Alasdair Gray - Poor Things

“But you said there were people you wanted to stay with in Paris. Maybe I can arrange that.”

“What people?”

“The midinettes and little green fairy.”

“Hoist with my own petard ha ha ha ha ha.” 22

When Wedder does not want to explain his funny words he gets out of it by using others. At that moment a waiter making the café ready for customers asked if we wanted anything and Wedder said, “Oon absongth.”

The waiter went away and brought back a little stemmed glass of what seemed water and a tumbler of more water. Wedder added drops from the tumbler to the small glass then held this up. The liquid in it turned a pretty milky green. “Meet the little green fairy!” he said and swallowed it in a gulp. Then he cried, “Oon otray!” to the waiter, folded his arms on the table top and hid his face in them. At this moment I saw a well-dressed man come out of a nearby doorway with “Hôtel de Notre-Dame” painted on the wall above it.

“Excuse me, Duncan,” I said and went inside.

The foyer was so small that a heavy mahogany desk in the middle nearly cut it in two. Folk going in or out had to squeeze round the sides. Behind the desk sat a woman who looked like Queen Victoria but younger and friendlier, a neat plump alert little woman in the black silk gown of a widow.

“Do you speak English, Madame?” I asked and, “It is me muver tongue, dear,” she answered in a London voice, “and what can I do for you?”

I told her I had a poor man outside who badly needed rest; that we had not much money and hardly any baggage, so wanted her smallest and cheapest room. She said I had come to the right shop — a cubicle here would cost only twenty francs for the first hour, to be paid in advance, with twenty for each additional hour or fraction of an hour to be paid before either party left. A cubicle had just been vacated and would be ready for use in ten or fifteen minutes — where was my gentleman friend? I said he was drinking green fairies at the café next door. She asked if he was likely to run away. I laughed and said, “No, I only wish he was!”

She laughed too and invited me to drink a cup of coffee with her while waiting. She said, “Judging by your voice you come from Manchester, and it is years since I had a heart-to-heart talk with a sensible down-to-earth English woman.”

I popped out and told Wedder this. He stared at me blearily then swallowed the second green fairy. I went back in.

She began by telling me she had once been Millicent Moon of Seven Dials and keen on the hotel trade, but London hotel regulations made life hard for beginners so she had come to Paris where new hôteliers were encouraged. In the Notre-Dame she had first occupied a very subordinate position, but became so indispensable to the manager that he married her — she was now known as Madame Cronquebil, but I should call her Millie. She had become manager herself after the Franco-Prussian war, when the Communards had suspended Cronquebil from a lamp bracket because of his international sympathies. She said she regretted his demise, but pursued her avocation with a facility and acumen which were appreciated in the correct quarters. French men were a lot easier to manage than British. The British pretended to be honest and practical but were at bottom a race of eccentrics. Only the French were sensible about the important things — did I not agree? I said, “I cannot say, Millie. What are the important things?”

“Money and love. What else is there?”

“Cruelty.”

She laughed and said that was a very English idea, but people who loved cruelty had to pay for it, which proved love and money came first. I asked what she meant? She stared and asked what I meant. I said I was afraid to tell her. At this she stopped being motherly and jolly, and asked in a low voice if a man had hurt me?

“O no Millie — nobody ever hurt me. I’m talking about worse things than that.”

I was trembling and starting to weep but she held my hands. This strengthened me so much that I told her what happened in Alexandria. And now I have the strength to tell you about it too, God, but it is so important that I will divide it from the rest of my letter with another line.

Mr. Astley and Dr. Hooker took me to a hotel where we sat among well-dressed people like ourselves at tables on a veranda chatting eating drinking and a crowd of nearly naked folk mostly children watched us all across a space where two men with whips walked up and down and at first I thought a jolly game was happening for many in the crowd were amusing folk on the veranda by bowing and praying to them and wriggling their bodies and grinning comically until someone on the veranda flung a coin or handful of coins onto the dusty ground before the veranda then one or two or a horde raced out and flung themselves down on the coins scrabbling and screaming while the audience at the tables laughed or looked disgusted or turned away then the men with whips who had stood with folded arms pretending not to see suddenly saw and rushed into the crowd flogging it apart and back which caused laughter too and Mr. Astley said remnants of the race that carved the sphinx and Dr. Hooker said that looks like a deserving case and pointed to a thin little girl blind in one eye carrying a baby with a big head who was blind in both she held it tight in one arm held the other straight out swaying the empty clutching hand from side to side mechanically as if in a trance in a trance I stood and walked to her I think the men shouted and followed I crossed the space and entered the crowd of beggars taking the purse out of my handbag to put into her hand but before I could do that someone snatched it anyway the money could never be enough she was my daughter perhaps I knelt on the ground embraced her and the baby lifted them up waded stumbled back through crippled blind children old men with running sores scrambling screaming stamping each other’s fingers to get coins from split purse I climbed onto the veranda a hotel man said you cannot bring these here and I said they are coming home with me and Mr. Astley said Mrs. Wedderburn neither the port authorities nor the captain will let you bring them onto the ship and the baby was wailing and peeing but the little girl clutched me with her other arm I am sure she knew she had found her mother but they dragged us apart YOU CAN DO NO GOOD bellowed Dr. Hooker nobody had ever cursed me insulted me like that before how could he say that to me who like all of us is good right through to the backbone I CAN DO NO GOOD? I cried hardly believing I had heard such a vile suggestion but Mr. Astley said distinctly none at all so I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth sink in.

The taste of blood sobered me. I was also surprised, because Mr. Astley did not wince or groan. He only frowned slightly, but two seconds later his face lost colour and he would have collapsed if Dr. Hooker and I had not helped him indoors and placed him on a sofa in the alcove of a lounge. Dr. Hooker ordered hot water, iodine and clean bandages, but though he has a medical certificate it was I who bathed and dressed the wound and bound it with a tourniquet bandage. I also told him I was sorry. In a sleepy voice he told me that a clean, unexpected flesh wound, however painful, was a flea bite to one who had been educated at Eton.

On the way back to the ship in a cab I sat silent and rigid, staring straight ahead while they talked. Dr. Hooker said now I knew the great task which lay ahead of the Anglo-Saxon races, and also why Our Father in Heaven had created an afterlife to counteract the evils of life on earth. At the same time (he said) I should not exaggerate the evil of what we had seen. The open sores et cetera were a source of income to those who flaunted them, and most beggars were happier than folk who lived by honest toil. The girl and baby were accustomed to their state, it was not misery in our sense of the word — they were certainly happier and freer in Egypt than they would be in a civilized country. He admired how completely I had recovered from my first reaction to a terrible surprise, but was not sorry to have administered that surprise — from now on I would think like a woman, not like a child. Mr. Astley said my pity was natural and good if confined to the unfortunate of my own class, but if acted on promiscuously it would prolong the misery of many who would be better dead. I had just seen a working model of nearly every civilized nation. The people on the veranda were the owners and rulers — their inherited intelligence and wealth set them above everyone else. The crowd of beggars represented the jealous and incompetent majority, who were kept in their place by the whips of those on the ground between: the latter represented policemen and functionaries who keep society as it is. And while they spoke I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.