“What would happen,” he asked himself, numb with horror, “if Johnson really were serious about his Catholicism? Might that also mean that those two Scotsmen genuinely believe in their Life Force? Then I’m the only one… the only one…”
But he allowed the absurd idea to drop. His thoughts turned, rather more consolingly, to Dowson, the love poet of transcendent delicacy who, in real life, spent his time playing cards with the father of his beloved — a greengrocer — and chatting away, no doubt, in the lowest form of cockney. Such is human nature.
Thus he arrived at a certain nightclub. Here, behind the sleeping back of the early-retiring Victoria, the nocturnal decadence of a highly moral age seethed and bubbled away like a virulent organism in a sealed bottle. Tyrconnel was well known in the place, not as a mystical poet but as the son of his eminent father, who sent him large remittances every month. His personal decadence found partial expression in telling dirty stories to the Alhambra chorus girls, who pulled their chairs into a ring around him because they enjoyed them so much. But this simply intensified his inner emptiness, and he drank steadily to fill the void, if only physically.
Some time later he was joined by his countryman and fellow poet Oscar Wilde — devastatingly elegant, as always, in his tail-coat, and languidly witty as ever. He had just come from some place or other where he had been the life and soul of the party… but what frightfully hard work it was, keeping up his non-stop brilliance! With the audacity of an ageing voluptuary, and one eye on his audience, he set his hands to work on the chorus girls, all the while murmuring in Tyrconnel’s ear about his one great grief, his unrequited passion for a certain young earl, a blond to boot, to whom he penned sonnets of classical perfection the way Shakespeare once had. How mendacious are the ways of poets! Tyrconnel knew all about the seedy-looking stable boys and hotel flunkeys who hung around outside Wilde’s house, draining off his rapidly diminishing funds. That was the real truth about poor Oscar.
A wave of alcoholic grief swept over him. He leant his head on Wilde’s shoulder and murmured through his tears:
“Babylon and Nineveh…”
Wilde stared at him in astonishment.
“For God’s sake, not you too, old chap? You’re not starting on this religious nonsense yourself? They tell me our dear Lionel—”
“I’ve come to realise,” Tyrconnel explained tremulously, “that I’m just as beastly a humbug as you, and those two… sons of the peasantry, with… with their Primal Force… and Lionel Johnson… who’s never had proper dealings with a woman in his life… But I… I happen to know a real human being… an itinerant tinker… drowned at sea off Inverary…”
And he launched into the story of the tinker, knowing full well that, as with everything else in his life, there wasn’t a grain of truth in any of it.
“I lie only when I speak, you lie even when you don’t — that is the difference between us,” Wilde declared aphoristically, and got up to go and repeat the witticism at several other tables.
Tyrconnel made his way home, taking one of the chorus girls with him, and paying her about as much attention as he would to a bus ticket.
Tyrconnel sat in the presence of the Great Publisher, having politely placed his newly purchased grey top hat on the floor beside him, and his snow-white gloves and ebony walking stick with the onyx handle on top of it.
“I’ve been thinking about a weekly journal,” the Great Publisher announced, “the sort of thing they do in America, something a lady might hold in her hand on the train. The cost would be recovered through advertisements for spas, watering places, that sort of thing. But of course that side of it wouldn’t interest you, as a poet. Naturally, the paper would mostly carry puzzles, photographs of the Royal Family and stories about dogs. But I also want it to print sonnets and Platonic dialogues — in a word, literature.”
“Indeed,” Tyrconnel murmured respectfully.
“But not the sort of ‘literature’ you get in John o’ London’s Weekly and suchlike. Mine will carry only the best, the most refined writing of the day. Nothing but Symbolism and that French stuff that no one understands. Which is why I thought of you, Mr Tyrconnel. You will be in charge of the literary column. Your fellow workers you will naturally choose yourself.”
Tyrconnel immediately thought of Lionel Johnson and Dowson. It was now a full month since he had seen them, and he had begun to miss them almost sincerely. It was not so much a case of the heart going out in friendship — that sort of thing was out of the question between them — rather, he missed the permanent but always stimulating sense of oppression that he felt in their company. What kept them together was a feeling of mutual fear. Tyrconnel was filled with pangs of genuine remorse every time he thought of Johnson’s immense Oxford-educatedness and the stubborn asceticism with which he worked, rewriting and polishing his verses until they were either absolutely perfect or consigned to the bin. He himself wrote swiftly and haphazardly, and then a kind of hysteria amounting almost to panic, or the simple fact that his cigarette had gone out, would be enough to stop him taking any sort of corrective action.
Dowson was different again. He would produce no more than four or five poems a year, but it was precisely this indolence that the prolific Tyrconnel felt as a perpetual reproach. The man who writes very little always has the advantage over the one who writes a lot, since his every phrase is carefully constructed; just as the person who stays silent is always cleverer and wiser than the one speaking.
Naturally, Tyrconnel did not know the actual address of either of his friends. He had often accompanied Johnson home, but had never noticed the name of the street, let alone the number. In truth, the only things he did notice were either written or spoken: just words.
The one positive thing he did know about was the gossip he so regularly repeated, both in his editorial capacity and at literary dinners — that Ernest Dowson spent every evening from eight onwards in a certain little pub the far side of London Bridge, playing cards with his beloved’s father, a greengrocer. Had Tyrconnel been English it would undoubtedly have restrained him from intruding on the hidden other half of his friend’s life. But his Irish soul was tormented by a mischievous delight in causing embarrassment. That evening he roused himself and set off in the direction of London Bridge.
He quickly identified the little pub from its coat of arms. He went in, knocked back an Irish whiskey at the bar (he was a great patriot) and enquired after Dowson. Not a name anyone could recall. But when he wrote it out in large simple letters, and explained that the person regularly played cards with a gentleman who owned a greengrocer’s shop, the barmaid’s face lit up.
“Oh, you must be thinking of Mr Ernest.” And she took him into a back room.
In the thick haze beneath a paraffin lamp several people sat at cards. It took him some time to spot Dawson’s aristocratic profile. By then his friend had already noticed him. He jumped up, came over, and shook his hand vigorously. He was deeply embarrassed.
“Hello, old chap. This really is kind of you… excessively kind… I’ll introduce you to my partners, if you like, but, please” (pulling him closer and whispering), “you won’t let on, will you, that… you know… I sometimes write verse. That sort of thing puts a chap in a rather difficult position here.”
There were three people at the table: Mr Higgins the greengrocer, his shop assistant, and his daughter.
“My friend Mr Smith,” declared Dowson, and blushed furiously. “Mr Smith is in bicycles.”
His connection with the newfangled sport bestowed a certain prestige, and Tyrconnel improvised a couple of highly interesting stories about the problems of the cycle trade, gazing all the while at the girl with friendly admiration.