A Man of Straw
I saw him in Leicester Square, standing on the edge of the pavement in front of the Empire.
There was something familiar about him, the tall, thin figure, the small moustache, and the pale, helpless blue eyes. He looked up at me, hesitating, uncertain, a little afraid to speak, expecting that I should cut him.
Then, like a flash, it came back to me; his name, his personality.
“Surely it’s Marlow, isn’t it?” I said, “and I don’t believe you’ve forgotten me either. Where have you been all these years, and what happened to you after we ran up against each other that time in France, in ’17?”
He had scarcely changed at all. He must have been thirty-six or seven, and yet there was scarcely a line to show the difference between him and the boy I knew at school. And yet there was something—vague, shadowy. It was as if, imperceptibly, he had shrunk into himself, become worn, a little humble. I could see him at school, rather arrogant, inclined to show off, and yet popular, with many friends. Then, in France, when I met him suddenly in Havre during 1917, his arrogance had shown itself again. His attitude towards me, a junior officer, had been superior, slightly ridiculous. Now, twelve years later, his manner had altered. He stooped a little, too, as if he bore some weight upon his shoulders. I felt curious to know how he had lived.
“I never thought you would remember me,” he smiled. “You know how it is, one goes abroad—one drifts, and people go out of one’s life. …” He seemed to be apologising for something.
I realised that he had the appearance of someone who is half-starved, who denies himself the meanest necessities. Yet he was not in any way shabbily or poorly dressed, his clothes were good. I took him off to dinner at my favourite little Italian restaurant, and there his general shyness melted, he gave way, he told me about himself. I leant back in my chair, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and listened to him for nearly two hours without interruption. He told me his story, fixing me the while with his pale blue eyes, and from time to time brushing his short moustache with a quick, impatient gesture.
“The fact is,” he began, “I’m done; beaten. Life has got me under, and I can’t cope. I’m thirty-seven; no money, no job—without the likelihood of anything turning up. One goes on hoping, day after day, that something will come along, and that’s about all. Meanwhile, I keep up appearances; I never allow myself to grow slack or shabby.
“These clothes, for instance. You’d never guess from my clothes that this is the first meal I’ve had for two days? No, I believe in keeping up appearances.”
He spoke without conviction. His hand trembled as he lit the cigarette I offered him. A note of weariness crept into his voice, a whining note, a ceaseless complaint.
“You see, nothing has really been my fault,” he went on. “Not consciously, anyway. I’ve never meant to hurt anyone or anything, and yet life has been against me, always, always. I don’t ask for much, only the right to live decently, to keep body and soul together.
“Something has happened to the world. People have become brutal, callous. No one is ready to lend a helping hand. If I were like the rest of them, hard, indifferent, thick-skinned—God, if I could only change my temperament. But I’m so appallingly sensitive—and it’s incurable, there’s nothing to be done. All my life it’s been the same—all my life mucked up because of it.”
He drank his coffee slowly, thoughtfully. It occurred to me that he was acting a little, that he was watching himself as it were, with me, and creating for his own benefit a shadow on a wall.
Yet he seemed unconscious of this, and I decided that he had acted a part so long that he had therefore lost all insincerity, and had become one with the character he had drawn for himself.
He leant forward, intimate, as one who bares his soul to his confessor.
“And then—no one has really understood me since my mother died.”
Weakness, self-pity—at once I held the key to his character.
Justified, perhaps, a shallow, empty life, like most of us who came through the War, but surely he could have found somewhere a place to rest? He could not have searched in himself, nor in anyone, for that matter, for that small grain of beauty that lies in all of us, even in the most weary, the most forsaken.
“No one has understood me since my mother died.”
Then he went on to talk about the War.
“Those four years had a terrible effect upon me. They shook something inside me, not youth, not ideals, but something I can’t name. Vaguely, I think, it was the want to ever do anything or to be anyone that went. There didn’t seem very much purpose in anything. I don’t know if other fellows did the same—but I became slack with myself, I didn’t bother to think at all.
“At first I waited, expectant, for something terrific to happen, so as to be able to lose myself in a rush of feeling—but it never came. I messed about, doing my job mechanically, aware of a sense of frustration, as if I’d missed something, taken the wrong turning. I dare say it was different for you, right in the thick of it. You see, I never actually saw any fighting,” he went on hurriedly, as if ashamed, blushing a little. “I was cooped up in Havre most of the time, staff work, you know, red tape. They stuck me there—it wasn’t my fault.”
He looked at me helplessly. I wondered why he took such pains to explain this to me. War records—what do they matter now, one way or another?
He conjured in my mind a vision of old men in clubs, discussing the election of a possible new member. “They tell me he has a very fine war record.” “Oh! really,” and the matter is settled.
“You’ve no idea what it was like in Havre,” said Marlowe. “It made one restless, impossible. If I could have been in the thick of it like you—seen men die round me—I don’t know, perhaps …”
He stopped, uncertain of his words, unable to continue.
One didn’t talk of these things—besides, it had all happened so long ago. I think we were both aware that this was not a discussion that would lead him anywhere.
“When I got back to England after the War, I messed about in London for a while. I didn’t know what to do with myself at all. I got in with a crowd of people, all a little jaded, and rather excited about nothing, do you know? We killed time, we went to parties—we didn’t even really amuse one another. That sort of thing has never appealed to me. Then I married.
“My marriage was a terrible failure, right from the start. You see, I started the whole thing because I was bored.”
So much for marriage. His sentence was typical, not only of the man, but of most of us—this thoughtless, postwar generation.
“Besides, I was sorry for her,” he continued. “I’m very easily touched by people, especially women. She was unhappy at home, and longed to be independent. She told me some wretched story about a man who wanted her to go to New Zealand and live with him—they had had an affair for a year or so—and then, before she could make up her mind, he died of pneumonia. Of course, when we met she was going on the rebound, and, as I told you—I was bored, nothing to do. Kate and I were just caught up in the mesh of things. Perhaps we both thought there was a certain safety in marriage. Anyway, it all happened without much forethought—we imagined and pretended that what we were doing was for the best. Outwardly, I fancied this, but in reality I was tortured by doubt. Why, on the eve of my wedding I told myself ‘You’re making a terrible mistake,’ but it was too late. I did not see what I could do. How does one get out of that sort of thing without appearing an appalling cad?
“No, I’m convinced now, as I was then, nothing could be done. Kate and I had to go through with it.
“How can I explain to you? You see, I’m not really a very physical person, and unless I have someone who is sympathetic, who understands my countless changes of mood, it’s hopeless—hopeless. I suppose she was disappointed in me, it was natural. However, it is worse than useless to try to draw a picture of this to you.
“Well, I found it impossible to continue living on the little income my mother had left me. I had to find something to do.
“Do you know Beachcomb, that place on the East Coast that some enterprising fool tried to push as a fashionable seaside resort? I believe a pile of money was lost there. I got the job of running the sports centre.
“It wasn’t bad fun at first. They gave us a bungalow facing the sea, and a decent little garden. Kate used to potter about there, she was fond of gardening, and she scraped up acquaintance with the various locals. After a year the life got on my nerves to such an extent I thought I should become insane.
“The petty atmosphere of that club, day in, day out, the endless rows at the hotel, people being rude, not paying—and then it always seemed to fall on me, the job of peacemaking—of patching up quarrels.
“Then Kate started to make silly scenes of jealousy over nothing at all.
“Oh, I dare say many other fellows would have found the life ideal, no actual worries, decent pay—long summer months in the open air and that sort of thing.
“Let them try Beachcomb in the winter, though, when you can get through all your work in the morning, and then idle away the rest of the day playing billiards with chaps who haven’t an ounce of brain in their heads.
“And then going back to your wife, and finding her in tears because you had left her alone. Row after row!”
“That sort of atmosphere kills anyone like me, my nerves went all to pieces. I scarcely knew what I was doing. Then—well, the inevitable happened. I—made a fool of myself over a girl, and it cost me my job. She was stopping at the hotel for the summer with an invalid aunt. Nan she was called. God—what a lovely thing she was—very fair, thin, only eighteen. She used to come up to the club and say she wanted lessons in golf. It was an incredibly hot summer that year—Beachcomb became almost attractive, and I neglected everything.
“I guess the sun must have gone to my head, nothing seemed to matter as long as I saw that child every day. We used to swim together—go for moonlight walks—you know the sort of thing. I never stopped to think for a moment. My life with Kate was a farce; I was miserable, wretched, and here was this lovely creature willing to give up her time to me.
“I’ve always adored anyone young, anyone gay. I couldn’t help realising that Kate was older than I, that she had never been particularly attractive. I can’t see that I was a cad in making love to Nan, any man would have done the same, she was so young, so lovely.
“Besides, I never meant it to become serious, I thought it would merely be a relaxation.”
Once more the note of injury crept into his voice. The weak man, the injured man. He had never “thought” about this, he had never “meant” any harm. Impotent stock-phrases, my brother.
“Everything seemed to combine to force us together,” he protested. “I assure you I made no definite move, but opportunities occurred—these things have to happen, it’s human nature. And I’m so damned sensitive to beauty.”
One by one his little weapons fell from him, and his words helped him not at all.
“Things went on like this for about six weeks, and then Kate found out. I can’t go into this, or how she discovered. It’s too sordid, too horrible. There was a terrible scene, and she threatened to make a scandal. I was terrified of the result of all this upon Nan, and the general breakup of things. For two days Kate and I never slept at all, we discussed the question from every point of view, arriving nowhere, going over and over the same old ground.
“By the third day I was too tired to argue any more, the position was hopeless, I was ready to accept any conditions. Kate suddenly seemed to possess the energy which I was lacking. I felt ashamed of myself, I had treated her badly. And now that it had come to the point I was uneasy at the thought of a divorce, of making some sort of a life with Nan, of another failure perhaps—anyway, I was unable to cope. So I agreed to Kate’s suggestion—I threw up my job—I wrote a wretched farewell letter to Nan—and that was the end of it.”
His eyes seemed to feel mine, in search of sympathy, of possible disapproval. Then he looked away, and began to tug uncomfortably at his little moustache.
“We then came up to London, and lived in rooms near Holland Park.”
His sentence seemed to suggest that this was the outcome of every adventure that has no end, of all broken romances.
“A fiend of Kate’s told me I ought to go on the films. I’ve always photographed fairly well, but I felt there must be more in it than that. Still, Kate was keen, she had heard glorified accounts of the money they paid, I suppose, and it didn’t make much difference to me what I did.
“This friend introduced me to a chap who was starting a company. I made a fair test, and to my surprise they engaged me, for small-part work. This went on for about a year. My heart was never in it for a moment, but it kept me from thinking. Then the company went bust—and I was once more without a job. It was the day after this happened, and I was feeling pretty desperate I can tell you, when Kate chose the moment to tell me she was going to have a baby. It was absolutely the last straw.”
The vivid scene came before me of him sitting in a chair in the drab rooms near Holland Park, and his wife breaking her news to him, tired, a little afraid, but perhaps daring to hope for a word of sympathy, a smile—a suspicion of tenderness. And he, rising from his chair, irritable, impatient, and clenching his hands, “This is the last straw.”
“There was another scene, naturally,” he told me, “but I was firm for once. I had no job, no settled income, I could not possibly provide for a child. I made her go back to her mother. I think she was relieved, and it was the only thing to do under the circumstances.
“I was determined to break away, to start with a clean page. I felt I just had to get away from England, to begin afresh. I longed for new faces, new people. I had just enough money to pay my passage to Canada, first-class.”
Yes, he would travel first-class. He would arrive in the: Colonies without the prospect of a job, with no money in his pockets; but at least, according to his code, he would have kept his self-respect. He would travel first-class.
“I met a woman on the boat who seemed really to understand me. She had the most amazing ideas on life; we had conversations—God, the things we discussed. We were both utterly in sympathy with one another. She was very rich apparently; anyway, she took me under her wing, and we went to Montreal together.
“For a couple of months I was perfectly happy. Of course I was a fool, I threw away many opportunities of jobs, for the mere pleasure of being with her, talking to her, exchanging ideas.”
“Then, I don’t know how it was, whether she grew bored or what, she was an extraordinary woman, but she went away one day and never came back. Left a note saying goodbye, and it had been fun and all that, and she had gone to California. Queer, wasn’t it? I’ve never understood it at all. The next few years I rather went to pieces. I mucked about in Canada looking for jobs, I tried one thing, and then another. I was on the stage for a while, I used to play the leading man in third-rate tours! One-night stands, and repertory stuff. What a crowd!”
He leant back in his chair, a puzzled frown on his face.
“One gets so awfully lonely,” he explained. “I can rub along with most people, but there’s something underneath all the time that keeps alive in spite of one’s efforts to kill it—a pain, a reminder. I tried drinking, but it wasn’t any use. It didn’t ease me, or even give me any pleasure, but I hoped it would help me to forget, you know—vaguely.”
His wisdom seemed infinite. The more one drinks the more one forgets—always vaguely.
“I began to wonder about Kate, and my little boy. She had not written to me for a long while, nor I to her, for that matter. I realised that the boy must be nearly three, and I had never seen him. Only a smudgy snap, taken in a back garden. I used to carry it about in my notecase. Then, one day Kate sent me a long letter. As she had not heard from me for so long she had started to take proceedings for divorce, on the grounds of desertion, etc. Also, she told me she had met someone who had become very attached to her and the boy. I gathered that she meant to marry him. Of course, there was nothing to say, she deserved any happiness she could get. I suppose the man had money, and, anyway, what sort of a father was I?
“I threw away the snapshot, there didn’t seem much point in getting sentimental.
“My luck changed after this; I thought life was going to offer me something at last.
“I won a lottery. It gave me a real thrill to have some cash in hand for once. I knew nothing about investments, but I resolved to make good, if such a thing were possible. I met some fellow who said he’d discovered a wonderful new process of photography—too technical to explain—but I took a great fancy to him, and we decided to travel back to England together, and start some sort of a business. He seemed thoroughly honest, mentioned the names of people I knew—well, I believed every word he said.
“I was to put my money in this photographic affair, and make a fortune. I never imagined for a moment that it was a swindle—I was completely taken in. We arrived in England, put up at the same hotel—and then he vanished. Not a trace of him, nor my money. It sounds a faked, unlikely story, doesn’t it, but I assure you it’s true.
“After that nothing will ever surprise me again; I’m prepared for anything—any mortal thing that comes along.”
Once more he became humble, small; he seemed to shrink into himself.
“Since then I’ve been unable to cope. I’ve spent my time running round, digging up old friends. People have been kind in a way, suggesting jobs, but nothing that I fancy. All a little degrading; you know how it is, if one’s been brought up in a certain way, public school and all that; I don’t know. …
“I’m lodging in Golders Green at the moment. There’s a girl there who’s been very sweet to me—and I believe I’m fond of her. But, of course, the position is hopeless, and I hate ties in any form, I must be independent.
“It’s difficult, so difficult, to know how to use one’s life. If only there was someone who could really help, really understand.”
We sat for a while in silence. I racked my brains, wondering if my uncle could do anything—if there was an opening for him in his office.
Then he leant forward suddenly, flushing a little, his eyes on his plate, and speaking in a low, hurried voice—
“If you could possibly lend me five pounds .