Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  The telephone at the other end went on ringing for quite a long time, but Mr. Wetherall persevered. Finally there was a “clunk” and a sleepy voice said: “Todd here.”

  “It’s Wetherall.”

  “Who?”

  “Wilfred Wetherall.”

  “Good God!” said the voice. “I thought it was the News Editor. No one else would have got me out of bed. What the hell do you want?”

  “Some information.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Just at the moment,” said Mr. Wetherall firmly, “nothing. Eventually, I really think, possibly something quite big.”

  “Hump!” said the voice. “The last time you asked me along, if I remember rightly, was when the Reds broke up that Fascist meeting in Thorneycroft Street and I got a black eye.”

  “And a good story.”

  “Is this as big as that one?”

  “Bigger than that.”

  “Crime?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “All right. It’s not really my pigeon now, but fire away. Only try and make it snappy, because I haven’t got my slippers on.”

  “Well, this is what it is. I want to find a place – I imagine it would be a restaurant or a night-club, or a pub or something like that. The only thing I know about it is that those who are in the know call it the Aldershot Ladies.”

  “You don’t want much, do you? Aldershot Ladies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ring you back.”

  When Peter Crowdy had repacked his one suitcase – he had pathetically few clothes but amongst them a set of good silk shirts a size too big for him – Mr. Wetherall took a cautious look out into the street.

  He could see no one but the milkman and the lady from next door holystoning her front step. It was hard to be sure. A lot of people were passing and re-passing at the end of the road where the High Street crossed it.

  He decided that a Wellingtonian simplicity was to be the order of the day. He went back to the telephone and rang up a Mr. Atkins. After enquiring about Mr. Atkins’ family (it seemed that Mr. Atkins too, was an ex-Battersea pupil) he asked him if his cab was available.

  “On the spot,” said Atkins.

  “Then would you please bring it round to the end of Brinkman Road. Don’t turn in. Park it fifty yards up in the High Street, facing north.”

  “Quick get-away,” said Atkins. “What is it this time, Mr. Wetherall? Police after you?’’

  “That’s right. Exactly ten minutes from now. And keep the engine running.”

  It was eight minutes later when he and Peter let themselves out of the front door and walked down Brinkman Road. A man came out of the telephone box on the corner as they passed it, but otherwise their arrival seemed to cause no flutter. They crossed the road. The taxi was there all right. Atkins was leaning half out of the driver’s seat, apparently doing something to his windscreen wiper.

  As they came level, Mr. Wetherall exclaimed: “Well now. Just the thing. Let’s take a cab.” He pulled the door open, pushed Peter in, threw the suitcase in and jumped after him. The cab started with a wrenching jerk which threw them both onto the back seat, twiddled around a corner, slipped along a side street, turned right and left half a dozen times and emerged unexpectedly into the Walworth Road.

  “Clean as a ruddy whistle,” said Atkins cheerfully. “Did-jer see em all running?”

  “I’m afraid I hadn’t time to look.”

  “Three of em. Let’em run. Won’t catch us now. Where to?”

  “Waterloo,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  II

  When Mr. Wetherall eventually got back to the school that afternoon he found a few matters waiting his attention. Colonel Bond had called and would call again later. Sergeant Donovan had rung up, and had said that he would try to catch Mr. Wetherall that evening before he left. An unknown gentleman had telephoned, but had refused to state his business. Fifteen boys had been sick. The stew at lunch was suspected.

  “Quiet morning really,” said Peggy.

  The telephone started again.

  “Todd here. That business you were talking about this morning. What is it? Competition or something?”

  “It’s a sort of competition,” said Mr. Wetherall guardedly. “Have you got the answer?”

  “I’m not sure. ‘Two Aldershot Ladies’, so my colleagues tell me, is a term used by the lower income groups in connection with their pastime of darts.”

  “Darts?”

  “Yes. Like skittles. All possible combinations of skittles have got names.”

  “I thought you said darts.”

  “I was drawing an analogy. Most of the doubles on a dart board have got names, too. You know, like ‘double-top’ – that’s double twenty, and ‘double-bottom’ – double-three. And ‘double-one’—”

  “Up in Annie’s room.”

  “That’s the boy. I’ve got a young chap in the office here who’s a bit of an expert. He knows them all. They’re most of them sort of rhyming slang. ‘Two-tens’ becomes ‘two fat hens’ and ‘two-eights’ is ‘china plates’ and so on.”

  “Yes. But why Aldershot Ladies?”

  “Two fours.”

  “Why – oh!”

  “Got it?”

  “I think so,” said Mr. Wetherall guardedly.

  “I had someone search the directories. We’ve got rather special directories here. There’s a Road House called the Two Fours at Leytonstone. There is – or rather there was, I fancy it’s shut down now – a night-club called the Twice Four and there’s a pub in Lauderdale Street, near Dean Street, called the Double Four.”

  “That’s three possibilities.”

  “Two, actually. I think the night-club really is defunct.”

  “Yes. And come to think of it, it wouldn’t be a night-club. The man who said he was going there – it was about eight o’clock in the evening.”

  “All right. I’ll look at the other two and let you know.”

  “It’s very kind of you,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “That’s the way I’m built,” said Mr. Todd.

  After he had rung off Mr. Wetherall looked at the list of people who were threatening to call on him and decided that the simplest way of avoiding them all was to go home to tea. After tea he took his wife to the cinema. When they got home Mr. Ballo, the Japanese lodger on the floor below, told them that the telephone had been ringing on and off the whole evening.

  Mr. Wetherall, who was feeling mildly defiant by now, got busy with a screwdriver and undid something essential in the telephone connector box. After that they went to bed and had an undisturbed night.

  Next morning, as was her custom every other month, Mrs. Wetherall was paying a visit to her mother, who lived in Kent. She usually stayed away for two nights.

  “I’ll be back on Tuesday morning,” she said. “You’re sure you’ll be all right.”

  “Certain,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  At two o’clock that afternoon a man arrived from the post office, detected the fault, and put it right. He asked Mr. Wetherall if the trouble had happened before.

  “No,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Positively the first time.”

  At three o’clock Todd rang through.

  “I don’t think Leytonstone’s much good,” he said. “I wasted an afternoon there yesterday. It’s called a Road House, but it’s really a buttered-toast and home-made cake sort of place, kept by an old sweetie with two Dandi-Dinmonts and a fearful squint. I took a pot of tea, and a plate of toast that cost me about a bob a slice, retail. If it’s really a hidden headquarters of crime, then all I can say is I’m losing my touch. Anyway, I didn’t spot anything. The Lauderdale Street pub looks a bit more promising. I had a drink there last night. It’s full of dim types, but that doesn’t mean anything, because all Soho pubs are like that. Nobody tried to sell me anything. There’s rather a pretty barmaid.”

  Mr. Wetherall reflected.

  “Alice is stopping with her mother tonight and tomorr
ow night,” he said. “Perhaps I could go up and have a look at it myself. I might see someone I recognised.”

  “You might. Or someone might see you.”

  “No harm in dropping in for a drink.”

  “I suppose not,” said Todd. “It isn’t a den – I mean, you don’t have to sew your pockets up before you go in. Equally it isn’t the sort of place you’d choose to take your Aunt Flossie for a quiet evening.”

  “I used to go to Soho quite a lot before the war,” said Mr. Wetherall. “There was one little restaurant – what was its name – Pagani – Busoni – something like that. They did the most beautiful, dry vermicelli, in butter—”

  “Soho’s full of places with names like Pagani and Busoni. But they’re in the four main streets. This pub is side-street. Definitely side.”

  “I’ll keep out of trouble – I’m only going to look.”

  “All right,” said Todd. “Ring me up on Tuesday and let me know how you get on.”

  When Mr. Wetherall said that he knew Soho quite well he was, so far as he was aware, speaking nothing but the truth. Before the war he had been patron of many of its good, cheap, restaurants; lately he had not had much time to visit them and had, therefore, not been saddened by their decline in goodness and increase in price. When he was walking in that part of London he liked to arrange his route so that it lay through Soho. He was attracted by the different, foreign, world that started at Wardour Street, full of shops which seemed to cater for the catering trade itself. Shops which sold nothing but carving knives or weighing machines, or wholesale port and sherry glasses or chef’s uniforms; wine bottlers and coffee grinders, odd delicatessen stores and even odder chemists shops. And the restaurants themselves, from the famous ones in Dean Street and Greek Street, to the lesser known but more exciting ones which flanked them down to the cafes where out of work musicians, resting artistes, and stage hangers-on sat for hours over single cups of coffee, talking to their friends and waiting for the Union to fix them a job.

  But when he reached Lauderdale Street, at about nine o’clock that Monday evening, he realised that he was in yet another Soho, of which he knew little. It was the Soho of the side streets, where the people who were at your service in the main streets lived and moved through their oddly regulated lives, lives which started with sundown and ended as the day was breaking.

  It was like getting behind the scenes at a theatre. What appeared from the front to be handsome and well-lighted and life-like, here dissolved into a jumble of meaningless odds and ends. Once behind the neon glare of the restaurant fronts and gorgeous rank of commissionaires, you were in the kingdom of working dress, and half lights, and whispers.

  At first sight the Double Four looked so uninviting that Mr. Wetherall nearly turned back. It was like no pub he had ever seen before, even in his own part of south London (where, indeed, they were usually glittering cases of light and life).

  The windows and doors, which had been boarded against the blitz, were still nailed up. What had once been fresh woodwork was now between dark brown and black, oily with twelve seasons of fog and neglect. Someone had playfully spiked the head of a rabbit on the area railing. A dim light from behind an old black-out slit illuminated the words SALOON BAR.

  As he was hesitating, a door swung open further along the street and a man came out. In the light of the door, before it shut again, he had time to take in such diverse items of dress as a kilt, a duffle coat, and a bowler hat. Then the newcomer was advancing towards him. He seemed to be carrying a small corpse under his left arm. As he came up to Mr. Wetherall he put out his right arm, wrapped it round Mr. Wetherall’s shoulder, and said, in a voice in which the stage Scotsman fought an unequal fight with the cockney. “That’s the boy. Were you taking a wee drappie? Come awa’ in. I had just the same thought me sel’.”

  Having no free hand he kicked the door open and surged into the saloon bar with Mr. Wetherall obediently in tow.

  Inside it wasn’t so bad. It was warm, and there was a good deal of light, some overhead and some from behind the bar, where a string of painted electric bulbs suggested some bygone Christmas decoration which no one had troubled to remove.

  “Whass yours?”

  “No really.”

  “Double scotch, Miss. And the same for my friend.”

  “Really, you’re very kind—”

  “Not at all,” said the Scotsman. “I took an in-stan-taneous liking to you the moment I saw you.” He removed the corpse, which turned out to be an old set of bagpipes, from under his arm and laid it out carefully on the plush-covered settee.

  “With or without,” said the barmaid.

  Mr. Wetherall thought that this might be the girl Todd had mentioned. She had a sort of stage prettiness. Anywhere but in that awful bar she could have looked attractive.

  “I never drown good usquebaugh,” said the Scotsman. “Warrarbout choors?”

  “Oh, I’ll have some soda water,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Plenty of soda water please.”

  The Scotsman disposed of his drink with a twist of the forearm and since he looked faintly expectant Mr. Wetherall ordered two more. His own went down more slowly. He had time to notice that it was very good whisky.

  “Scots wha’ ha’,” said his new friend. He got through his second drink at creditable speed, too. Mr. Wetherall bought him a third, but left himself out of the round.

  “It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht,” observed his friend, and this seeming to exhaust his fund of compulsory Scots axioms, proceeded more rationally. “It’s a long time since meself set eyes on you, Hector. Where have you been hiding? “

  “I—”

  “It was boat-race night, twa years syne. Not, and it wasn’t though. Don’t tell me. It was the steps of St. Paul’s, on Hogmanay.”

  The thought affected him so powerfully that he sang a whole verse of “Auld Lang Syne”, in a strong tenor voice. This brought the proprietress on to the scene from the private bar.

  She wasn’t just one more woman. It was quite clear that she was somebody.

  The barmaid started polishing an already clean glass, and the Scotsman discontinued his singing and said: “How’s tricks, Annie?”

  “Quiet enough till you come in. What do you think this is? Second house at the Empire?”

  It was her eyes that you noticed first. The white was very white and the brown was very shiny and brown and the whole was set so far forward that you had a feeling that she could see, like the caterpillar, both forwards and backwards without moving her head. Her hair was black and coarse and tightly drawn over her head.

  “Do I know your friend?”

  “Friend indeed. It’s me cousin Hector, all the way fra’ Aberdeen.”

  “The back of a picture postcard’s the only place you’ve ever seen Aberdeen,” said Annie.

  The voice had an overlay of professional bonhomie but there was clearly a whip in reserve.

  “You’re unkind.” He looked so disconsolate that Mr. Wetherall bought him another glass of whisky, which cheered him up a lot.

  Meanwhile Annie was trying to place Mr. Wetherall. You could almost see her, like a factory hand testing parts for gauge, fitting him into various sockets and slots, giving him a twist here and a twist there, and deciding that he didn’t quite measure up.

  Private detective? Not nearly tough enough.

  Journalist? Not enough bounce and savvy.

  Commercial traveller? Could be. Not really smart enough.

  Dirty old man on the prowl? Wrong sort of eyes and mouth.

  In the end she abandoned finesse and said: “My guess is you’re a journalist. Am I right?”

  “I—”

  “He’s my second cousin Hector,” said the Scotsman, “and he travels in corsets.”

  “Anyone who’ll stand you a drink’s your second cousin,” said Annie.

  “You insult me,” said the Scotsman gravely.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Wetherall. “You’re both wrong. I�
�m a schoolmaster.”

  “Well, there now,” said Annie. “I guessed it was something to do with writing.”

  “Would you take a drink with me?”

  “I don’t mind if I do. It’ll be a gin and pep. Two and eleven. That’s right. As a matter of fact I daren’t drink anything else. This job’s death to the lining of my stomach. Overwork and old age.”

  “Overwork, perhaps,” said Mr. Wetherall gallantly.

  “Get away with you. And what are you doing in these parts?”

  The question came sliding out of the froth like a blade out of a press.

  “I was having dinner with someone,” he said. “At Bernadis. But they didn’t turn up.”

  “Stood you up, did she?”

  “As a matter of fact, it was a man.”

  “That’s right, dearie.” Annie gave a sharp, popping laugh. “Just a joke.”

  During the next half-hour, though customers came and went, Annie never entirely abandoned Mr. Wetherall. She seemed to have become quite attached to him.

  In the intervals of nagging the barmaid, serving drinks, and keeping up her side of a marathon argument with an unseen gentleman in the private bar, she leaned over the counter and treated Mr. Wetherall to an account, in serial form, of the progress of her various ailments. The multitude of her afflictions, the skill and unexpectedness with which they attacked her, the occasional triumphs, the deadly set-backs.

  “It’s standing round on the feet all day,” she said. “It draws the humours down into the legs. Many’s the time I’ve gone to bed at the end of the day with a deathly feeling in my—those packets of biscuits are fivepence now, Beryl, do you think we give ‘em away—the only things that done me any good was pads of heated cotton wool and regular doses of Bangalore Broth – I expect you’ve heard of it – it’s the essential germ of wheat and nine other vitamins in emulsified form – and there’s a picture on the packet of a woman who had symptoms just like mine and three tablespoonfuls of Bangalore Broth finished her right off.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I can’t remember that I’ve ever seen it advertised.”

  “Advertised,” said Annie scornfully. “When a thing’s as good as Bangalore Broth you don’t need advertisement. There’s a place in North London where—I can’t hear you, dearie.”