Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 7

  George stood at the door of this wooden building. He could see Fred's head above the bonnet of a car. George's eyes were glistening with sadness.

  Fred got up from the other side of the car and straightened his thick body. He was a bald man of thirty-five with a war scar over one eye and this gave a look of sinister, complex interest to a simple, literal-minded man.

  “Hullo,” said Fred.

  “I've been to meet my father,” said George.

  “Go on,” said Fred. “Did you see him?”

  “No.”

  “Not down at Truslove's?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” said Fred. He stared at George with slow sympathy.

  George went over to the car and Fred bent down to work again.

  “I see him down at Truslove's the day before yesterday,” said Fred.

  “He's often there,” said George.

  “He's got something there,” said Fred, winking.

  “He's always had her,” said George.

  “Dirty old man,” said Fred. “I see them go by. Handsome.”

  George smiled with pleasure. He had boasted that his father had a mistress in Hetley, as a loud addition to his knowledge of sin and his blatant belief in it. His father was “abominable”, “hellish”: terms of admiration.

  “Have you spoken to him about your job?” said Fred.

  “Yes. Nothing's happened.”

  “It's bad for you being idle. You ought to tell him straight,” said Fred.

  “I have,” said George.

  “It isn't right,” said Fred.

  He put down his spanner and gazed at George across the wing of the car for a long time.

  “I socked my old boy in the jaw when I was seventeen,” said Fred. “Some row, I don't know what it was; I took his girl off him, I expect. My old man was all right, I respected him, but he liked one on the side now and again. So I socked him. We had no trouble after that. Don't worry, George. It'll come out in the wash.”

  Fred bent to the engine of the car and George came round to stand close to watch him.

  “Bloody trouble at Pop's last night,” said Fred. “Skippy got fresh with that tart. She was asking after you.”

  “Oh,” said George.

  “I'm going up there to fetch a van,” Fred stood up. “You might hear of a job up at Pop's. It's no place for a girl.”

  “There was an ex-Army officer with a girl at Boystone station,” said George. “Abominable lad with two dogs.”

  “Go on,” said Fred. “What kind of dogs?”

  “Sealyhams, I think,” said George.

  “Go on,” said Fred, straightening up again to gaze at George. Fred was sincerely interested in everything George said. They were figures of romance to each other. Fred was married to a kind woman who was often in hospital. During the war, he had, he said, “mucked and split-arsed” his way round the British Empire. George, in Fred's eyes, was the son of a rich and tempestuous financier who had sporting estates all over England and kept a mistress in Hetley. A lassitude, if not a lack of imagination, in George and Fred, had created these imaginary figures and gave a restful flicker of interest to their relationship.

  “He had a girl with him,” said George, completing his picture of the officer.

  “Go on,” said Fred. “What colour hair?”

  “Fair,” said George.

  “Cold,” said Fred. “No good. Blondes aren't.” And he went on with his work.

  “Your brother gone to see his girl?” said Fred.

  “I expect so,” said George.

  “He ought to see Molly up at Pop's, she'd put him right in a jiffy,” Fred said. “Does your brother's girl go to your father's church?”

  “Yes,” said George.

  “Molly would cure that too,” he said. “We'll see Molly when we go up. I hope her aunt isn't there, now there's a tart. Molly was asking after you, did I tell you that?”

  “Yes,” said George.

  “What did she say? Something,” he said, “I forget what. When we go up we can ask her what she said. If she's there,” said Fred. “Perhaps it was about a job. She hears things.”

  “Does she?” said George.

  “Come to think of it though,” said Fred, “your old man wouldn't like it if you went up there with me. I better go up on my own.”

  George's face became miserable.

  “I could stay in the car,” said George.

  “All right,” said Fred. “That's an idea. That'd help me. I don't want anyone mucking round the car. Second thoughts, Molly's no good to you. Still, she was asking after you. Well, there,” said Fred, pulling down the bonnet of the car.“There's that b done.”

  A smile of deep happiness came on George's face. He deeply loved bad language.

  A black van was driven to the far door of the garage and two men got out.

  “Leave her there,” shouted Fred.

  “Repent ye,” Fred whispered to George.

  On the body of the van were printed the words “The Wages of Sin is Death” in large yellow letters.

  The two men walked round the car with quick steps and breathlessly. They tried the door-handles, they went to look at the tyres. They were whispering to each other in secret voices; very often their shoulders were touching. One of them was tired and fat and elderly and the sweat was running off his forehead. He was a jobbing gardener in Hetley. His name was Granger.

  “Shall we fill her up now or in the morning? In the morning is better. And give her water then, eh? And the oil, don't let us forget the oil. Ah,” whispered the old man with an anxiety that was sweet to him.

  And he stepped back, wiping his face with a handkerchief and gazing at the car.

  “It's a glory,” he said. And then he leaned closer to the younger man. “You know what she is, I thought,” and he touched the young man, “she's a worker for the Lord. She is.” And he gave a covert giggle.

  The younger man had grey hair and he was thin, straight and severe. He said, with a bitter grin:

  “It bears its witness.”

  “Ah, that's it, that's it, what I told them,” said the older man eagerly, cringing. “You mustn't look at the expense, I said, you must look at the witness she bears. Eh? Well, you must. Oh!” he broke off childishly. “Do you see what I nearly done? Do you see?”

  “What?”

  “Left 'em inside.”

  And he opened the door of the van and took out a heavy bundle of two or three hundred copies of a magazine and a rolled-up banner. His big, cracked, wooden-looking hands trembled as he picked up these things and gave ther heavy bundle to his friend. Then, they locked the door again and once more stood back from the car and considered it. They stepped backwards a few yards from the car, as though it were a sacred object on which they must not turn their backs; and then the stout one again touched the arm of the other delicately and whispered: “Vogg, better mention it, perhaps?” Mr Vogg nodded. And together the two braced themselves to speak to Fred. It was Granger, the old man, who spoke. His whispering voice was fond, breathless and anxious; but now he spoke aloud in a whining, nasal and obsequious voice.

  “Mister,” he whined, “we have put the van there.”

  “Over there,” said Vogg. His voice was deep, dead and blank.

  “Will it be all right over there?” whined the stout man, insinuating and cadging.

  “It won't harm no one there,” said Vogg in a threatening voice.

  “No, that's O.K.,” said Fred, giving George Beluncle a nudge.

  “O.K.,” said the fat man, becoming aggressive, and he shambled rapidly up to Fred, feeling in his pocket for a tip; but half-way there he changed his mind. His hand went to his jacket pocket and, with a sudden brisk flick of experience, pulled out a tract and put it on the bonnet of the car which Fred was standing by.

  “O.K.,” said Vogg boldly, to Fred, looking him in the eye, man to man.

  “O.K.,” said Fred.

  “That's Vogg, the paper man, opposite
Truslove's, your old man's little job,” said Fred. “Well, I'm going to pack it up. Are you coming?”

  “I'd better get back,” said George. And, refreshed by Fred, he said boastfully, “I'm going to tell him where he gets off.”

  “That's it,” said Fred. “Give it him straight between the eyes.”

  VI

  The two evangelists hurried out of the garage, close together, shoulders touching and whispering. In his earth-coloured skin, Granger looked like a frayed cigar stump: Vogg was bonier. His skin was tallow-coloured. Tortured by a sick stomach, Vogg had thin lips and his face was drawn by the habit of pain to a fanatical and cynical expression.

  “It's a burden,” whispered the fretful fatter man, as they jostled each other rapidly past the hoardings near Fred's garage. “Gladly, I think, I would lay myself down in the Saviour's bosom, on Jesu's breast, and enter our eternal rest. Yes, yes, I would, on Jesu's breast, beside her in the grave. I long for my eternal home.”

  “She's in the peace that passes understanding,” said Vogg curtly.

  They were speaking of Granger's dead wife.

  “She is, she is,” said the other eagerly, happily, breath lessly. “His yoke is easy but His burden light. And,” he touched the arm of the other man with his free hand, “she wanted the glory so,” he whimpered. “In hospital that's what she said, 'Give me the glory.' “ And he looked enquiringly at Vogg.

  Vogg ignored him.

  “Look,” said Vogg. He had stopped at a poster on the hoarding. They read: Mrs Parkinson's Group. A Lecture: Is Death Real?

  The fat man smiled stupidly and then he spat.

  Vogg glanced up and down the street. There was no one near. He put his fingers to the corner of the poster and tore half of it off the board, screwed up the paper and put it in his pocket.

  “That's number eight,” he said, as they walked quickly off.

  This part of Hetley, removed from the arterial road, was Victorian in all its phases, from the grandiose, pillared houses of the early part of the century, to the sharp red jerry-built villas, already decayed, that were put up in the '8o's. Nearly opposite to the latest and neatest villas was a row of shabby and defeated shops. They had been started eighty years ago for the use of the servants and mews families who worked for the prosperous people who had lived in the larger houses of the road. But now these houses were divided into flats and let off in rooms, the servants had gone, and the shops remained, half-empty places, their trade dying, owned by surviving invalids who scraped feebly out of the dark back rooms to their counters and whimpered about the changes in the neighbourhood.

  Vogg's, the newsagents, had not been painted for years and its window was blurred by the dried runnels of dirty rain. The window contained some sheets of faded brown paper and one or two empty cigarette cartons. Vogg's few newspapers were on a rack in the doorway.

  Vogg left his friend at the door. The inside of the shop was nearly as empty and dingy as the window. Its shelves were bare; the glass-covered show-case for cigars on the counter was empty. There were empty tobacco jars. The only saleable objects were a few comic papers and the district Advertiser. Old Vogg-this man's father-had been dead for ten years; the young one had let the trade go and merely kept on a newspaper round. When he went out on this round or when he went out selling badly bound and illustrated books on the Holy Land, he closed the shop. But if, when he was at home, the sharp new door bell went, Vogg would come out of the darkness at the back of the shop and look with blazing, upright, sarcastic amazement at the customer. No, he didn't sell ink, he had not got any tobacco or envelopes. If the customer wanted a paper he would curtly say they were all sold.

  Vogg put his heavy bundle of papers on the counter and locked and bolted the door. Then he went inside to a staircase, past his bicycle, and went noisily upstairs. It was a dirty house, malodorous with the sour smells of cooking, lavatories, gas and the insidious acid smell of London dust and floor boards. He went into a wide high room above the shop. By one of its windows a very large woman was sitting in a raised chair that was bunched out with cushions and draped with a quilt. She was a woman of sixty with stained, violet cheeks and the alert eyes of a little girl. She had a small and pretty voice.

  “Did you lock up?” Mrs Vogg asked.

  And when he said he had done so, she asked if he had done the bolt too. To this he said he had also put the chain on and pulled down the blind. Then she asked:

  “What was you doing, you was a time?”

  “I put the papers on the counter,” he said.

  “You seemed so long,” she sighed.

  She asked all these questions out of an amiable smallness of mind and he answered them patiently and exactly while he leaned over to kiss her.

  Their kiss made them both smile. David Vogg walked round the big room, passing the fireplace where the large mirror was. He looked into this with a look of exhilarated conceit. He now bared his teeth and squared his sharp shoulders and became overweening.

  “Have you had your medicine?” he said.

  “No, dear.”

  “You're a bad one,” he said.

  “Oh, I know I'm bad,” she said with pleasure.

  When he brought her medicine she told him about her day.

  The two tall windows of the room were darkened by heavy green curtains and impressively the large mirror reflected, through its dust, a room which had only one picture on its dirty walls-an advertisement for tobacco. The floor was covered by linoleum and had only one rug, by the fireplace. There was a high, iron double bed, unmade, along one wall. The Voggs lived among smells rather than among things. Here there was a rich odour of sweet fruit, there of cheese and cooking; from chairs, the extraordinary breath of upholstery.

  Mrs Vogg sat at the window most of the day, after her son had got her out of bed in the morning and had helped her to dress. She stood up, feebly modest, feebly ashamed, in her underclothes, the flesh coming like innocent chins over the cotton straps. She was pleased to have him as a slave. While she finished dressing he cleaned the room, got their breakfast and it was he who did most of the domestic work of the day; sometimes, on her swollen legs, she scraped with difficulty round the large table in the middle of the room, moving a plate from one end of it to the other. At the window she sat watching the street and the houses opposite, drowsing in innumerable childish secrets.

  Mrs Vogg was wrapped in secrets. Every hour she made a few more. One or two central secrets gave her an innocent complacency. For no clear reason, unless it was some mysterious vanity or fear, she pretended that she came from North London. She was, in fact, the child of a Gloucester-shire labourer. Then the older Vogg had not been the father of her son. She did not know who the father had been. She had made up a story for the late Vogg. Another secret was that she had not been married to Vogg. She had worked for him as a housekeeper before she became his mistress. She had never expected to be married. Vogg had often hated her son, but she had become necessary to the old man in his illnesses and he had left her his money. By surviving, Mrs Vogg had been at last rewarded; she saw herself as a wonderful collection of undisclosed facts, a passive and contented monument to all the crimes that were committed against ignorant girls and easily deceived women.

  Mrs Vogg had peaceful blue eyes and small disappointed youthful lips. Out of the stale heap of clothes and flesh a precocious child was looking. When her eyes glanced at her arm or her knees, or when the arms or some part of her body moved, the impression was of a pair of animals in the same untidy basket looking strangely and mutely at each other.

  The keeping of her own secrets had given Mrs Vogg a consolation in her illness; it had trained her to watch the secrets of other people. She supposed that everything she saw from her window was a concealed happening. A tradesman's van stopping at a house, a woman going out at ten and coming back at twelve, men knocking at doors, children crossing the street to another house, all the minute comings and goings of the day, were disclosures.

  David V
ogg shared his mother's taste. For her watching provided her with soothing, harmless comparisons with her own life: she was looking for events in the lives of others which would match and explain events in her own life. And it was her vanity that she saw nothing to equal them. David Vogg listened to her minute accounts. He sat close to her with his hands gripped between his knees, his eyes intent and searching, a line of sarcasm on one side of his face; and at every point he made a peculiar, wet-sounding noise like “Tiss-tiss” as he listened.

  David Vogg listened for a motive that was different from his mother's. It had formed slowly in his childhood and had become a passion as he grew up. He was convinced that the streets he walked down, the people he saw or spoke to, were, in their varying ways, lies. His mother, in her watchful gossip, exposed some of these possible lies to him and calmed the anger he felt when he was alone and which had been strongest in him when his adoptive father had been alive and had cruelly separated him from her. Strengthened by her talk, he would get up at the end of it to cook a meal for her and say to himself as he stood over the gas stove in the small cupboard-like kitchen on the landing:

  “The world is filled with sin, crawling with evil underneath the good appearance it puts on things; but you can see through it, you are superior. And you know one thing the world scoffs at: it is rushing to destruction and hell-fire.”

  Mrs Vogg worked her way down the gossip of the street as they sat together at the window. Presently a car drove up to one of the newer red villas which had long, cold, tiled paths to the gates. They were nearly opposite. The Voggs had to move in their chairs and lean back to see the car from this angle. Mrs Truslove got out of the car and was followed by Mr Beluncle into the house.

  “It's his night,” said Mrs. Vogg. “The sister is out. She must have gone to her church.”

  They nodded and they watched.

  “She must have gone to her church. That's what I miss, Dave, not going out,” said Mrs Vogg. “They come across the road. Mrs Johnson was pushing her.”