Catchy, I repeat, is the last of the old school at the Bar Bacthus, and she is far from being the woman she used to be. Her cheeks are at once puffy and shrivelled, and her skin is of the colour and texture of dusty curds. She still takes a certain pride in her appearance: her nails are meticulously varnished dark red, but she seldom remembers to wash her hands. The fact that she cannot bring herself to wash off the remains of yesterday’s powder, cream, and rouge is neither here nor there — she makes her face scrupulously every morning, laying a fresh coat of paint upon the cracked, stratified remains of the old. Catchy’s teeth too are in a precarious condition. After the birth of her child — she was married once — two or three of her side teeth fell out and were replaced with a bridge. Years later the bridge fell out. By then she had lost the will to do anything about anything, and so she put the fallen bridge into a cold-cream pot. For the past five years she has been intending to go to a dentist. But she never has time. Meanwhile some of her real teeth have gone, and others are going, so that she has acquired a tight-lipped, enigmatic smile, like the Empress Josephine.
As for Catchy’s fine physique, it is a thing of the past. Her torso is blown up round and taut. Yet her arms and legs remain elegant in shape, and her hands would still be beautiful if only she could find time to wash them. Still she retains her old taste in dress. She used to be a well-dressed woman with a flair for style and colour. Now, shuddering away from the clutching hand of Time, she dresses as if the years had not passed, in short skirts and low waists. In general, however, her manner has not changed. She is still kind, sympathetic, anxious to talk things over and listen to your troubles, willing to have something to forgive you for, eager to be good for you, ready to combine the functions of a mistress and a mother. But this is out of the question. People do not like to be seen talking to her in the street. It is not that she is uglier, older, or wilder-looking than other women of the Bohemian half-world; there is about her an indescribable air of neglect and decay that causes passers-by to turn and look at her. Catchy rushes past in the manner of a demented woman who is looking for something very important and cannot remember what. She is conspicuous for her expression of crazy tragedy, especially when she has been crying. Then her face swells until it resembles a painted toy balloon, the colours of which have run in the rain. She cries at least once every day. She drinks as much as she can because there is something she wants to forget.
The first few drinks really do cheer Catchy up, and then she can be a lively companion, well worth listening to; humorous in her turn of phrase, vivid in her narratives and anecdotes of people she has known. For she has a keen eye, a good ear, and an excellent memory — all too excellent. Usually when she is at her most hilarious and scandalous, she will encounter a little stale crumb of something that brings back that which she has been working so hard to forget. It chokes her. She falls silent; gulps, coughs, sobs, and at last weeps in a hoarse, loud, howling voice. At this point she ceases to become good company and becomes very bad company indeed. Catchy throws out her hands like grappling hooks, holds you fast, and tries to tell you somethingwhich does not make sense, something hoplessly incoherent. It is distressing to hear her uncontrolled sobbing and moaning. There is something weighing upon this unfortunate woman’s heart, but no one has any idea of the nature of it. When she stops talking suddenly and you hear in her throat a noise like a tight corset bursting all its hooks, you excuse yourself, if you are wise — you duck away as you used to do when you heard a V-1 bomb cut off overhead. You know what is coming and hope that it will miss you. They all have their sorrows, their incommunicable sorrows, these broken people who belong to the Mad. Twenties and seem to nourish themselves mainly on other people’s liquor and wash themselves only in their own maudlin tears — these pumping-stations on the shores of a Dead Sea. Best not to listen to them: it will probably end by your having to see them home in a taxi. More likely than not they will fall down and cut their heads, or be sick on your feet. It is best not to involve yourself in the unprecedented sorrows of Mercedes — who once loved a man who didn’t love her. Wisest to keep beyond the range of the flame-thrower that is the anguish of Fifi, who was divorced by the husband she loved because he could not see eye-to-enlightened-eye with her passion for a female book-reviewer. The voice of Catchy when she starts on the story of her great sorrow is not unlike the voice of a cat in the night — that cry that drags you back from the frontiers of sleep because your foggy consciousness tells you that something human is emptying its heart of sorrow too deep for words, trying to tell you something. You sit up and there is only the howl of a beast in the dark. So you fall asleep again.
And so when Catchy begins to cry out, you start for an instant into an anxious alertness, if you do not know her. But you do know her. Nothing she says can possibly mean anything to you:
‘Oh, why, why, why? Tell me, darling — darling, dear darling; for God’s sake don’t desert me, but tell me why! You understand, you do understand — don’t you? Yes, you do! Then tell me, for God’s sake tell me, what did I ever do? Oh dear God, if you knew — if you knew how unhappy I am, how miserable! Do something for me! I haven’t the courage. Kill me! Do this for me, kill me, kill me and I won’t cry out. Darling: I am brave, so much braver than you think! Kill me! What right have I got to live?
At this point, she stubs out a lighted cigarette in the palm of her hand and leans forward flickering her wild brown eyes at you.
‘I’m not afraid. Do you see, do you see that? And
She starts to take off one of her stockings. You say: ‘No, no!’
She says, with something between a smile and a whimper: ‘Oh, I see, you’re afraid. You’re a coward. You’re a dirty, cheap, common, rotten, lousy, stinking, bloody coward — That’s what you are. Oh, darling, darling, darling, I could so admire and adore you if you weren’t a coward. I’d do anything for you, I’d lie down and let you walk on me. I’d be your slave. I’d look up to you like a king on a throne. I’d wash your feet and drink the water. Don’t you see, I want to worship you! You’re so strong, so ruthless, so powerful! You’re so real, so hard… but no, I was mistaken. You’re all alike, you — liars, cowards! And I
If you’re still there thirty seconds later, you’ll hear her say: ‘I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t do anything! But punish me, kill me — strike me down dead. Strike me dead! Strike me…’
But if you are a sensible man, you’re on your way elsewhere. Christopher, the doorman of the Bar Bacchus, will see her to the street. Then Catchy will make a recovery. She will draw herself up, take a firm grip on her handbag — her poor old greasy alligator-skin handbag which looks as if it contained fifteen pounds of walnuts, into which no one has ever dared to peep — and lurch off home.
3
She can always rely upon her feet to take her home. She has been living in the same place for many years. It is a little flat on the top floor of a second-hand clothes shop. The lettering on the fascia reads:
S. SABBATANI
MISFITS
WARDROBES
The shop has an air of dilapidation. As you walk by, you wonder how the devil anyone can possibly make a living out of it. It was last painted ten years ago, and then with a cheap brownred paint. The shop window is of a sort of plate-glass that is no longer made nowadays. Slightly corrugated and flawed
