Sullivan, page 23
‘That’s the nicest thing anybody has said to me for three months,’ said Oswald. He held out his hand. Sullivan hoped sincerely that he would get back his bounce in the Grecian Isles, that he would leave his defeat behind him. Greta would leave a lot more than that behind her, he thought as he shook hands with her. This time she avoided his eyes.
Oswald saw him to the front door, and waved him good-bye from the steps.
All right, said Bernie, if that is what you want, that nice house and the good living in it would you exchange what you are, even low as you are now, and be Oswald? Would you be poor Greta? he asked, to tease her. Look, kid, he said, you don’t understand. It’s the use of the things that counts. If I had the use of them, they would be properly used. See what I mean? You wouldn’t be unhappy? she asked. Don’t be silly, he said. But he went back to King Street a little more content with his lot and determined to plough on with the Street of Anger, and go searching again for jobs in the morning even if he had to put cigarette packets inside his shoes where the holes were wearing in them.
He bought hot chips when the time for supper came. Pi would be home. He cooked a dozen sausages in the pan. He cut the bread and buttered it There was a lot of shouting in the street. He went to look. There was a game of football going on. Sullivan grinned as he leaned against the frame of the outer door.
Pi was on one side and the bandy-legged chap from the fruit stall was on the other. The teams were made up of nearly all the races under the sun. London boys and West Indian boys, and Italian boys and Greek boys and Chinese boys. The conglomeration was incredible. They were all dressed in the oddest clothes. They could all laugh or frown in the same way, or curse in the same way. The veins in their necks could stand out the same way. It was a very fast and furious game and the ball was a bundle of tied-up rags.
Sullivan pursed his lips and whistled loudly at Pi. Pi looked up and waved his arm, and then got back into the game as the ball came to him. It was more like a battle than a game. It surged up and down the street. Passers-by had a job keeping out of the way. They looked indignant. It literally enveloped one man who came around the corner straight into the mêleé. He was an American; blue suit of light cloth, trousers held up by a leather belt a conservative tie and a white shirt with a buttoned-down collar.
Sullivan laughed when he was swamped. That’s democracy wiped out for you. But then the man emerged from the scrabble like a professional centre forward with the rag ball at his toes. He could run too. The combatants watched his performance in amazement and then with a howl of glee they ran after him and submerged him and passed over him, leaving him sitting on the cobble-stones. He was laughing. He had a wide mouth. Pi paused to help him to his feet to brush him down. The man asked Pi a question. Sullivan saw the surprise on Pi’s face, and him nodding towards Sullivan. Then the man saw Sullivan and came towards him settling his tie.
‘Not a patch on American football,’ he was saying to Pi. ‘If that was one of our ball games I’d have a broken clavicle by now or a bust nose.’
Then he was facing Sullivan.
‘Sure, I remember you,’ he said. ‘ You’re the one. The Hazel Shell. Right?’
‘Hello,’ said Sullivan, his heart starting a slow heavy pound. He was saying: This is good, Sullivan. Always the way. When you are down there is always something, around the corner. That’s the beauty of it. It is so unpredictable. Only good is going to come from this. I know it.
‘I’m Jay Stormer,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Sullivan. Jay had a hearty handclasp.
‘This is Pi,’ said Sullivan.
‘Hello,’ said Jay, shaking hands with him. ‘I believe we have met.’ He laughed. Pi laughed. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said then. ‘What’s cooking?’
‘Sausages,’ said Sullivan.
‘My dish,’ said Jay as they went into the room. The room was littered with the Street of Anger. Sullivan gathered the bits and pieces and threw them on the bed. Jay went over to the pan and took a hot sausage in his fingers and started eating it. Keeping his lips away from the heat of it. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I like your sausages. I had a tough job finding you, Sullivan.’
‘You succeeded,’ said Sullivan in awe.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But it was tough. Tracked you from Dublin. Then some play you were in that flopped. No address there. Got it through the Labour Exchange. Nice work, hah?’
‘Persistent,’ said Sullivan. ‘Why?’
‘I bought that Hazel Shell,’ Jay said. ‘Going to do it. Wonder if you would come and play the part in it.’
‘Where?’ Sullivan asked.
‘New York, of course,’ Jay said.
‘But why me?’ Sullivan asked.
‘Because I saw you doing it,’ he said. ‘Meant to go around and see you afterwards. But no time. Flying to Moscow the next morning. Back now though. Had a tough job finding you. Will you come? Are you booked?’
‘You’re not a phoney American, by any chance?’ Sullivan asked. ‘This is not a gag, is it, thought up by a couple of bright boys somewhere?’
Stormer laughed.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Don’t give yourself away. Bargain, man. Say that you have forty-seven different contracts, and it would cost a fortune to break them.’
‘You only have to look around here,’ said Sullivan, ‘to know what’s what.’
‘You might be a genius,’ said Jay, taking another sausage. ‘You might be living here because you like it. Some people do.’
‘Do I have to say yes now?’ Sullivan asked. ‘Or do I have to think it over for half a minute before I say yes?’
Jay laughed.
‘Look, Sullivan,’ he said. ‘I’m not a mug. I know you’re good. I doubt if anybody could do the part better than you can. I like the play. I want to do it. It may be successful. It may not be successful. I don’t know the hell. But it has quality. I like the quality. That’s all that’s to it. Just to make an agreement, fair to you, fair to me.’
Sullivan’s excitement was just steaming up. Caution said to him: This happened before. You were sold a bill of goods before. But he knew The Hazel Shell, didn’t he? And all right? What was the difference poking around here looking for a job and poking around New York looking for a job?
I’m your man,’ he said. ‘You are my man. This is Pi. Pi must come with me. You bring Pi too, and take it out of what’s coming to me. That’s the only bargain. Is it all right?’
‘That’s fine,’ said Jay. ‘I like Pi. Pi and me will get on together. I’ll take Pi and show him some real football.’
Pi was lost in this. It was too fast for Pi. Things, Pi was thinking, shouldn’t move so fast.
‘Fine,’ said Jay, taking another sausage. ‘Now let’s go and have something to eat somewhere and we will hammer out the details.’
‘You’ll have to wait,’ Pi wailed. ‘I’m not washed. I’m not cleaned.’
‘All right, don’t get excited,’ Stormer said. ‘We’ll wait.’ He went over and looked out of the window. ‘Nice view,’ he said. ‘For a plumber.’
‘Listen, man,’ said Sullivan. ‘You know the part of Bart in the play. Could you use him? You remember the man who played Bart?’
‘Sure I do,’ said Jay. ‘Sardonic-looking fellow. Good actor. What was his name?’
‘Mahon,’ said Sullivan. ‘Tony Mahon. Look, he’s in a play right now outside a bit. Will you come and see him? Can’t you take him? He’s good. How can you get any better?’
‘All right,’ said Jay. ‘ We’ll go look at him. I’m open. As long as you say yes, I can go ahead.’
‘For the love of God hurry up, Pi,’ said Sullivan. Pi had to be shameless.
‘You know,’ said Sullivan, ‘ this is all like a dream. Things don’t happen like this. They shouldn’t happen like this. It’s all wrong. You’re no pixie.’
‘That’s true,’ said Jay. ‘What the hell is wrong with it? I buy a play. I want to put it on. I want you in it. I come for you. I find you. That’s it. You don’t have to be a pixie to be business-like. What’s wrong with it?’
‘Not a thing,’ said Sullivan, ‘not a thing in the world.’
Wasn’t that always the way things happened? You go down and down but the principal thing to remember is that you must never lose heart. And if you work hard and do something good, some day it will benefit you, like The Hazel Shell. Why, maybe even some day I The King work would come into its own. And Tony. He always felt bad about having dragged Tony away from a place where he was fairly happy. Into a place where he had found a well of unhappiness and drunk deeply from it.
Sullivan said: ‘Whatever happens, whether you get to hate the sight of me, and you become sorry for having sought me out in King Street, whether the play is a failure or a success, I will always remember how I feel about you this moment. You are blood walking into a man’s heart; you are steps under a man’s soles; you are plankton for a whale.’
Stormer laughed.
‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you’ve gone all Celtic.’
Pi was ready, and they left. Pi held Sullivan by the coat-tails to whisper: ‘Hey, Sullivan, do you know what you are doing? Are you sure what you are doing is right?’
‘Get behind me, Satan,’ said Sullivan grandly and followed. Jay. Pi came after them shaking his head.
They dined in an expensive place. Sullivan revelled in it: the clean tablecloths; the shining cutlery; the unobtrusive service; the dishes that you could never afford. Stormer was good company. He had been everywhere. He had met and talked with a lot of. famous people. They were just crumbs, burns or good guys. He laughed a lot. His eyes were never done darting, watching, taking everything in. Sullivan sat back and enjoyed him. He became used to the feeling of fear departing from him. He didn’t allow himself to think that this was only tentative; that it might fizzle away like white frost in sunshine. This has to be, he told himself. Never again King Street. Please God, let us be done with King Street.
It wasn’t a good play that Tony was in, and Sullivan nearly crawled under the seat when he saw that Tony was slightly drunk. Maybe others didn’t know. But Sullivan knew. Tony all dressed up in a dinner suit, acting in a sort of polite English drawing-room comedy.
‘Is this the same guy?’ Jay whispered to Sullivan.
‘Yes,’ said Sullivan. It is the same guy and it is not the same guy. But he was making a good hand of what he had to do. Whatever laugh was in it he was getting it out with skill. He was doing a slightly drunken character in the play, so that the fact that he was really drunk wasn’t visible to the audience. Sullivan prayed that it wasn’t.
It wasn’t either, until the third act, when Tony dried. He dried at a point where nobody could help him. There was panic in the house. You could hear the voice of the prompter. Sullivan’s nails were biting into his palms. Tony said: ‘ The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place beneath.’ Then he caught the prompt and he went on with his lines. The house relaxed. There were a few titters. Jay Stormer guffawed.
‘Quality of mercy indeed,’ he said to Sullivan.
‘I hope you have it, buckets of it,’ said Sullivan. ‘He is the best Bart you can get. It will make a great difference to him.’
Tony wanted mercy.
The manager was talking to him when they went back to see him. ‘You’re finished,’ he was saying, ‘here and everywhere else. There’s not another theatre in the British Isles will make use of you. I’ll see to that.’
He walked past them angrily. Every cause to be angry, thought Sullivan. Tony himself of old would have been the first to admit it.
‘It’s yourself, Sullivan,’ he said. ‘And the brave Pi. You came at an embarrassing moment for me, but all will be well. How are you, Pi? How are you, Sullivan?’ He looked extremely decadent, the tall silk hat on one side of his head. Where are you going, Tony?
‘Tony,’ Sullivan said. ‘This is Jay Stormer.’
‘Hello,’ said Jay. ‘You’re loaded, boy.’
‘I am,’ said Tony. ‘ I am a disgrace to my own principles. Forgive me. You saw the play?’
‘Yes,’ said Jay, ‘unripe corn. I’m doing The Hazel Shell in New York. I’ve got Sullivan. Sullivan would like me to take you.’
Tony got to his feet.
‘You chose a bad time to come and see me,’ he said.
‘Look,’ said Jay. ‘Do you really have to be like this? Is there a cure for you?’
‘There might be one cure,’ said Tony. ‘A man’s trust.’
‘A guy is taking a long chance on that,’ said Jay. ‘Could you cut the corn?’
Tony put his hand on his breast. He bowed.
‘If you trust me,’ he said, ‘you will never have cause to complain of me.’
‘You’re in,’ said Jay.
‘Good God,’ said Tony. ‘I thank you, Sullivan, I owe you thanks. I would like to think that if the positions were reversed I would do the same for you.’
Sullivan snorted.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Whose fault is it that you are where you are now? Mine. Maybe you’ll have no cause to thank me. Maybe you will be cursing me later on. Maybe I will have done the wrong thing again. What does it matter?’
‘Tell me,’ said Tony, ‘have you seen anything of that poor Oswald man?’
‘I have,’ said Sullivan. ‘ He is gone to Greece. He went today.’ He didn’t say anything else although he knew that Tony really wanted to know about Greta. Greta!
‘Tell me, Jay,’ said Tony. ‘New York is in America, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ said Jay.
‘Approximately three thousand miles from our present geographical position.’
‘Yes,’ said Jay, laughing.
Tony put his hand on his shoulder.
‘Dear Jay,’ he said, ‘you’re an angel.’
‘That’s right too,’ said Stormer laughing. ‘I really am an angel.’
Here we go again, thought Pi, sighing, as they laughed.
Chapter Twenty Four
There came a time when Sullivan’s mind almost gave itself up to a state of incoherency. That was when his letters to Bernie became almost scatter-brained. As he told her, there was too much movement; everything was done in such a fever of excitement and drama that no cool, detached attitude could keep up with it. The mind just had to go along hectically or give up altogether.
Too much to assimilate at the one time, that was the trouble. Not enough time to settle down to a strange new way of life; where everything seemed perforce to have to move at a fast pace; where decisions and engagements were made on the phone so fast that you had to run to keep up with them, and no man can move faster than a message on a wire. None of this leisurely attitude of seeing you on Tuesday, old chap, and we’ll hammer the thing out together over lunch.
It was a kind of relief to Sullivan to get home in the small hours of the morning to the unpretentious hotel where Pi and himself and Tony had rooms, which they rarely saw. Just to flop on the bed and sleep if your seeming mind would let you. Pi was sane enough. He had the pleasure of working as what they called a hash-slinger, serving meals in a pub with a restaurant. The proprietor’s grandfather had been Irish and he loved Pi. He questioned him closely all day. He knew more about Ireland and the Irish than Sullivan who read the papers closely. Jimo could go back to the Firbolgs and tell you what way they were dressed and what they liked for their main dish (mainly long pig, Sullivan gathered).
Tony was no worry. He was very sober. He had turned over a lot of new leaves. You haven’t been through it, he told Sullivan. You haven’t been caught on a stage without words, just because you had too much to drink. I know you were caught without words but that was not your fault. But it was my fault. Like having the ten commandments smashed on your head. All the things I preached all my life. To see them broken there. That frightened him. Another thing, it was so dishonest. Even if the play wasn’t good, people were paying to see it. They were entitled to see it done as well as the actors were paid to do it. And what happened? They were cheated. Never again, Sullivan, never again. Tony took to wandering the straight streets in the little spare time he had, just looking at people, he told Sullivan. And the buildings. What monsters! What wonder! The tremendous brashness of man! How the builders of Babel would have envied! The piers on the river and the docks with the great liners, and the beautiful bridges that would transfix you with the soar of them, when they shouldn’t have been beautiful at all, they were so gigantic and so slender at the same time. All right, Tony, all right, Tony. Glad that Tony was that way.
Sullivan himself, who never walked a street without looking at the creases on men’s faces; that’s what gives faces the character they possess. You could almost guess from a man’s grooves what life had done to him. The grooves of bitterness or laughter or worry; or the good grooves carved on the face of a man who took fate as it came, weathered it, and pressed on. All these that he would notice, and store away for future use; how a highlight here or a highlight there could reproduce in your own face the remembered lines from the face of a man in a throng. Early on he was like that, walking and pointing them out to Bernie. See him! Or see that! My, there’s a beautiful girl! Can you tell her status from her clothes in this strange land where servant girls can look like duchesses on account of the mass producing of the dreams of a cutting artist? You will have to come over somehow, sometime, he would write to Bernie. You will just have to see it, just once, and then go back to your bloody apple trees.
None of that did he have time for in the long run. In the evening too tired; in the morning in too much of a rush.
He remembered just the one time in Jay’s office where they had picked the girl.
You go seventeen floors up in the lift to the corner office where a wide window looks down on what could be eternally scuttling beetles. At night it is a blinding fairyland of flashing lights of all the colours in the spectrum captured and contained in glass bottles. It is garish or extiting, or disturbing, or vulgar, or wonderful, as your fancy takes you. Wondering, apart from the practical reasons, if man built so high because like a mountain he could look down way below and feel like a god. Trouble was you had to go down and become small again. You couldn’t be a god up there all the time.
