Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

He had taken rooms in Blount Street, Battersea. Actually the rooms made a small upper flat — a bed-sitting-room, kitchenette with gas cooker and bathroom — but the flat was not self-contained and was reached through the ordinary passage and staircase of the house. He paid £1 a week for the small uncontained flat on the understanding that Mrs. Tucker, the landlady, would make his bed and keep the place tidy. Beyond that David wanted to look after himself; he was going even to make his own breakfast, which moved Mrs. Tucker to considerable surprise.

Blount Street was not distinguished, a drab and smoky artery passing between two rows of grimy houses. On the paper-littered pavements a great many pallid children played curious, noisy games and climbed the spiked railings and sat companionably — especially the little girls — on the kerb, with their feet resting in the gutter. But it was within a mile of Battersea Park and No. 33, the Tucker house, had an extra storey which enabled David to get a glimpse of green trees and open sky beyond the fringe of smoking chimney-pots. He had take an immediate liking to Battersea Park. It was not so pretty as Hyde Park or the Green Park or Kensington Gardens, but it lay altogether nearer to his heart. There he watched the young workmen who practised running and jumping on the cinder track, and the council schoolboys who played strenuous, skilful football, and the pale and adenoidal typists who struggled after the ball on the gritty courts, wielding their rackets in a style never dreamed of at Wimbledon. There were no smart nannies and no well-dressed children frisking behind monogrammed coach-built perambulators. Peter Pan, being a nicely brought up child, would never have looked twice at Battersea Park. But David, mingling with the raw humanity relaxing there, found comfort and a powerful inspiration.

His first real inspection of the park was on that Saturday afternoon when he lunched with Bebbington. David’s performance at the election and his largely increased majority had impressed Bebbington, for Bebbington was that kind of man, always eager to cultivate the right people, to attach himself to success — which explained why Bebbington had come forward with Nugent to introduce David to the House. Later Bebbington strolled up.

“Going out of town this week-end?”

“No,” David answered.

“I had made arrangements,” Bebbington continued impressively, studying the effect sideways. “A house party at Larchwood Park — you know, Lady Outram’s place — but at the last minute I’ve got landed to speak at the Democratic Union on Sunday evening. Beastly, isn’t it? How I loathe the week-end in town! Lunch with me on Saturday if you’ve nothing better to do.”

“Very well,” David agreed, after a second’s hesitation. He did not care much for Bebbington but it seemed boorish to refuse.

They lunched in the green and gold restaurant of the Adalia at a window table with a glorious view of the river. It was immediately clear that in this famous and exclusive place Bebbington knew everybody. And a great many people knew Bebbington. Conscious of the eyes directed towards his erect yet supple figure, Bebbington was pleasant to David in a patronising style, explaining the ropes, whom to run with and whom to avoid. But mainly he talked about himself.

“It was a toss up with me, really,” he remarked, “whether to decorate the F.O. or go labour, I’m ambitious, you know. But I think I’ve been wise. Don’t you think there’s more scope with the party?”

“What kind of scope?” David asked bluntly.

Bebbington raised his eyebrows slightly and looked away as though the question were not in the best of taste.

“Aren’t we all?” he murmured gently.

This time it was David who looked away. Already Bebbington nauseated him with his vanity, his self-seeking, his steely, unwavering egoism. He let his gaze wander round the restaurant, noting the swift service, the flowers, iced wine, rich food and elegant women. The women especially — they blossomed in this warm perfumed air like exotic flowers. They were not like the women of the Terraces, with calloused hands and faces puckered by the eternal struggle to live. They wore costly furs, pearls, precious stones. Their finger nails were crimson, as if delicately dipped in blood. They ate caviar from Russia, pâtè from Strasbourg, early strawberries forced under glass and carried by aeroplane from Southern France. At an adjoining table a young and pretty woman sat with an old man. He was fat, hook-nosed, bald. His pendulous cheeks shone with gross living; his paunch, protruding against the table, was obscene. She languished towards him. An enormous diamond, large as a bean, was on her forefinger. He ordered a magnum of champagne, explaining that they always put the best wine in the magnums. Though he wanted only a glass he always demanded a magnum. When presently his bill was brought, presented with a genuflection before him, David saw six pounds placed by his fat hand upon the plate. They had trifled with food and drink, these two, for a bare half-hour, and the cost would have kept a family in the Terraces for a month.

A sense of unreality came over David. It was not, it could not be true, this enormity of injustice. A social order which permitted such inequality was surely rotten to the core.

He was very silent for the rest of the meal, and his appetite was gone. He remembered the days of his boyhood, of the strike, when he had gone to the fields and eaten a raw turnip to stave the pangs of hunger. His spirit revolted at this pandering luxury; he breathed with relief when at last he got away. It felt like getting out of a hothouse, where deadly and voluptuous odours intoxicated the senses and destroyed the soul. Striding back home to his lodgings, it was then that Battersea Park seemed open and undefiled.

The reaction to that inaugural luncheon with Bebbington was an almost passionate strengthening of his resolution to live simply. He had come across a strange book: The Life of the Curé d’Ars . The curé was a religious, naturally, a simple village priest in a country district of France, but the austerity of his life and the bare frugality of his diet deeply impressed David. After the wallowing he had witnessed at the Adalia, David felt a new respect for the simple man of Ars whose single daily meal was made up of two cold potatoes washed down with a glass of water from the well.

Mrs. Tucker was distressed by David’s intentions upon the Spartan life. She was an elderly voluble Irishwoman — her maiden name she proudly declared to have been Shanahan! — with green eyes and a freckled face and fiery red hair. Her husband was a collector for the Gas Company and she had two grown-up unmarried sons clerking in the City. She had none of the natural indolence of her race, her fiery hair precluded that, and she was used, in her own phrase, to arranging the men. David’s refusal to allow her to cook breakfast and supper for him struck at the roots of the Shanahan pride and set her talking freely. She was a great talker, Nora Shanahan that was, and her talking brought mortifying results.

On the last Saturday afternoon of January David went shopping in Bull Street, which was a main thoroughfare just round the corner from Blount Street. He often bought fruit in Bull Street or biscuits or a piece of cheese — there were shops in Bull Street that were both cheap and good. But this afternoon David bought himself a frying-pan. For a long time he had coveted a frying-pan as being simple, and quick in the mornings, and not gaudy then or any other time. And now he had the frying-pan. The girl in the ironmongery found the frying-pan an awkward article to wrap up and after splitting several newspapers and causing David and herself a good deal of amusement she gave over the attempt and asked David if he would take it like that. So David took the new and naked pan and carried it unashamedly to 33 Blount Street.