Free Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson

shook it over the floor.
    Frank's bald head with its ring of carroty fuzz shot forward at her.
    'Stop that at once,' he said. 'No wonder you don't get any work at the studios. You'll spend the rest of your life in the ice-cream factory if you don't smarten yourself up a bit. Look at those jeans.'
    'Well, what are you wearing?'  said the girl.
    It was true that Frank also habitually wore jeans and a woollen T-shirt, but they were scrupulously clean, if, perhaps, a little unsuitable for a man of fifty-nine. It was this aspect that the girl seized on. 'I've never seen anything so silly at your age,' she said.
    Frank was now really angry. 'You'd better go,' he said, 'and if you land back in the approved school don't come to me for a good character. Pilchard tins and rudeness, I've had enough of it.'
    'You know what,' said the girl; 'you're a bloody hypocrite. You don't care about the pilchard tins. Not a damn. You're just frightened about your rent. Only you won't say so. Not Mr Frank Rammage, the friend of the down-and-outs, the man the police come in to tea with, the pal of all the social workers and snoopers in South-west London. Oh no! It's just that he wants to help, that's all.'
    The mention of rent put Frank on his mettle. 'That's all right, dear,' he said; 'you pay when you can.'
    Each time that he spoke this familiar phrase, and sometimes it was as often as twenty times in a week, he felt overcome by the sadness of the situation. It was seldom, he knew, that any good would come of his sympathy, but it was the hopelessness, the endless hopelessness of the lives with which he had surrounded himself, that awoke his compassion. Frank Rammage's attitude could hardly be called sentimental, for it went farther than mere feeling - he regarded the dishonest and depraved as almost sacred. As usual, however, the little scene had satisfied the mixture of bullying and masochism that lay on the surface of his strange, Dostoyevskian philanthropy. He felt quite jolly. He seemed more like matron in an expansive mood as he picked up a piece of yellow material from the table and showed it to the girl.
    'Buttercup yellow,' he said. 'It's very difficult to get that exact shade.'
    'Lovely, Frank,' said the girl abstractedly. She, too, had got what she had intended - a further extension of credit. 'Well, so long, Frank,' she said; 'I've got a date.'
    The chance to moralize was too great to resist. 'You ought to leave "dates" alone,' Frank called after her reprovingly, 'and rest yourself. To keep them healthy and good to look upon, that's what God gave us bodies for.'
    'Like Mr Rammage, I suppose,' called the girl from the landing.
    'You do talk cock, Frank, don't you?'  said Vin Salad in his refined drawl, which sounded as though he had got rid of a Cockney accent by swallowing it. He called back upstairs to the girl, 'Put something on your face, Myra, before you go out to meet him.' Then, seating himself demurely on the divan, he said, 'That girl's face looks terrible naked. That's nice,' he added, pointing to the yellow material. 'Six and eleven?'
    'No,' said Frank sharply, 'seven and five.'
    'You've been taken for a ride,' Vin replied, 'as usual.'
    He sat for a while very still and tall and languid on the divan. There was something almost Egyptian or Persian about Vin Salad's stillness and languor, with his long, docile, almond-skinned face and his huge, liquid black eyes. His clothes were far from Eastern, however, for Vin was very careful to avoid anything that suggested the ornate or even the flashy black of the Teddy boy. He wore a very plain dark grey worsted flannel suit, with a cream silk shirt, dark red tie, and light suede strap shoes. It was rather a fragile covering for the winter season, but it was all he had at the moment, and in any case, Vin was always shivering slightly with cold even on a hot summer day. Suddenly his eyes flickered in his stillness and the tip of his tongue appeared between his even teeth. It was a saurian