Kif

by Josephine Tey

  'Oh, the fish!' she said suddenly, and drawing herself away from him clutched the pan.

  Together they dished the golden fillets, but Kif's teeth did not water at the sight of them. He was occupied in remembering how the tip of her ear curved forward, and being foolishly amazed to find it still so. And the strand of hair that always crept down from the right side of her forehead, it was still there.

  Breakfast was a gala meal. The windows were set wide to the street, and a warm air streamed into the cool room over a bowl of sweet peas, moving them gently in its progress, and bearing with it some of their delicate sweetness and the bitter fresh smell of new-sprinkled dust. Kif sniffed it appreciatively. It had some happy association for him, that smell of hot damp dust, but he could not remember what. He ate whatever was put before him—Baba had rolls hot from the oven to mark the occasion—and listened while they talked, answering their questions, and becoming more and more conscious of a subtle difference in their manner, of which they themselves seemed totally unaware. For the first time they were utterly unreserved in his presence, and their welcome to him was a welcome to one of themselves, not to any outsider, however good his standing with them. Mr Carroll had patted him on the shoulder and said: 'Well, my boy, it is very nice to have you back. I have business to talk with you, but that can wait. It is good business.' And he had chuckled bronchially and patted Kif's back again with an affectionate hand. They all lingered over the meal as though nothing in the day mattered but Kif's return. 'The boy' was opening the shop, it seemed. When eventually Mr Carroll departed, Angel remained, smoking placidly, and placidly and feeding Kif with scraps of information as they happened come to the surface of his thoughts.

  'Danny said to tell you he'd blow in here after six. You don't need to go round to Dormer Street until after tea to-night.'

  When Kif had mentioned his rooms Baba had said: 'Oh, Mrs Campany has yours waiting for you.'

  'Yes, I must. I must change my clothes. Look at me. Come round with me now. You don't have to go to business just yet.'

  'No, but—' Angel looked at his sister. She was extinguishing a cigarette end carefully in the ash-tray (Baba allowed no one to 'muck up the things' with cigarette ash) and as if conscious of the glance she said without looking up:

  'Yes, you go along with him.'

  Angel still hesitated, but seeing the dawning surprise on Kif's face said: 'All right. But Baba'll come along too. The house can wait for one morning.'

  'Yes, but the dinner can't. And Pinkie'll never be cook at the Ritz. You take him along and see he's back sharp at one.'

  'Oh, come along, Baba!' Kif said; but she would not be persuaded. She gave him a fleeting kiss as he passed behind her to follow Angel, and pushed him away from her.

  'If you're later than one you needn't come back at all,' she said.

  'Dance with me to-night?' he asked from the doorway. And she nodded.

  As they debouched from Northey Terrace the dizzying racket of the main street staggered Kif. For eighteen months that racket had come to him as a far-away hum. He had listened so often to the low monotone—symbol of all that he was missing—that he had forgotten the mad cacophony of the reality. He felt that he needed the shelter of a dug-out from some incredible barrage, and it was more than ten minutes before he could walk along without being conscious of the row.

  Mrs Campany—a tight-mouthed shrunken creature who had 'had misfortunes', and who wore habitually shirt blouses of aggressive stripes which looked still more aggressive on her meagre frame—smiled on Kif with as jubilant an air as her features permitted. She remarked on his look of health, and was going to conduct the returned exile personally into his kingdom when Angel engaged her in talk, so that Kif went alone into the room he had left expecting to come back to one evening more than a year ago.

  When Angel followed him he was standing, hat in hand, just inside the door.

  'Who is responsible?' he asked, without turning round.

  'For goodness' sake say you like it,' said Angel. 'It'll be an awful come-down for them if you don't.'

  Kif looked again at the cream walls, the four deep chairs covered in golden-brown loose-covers, the hanging bookshelves filled with books, the three framed prints of thoroughbreds in action done in pastel by a famous sporting artist, the folding oak table with its bowl of yellow roses. He remembered the grey-and-green patterned walls, the bilious tiles in the fireplace—they were fawn now—the mirrored wall-brackets, the unsightly ornaments, the improbable floral carpet which had mocked in its ugliness Baba's gay cretonnes.

  'Who did it?' he asked again.

  'Well, I think it was Dago's idea originally, but Baba did all the chivvying about what was necessary—and if you'd believe her, there was a whole lot. There were times when I was sort of sorry for the workmen.' Angel smiled his beautiful smile. 'And Dago'd come and say what was wrong, you see, and Baba'd repeat it next day to the folk responsible. It looks all right to me. What do you think?'

  Kif put his hat on the table and sat down slowly in one of the round swelling armchairs. 'It's a lot too good to be true,' he said. 'There must be a snag somewhere.'

  Not that I know of. May I smoke in this palace? We owe you much more than this. It's thanks to you the old man got away that night. (The stretch you got was a bit of a shock to him, by the way.) He'll settle up with you for that. But the rest of us…Well, I'm glad you like it. Mrs Cam. was tickled to death when it was done, though it took a whole lot of argy-bargy before she'd say go. She's a mule, if ever there was one…You'd better buzz off and change.'

  Kif's bedroom was a replica of the sitting-room. Gone was the crazy basket-chair thinly smeared with hard turkey-red cushion and bristling like a porcupine with broken cane, gone the defaced linoleum, gone the drawers reluctant to open and impossible to shut. Kif rummaged happily among the clothes which had been laid in the new chest-of-drawers, finding, as is the way with everyone after a long absence, garments he had forgotten he possessed. It was Angel calling to know if he was still alive that recalled him to passing time, and the impatient one came upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed while he completed his toilet. In that hour Kif felt that the barriers of his knowledge of Angel had been broken down. He knew, too, that they had reached their last reserve—Baba. And that that reserve would for some reason remain.

  After the midday dinner it was Mr Carroll who took a holiday while Angel went to business, and Mr Carroll suggested that he and Kif should go up West together. It was almost as if he had guessed Kif's ache to see the town again. As they walked up Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner Carroll asked him if he had any plans. Kif, who was sniffing the atmosphere delightedly, would have preferred to leave ways and means to a future occasion, but he said:

  'I want a job.'

  'It would be better,' said Carroll, 'but it won't be easy.'

  Kif fumbled in his breast pocket. 'They gave me this,' he said, handing over the address with which the governor had provided him.

  Carroll examined it. 'Ah, yes,' he said kindly. It was the tone one uses on being asked to admire a kindergarten drawing. 'Well, there's no harm in trying them.'

  'What's wrong with them?' demanded Kif.

  'Oh, nothing, nothing,' said Carroll. 'A most excellent institution. Of course,' he added, 'there is no immediate need to find work. There is your share of the last eighteen months still untouched.'

  He paused pleasantly before delivering his bomb, and then lobbed it gently into the warm afternoon. 'Your share of the Cannon Street business and of the two affairs which, contrary to my custom, I put through alone, amounts to—' and he mentioned the sum.

  Kif's eyes opened wide, and the world swung suddenly into a new perspective. A lump sum like that—why, it altered things completely. With that sum he could begin bookmaking again; and presently, if things went well, own horses of his own, make a steady income, have a house on the river—long ago he had decided that when he had a home of his own it should be by the river—and perhaps Baba for his
own.

  But the delicious mirage faded in the desert of second thought. There would be too many questions to answer if he reappeared on the Turf just now. Everyone in the bookmaking crowd had known that he was a partner in Hough & Collins. He had no evidence to show that he had been a sufferer in the absconding of his two partners. And any inquiry would unearth the fact that he had just served a sentence of hard labour. He could not risk yet that warning-off which would definitely put an end to the hope which he secretly still hugged. But—supposing he got a job and hung on to it?

  They were crossing the circus when he came to himself. 'All the same,' he said, as they pushed open a bar door, 'I think I'll look for a job. The busies are too inquisitive.'

  Carroll assented with his tolerant air of letting everyone decide their own course. As a Bass and a stone-ginger were set before them—Mr Carroll drank only soft drinks—Kif heard him say: 'Hullo, Sammy!' and swung round with an eagerness he had not meant to betray. Here was the man who had caused him so many tortured moments.

  Carroll turned from shaking hands to introduce Kif. Sammy looked at him curiously for a moment and then nodded, but as he and Carroll talked his eyes came back always, curiously, to Kif. Sammy was long and lean, and pale, and loosely put together, with shoulders too square and too flat. He had a thin twisted cynical mouth, rather kindly grey eyes, and a perpetual air of having slept badly. They discussed the failure of the Derby favourite, the possibility of Donoghue's doing the hat-trick next year, the thinness of beer and its iniquitous price—all the subjects, in fact, that are common to bars and clubs.

  'I see Murray Heaton was married yesterday,' Sammy said. 'No end of a splash. Duchesses and what not.'

  'Oh? Didn't pay much attention to the papers this morning. Who's he married to?'

  'Don't know. No one I'd heard of. The chorus as like as not. The duchesses would be all on Murray's side. He was a dam' fine jock.'

  'He was. A great jockey. It's a pity he isn't riding now. Were you in Liverpool when he won with Purple Pest on three legs and his hand half chewed off at the wrist?'

  They exchanged reminiscences until Kif was moved to give them later news.

  'He was a jolly good soldier, too. He was my captain in France.'

  At that they turned eagerly to him, and Kif told them stories of Heaton, authorised and apocryphal, until their second glasses were drained. But going home to six o'clock tea at Northey Terrace his mind was occupied more with speculation about Sammy and thoughts of the evening he was going to spend with Baba than with memories of Heaton, though he cast him a friendly thought. (Old Heaton married! Good luck to him! One of the best, Heaton.) Why was there this queer gap of silence in the apparent frankness about Sammy? They all liked him, apparently, and they all talked freely about him, and yet Kif was conscious of an uneasiness in the atmosphere when his name was mentioned.

  Danny came in at tea-time, a little more round-shouldered than when Kif had seen him last, but with black eyes alive and friendly, and Kif tried to thank him for what he had done to his rooms.

  'Oh, that's Baba's work, not mine,' he said; and as Baba had said, 'Oh, Dago did that,' Kif was left with his thanks undelivered. Kif noticed that his eyes followed Baba as intently as they had on that night more than two years ago, when he had met Danny for the first time. He had it rather badly, poor little devil, Kif thought with a spasm of pity; and he hadn't a chance—not an earthly. And yet what had Baba said about his not being jealous? But he was jealous once. He had been jealous—furiously jealous—that first night, when Kif, the new-comer, had helped Baba in the kitchen. Strange!

  Kif helped Baba again to-night, partly to be alone with her, partly because she had to dress afterwards. But the clearing process had so many interludes that the first reason proved to be the only valid one.

  'For goodness' sake get a move on,' she said at last, 'or we'll be coming home before we're there.'

  She spread a newspaper on the sink and scraped the refuse from the plates into it before consigning them to the water in the basin, and Kif stood by her side drying expertly, his absent eyes on the newspaper.

  'It is rumoured that very shortly a new arterial road will be commenced from…'

  'The state of Mysore has been famous for a generation or more for the statesmanlike character…'

  'Yesterday at the junction of Bedford Street and the Strand a collision occurred…'

  'At St. Margaret's, Westminster, yesterday there was solemnised the marriage of Murray Heaton, the famous jockey, horse breeder and trainer, to Miss Ann Barclay, only daughter of Mr and Mrs T. R. Barclay of Golder's Green and granddaughter of…large assembly…the bride who looked charming wore…retinue…'

  The cup he had been drying crashed on the tiled floor.

  'Butter-fingers!'

  'I'm sorry. I'm—I—I'm sorry,' he stammered stupidly. Murray Heaton and Ann!

  She looked at him surprisedly and said: 'Well, you are a ninny, getting white in the face over a broken cup. You don't suppose it matters really, do you? Even if it did, it's done now.'

  'Yes, that's true,' Kif laughed. 'Spilt milk, 'm?' He was still looking at the pieces.

  'Well, at least you can pick up the bits!'

  'Can I?' He squatted on his heels and began to collect the fragments, laying them in his palm as carefully as though they were fragile and valuable. 'And don't he all night about it. It's nearly eight o'clock. Chuck them in the ash-bin. It's outside the door.'

  Kif carried the remains outside and trickled them slowly into the ashes.

  As they danced—languidly, for the evening was warm—Baba glanced curiously at him once or twice, and then she said: 'You're tired, aren't you?'

  'Well, it's long past my usual bed-time,' he said, but his smile was unconvincing.

  'We shouldn't have danced to-night. Let's beat it. I'll come to Eighteen with you.'

  She went to collect her wrap and they walked across the park. The cool damp air rose round them from the dim grass, and the lights—the lights of London at the climax of the season—came and went behind the purple brown of the trees. Outside, taxis hooted, the horns of cars called long and low, klaxons choked; but here it was very quiet. Their footsteps sounded in faint thud and swish over the grass.

  'Funny to think it was only this morning you came out,' she said.

  'Yes.'

  They took a taxi at the other side of the park and sat in their respective corners without a word, the man abstracted, the girl puzzled.

  As they came into his sitting-room she said: 'You do like it, don't you?' and looked at him again with that doubtful glance.

  'Oh, rather,' he said. 'Rather!'

  As the door closed behind them he sank on to a chair, drawing her down to the arm of it, and buried his face against her shoulder, clinging to her despairingly.

  'Baba!' he said 'Oh, Baba!'

  Her face cleared. She laughed, and rumpled his dark straight hair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It was a dull hot morning, heavy-aired and full of thunder. Kif, having dutifully reported himself, determined to do the politic thing without delay and provide himself with work of some sort. With considerable curiosity and not much faith he betook himself to the address furnished by the governor. There he was interviewed by a small rotund gentleman who looked like Mr Pickwick—though Kif, who did not read Dickens, was unaware of the fact—and whose benign expression seemed to have something to do with his glasses, for when he removed these appendages for a moment his eyes revealed themselves as hard and shrewd as any lawyer's.

  'What have you done in the way of work? Have you a regular profession?'

  Kif explained what he had done since the war. 'And before?'

  Kif was just about to suppress the farm experience when he recollected that now that the police had his dossier nothing could be hidden any more.

  'Ah, farm work!' said the little man, seizing eagerly on the information. Now the best thing you can do is to go abroad. I think I can arrange a
bout the fare if you engage yourself for three years. An entirely new start for you and a splendid opening.'

  Kif, breaking in, said that he had no intention of going abroad.

  'Dear me! and what are your intentions?'

  'I want a job in London.'

  'And do you know that about ten thousand men are wanting the same thing at this moment?'

  'I shouldn't be surprised.'

  'And what chance do you think you have of being successful?'

  'One in ten thousand.'

  'Oh, much less. You forget your disabilities.'

  'You mean that I've done time?'

  'Exactly.'

  'That doesn't prevent me being good at a job.'

  'Perhaps not, but it makes you undesirable from an employer's point of view.'

  'Oh yes. I forgot. A bad lot, in fact.'

  'You must see that in your position it is not possible to pick and choose the kind of work that appeals to you. We take the risk of recommending you, and if you desire to go straight, the work is there for you and the opportunity. We can find you work that you can do, but it is not possible for us to supply the ideal occupation.'

  'Oh, I'll do any kind of work provided it's in London,' said Kif cheerfully.

  'Why London?' asked his interviewer suspiciously.

  'Why not?' said Kif.

  'Because,' said the little man, slightly non-plussed by this March Hare attitude, 'it seems to me that it is the worst place for you.'