Atdtda32: Consult the mirror, Clive, 903-906

[Paul Nightingale]

Up the page on 903, at the end of 61.5, Lew is "aware that eyes [are]
directed their way"; and then, straightaway, he comments on Dally's apparent
sang froid. A couple of pages later, "[i]nvisible within her celebrated
beauty" (905), she is observed by Crouchmas, who has hired detectives, it
seems, to tell him what he doesn't want to know. Then, on 906, Madame
Entrevue interrupts Crouchmas' continued self-exposure.

When we first see Crouchmas on 899 he is "not exactly lurking, but
obstinately staring"; his speech ("And she isn't ...") is completed by
Ruperta ("Spoken for? Whatever that might mean in her case ..." etc), who
dismisses Dally as a cheap commodity. On 900 "he [sits] at his safe
distance, watching". On 905 his response to Dally's 'betrayal' ("Oh, God ...
God help me ...") is again interrupted, this time by businesslike
detectives. And so to the scene with Madame Entrevue, who sets
"hardheadedness" against "sentimental" (906). Here, Crouchmas insists Dally
"was not one of the usual", which judgement is in sharp contrast to
Ruperta's disdain for "[t]hese girls ..." etc (899). If indeed Crouchmas
exemplifies a new capitalism, one that disregards the nation state and the
attendant patriotism, perhaps Dally represents a throwback to an earlier,
more innocent (?), state: note his proposal for punishment, "no longer an
option in the new Turkey" (906; and cf "rugriders" down the page).

>From the close-up ("Consult the mirror, Clive ...") to the long-shot that
opens this section, description of "a tall building, taller than any in
London ..." etc, "more a prism of shadow of a certain solidity ..." etc.
Again one thinks of Hunter's painting, just as the subsequent passage here,
an account of Dally's unhindered quest for information--"room after room,
for days" (904)--takes us back to Hunter's speech on Crouchmas, above the
section break on 903.

The building offers a world apart: entry is "a matter of obscurity, indeed
[is] known only to adepts ..." etc (903-904). The building's internal
workings (from "the downward transfer of an undiscussed product from the
upper levels to hidden cargo docks below" to "the equations governing its
movement were said to be hydrodynamic in nature", 904) are juxtaposed to the
business of government, just as obscure to the general public, not least in
government's relations to a global economy. As the building disappears
upwards we might think of the Chums' existence above the everyday. The
reader is positioned with those who cannot understand until the new
paragraph on 904: "Up here ..." etc offers the reader access as Dally is
introduced as, well, a Hitchcock figure, Vera Miles in the Bates house, or
even--given her relationship with Crouchmas, as suggested by Lew on 902
903--one reminiscent of Bergman's prostitution in Notorious. Such melodrama
positions the character as an innocent of sorts, not least when the reader
has superior knowledge of a likely threat.

And so, as Dally leaves, the narrative will again shift, to align the reader
with detectives following her, with Crouchmas present to bear witness;
feeling betrayed or simply fooled, he will consider "shop[ping] the bitch to
a harem" (905-906). The reader, then, adopts Crouchmas' pov following a
reference to Dally-as-celebrity, interchangeable cultural commodity as
described on 898-899. Life in a harem, were Crouchmas to organise such a
fate for Dally, would represent a different kind of prostitution to that she
experiences on the West End stage. As the section ends, there is a reference
to the mysterious Q-weapon: from Madame Entrevue's "Don't say it--we don't
use language like that in here" to Spokeshave's "The item doesn't even have
a name anyone agrees on".