Still
Falling
Where last
I loved.
23
To walk out under the big crystal chandelier past the wide brown marble balustrade. Touch the brass handrail and go down the green carpeted steps. And out into this warm sunny day.
Take this morning stroll through the park, a light wind shaking the leaves. Couples lying on the grass. And striped sails fluttering on boats bumping across the Serpentine. An Afghan hound goes loping around the deck chairs. Nice to see an Alsatian locked in cohabitation with a little white poodle as the owners hysterically dance and belabour all around. And there two little babies, a boy and girl, come wading through the grass hand in hand. And I look up. A blue jay catches a moth. Now it lands to sit on a branch and devour and dine. As the tiny bits of moth wings come fluttering down.
And again to march out into life after lunch, a tune in my head. Step lively, stride long. Under a sky flooded blue. And over blackened slate rooftops and greening copper rain gutters clouds float puffy white and moisty. Turn this corner away from traffic humming on the mild afternoon air. The houses of this street all their red sooty fronts mellowed umber. And there, that's the house where I still might live. Behind the bits of ivy. Me and my volumes of comparative anatomy. Mr. Pleader, who comes after Horn and before Hoot, not to mention Bother and Writson, said yesterday these brooding blocks of flats nearby are graced with leading stage actors and psychologists. They graze here on these calm spring pastures. Of soft brick, gentle curtains, gleaming glass and goodish surnames. Terribly nice, all of it.
Balthazar B went through the double swing doors of this russet stone walled emporium. Suppliers of fancy goods to the Monarch. Past the ties, shoes and shirtings. The glove counter and the stairs down to the safety deposit vaults. Where many documents and various ready cashes have lain locked away between the mirrored walls, lonely in the fireproof silence.
Ahead the waiting hall. Vast marble room of creamy browns. Six fluted pillars hold up a ceiling lit with funereal glass trays shrouding neon lights. A gauntlet of dowagers in last year's wedding hat. Seated with unmarried sons in the green leather chairs. They confide little jokes. Nod and flicker timidly at their random passing friends. And sometimes they pause to talk of weddings and christenings. And my God. There. Is it, it must be. Beefy. And his clothes. As he sits dejected. Suede leather on his feet smudged with something like plaster and powdered cement. His grey flannels spattered with crusts of mud. But higher up near the throat he looks splendidly the same. Silk crimson hanky and a moss green cravat tucked in the neck of his yellow shirt.
"My God Beefy. I hardly recognised you."
"Yes. I know. Note the colours of my jacket match nicely with the encrusted clay. Clearly no tonsorial artist or tailor is doing his fortnightly nut to keep me beautiful. But my glands sustain in the lack of gaudery. Goodness I am glad to see you.
I need a friend in my world these days. If Fm away from the building site much longer Fll be sacked. Say Fm shirking. When I have the most awful case of the runs. Together with my piles, which attacked recently, I can barely stand up. Chaps keep accusing me of not pulling my weight."
"What have you done Beefy."
"Done. Dear man I should like to know. Mostly it is what another has done. In particular dear old granny. I came to the last five pound note in my deed box after a catastrophic series of races devoid of tips from Zutu. And then I made another awfully ill advised attempt to harass granny, I tried to get a mortgage on the insurance of her life. And I am now situated in chambers in Bayswater. A polite word which upon map scrutiny admits of one having been pushed into Paddington. The tale is simple. I'm ruined. As you know the Public School Appointments got me my job on the stock exchange. After a prolonged safari in Brighton with a most saucy but impoverished debutante, I was fired. Upon many subsequent interviews I was finally offered another position. As a clerk. Can you imagine. I said not on your life. I will go and tear up earth as a navvy before I will stand behind a counter. I sounded so convincing, I believed it myself. Mesmerised by those suicidal words that's what Fve done. After the first two days I was so blistered and tired I thought I'd soon die a natural death. Some days later climbing up the marble steps of the club, my hand touching along the reassuring brass gleam of the rail, I asked for mail. Hoping my trustees might have unearthed ownership of a deed to some country pub. But there wasn't even a bill. And just as I went across the lobby to the lift, an elderly rather red nosed member said to George the porter as I passed, that chap is soiled. Imagine. Soiled."
"O my God Beefy. You must let me help you."
"Wait there's more. Not all of it gloom. Just last week at my very bottom lowest when I'd returned to my tiny room. Put sixpence in the slot for a morsel of electric fire. Not for heat. Just for the encouraging glow in the gloom. I stared out back at the pipes and chimneys and the car parts yard below. Then I knelt down. God I was fervent. I really meant it. Knees sunk deeply in the threadbare broadloom. I promised and prayed, as a onetime member of the Church of Ireland, that if God would send some reasonable female creature of marriageable age across my path, in fact age immaterial, who was possessed of the wherewithal and whence I should get my hands upon it, I would forthwith, as decency allowed after the ceremony, covenant the church to two and a half percent of the income, after tax was paid. At that exact moment. Right over my head. The light bulb exploded. I was showered in glass and darkness. I also jumped ten feet. And as the room is six by nine I had to call my doctor. He bid me, tired as I was, to come round and he would look for breaks in the arm bones. Off I went to Harley Street. I was next to last at his ultra late Friday surgery. My unbroken legs crossed as I turned the pages of a magazine. And into the waiting room. There comes a young lady.
A rainbow of a smile bursting across Beefy's blustery freckled face, his wandering nose and wine tinted cheeks. As Balthazar B leaned forward in his light grey flannel suit sewn in the Rue St. Honore with two horn buttons requested on the sleeves. A matron near by, long nostrilled, green suited, her lorgnette held up to an auction catalogue. An audibly tender moment really.
"Yes. There comes a young lady, Beefy."
"Ah. By the way Balthazar, that is a fine blue tie you're wearing with that elegant shirt. You're marvellously turned out."
"And you Beefy have not changed one bit. And what happened. There comes a young lady."
"Ah. Wait. My God I have an erection. Of the volcanic variety once again. Visions of richness always brings it on. Ah so. Yes. To be sure. The young lady. Who that moment came delicately in, in the best of leathers and fabrics. And I who had just crawled searching for forgiveness, off the wintry Hornchurch Marshes near some borax works to face a committee of ecclesiastics lined up inside a glassed, centrally heated pavilion. They were chanting quietly, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. And then at the sight of me. They pointed. Go back, they said. Back to the marsh, dirty deed doing profaner, your redeemer does not liveth."
The nearby dowager shifting uncomfortably in her seat, turning for a moment to survey Beefy. As he leaned back legs spread wide to regard airily the randy bulge upon his person. The lady made a high pitched noise down her nose and jerked swiftly back to her auction catalogue of ceramic antiques.
"My God Beefy, the young lady."
"Ah the young lady. But you are so splendidly turned out Balthazar, so frisky and one might say fresh from France that it does my heart fair good just to see you."
"Yes Beefy, I've come all this way. And a girl came into the waiting room and then what."