The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (13 page)

But now the phrase pleased him. He gave his son a suggestive, intimate dig in the ribs, and told him in fantastic detail the history of Appenrodt’s fork. Into this history he threw all he had ever heard of high life and dissipation. The story started somewhat sheepishly:

“… Well, as man to man, it was nothing much. It was nothing much, as man to man …” Seeing that his son looked disappointed, I. Small scoured the stockpot of imagination and scraped the bones of fancy. In a solemn, dramatic voice, he went on: “Me and my friend Mr. Schwartz, We went one night to the Criterion. You, Charley, you were not born or thought of. Well, born, yes. Thought of, you wasn’t. No, wait a minute—I didn’t had your education—you was thought of, day and night. That was the days! So Mr. Schwartz and me, we went to the Criterion, in Piccadilly. And you should have seen who was there!” I. Small pursed his lips and whistled. “… Actors, with actresses, artists, gentlemen, designers, politicians, lords and ladies, Rothschild, everybody you can think of. Do you hear, Charley? Boxers, Hackenschmidt, T. E. Dunville, dukes, duchesses everybody!”

“As man to man, Father, was Mother there?”

“As man to man, Charley, no. Your mother, bless her, was at home with you, because you was a baby in arms. You wasn’t born or thought of, practically. You was a backward child. You was still teeding—day and night you screamed murder with your teet. They wouldn’t come out from your gunks, Charley. It wasn’t your fault, it was your misfortune. Your poor mother——”

“I’ve heard all that before about ten thousand times, Father. Go on about the fork.”

“This should be a lesson to you, Charley,” said I. Small, solemnly. Then he proceeded to give an account of that
unforgettable
evening. He suggested that he and Solly Schwartz had practically sacked the West End of London, leaving no window unbroken and no maiden unravished. He exposed himself as a drink-crazed hooligan abominably devoid of conscience—a sort of Mohock who had gone roaring and ravaging from the Criterion to the Quadrant and back again, scattering torn-up policemen in his wake as a runner in a paper-chase scatters paper. Maddened
with liquor he had destroyed restaurants, uprooted lamp-posts, whistled after girls and made a perfect beast of himself. He made it clear that if the mounted police had not been called out he might have put an end once and for all to law and order. But luckily for him, seventeen or eighteen strong men subdued him. They may or may not have tied him with ropes—these details slip out of memory.

One thing is certain, and that is that I. Small came home and found one of Appenrodt’s forks in his outside breast pocket.

At the conclusion of his terrific narrative he began to laugh, and his son laughed with him. When they stopped laughing he said: “Eat another egg,
Charley.”

“No thanks, I can’t eat more than two.”

“Then shall I tell you what we’ll do?”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you what—you and me, let’s go to Kew. Go on, Charley, put on your new suit. Your other suit put on, and we’ll go to Kew Gardens. Hurry up.”

Young Charles Small dressed himself in a pepper-and-salt Norfolk suit, and they took a tramcar to Kew. Young Charles discovered, with astonishment, that he was beginning almost to like the old man.

They walked in the Gardens for an hour, visiting all the
hothouses
. Large white flowers aroused in I. Small a strange, strong, tender emotion: his eyes filled with tears when he looked at a Victoria Lily; and when he gazed up at the feathery head of a stately palm tree he struck himself on the chest and sighed—“Look at it, Charley. Look and … and … and take a lesson.” He stood several minutes before the bronze statue of the bowman, and started to say something: “That’s a … that’s a …” Poor man, he had no words. At last they left the Gardens. The teashops outside were advertising strawberries and cream.

“Do you fancy a strawberry, Charley?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said young Charles haughtily; and so they went and ate strawberries and cream. I. Small pushed his portion over to his son. After the bill was paid they walked over Kew Bridge and stopped at a little fair-ground where there were swings and merry-go-rounds.

I. Small said: “What about a ride on the roundabout?”

Charles Small, at sixteen and a half, was above such frivolity,
but it was obvious that the old man was dying to go up and down and around and around on the saddle of a spotted wooden horse; so he said, scornfully: “All right, Father, if you like.” Then they rode four times on the roundabout, and swung three times on the swings.

“Foolishness,” said I. Small, laughing. “
Kinder
spiel
—
baby-games
! Tell me, Charley, are you hungry?”

“Well …”

“Let’s eat something, let’s.”

There was a superior sort of public-house across the road. They went in, sat down, and looked at the menu.

“What do you fancy, Charley, boychik?”

“Well I don’t know, what do
you
fancy, Father?”

“What does it say?” asked I. Small, whose eyes were getting weak.

“Well, there’s soup, cold ham and tongue, there’s——”

“Ham? I wonder what ham tastes like?
Ham!
What sort of a thing
is
ham, I wonder,” said I. Small. “I tell you what, just for a joke, shall we taste it—just a taste—just to see?”

“Why yes, I don’t mind.”

“Man to man? Not a word, eh? Just to taste?”

“By all means,” said young Charles.

“It’s nice to know what people see in it…. Ham! What’ll we drink? A nice glass lemonade? Or I tell you what—what’s the matter with a glass beer? Man to man, Charley, what do you say—a glass beer? In moderation everything is good. Even deadly poison in moderation is good. Too much of a good thing can be poison. Everything in moderation. A glass beer.” When the ham was served he said: “It looks like smoked salmon. What does it taste like to you, Charley?”

“Like ham.”

“It’s funny, but by me it’s like smoked salmon.”

They ate their ham, drank their beer, and became friends. When they had finished eating and had, between them, drunk a pint and a half of beer, young Charles said: “Father, tell me something about yourself—tell me something about your life.”

“My life,” said I. Small, startled. “What d’you mean?”

“Things must have happened to you. After all you’re
middle-aged
—more than forty years old. Why don’t you tell me all about yourself?”

Time passed before I. Small said: “… My father made boots
for a Graf. In English, that’s the same as a Lord. Well, one day I had to take a pair boots to this Graf, and he got hold of me by the hair and shook me up and down and backwards and forwards, and I started crying, and he gave me a silver rouble … And … and … What do you mean, Life?” said I. Small, irritated. “Life! What time have I had for Life? What do they take me for, a Piccadilly Johnny, Life I should have?”

Then he said: “Charley, don’t take too much notice of every word I say. Would you like I should tell you? Then take a lesson from me. Listen: I’m ignorant. Man to man”—I. Small had taken a fancy to this expression—“man to man say nothing to nobody, man to man. I’m ignorant. You know more than I know. I know more than my father knew, rest his soul. And so it goes on, Charley, so we go, and there’s the world. Look at me. What am I? A nobody, a nothing. A nothing from nothing. A
Schuster.”

I. Small said this with deep humility.

“I wanted you to go to school, Charley, so you should
be
something
, not a nobody. Life! What do you mean, Life? What time have I had for Life? Didn’t I never have nothing more important to do? Life!
You’ll
have
Life, please God. My child,” said I. Small, thrusting out his weak hands with their broken and blackened nails, “these hands I would work to the bone for you, man to man.”

Then the breast of young Charles Small contracted and squeezed his heart into the back of his eyes, so that he had to run away to the lavatory and cry.

When he came back he was sorry for his father when, furtively smiling, he said: “Listen, Charley, supposing your mother should turn round and say: ‘So where you been? What you done?’ What’ll you say?”

“I’ll say we went to Kew Gardens.”

“Yes,” said I. Small, uneasily, “I want you should always tell the truth. A liar is worse than a thief. A thief, he’ll steal your money, but a liar, a liar will swear your life away. Quidle right—I only want you should be honest. A liar is always found out. A tram for a few pence we took to Kew Gardens. Why not? What’s the matter with Kew Gardens? … Flowers, trees, water lilies—it’s good to keep in touch so a boy should know what’s going on in the world. What’s the matter with Kew Gardens, what?”

“Nothing’s the matter with Kew Gardens.”

“Tell the truth, Charley, and nothing but the truth. Only one thing I ask—don’t tell your mother, bless her,
don’t
tell
her
I
went
on
the
roundabout!
To please me!”

“I shan’t say a word.”

“That’s right, Charley-boychik,” said I. Small, with relief, “never tell a lie. A liar is a rotter. You can never trust a liar. But there is no need to … talk too much. Man to man, we went in a tram to Kew Gardens. Enough is enough.”

“Oh all right, all right!” said young Charles, impatiently.

“What’s the matter, boychik? Didn’t you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes, yes, I enjoyed myself … I wish you wouldn’t call me boychik.”

“I won’t, if it hurts your feelings, Charley.”

“It doesn’t hurt my
feelings!”

“Charley-boychik, are you still fretting about that other nonsense and rubbish, eh? Man to man?”

The expression on the old man’s face was such that his son saw him, then, as a dog unjustly beaten, lifting a placatory paw in supplication. He Wanted to stroke him, comfort him, fondle his ears and soothe him to sleep; but the best he could do was, touch his arm and say: “Don’t worry. It’s all right. I’ll be quite all right.”

“It was all for your own good, my little boychik. Believe me, your mother and me, we’re a little bit older than you. Your mother knows best.”

“Don’t worry,” said young Charles.

I. Small was dismayed to find his wife at home when they got back to the house.

“So soon?” he asked.

“Why, what’s the matter, am I in the way?”

“Tell me, how’s Ruth?”

“You should think yourself lucky
I’m
not the kind of person to make a fuss about nothing. If
I
rushed into nursing-homes with every twopenny-halfpenny ache and pain—ha-ha! … They want to be pitied, that’s what they want. All right, as long as I know what they are.”

It appeared that Ruth, wrapped in a quilted sky-blue
dressing-gown
trimmed with swansdown, was sitting in a rocking-chair, eating chocolate cream, smelling flowers, and reading a novel by Charles Garvice which she was reluctant to put down. Trained
nurses were dancing attendance on her and calling her “Madam”. There were dishes heaped with peaches and grapes; a bottle of Invalid Port. Crammed with the fat of the land she was lolling in the lap of luxury, pretending to be ill. Her husband had given her a pair of bedroom slippers made of white fur—probably rabbit. Ruth had not been seriously ill, and had told her that she didn’t need to be looked after—Millie was humiliated, angry and disappointed.

“But
scraped!
They scraped her?” whispered I. Small.

Millie indicated that Ruth had not been what
she
would call scraped. A spoiled fuss-maker might call it being scraped. She suggested that Ruth’s womb had been varnished and polished. “But where have you been?” she asked.

“Where have
we
been, Charley?”

“We took a tram to Kew Gardens, Mother.”

“I hope you enjoyed yourselves.”

“Well, Millie, it was such a lovely day … what does it cost, sixpence on a tram? What’s the matter with Kew Gardens?”

“What did you have to eat?”

I. Small said quickly: “We went to a tea garden, eh Charley? So we had tea, we had bread-and-butter; jam we had, with
water-cress
.”

“Is that all?”

“Strawberries and cream,” muttered young Charles.

“Quidle right—I forgot—strawberries and cream.”

“What else did you do?”

“Nothing, Millie, nothing at all—eh, Charley?”

Young Charles nodded.

“A bit of bread-and-butter and a strawberry—is that all they’ve had to eat all day long? Kill yourself to fill the house up with food for them, and the minute you turn your back they rush out to restaurants to eat goodness knows what, and
goodness
knows who’s been touching it. Leave them alone for five minutes and they neglect themselves. Them and their water-cress! Water-cress!”

I. Small said: “We had a sandwich—eh, Charley?”

“That’s right.”

“Where? What sandwich?”

I. Small said: “Where? What do you mean, where? In Kew, where else should I eat a sandwich?”

“What kind of sandwich?”

I. Small pretended to forget. He squeezed his head between his hands, slapped his forehead, and said: “… A, a, a
sandwich.
Eh Charley? What sandwich, Charley? Man to man?”

“Oh, smoked salmon,” growled young Charles, naming the first pink-coloured eatable that came into his mind. But he gave his father a contemptuous look that was meant to say:
You
coward
—
can’t
you
even
carry
the
weight
of
your
own
little
lies?
Must
you
chuck
your
muck
into
my
conscience?

I. Small blew his nose.

He had become a tremendous nose-blower. Confronted with a problem he took out a great handkerchief, shook it out of its folds, and blew into it, making a noise like a trombone. This stunning noise generally put an end to discussion. On such occasions, when I. Small paused for breath, he cautiously opened his handkerchief, peered into the folds, shook his head, and blew and peered again.
What
did
he
expect
to
find
—
pearls?
Charles wondered.