Free Umbrella by Will Self Page B

up the stairs and make their way to the front seat. Finest penny to be spent on the London stage , her father has said often enough, and he also says, A wide window on a widening world . Sitting, Audrey is aware of the hard slats pushing her sweat-damp petticoat between her thighs, while her hands lie useless and freckled on top of them – she thinks of the Westray’s Whitening Powder she covets above all things and how it would give her the porcelain complexion of Miss Gabrielle Ray . . . Father is speaking of Bert’s benefactor as whip-smack and harness-jingle the ’bus mingles with carts, hansoms and the occasional fly. – Why, Audrey, d’you imagine that Mister Phillips takes such a generous interest in our Albert? Some might think it a little queer, paying for one not your own . . . At least this remark is straightforward enough – besides, Audrey senses she isn’t expected to answer, only bear witness to. – There’s some as might rebuff ’im out of pride alone. The ’bus swings wide to avoid a young lady, her weighted skirts caught up in the chain of her safety bicycle, her leg-o’-mutton sleeves frisking. Oh! Audrey cries, then flushes. Her Oh! hangs in the sudden soundlessness, for the ’bus’s wheels have been shushed by wood paving. A well-set-up woman of pedigree in an old-fashioned coal-scuttle bonnet sits on the other side of the aisle, staring and staring and staring like she ain’t never seen a girl before . Audrey wishes her navy dress weren’t so shabby, wishes her red hair didn’t flare from her head, wishes the cables strung from the multiple crosstrees of the rooftop electrical conductor were the rigging of a fleet clipper slipping anchor and sliding on the ebb tide down t’wards Gravesend and freedom . . . And yet . . . this unexpected excursion is . . . a treat . Formerly, Rothschild would often take one or other of his children for a ride, but since he became the deputy manager she cannot have been on the ’bus more than a handful of times – the trip to Windsor Park last summer, that was by brake, but apart from this she has walked from home to school to market to Sunday school to the baths, and very occasionally to watch Bert and Stan play footer, while their Sunday afternoon entertainment is itself a promenade in the park they walk to. Now, the animalistic swing of the ’bus, the bell-ring of spring, the syringas in the front gardens and the flap of the shop awnings – all of it fills Audrey wiv soda bubbles . The tangy pitch from the navvies’ crucible in front of St Mark’s College is blended with the soot-fall from the Lots Road Power Station – and still the pair down below strain on, their broad backs rising glossy, their hoofs cleaving the chestnuts of their own droppings. Fentiman has come up fer a natter with Rothschild, who’s addenuff of fresh air, struck a match on his boot and is puffing benignant cigar smoke, while studiedly ignoring the boring of the coal-scuttle woman’s eyes. — They speak of Sir David Barbour and wily John Pound and blinkin’ Balfour , of whom only the last is known to Audrey. From time to time Fentiman pivots away along the seatbacks to issue more tickets, then returns to bemoan the tramlines’ encroachment. Sam Death is sanguine. Those white-livered nabobs’ll never have the front, he says, to sweep awlviss away. ’Lectric trams wiv all their cabling and their track’ll awluss be too cumbersome for the middle of town. Fentiman listens respectfully, donkey-faced and sweaty in his black work suit as the guv’nor expatiates: No-no, change ass t’come – no gainsaying that – and change is always a friend to some and an enemy to others. Now, see, there’s the tuppenny tube an’ the padded cell, an’ now they’ve their shield appa-ra-tus there’ll be no stopping ’em from nibblin’ froo the underbits like mites in cheese. No, change is upon us – but it ain’t the ’bus’ll be sluiced down the gutter, mark my words . . .