by John Bingham
“How did you meet her?”
He smiled in what seemed to me a rather embarrassed way. “I met her when we were all having some beer one evening after a practice row. As a matter of fact, she used to go around with one of the chaps in the rowing club; he wasn’t in my branch, though.”
“And now she goes round with you?”
“He was rather peeved about it, I believe, but she said she was fed up with him, anyway.”
“That must have been a consolation to him.”
Prosset said nothing. He looked at me sideways, cigarette in mouth. He appeared faintly surprised, and I felt I had scored a delicate hit.
The Mitre was like many public houses which have been patronized at one time or another by theatrical people. There were a number of signed photographs of actors and actresses on the walls, and various cartoons. There was a long counter which curved round to the right, with a reasonable cold buffet at one end. There were high stools at the bar, upholstered in green leather, and half a dozen small tables, with modern metal chairs upholstered in leather of the same colour. The walls were panelled with some sort of light-coloured wood; the place was brightly lit, and the barmen wore white jackets.
A girl stood at the bar at the far end, one of a group of five people. Prosset spotted her as we entered, and said, “Oh, my God, the whole gang’s here.”
The girl looked round as we approached and said, “Hello, John, you’ve just come at the right moment. It’s Herbert’s round.” She glanced briefly at me.
The man who appeared to be Herbert said, “What are you having, John?”
After a slight hesitation, he looked at me and asked me what I would have. Prosset ordered a whisky and soda; I said I would like a mild and bitter.
Prosset turned to the girl, and said, “Margaret, meet Mike Sibley. Mike—Margaret Dawson. We were at school together. You remember, he’s the chap David and I did everything with.”
She was about nineteen, I suppose, slightly built, and wore a wine-coloured jumper under a coat and skirt of light grey. Her hair was bobbed close to her head, and was light brown. But the things I remembered mostly about her were her eyes and her complexion. Her eyes were not very large, but they were a very dark, unusual grey, so dark that they seemed to be streaked liberally with black and her skin was of that curiously pallid, almost mottled colour which reminds you of an orchid. It is rare, and the texture is uncommonly soft. She wore no rouge, and only a touch of lipstick, and she applied the tweezers to her eyebrows with restraint. She smoked a great deal, almost continuously, out of a plain, black, unpretentious holder. When she offered me her hand, it was soft and limp; she did not so much shake hands as place her hand in yours, and allow you to do the shaking.
She said “Hello, Mike” without much enthusiasm, and left it at that.
I must confess I looked at her with interest. She made Kate look like an unsophisticated country bumpkin.
John Prosset and Margaret Dawson, one aged twenty-one, the other nineteen or so. Two kids. Life seemed full of promise to them then.
Herbert Day I disliked at sight, and I have had no reason to alter my opinion. He was of medium height, thinly built, with a pale, dark face. He was dressed in a black pinstripe suit, a white shirt, and a grey tie in which he wore a pearl pin. He had a habit of passing his tongue quickly over his lips which made one think of a snake. He seemed to speak partly through his nose. Prosset introduced him as, “Mr. Day. He’s on the Stock Exchange.” He smoked Cyprus cigarettes, which gave off a peculiar, slightly acrid smell.
A nondescript married couple, aged about thirty, were introduced more informally as “Ada and Ronnie Mason.” They had with them a red-haired youth in his twenties whose only name seemed to be Fred. They were all drinking spirits except me.
After a few moments, Margaret spoke to me. “You’re the one who’s going to be an engineer or something in Africa, aren’t you? Or are you the one whose father has a farm in Cornwall? I always get mixed.”
“I was, once upon a time, the one who was going to Africa. They won’t have me, though. They don’t like my face.”
Prosset said, “Never mind, Mike. You can become a theatre critic and give Margaret some good reviews. Mike’s going to be a reporter, Margaret.”
Margaret looked at me for a moment with interest.
“How exciting. Which paper?”
“It’s not settled yet. Somewhere out in the wilds. Are you on the stage?”
“Only in amateurs at present. I’ve got a job as a librarian. I hate books.”
Prosset bought the next round and I switched to gin and lime. Then the Masons went through some rigmarole of tossing to see who should pay for the next, husband or wife. Then Fred bought a round.
I have never had a very good head for spirits, and by this time my brain was not as clear as it could have been. I was aware that common courtesy required me to stand the next round of drinks. There were seven of us. When I had accepted Prosset’s invitation I had not reckoned on going out on a drinking bout. I had 5s. 10d.
I thought that seven whiskies and gins would be 4s. 1d. If one or two of them had lime or orange or lemon, it might cost a few pence more. I would just have enough.
It was Herbert Day who upset everything by saying, “Do you mind if I change and have a brandy, old man?”
The barman brought the drinks. He said, “Six and three altogether, please.”
I stood looking at the change I had dragged out of my pocket. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Margaret Dawson watching me curiously. I was trying without much success to think of what to say. I put all the change clumsily on the counter while the barman waited. In those days I had a tendency to blush and now, already flushed with drinks, I felt the colour mounting to my cheeks. I pulled out my wallet and pretended to look for some money. Prosset had his eye on me. I felt they were all watching this funny-looking youth who lavishly ordered drinks for which he had not the money to pay.
Suddenly Prosset said in his calm, self-assured way, “Are you short? Here’s ten bob I borrowed from you.”
He handed it to me without a smile, quite smoothly and naturally. It was beautifully done. The timing was so perfect that everybody would know that I had not lent him 10s, yet they would admire his exquisite tact for the way he had stepped forward to help me out. Just for a second his eye caught mine. “Poor old Mike!” he seemed to be saying, just as he had said it the day when he and Collet had been discussing tailors in the train.
Closing time was not the end. I found myself in the back of Herbert Day’s car. Ada Mason was sitting with her husband in front; Day was snuffling through his nose, saying something about keeping clear of the gear lever. I was at the back with red-haired Fred on my knee. Prosset was at the back, too, with Margaret between us. Inevitably her firm thigh was pressed against mine, and I liked it.
But her head was on Prosset’s shoulder, and his arm was around her.
I remember later picking at a greasy fried egg and a rasher of bacon which Ada Mason had cooked in her flat. Some of us were sitting in chairs or on the sofa, and some on the floor, and I was dimly aware that since the evening had begun the party had somehow grown in numbers, and there were two or three other people whom I did not know. Prosset’s voice, sounding a long way off, said, “Old Mike’s looking a bit green.”
Somebody gave me a cup of coffee, which improved matters a little, but only temporarily. The smell of fried food in the room, the cigarette and tobacco smoke, especially the smell of Herbert Day’s cigarettes, were too much. I rose unsteadily to my feet. Bill Mason, who was more sober than the rest and was doubtless watching for this moment, led me from the room.
When I came back, I had some more coffee and a piece of bread and cheese and felt better. I just felt tired and cold and could hardly keep my eyes open. I wanted to go home, but did not wish to be the first to make a move. Some of them were drinking more beer. I saw Prosset and Margaret and Herbert Day sitting on the sofa. Day was talking ten to th
e dozen. I watched his tongue flickering in and out.
Suddenly Fred, who had been sitting quietly in a chair, burst into violent life. He began to hum music; then he rose to his feet, pirouetted on his toes, flung his arms out, stood on one leg with the other stretched out behind him, and gradually swung into an energetic ballet dance. Nobody took much notice.
Herbert Day said, “Now he’s off. There he goes.”
Prosset said, “Fred always does that when he is tight.”
“Why?” I asked.
Prosset shrugged his shoulders. “God knows. Sometimes he starts in a pub. Then we have to restrain him.”
At about one o’clock we left.
Herbert Day drove with Fred in front beside him. Margaret, Prosset and I were behind as before. But now Margaret was sitting on Prosset’s knees; she had her arms about his neck. From time to time Prosset leaned forward and kissed her; they were long kisses, lasting twenty or thirty seconds. They put Fred off somewhere in South Kensington and then drove me to Earl’s Court.
On the pavement, I turned round to thank Herbert Day once more for the lift and to say a final good night. He was leaning over the driver’s seat looking at Prosset and Margaret. He said, “What about you two? Oxford Terrace for you, Margaret, too, I suppose?”
He sniggered in his nasal, muffled kind of way.
I envied Prosset, with Margaret, in his own basement flat. Fundamentally, I suppose envy and jealousy, and their evil progeny called malice, were at the root of most of my trouble with Prosset.
Two days later I left to take up my job on the Palesby Gazette.
As I brooded over the police visit, I was aware that something, some small, forgotten incident, had occurred while I was a reporter at Palesby which I would prefer the police not to know. It was nothing that I had done, nothing illegal, but I felt that in the present circumstances, though it was trivial in itself, it might have some significance to the Inspector. I thought it was something I had said, or something which somebody had said to me, but what it was I could not for the life of me recall.
I mixed myself another drink. As I sat in my chair I kept worrying about Palesby, and about Cynthia Harrison, who lived there.
CHAPTER 6
Although I am a southerner, not merely by birth, but by preference, I must confess that I never encountered in the south such warm-heartedness among townspeople or such comradeship among newspapermen as I met with on the Palesby Gazette.
The town is a fishing port on the east coast, and is itself unattractive, though the country just outside it is lovely. There are smoking factories in Palesby, a number of industries connected with the fish trade, and docks where the little trawlers berth side by side in the intervals between their long trips to northern waters. There is not much else.
There is one broad street where the smarter shops are situated, and two or three fairly important long streets served by rattling trams. There are three cinemas, a music hall and a repertory theatre; and there is the City Centre, as they call it, dominated by the Guildhall with its police courts, council chamber and numerous rooms for committee meetings. The rest of the town consists of a great number of small side streets composed of little red-brick houses.
In retrospect, it seems to have rained a great deal, so that the streets were always covered with a thin, watery mud.
There is also the Central Park. I must not forget that, because it played a not unimportant part in my life.
Palesby is not inspiring, then, but it has an esprit de corps second to none in the whole of Britain. Its citizens, brought up within sombre confines, regard people who live elsewhere with a sort of restrained pity. Its aldermen and councillors when opening bazaars or making any kind of speech at all will hardly ever sit down without somehow dragging in the name of Palesby in a complimentary manner.
If the occasion should be the presentation of prizes at the police sports, the speaker will point out, amid a seemly round of applause, that Palesby has a police force which is second to none in the country; if it is the annual Guest Night at the Society of Protestant Vigilantes, it will be pointed out that there is no more vigilant, protesting set of defenders of the Church of England than the citizenry of Palesby; on the other hand, if it is a Catenian dinner, it will transpire that nowhere on this side of the Channel is there a more devout body of Roman Catholics than in Palesby. It would not surprise me to learn that the Governor of the local prison stoutly maintained that though crime might be unfortunately increasing, at least the convicts in Palesby were as skilful and yet as peaceful as any in the land.
Even when the local football team was defeated, as it often was, it was heartening to note that this was clearly no reflection upon the skill of the players, who indeed played as cleverly as any in the league; only a mysterious concatenation of cosmic circumstances could account for their ill-luck.
They were, and I suppose still are, a forthright people, like so many in the north and Midlands; but though outspoken they were not offensive unless you were looking for offence.
The Gazette offices were in a modern building in St. Mark’s Street, which is the main thoroughfare. The reporters worked in a large room on the first floor; the Chief Reporter, a man called Grimshaw, had a small room to himself leading off from the main reporters’ room, the connecting door being always open. He was a tall, heavily built man with a red face, thinning hair and very thick spectacles. Almost his first words were: “How did you get this job, lad? Influence?”
This was too near the truth for my liking. I said, “No. I applied for it in London. Why?”
“I just wondered, lad. Reporters’ jobs are a bit difficult to get these days.” He had not believed me, of course, and I knew it, and he knew I did. He went on looking at some newspaper cuttings for a moment. He and I were the only people in the room. The other reporters were all out on jobs.
After a while he looked up and said, “Got any digs to live in, lad?”
“Not yet. I’ve left my luggage at the station.”
“What’s your salary?”
“Two pounds a week.”
“Any experience?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t get the job through knowing somebody?”
“No.”
He said nothing. Eventually he heaved himself up and went out of the room. I began idly turning over a file of newspapers. In three or four minutes he was back again.
“About your digs. You might like to try Mrs. Martin’s place. Here’s the address. She’s the mother of one of our telephonists; she’ll probably make you comfortable. One of the others, Hailey, the sports man, lives there. Off you go. You needn’t come back till tomorrow. Nine sharp, lad.”
The address was No. 2 Oaks Street, about half a mile from the centre of the town in a district called Summerfields. I walked back to the station, commissioned a taxi, piled my luggage in, and gave the driver the address. I do not know why Summerfields has not long since changed its name. It lies on a tram route, and is composed of the inevitable streets of red houses, shabby and smoke-begrimed. There are no fields, and when summer comes with its heat, the place is almost as unpleasant as in winter, when the mud covers the footpaths. Oaks Street, long denuded of any trees at all, let alone oaks, lies about twenty yards from the level-crossing gates. Periodically throughout the day and night trains rumble across. On the corner is a public house called The Greyhound, though inevitably more often known as The Dirty Dog.
I kept the taxi waiting while I negotiated with Mrs. Martin, just so that she could see that I had not made up my mind for certain. The talk took place in the front parlour, a room which in all the years I lived in the house I cannot remember ever sitting in again.
It had a fawn carpet, a sofa, four high-backed chairs in light oak with rush seats, a round polished table and an upright piano. Near the window was a tall pedestal bearing an empty birdcage. The room was ostensibly kept clean and tidy for special occasions, but after my arrival there never seemed to be an occasion cons
idered by Mrs. Martin to be so special as to warrant its use.
She herself was a small, nervy little woman, thin and grey-eyed with regular features which at one time had certainly been attractive. But she was now in her late sixties, her hands were worn, and she had ill-fitting teeth which clicked. I was to discover that she had a keen sense of humour and took a close personal interest in “her gentlemen” and in everybody at the Gazette office. Every evening she would closely cross-question her daughter Phyllis on the day’s doings and the day’s gossip. She certainly took a closer interest in my own activities than my kind but absent-minded Aunt Edith.
After she had shown me my room, she asked if it would suit.
“How much will you charge me if I take it?”
“Well, I charge Mr. Hailey twenty-five shillings a week, Mr. Sibley.” She spoke diffidently, watching the effect of the words on me. Maybe I looked surprised, for she added hastily, “That includes everything, Mr. Sibley, three meals a day and a snack before you go to bed, if you like, and lighting and laundry and everything.”
If I looked surprised, it was because it was so much cheaper than I expected. I paid the taxi and moved in. The date was October 2nd, 1930.
Behind the best parlour which was never used were the living room and the kitchen. The living room was a shabbily comfortable place, with a big square table covered with a red-tasselled cloth, a large black grate and two well-worn easy chairs stuffed with horsehair and covered with black leather. These two chairs were at the disposal of Mrs. Martin’s “gentlemen,” and there was a smaller chair for the daughter Phyllis. Mrs. Martin, on the rare occasions when she was in the living room with us, always sat at the table mending and darning.
Phyllis was a young woman of about thirty-five with brown hair and grey eyes. She was not good-looking, but she was pleasant; she wore good warm jumpers and thick woollen stockings, and in wet weather galoshes. Phyllis had her meals with Hailey and me, but I never once saw Mrs. Martin eat, though I sometimes saw her drinking a cup of tea. She alleged she had “a bit of something” in the kitchen now and then, but though I came in at all hours of the day and evening I never caught her at it.
