Frank Baker Page 10

  My mother had got up and was in the kitchen making herself tea. She spoke a little irritably, saying I was rather earlier than usual. There were heavy lines under her eyes; I saw she had slept badly.

  I told her about the birds.

  “They were drinking the water,” I emphasized.

  “Well, dear,” was all she said as she poured hot water into the pot, “I expect they were very thirsty, like us.”

  “Yes, but don’t you see,” I cried impatiently, “if they go on being thirsty, where shall we all be? The reservoirs are only a few yards away. They’ll start on those next.”

  “Oh, what nonsense! They won’t allow that to happen.”

  “Who’s going to stop them?”

  “I don’t want to talk about them,” she snapped in sudden anger. “There’s quite enough to worry about without birds.”

  She went out of the room, and presently we sat down to a sullen breakfast together.

  But I was right. By midday more and more birds had gathered over the north of London and had swarmed to the reser­voirs. Distracted local councillors came and surveyed the strange scene, but they did not like to venture too near. The smell was appalling; in a few hours the water was foul with their dung.

  I told my friends in the office how I had seen the birds that morning, but they seemed as little interested as my mother. Lassi­tude had overcome everybody. It was more than heat sickness; people seemed entirely dazed, stupid.

  Various stories about the birds were brought to us by brokers. It was rumoured that a number of them were hovering around Battersea Power Station. Again, a swarm had surged on to the vast drum of a gas-container adjoining a cricket field in south London, where an important county match was then in progress. They had stayed there motionless, making no noise, yet so disturbing the players by their very presence as to put them entirely off their stroke. Nobody had been able to attend to the game; a famous and popular batsman had been bowled out with the first ball.

  More serious was the news, later confirmed in the evening papers, that a famous English aviator demonstrating a new and supposedly “silent” type of monoplane over Hyde Park in the west of London, had been pounced on by the birds, who, screaming and croaking in evident rage, had attacked him with such fury that he lost control of the machine and crashed to the ground. He was not killed; but he was blinded and terribly maimed. This incident stirred people a good deal from their apathy, for the aviator had been a popular hero. The public indignation was revealed in a multitude of letters which poured into the Press. All these complained of the birds, and emphasized that “something ought to be done.”

  But what? Nobody knew. There seemed to be no end to the number of the birds. Thus, although the reservoirs in Hornsey were entirely submerged by them, various swarms were located in all parts of England and other countries. People went about, however, saying petulantly, “the Government ought to take the matter in hand.” They had a profound and pathetic faith in the ability of this Government at Westminster to deal with any unforeseen circumstances, however extraordinary. At that time, however, most of the gentlemen who composed the Government were away; either at a place called Geneva, discussing peace treaties; or playing golf, dancing, and swimming in the south of France and other fashionable places of amusement.

  The King was in one of his country homes, hoping for a rest. Every hour, how­ever, he was bothered by politicians who kept on sending him notes about the warlike situation in Africa. The politicians must have regarded the birds as a great nuisance, coming at a time when they were all so busy having holi­days or parleying about peace. The newspapers were daily informing the public that the situa­tion was as grave as that of another August twenty years previously. For once they spoke the truth though they did not know it.

  August was the silly month. And this year the whole world seemed to have lost its head; nobody knew which way to turn. The half-whimsical, half-sinister behaviour of the birds for ever hovering about us and, as it seemed, contemplating fresh mischief, added greatly to the universal inability to think clearly. Yet few people could take the birds seriously. It was outside the English temperament to take anything seriously, except sport.

  The evening of the day I had seen the birds in the swimming-bath I went to the west of London with my old school friend. It was two days before my holiday. I did not feel I could go home to Stroud Green, sit about in the house doing nothing, sticky in the burning evening heat. So I told my mother I should be home late. She was not well, but she did not push any claim upon me to come home early and stay with her. She was quiet, afflicted also with the uni­versal apathy. I was selfish, and did not think much about her.

  Early in the evening I met my friend in Leicester Square. We had some food at a sandwich bar in a side street by Charing Cross Station, a cheap street named after a romantic English aristocrat of another century. When we came out, we walked towards the river embankment.

  My friend was in high, almost nervous spirits. We talked wildly about war, the birds, and our individual affairs. I tried to give a reason for the presence of the birds, saying they had been sent by some insulted God to teach men a lesson. But my friend would have none of that. He did not believe in God; everything, he said, must follow a natural law.

  “Yes, but whose natural law?” I demanded.

  “They have a biological reason for existence,” he maintained. As we argued, the evening slowly grew darker. We had walked along the Thames Embankment and stood looking across the river in the same spot where I had parted a few nights ago from my lover. The memory of it saddened me suddenly, and I urged my friend on. We came to Westminster and along a wide street of Government offices called Whitehall. In the middle of the road was a chunk of stone called Cenotaph; it was a memorial to the men who had been killed in the last war.

  We came to Trafalgar Square. It was nearly dark now; the flash­ing advertisements began to trace the shapes of twinkling coloured words, urging the spectator to use this fountain-pen and no other; to drink that beverage if he wished to be a happy man. Lies pricked into the darkness—yet how beautiful they seemed! We walked past the colonnade of an old theatre which seemed to mutter a dusty rhetoric to itself. So eventually to Piccadilly, that centre of London, that warm heart of the great many-limbed beast, for which exiles in other countries had nostalgic dreams. Poised delicately in the centre was a statue of young Eros, loosing his arrows into the vulnerable hearts of men. I never discovered whether the presence of this innocent God in a part of London where love was commercialized, was a conscious satire or not. Sitting on steps at the base of the statue were some shawled old women selling flowers; they were familiar figures, as permanent a tradition in Piccadilly as Eros and the prostitutes. In defiance of darkness, electric advertisements sputtered and shone from every building. They were like elaborate pyrotechnical constructions. It was difficult to believe in the actual solidity of the buildings upon which these electric signs so flamboyantly quivered.

  A thick crowd of people walked slowly along the pavements; interrogative glances were exchanged between strangers. The entire atmosphere of this neighbourhood was totally different from that of the City, where people hurried and pushed, never caring who passed them. In Piccadilly one was made aware of every individual. The people, who with such impeccable dignity worked in the sober City, were different creatures if one met them in the west of London. Here, people seemed to be creeping after pleasure, not with any manifestations of joy, but with a stale furtive air as though they knew well enough that all the pleasures had been discovered and sampled long ago.

  My friend and I went into a café which had a reputation for attracting artists, musicians, poets, actors. We sat at a marble table and ordered pale, tepid beer in tall glasses. A ceaseless chatter of quick conversation echoed through the room. We looked around us. One could not go into this café with­out expecting to see somebody “interesting”; and by that I mean either
famous or infamous. There were women with red finger-nails, sleek, stringy hair, and sad, sharp faces; women with pasty, spec­tacled faces and rough tweed suits. Men who looked like women, with long hair, powdered faces, and scented silk shirts; women who looked like men, with neckties, flat bosoms, and cropped hair. Often it was difficult to distinguish between the sexes.

  Behind me was a man with a mop of hair falling over his shoulders. He was dressed in an open white shirt, knee-breeches of dark green velveteen, and he carried an umbrella. He was an ubiquit­ous curiosity. I had already seen him in a concert hall, an under­ground lavatory, and a Catholic church. I never discovered who he was. That evening I remember he was talking to a small audience of three or four persons, about some esoteric point in the art of magic and divination.

  A tall, handsome young man with a carnation stuck in the jacket of his loud blue check suit, carrying a pair of scarlet gloves made of wool, came in at the door and was immediately hailed by a party of pale youths with high squealing voices and narrow waists, who made a place for him and showed the greatest interest in his gloves.

  My friend and I began to talk about the people, comparing types, judging their worth, who were artificial, who were not. We wrote verses on the back of a list of foods and drinks. It grew later—towards eleven. More and more people drifted in: some alone, some in groups.

  Then a strange thing happened. The door burst open noisily and a large man entered. He stood there, swaying a little, glaring insolently round the room. He laughed loudly and people looked up. There was a sudden murmur of astonishment, followed by an uneasy silence.

  He was an exceptional figure, very tall, with a keen, angular, somewhat blotchy face, and a thick golden beard. His hair was the same colour, thrown back from his head in a careless sweep. He was dressed in a bright yellow shirt with a long blue tie; a tweed jacket bulging with a variety of articles he had in his pockets; and grey trousers.

  But it was not the man who caused that little gasp of astonishment to go round the room. It was small gray bird on his shoulder.

  He stood there, swaying and hiccuping, with this small bird gently rubbing its beak into his neck.

  A waiter passing, stopped, stared, and dropped the empty tray he had been carrying. The metallic clang broke the silence; people began to talk excitedly.

  “I wonder how he caught it,” said my friend casually.

  “And if he did catch it,” I replied, “why doesn’t it fly away?”

  But I did not believe he had captured it. It was so quiet, so timid—it did not look as though it had the power to fly away. Faced with the crowd of staring, chattering people, it seemed to shrink close up to the man as though for shelter. Its feathers were not very bright, but subtle in colouring: a sort of grey which concealed all other colours. The eyes blinked as though the sudden bright light blinded them.

  The man did not stand there long. He appeared to be looking for somebody. He was clearly drunk and could not easily distinguish one figure from another.

  He called out, “Does anybody want to buy a unique bird?”

  Nobody responded. Then he laughed and shouted in some lan­guage I could not understand. Suddenly he saw somebody over in a far corner, sitting alone. I followed his eyes and saw a woman, sitting gravely, studying him. He called with a raucous shout, pushed his way carelessly past chairs and tables, and sat down heavily opposite the woman.

  I looked across at her. She was dressed in quiet simple clothes with no adornment anywhere upon her person. This lack of colour compelled one’s attention to her face, which was grave and as colourless as the cream-coloured blouse that she wore. In this serene countenance her eyes glowed with almost fierce richness. They were beautiful eyes, so full of light in their depths, that they seemed to cast a radiance over her face. Looking back at her face after having seen her eyes was as though you had looked on a death-mask that suddenly smiled. I felt that the lids of those eyes, when they fell, would draw a curtain over the entire face.

  Her hair was black, with here and there a greying streak; it lay thick and smooth, brushed back from her ivory-cool forehead. She was rather tall and thin, but well-proportioned. I could not tell her age. If I said twenty-five, I noticed the line of grey in her hair which seemed to contradict that. Yet the eyes were young and full of vigour.

  When I looked at her I was instantly stirred. She sat with a slight frown on her face, tapping her teeth with a pencil. Against the clatter of the café the only sound I could hear was this critical tapping of wood upon a row of small white teeth.

  “Interesting female,” said my friend.

  I nodded without speaking. The man with the bird leant over the table towards her. She appeared to accept his drunkenness as inevitable; neither did she take any interest in the bird who crouched low on the man’s shoulders, its head tucked away into its feathers, as though asleep. I was fascinated, as everybody was, by the bird; but I was fascinated more by the critical intensity of the woman’s gaze, her clear distaste and yet tolerance of her companion.

  We stayed watching this curious trio. My friend said he had seen the man somewhere, but could not recollect where. To me also the face seemed familiar.

  He drank a great deal and grew incoherent and louder in his talk. Once he took the woman’s arm roughly, with a gesture of possession. She tried to push him aside, but he insisted on fondling her. He was urging her to come away with him. She would not stir. They were quarrel­ling. He, brutally loud; she, colder than ice, her lips pressed tight in her white face. Two people sitting at the same table hurriedly left the room.

  The man’s voice rose. “—tired of me, Olga. Sleep with any damn man who’ll pay you enough . . . tired of me——”

  I jumped suddenly to my feet. I felt as though something had attacked me also.

  But she, too, at that moment, had risen, and managing to elude his grasp—walked quickly, but with great dignity and command, away from the table.

  The bird screamed suddenly and the man tried to push it away from his shoulder. I stood watching Olga as she went towards the door. She passed a few inches from our table. I glanced at her, my heart pounding in an excitement I had never felt before. For a moment she caught my glance. Then she was gone.

  I sat down. There was a commotion at the other end of the room where the man, attempting to check the thin, ragged screaming of the bird, grew furious, rose, and knocked over some glasses. The bird had fixed its claws tight into the man’s shoulder. Its cries were most melancholy, pitiful, wailing sounds, the saddest sounds I have ever heard.

  An attempt was now made to remove the man, as he struggled wildly to shake the bird away from his shoulder. Three or four waiters came up and seized hold of him. Suddenly the drunkard relaxed and went limp in their grasp, so that they had to drag him to the door like a sack of oats. A heavy silence hung over the room. The drunkard made no sound except a heavy breathing; he seemed almost insensible. The bird still clung to his shoulders.

  They passed our table and I drew aside. I was afraid, not of the drunkard, but of some extraordinary quality to this scene which I could not understand. I saw the bird pressed so firmly into the man’s shoulders that it looked almost as though it were part of the sub­stance of his tweed coat. I drew aside, feeling there was something here I should not see. I did not understand, and the memory of it was to trouble me for a long time until I did understand. In the thick, misty eyes of the drunkard was a futile agony which made me aware of a similar agony somewhere in myself, deep down. If I looked at him, the more I was conscious of this agony in myself. I dared not look.

  My friend was talking, but I could not respond. All the time, carved into my mind above this feeling of distress, was the image of that coldly passionate woman’s face—a face clear in my memory as no face had ever been. Olga. . . .

  There is little more to tell of that strange evening—a lovely and a terrible evening. They got the dr
unkard out; I saw the last of him as they carried him through the door. Then the waiters came back, laughing nervously and pretending that the incident was all part of the day’s work. My friend and I left very soon. It was past midnight. I caught a late omnibus and walked part of the way home. The night was burning and still; yet as I passed along the dreary suburban streets most of the windows were closed firm, with blinds drawn. I crept into the house without disturbing my mother, though I saw that a candle was alight in her room. She had closed my windows; I did not open them.

  One word was on my lips; one face carved into my mind. I could not sleep.

  The end of this story was revealed in the newspapers. I saw next day a photograph of a well-known poet called Paul Weaver whom I immediately recog­nized as the drunkard of the previous night. He had killed himself. The case attracted a certain amount of attention because of the fact that he was a poet whose early sensitive lyrics had been lately superseded by a number of violent erotic verses which some critics deplored, some admired. He had thrown himself before a fast-moving bus shortly after his eviction from the café, and had been instantly killed. The bird—as in the case of the old woman in the telephone-box of whom I told you earlier—had apparently escaped.

  No mention was made of the woman who had been with him—she whom he had addressed as Olga.

  *

  The next day was the last before my holiday.

  That Friday, as all such days which are a vigil of some unusual event, seemed interminable. How I worked I do not know. Often my pen dribbled along the paper in a chain of lethargic noughts, so that where I should have written five hundred I more often wrote fifty thousand.

  I lunched alone in an underground café some way from the office; my literary friend was away on his holiday, and I did not want to meet anybody else. There, I read for the third or fourth time the account of the poet’s suicide which was given in the newspaper. His portrait revealed a fine and sensitive face which seemed the antithesis to the coarse, lined face which I had seen last night. Yet it was the same man.