A nightingale in the sycamore
(Underwoods by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I wish I could remember the name of that pub. I can't even remember the area it was in. Somewhere around Labroke Grove or Shepherd's Bush.
It's terribly annoying. I've been asked to write an article in the series The Most Unforgettable Character I've ever met.
I can't remember him. No. I can remember HIM. I'll never forget HIM.
It's where he was that I can't. It'll come back to me.
I know it was at a pub. Because I'd just bought this drink. I was astonished to see this elderly man at the other end of the bar holding an umbrella.
I know you're thinking what was astonishing about that. What was astonishing about that is that the umbrella was UP.
This old bloke was sitting at the end of the bar holding an open umbrella over himself. And what's more it was one of those new type of umbrellas which come right down over your shoulders, you know the kind, like sort of plastic dome of St. Pauls.
And there he was, sitting inside it. And the remarkable part. This is the remarkable part. He was puffing at a pipe.
Can you visualize what happens when a man smokes a pipe inside one of these transparent umbrellas? The whole upper half of his body simply disappears from view. The smoke just PILED up inside the dome 'till eventually it was just like looking at cumulous formations on type of the pair of gray flannel trousers.
That was nothing to what happened next.
When the umbrella was completely full of smoke, he ducked out of it, then holding the umbrella so that none of the smoke escaped, he took from a carrier bag a large round plastic sheet with a little hole in the middle. And he slipped the hole over the handle of the umbrella. Then he gradually worked the plastic circle up the dome and sealed it to the ends of the umbrella spokes. You understand what I mean? So that all the smoke was now sealed inside this umbrella dome.
And he put the whole thing on the floor and just sipped his beer as though nothing had happened.
I don't know if you could have kept quiet to this affair. I couldn't. I said, "Excuse me, sir. I wonder if you could tell me. What's your racket? To what purpose do you intend to put that umbrella full of smoke?"
And he was kind enough to explain. It all sort of fell into place. The point of the whole thing was many many years ago he had been unfortunate enough to get married to one of those kind of women whose only response to any statement you make to her is some homely old saw or axiom.
If you were to rush in and say, "Oh darling, we've lost all of our savings. The baby has fallen out of the pram. And the bathroom's just caught fire." What she'd say was something like, "Oh no, no use crying over spilled milk. Every cloud has a silver lining. Least said soonest mended."
"Thirty-five years I've lived with that," This old man said to me, "It's been like co-habiting with the Oxford Book of English Quotations. So the day I retired from work I made a vow, sir. I vowed I would dedicate the rest of my life to finding answers to them proverbs of hers. Now, this." And he patted the umbrella, "This is for the next time she comes out with, 'there is no smoke without fire'. As soon as she says it, out I'll go to my shed bring in the umbrella, shove it in her face, say 'What about this, eh'?"
I said, "I see. I see. Do you have other sort of ammunition in that shed?"
I've got a few things, sir. There's a small round stone with a bit of moss on it. There's the two dozen eggs that I DID manage to teach my grandmother to suck. And they are all in one basket, I might add. Well, it's been nice talking to you, guv. I must be shoving off. I'm making the wife a birthday present at the moment. A little purse.
I said, "That'll be nice."
He said, "Pricey though. You wouldn't credit the cost of those sows these days."
And I watched him leave. The most unforgettable character that I've ever met. But where that pub was. Was it at Maider Vale, in the Red Lion. No. I've got it. I've got it. It was exactly where that quotation of Robert Louis Stevenson indicated. It was at Nottinghill. In the sycamore.
Dennis Norden 574b
