The Other Side of a Frontier, page 9
Crowds or occasions frightened Peacock. They engaged him, at first sight, in the fundamental battle of his life: the struggle against nakedness, the panic of grabbing for clothes and becoming someone. An acquaintance in a Scottish firm was standing near the door of the packed room as Peacock went in.
‘Hullo, laddie,’ Peacock said, fitting himself out with a Scottish accent as he went into the crowded, chocolate-coloured buffet.
‘What’s to do?’ he said, passing on to a Yorkshireman.
‘Are you well now?’ he said in his Irish voice. And, gaining confidence, ‘Whatcha cock!’ to a man up from London, until he was shaking hands in the crowd with the President himself, who was leaning on a stick and had his foot in plaster.
‘I hope this is not serious, sir,’ said Peacock in his best southern English, nodding at the foot.
‘Bloody serious,’ said the President, sticking out his peppery beard. ‘I caught my foot in a grating. Some damn fools here think I’ve got gout.’
No one who saw Peacock in his office, in boardrooms, on committees, at meetings, knew the exhausting number of rough sketches that had to be made before the naked Peacock could become Peacock dressed for his part. Now, having spoken to several human beings, the fragments called Peacock closed up. And he had one more trick up his sleeve if he panicked again; he could drop into music-hall Negro.
Peacock got a drink at the buffet table and pushed his way to a solitary island of carpet two feet square, in the guffawing corral. He was looking at the back of the President’s neck. Almost at once the President, on the crest of a successful joke he had told, turned round with appetite.
‘Hah!’ he shouted. ‘Hah! Here’s friend Peacock again.’ Why ‘again’ thought Peacock.
The President looked Peacock over.
‘I saw your brother this afternoon,’ shouted the President. The President’s injured foot could be said to have made his voice sound like a hilarious smash. Peacock’s drink jumped and splashed his hand. The President winked at his friends.
‘Hah!’ said the President. ‘That gave our friend Peacock a scare!’
‘At the Odeon,’ explained a kinder man.
‘Is Shelmerdine Peacock your brother? The actor?’ another said, astonished, looking at Peacock from head to foot.
‘Shelmerdine Peacock was born and bred in this city,’ said the President fervently.
‘I saw him in Waste,’ someone said. And others recalled him in The Gun Runner and Doctor Zut.
Four or five men stood gazing at Peacock with admiration, waiting for him to speak.
‘Where is he now?’ said the President, stepping forward, beard first. ‘In Hollywood? Have you seen him lately?’
They all moved forward to hear about the famous man.
Peacock looked to the right – he wanted to do this properly – but there was no mirror in that direction; he looked to the left, but there was no mirror there. He lowered his head gravely and then looked up, shaking his head sorrowfully. He brought out the old reliable Negro voice.
‘The last time I saw I’il ole brudder Shel,’ he said, ‘he was being thrown out of the Orchid Room. He was calling the waiters “goatherds”.’
Peacock looked up at them all and stood, collected, assembled, whole at last, among their shouts of laughter. One man who did not laugh and who asked what the Orchid Room was, was put in his place. And in a moment a voice bawled from the door: ‘Gentlemen. Dinner is served.’ The crowd moved through two anterooms into the great hall, where, from their portraits on the wall, mayors, presidents, and justices looked down with the complacent rosiness of those who have dined and died. It was gratifying to Peacock that the President rested his arm on his shoulder for a few steps as they went into the hall.
Shel often cropped up in Peacock’s life, especially in clubs and at dinners. It was pleasing. There was always praise; there were always questions. He had seen the posters about Shel’s film during the week on his way to his office. They pleased, but they also troubled. Peacock stood at his place at table in the great hall and paused to look round, in case there was one more glance of vicarious fame to be collected. He was enjoying one of those pauses of self-possession in which, for a few seconds, he could feel the sensations Shel must feel when he stepped before the curtain to receive the applause of some great audience in London or New York. Then Peacock sat down. More than two hundred soup spoons scraped.
‘Sherry, sir,’ said the waiter.
Peacock sipped.
He meant no harm to Shel, of course. But in a city like this, with Shel appearing in a big picture, with his name fifteen feet long on the hoardings, talked about by girls in offices, the universal instinct of family disparagement was naturally tickled into life. The President might laugh and the crowd admire, but it was not always agreeable for the family to have Shel roaming loose – and often very loose – in the world. One had to assert the modesty, the anonymity of the ordinary assiduous Peacocks. One way of doing this was to add a touch or two to famous scandals: to enlarge the drunken scrimmages and add to the divorces and the breaches of contract, increase the overdoses taken by flighty girls. One was entitled to a little rake-off – an accountant’s charges – from the fame that so often annoyed. One was entitled, above all, because one loved Shel.
‘Hock, sir?’ said the waiter.
Peacock drank. Yes, he loved Shel. Peacock put down his glass, and the man opposite him spoke across the table, a man with an amused mouth, who turned his sallow face sideways so that one had the impression of being enquired into under a loose lock of black hair by one sharp, serious eye only.
‘An actor’s life is a struggle,’ the man said. Peacock recognized him: it was the man who had not laughed at his story and who had asked what the Orchid Room was, in a voice that had a sad and puncturing feeling for information sought for its own sake.
Peacock knew this kind of admirer of Shel’s and feared him. They were not content to admire, they wanted to advance into intimacy, and collect facts on behalf of some general view of life’s mysteriousness. As an accountant Peacock rejected mystery.
‘I don’t think l’il ole brudder Shel has struggled much,’ said Peacock, wagging his head from side to side carelessly.
‘I mean he has to dedicate himself,’ said the man.
Peacock looked back mistrustfully.
‘I remember some interview he gave about his school days – in this city,’ said the man. ‘It interested me. I do the books for the Hippodrome.’
Peacock stopped wagging his head from side to side. He was alert. What Shel had said about his early life had been damned tactless.
‘Shel had a good time,’ said Peacock sharply. ‘He always got his own way.’
Peacock put on his face of stone. He dared the man to say out loud, in that company, three simple English words. He dared him. The man smiled and did not say them.
‘Volnay, sir,’ said the waiter as the pheasant was brought. Peacock drank.
‘Fried-fish shop,’ Peacock said to himself as he drank. Those were the words. ‘Shel could have kept his mouth shut about that. I’m not a snob, but why mention it? Why, after they were all doing well, bring ridicule upon the family? Who not say simply: “Shop”? Why not say, if he had to, “Fishmonger”? Why mention frying? Why add: “Bankrupt fried-fish shop”?’
It was swinish, disloyal, ungrateful. Bankrupt – all right; but some of that money, Peacock said, hectoring the pheasant on his plate, paid for Shel’s years at the Dramatic school. It was unforgivable.
Peacock looked across at the man opposite, but the man had turned to talk to a neighbour. Peacock finished his glass and chatted with the man sitting to his right, but he felt like telling the whole table a few facts about dedication.
‘Dedication,’ he would have said. ‘Let us take a look at the figures. An example of Shel’s dedication in those fried-fish-shop days he is so fond of remembering to make fools of us. Saturday afternoon. Father asleep in the back room. Shel says: “Come down the High Street with me, Tom. I want to get a record.” Classical, of course. Usual swindle. If we get into the shop he won’t have the money and will try and borrow from me. “No,” I say, “I haven’t got any money.” “Well, let’s get out of this stink of lard and fish.” He wears me down. He wore us all down, the whole family. He would be sixteen, two years older than me. And so we go out and at once I know there is going to be trouble. “I saw the Devil in Cramer’s,” he says. We go down the High Street to Cramer’s – it’s a music shop – and he goes up to the girl to ask if they sell bicycle pumps or rubber heels. When the girl says no, he makes a terrible face at her and shouts out “Bah.” At Hook’s, the stationer’s, he stands at the door and calls to the girl at the cash desk: “You’ve got the Devil in here. I’ve reported it,” and slams the door. We go on to Bond’s, the grocer’s, and he pretends to be sick when he sees the bacon. Goes out. “Rehearsing,” he says. The Bonds are friends of Father’s. There is a row. Shel swears he was never anywhere near the place and goes back the following Saturday and falls flat on the floor in front of the Bond daughter, groaning: “I’ve been poisoned. I’m dying. Water! Water! Falls flat on his back…”’
‘Caught his foot in a grating, he told me, and fell,’ the man opposite was saying. ‘Isn’t that what he told you, Peacock?’
Peacock’s imaginary speech came suddenly to an end. The man was smiling as if he had heard every word.
‘Who?’ said Peacock.
‘The President,’ said the man. ‘My friend, Mr McAlister, is asking me what happened to the President. Did he fall in the street?’
Peacock collected himself quickly and to hide his nakedness became Scottish.
‘Ay, mon.’ He nodded across the table. ‘A wee bit of a tumble in the street.’
Peacock took up his glass and drank.
‘He’s a heavy man to fall,’ said the man called McAlister.
‘He carries a lot of weight,’ said his neighbour. Peacock eyed him. The impression was growing that this man knew too much, too quietly. It struck him that the man was one of those who ask what they know already, a deep unbelieving man. They have to be crushed.
‘Weight makes no difference,’ said Peacock firmly.
‘It’s weight and distance,’ said the Scotsman. ‘Look at children.’ Peacock felt a smile coming over his body from the feet upwards.
‘Weight and distance make no difference,’ Peacock repeated.
‘How can you say that?’
An enormous voice, hanging brutally on the air like a sergeant’s, suddenly shouted in the hall. It was odd to see the men in the portraits on the wall still sitting down after the voice sounded. It was the voice of the toastmaster.
‘Gen-tle-men!’ it shouted. ‘I ask you. To rise to. The toast of Her Maj-es-ty. The Queen.’
Two hundred or more accountants pushed back their chairs and stood up.
‘The Queen,’ they growled. And one or two, Peacock among them, fervently added: ‘God bless her,’ and drained his glass.
Two hundred or more accountants sat down. It was the moment Peacock loved. And he loved the Queen.
‘Port or brandy, sir?’ the waiter asked.
‘Brandy,’ said Peacock.
‘You were saying that weight and distance make no difference. How do you make that out?’ the sidelong man opposite said in a sympathetic and curious voice that came softly and lazily out.
Peacock felt the brandy burn. The question floated by, answerable if seized as it went and yet, suddenly, unanswerable for the moment. Peacock stared at the question keenly as if it were a fly that he was waiting to swat when it came round again. Ah, there it came. Now! But no, it had gone by once more. It was answerable. He knew the answer. Peacock smiled, loosely biding his time. He felt the flame of authority, of absolute knowledge burn in him.
There was a hammering at the President’s table, there was hand-clapping. The President was on his feet and his beard had begun to move up and down.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Peacock curtly across the table. The interest went out of the man’s eye.
‘Once more,’ the President’s beard was saying, and it seemed sometimes that he had two beards: ‘Honour,’ said one beard; ‘privilege,’ said the other, ‘old friends,’ said both beards together. ‘Speeches… brief… reminded of story… shortest marriage service in the world… Tennessee…’
‘Hah! Hah! Hah!’ shouted a pack of wolves, hyenas, hounds in dinner jackets.
Peacock looked across at the unbeliever who sat opposite. The interest in weight and distance had died away in his face.
‘Englishman… Irishman… Scotsman… train… Englishman said… Scotsman said… Och, says Paddy…’
‘Hah! Hah! Hah!’ from the pack.
Over the carnations in the silver-plated vases on the table, over the heads of the diners, the cigar smoke was rising sweetly and the first-level indigo shafts of it were tipping across the middle air and turning the portraits of the past masters into daydreams. Peacock gazed at it. Then a bell rang in his ear, so loudly that he looked shyly to see if anyone else had heard it. The voice of Shel was on some line of his memory, a voice richer, more insinuating than the toastmaster’s or the President’s, a voice utterly flooring.
‘Abel?’ Shel was saying. ‘Is that you, Abel? This is Cain speaking. How’s the smoke? Is it still going up straight to heaven? Not blowing about all over the place?…’
The man opposite caught Peacock’s eye for a second, as if he too had heard the voice, and then turned his head away. And just at the very moment when once more Peacock could have answered that question about the effect of weight and distance, the man opposite stood up; all the accountants stood up. Peacock was the last. There was another toast to drink. And immediately there was more hammering and another speaker. Peacock’s opportunity was lost. The man opposite had moved his chair back from the table and was sitting sideways to the table, listening, his interest in Peacock gone for good.
Peacock became lonely. Sulkily he played with matchsticks and arranged them in patterns on the tablecloth. There was a point at annual dinners when he always did this. It was at that point when one saw the function had become fixed by a flash photograph in the gloss of celebration and when everyone looked sickly and old. Eyes became hollow, temples sank, teeth loosened. Shortly the diners would be carried out in coffins. One waited restlessly for the thing to be over. Ten years of life went by and then, it seemed, there were no more speeches. There was some business talk in groups; then twos and threes left the table. Others filed off into a large chamber next door. Peacock’s neighbours got up. He, who feared occasions, feared even more their dissolution. It was like that frightening ten minutes in a theatre when the audience slowly moves out, leaving a hollow stage and row after row, always increasing, of empty seats behind them. In a panic Peacock got up. He was losing all acquaintance. He had even let the man opposite slip away, for that man was walking down the hall with some friends. Peacock hurried down his side of the long table to meet them at the bottom, and when he got there he turned and barred their way.
‘What we were talking about,’ he said. ‘It’s an art. Simply a matter of letting the breath go, relaxing the muscles. Any actor can do it. It’s the first thing they learn.’
‘I’m out of my depth,’ said the Scotsman.
‘Falling,’ said Peacock. ‘The stage fall.’ He looked at them with dignity, then he let the expression die on his face. He fell quietly full length to the floor. Before they could speak he was up on his feet.
‘My brother weighs two hundred and twenty pounds,’ he said with condescension to the man opposite. ‘The ordinary person falls and breaks an arm or a foot because he doesn’t know. It’s an art.’
His eyes conveyed that if the Peacocks had kept a fried-fish shop years ago, they had an art.
‘Simple,’ said Peacock. And down he went, thump, on the carpet again, and lying at their feet he said:
‘Painless. Nothing broken. Not a bruise. I said “an art”. Really one might call it a science. Do you see how I’m lying?’
‘What’s happened to Peacock?’ said two or three men joining the group.
‘He’s showing us the stage fall.’
‘Nothing,’ said Peacock, getting up and brushing his coat-sleeve and smoothing back his hair. ‘It is just a stage trick.’
‘I wouldn’t do it,’ said a large man, patting his stomach.
‘I’ve just been telling them – weight is nothing. Look.’ Peacock fell down and got up at once.
‘You turn. You crumple. You can go flat on your back. I mean, that is what it looks like,’ he said.
And Peacock fell.
‘Shel and I used to practise it in the bedroom. Father thought the ceiling was coming down,’ he said.
‘Good God, has Peacock passed out?’ A group standing by the fireplace in the hall called across. Peacock got up and, brushing his jacket again, walked up to them. The group he had left watched him. There was a thump.
‘He’s done it again,’ the man opposite said.
‘Once more. There he goes. Look, he’s going to show the President. He’s going after him. No, he’s missed him. The old boy has slipped out of the door.’
Peacock was staring with annoyance at the door. He looked at other groups of twos and threes.
‘What was the casualty over there?’ someone said to him as he walked past.
