Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 62

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It was with his eyes wide open, and with a reluctance amounting to dread, that Albert Baker slowly surrendered to the passion that was to change his whole life. «Am I mad?» he asked. He addressed this inquiry, at the end of a long letter, to a certain Big Brother Frank, who gave candid advice in the Heart Correspondence Column of the popular Tails Up Weekly. They printed his letter in full.

Dear Sir,

Excuse my writing to you, but you say write your difficulties. I am in a difficulty, and cannot ask anyone else, they will say I am mad. I am in love. Only the young lady is not like others. She is different.

Have you been along Oxford Street at eight in the morning? I have to go every morning, that is where I work. In the shop windows you can see the young men carrying in the artificial young ladies they have to dress for the day. All the way along you can see them, like the old master picture of the Romans and the stolen women, only not so fat. Some struggle, some have their arms round the young men's necks but are looking out of the window. She does not struggle or look out of the window. She is one of those young ladies and I am one of the young men.

Surely it is not much difference from falling in love with a film star. I have been in London on this job four years, no one to really talk to. She seems to know everything I try to say. She has those very long blue eyes, thinking about the Riveera, but very kind.

After all, what do you really want with a girl if not higher things? It isn't only the Riveera, either, but I look after her every way, and you would really think she knew. Ordinary girls don't know, take it from me.

I take her in and keep well in front of her till she is full-dressed, no one shall write to the papers about her. Anyway, what is it they make all the fuss about — nothing. I am not mad, she is what I want, not everybody wants a lot of chatter or a family. You want someone to understand you, so you can be happy. I would look after her. But they cost ?30, you might as well cry for the moon. Besides, if I got ?30, they would say to me, you are mad. Or immoral purposes. It is not like that.

In the shop they heard me speak to her and are ribbing me all the time. I shall know what to do if I know what I am. My plans are made. Please tell me Big Brother if you think they are right. Am I mad?

Yours truly,

Albert Baker

Big Brother Frank's reply was printed below. «Take cold baths and plenty of open air exercise,» said this amiable adviser. «Change your occupation. If you find yourself unable to put aside this degraded and perverse attachment, by all means consult a reliable psychiatrist, and if necessary enter an institution for treatment.»

«So I'm crazy,» said Albert, when the paper was delivered on Friday morning. «All right, then. My plans are made.» There was a touch of braggadocio in this speech. Albert's only plan was to keep quiet and see what he could do.

At half-past seven in the morning there is only one thing a shop assistant can do; that is, hurry off to work as fast as he may, especially if he has to walk from Paddington. To be crazy is one thing; to be late at Rudd & Agnew Ltd. is quite another; Albert was not as mad as all that.

So he started out from his lodgings with his mouth open and his eyes wide. «If I'm late,» said he, «they're bound to get hold of her. They'll bend her over. They'll do anything. I must hurry.»

«I'll be in time,» said Albert to Eva, speaking across the desolate glory of the new day's sunlight, the sunlight, that is, of the day on which he was definitely crazy, and anything was possible; the sunlight in which he and she were utterly and terribly alone. «I wouldn't let you down.»

Unfortunately, Albert now abandoned himself to a dream, the dream of his every morning rush toward Rudd & Agnew's. This was of entering first upon the empty salon, lifting the dust-sheet. «Wake up,» he would say. «Is it all right? Put your arms round my neck. Helpless, aren't you? Here's your brassiere. Here's your things.» (The models at Rudd & Agnew's were life-like to a degree, perfect in almost every particular.) «Come on,» Albert would say. «Nobody can see you. Hurry up, and we'll have a minute before they come in. What did you dream about? Did you dream about the house?»

In abandoning himself to this rehearsal, Albert unconsciously fell into his normal pace. Awakening, he found himself in the glazed brick employee's entrance, devoured by the dry smell of big shops, facing a time clock that stood at three minutes past eight. «They'll be here,» he said.

He fled through the catacombs below, into the main shop, downstairs, upstairs, over an interior bridge. From the gallery on the other side he could look down into the long aisles behind the principal windows. Like laden ants in a disturbed ant-hill, the shop-men ran to and fro with their still, pale burdens. Albert could see the daily joke pass, from the lips of one to the eyes of another, wherever their paths crossed, as they carried their waxen Circassians, these proud, long-suffering, far-eyed, enchanted princesses, out of their mad mysterious night to their odious toilettes, to make them ready for the long slave-market of the day. There was a slap, and a guffaw.

«Here, none of that,» said the shopwalker, himself unable to restrain a scurvy grin at what Clarkie was doing.

But, rounding the gallery, Albert could see three or four gathered in the corner where Eva lay, where he put her to sleep properly, after they had all gone at night. They were out of sight of the shopwalker. They were bending over. Miller's hateful voice sounded out of the middle of the group. «Oh, my God!» cried Albert. «They've got her.»

He went down the stairs as one flies downstairs in a nightmare, heedless of the steps, round the satins, into the French models. «Living statue, number three,» he heard Miller say. «Albert's 'oneymoon, or —» His hands dived out before him, without waiting to be told; his fingers were on the back of Miller's neck. They slipped on the brilliantine. He drove his nails in.

Next moment, Miller was up, facing him. «You think you can do that to me?» said Miller. «You poor loony!» There was a crack, shatteringly loud; Miller had struck him open-handed on the cheek.

«You leave her alone,» said Albert, «or by heaven I'll be the death of you.»

«What in the world is this?» cried the shopwalker, hurrying up.

«Stuck his nails in the back of my neck, that's what,» said Miller, truculent, standing up for his rights, justified. «I reckon I'm bleeding.»

Albert's lower lip was jerking, as if something quite independent of himself had got inside it. «He had hold of her,» he said at last.

They all looked down at Eva, naked, her eyes staring out far beyond her shame, like a lion's eyes staring past the bars and the crowd. Albert bent down, and pressed her into a more seemly position. She ignored him. Properly let down, angry, she ignored him.

«What if he had got hold of her?» said the shopwalker. «You think Rudd & Agnew's waits for you to come in any time and fix the windows?»

«I'm sorry sir,» said Albert.

«I shall have to make a report on you,» said the shopwalker. «Get on with your work.»

Albert was left alone with Eva. «If they give me the sack,» he murmured, «who'll look after you? Don't be hard, Eva. I couldn't help it. And I had something to tell you. Don't you want to know what it is? You do? Really? Well, listen —»

Eva had given him an unmistakable look of understanding and forgiveness. It raised Albert to a precarious exaltation. Twice he actually risked slipping out into the entrance, where he could catch the side-long glance from her eyes. It seemed to him impossible he could get the sack.

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