A Voice Like Velvet

Now, when he sometimes sat on a public platform, much more cautiously airing the same views, whatever he said seemed to be greeted with popular applause. He would wait confidently for his cue, knowing whatever he said would be successful. ‘… So I will now call upon Mr Ernest Bisham, the well-known announcer, who has very kindly come all the way to Manchester to be with us today!’ To a storm of applause, he would stand before a sea of curious faces, and he would proceed to get in as much of his views against prison life, and its silly inhumanity, or his views against the repulsive habit of flogging, without letting it be thought he was either a socialist or airing the views of the BBC. At the end, there would be another storm of applause, and silly faces would throng round him and voices would say: ‘We always listen when you read the news, Mr Bisham! My mother-in-law thinks your voice is by far the best!’ Not one of them cared the slightest about his views on anything, least of all sex life in prisons. But it amused him, as life amused him with its odd antics. When magazines asked him if they could print his photograph and an article about his life, he was studiously vague about certain years. It was strange how lumps of years could safely be dropped from an article. It was a technique. And it was often convenient. Impossible to say: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, during those years I was simply appallingly broke. I had the dreariest of jobs—until my father died, you know—mechanic, salesman, oh, and cat-burglar.’ One item would be very colourful. ‘I must tell you about the afternoon I walked into a jewel shop in the city. I asked to see some rings and the bloke showed me about ten on a narrow tray. I said, thanks, chum, and stuffed them in my pocket. I strolled out—you mustn’t run when you’re a professional thief—each moment expecting bells to ring and hands to seize my left shoulder. But the shopkeeper must have had one or two, for in about two seconds I was outside and lost in the crowds.’ An asterisk and italics at the bottom of the page could add, in a dignified way: ‘By the way, I sent the rings back. When I got home that desperate day I found I’d landed a job. And in any case it’s too risky trying to sell jewellery of that kind in London.’ Yes, indeed, and it was still a problem to know what to do with it. The prisons were full of blokes who had tried to solve this unsatisfactory problem. He often thought old Mrs Clarkson might have had some useful suggestion to make. Her house was full of the most shadowy, stooping characters. They would creep furtively up her dark stairs at all hours, not a few going to bed during the day instead of during the night. But he had never risked it. He went on doing various little cat burglaries, just for the thrill, and to prove his beliefs about never getting caught, and in the hopes that one day he would think of what to do with the proceeds. Sometimes he chucked the proceeds into the Thames when he got bored with looking at them. Now and then he sent later proceeds to insurance houses he felt he might have cost too dearly. Mrs Clarkson would be curious about his little newspaper parcels and think they were fish and chips. She would accuse him of not liking her food.

He didn’t know what he would have done without her help in the first days of his break with home. And he often wondered now if it was Mrs Clarkson who had first given him his interest in the word ‘bulletin’. She certainly brought regular news bulletins to him for several years, scurrying back to the shabby little Hammersmith house to say: ‘No, Master Ernest, I tried again—but he just won’t speak. We shall have to wait.’ When at last Mr Bisham Senior’s obituary did appear in The Times, his will was reported to have mentioned a figure as large as thirty-three thousand pounds—five of which he was obliged to leave to his son through his mother’s will. His son instantly got an advance, threw a lot of surplus jewellery into the Thames and drank gin with Mrs Clarkson until midnight, when they changed to draught Burton. By four o’clock in the morning they were both completely and contentedly under the weather. They lost no time declaring that the old man hadn’t been such a bad sort after all, erroneous though the belief was in the cold light of day, Mrs Clarkson insisting that he had been a sort of Dick Whittington in his younger days, ‘and very human about ladies, my dear, excepting his own family, that is.’ Mrs Clarkson did not at once let drop certain pending surprises about the Bisham family, but proceeded to read the story of Dick Whittington to Ernest Bisham, who sat in her brown armchair with his feet on the table. It was Mrs Clarkson reading it.

He was never very partial to Dick Whittington’s story, having no particular fancy for Lord Mayors or for cats, though Mayors were jovial fellows with plenty of food and cash, and Mrs Clarkson had a cat in her kitchen with a highly developed dramatic sense, being fond of springing from great heights across gaps of at least fifty feet, or hurtling itself from the very jaws of infuriated Hammersmith buses into the basement area.

Mrs Clarkson then slyly proceeded to make certain strange suggestions. She was going to have her house repainted, inside and out, and so Ernest was to take the opportunity, ‘now that dear father has passed away’, of going on a short visit to, ‘a sort of family relation, a kind of distant cousin, in another part of London’. She said she had always wanted to see Master Ernest, and she might turn out to be useful to him over a career, or something in that line, you never knew. Startled, for Ernest had been unaware of any such watching interests in his background, he cross-examined Mrs Clarkson in some detail. But all he got was: ‘Never mind about the whys and wherefores, dear. And don’t ask her any questions, either. She is very reserved and a little prim, as the saying goes. But she likes young people and is keen on educational matters. Go and stop with her, it can’t hurt, and I’ll get on with the house.’

She was called Miss Wisdon, and her house was in Chepstow Walk, Notting Hill Gate. It was hard saying good-bye to Mrs Clarkson, and to thank her for all she had done.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘And Miss Wisdon is quite decent. Don’t rub her up the wrong way.’

‘No,’ Ernest said.

‘And I expect her Mr Edwards will come and see you and see what he can do.’

‘Oh?’ he said, startled again.

‘Don’t rub him up the wrong way,’ she strongly advised him. ‘Then you’ll be all right.’

‘Yes. But who is he …?’

‘You’ll see in good time,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ll see you again soon. Be sure to write, or it will rub me up the wrong way.’

‘Yes, I will. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye, dear,’ she said, and decided to kiss him, a little after the fashion of a mallet going conk up against a tub.

Conk!

Conk!

‘Well, good-bye, Master Ernest!’

‘Good-bye, Mrs Clarkson …!’

The parting seemed quite a sorrow, another rooting up. And although he did see her again soon, when the painting was finished, he had really said good-bye, for she died later that summer, and he was not again to live in the Hammersmith house.

He took a taxi to Miss Wisdon’s. He had been told she was ‘poorly’, or she would have come to collect him herself. He reached Miss Wisdon’s at six o’clock. He walked up the pathway of a tiny three-storied house. It was of the dimity variety, and in the garden were large stone toadstools. There was a note jutting out of the front door letter-box with his name on it explaining economically: ‘Pull string.’ He pulled and there was a long key on the other end, so he let himself in. In the little green glass hall was a second note propped up against a large brass pot with a fern in it. It was as economical as the first. ‘Upstairs.’ He felt Miss Wisdon was very rash with her trusting notes and he went upstairs feeling a little polite. On a door a third notice said: ‘Knock.’ He had reached the Robbers’ Cave. A thin voice said to come in.

Miss Wisdon was a little old-fashioned lady who belonged to the Victorian era, and who had no wish to modernize herself. She turned out to be good-hearted and easily scandalized. She was one of the world’s fussers, everything must be in its place before she could settle. The tea must be laid properly, with things in the right position, and if one of her stone toadstools fell over there was conversation to last the week. Tea must be exactly at four and the silver must be polished on Tuesday mornings between eleven and twelve. Maids who came in and ‘did’ for her rarely stopped long, they were ‘rude’, and they went out into the night (and sometimes the day) never to return. She liked being made a fuss of and was used to it, particularly from the mysterious Mr Edwards, a gentleman she regarded with considerable reverence and awe.

Scarcely anything was said about family matters, Miss Wisdon explaining, with familiar reasoning, that Ernest’s father had been ‘difficult but least said soonest mended’. It seemed she was a distant relation of Ernest’s mother and had always wanted to take an interest in him. She was shocked to discover he had no evident plans for a career, but she had already spoken to her old friend, Mr Edwards, who was an accountant, and so it seemed his future was in his hands! There were introductions which he was going to be so good as to give him, so that he could get started in a job. Miss Wisdon said of him: ‘He’s such a very busy man, but he has found time to dine with us on Tuesday.’ Then she said he was not able to come until Thursday. It seemed only fitting that Miss Wisdon should keep a cat. She hated dogs. ‘They water my doorstep.’ She said: ‘And Iris is afraid of them.’ Iris was her cat, a dreary thing, Ernest thought, though he tried to like her. She was a tabby. He never once saw her move from the kitchen chair while he was in the house, even for most pressing reasons, and could only assume she absorbed everything in some mysterious way. If he must have a cat, give him Mrs Clarkson’s black Tom, which fought like a virago, and feared neither man nor machine. Iris just sat, and the expression in her pink eyes was of an actress watching her understudy take over. When he gave her any fish she just turned her head away. But when Miss Wisdon did, she was good enough to allow herself to be fed piecemeal. Miss Wisdon bent over her, looking like a Victorian music-hall turn, turning to Ernest with pride in her eyes.

CHAPTER V

ERNEST was really rather dazed at this period of his life. He was ‘resting’. He had a good think, but let life do the worrying for a change. And he met his first dangerous woman at Miss Wisdon’s house, or to be precise, over Miss Wisdon’s fence. She was a girl of sixteen called Violet. She was fond of chocolate, eating it with her mouth open the whole time, without spilling any of it, and without offering him any. She had raven black hair shaped like a worn-out mop, and a hefty-looking father who wandered about the narrow garden as if he was looking for something. Miss Wisdon didn’t ‘know’ them; they were sanitary inspectors who had come into a bit of money, or they would have been still in Battersea by the gasworks. Violet was fond of standing on the manure heap at the bottom of her garden with her legs wide apart. She balanced herself there in order to stare at him and whatever was going on at any of Miss Wisdon’s windows. The only thing which ever did go on at her windows was a dancing yellow duster, in the mornings. For the rest of the day there was just Ernest for Violet to look at. She thought he made a change. She asked him point blank to kiss her at their third meeting by the manure heap, chocolate and all. He thought it would be like kissing an éclair. ‘You’ve never kissed a girl,’ she challenged him, ‘have you?’

‘I may have done,’ he told her, embarrassed.

‘Where?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘When, then?’

‘I can’t remember now.’

‘I knew you’d never! You went red as red!’

‘No, I didn’t! In any case, why should I tell you?’ he said, stung, but curious about her and this odd phase of his unsatisfactory life.

‘I didn’t want to know,’ she said, womanlike.

Then she said:

‘All the boys are after me. I go to the pictures twice a week.’

‘Oh?’ he said.

‘Joo go to the pictures?’

‘Now and then.’

‘I like Charlie Ruggles,’ she said in a certain way. ‘He’s up the road this week.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ he said, deciding quickly.

‘What’s it about, then?’

‘Well, if I tell you,’ he said glibly, ‘it’ll spoil it for you.’

Her long red tongue travelled down a yard of chocolate.

‘You haven’t seen it. And you’ve never bin with a girl. And you’re a dirty little liar.’

She ran up the garden and then ran back to say:

‘You can call me Violet. But I shall call you Squit.’

Then she ran away again.

It was Squit Bisham, watching her!

On Thursday afternoon when Mr Edwards was expected to dinner, Violet came to her manure heap when Bisham was thoughtfully weeding Miss Wisdon’s aster bed.

‘Hullo, Squit,’ she said.

‘Hallo,’ he said, generously.

‘Dad and Mum have gone out to supper. Take me to the pictures and we’ll be back by nine o’clock. We’ll have a good time.’

She looked flushed and pretty in a rough way. She was still licking chocolate. He was rather interested in the feminine figure at this time. But was it wise to take up with her? He thought of women in terms of marriage, and there was something a little unromantic about marrying a Sanitary Inspector’s daughter. He was very snobbish at this time. Violet was in a very chatty mood, called him Squit in quite a friendly way, and it obviously didn’t occur to her that he could refuse. She told him all about her grandma, who had the dropsy, giving interesting details. Finally she said he was to slip out into the street in exactly an hour’s time.

‘See? Have you got any money?’

‘Well, yes. But …’

‘Enough for chocolates? I hate half doing things.’

‘Look,’ he faltered, ‘I’m afraid I can’t come tonight. Somebody’s coming to dinner.’

Her brow darkened.

‘Who? That Mr Edwards?… That’s fine, leave them together, they’re madly in love with each other, didn’t you know that? Tell Miss Wisdon you want to go for a long walk.’

‘It isn’t so easy as that!’

‘You dirty little squit!’

‘I’d like to come some other night,’ he protested.

‘You’re afraid,’ she said.

‘I’m not …!’

‘Yes, you are! You’re afraid of girls!’ The contempt in her voice hurt badly. ‘I shall never speak to you again!’

She turned and ran up the garden, long legs white in the sunshine.

The incident clouded an evening already a little overcast. Mr Edwards’s arrival did nothing to cheer, nor did his after-dinner comments. During dinner he made no comments at all. Miss Wisdon had warned him in advance not to speak to him unless spoken to, Mr Edwards liking to eat in silence and to masticate his mouthfuls fifty-six times. He sat at table staring over his head at the bust of Robespierre on the bookcase. He was tall and stern and high-collared, and Miss Wisdon treated him like God. He treated her with great courtesy and respect too, speaking of her to him as ‘a great lady, so good and kind’. There wasn’t the feeling they were madly in love with each other, but he gathered at the finish he was a Trustee, and that she had done a great deal for the Chapel at which he was Sidesman. Dinner was prolonged and Ernest sat wondering what he would say to him afterwards, and whether Violet really thought he was afraid of girls, and whether he had better invite her to the pictures fairly soon. Miss Wisdon had said in scandalized tones before dinner: ‘I hope I didn’t see you talking to the girl next door, dear? She is not at all suitable and we do not know them.’ At the close of dinner Mr Edwards gravely said a grace, and Miss Wisdon in hushed tones said she now thought Mr Edwards might like to speak to him alone, and she went gravely out. He opened the door for her and she went off to the drawing-room, giving him a little pat on the cheek as if to say: ‘It’s quite all right, your future is assured—thanks to Mr Edwards!’

‘So kind and good,’ Mr Edwards said as he returned to his place. He was getting out a little cigar not much bigger than a cigarette.

He thereupon grew very pompous and talkative, asking a lot of questions about his life, and about his schools, and about how he liked being with good, kind Miss Wisdon, and whether she ever spoke about him. He replied that she frequently did and he looked very pleased in a clouded sort of way. Suddenly he got up and went to the fireplace and clasped his hands behind his coat tails. He said he understood that Ernest was worried about his future, but that now it was settled, and that he was to start on Monday in the West End of London, in a Banking and Insurance House called Ponds Corporation Limited. There was a sinister silence.

It suddenly came to Ernest that it was time he emerged from his dazed condition and took a serious interest in things.

He tried very hard to convince Mr Edwards about certain musical ambitions, which he didn’t really possess, but they sounded better than mentioning burglary.

Mr Edwards didn’t look the type to understand cat-burglaries.

Unfortunately, he didn’t understand music, either.

Ernest became aware that he had reached a time in life when certain decisions had to be made. He had some money now, but not so much as all that, and he supposed Mr Edwards was right in saying he ought to ‘do’ something. Why not learn banking, from the bottom rung of the ladder? It was so safe, Mr Edwards said he thought.

Mr Edwards said that music was ‘very unsatisfactory’, and, although Ernest knew he was pulling Mr Edwards’s leg, he kept on about music, so as to keep off the difficult subject of banking.

He also said there was no need for Mr Edwards to bother about him. It was only Miss Wisdon’s idea.

‘Only?’ frowned Mr Edwards.

‘It’s very kind of her, of course.’

‘She is very good and kind …’

‘I know. But there’s no need for either of you to bother about me, Mr Edwards. Thank you very much. Things will sort themselves out, I’ve no doubt.’ He added vaguely: ‘I might write a symphony.’

Mr Edwards was horrified.

‘Composing?’ he said, standing. He seemed fascinated by him. ‘But I thought you wanted to carve out a career for yourself. I know you have a little money now. What’s better than to learn banking? Then you will be able to look after it.’

‘I loathe money and banks,’ Ernest said sadly.

This winded him completely. He looked quite at a loss until his brain cleared with:

‘I must remember you are still very young.’ He seemed much happier. ‘How old are you?’

‘Getting on for thirty.’

‘Much older than you look. But nothing wrong with that age to enter a sound firm like Ponds Corporation. In fifty years—providing you work hard—you’ll probably be earning between ten and twenty pounds a week. This music phase of yours—there’s nothing wrong with it—will of course pass. Here is your letter of admission. I have already written to the bank on your behalf.’

Thus this ancient problem was no easier for Ernest than for a multitude of others. It had come to him later, that was all. Just before he was ready for it. Income versus Art, and all the arguments about playing for safety, or playing for your beliefs and your secret faith in yourself. He could never agree with those who thought an artist could not create what he wanted to create without that frightful preliminary toss-up. Perhaps one day it would be possible for the boy who wanted to paint or write or sing or play to get on with it at once without money worries, in the same way that the would-be businessman could get on with it from the word go, and paid for it into the bargain. Until the present, the would-be creators, who had problems enough to decide if they were even sufficiently gifted, had to set out into the darkness of probable hunger and squalor, at tenderer years than thirty. It was time that Dickens’s garret was burned down and forgotten. Mr Edwards was no better and no worse than his predecessors. He put it down to Ernest’s youth and said quite sharply: ‘Take my advice and put music out of your head.’ He would have said much worse about cat-burglary.

‘Supposing Beethoven had done that,’ Ernest explained, flushed. ‘Or Schubert.’

He let out a guffaw. ‘So you fancy you are Schubert?’

‘No,’ he said, getting bored. What ought he to do with his life? There was such a lot of it.

‘We all have young ideas,’ Mr Edwards said.

‘Did you?’ he asked.

Mr Edwards went into the drawing-room presently, shaking his head and looking very cross. Ernest heard him telling Miss Wisdon that he had been a little rude ‘and ungrateful’, and that he was afraid he was stupid into the bargain. He admitted Ernest looked intelligent enough to grow out of it ‘in time’. When he had gone, Miss Wisdon asked him in scandalized tones if he had been ‘polite to Mr Edwards? He’s such a great man, and Chapel.’

‘I tried to be,’ he said. ‘But I’m older than he thinks.’

‘I hope you will make a better impression on Ponds Corporation, dear. You are not at all old. Thirty is nothing. For a man.’

‘I want to learn about music. Not about banking, Miss Wisdon,’ he decided to explain. ‘When anyone wants to learn about banking, they’re received with open arms! Everyone understands immediately. They don’t get told, oh, you must go and write a symphony, here’s a letter of introduction, you will start on Monday at two pounds a week. Then, after fifty years, if you have written enough symphonies, you may earn ten pounds a week.’

‘Don’t scream, dear,’ prayed Miss Wisdon, scandalized afresh. ‘You look quite flushed, I’m sure you’ve got a headache.’

And she asked him if he needed aspirin or Enos. He chose aspirin.

Next morning he saw Violet balanced as usual on her manure heap. He had been set to sweep in between Miss Wisdon’s row of stone frogs, by the sun-dial. Violet was wiping her tongue along a stick of liquorice and eyeing him with that kind of disfavour which was also speculative. A high wind blew her mop in an easterly direction.

‘Squit,’ she said.

‘Good morning,’ he said, by now resolved to ease his ruffled vanity by some display of manhood. ‘I wanted to speak to you.’

She turned her back, but he noticed she didn’t run away.

‘Would you like to come to the pictures?’ he enquired nervously.

‘Seen everything,’ her back said.

‘Well, we could go to a theatre.’

‘What sort?’

‘Something musical, if you like.’

‘When?’

‘Saturday. Tomorrow. I’ve decided to start a job on Monday and I’ll be leaving here.’

She swung round.

‘Leaving?’

‘Yes. I didn’t come here for always. Miss Wisdon only did it to oblige. My other house is being painted.’

She would not commit herself, but he felt certain she would turn up, if only because he secretly prayed she wouldn’t. She ran in, and then ran back to say she had examined the papers and he could take her to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a twopenny bus ride, and that if she turned up, she’d meet him there in time for the first house. ‘I say if. I ought not to come out with you at all, after the way you treated me.’

‘It’s very kind of you.’

‘I wouldn’t do it for everyone.’

‘Well, thank you.’

He retired to wait in dread for the following evening.

When it came, he told Miss Wisdon he thought he would go and make sure of how to reach Ponds Corporation, so as not to be late for Monday morning, and she was very pleased, though she told him not to linger long in the West End on a Saturday night. She looked very grave about this, and so did Iris. The future seemed a dizzy and bewildering affair, and his evening with Violet offered some light relief. Perhaps it was at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, once again within sound of music, or at any rate musical noises, that he decided Ponds Corporation could not be allowed to hold him for long, if at all. Violet turned up on the tick. She looked surprisingly nice, a trifle startling, wearing a little red hat with a huge white feather jutting out of the top of it. She was for a time surprisingly shy and subdued, blushing profusely when she said: ‘Hullo, Squit!’