The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [486]
Little scenes from the street life. A mad wild witch of a woman who suddenly burst into the street, foaming at the lips and uttering curses so terrible that silence fell and everyone’s blood froze. Her eyes blazed like a bear’s under the white matted hair. Being mad she was in some sort holy, and no-one dared to face the terrible imprecations she uttered which, if turned on him, might spell ill luck. Suddenly a grubby child darted from the crowd and tugged her sleeve. At once calmed she took his hand
and turned away into an alley. The festival closed over the memory of her like a skin.
I was sitting here, drunk on the spectacle, when the voice of Scobie himself suddenly sounded at my elbow. ‘Now, old man’
it said thoughtfully. ‘If you have Tendencies you got to have Scope. That’s why I’m in the Middle East if you want to know….’
‘God, you gave me a start’ I said, turning round. It was Nimrod the policeman who had been one of the old man’s superiors in the police force. He chuckled and sat down beside me, removing his tarbush to mop his forehead. ‘Did you think he’d come to life?’ he enquired.
‘I certainly did.’
‘I know my Scobie, you see.’
Nimrod laid his flywhisk before him and with a clap of his hands commanded a coffee. Then giving me a sly wink he went on in the veritable voice of the saint. ‘The thing about Budgie was just that. In Horsham there’s no Scope. Otherwise I would have joined him years ago in the earth-closet trade. The man’s a mechanical genius, I don’t mind admitting. And not having any income except what the old mud-slinger — as he laughingly calls it — brings him in, he’s stymied. He’s in baulk. Did I ever tell you about the Bijou Earth Closet? No? Funny I thought I did. Well, it was a superb contrivance, the fruit of long experiment. Budgie is an FRZS you know. He got it by home study. That shows you what a brain the man has. Well it was a sort of lever with a trigger. The seat of the closet was on a kind of spring. As you sat down it went down, but when you got up it sprang up of its own accord and threw a spadeful of earth into the bin. Budgie says he got the idea from watching his dog clear up after himself with his paws. But how he adapted it I just can’t fathom. It’s sheer genius. You have a magazine at the back which you fill with earth or sand. Then when you get up the spring goes bang and presto! He’s making about two thousand a year out of it, I don’t mind admitting. Of course it takes time to build up a trade, but the overheads are low. He has just one man working for him to build the box part, and he buys the springs — gets them made to specification in Hammersmith. And they’re very prettily painted too, with astrology all round the rim. It looks
queer, I admit. In fact it looks arcane. But it’s a wonderful con-trivance the little Bijou. Once there was a crisis while I was home on leave for a month. I called in to see Budgie. He was almost in tears. The chap who helped, Tom the carpenter, used to drink a bit and must have misplaced the sprockets on one series of Bijous. Anyway complaints started to pour in. Budgie said that his closets had gone mad all over Sussex and were throwing earth about in a weird and unwholesome way. Customers were furious. Well, there was nothing for it but to visit all his parishioners on a motor-bike and adjust the sprockets. I had so little time that I didn’t want to miss his company — so he took me along with him. It was quite an adventure I don’t mind telling you. Some of them were quite mad with Budgie. One woman said the sprocket was so strong her closet threw mud the length of the drawing-room. We had a time quietening her down. I helped by lend ing a soot hing influence