The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B

23

To walk out under the big crystal chandelier past the wide brown marble balustrade. Touch the brass handrail and go down the green carpeted steps. And out into this warm sunny day.

Take this morning stroll through the park, a light wind shaking the leaves. Couples lying on the grass. And striped sails fluttering on boats bumping across the Serpentine. An Afghan hound goes loping around the deck chairs. Nice to see an Alsatian locked in cohabitation with a little white poodle as the owners hysterically dance and belabour all around. And there two little babies, a boy and girl, come wading through the grass hand in hand. And I look up. A blue jay catches a moth. Now it lands to sit on a branch and devour and dine. As the tiny bits of moth wings come fluttering down.

And again to march out into life after lunch, a tune in my head. Step lively, stride long. Under a sky flooded blue. And over blackened slate rooftops and greening copper rain gutters clouds float puffy white and moisty. Turn this corner away from traffic humming on the mild afternoon air. The houses of this street all their red sooty fronts mellowed umber. And there, that's the house where I still might live. Behind the bits of ivy. Me and my volumes of comparative anatomy. Mr. Pleader, who comes after Horn and before Hoot, not to mention Bother and Writson, said yesterday these brooding blocks of flats nearby are graced with leading stage actors and psychologists. They graze here on these calm spring pastures. Of soft brick, gentle curtains, gleaming glass and goodish surnames. Terribly nice, all of it.

Balthazar B went through the double swing doors of this russet stone walled emporium. Suppliers of fancy goods to the Monarch. Past the ties, shoes and shirtings. The glove counter and the stairs down to the safety deposit vaults. Where many documents and various ready cashes have lain locked away between the mirrored walls, lonely in the fireproof silence.

Ahead the waiting hall. Vast marble room of creamy browns. Six fluted pillars hold up a ceiling lit with funereal glass trays shrouding neon lights. A gauntlet of dowagers in last year's wedding hat. Seated with unmarried sons in the green leather chairs. They confide little jokes. Nod and flicker timidly at their random passing friends. And sometimes they pause to talk of weddings and christenings. And my God. There. Is it, it must be. Beefy. And his clothes. As he sits dejected. Suede leather on his feet smudged with something like plaster and powdered cement. His grey flannels spattered with crusts of mud. But higher up near the throat he looks splendidly the same. Silk crimson hanky and a moss green cravat tucked in the neck of his yellow shirt.

"My God Beefy. I hardly recognised you."

"Yes. I know. Note the colours of my jacket match nicely with the encrusted clay. Clearly no tonsorial artist or tailor is doing his fortnightly nut to keep me beautiful. But my glands sustain in the lack of gaudery. Goodness I am glad to see you.

I need a friend in my world these days. If Fm away from the building site much longer Fll be sacked. Say Fm shirking. When I have the most awful case of the runs. Together with my piles, which attacked recently, I can barely stand up. Chaps keep accusing me of not pulling my weight."

"What have you done Beefy."

"Done. Dear man I should like to know. Mostly it is what another has done. In particular dear old granny. I came to the last five pound note in my deed box after a catastrophic series of races devoid of tips from Zutu. And then I made another awfully ill advised attempt to harass granny, I tried to get a mortgage on the insurance of her life. And I am now situated in chambers in Bayswater. A polite word which upon map scrutiny admits of one having been pushed into Paddington. The tale is simple. I'm ruined. As you know the Public School Appointments got me my job on the stock exchange. After a prolonged safari in Brighton with a most saucy but impoverished debutante, I was fired. Upon many subsequent interviews I was finally offered another position. As a clerk. Can you imagine. I said not on your life. I will go and tear up earth as a navvy before I will stand behind a counter. I sounded so convincing, I believed it myself. Mesmerised by those suicidal words that's what Fve done. After the first two days I was so blistered and tired I thought I'd soon die a natural death. Some days later climbing up the marble steps of the club, my hand touching along the reassuring brass gleam of the rail, I asked for mail. Hoping my trustees might have unearthed ownership of a deed to some country pub. But there wasn't even a bill. And just as I went across the lobby to the lift, an elderly rather red nosed member said to George the porter as I passed, that chap is soiled. Imagine. Soiled."

"O my God Beefy. You must let me help you."

"Wait there's more. Not all of it gloom. Just last week at my very bottom lowest when I'd returned to my tiny room. Put sixpence in the slot for a morsel of electric fire. Not for heat. Just for the encouraging glow in the gloom. I stared out back at the pipes and chimneys and the car parts yard below. Then I knelt down. God I was fervent. I really meant it. Knees sunk deeply in the threadbare broadloom. I promised and prayed, as a onetime member of the Church of Ireland, that if God would send some reasonable female creature of marriageable age across my path, in fact age immaterial, who was possessed of the wherewithal and whence I should get my hands upon it, I would forthwith, as decency allowed after the ceremony, covenant the church to two and a half percent of the income, after tax was paid. At that exact moment. Right over my head. The light bulb exploded. I was showered in glass and darkness. I also jumped ten feet. And as the room is six by nine I had to call my doctor. He bid me, tired as I was, to come round and he would look for breaks in the arm bones. Off I went to Harley Street. I was next to last at his ultra late Friday surgery. My unbroken legs crossed as I turned the pages of a magazine. And into the waiting room. There comes a young lady.

A rainbow of a smile bursting across Beefy's blustery freckled face, his wandering nose and wine tinted cheeks. As Balthazar B leaned forward in his light grey flannel suit sewn in the Rue St. Honore with two horn buttons requested on the sleeves. A matron near by, long nostrilled, green suited, her lorgnette held up to an auction catalogue. An audibly tender moment really.

"Yes. There comes a young lady, Beefy."

"Ah. By the way Balthazar, that is a fine blue tie you're wearing with that elegant shirt. You're marvellously turned out."

"And you Beefy have not changed one bit. And what happened. There comes a young lady."

"Ah. Wait. My God I have an erection. Of the volcanic variety once again. Visions of richness always brings it on. Ah so. Yes. To be sure. The young lady. Who that moment came delicately in, in the best of leathers and fabrics. And I who had just crawled searching for forgiveness, off the wintry Hornchurch Marshes near some borax works to face a committee of ecclesiastics lined up inside a glassed, centrally heated pavilion. They were chanting quietly, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. And then at the sight of me. They pointed. Go back, they said. Back to the marsh, dirty deed doing profaner, your redeemer does not liveth."

The nearby dowager shifting uncomfortably in her seat, turning for a moment to survey Beefy. As he leaned back legs spread wide to regard airily the randy bulge upon his person. The lady made a high pitched noise down her nose and jerked swiftly back to her auction catalogue of ceramic antiques.

"My God Beefy, the young lady."

"Ah the young lady. But you are so splendidly turned out Balthazar, so frisky and one might say fresh from France that it does my heart fair good just to see you."

"Yes Beefy, I've come all this way. And a girl came into the waiting room and then what."

"You must let me tantalise myself Balthazar. To me these days it means much. Let me digress one more delicious moment. The chaps at my building site when they saw me giving the cement a little extra wetting down. They cheered. Said it was the biggest weapon ever seen. It rather improved my day. Of course I know it's achieved a further grandeur it did not know at prep school. And perhaps not even as one prepared to take holy orders. But to have these chaps cheer. It's given me courage to again present this instrument to a mare who would exchange all her riches lain at my feet for a guarantee of frequent thrustings. Ah but back at the doctor's."

"Yes."

"Ah. Her name, listen carefully while I thrill it out between my sober lips. Listen. Angelica Violet Infanta. Doesn't that tell you much already. Angelica, from the Greek, Violet from the Latin. Those delicate tiny flowers found on grassy banks through woods. Infanta. From that latter one catches a tremolo of Debrett. I swim back to the shores of privilege out of the sea of the dispossessed. Saved from a lifetime of discomfort. But back at my doctor's. Medical treatment is the only thing left that granny pays for these days. And the dear man while he was examining my bones said, now Beefy there waits downstairs in my waiting room a girl of not too great looks perhaps but a marvellous fortune. When I returned to the waiting room I gave my most charming smile. But she was of course aloof. In fact positively ignored me. Being as I was and still am, in a state of deshabille. But on the good doctor's front door step. I lurked waiting. And did pounce. With a long prepared stream of lies. When the door opened and she appeared. I said I'm awfully sorry. Then I left an enormous pause. To let my villainous vowels sink in. Her eyebrows were rising. I attacked. Said I'd just rushed from rehearsals. Left my bowler and brolly in my dressing room. I'm a navvy darling in an uproariously funny stage play. I didn't say darling I must admit. But I made a further thrust. As always Fm the first to believe myself. I said you, my dear, are just the one one has been looking for. My leading lady in the flesh. She began to open her mouth. I knew it would be fatal if ever she got anything out. Something odious like be gone cad. So I said. Say nothing please. Just come with me. I got her into a nearby wine lodge. Admiring her eighty quids' worth of tailoring she carried so presentably on her back. I extracted her address. Belgravia of course. I flung the necessary heirlooms into pawn. Bombarded her with red roses for a week. And now if only I can hold out. Keep the wool over suspicious eyes. Tonight I meet ma and pa."

"I'm terribly pleased for you Beefy."

"Balthazar so good to hear your word. When all is not well. When you know that out under the cloudy skies of London no one thinks in love of one. But now. The Violet Infanta. Niece of a Welsh peer. You know how utterly rich they are. She may mention Le Touquet a trifle too often for my comfort. Does rather hysterically laugh. But what matter. We'll get on. In wedlock I know I can grow to love her. For what she is. Stinking. Gushingly stinking rich. My doctor smiles every time he tells me of her ground rents and her father's connection with motor cars. Given me the runs, made me half demented. The slothful grandeur of it all. Our spiritual feelings are so in harmony. She's a rabid believer in the monarchy. And of course so am I. Ah Balthazar you look so untouched by life. The calmness of your existence. Back there in Paris. You must meet her. You must. Told her all about you. She thinks she has a friend you would adore."

Beefy's sun reddened hand reaching to lightly touch his cravat. And a finger flicks away a morsel of hardened mud from his knee. As mothers, aunts and nannies march by, irregularities of figure neatly corsetted under their tweed. Children in tow. On their way to measure for the school uniform.

"Balthazar, you do tolerate me so much. Why."

"Your charm."

"For that I shall send you by foot messenger six gull's eggs. Imagine though how God answered my prayer. Nearly within the hour. I even thought I might have caught a glimpse of him as the light bulb overhead exploded. I knelt with the backside out of my underwear and untold guilts from nursery days blushing on my face. Fm on my way. My rich mare lassoed. And till I get to the altar, I smash back my emulsion of poppy juice to keep my spirits up. I really know now that one's redeemer damn sure liveth."

"Beefy. I don't want to trouble you or be presumptuous. But I do think that you need a little help. And Fd like very much if you would accept from me an early wedding present."

"Balthazar, my goodness, you are a brick. You really are. What an awfully nice thing of you to say. Were I a heretic denying the transubstantiation and you minded, I must say Fd mend my ways forthwith. And my Lord I haven't really asked you how you are. How are you.' "Fm fine. Very fine. I had one or two low moments in Paris perhaps. But at the same time I rather caught up on some aspects of zoology I had missed."

"God suddenly the world at this moment seems so good. I mean one couldn't help wondering what was going to happen to us. To our caste. Me wheeling a wheelbarrow on a building site. Marvellous thing is, amazing how many places one can go, a wheelbarrow in front of you, shouting out gangway. Fm planning to use it to enter the Enclosure at Ascot with champagne buried in my little load of ice cold sand."

"Would you excuse me Beefy. Just for a few moments."

Balthazar passed to the end of the waiting hall. Between the elevators. And down the steps into the vaults. Pressing the black little button. A buzzer ringing along a corridor and footsteps approaching. Dark uniformed man lifting up his rings of keys to unlock and swing open this iron barred entrance.

"Good day, sir."

"Good day."

Heels clicking over the tiles along this passage and turning right into a mirrored room, a fan whirring quietly. The tinkle of keys and clank of a safe door. Great steel box lugged forth. Placed on a high table shelf behind the frosted glass door of a panelled booth. Turn the key, lift up the lid. Reach into the loneliness. To choose a stack of white storage crisp five pound notes. From the other stacks of French, Swiss, Dutch and Danish. Uncle Edouard always said keep a balance of currencies dear boy to cushion your horror if they all devalue at once.

And climbing back the carpeted marble stairs. Left between the phalanx of lift doors. Step aside politely for a high heeled toy poodle carrying perfumed customer. Beefy, my goodness, engaged in eager conversation with the dowager. He must practice on all old ladies. In the hope of handling granny. He lights up one's whole lonely life. With his fighting flaming flesh and bone. Now my God she's handing him her card. Enmeshed in his magic. And once he said at a distance people look different but when you talk to them they all become the same.

"Beefy. Here."

"Balthazar. I don't really feel I ought to take this."

"You must. Because it's my wedding present."

"You are a brick you know. But if the wedding should never take place."

A silence. And their both eyes look down. Upon the packed sheets of money. The dowager clears her throat. A waddling American goes by through the cocktail murmur of voices on this splendidly tremulous afternoon.

"Thank you unforgettably Balthazar. With the world gone dotty with greed you alone stand uncorrupted."

Beefy with a gentle gesture touched Balthazar. And put the wad of notes with all their curlicued embellishments in under his tweed. Giving them a reassuring little pat. He turned to his dowager friend and smiled. She smiled. One can weep with joy. To be at home again in London. Beefy's eyes as they always look for something in the middle distance. Never too close nor too far. He will hit yet the world a stunning blow. Crumple it in the mid section. And bring it back to life again with a dram of his poppy juice.

"Balthazar may I introduce you. Lady Bicuspid. I've just been telling her about great grand uncle. Who contracted fever tracing the source of the Nile. He was the first to find the source of the Shannon for the Irish. It foxed the Erse for years. Poor devils. They were delighted when great grand uncle with a sample given him by my great grand father identified the water as being from a particular lake in China, called Shah Nun. For millennia it had leaked right through the earth. To trickle out in Ireland. That's how Shannon came to be its name. They gave uncle an immortal potato. The very original one they kept buried in a box at Tara. From which came all the others. Poor uncle. After his success in Ireland he thought he'd solve the Nile. Got knighted for his religious work among the savages. Who later, God rest his soul, knighted him with a spear where one does not want such a thing. They offered him up as a sacrifice in honour of the God uncle had revealed to them. They ate him. Without salt. It was awful. And dear lady. It appalls me still. The utter lack of gratitude and charity. Must rush now, but so pleasant meeting you like this."

"So interesting. I've enjoyed every moment so much, thank you. Young people don't talk to their seniors these days."

"Yes. I know. Not nice. But please God may we have this happenstance again. Been much rewarding to see the wealth of colour sparkling in eyes such as yours. An autumn splendour which only comes with the riper years."

"You are a dear boy."

"Goodbye, madam."

"Goodbye."

Beefy led Balthazar to the cigar department. There to purchase several packets to bulge out his pockets. On this lucid afternoon. He said he was going to distribute them to his mates on the building site. Where he would finish out the week. But alas he would still have to stay employed. Gainfully and continually or else forfeit the last remaining hope of granny's distant riches.

They parted with a wave at the entrance to the sweet department. Balthazar B went past the cheese and candles, by petunias and into the health juice bar. There amid a sudden throng of busty twice married heiresses he quaffed a mixture of blackberry juice and milk. And up through the various departments. To order furniture, enough for one. To sit and sleep upon.

The day of delivery in the door of 78 Crescent Curve. The men in pleasant green coats came. Set up the bed, table, sofa, chair, lamp and rug in the dining room. They thought me rather a little strange but I said it saves running around the house. I climbed up the stairs and stood there on the landing. Looking out back and into a small garden opposite. And saw lying back carelessly in a chair. A nearly naked girl. A towel just over her lap. Moving her head back and forth in the sunshine. A gleam on her small sharp pointed breasts. I was enchanted and somewhat saucily steamed. How gay and carefree and goodness, how London has changed. An older lady, looks her mother, comes out. Polishes her all over with an embrocation. As she now leans forward. Her pair seem to gain much in size. One wonders what other windows are alive with binoculars or unassisted eyes. Good Lord they look up. I step back. And wait. To peek again. From the landing next floor up. Ah the scene remains unchanged. I could run around and present my card. Placed neatly sticking up. I beg your pardon.

Out of

Beefy's

Wheelbarrow

Of ice cold

Sand.