Will Self - Umbrella

Getting down at Charing Cross, still sucking her pear drop, Audrey turns from the sooty black drainpipe of Nelson’s Column to be put upon by PHOSPHERINE THE REMEDY OF KINGS and PLAYER’S NAVY CUT, momentarily sandwiched between two sandwich men, and once freed engulfed by the hubbub of the afternoon crowds — clerks and shop-walkers released for their half-day dodge and jig across the road. One snappy chappie pops under the very shafts of a growler — the cabbie flicks his whip, but the three ladies behind chandeliers wrapped in muslin disdain to notice. Bloody oaf! Her father’s oath rises above the charivari as he upbraids a ragamuffin the worse for drink who cavorts about an organ-grinder. A few paces on Audrey looks back at this man’s pillbox hat, his torn and filthy scarlet tunic — he is an old soldier, who hops on an ashplant, the empty leg of his trousers flapping — but Sam Death won’t be caught napping, he weaves through the throng along the Strand, then wheels Audrey round to join a queue who are taking their turn to peer in the eyepiece of a kinetosocope plunked down beside the foyer doors of the Old Tivoli. Her head ducked into this commedia, she sees a pretty Colombine pirouette around a capering ape — Might I escape? — her gyration not smooth but jerking forward, then back, the double-exposure of the film depicting a meeting with her transparent double. The title card slots in: Miss Lottie Farquhar, Appearing Nightly in ‘Darker Delights’, Stalls Seats for a Limited Period, 5/6 d., Fully Electrified, fssschk-chk-fssschk-chk . . His paw on her again. P’raps it’d be agreeable to you if we were to take the back way? Audrey wonders what errand can it be that her father runs for Arnold Collins, his inferior — one he has always treated with amused contempt? The tip of his umbrella fingers the joins between the cobbles as they cross the corner of Covent Garden, ignoring the leather-aproned porters lounging against the empty crates, ignoring the rotten fruit underfoot and the arabs scrabbling for it — the dusk is massing in the corners of the square, lyin’ in wait . Little Dublin, he remarks casually as they cross Drury Lane. Every third store-front is boarded up with heavy planks, some scrawled with crim’ sigils , although why? There’s nuffink ’ ere to avaway . The narrow entries to the godforsaken courts are blocked off with timber bulwarks, and through a gap in one Audrey sees the limewashed ghost of a dwelling, some of the condemned tenants standing in front of it, their faces and clothing creased with dirt — they are, she understands, too weak wivunger to be dangerous. One boy her own age who lolls in a doorway wears no trousers — no pockets . . no pockets t’pick — his man-sized shirt torn up past his hips, an idiot grin slitting his potato head. The final shard of the boiled sweet snaps between Audrey’s teeth. They simper, the three little maids . . Women of the unfortunate class, Death chews this phrase over before spitting it out more coarsely: Wimminuv ve un-for-tun-ate class, they’ll sell their selves for thru’pence, tu’pence or a loaf of stale bread. . One makes as if adjusting something in her bodice: a corsage that’s invisible . Audrey feels her bubbies prickle and the sweat-damp shift still wadded between her thighs. I don’t need no Snowdrop Bands, I need the double-you-see — there are no words to say this, a year or so ago, yes, but not now. Beyond the pub hatch where the whores have gathered the street ends in another timber bulwark — this one two storeys high and plastered with the pink cheeks, golden curls and frothing white suds of hudson’s soap. To the right of the hoarding a cranny leads into a long, narrow lane, the carriageway barely wide enough for a cart, the shop-fronts to either side antiquated, their many-paned and thick-mullioned windows plastered wiv ’ udson’s dirt , as are their horizontal shutters, some of which have been let down to form the basis of stalls. Up above are more wooden bafflers tilting out obliquely from the buildings — Audrey breaks step. — Those? Death is amused by what’s pricked her curiosity. Those’re mirrors, Audrey, t’catch a slice of the ’eavens and chuck it in the winder. ’Course, anyone peeping down from on top could see a body steppin’ inter ’er smalls. . Who is he, my father? As they go on, the hush she had not been aware of deepens, the never-ending snarl of the city streets tails away into a single bark tossed from jaws to jaws: a solo motor horn yelping.

The alleyway scores deeper into the damp clay. Halting, her father takes a small leather-bound volume from the stack of books on a stall — and, as he lifts it to his face, the cover falls open to expose marbled endpapers, then drops off altogether, along with several leaves that swipe their way to the ground. At once a white head pops up from behind the stall, the Mad Mullah! turns out to be a mousy man, his turban wound out of an Indian shawl, and when he’s hauled up his pince-nez from the length of its black ribbon and clipped his nubbin innit he sees Death clearly. Oh, it’s you, Rothschild, he wheezes wordy notes — he has swallowed the consumptive’s harmonium . Audrey’s father gestures with the broken book. — I shall, of course, recompense you for any loss, Mister Fellowes. The mousy man plays a mournful chord : Why bother, eh? This’n — he gestures in turn — all done for now an’ gone, done up proper, done up prop— and there’s another pump on the pedals, he oughtn’t to run on so, ’e ain’t got the breff . Mister Fellowes is tieless, his collar unfastened, his Turkey throat gobbles , in the dark recesses of the shop a caged bird fluttercheeps . — Death utters this: As the papers have it, there’s substantial com-pen-say-shun available along the way for those who’ve longer leasehold. . and freehold, naturally. For the first time Audrey notices her father’s ponderousness when he speaks proper . She blushes — and to hide her confusion takes a book from the pile on the stall, Sermons of the late Reverend Simon Le Coeur, D.D. A little friend o’yourn, is she —? She has attracted the bookseller’s leer. Samuel barks, Yes, a special little friend! He grabs her shoulder and twists her upright, pulling everything tight . Tell me — his grip tightens — has Mister Beauregard ceased trading yet? The mousy man runs his fever-pink eyes the length of Audrey, from top to toe , before answering disdainfully: Beauregard won’t cease ’til the wreckers’ ball drops on that fucking garret — not that ’e ain’t made his ’rangements, fixed up premises with some shonks on the Mile End Road. Death lifts the beetle carapace of his bowler, runs a hand over his damp pate. In that case, he says, I will ascend — he has some, ah, merchandise for Brother Collins —. Mister Fellowes coughs, retches, spits derision: While you’ve some fer ’im inall! This is a statement of fact, accompanied by the retrieval of a waxed paper, its unfolding, the savage poking of a pinch of snuff into his nostril. Hm. . Death mutters. . mebbe. He hooks his umbrella over his left arm and gropes deep in his trouser pocket. Audrey stands wrung out and abandoned. ’Ere — he presses a thru’pence into her palm, hard — you’ll find a coffee shop along aways. Sit tight wiv a cuppa anna slice, I’ll come after yer inna bit. The mousy man’s sneeze follows her down the road, heff-heff-heff-p’shawww! — she turns back once but her father has already disappeared.

A cake sits on a tin stand in the window of the coffee shop, which otherwise is indistinguishable from the rundown book dealers flanking it. Audrey looks at the cake black as coke on its dirty paper doily. A sign beside it contends TEN OUNCE CHOPS 6D., CUTLET 5D., FRIED ONION 1D. That’s all. A man comes from within to stand in the doorway — wound tightly into his apron, he’s the same shape as the milk churn he sets down. He has thick black curly side-whiskers and below his red cheek a redder goitre rests on his Gladstone collar. A barefoot piker boy comes limping along the lane, his cap pulled right down, the sleeves of his man’s jacket rolled right up — his arms are all striped lining . In one hand he holds a skinned rabbit by its ears and, stopping by the coffee shop man, he raises it bloody socket where its guts were but says nothing. The man shakes his head: Inna pig’s arse. The boy limps on. Cummin an’ eat befaw we boaf starve. . It’s a while before Audrey realises he’s addressing her, and then she complies. There’s nothing much to the coffee shop — four pew seats, two rickety tables — everything is coated with the brownish patina of tobacco smoke, grease and ingrained dirt. The gaslight and the geyser are confused in one another’s piping — both are lit. The man asks Audrey what she wishes for, and while he is absent in the back the geyser heats up and begins to steam — droplets condense on the ceiling, then fall, one hissing on the gas-mantle. It’s raining inside . .She opens her hand: the thru’pence has impressed a portcullis on her palm. The man comes back with a mug of tea and two slices of bread and marge, sliced diagonally. I dunno why I does vat, he says, looking at the droplets swell and fall, but I allus do. He turns the key in the pipe and the geyser pops off. Could I —? Is there —? There can be no mistaking surely the reason for her discomfort. . He points offhandedly and says: Jakes is out back. She goes and finds a lean-to against the kitchen wall, beyond it another section of the two-storey-high timber bulwark, and beyond this the wreckers’ ball hangs in the foggy dusk, a black moon . When she returns, he’s lit the geyser again, and, as she nibbles the slices and sips the tea, he stands erect by the matchboard counter, head up, massaging the goitre while doggilylistening to its rising notes. . there’s no ’arm innim . All that’s left are crumbs, smears, dregs . .still her father does not come. Abruptly, Audrey rises from the pew — the man gives her a penny and two farthings change, which she holds so tightly as she walks back up the road that the metal discs replace her knuckles, Enigmarelle, the Man of Steel . There’s no one about except a tall gent inna topper who reminds her of an illustration she’s seen of Bransby Williams the ’personator , so cross-hatched is he by shadow. Fellowes’s shop is shuttered — tapping fearfully on the door, she is relieved when it swings open, so scurries in to the smell of mouse droppings, cat’s piss and the ammoniacal residue of birds. Inside there is no illumination at all — only different strengths of darkness, the black bat night brushing against her. She mounts the stairs to the accompaniment of a concerto of creaks — one flight, a second, a third and a fourth — then peeks along a landing at eye-level, to where bright white light leaks from beneath a closed door. She hears — in there — a sharp intake of breath, h’heurgh! and a piggish grunt . Her belly seethes with glow worms — last month Mary Jane fixed me up with cotton pads and an itchy belt sewn from hemming tape. When Audrey pointed out to her the advertisement in the back of a Free Library book — Sanitary, Absorbent, Antiseptic, Available from All Drapers — her mother snapped: What d’you fink we are? but not unkindly. A cord that stretches taut from her tummy-button along the landing and under the door draws her in with each h’heurgh! every piggish grunt . She barges the door with her shoulder and collapses into a room lit brilliantly by clear bulbs under shades of frosted glass. In front of a floor-length nankeen drapes an aspidistra in a hammered-bronze pot, beside this a chaise-longue covered in green velvet, on this the skinned rabbit what the piker ’ad its glistening dead legs sticking up from a mess of petticoats . Standing with his back to Audrey, a bare-arsed man does something to the rabbit’s belly, guttin’ it —?