The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [141]
“I don’t quite twig,” said Atwater. “But if you are trying to hint that I’m boring you . . .”
“Atwater,” I said earnestly, “I will give you a pound just to talk to me. Here it is, look, take it. There. Does that look as though I was bored?”
“It looks to me as though you were barmy,” said Atwater, pocketing the note. “Much obliged all the same. It’ll come in handy just at the moment, only as a loan, mind.”
“Only as a loan,” I said, and we both of us lapsed into silence, he, no doubt, thinking of my barminess, I of Lucy. The black ape walked slowly round his cage raking the sawdust and nut shells with the back of his hand, looking vainly for some neglected morsel of food. Presently there was an excited scurry in the cage next to us; two women had appeared with a bunch of bananas. “Excuse me, please,” they said and pushed in front of us to feed Humboldt’s Gibbon; then they passed on to the grey sycophant beyond, and so down all the cages until their bag was empty. “Where shall we go now?” one of them said. “I don’t see the point of animals you aren’t allowed to feed.”
Atwater overheard this remark; it worked in his mind so that by the time they had left the monkey house, he was in another mood. Atwater the dreamer, Atwater the good scout, and Atwater the underdog seemed to appear in more or less regular sequence. It was Atwater the good scout I liked best, but one clearly had to take him as he came. “Feeding animals while men and women starve,” he said bitterly.
It was a topic; a topic dry, scentless and colourless as a pressed flower; a topic on which, in the school debating society, one had despaired of finding anything new to say—“The motion before the House is that too much kindness is shown to animals, proposed by Mr. John Plant, Headmaster’s House”—nevertheless, it was something to talk about.
“The animals are paid for their entertainment value,” I said. “We don’t send out hampers to monkeys in their own forests.”—Or did we? There was no knowing what humane ladies in England would not do—“We bring the monkeys here to amuse us.”
“What’s amusing about that black creature there?”
“Well, he’s very beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” Atwater stared into the hostile little face beyond the bars. “Can’t see it myself.” Then rather truculently, “I suppose you’d say he was more beautiful than me.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, since you raise the point . . .”
“You think that thing beautiful and feed it and shelter it, while you leave me to starve.”
This seemed unfair. I had just given Atwater a pound; moreover, it was not I who had fed the ape. I pointed this out.
“I see,” said Atwater. “You’re paying me for my entertainment value. You think I’m a kind of monkey.”
This was uncomfortably near the truth. “You misunderstand me,” I said.
“I hope I do. A remark like that would start a roughhouse at the Wimpole.”
A new and glorious idea came to me. “Atwater,” I said, cautiously for his oppressed mood was still on him. “Please do not take offence at my suggestion but, supposing I were to pay—as a loan, of course—would it be possible for us, do you think, to lunch at the Wimpole?”
He took the suggestion quite well. “I’ll be frank with you,” he said. “I haven’t paid this month’s sub yet. It’s seven and sixpence.”
“We’ll include that in the loan.”
“Good scout. I know you’ll like the place.”
The taxi driver, to whom I gave the address “Wimpole Club,” was nonplussed. “Now you’ve got me,” he said. “I thought I knew them all. It’s not what used to be called the ‘Palm Beach’?”
“No,” said Atwater, and gave more exact directions.
We drove to a mews off Wimpole Street. (“It’s handy for chaps in the motor business Great Portland Street way,” said Atwater.) “By the way, I may as well explain, I’m known as Norton at the club.”
“Why?”
“Lots of the chaps there use a different name. I expect it’s the same at your club.”