Of Love And Hunger (Julian MacLaren-Ross)

I gotout my dem book to look up the old girl’s name.


    Always address the prospect by name: it pays.  Makes ‘em feel at home, see?  The personal touch.


    This one was called Miss Tuke, 49, TheCrescent.  Small house, two storeys, villa-type; small dark drawing-roomfull of knick-knacks, thick old-fashioned hangings full of dust.  No maid,no cleaner, woman in once a week.  A cert, if I played it right.

    Miss Tuke didn’t seem a bad old girleither.  Bit jumpy:  kept looking up at the ceiling as if expectingit might fall on her any moment.  Couldn’t believe her eyes when she sawwhat I got out of her carpet.


    ‘But I don’t understand. I had the carpetcleaned.  Two days ago.  I had a woman in.’


   ‘This dirt didn’taccumulate in two days, Miss Tuke,’ I told her.  ‘It’s been in your carpetfor years.  The ordinary methods of cleaning won’t remove it.’

 

    ‘Then what can I do?’


     ‘There’s only one thing,’ I said, pointing to the cleaner.  Miss Tuke looked at it andswallowed.  I wanted to let the idea sink in.  It was too soon tostart on her yet, but I felt in my pocket to make sure I’d an order-form readywhen the time came.  It was there all right.


     Miss Tuke said: ‘Andhow much did you say the price . . .’


            ‘A pound down,  a pound a month.’


     ‘Oh, I wouldn’tdream.  I don’t hold with hire-purchase.’

  

    ‘It’s much the best way, Miss Tuke.  We never advise buying one of these machines outright.  Think ofthe advantages you become eligible for under our instalment-system.  Freeservice every six months.  A thorough overhaul of your cleanertwice-yearly free of charge.  After all, you wouldn’t pay your maid ayear’s wages in advance, would you?’ 


    ‘Of course not.’


          ‘Well we look on this cleaning system as amechanical maid.  More efficient, naturally, as this dirt goes to show.'

    Always bring ‘em back to the dirt.  Iswitched on again and pushed the cleaner to-and-fro across the carpet.  Iwas a No. 1 model, the biggest sort and the one that costs the mostmoney.  Kicks up a terrific row, but you get round that by saying you canonly silence the machine at the price of efficiency.




NOTE: 



     Several years ago or more (or more, I think), my friend GerryHoward introduced me to Julian MacLaren-Ross’s writing.  Gerry hadacquired Memoirsof the Forties (I don’trecall why) and liked the book for reasons that would quickly become apparent to anyfirst-time reader.  Gerry’s enthusiasms (any ofthem) and recommendations (ditto) mean a lot to me, so I bought and read the book. 


     I think Gerry fell in shallow; I fell in deep, but at the righttime because the Julian MacLaren-Ross revival -- a series of republicationsthrough Black Spring Press, Paul Willets’ remarkable biography Fear  And Loathing InFitzrovia, internet chatterand other enthusiasms (including the attention paid by many dedicated readers to Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time; MacLaren-Ross was the model for the novelist character, X. Trapnel) was afoot and picking up steam.


     I’ve previously postedother examples of this author’s work -- short story and memoirexcerpts, as well as a haunting snippet from his autobiographical novel, The Weeping and theLaughter, concerning a World War I zeppelin raid on Ramsgate, MacLaren-Ross's childhood home before his family decamped for a life on the Côted’Azur, an event that turned out to be a mixed blessing in terms of the author's personal and professional future.  The passage above, taken from the first chapter of Of Love And Hunger, his great novel, is new here. Set in cusp-of-World War II Brighton, the book is based on MacLaren-Ross’s experiences selling vacuums door-to-door.  As he told GrahamGreene, it was Depression-era labor, the best he could find after losing, through no fault of his own, his private, family income, fortune, i.e.,  he wasn’t just collecting material to write about in anovel.  


     Of Love And Hunger is a fully-accomplished, deeply moving work of art, the  summation and apotheosis of J M-R's great work of the 1940s, which included the publication of his best and most popular short stories.   All his subsequent writing (journalism, bookand film reviews, radio plays, memoirs, astonishing literary parodies, other novels), whether superb or somewhat less so,never matched this novel’s perfect,sustained emotional pitch and style subsumed, immersed, in every single sentence and scene.


     Re-telling Julian MacLaren-Ross anecdotes (they are as outlandish and improbable as any stories about intense, esoteric literary or artistic eccentrics maintaining  24-hour schedules until inevitably checking out too early) all night is an entertainingthing to do to delight old friendsand new companions.  One can still do so today, standing in J M-R's usual spot at the Wheatsheafbar in Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia.  What I find really difficult to fathom,however, is the degree to which my life has come to resemble aspects of Richard Fanshawe’s life in Of Love And Hunger.

Twopence Coloured (Little Thunders)

I.

Shortly before midnight, several years ago, a pretty butunusually foolish girl, for her age (which was nineteen), was walking byherself along the Brighton front.  It wasraining slightly, and the movement of her even strides made little thunderswith her mackintosh, and the rain spat with a kind of sullen suddenness uponher glistening white face and mouth, and she was very full of her quiet selfand her quiet decisions.

 II.

        As Jackie walked along the Brighton front, it became moreand more her own Brighton front, and at last it seemed that there was no onethere at all to share her striding and buoyant possession of it.  At the same time the wind grew higher,bawling violently into Jackie’s ears, and the rain came with it, spittingitself into millions of ardent sharp triangles on the slimy streaming pavingunder the lamps.  And the sea, which alittle while before had been crashing measuredly away (as though it has reallyrather forgotten what is was aimingat, after the nonsensical centuries it had been at the business), suddenlyseemed to awake, and as good as said it had had enough of this tomfoolery, andnow the coast should listen, come what might! And that was what Jackie was wanting really, some sort of challenge likethat, to nerve her and brace her and give her a sense of immediate andimpending battle.  And in the sound andrush of the storm about her, in the unquenched but fearful sputtering of theyellow-green lamps, in the wash and thunder of the war-like and long-preparedcoast (which had taken the sea at its word and also wanted a row), Jackieplanned for herself a very gallant and hand-to-hand and triumphing battle withlife indeed. 

NOTE:  The recent Faber and Faber republication of Patrick Hamilton's third novel, Twopence Coloured (1928) is reason for celebration.  Books -- real books -- should stay in print as real books, i.e. not e-books.  The two sections above, which begin and end the prologue section of Jackie Mortimer's story of wanting to "Go upon the Stage," remind me of my times in the rain in Brighton, of the incessant noisy rain tonight, which brought me downstairs to write this, and of a few other things I can't get off my mind.  Looking for suitable illustrations, I was finally satisfied, but was also constantly reminded that the truest Brighton images I know (apart from my own memories of being pelted with "millions of ardent sharp triangles" of rain like Jackie Mortimer) are those taken by the poet and photographer Tom Raworth, which I highly recommend seeking out.  Raworth captures the essence of a place that visual artists have occasionally rendered vividly, but which often comes off as a static cliche compared to the "real thing."  There is nothing like walking along the Brighton front in the cold hard rain.

Brighton Three Ways From Sunday

I.

Trudging slowly over wet sand,

Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen.

This is the coastal town

That they forgot to close down :

Armageddon - come Armageddon!

Come, Armageddon! Come!

Every Day is like Sunday.

Every Day is silent and grey.

Hide on the promenade,

Etch a postcard :

"How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here."

In the seaside town

...That they forgot to bomb :

Come, Come, Come - Nuclear Bomb.

Every Day is like Sunday.

Every Day is silent and grey.

Trudging back over pebbles and sand,

And a strange dust lands on your hands

(And on your face...)

Every Day is like Sunday.

"Win Yourself A Cheap Tray."

Share some greased tea with me.

Every Day is silent and grey.

II.

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.  With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anyone could tell he didn’t belong – belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd.  They came in by train from Victoria every five minutes, rocked down the Queen’s Road standing on the tops of the little local trams, stepped off in bewildered multitudes into fresh and glittering air: the new silver paint sparkled on the piers, the cream houses ran away into the west like a pale Victorian watercolour;  a race in miniature motors, a band playing, flower gardens, in bloom below the front, an aeroplane advertising something for the health in pale vanishing clouds across the sky.

 

        It had seemed quite easy to Hale to be lost in Brighton.  Fifty thousand people besides himself were down for the day, and for quite a while he gave himself up to the good day, drinking gins and tonics whenever his programme allowed.  For he had to stick closely to a programme: from between ten and eleven Queen’s Road and Castle Square;  from eleven till twelve the Aquarium and Palace Pier, twelve till one on the front between the Old Ship and West Pier, back for lunch between one and two in any restaurant he chose round the Castle Square, and after that he had to make his way to the station by the Hove streets. These were the limits of his absurd and widely advertised sentry-go.

 

        Advertised on every Messenger poster: ‘Kolley Kibber in Brighton today.’  In his pocket he had a pack of cards to distribute in hidden places along his route;  those who found them would receive ten shillings from the Messenger, but the big prize was reserved for whoever challenged Hale in the proper form of words and with a copy of the Messenger in his hand:  ‘You are Mr Kolley Kibber.  I claim the Daily Messenger prize.’

III.

 

        These two girls were walking from the direction of the Palace Pier towards the West Pier, which they had nearly reached.  

        At about a hundred yards’ distance from the West Pier some sort of suggestive nudging took place between their interlocked arms and they turned away to the left to the railing overlooking the sea.  They leaned over these railings and gave an imitation of observing the beauties of what remained of the sunset. 

        ‘Go on,’ said the pretty girl to her companion.  ‘Have a look now.’

        ‘No,’ said the ugly girl.  ‘You look.’

 

        ‘No – you look,’ said the pretty girl, and she was in due course obeyed.  The pretty girl is usually ultimately obeyed on such occasions, for, in addition to her ascendancy for other reasons, she is the initiator, the senior officer, the skilled and experienced campaigner in operations of this nature.

        ‘Yes,’ said the ugly girl. ‘Here they come.’

        She was alluding to three young men whom they had believed to have been following them.  

        ‘All right.  Just pretend to be looking out at the sea,’ said the mature strategist, in a quiet, steady tone which in fact betrayed some nervousness by virtue of its quietness and steadiness.

        ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ she added.  ‘Ain’t it?’

Reader Key:  I. Everyday Is Like Sunday (Morrissey-Stephen Street); II. Excerpt from Graham Green, Brighton Rock (N.b., Lobby Lud pictured above is the actual newspaper promotion contest that Graham Greene used as the basis for Kolley Kibber); III.  Excerpt from Patrick Hamilton, The West Pier. (Graham Greene once described The West Pier as the best novel ever written about Brighton, a place I've visited several times and love. I have had no sinister experiences there, however, just rough late winter weather.)

Actually, sort of days of future passed future