The Frightened Man

are not, mm, quite happy with me yet.’ He reached out and tapped Denton’s calf. ‘It’s about art, man. About art and this ridiculous, stuffy, suffocating, hypocritical society we live in! Everything’s regulated; everything’s marked out ahead of time — whole lives! — except for art. An artist can go anywhere — until he goes too far. Then the bastards turn their backs on him and sneer. We can’t let Oscar go like that, Denton. We owe it to ourselves as artists.’ Then he guffawed — a sound loud and abrupt enough to make Denton flinch — and said, ‘Heard the one about the tart who gave service a la bouche while playing “The Lost Chord” on the pianoforte with her toes?’

Denton said he hadn’t. Perhaps he had, but he could never remember jokes, and he had a puritanical distaste for off-colour ones, a leftover from his New England boyhood.

‘Well,’ Harris said, settling into it with a grin. ‘Fellow goes to this tart, et cetera, et cetera, and she has the speciality as noted, so she begins, and he’s delirious with pleasure, and she’s swinking away, playing Sullivan with her toes, and he’s just a jot short of a climax when she stops dead and says, “I can’t remember how this part of the music goes.” Well, the man is beside himself! He shouts, “Play anything — anything — make something up!”’ Harris roared with laughter, and Denton, thinking this was the end, smiled; Harris, however, wiping his eyes, said, ‘So — so the tart rears back, and she says — she says — ’ he couldn’t keep from laughing — ‘she says, “Make something up! Sir — I’m an artist!”’ And he became helpless, laughing.

Denton at least chuckled at that, but when Harris had recovered, Denton made the mistake of asking what a la bouche meant, and Harris became glum and said the joke was ruined. ‘I don’t know which is worse, Denton, your utter lack of humour or your sexual prudery.’

‘I don’t think that not knowing French makes me a prude.’

‘Ever hear of a man named Havelock Ellis?’

‘The Psychology of Sex. Downstairs on my shelves. Volume one, anyways.’

‘You astonish me. Well, how can you read that book and still be a prude?’ Harris leaned forward. ‘I suppose German and Latin would be too much for you, or I’d put you on to Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis. Set you straight.’

‘Ever occurred to you, Harris, that sex isn’t all that important?’

Harris looked poleaxed.

‘I mean,’ Denton said, ‘it’s fine in its place. Pleasure is nice. But it’s not worth writing whole books about. Maybe you have sex a bit too much on the brain.’

‘You’re the one who’s mad about murdered tarts and voyeurism and sexual mutilation!’

‘But not because of the sex.’

Harris stared at him, shook his head, and sighed, like an actor trying to make a point to a particularly stupid audience. He looked at his watch; then he pushed his hands down into his trouser pockets and sank even farther down in his chair, his legs out. Then he shook his head. ‘Thesis, antithesis, synthesis,’ he muttered.

To cheer him, Denton said that he supposed he could go to Paris, but-‘Why me?’ he said, although he knew why. Because there was nobody else. ‘Are they all so afraid?’ he said.

Harris sighed. ‘Since Oscar was jailed, everybody with a lingam behind his flies has been terrified to so much as own a copy of Dorian Gray. Actually, you’re the perfect one — you are, if I may say so, the epitome of the hairy masculine. Not a hint of English neurasthenia about you. Come on, Denton — if not for Oscar, then for me.’ He grinned — much show of teeth — and said, ‘After all I’ve done for you!’ It was both a joke and a solipsistic plea.

All Denton could say was that he’d think about it. He didn’t say that he wasn’t going anywhere until Atkins was out of danger. Otherwise, the idea of a flying visit to Paris was not unattractive. Except that, of course, it was doing exactly what Guillam had advised him to do. And he shouldn’t spend the money just now. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said again — grumpily, as he realized when he heard himself. ‘I can’t leave Atkins unconscious in a hospital.’

‘Better in a hospital than somewhere else.’

‘I’ll let you know tomorrow. There’ll still be time to take the night mail and get there.’ Harris looked at him with the terrific frown that had made him feared — sheer uncivilized ferocity, as if he planned to club you to death and eat the remains. Denton wasn’t impressed, but he wondered how sane Harris was. He reminded himself that he didn’t know Harris at all well; they were Cafe Royal acquaintances, and not very frequent ones, at that. In fact, his only contact with Harris outside the Cafe had been when the man had asked him to provide ‘anything on American fiction’ more than a year before, and Denton had written something on Stephen Crane. So far as Denton could remember, he’d never been paid. Which wouldn’t have been much to begin with, its being Harris. To forestall more talk about Paris, Denton now said, ‘Did I ever get my money for that piece on Crane?’

He should have said ‘Where’s my money for the piece on Crane?’ because Harris, given the possibility of its already having been paid, said, ‘Of course you did!’

‘I don’t remember it.’

‘Shock. Loss of blood.’

‘I think you gave me the loose notes from your pocket when I asked for it. I think it was about ten pounds short.’

Harris became magisterial. ‘I don’t think we should bicker over money when Oscar is barely cold.’

‘I’m not bickering — I’m asking-’

‘Crane just died, of course. How about doing a piece on that? We could split the difference.’ Not getting encouragement for that idea, he rushed on to say, ‘Oh, another thought I had.’ Harris smiled, then touched his forehead and frowned. ‘Would it be possible to get a drink, do you think? Something is always welcome at this time of the day.’ It was not yet one o’clock.

There was no bell, and Denton had forgotten the boy’s name. ‘Bellow down the stairs. Tell him what you want.’ What Denton wanted was for Harris to go; he was feeling disoriented, floaty, weak. Not up to the Harris personality. ‘Or you could just go next door to the Lamb.’

‘A public house? Good God! Only an American would suggest it.’ Harris went out and, instead of bellowing, said something in a low voice and then went on down the stairs. He was back in two or three minutes with brandy; Denton was almost asleep, and the smell woke and nauseated him. Harris drank, sighed, massaged his temples. ‘You really need to get away for a day or two, Denton. The boy isn’t to be here at night, he tells me; you’ll be alone.’

‘I’ll think about it, I said.’

‘Of course, I’ll cover your expenses — take up a collection. ’

‘Take up one for the Crane piece, while you’re at it.’

Harris finished his brandy with great briskness and banged the glass down. ‘You disappoint me.’ He paused at the doorway like an actor with an exit line. ‘The Cafe Royal is counting on you.’

Later, Maude — by then, Denton had remembered the boy’s name — brought up a lunch from the Lamb and more beef tea, of which Denton was getting noticeably weary. Denton asked him if Harris had paid his wages.

‘Oh, no, sir, that’s for you to do.’

Of course it was.

Towards six, Dr Bernat puffed up the stairs, a glass bottle in his hands full of what looked like blood. Denton was ready to shout that by God, he’d gone too far; he’d put up with beef tea, but not blood! But Bernat explained that it was Russian beet soup made especially for Denton by Mrs Bernat. ‘The beet is being full of mineral, which is also the blood. Drink.’

‘Now?’

‘When better?’

Denton had had enough beets in his childhood to last a lifetime, but he didn’t want to offend Bernat. Mentally holding his nose, he drank — and liked it. Borscht, he found, when made by the right cook, was very different from boiled beets. He smiled. Bernat smiled. They both laughed. Bernat said Denton was ‘very game’, an Englishism of which he seemed proud. He had been to see Atkins again. There had been a period of consciousness, he had been told, some indications that Atkins could see, move his limbs and ask questions, or at least say, ‘What the bloody hell?’

‘Now, he will improve, but he is having a nasty wound. Some days yet he must be in hospital.’

‘Can I visit?’