the art she’d been brought up to. It wasn’t modern art. It was real art, beautiful and moral art, which is the same thing as what you’ve been brought up to. And papa was part of her religion.
The proof was that she gave up all for him. She was a belle of the season when she fell in love with papa’s blue eyes and little golden beard, and velvet coat; with a real artist, who not only loved the good and the beautiful, but painted them. Her family was shocked. But she had all the will of a beauty. And besides, papa was making a lot of money in the fifties. She was allowed to marry him, and it was a great success. She set herself to serve art. But nobody was shocked at that. That was the right thing in those days. If mama had been a deb of these times, she would have set out to have a good time; but in the sixties, her idea was duty and devotion. Her vision was, perfect service. And when papa stopped selling pictures and she found herself with five children to feed and no money, and a husband who was already broken-hearted; when, that is, the old woman nailed her down on the rock of necessity and cut her heart open she carried on with duty and devotion. She went on worshipping real art, papa’s art, and she even went on having children, or where should I be now? She went on conducting her life in the grand classical style. Yes, that’s what it was. And what a technique when you come to think of it. Nothing like the classical. A sense of form. None of your surface tricks; but solid construction.
If I was only fifty or so, I declare I’d go back to school again, to the life class, like Renoir in his forties, and study nothing but form, form in the black and white, for two years. Just charcoal. See what my mother became in the years of misery; a great woman; a person in the grand style. Yes, by God, you need technique to make a good job of life. All you can get. You need to take necessity and make her do what you want; get your feet on her old bones and build your mansions out of her rock.
And she becomes his dwelling-place
And garden fruitful seventy fold.
Look at what Mick Angelo did in black and white or a chunk of rock.
‘I hear you’ve been on the telephone,’ said Walter.
‘Yes, and the police are after me already. Smart work. They know their job, those coppers.’
‘Does Mr. Plant know?’ said Walter. ‘We ought to be making out what you ought to say. You’ll have to have a story.’
‘Story,’ said young Franklin, quite losing his temper. ‘Bloody lot of good that would be. He’s done for himself, that’s all. He’ll get two years.’
‘That’s about it,’ I said. ‘I was warned. Serve me right. Playing the fool. I ought to get seven years.’ ‘They can’t give you all that, Mr. Jimson,’ said Walter, who was upset. ‘It wouldn’t be right. What would they give you seven years for?’
‘Being Gulley Jimson,’ I said, ‘and getting away with it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said young Franklin. ‘Not if you look at what’s happening to the Jews in Germany. Nor anybody anywhere.’ And all at once he shouted out, ‘Ahsitfeelintodye, Chawly.’
All the Greenbank boys talk Greenbank as well as English. Frank’s friend called back out of the dark, ‘Cheeroarry, ah’llbeseeinyer.’
On the Surrey side the fire was dead. Clouds all in blue and blue-and-soot. Blue-black smoke drifting up like smoky candles, and a blue sky as blue as blue spectacles with long pieces of sooty cobweb floating high up. Stars coming through like needle-points; green-blue, and neon blue; and the river pouring quietly along, as bright as ink out of a bottle. All below as flat as melted iron, on three levels: first, Greenbank Hard; then a step down to the river, and a step up to the towpath; then away to the edge of the plate. A flat earth. A few knobs of trees and houses popping up to make it flatter. And all above on one curve about ten thousand feet high. Sweet as the inside of a dish-cover. The cobwebs hung on nothing in the middle, to make it hollower.
As simple as Euclid. Grand as the field of glory. Almost a picture ready-made, I said. There’s more than a sketch there—it’s got some composition. And my fingers ached to do it. But I said to myself, time’s up. You’ve had fifty years to play with. So what are you groaning about?
We’d got to the railing next the motor factory and Barberry Creek. It was half-tide, and there were three barges cockeye on the serge-blue mud. So that they tilted on the ramp. Like stranded whales with their waists in the water. And a brazier full of orange hot coke making a hay-green high light on their snouts. Two men and a boy moving about throwing shadows fifty yards long, right to our feet. Carrying long tar brushes, like brooms.
It made my mouth water. I could have eaten those personal chunks of barges and that sweet individual flank of mud. But I thought, only another sketch and there’s a million every day. Self-indulgence. You damned old sorcerer.
Frankie and Walter were moving down the planks, and I went after them. The river came up to us and its surface dissolved away into blue-glass sky. But the stars were floating on the water you couldn’t see. Gave the plane in the middle of nothing. Barges like cliffs hanging over our heads. Little Harry the watchman smoking his pipe by the brazier. Chin in right hand, right elbow in left hand. Eyes on the air. Didn’t even nod to us. Pursuing the meditations of Harry.
Franklin called out ‘Bert,’ and one of the men gave us a shout. Came up with a little tar-brush in his hand like a whitewash brush. Bert Swope. Seventy-five or so. With his neck bent forward like a lizard. Long flat nose. White moustache, smoked like a kipper. Green eyes. A Greenbank walrus. Wears a jersey to show he’s on the boats, and moleskins to show he’s on the hard. Not to presume. Too proud and particular.
‘In a minute—in a minute. Half a mo. Sno hurry.’
Bert had just put a patch on the bottom of a dinghy. He tarred it over and stood back to have a look at it. But when he stood back he couldn’t see the whole effect. So he went to have a close look.
‘Mr. Jimson here is expecting trouble with the police,’ said Ollier.
‘Go on,’ said Bert. Bert is an old bachelor, and doesn’t believe anything he hears. ‘What is it this time?’
‘I’ve been telephoning again,’ I said.
Bert went back to the brazier to take a dip of tar and gave the patch another brush over.
