Paradise Street
The boat race was over. The hawkers had packed up their wares some time since, but a five-piece brass band was still hard at work, for money hath charms. Outside the Star and Garter a knot of the silent curious had gathered around a man stripped to the waist who was performing feats of strength. He was a man of an immense size, grossly muscular, his back humped like a bow that is too tightly strung, his skin a dark colour such as the sun could not have produced at that time of the year. Otherwise the crowds had melted leaving behind only trampled newspapers and rude remarks chalked on the road above the Hard. The hot sun beat upon the black pavement and from the various boat clubs came the confused tumult that goes with beer. Argyll walked slowly along the road above the river trying to overcome a sense of desertion and emptiness. Then he remembered he had had no lunch and walked up to Putney High Street.
The little Cockney was standing on the very edge of the pavement across the road. He wore a cloth cap of battered design and a white scarf was knotted at his throat. He was gazing across the road, with a look of fear and pride. His eyes were focussed at infinity. It was strange that he should just stand there as though there were no cars passing before his eyes, as though there were not a constant stream of people jostling behind him. Strange too that the small boy about whose shoulders he had his arm crooked should be alternately rubbing his face and resting his head against the immobile man beside him. A grubby child of some twelve years, in shorts and sweater, his socks accordeoned over the tops of ragged black boots.
Argyll crossed the road.
“ ’E’s ’urt ’is eye.”
“Yes, but have you called a taxi?”
The Cockney was going to say “I haven’t the money,” but checked himself, so that he merely said “No, guv’nor.”
It was not far to the hospital. The little man said nothing until after the boy had been laid on a table in a dark room. Then he and Argyll walked out into the hall.
“Cigarette?”
“Thanks, mate.”
There was silence for a bit. The little Cockney gazed fixedly out of the window at the concrete pavement from which the sun shimmered. Occasionally he blew the ash off his cigarette without removing it from his lips.
Suddenly he seemed to remember something and clutched his cap from his head thus revealing the pate of a man who always wears headgear except when in bed. As he spoke he crushed and twisted the cap in his hands.
“I’d not been asleep an hour,” he said, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth jerking up and down spasmodically, “workin’ all night on a twelve hour shift, when in runs young Bert, cryin’ So I cuffs ’im for wakin’ me. ‘Alf’s ’urt ’is eye,’ ’e says quick-like. We was playin’ in the yard and my stick broke ’is glasses.’ So I jumps up from the couch and looks out the window and there’s Mrs. Green from across the street, and Bert cryin’. So I brings ’im out to the road where you seen us. Oh, I don’t know what ’is mother will say. She's out workin’ and won’t know about it till the neighbours tell ’er.” And as an afterthought “Then I’ll get what for.”
They went back into the darkened room. The doctor had just come in. The boy was sobbing softly, without tears, from fear rather than pain. The doctor examined the eye, and said to the little Cockney.
“I’m afraid we can do nothing for him here. You will have to take him to the London Ophthalmic.”
Argyll had often wondered what it would be like to drive through the five o’clock London traffic in an ambulance. But the actual experience left little impression except one of speed, of a clattering bell, and of kaleidoscopic streets seen through dark purple glass.
At the Ophthalmic there was another long wait. Neither of them spoke. Time stood still. And once the two of them, thinking how lonely it must be there, returned to the darkened room. The boy tried to sit up, started to cry again and the father comforted him with a fierce gentleness. Then the boy slept.
At length the doctor came. He removed the bandage, and after a cursory examination, said, without change of facial expression, “The eye is seriously injured. I am not sure whether we can save the sight of it.”
The Cockney turned to the boy and said softly:
“You’re goin’ to be all right, Alf.” Then: “The wife will be comin’ ’ome now and won’t know where I am. Then I’ll get what-for. You go and tell ’er, mate. I don’t mind being alone now. You go and tell ’er. I’ll be ’ome when I can."
They were standing in a corner out of the pool dropped from the shaded light. There was the crackle of a banknote, and “You’ll be needing something to get home with.” The little man turned away, crushing the note in one hand and his cap in the other. His shoulders shook and there was no sound. When he turned he said nothing and the tears rolled down his cheeks as though an eternity of pent-up courage and silence had suddenly ended and he felt cold, hopeless, alone.
Argyll thought the taxi would never reach Putney. In the evening traffic, unlike the ambulance, it was forced to stop frequently and for minutes at a time. What would he say? He looked savagely at an address written on a crumpled envelope: Mrs. Martin, 69 Paradise St., Putney. He had looked at it dozens of times before, but it still gave no answer to his questions.
Argyll left the taxi at the end of Paradise Street – it would seem indecent to enter that street other than walking. When he had found the house he was looking for, there was no answer to his knock, except that a woman’s head emerged from a window across the road to remark that “she ain’t ’ome yet." So the whole street knew; the empty narrow street, the street full of identical houses; blind windows; a pathetically disguised squalor.
When he returned for the seventh time the street was dark except for a single lamp at its far end. His footsteps echoed wildly. The sound of his knock seemed almost sacrilegious. Then there came the sound of someone moving in the dark front room and the door was opened by a small boy. Argyll stepped into the front room which was twilit by the door facing him. The boy had disappeared without a word so the visitor said to the house in general:
“I want to see Mrs. Martin.”
The half-light darkened as a man’s form filled the doorway, and a gentle voice said: “It’s ’im, Maggy. Come in, mate." Then the man disappeared.
The lighted room was the kitchen, a small low ceilinged room almost filled by a stove and a large round table. On the table were two cups and a pot of tea. Facing each other were the Cockney and a very ample woman who had rested her elbows on the table and was blankly observing the points of light on the teapot.
“It’s ’im, Maggy.”
She raised her eyes and extended a limp hand. Argyll sat down, suddenly realizing what an incongruous contrast his evening clothes made.
“She knows, mate. I got ’ome ’arf an hour ago.”
“I tried to find your wife but couldn’t. Now that she knows, there is nothing more for me to do,” and turning to the woman, “I just want to say how sorry I am, how much I feel for you.”
As he spoke the woman watched him with the fixed attention of one who does not hear.
“She’s a bit deaf, is Maggy. Speak louder.”
“I am very sorry, Mrs. Martin, that this should have happened.” But by raising his voice he seemed to have drained the last drop of sympathy from the words, so that they sounded stereotyped and shallow – almost bitter.
Suddenly the loneliness and pity of it all engulfed him; the brown teapot, the white scarf still knotted about the Cockney’s throat, the blank stupefaction in the woman’s eyes, her great bulk shapeless with the sorrow that transcends tears, the pathetic consolation to be found in two cups of tea. They only felt the pain dully. It numbed them because they had suffered so much pain before. They no longer tried to find a reason for it or even took the trouble to cry out against the injustice of it.
He stammered: “I must be going – friends waiting for me.” He rose, shook hands, stumbled as he crossed the dark front room. He turned when the Cockney said: “Thanks for all you’ve done,” and heard soft weeping.
“It’s only young Bert, ’im as did it.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” said a choked voice. The boy was standing by the door.
The door was open.
“Cheer up, Bert. Alf’s all right,” said Argyll. He mumbled, “If I can help at all ... ” and the door closed.
* * *
A week later Argyll walked up the same street in spring sunlight. He could hear a blackbird singing, a rare phenomenon in Putney. He knocked, waited, and receiving no answer, knocked again. Suddenly a window crashed up and a strident man’s voice shouted:
“What the ’ell do you mean by makin’ such a bloody row?” and added with unreasonable petulance. “Didn’t you know I was sleepin’?”
He looked up. It was the little Cockney, a collarless shirt buttoned at his neck, hair towzled, face unshaven.
“Ow, it’s you, is it? Well, what do you want?”
“I just came to ask whether Alf was all right.”
“ ’E’s all right.”
The window crashed down.
Argyll walked slowly back along a street that had suddenly become dark and ugly.