PRELUDE TO A CERTAIN MIDNIGHT
by Gerald Kersh
This Dover edition, first published in 1983, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by William Heinemann, Ltd., London, 1947.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 180 Varick Street, New York, N.Y. 10014
ISBN 0-486-24536-5
For
MY MOTHER
BOOK ONE
1
Hardly any of the old crowd go to the Bar Bacchus now, yet for twenty-five years it was one of the three most popular meeting-places in London. Suddenly nobody wanted to go there any more. The old customers developed a distaste for the bar at which they had for so many years intoxicated themselves with mixtures of alcohol and intimate conversation, where they had cashed cheques, borrowed money, made eyes at one another’s husbands and wives, and uttered strong words about deep matters.
People said that the ‘atmosphere’ of the Bar Bacchus had changed. But they could never tell you how it had changed, or what had changed it. It is difficult — I believe that it is impossible — to explain a change of atmosphere. The atmosphere of a place is the soul of that place, and when it departs the place dies. One may make equations: A New Manager, plus the New Manager’s Friends, minus certain Old Familiar Faces, plus a Strange Barman, plus the Tension that goes with Unfamiliar Voices, minus Intimacy, equals a Change of Atmosphere. But this is not satisfactory. One might as well describe an oppressive quiet in terms of decibels, or explain a grief in cubic centimetres of salt tears. One might as well expect an oceanographer to draw up the loneliness and the darkness of the Mindanao Deep on a plumb-line.
The Bar Bacchus died. The virtue went out of it. Its soul drifted away, so that now, although nothing about the place has visibly changed, it is nothing but a shell that once enclosed a character and an individual heart-beat.
Of all the old habitués, only Amy Dory goes there regularly, generally in the evening. She is better known by her nickname Catchy. More years ago than she cares to remember, when she was only twenty-eight years old and still beautiful, a certain novelist who never got around to writing his novel and whose very appearance no one remembers was sitting at the bar ten minutes after opening time. His name is Ember, and he is one of the few men that ever burned with unrequited passion for Amy Dory. After the manner of such men, he had to talk about it. Since none of his friends would arrive for at least five minutes, he talked to the barman, Gonger.
He said: ‘She gets hold of you, that woman. Do you understand what I mean? She gets hold of you. I mean, she goes with everybody. Let’s face it, she’s as common as a drain, Gonger. But I mean, common — common, like one of those catchy bits of sentimental music that everybody gets hold of. In everybody’s mouth. You find yourself singing “_Amy Dory, Amy Dory, Amy Dory_” until she sort of interferes with your sleep. I mean, you can’t get her out of your head. A catchy tune. She has to have her run. There’s nothing you can do about her, do you see what I mean? She’s catchy.’
Gonger, the barman, gave him a warning look as the door opened and Amy Dory came in. Ember turned, changing colour, but said in a hearty voice, ‘Hello, Catchy!’
One of his friends who was coming behind her asked: ‘Why Catchy?’
‘Because she’s catchy,’ said Ember.
From that day her name was Catchy. After many years it still sticks. It is a fact that she was extremely attractive in those days, although her beauty was of the commonplace sort. She had regular features, an excellent figure — she called it a ‘_good bod_’ — and a fine head of hair, remarkable in its luxuriance and colour. It was gleaming red-brown. Her eyes were of the same colour; they were large and clear, candid yet submissive — motherly yet dog-like when she looked at men. Catchy’s face had something of the shape, the warm colour and the texture of an apricot. She used to be much beloved. There was no doubt that her heart was big and warm — she couldn’t bear to see anyone suffering. And she was good company: she made you feel powerful. ‘Whatever you say’, was her slogan. The weaker you were, the more submissive she became. The more foolish and indecisive you were, the more she looked up to you.
She was by instinct neat, orderly, and tasteful in her dressing. Yet, if by virtue of your helplessness you won her heart, she never made you feel that your unwashed teeth, dirty socks, filthy linen, or stained bed were in any way offensive to her. She wanted, as she said, to be ‘good for you’. There isn’t the slightest doubt that Catchy had a kind heart, the sweetest of natures. There was (as someone said to her at that time) something of the saint about her; she gave everything, took nothing, and forgave those who ill-treated her — or rather, she convinced those who ill-treated her, when they begged pardon, that there was nothing to forgive. Thus Catchy made many men happy; generally neurotic, misunderstood men who needed her most. The majority of her friends were writers, actors — artists of one sort or another who lived to tell her all about themselves and explain their disabilities to her. She learned a great deal about people, and came to be regarded as a Mother Confessor to all the world.
Not only did she absolve, she excused. Having excused, she justified. She knew how to make people happy when she was beautiful, and when the Bar Bacchus was a place with an atmosphere.
2
But the Bar Bacchus lost its soul and Catchy lost her body. If you had known her then and could see her now you would see what I mean when I say that she has gone through the years like a woman dragged backwards through a thickset hedge. Time has made a sad mess of her — time and trouble. She has had trouble, she will tell you a few minutes after meeting you. Those bright brown eyes that used to be so steady and candid against the baby-blue whites may now be likened to a couple of cockroaches desperately swimming in two saucers of boiled rhubarb. Her magnificent hair has acquired a coarse texture. There is something Bohemian about it: it will not lie down; it resists the comb: it is hair in revolt. She is too tired, now, to fight against it.
A few months ago she made her last effort and went blonde. This merely made matters worse. The mixture of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia with which she bleached it made it even coarser than it had been when, with angry determination, she first stirred up the chemicals with a toothbrush. When the mixture was dry she washed her hair in the hand-basin, looked at herself in the grimy, freckled mirror, and wept. The same evening she attempted to commit suicide.
She tied her head up in a kind of turban, went to the Bar Bacchus, and told a friend whom she happened to meet that at last she proposed to end it all. After she had spent all her money, she went home and swallowed twenty aspirin tablets. Nothing happened. Catchy is still alive. Everyone knows that Catchy has gone through the motions of suicide at least half a dozen times. She has scraped at the tendons of her wrists with a blunt razorblade, drunk hair lotion, swallowed a sixpenny bottle of iodine, taken aspirins, and turned on the gas fire without lighting it. But it has always happened that somebody has been near her to rescue her in case she needed saving.
Catchy, I repeat, is the last of the old school at the Bar Bacthus, and she is far from being the woman she used to be. Her cheeks are at once puffy and shrivelled, and her skin is of the colour and texture of dusty curds. She still takes a certain pride in her appearance: her nails are meticulously varnished dark red, but she seldom remembers to wash her hands. The fact that she cannot bring herself to wash off the remains of yesterday’s powder, cream, and rouge is neither here nor there — she makes her face scrupulously every morning, laying a fresh coat of paint upon the cracked, stratified remains of the old. Catchy’s teeth too are in a precarious condition. After the birth of her child — she was married once — two or three of her side teeth fell out and were replaced with a bridge. Years later the bridge fell out. By then she had lost the will to do anything about anything, and so she put the fallen bridge into a cold-cream pot. For the past five years she has been intending to go to a dentist. But she never has time. Meanwhile some of her real teeth have gone, and others are going, so that she has acquired a tight-lipped, enigmatic smile, like the Empress Josephine.