Vile Bodies Page 2

  “Here, I got fifteen cards.”

  “I wonder if you’ve heard this one,” said the journalist. “There was a man lived at Aberdeen, and he was terribly keen on fishing, so when he married, he married a woman with worms. That’s rich, eh? You see he was keen on fishing, see, and she had worms, see, he lived in Aberdeen. That’s a good one that is.”

  “D’you know, I think I shall go on deck for a minute. A bit stuffy in here, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t do that. The sea’s coming right over it all the time. Not feeling queer, are you?”

  “No, of course I’m not feeling queer. I only thought a little fresh air… Christ, why won’t the damn thing stop?”

  “Steady, old boy. I wouldn’t go trying to walk about, not if I were you. Much better stay just where you are. What you want’s a spot of whiskey.”

  “Not feeling ill, you know. Just stuffy.”

  “That’s all right, old boy. Trust Auntie.”

  The bridge party was not being a success.

  “Hullo, Mr. Henderson. What’s that spade?”

  “That’s the ace, that is.”

  “I can see it’s the ace. What I mean you didn’t ought to have trumped that last trick, not if you had a spade.”

  “What d’you mean, didn’t ought to have trumped it? Trumps led.”

  “No, they did not. Arthur led a spade.”

  “He led a trump, didn’t you, Arthur?”

  “Arthur led a spade.”

  “He couldn’t have led a spade because for why he put a heart on my king of spades when I thought he had the queen. He hasn’t got no spades.”

  “What d’you mean, not got no spades? I got the queen.”

  “Arthur, old man, you must be feeling queer.”

  “No, I ain’t, I tell you, just tired. You’d be tired if you’d been hit on the back same as I was… anyway I’m fed up with this game… there go the cards again.”

  This time no one troubled to pick them up. Presently Mr. Henderson said, “Funny thing, don’t know why I feel all swimmy of a sudden. Must have ate something that wasn’t quite right. You never can tell with foreign foods—all messed up like they do.”

  “Now you mention it, I don’t feel too spry myself. Damn bad ventilation on these Channel boats.”

  “That’s what it is. Ventilation. You said it.”

  “You know I’m funny. I never feel seasick, mind, but I often find going on boats doesn’t agree with me.”

  “I’m like that, too.”

  “Ventilation… a disgrace.”

  “Lord, I shall be glad when we get to Dover. Home, sweet home, eh?”

  Adam held on very tightly to the brass-bound edge of the table and felt a little better. He was not going to be sick, and that was that; not with that gargoyle of a man opposite anyway. They must be in sight of land soon.

  It was at this time, when things were at their lowest, that Mrs. Ape reappeared in the smoking-room. She stood for a second or two in the entrance balanced between swinging door and swinging doorpost; then as the ship momentarily righted herself, she strode to the bar, her feet well apart, her hands in the pockets of her tweed coat.

  “Double rum,” she said and smiled magnetically at the miserable little collection of men seated about the room. “Why, boys,” she said, “but you’re looking terrible put out over something. What’s it all about? Is it your souls that’s wrong or is it that the ship won’t keep still? Rough? ’Course it’s rough. But let me ask you this. If you’re put out this way over just an hour’s seasickness” (“Not seasick, ventilation,” said Mr. Henderson mechanically), “what are you going to be like when you make the mighty big journey that’s waiting for us all? Are you right with God?” said Mrs. Ape. “Are you prepared for death?”

  “Oh, am I not?” said Arthur. “I ’aven’t thought of nothing else for the last half-hour.”

  “Now, boys, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to sing a song together, you and me.” (“Oh, God,” said Adam.) “You may not know it, but you are. You’ll feel better for it body and soul. It’s a song of Hope. You don’t hear much about Hope these days, do you? Plenty about Faith, plenty about Charity. They’ve forgotten all about Hope. There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair. I know all about England, and I tell you straight, boys, I’ve got the goods for you. Hope’s what you want and Hope’s what I got. Here, steward, hand round these leaflets. There’s the song on the back. Now all together… sing. Five bob for you, steward, if you can shout me down. Splendid, all together, boys.”

  In a rich, very audible voice Mrs. Ape led the singing. Her arms rose, fell and fluttered with the rhythm of the song. The bar steward was hers already—inaccurate sometimes in his reading of the words, but with a sustained power in the low notes that defied competition. The journalist joined in next and Arthur set up a little hum. Soon they were all at it, singing like blazes, and it is undoubtedly true that they felt the better for it.

  Father Rothschild heard it and turned his face to the wall.

  Kitty Blackwater heard it.

  “Fanny.”

  “Well.”

  “Fanny, dear, do you hear singing?”

  “Yes, dear, thank you.”

  “Fanny, dear, I hope they aren’t holding a service. I mean, dear, it sounds so like a hymn. Do you think, possibly, we are in danger? Fanny, are we going to be wrecked?”

  “I should be neither surprised nor sorry.”

  “Darling, how can you?… We should have heard it, shouldn’t we, if we had actually hit anything?… Fanny, dear, if you like I will have a look for your sal volatile.”

  “I hardly think that would be any help, dear, since you saw it on my dressing table.”

  “I may have been mistaken.”

  “You said you saw it.”

  The Captain heard it. “All the time I been at sea,” he said, “I never could stand for missionaries.”

  “Word of six letters beginning with ZB,” said the Chief Officer, “meaning ‘used in astronomic calculation.’ ”

  “Z can’t be right,” said the Captain after a few minutes’ thought.

  The Bright Young People heard it. “So like one’s first parties,” said Miss Runcible, “being sick with other people singing.”

  Mrs. Hoop heard it. “Well,” she thought, “I’m through with theosophy after this journey. Reckon I’ll give the Catholics the once over.”

  Aft, in the second-class saloon, where the screw was doing its worst, the angels heard it. It was some time since they had given up singing.

  “Her again,” said Divine Discontent.

  Mr. Outrage alone lay happily undisturbed, his mind absorbed in lovely dream sequences of a world of little cooing voices, so caressing, so humble; and dark eyes, night-colored, the shape of almonds over painted paper screens; little golden bodies, so flexible, so firm, so surprising in the positions they assumed.

  They were still singing in the smoking-room when, in very little more than her usual time, the ship came into the harbor at Dover. Then Mrs. Ape, as was her invariable rule, took round the hat and collected nearly two pounds, not counting her own five shillings which she got back from the bar steward. “Salvation doesn’t do them the same good if they think it’s free,” was her favorite axiom.

  Two

  Have you anything to declare?”

  “Wings.”

  “Have you wore them?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “Divine Discontent gets all the smiles all the time,” complained Fortitude to Prudence. “Golly, but it’s good to be on dry land.”

  Unsteadily, but with renewed hope, the passengers had disembarked.

  Father Rothschild fluttered a diplomatic laissez-passer and disappeared in the large car that had been sent to meet him. The others were jostling one another with their luggage, trying to attract the Customs officers and longing for a cup of tea.

  “I got half a doz
en of the best stowed away,” confided the journalist. “They’re generally pretty easy after a bad crossing.” And sure enough he was soon settled in the corner of a first-class carriage (for the paper was, of course, paying his expenses) with his luggage safely chalked in the van.

  It was some time before Adam could get attended to.

  “I’ve nothing but some very old clothes and some books,” he said.

  But here he showed himself deficient in tact, for the man’s casual air disappeared in a flash.

  “Books, eh?” he said. “And what sort of books, may I ask?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  “Thank you, that’s what I mean to do. Books, indeed.”

  Adam wearily unstrapped and unlocked his suitcase.

  “Yes,” said the Customs officer menacingly, as though his worst suspicions had been confirmed, “I should just about say you had got some books.”

  One by one he took the books out and piled them on the counter. A copy of Dante excited his especial disgust.

  “French, eh?” he said. “I guessed as much, and pretty dirty, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books”—how he said it!—“in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside. That’s what he said the other day in Parliament, and I says ‘Hear, hear…’ Hullo, hullo, what’s this, may I ask?”

  Gingerly, as though it might at any moment explode, he produced and laid on the counter a large pile of typescript.

  “That’s a book, too,” said Adam. “One I’ve just written. It is my memoirs.”

  “Ho, it is, is it? Well, I’ll take that along, too, to the chief. You better come too.”

  “But I’ve got to catch the train.”

  “You come along. There’s worse things than missing trains,” he hinted darkly.

  They went together into an inner office, the walls of which were lined with contraband pornography and strange instruments, whose purpose Adam could not guess. From the next room came the shrieks and yells of poor Miss Runcible, who had been mistaken for a well-known jewel smuggler, and was being stripped to the skin by two terrific wardresses.

  “Now then, what’s this about books?” said the chief.

  With the help of a printed list (which began “Aristotle, Works of (Illustrated)”) they went through Adam’s books, laboriously, one at a time, spelling out the titles.

  Miss Runcible came through the office, working hard with lipstick and compact.

  “Adam, darling, I never saw you on the boat,” she said. “My dear, I can’t tell you the things that have been happening to me in there. The way they looked… too, too shaming. Positively surgical, my dear, and such wicked old women, just like Dowagers, my dear. As soon as I get to London I shall ring up every Cabinet Minister and all the newspapers and give them all the most shy-making details.”

  The chief was at this time engrossed in Adam’s memoirs, giving vent at intervals to a sinister chuckling sound that was partly triumphant and partly derisive, but in the main genuinely appreciative.

  “Coo, Bert,” he said. “Look at this; that’s rich, ain’t it?”

  Presently he collected the sheets, tied them together and put them on one side.

  “Well, see here,” he said. “You can take these books on architecture and the dictionary, and I don’t mind stretching a point for once and letting you have the history books, too. But this book on Economics comes under Subversive Propaganda. That you leaves behind. And this here Purgatorio doesn’t look right to me, so that stays behind, pending inquiries. But as for this autobiography, that’s just downright dirt, and we burns that straight away, see.”

  “But, good heavens, there isn’t a word in the book—you must be misinterpreting it.”

  “Not so much of it. I knows dirt when I sees it or I shouldn’t be where I am today.”

  “But do you realize that my whole livelihood depends on this book?”

  “And my livelihood depends on stopping works like this coming into the country. Now ’ook it quick if you don’t want a police court case.”

  “Adam, angel, don’t fuss or we shall miss the train.”

  Miss Runcible took his arm and led him back to the station and told him all about a lovely party that was going to happen that night.

  “Queer, who felt queer?”

  “You did, Arthur.”

  “No I never… just tired.”

  “It certainly was stuffy in there just for a bit.”

  “Wonderful how that old girl cheered things up. Got a meeting next week in the Albert Hall.”

  “Shouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t go. What do you say, Mr. Henderson?”

  “She got a troupe of angels, so she said. All dressed up in white with wings, lovely. Not a bad-looker herself, if it comes to that.”

  “What did you put in the plate, Arthur?”

  “Half-crown.”

  “So did I. Funny thing, I ain’t never give a half-crown like that before. She kind of draws it out of you, damned if she doesn’t.”

  “You won’t get away from the Albert Hall not without putting your hand in your pocket.”

  “No, but I’d like to see those angels dressed up, eh, Mr. Henderson?”

  “Fanny, surely that is Agatha Runcible, poor Viola Chasm’s daughter?”

  “I wonder Viola allows her to go about like that. If she were my daughter…”

  “Your daughter, Fanny…”

  “Kitty, that was not kind.”

  “My dear, I only meant… have you, by the way, heard of her lately?”

  “The last we heard was worse than anything, Kitty. She has left Buenos Aires. I am afraid she has severed her connection with Lady Metroland altogether. They think that she is in some kind of touring company.”

  “Darling, I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned it, but whenever I see Agatha Runcible I can’t help thinking… girls seem to know so much nowadays. We had to learn everything for ourselves, didn’t we, Fanny, and it took so long. If I’d had Agatha Runcible’s chances… Who is the young man with her?”

  “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t think, do you?… He has that self-contained look.”

  “He has very nice eyes. And he moves well.”

  “I dare say when it came to the point… Still, as I say, if I had had Agatha Runcible’s advantages…”

  “What are you looking for, darling?”

  “Why, darling, such an extraordinary thing. Here is the sal volatile next to my brushes all the time.”

  “Fanny, how awful of me, if I’d only known…”

  “I dare say there must have been another bottle you saw on the dressing table, sweetest. Perhaps the maid put it there. You never know at the Lotti, do you?”

  “Fanny, forgive me…”

  “But, dearest, what is there to forgive? After all, you did see another bottle, didn’t you, Kitty darling?”

  “Why, look, there’s Miles.”

  “Miles?”

  “Your son, darling. My nephew, you know.”

  “Miles. Do you know, Kitty, I believe it is. He never comes to see me now, the naughty boy.”

  “My dear, he looks terribly tapette.”

  “Darling, I know. It is a great grief to me. Only I try not to think about it too much—he had so little chance with poor Throbbing what he was.”

  “The sins of the fathers, Fanny…”

  Somewhere not far from Maidstone Mr. Outrage became fully conscious. Opposite him in the carriage the two detectives slept, their bowler hats jammed forwards on their foreheads, their mouths open, their huge red hands lying limply in their laps. Rain beat on the windows; the carriage was intensely cold and smelled of stale tobacco. Inside there were advertisements of horrible picturesque ruins; outside in the rain were hoardings advertising patent medicines and dog biscuits. “ ‘Every Molassine dog cake wags a tail,’ ” Mr. Outrage read, and the train
repeated over and over again, “Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gentleman Right Honorable gent…”

  Adam got into the carriage with the Younger Set. They still looked a bit queer, but they cheered up wonderfully when they heard about Miss Runcible’s outrageous treatment at the hands of the Customs officers.

  “Well,” they said. “Well! how too, too shaming, Agatha, darling,” they said. “How devastating, how unpoliceman-like, how goat-like, how sick-making, how too, too awful.” And then they began talking about Archie Schwert’s party that night.

  “Who’s Archie Schwert?” asked Adam.

  “Oh, he’s someone new since you went away. The most bogus man. Miles discovered him, and since then he’s been climbing and climbing and climbing, my dear, till he hardly knows us. He’s rather sweet, really, only too terribly common, poor darling. He lives at the Ritz, and I think that’s rather grand, don’t you?”

  “Is he giving his party there?”

  “My dear, of course not. In Edward Throbbing’s house. He’s Miles’ brother, you know, only he’s frightfully dim and political, and doesn’t know anybody. He got ill and went to Kenya or somewhere and left his perfectly sheepish house in Hertford Street, so we’ve all gone to live there. You’d better come, too. The caretakers didn’t like it a bit at first, but we gave them drinks and things, and now they’re simply thrilled to the marrow about it and spend all their time cutting out ‘bits,’ my dear, from the papers about our goings on.

  “One awful thing is we haven’t got a car. Miles broke it, Edward’s, I mean, and we simply can’t afford to get it mended, so I think we shall have to move soon. Everything’s getting rather broken up, too, and dirty, if you know what I mean. Because, you see, there aren’t any servants, only the butler and his wife, and they are always tight now. So demoralizing. Mary Mouse has been a perfect angel, and sent us great hampers of caviar and things… She’s paying for Archie’s party tonight, of course.”