You MAKE YOUR OWN LIFE

58 • Essential Stories

The clerks in this new freedom were gay. One who had come to sus-pect Divine Justice took to games of chance. One who was bald con-summated love with a telephone operator and was presented with aclock on his marriage; one saddened by an adding machine took drugswhich gave him visions; one moved into a town whose train servicehad been electrified; one who could imitate the voice of the cashierplayed in an orchestra; one sold his house at a profit; a typist given tothe circulation of religious pamphlets had a week's leave to serve on ajury; many grew flowers and had newborn children.

But what can a man do in the world who cannot bend his head?Even the inspired blind are led erect, tapping, can bend their headsand work. They can lean down to kiss, they can grope into the convul-sions of love. But a man screwed upright by a bullet in his neck, a bul-let like the clot of a spirit level to be steadily carried, cannot bend overtools or ledger, nor grovel with fingers.

In this new world returning to life Calvert walked now rigid as thememory of the fear of death. Eyes now wide open, face narrow, shoul-ders fixed, body bleak, he was fixed in uprightness for ever. Manypitied him. But life requires pliable men. Regimentation of the pliable,they said; it was the lesson of the war. All must bend to the wheel to-gether. No head out of alignment.

What could he do, fixed now in the discipline of uprightness forever, not of men, lately of heaven, but not of the angels, needing to eat?He sank from plane to plane. There were two women. He had been,he said, staring, a clerk. He went from place to place asking. "There,"they said, "that is what you can do." He could go from place to place,he could be a pair of hands, impersonal. Take this. Bring that. Fetchme . . . Give him . . . A messenger, walking from room to room, stand-ing in lifts, waiting at desks, an intermediary, lifeless. Not a live man,not a dead man, a man now without all means of desiring anything, aman indelibly alone not looking up nor down. An upright man.

You MAKE YOUR OWN LIFE

Upstairs from the street a sign in electric light said "Gent's Saloon." Iwent up. There was a small hot back room full of sunlight, vith hairclippings on the floor, towels hanging from a peg and newspapers onthe chairs. "Take a seat. Just finishing," said the barber. It was a lie. Hewasn't anywhere near finishing. He had in fact just begun a shave. Thecustomer was having everything.

In a dead place like this town you always had to wait. I was waitingfor a train, now I had to wait for a haircut. It was a small town in a val-ley with one long street, and a slow mud-coloured river moving be-tween willows and the backs of houses.

I picked up a newspaper. A man had murdered an old voman, aclergyman's sister was caught stealing gloves in a shop, a man who hadidentified the body of his wife at an inquest on a drowning fatality mether three days later on a pier. Ten miles from this town the skeletonsof men killed in a battle eight centuries ago had been dug tp on theDowns. That was nearer. Still, I put the paper down. I looked at the twomen in the room.

The shave had finished now, the barber was cutting the rran's hair.It was glossy black hair and small curls of it fell on the floor. I could seethe man in the mirror. He was in his thirties. He had a swarthy skin andbrilliant long black eyes. The lashes were long too and the lids when heblinked were Dale. There was iust that suggestion of weakness Now he


was shaved there was a sallow glister to his skin like a Hindu's and asthe barber clipped away and grunted his breaths, the dark man satengrossed in his reflection, half smiling at himself and very deeplypleased.

The barber was careful and responsible in his movements but non-chalant and detached. He was in his thirties too, a young man with fairreceding hair, brushed back from his forehead. He did not speak to hiscustomer. His customer did not speak to him. He went on from one jobto the next silently. Now he was rattling his brush in the jar, wiping therazor, pushing the chair forward to the basin. Now he gently pushedthe man's head down, now he ran the taps and was soaping the headand rubbing it. A peculiar look of amused affection was on his face ashe looked down at the soaped head.

"How long are you going to be?" I said. "I've got a train."He looked at the clock. He knew the trains."Couple of minutes," he said.He wheeled a machine on a tripod to the back of the man. A curved

black thing like a helmet enclosed the head. The machine was pluggedto the wall. There were phials with coloured liquids in them and soonsteam was rushing out under the helmet. It looked like a machine yousee in a Fun Fair. I don't know what happened to the man or what thebarber did. Shave, hot towels, haircut, shampoo, this machine and thenyellow liquid like treacle out of a bottle—that customer had every-thing.

I wondered how much he would have to pay.Then the job was over. The dark man got up. The clippers had been

over the back of his neck and he looked like a guardsman. He wasdressed in a square-shouldered grey suit, very dandyish for this town,and he had a silk handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. Hewore a violet and silver tie. He patted it as the barber brushed his coat.He was delighted with himself.

"So long, Fred," he smiled faintly."Cheero, Albert," said the upright barber and his lips closed to a

small, hardly perceptible smile too. Thoughtfully, ironically, the bar-ber watched his handiwork go. The man hadn't paid.

I sat in the chair. It was warm, too warm, where the man had sat. Thebarber put the sheet round me. The barber was smiling to himself likea man remembering a tune. He was not thinking about me.

You Make Your Own Life • 61

The barber said that machine made steam open the pores. Heglanced at the door where the man had gone. "Some people vanteverything," he said, "some want nothing." You had to have a machine

like that.He tucked in the cotton wool. He got out the comb and scissors His

fingers gently depressed my head. I could see him in the mirror bend-ing to the back of my head. He was clipping away. He was a dull youngman with pale blue eyes and a look of ironical stubbornness in him.The small dry smile was still like claw marks at the corners of his lips.

"Three bob a time," he said. He spoke into the back of my neck, and

nodded to the door. "He has it every week."He clipped away."His hair's coming out. That's why he has it. Going bald. You can't

stop that. You can delay it but you can't stop it. Can't always be young.He thinks you can." He smiled drily but with affection.

"But he wasn't so old."The barber stood up."That man!" he said. He mused to himself with growing satisfaction.

He worked away in long silence as if to savour every possible fltvourof my remark. The result of his meditation was to make him change his

scissors for a finer pair."He ought to be dead," he said."TB," he said with quiet scorn.He looked at me in the mirror."It's wonderful," he said, as if to say it was nothing of the sort"It's wonderful what the doctors can do," I said."I don't mean doctors," he said. "Consumptives! Tub! They're won-

derful." As much as to say a sick man can get away with anything—butyou try if you're healthy and see what happens!

He went on cutting. There was a glint in his pale-blue eyes. Hesnipped away amusedly as if he were attending to every indi/idual

hair at the back of my head."You see his throat?" he said suddenly."What about his throat?" I asked."Didn't you notice anything? Didn't you see a mark a bit at the

side?" He stood up and looked at me in the mirror.

"No," I said.He bent down to the back of my neck again. "He cut his throat


once," he said quietly. "Not satisfied with TB," he said with a grin. Itwas a small firm, friendly grin. So long, Fred. Cheero, Albert. "Tried tocommit suicide."

"Wanted everything," I said."That's it," he said."A girl," the barber said. "He fell in love with a girl."He clipped away."That's an item," said the barber absently.He fell in love with a local girl who took pity on him when he was

in bed, ill. Nursed him. Usual story. Took pity on him but wasn't inter-ested in him in that way.

"A very attractive girl," said the barber."And he got it badly?""They get it badly, consumptives.""Matter of fact," said the barber, stepping over for the clippers and

shooting a hard sideways stare at me. "It was my wife.""Before she was my wife," he said. There was a touch of quiet,

amused resolution in him.He'd known that chap since he was a kid. Went to school with him.

Used to be his best friend. Still was. Always a lad. Regular nut. Had amilk business, was his own guv'nor till he got ill. Doing well.

"He knew I was courting her," he smiled. "That didn't stop him."There was a glint in his eye.

"What did you do?" I asked."I lay low," he said.She had a job in the shop opposite. If you passed that shop you

couldn't help noticing her in the cash desk near the door. "It's not forme to say—but she was the prettiest girl in this town," he said. "Stillis," he mused.

"You've seen the river? You came over it by the station," he said."Well he used to take her on the river when I was busy. I didn't mind. Iknew my mind. She knew hers. I knew it was all right."

"I knew him," he grinned. "But I knew her. 'Let him take you on theriver,' I said."

I saw the barber's forehead and his dull blue eyes looking up for amoment over my head in the mirror.

"Damp river," he said reflectively. "Damp mists, I mean, on the river.

You Make Your Own Life • 63

Very flat, low lying, unhealthy," he said. "That's where he made hismistake. It started with him taking her on the river."

"Double pneumonia once," he said. "Sixty cigarettes a day, burningthe candle at both ends."

He grunted."He couldn't get away with it," he said.When he got ill, the girl used to go and look after him. She used to

go and read to him in the afternoons. "I used to turn up in the eveningstoo when we'd closed."

The barber came round to the front and took the brushes lazily. Heglanced sardonically at the door as if expecting to see the man stand-ing there. That cocksure irony in the barber seemed to warm up.

"Know what he used to say to her?" he said sharply and smiledwhen I was startled. " 'Here, Jenny,' he used to say. 'Tell Fred to gohome and you pop into bed with me. I'm lonely.'" The young barbergave a short laugh.

"In front of me," he said."What did you say?""I told him to keep quiet or there'd be a funeral. Consumptives want

it, they want it worse than others, but it kills them," he said."I thought you meant you'd kill him," I said."Kill him?" he said. "Me kill him?" He smiled scornfully at me: I was

an outsider in this. "He tried to kill me" he said."Yeah," he said, wiping his hands on a towel. "Tried to poison me.

Whisky. It didn't work. Back OK?" he said, holding up a mirror. "I don'tdrink."

"I went to his room," he said. "I was his best friend. He was lying onthe bed. Thin! All bones and blue veins and red patches as if he'd beenscalded and eyes as bright as that bottle of bath salts. Not like he is now.There was a bottle of whisky and a glass by the side of the bed. Hewanted me to have a drop. He knew I didn't drink.

" 'I don't want one,' I said. 'Yes, you do,' he said. 'You know I nevertouch it,' I said. 'Well, touch it now,' he said. 'I tell you what,' he said;'you're afraid.' 'Afraid of what?' I said. 'Afraid of catching what I'vegot.' 'Touch your lips to it if you're not afraid. Just have a sip toshow.'

"I told him not to be a fool. I took the bottle from him. He had no


right to have whisky in his state. He was wild when I took it. 'It'll dosome people a bit of good,' I said, 'but it's poison to you.'

" 'It is poison,' he said."I took the bottle away. I gave it to a chap in the town. It nearly fin-

ished him. We found out it was poison. He'd put something in it."I said I'd have a singe. The barber lit the taper. I felt the flame warm

against my head. "Seals up the ends," the barber said. He lifted up thehair with the comb and ran the flame along. "See the idea?" he said.

"What did you do?""Nothing," he said. "Just married my girl that week," the barber

said. "When she told him we were going to get married he said, 'I'llgive you something Fred won't give you.' We wondered what it wouldbe. 'Something big,' he said. 'Best man's present,' he said. He winked ather. 'All I've got. I'm the best man.' That night he cut his throat." Thebarber made a grimace in the mirror, passed the scissors over his throatand gave a grin.

"Then he opened the window and called out to a kid in the street tofetch her. The kid came to me instead. Funny present," he said. Hecombed, he patted, he brushed. He pulled the wool out of the back ofmy neck. He went round it with the soft brush. Coming round to thefront he adroitly drew off the sheet. I stood up.

"He got over it," he said. "Comes round and plays with my kids onSundays. Comes in every Friday, gets himself up. See him with a dif-ferent one every week at the Pictures. It's a dead place this, all right inthe summer on the river. You make your own life. The only thing is hedon't like shaving himself now, I have to go over every morning and doit for him."

He stood with his small grin, his steady eyes amused and resolute."I never charge him," he said. He brushed my coat, he brought my hat.

THE SAILOR

He was lifting his knees high and putting his hand up, when I first savhim, as if, crossing the road through that stinging rain, he were break-ing through the bead curtain of a Pernambuco bar. I knew he was goingto stop me. This part of the Euston Road is a beat of the men who warta cup of tea or their fare to a job in Luton or some outlying town.

"Beg pardon, chum," he said in an anxious hot-potato voice. "Is thttWhitechapel?"

He pointed to the traffic clogged in the rain farther down where theelectric signs were printing off the advertisements and daubing themon the wet road. Coatless, with a smudged trilby hat on the back of hishead so that a curl of boot polish black hair glistered with raindropsover his forehead, he stood there squeezing the water in his boots andlooking at me, from his bilious eyes, like a man drowning and scream-ing for help in two feet of water and wondering why the crowd islaughing.

"That's St. Pancras," I said."Oh, Gawd," he said, putting his hand to his jaw like a man with

toothache. "I'm all messed up." And he moved on at once, gaping at thelights ahead.

"Here, wait," I said. "Which part of Whitechapel do you want1

Where have you come from?"

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You MAKE YOUR OWN LIFE