glistening dead legs sticking up from a mess of petticoats . Standing with his back to Audrey, a bare-arsed man does something to the rabbit’s belly, guttin’ it –?
– No, no, no! That won’t do! A florid man with pomaded hair, in his shirtsleeves and a fancy embroidered waistcoat, comes out from behind a kinematographic apparatus set up in the tapering corner of the attic. No, no, no! he cries again – his expression is mad and guileless – this ’ere girlie’s torn it –! Mister Beauregard? Audrey ventures, but the red-faced man ignores her, his regard is fixed. — When Audrey turns back there’s no coney, only a girl a little older than her who sits on the chaise buttoning her bubbies into her bodice. The girl’s hair is up apart from a few stray locks, and atop its nondescript mass sits a lady’s toque complete with magenta-dyed ostrich feathers. There’s no bare-arsed man either, only Audrey’s father, who’s standing there in his long rabbit-skin coat and buttoning up gloves I’ve never see before . He doesn’t acknowledge his daughter but raises his bowler to Mister Beauregard, says, O-vwar, m’dear, to the girl and, retrieving his umbrella and a brown paper parcel from behind the drapes, conducts Audrey unceremoniously from the room. They are borne down the stairs on the wave of electric light – its crest breaks on the blank street . There is no sign of Fellowes – only his name fading across the tops of the shutters. – All this – Samuel Death strikes with his umbrella at the complicated dinginess of the Jacobean frontage – will be gone wivvin weeks . . . He sounds neither regretful nor cheered by the prospect. I do not know ’im who leads her on through streets shuttered by the massive timber bulwarks, working their way through the condemned rookery to the purlieu of Waterloo Bridge, where, through a gap, they can see the workings: navvies’ picks thrust handle-first in grave-fill, beside this Calvary a slough of despond wellin’ over with night-time and the drowned-corpse smell of the river . Why, Audrey longs to ask him, have they stuck bills on the insides of the hoardings? For surely navvies aren’t likely customers for Beecham’s Powders or a GUARANTEED 7 HOUR PASSAGE FROM Tilbury to Cherbourg. There will be, Samuel says, a grand booleyvard runnin’ norf t’Olborn, the newest street in Lunnun town, with the nobs pacin’ up an’ pacin’ down . . . an’ there’ll be a tunnel connectin’ to the bridge for the trams runnin’ under a twenny-storey buildin’ that’ll ’ave business premises, an arcade of posh shops, theatres . . . This, Audrey realises as they go through the Saturday evening drowse of Lincoln’s Inn, is his gift: this tour of the city about to be swept away, and this portrait of an orderly city of the future. – At Chancery Lane the boys are crying Bulgarian Massacre! and there’s a feverishness to the tipsy clerks gathered round a sandwich stall. Finally, it is night. The wreckers’ ball has turned and dropped, the air fills with dust, fog , smuts . . . thickening with dark droplets , I dunno why I does vat – but I allus do . . . as the passengers rise up from the Underground station dewy mushrooms sprout alongside the old timber house fronts of High Holborn. — This, I recall, Audrey says: the glacé silk and the oiled cotton of the covers, so many of them – and t’were only a little drizzle . . . It ish, Gilbert Cook says sententiously, to the petit-ourgeoishie of London what a fetisssh is to an African primitive – he manipulatessh it, speaksh to it, forgetsh it at hish peril, for, should the shky godsh choosh to show their dishpleasure, he will be losht without hish portable shelter. Conshider thish, Audrey, when Crushoe – that quinteshenshial petit-bourgeois – is cashtaway, the firsht implement that he makesh for himshelf ish an umbrella! This speech would be hard to tolerate were Gilbert not bare-arsed – he has no shame , and this
– No, no, no! That won’t do! A florid man with pomaded hair, in his shirtsleeves and a fancy embroidered waistcoat, comes out from behind a kinematographic apparatus set up in the tapering corner of the attic. No, no, no! he cries again – his expression is mad and guileless – this ’ere girlie’s torn it –! Mister Beauregard? Audrey ventures, but the red-faced man ignores her, his regard is fixed. — When Audrey turns back there’s no coney, only a girl a little older than her who sits on the chaise buttoning her bubbies into her bodice. The girl’s hair is up apart from a few stray locks, and atop its nondescript mass sits a lady’s toque complete with magenta-dyed ostrich feathers. There’s no bare-arsed man either, only Audrey’s father, who’s standing there in his long rabbit-skin coat and buttoning up gloves I’ve never see before . He doesn’t acknowledge his daughter but raises his bowler to Mister Beauregard, says, O-vwar, m’dear, to the girl and, retrieving his umbrella and a brown paper parcel from behind the drapes, conducts Audrey unceremoniously from the room. They are borne down the stairs on the wave of electric light – its crest breaks on the blank street . There is no sign of Fellowes – only his name fading across the tops of the shutters. – All this – Samuel Death strikes with his umbrella at the complicated dinginess of the Jacobean frontage – will be gone wivvin weeks . . . He sounds neither regretful nor cheered by the prospect. I do not know ’im who leads her on through streets shuttered by the massive timber bulwarks, working their way through the condemned rookery to the purlieu of Waterloo Bridge, where, through a gap, they can see the workings: navvies’ picks thrust handle-first in grave-fill, beside this Calvary a slough of despond wellin’ over with night-time and the drowned-corpse smell of the river . Why, Audrey longs to ask him, have they stuck bills on the insides of the hoardings? For surely navvies aren’t likely customers for Beecham’s Powders or a GUARANTEED 7 HOUR PASSAGE FROM Tilbury to Cherbourg. There will be, Samuel says, a grand booleyvard runnin’ norf t’Olborn, the newest street in Lunnun town, with the nobs pacin’ up an’ pacin’ down . . . an’ there’ll be a tunnel connectin’ to the bridge for the trams runnin’ under a twenny-storey buildin’ that’ll ’ave business premises, an arcade of posh shops, theatres . . . This, Audrey realises as they go through the Saturday evening drowse of Lincoln’s Inn, is his gift: this tour of the city about to be swept away, and this portrait of an orderly city of the future. – At Chancery Lane the boys are crying Bulgarian Massacre! and there’s a feverishness to the tipsy clerks gathered round a sandwich stall. Finally, it is night. The wreckers’ ball has turned and dropped, the air fills with dust, fog , smuts . . . thickening with dark droplets , I dunno why I does vat – but I allus do . . . as the passengers rise up from the Underground station dewy mushrooms sprout alongside the old timber house fronts of High Holborn. — This, I recall, Audrey says: the glacé silk and the oiled cotton of the covers, so many of them – and t’were only a little drizzle . . . It ish, Gilbert Cook says sententiously, to the petit-ourgeoishie of London what a fetisssh is to an African primitive – he manipulatessh it, speaksh to it, forgetsh it at hish peril, for, should the shky godsh choosh to show their dishpleasure, he will be losht without hish portable shelter. Conshider thish, Audrey, when Crushoe – that quinteshenshial petit-bourgeois – is cashtaway, the firsht implement that he makesh for himshelf ish an umbrella! This speech would be hard to tolerate were Gilbert not bare-arsed – he has no shame , and this
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