Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 3
IT took Stephen Sorrell the best part of a week to understand the "atmosphere" of the Angel Inn at Staunton.
It was a little world in itself, a world dominated by that woman of blood and of brass, Florence Palfrey. The other humans were little, furtive figures, scuttling up and down passages and in and out of rooms. There were the two waitresses, the cook, the two chambermaids, and the apathetic young lady who helped in the bar. Poor, besotted John Palfrey, waddling about like a pathetic yet repulsive old dog, a creature of wind and of nothingness, was a voice and nothing more. He was perpetually fuddled. His hands trembled; his swollen waistcoat was never properly buttoned; even his gossipings in the "Cubby Hole" were like the blunderings of a brainless animal. Sometimes Sorrell found him in tears.
"What is it, sir?"
"I've lost—my slippers. It's that damned pup—again."
"Who cares? I'm—I'm asking you? Not a blessed—soul"
Sorrell would find his slippers for him, or his pipe, though he could not dry the poor creature's silly tears. There were times when he himself was on the edge of tears, tears of rage or of exhaustion. He went to bed each night, worn out in mind and in body, so tired that he would lie awake and listen to the cathedral clock, or to the noises of his own body. The work was new to him; he was on the go from morning to night; the luggage pulled him to pieces. Moreover, the food was execrable, and those slovenly meals snatched anyhow and at any time in the slimy kitchen, turned sour in his tired stomach. Very often he was in pain.
But the thing that astonished him was the dirtiness of the place. From the street the Angel suggested cleanliness and comfort; the paint was fresh, the dcor-step white, but an observant eye might have noticed the dead flowers in the window boxes. Within, a cynical slovenliness prevailed. It was not safe to look under the carpets, or to reflect upon the blankets hidden by the treacherously clean sheets. There were places that smelt. As for the kitchen, and that awful dark and greasy hole where the dishes were washed, they made Sorrell wonder at the innocence of the people who ran their cars into the Angel yard and ate the Angel dinner, and slept in the Angel beds.
The place had a sly filthiness. It was like a wench in silk stockings and lace whose ablutions were of the scantiest. Yet there was money in the "house." Trade was good; Florence Palfrey never gave you the impression that she had to deny herself anything. She was brazen, voracious, insatiable, an animal with bowels full of fire. It was she who made out the bills, and in most of them there was some flagrant item against which the easy English visitor should have protested. In nine cases out of ten they remained mute, and paid. Florence Palfrey knew her world. She bluffed. She chanced the protest, knowing that people would pay and go away and grumble and forget. She knew the world's moral cowardice, its inertia.
Sorrell soon realized that the Angel as an hotel did not matter. The coffee-room, the commercial-room, the bedrooms were of no importance; what mattered was the bar.
Men came to booze.
In fact the "Cubby Hole" of the Angel Inn was a pivot, a fly-trap, a cave into which all sorts of male things crowded, and drank, and made silly noises and sillier laughter, and looked with lustful eyes at Florence Palfrey. At night the room would be full of them, and even in the daytime it was rare for the room beside the bar to be empty. This cavity had a secret, conspiratorial air. The men who sneaked into it dreamed of catching old Palfrey's wife in a mood of consent, and of exciting moments among the red cushions.
The "Cubby Hole" filled Sorrell with nausea.
He began to know the names and the faces and the callings of the men who drifted into it. There was Romer—the managing clerk of Spens and Waterlove, a polite person with restless brown eyes and an unpleasant tongue. He had an amazing collection of stories. Biles, who owned the big butcher's shop in High Street, would slip in with his red, greasy and furtive face, and would spill silly compliments from his coarse lips. Sadler the "vet" went away each night stiffly drunk, moving like a figure on wires, his eyes fierce in his thin and debauched face. But there were dozens of them, farmers, tradesmen, commercial travellers, young bloods, all slinking in like dogs, drinking, and lounging and lusting.
"The fools!"
Sorrell called them fools, and his scorn of them was part of his own pain. He had to mark for some of them in the billiard room, to listen to their dirty stories, to fetch them drinks. It was their amusement, and his torture, for often he was drooping with fatigue and boredom, and yearning for the fools to go to bed. And he would hear the laughter in the "Cubby Hole," and the splurgings of these tradesmen who made love like bullocks.
"Floe—on thou shining river."
That was Medlum's jest, Medlum who kept the bookshop and sold prayer-books and Bibles and pretty-pretty art tourist guides, and who had a wife and seven children. He was a sandy man who looked as though he had been dipped in a bleaching vat, all save his mouth which was thin and red and lascivious.
They spent much money.
They would send poor old Palfrey up to bed, bemused, shuffling in his slippers, grabbing at the handrail. Often Sorrell would have to help John Palfrey up the stairs, listening to his pantings and to his fuddled confidences.
"She don't care—not a damn. I've got water in me. I'm like a grape, Steve. What did the doctor call it? Ass-i-tis. Wish I were dead."
He would pause at the top of the stairs, panting, and staring solemnly at Sorrell.
"You mark my words. A coffin—in six months, I'm asking you. Who cares?"
He would weep.
"You're a good chap,—Steve. Don't know why. God,—I feel sick."
There were other things that Sorrell began to understand. Women came to the "Cubby Hole"; Miss Hargreaves from across the way, red nosed, excited, ready with thin, hard giggles; the lady who kept the fruit shop and who looked like an over-ripe plum, and who was always protesting that she could not bear to be tickled. "I'll scream."
These earthly souls soon ceased to puzzle him, but the woman of brass remained an enigma. She bullied these people, even when she treated them with brutal good-humour. She knew exactly how to handle each fool-man, and how to repulse some flushed face that was breathing too near to hers. There were times when Sorrell felt that she despised the whole crowd as much as he did.
And since a man must wonder, he went in pursuit of her motives. Did her huge vitality suck something from her herd of swine? Was it money? Did it cause poor Palfrey to disobey his doctor's orders and to shuffle nearer to the inevitable coffin?
She was shrewd, like a strong and cunning animal. She never lost her dignity, or allowed the amorous clowns to take liberties.
"I have seen something like her before," he thought. "Where?"
One wet night he remembered. The den was full of her Circe troop, and Sorrell, going in with a tray of glasses, saw her sitting on the sofa and looking over the heads of her adorers. Yes, he remembered. He had seen a lioness at the London Zoo, couched, and looking just like that, savagely and superbly indifferent. He could remember the way the tawny beast's eyes had looked over the heads of the humans fidgeting and chattering outside the railings, those tame people, those monkeys. The lioness, couched up above, eyes fixed upon some distance of her own, had ignored them.
But she met Sorrell's eyes, and a sudden glitter came into them.
He was closing and locking the hotel door when he heard her calling him.
"Stephen."
He went to the door of the den. She was sitting on the sofa, yawning, and with the naturalness of a fine animal.
"What damned fools!"
She looked at him, and picked up a cigarette from the table.
"I want a match."
He produced a box, and striking a match, held it for her to light her cigarette. She blew smoke. Her eyes lifted suddenly, and he saw the big black pupils and the vivid blue of each iris.
"You looked fagged."
"It's the end of the day."
"You ought to get off more. You work too hard."
Sorrell's eye dropped.
"If I could get out for an hour—after tea. There's my boy; I don't see much of him"
Instantly he was aware of the fact that he had offended her.
"O—your boy! What's he doing?"
"Going to school."
"The Council school?"
"Well, it's that—or"
"A summons. All right,—clear out for an hour each day. Have you locked up?"
"Yes, madam."
He had a glimpse of her profile as he passed the door on his way to the stairs. She was smoking and looking at and through the wall opposite her. The corner of her mouth was drawn down and she was frowning.
Sorrell had particular moments in the day when life was worth living. One of the moments was when he got to his attic at night, and counted up the day's tips and entered the amount in a little black note-book; the other moment of happiness came to him with a daily glimpse of the clean, frank face of his boy.
Kit would come to the arched entry, and Sorrell would meet him there, and Kit would see his father in the old, familiar blue serge suit grown more shiny and less neatly creased about the trousers. There were times when Sorrell wore an apron, but he contrived to appear before Christopher minus the apron. His pride allowed itself this little satisfaction.
They would stand together for five minutes beside one of the white Ionic pillars supporting the bow window of the dining-room, the boy looking up into his father's face. He was an observant child, and his love for Sorrell had undergone a transfiguration. Christopher noticed changes in his father's face; it looked more waxy; there were little wrinkles as of a troublesome knot of effort lying between the eyebrows. Sorrell was thinner; he stooped more.
But Sorrell's eyes smiled.
"How's she feeding you, son?"
Christopher had no complaint to make of the food that Mrs. Barter gave him at No. 13 Fletcher's Lane. She was a good woman.
"She's been mending my shirts, pater."
"Ha," said Sorrell, "has she!"—and glanced at the boy's suit. Yes, that fresh face contrasted with the shabby clothes.
"Time I took you to the tailor, my lad. I think I can manage it next week."
Christopher could not analyse all that lay behind his father's eyes, but he felt the warmth of the love in them. He noticed that his father's eyes had a filminess, a veiled and secret delight, a moment of deep dreaming. They were the eyes of a man who was thirsty, and to whom the boy brought pure, clean water. Christopher refreshed him. His candid eyes and the brown warmth of his clear skin were unblemished fruit after the rottenness of those squashed and purple souls, those men who made Sorrell think of faces trodden on by an ever-passing crowd of sordid and unclean thoughts. His boy had youth, a future, possibilities; he was the sun in the east.
And poor Palfrey!
"My God!" Sorrell thought; "one must hold on to something, even if it is nothing but a clean shirt and a piece of soap."
Christopher never asked questions, awkward and embarrassing questions. He accepted his father's job, and he understood the significance of it far more subtly than Sorrell knew. It reacted on the boy, and deepened his sensitive seriousness.
At school he was very careful of his clothes. He did not say much about the school. It was all right. Better than London. What did he do in the evenings? O,—went for walks, mostly. There were woods outside the town, and the river.
Those few minutes were very precious to Sorrell, but they tantalized him. His boy was so apart from him all through the day, and whenever they met he would look eagerly at that frankly radiant face for the shadow of any possible blemish.
He felt so responsible, greedily responsible. The boy's clean eyes made the life at the Angel possible.
On one occasion when he had walked a little way along the footpath with Christopher he became aware of a face at a window. The woman was watching them. He caught her bold, considering eyes fixed on the boy.
He went back rather hurriedly into the passage, and met her there.
"That your kid, Stephen?"
"Yes, madam."
"He's not a bit like you. The mother's dead, I suppose?"
"I divorced her," said Sorrell, pale and stiff about the lips.
Usually, it was about eleven at night when he went slowly up the narrow staircase to the top landing where the staff slept. He carried a candle. Sometimes he would hear giggling and chattering in one of the girls' rooms, but he always went straight to his own, shut the door, put the candlestick on the chair, sat down on the bed and turned out his pockets. At this hour he did his precious calculations. His little black note-book was a model of neatness, with credit and debit entries.
| July 7. | Wages | £1 | 10 | 0 | Christopher—Board | £1 | 0 | 0 |
| July„ 7. | Tips | 4 | 6 | Tobacco | 2 | 0 | ||
| July„ 8. | Tips„ | 3 | 0 | Tooth brush | 1 | 0 | ||
| July„ 9. | Tips„ | 0 | Christopher—Boots | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
| July„ 10. | Tips„ | 7 | 0 | |||||
| July„ 11. | Tips„ | 5 | 6 | |||||
| July„ 12. | Tips„ | 1 | 0 | |||||
| July„ 13. | Tips„ | 9 | 0 |
Already he had a plan for his boy, an objective that showed like a distant light through the fog of the day's confusion.
"It's my business to do my job thoroughly," he thought, "in order to get Kit a better one. I'll save every damned penny."
Life, the life that should have appealed to the cruder of his own appetites, had ceased to attract him, and all his energy appeared to concentrate itself and to flow in one particular channel. He developed a peculiar passion for thoroughness, even though he might curse the inanimate things upon which he had to exercise this thoroughness. Queerly enough, much of his thinking and his philosophizing were done while he was cleaning the various pairs of boots and shoes left outside the bedroom doors. He did not mind this job,—though scrubbing the bar floor made his gorge rise. It was like cleaning out a pen where unclean animals had left their ordure. But boots! Boots had character. He got into the way of estimating the owners of the boots by their footgear. He had a preference for neat brown shoes, gentlemen's shoes, and his favourites came in for more polish. Young women's shoes—were they ever so chic—gave him no thrills. The boots he detested were the boots worn by a particular type of middle-aged commercial traveller, men who trod heavily and whose waistcoats bulged. He never put a hand inside one of these "swine's trotters" as he called them.
But with a free hour each day snatched from the Lioness's rather jealous paws, Sorrell began to see more of Christopher. He took his hour off from eight till nine, for he had found that too many motorists arrived after tea and he was not there to handle the luggage and to carry it up from the garage. He wished to be in evidence because is subsequent tips. But in these long summer evenings he and Christopher wandered together; sometimes they chose the Close, on other evenings they wandered out a little way into the country; if it was wet Mrs. Barter let them sit in her parlour. She was kind to Sorrell; she offered to do his mending for him.
Christopher loved trees. There was a particular elm in the Close, a green giant with a ring seat round its bole, under which the boy liked to sit. Nor was Sorrell sorry to sit. It conserved boot leather, and rested his tired feet. Kit had noticed on their short country rambles that his father walked as though his feet hurt him. He had noticed—too—that one of the boots was patched.
"Your turn next—pater?"
"What for, son?"
"Boots," said the boy.
He had fatherly moments towards Sorrell. He too had his plans, vague ambitions, and impulse that pushed him towards some magnificent job in the doing of which he would earn much money. He had sensed the effort in his father's life; he dreamed of taking his share of the effort.
"I can start work at fifteen, pater."
Sorrell was astonished.
"I hope not," he said, and glancing from the boy's face to the spreading branches of the elm he saw life and its effort symbolized.
"Most people grow like cabbages. Look at this tree. How many years—eh? O,—it was not in a hurry. We—are not going to be in a hurry."
The boy's eyes were questioning.
"Not as long as that With you—sweating—and doing everything"
"It's my job, Kit."
He looked mysterious.
"I've got plans. The thing isWell, you don't know yet,—what you will want to do—I mean. No blind alleys, or office stools."
"You mean—dad—what I would like to be?"
"That's it."
"Seems—one's got to earn money."
"Wait a bit. There's something better: how you earn it. The real job matters more than the money."
"Yes," said Christopher very solemnly, "the sort of thing you love doing. Well,—I suppose I shall find out."