Poor Things

18. Paris to Glasgow: The Return

I am no longer a parasite. For three days I have earned a wage by doing a job as well and fast as possible, not for pleasure but cash like most people do. Each morning I sink into slumber, glad to have knocked off forty and earned four hundred and eighty francs. I am surprised at my popularity. Bell Baxter is certainly a splendid looking woman, but if I was a man there are at least a dozen here I would want more than me: soft little cuddlies, tall supple elegants, wild brown exotics. Millie describes me in our brochure as “The beautiful Englishwoman (la belle Anglaise) who will fully compensate you for the pains (travail) of Agincourt and Waterloo.” She is careful that I only deal with Frenchmen, because (she says) it might embarrass me to meet some of her English clients in later life. Perhaps she also thinks it might embarrass them! She has a lot of these at the weekends who require special services from some of our girls who are between employments at the Comédie Française. I watched one of the performances through an aperture last night. Our client was Monsieur Spankybot who arrives in a cab wearing a black mask which he never removes, though he takes off everything else. He has very elaborate requirements for which he pays a great deal, being first treated as a baby, then as a little lad on his first night in a new boarding-school, then as a young soldier captured by a savage tribe. His screams were out of all proportion to what was actually done to him.

My best friend here, Toinette, is a Socialist, and we often talk about improving the world, especially for the miserable ones, as Victor Hugo calls them, though Toinette says Hugo’s special insights are très sentimental and I should apply myself to the novels of Zola. We discuss these things at the café next door because Millie Cronquebil says politics should be detached from the hotel trade. The intellectual life of Paris is in its cafés, and our quarter (which contains the University) has cafés whose customers are writers or painters or savants of other kinds, and the academics have different cafés from the revolutionaries. Our café is mostly frequented by revolutionary hôteliers who say the rich will only disgorge through a bouleversement of the structure totale.

No time to write more. Someone’s coming.

I am writing the end of this letter in a splendid office which smells of disinfectant and leather upholstery, just like home. I left the Notre-Dame suddenly today after two hours of terrible confusion. The cause was my own ignorance. Will I ever reach the end of it?

For obvious reasons we usually rose late in the mornings, but today Millie knocked on my door soon after eight and said I should hurry downstairs at once to the Salon International because the doctor was looking at the girls there.

“An early start indeed!” thinks Bell but says aloud,

“Certainly, Millie. What doctor is this?”

“He is employed by the municipality to enforce public health regulations. Just wear your dressing-gown, dearie, and it will be over in a jiffy.”

So I joined the queue, noticing many of the girls wore nothing but their chemise and stockings. All the ones outside the alcove seemed quieter and glummer than usual so to cheer them up I said it was good for the municipality to care about our health, and I hoped Toinette (who was ahead of me) would get the doctor to prescribe something which would ease her migraine headaches. This did cheer them up — they giggled and said I had esprit, which puzzled me. But when I reached the alcove I saw an ugly little man with a ferocious scowl who was barking “Wider! Wider!” at poor Toinette like a bad-tempered drill-sergeant. She lay with her legs apart on a padded table while he pressed a thing like a spoon into her loving groove or vagina (as the Latins call it) while nearly sticking his nose and heavy moustache in after it. That was the only part of women he cared about because a moment later he said, “Pah! You may go.”

“I am not going near him!” I said firmly. “He is no doctor — doctors are kind and gentle and care for every part of their patient.”

Uproar. More than half the queue fell about laughing.

“Do you think you are better than the rest of us?” screamed others.

“Do you want him to remove our licence?” screamed Millie, rushing in.

“Insanity!” roared the doctor. “She willingly accommodates any quantity of verminous male appendages, but recoils from a clinical spatula in the hands of an impersonal scientist. But no, she is not insane — she is English, and has something to hide.”

That was how I learned about venereal diseases.

“I am sorry Millie, I can no longer work here. As you know, I am engaged to be married. And this medical inspection is unfair and inefficient. Your girls are healthy when they start working here so it is the clients, not the staff who spread the diseases. It is the clients who should be medically examined before we let them into us.”

“The clients would never allow it and there are insufficient doctors in France.”

By this time we were tête à tête in her office. I said, “Then train the girls to examine each client before the wedding starts — make it part of the ceremony.”

“The accomplished ones already do so and the house cannot afford to start classes of instruction for novices. From our earnings I am obliged to pay for rent, rates, gas, furnishings, police bribes, wages and a clear fifteen per cent profit to the lawyer who acts for the company. If my monthly return ever falls below fifteen per cent I will be replaced tout de suite and die a lonely and wretched old woman.”

Though plump and queenly she began wailing like a little thin child, so I saw that coaxing, kissing and passionate embraces were required. I led her upstairs to her bedroom while Toinette manned the reception-desk.

But nothing I did cheered her up. She said she hated Paris and the French and had been trying for years to get back to England. She dreamed of buying a boarding-house in Brighton and ending her life with a decent Church of England funeral, but every time she managed to save a little money an accident like this morning’s took it all away so she would never escape from Paris — her cadaver would end on a slab in the public morgue by the Seine, her maquillage smeared by the drippings of water onto it from a rusty tap. She said other lovely, tragic, despairing things which wrung my heart, they were so daft. She said, “It is all so unequal — I have the fifth place in your affections. First comes your mysterious guardian, then your peasant fiancé, then the debauched Wedderburn, then the frigid Astley. Since I was a little tiny girl I have prayed for a pal but God hates me. Every time someone beautiful and friendly enters my life crash bang wallop, out they fly again leaving nuffink behind but a bloody big owl.”

I said that no god could ever hate her — that she should think of my loving embraces, not imaginary owls²³—that I would always remember her with love — but how much money had I earned? Surely enough for a third-class fare back to Scotland?

“You have earned less than nothing,” she said. “I gave the police doctor all you earned and a bit more, to help him forget how you insulted his profession. Frenchmen are very proud. If I had not done that he would have taken my licence away and we would all be out of work.”

I suddenly felt too cold and tired to say a word. I went to my room, dressed, packed my bags, went downstairs, kissed Toinette wordlessly too (she wept aloud at that) and left the Hôtel de Notre-Dame for ever.

I still had some francs left from the money which had brought Wedder and me to Paris. It covered the cost of a cab to the Salpêtrière, and I gave what was left to an attendant with a note to be given directly into the hands of Professor Charcot. The note said Bella Baxter, niece of Mr. Godwin Baxter of Glasgow, was in the vestibule and would like to see him at his earliest convenience. The attendant returned and said the professor’s duties would keep him fully occupied for an hour or more, but if I cared to wait in his office his secretary would provide me with coffee. So I was shown into this room which smells like your study in Park Circus.

When Charcot at last arrived he was very genial at first: “Bonjour, Mamselle Baxter — the one completely sane English! How is my friend the enormous Godwin? What event must I thank for the unexpected pleasure of your presence here?”

I told him. It took a long time because he asked questions which brought out everything and he looked more and more solemn the more I spoke. At last he said abruptly, “You need money.”

Enough to return to Glasgow, I told him, where my guardian would repay him by a money order. To this he said nothing at all, but sat frowning and drumming his fingers on the desk top until I stood up, thanked him for his attention and said good-bye.

“No no. Pardon my abstraction — you need money and shall have it — enough to return in comfort to Scotland whenever you wish after spending tonight in my home as my guest. And do not thank me. You prefer earning money to receiving gifts. I approve. The money will be payment for helping me in a way you have already experienced. Attend!

“This evening I am lecturing before a very small, very fashionable audience: the Duc de Germantes (a man of genuine culture) and two or three whose names would not interest you. They are politicians — sensation seekers who like to pose as intellectuals. The lecture will help science indirectly by ensuring my researches are appreciated by those whose hands are on the public purse-strings. Tonight I will question under hypnosis a female farm servant — a religious hysteric but not, alas, as interesting as Jeanne d’Arc or as you Mamselle Baxter. Please enliven the occasion by recounting this evening (under hypnosis, of course, and in response to my questioning) part of what you have just told me.”

“What part?” asks Bell.

“Tell them how you enjoyed life before you saw Alexandria, your rational pleasure in an existence untainted by guilt and the fear of death. Tell them, in your splendidly unpunctuated fashion, how the sight of the poor children affected you, and do not, in the name of God, hold back the tears. Say how you relieved your feelings toward your male companion, and how you were affected by the taste of his blood. Finally, describe your present sense of the human condition. Be as Socialistic, Communistic, Anarchistic as you please — denounce the bourgeoisie, the plutocrats, the aristocrats, even royalty! Do you know anything about royalty?”

“I have been told Queen Victoria is a selfish old woman.”

“Perfect. They will enjoy that. These speeches of yours will be punctuated by my addresses to the audience in rapid French; you need pay no attention. After all, you will be in a hypnotic trance.”

“I suppose you will tell them that my pity for poor people is caused by a displaced sense of motherhood.”

²⁴

“You recognize that? Then you are a psychologist!” he cried laughing. “But do not say so tonight! Society is based upon division of labour. I am the lecturer, you are my subject. Our august audience will be disconcerted if anyone but the great Charcot passes opinions. By the way, I will guarantee your anonymity. And you need not mention the names of your friends. After all, you are British. Reserve is instinctive to you, and everyone knows hypnosis cannot influence people against their will. Well?”

So tonight I will perform with him again, and tomorrow set off home, but this letter must be posted today, for you must know that the Bell coming back to you is no longer the pleasure-seeking somnambulist who eloped with poor old Wedder. You must answer some difficult questions for me. You must tell me how to do good and not be a parasite. Tell Candle too, for since he and Bell will soon be lifelong partners we must work together. Tell my dear Candle that his wedding Bell no longer thinks he must do all she bids. Tell him also that Millie Cronquebil was wrong in one thing she said: I will not be a better wife because of the variety enjoyed in the Notre-Dame, unless it pleases him to see me lying flat murmuring “formidable!” in a variety of astonished tones.

Meanwhile, all the best, both of you,

From she you love most,

Ding Dong Bell.

P.S.

Stroke the pussies, pat the dogs, kiss Mopsy and Flopsy for me.

“Well, Candle?” said Baxter, laying down the letter and smiling at me, “are you not terrified by the prospect of the return of this truly formidable partner? Think of what she did to Duncan Wedderburn!”

I was now too joyful to resent his kindly condescension. My pulse was accelerated. The ductless glands released such vital secretions into my blood-stream (I felt them doing it!) that my muscles expanded and I had the strength of several men.

“No, Baxter! I fear nothing from my Bella. She is a kind woman and a perfect judge of character. She knows a man’s inmost soul as soon as she shakes his hand. In Wedderburn she sensed the selfish sexual male rampant and served him exactly as he wished. He was fool enough to want a life of unending ecstasy. It was not her fault that no organism can survive through that. I am a virgin. My ecstasies with her will be varied by milder, more comfortable modes of affection. The main strain will fall on you, Baxter. If you do not show her how Mr. and Mrs. McCandless can improve the world you will hideously disappoint her — our marriage may not happen. Are you not terrified?”

“No. I will tell you to improve the world along lines clearly indicated by your characters and talents. . What is that sound?”

The hour was a little after midnight. As on the night Bella had left us the curtains were wide and I saw the moon through the window, though drifts of hurrying cloud sometimes hid it. The sound was a key turning in a lock downstairs, the front door opening and closing, a light rapid step ascending the stairs. I rose to face her as the study door opened — Baxter stayed seated. She stood before me, her face more gaunt and lined than it had been but her smile as delighted and delightful as ever. She had unfastened her travelling-coat so that I saw both the darned lining and my tiny pearl gleaming in the lapel. She laughed as she saw my eye fix on that, then said, “I am glad you are both still up and the old place is exactly the same — except for this. This is new.”

She strode to the fireplace and examined a lidded crystal vase on the overmantel. It contained our gobstoppers.

“The covenant of our plighted troth!” she cried. Removing the lid she took one out, ground it to powder beneath her firm white teeth, swallowed it then, opening her arms to us, cried, “O my God and my Candle, how wonderful to be home but what is there to eat downstairs? Sweets are not enough for a hungry woman. Duncan Wedderburn taught me that, besides what the scar on my stomach meant.”

This reminded her of something else. Suddenly she stared hard at Baxter, her face growing thinner, the pupils of her eyes expanding to completely blacken the irises. “Where is my child, God?” she asked.