“She don’t yet, but she’ll ’ave to. Megan’s going up to tell’er. What’ll she say?”
“She loves you. You know that, or you ought to. And she’s not the only one. You ought to have known that too.”
He pressed my hand.
“Thanks, Frank. You’re the only pal I got.” I kissed him. “I’m sorry I let you down. I won’t never let you down no more. I promise you that.”
The policeman who had brought me in returned.
“But whatever I do, Johnny,” I said as I got up to go, “I do for you. I wouldn’t cross the road to help that tart of yours.”
I paid Johnny’s back rent for him—three months it was— and a couple more weeks for a breather. Then I met Millie by appointment in a pub at Aldgate where we had sometimes met in the past. It was more convenient just then than going all the way to Stratford. Megan had been up to see her, Millie’s letter informed me, so the bad news had already been broken.
“I’m frightfully sorry, Millie,” I said, when she had spread her heavy limbs on a chair in the Saloon Bar and I had placed double gins in front of us. Not that my angry and resentful mind admitted responsibility, at any rate to her, but I knew that the fact that Johnny had set up house not far from me, in Fulham, had seemed to her an absolute guarantee of his safety.
“I don’t see what it has to do with you,” said she in her calm way. “I’m sure you’re the best friend he ever had, and if he didn’t know it before, he knows it now, poor boy. If I blamed anyone I’d blame her. She’s his wife and should have looked after him better.”
“He says she didn’t know.”
“Of course he does,” said Millie stoutly. “My Johnny always took the blame for everything, ever since he was little and got into trouble at school. He wouldn’t never let the other boys suffer, even if they’d been bigger scamps than him; he always took it all on himself. I’m not saying she did know, but I’d like to see a ’usband of mine get up to them tricks without me knowing!” she added, laying an emphatic hand on a knee that was twice the breadth of my own.
Millie had been married four times. She had been my char when I had a flat in Holborn, until the war came and blew me out of it and I migrated to the other side of London, to the riverside at Barnes. But we had kept in touch since and I had often visited her in Stratford, where she lived. An exceptionally strong bond united us, we were both bewitched by her son; but before that young man’s flashing figure appeared upon the scene, at first in the guise of a butcher’s boy, to reduce me to the same almost servile condition to which he had long ago reduced her, I had liked her for herself, for her forthrightness and good nature, the fat jollity of her rather childish mind, and the unswerving honesty of her moral code—a quality which, I think we had both guessed before the present catastrophe proved it, she had not passed on to Johnny. His cheerful and impudent lack of it, indeed, had seemed part of his charm.
“But I don’t blame no one,” she concluded. “What he done wasn’t right, there’s no getting away from that, and I’m sorry he done it. Tom and me would have helped him if he’d asked.”
He had asked me and I had refused. She would never have refused, I knew. She would have put up with anything from him, anything. . . . But then her love for him was different from mine, less demanding. I had refused, but that lay between him and me.
“So would I. I helped him a lot, as you know, until that woman of his stopped him coming to see me. He hasn’t been near me these last two months. She even intercepted my letters to him.”
“You don’t like her, Frank, do you?” said Millie, fixing her large blue gaze upon me. She knew my opinion perfectly well, and shared it; but whenever we met we indulged our personal rancors by taking Megan apart, and this was one of her favorite opening gambits.
“I love her.”
“That’s not what you used to say about her,” said she severely.
“No, dear. I was only moderating my language.”
“I don’t understand you when you use them long words.”
“I’m sorry, Millie. I think she’s hell. Will that do?”
“I never liked her meself,” said Millie judiciously, “and never pretended otherwise. I was sorry he picked up with her in the first place, as I told him. Tom never liked her neither, he says you can’t trust the Welsh. But she’s Johnny’s wife and I haven’t got nothing against her, she’s always kept her place with me, so I wouldn’t like to say nothing.”
“Nor would I!” I remarked grimly.
Millie shot me another look.
“I never know how to take you,” she said with a laugh.
“Why on earth did he marry her?” I continued bitterly. “I warned him not to and he always said he wasn’t such a mug. Everything was perfectly all right when he was just living with her and the twins in Chatham, and coming up to stay with me or you as he pleased. He belonged to us all then. But as soon as Dickie was on the way she got working on him, and he was too weak to stand up to her. I knew she’d start interfering if she got a legal grip on him, and so she did. Her true character was instantly revealed, and now he can’t call his soul his own.”
“Of course I don’t know nothing about all that,” said Millie placidly.
“I’ve told you often enough!” I snapped—and though the Fates must have been chuckling, the echoes of their mirth were not to reach me for some years.
“Well, what’s done’s done, and you saw more of them than I did. Shall we have another drink? It’s my turn.” Millie always paid her shot. I took her money and brought them. “What d’you think he’ll get?” she asked when I was seated.
“He won’t get off, I’m afraid.”
“Tom didn’t think so neither.” We sat for a moment in silence. “They want me to take Dickie so as she can go to work.”
“Are you going to?”
“I’d like to, but I don’t see how I can, not without giving up my job, and I can’t afford to do that.”
“Can’t Ida lend a hand?” Ida was her married daughter, Johnny’s sister.
“She lives too far off to be always popping in.”
“Well, couldn’t you put him in one of those day nurseries?”
“We haven’t got one near us. I could get someone to mind him, but it would cost.”
“I’ll help you if you like.” Why on earth did I say it? They would have muddled through somehow, no doubt, and it was nothing to do with me, all this. Looking at me straight, Millie seemed to think the same.
“Why should you? You’ve done enough already, paying the rent for her, or so she told me. Why did you do that, seeing what you think of her?”
“Dear Millie, I didn’t do it for her! I wouldn’t do a thing for her, except wring her neck! I did it for him, worthless though he is.”
“Now don’t you go speaking against him!” said she sharply. “He’d never say nothing but nice about you.”
“I’m sorry, Millie. I didn’t mean it. I love him, as you know.”
“That’s better,” said she comfortably.
“What about the twins?” I asked. “What’s to become of them?”
“Oh, I’m not taking the three of them!” cried Millie going off into one of her gusts of laughter. “Megan reckons she can manage Rita, and she’s sending Gwen over to her mother’s in Cardiff.”
“There’s to be a fourth, I understand.”
“Yes, she told me, and sorry I was to hear it. She don’t seem able to keep the three of them decent as it is.”
“Well, you’d like Dickie?”
“Oo yes. I think the world of him. So does Tom.”
Personally I thought the child both plain and stupid, but there’s no accounting for tastes.
“Well then that’s settled. How much do you think he’ll cost? Would thirty bob a week cover it?”
“I could manage on that,” said Millie promptly. Then she added: “But you must come up and see him sometimes. I wouldn’t take the help otherwise.”
“Yes, of cours
e. I’ll bring the money up each month. How’s that?”
“That’ll be nice,” said Millie cheerfully. “I haven’t seen much of you since Johnny left us.” This was a home truth, and I began to excuse myself, but “Not that I blame you for that,” she added, in that calm, sympathetic way of hers which seemed always to convey a true perception of my feeling for her son.
Determined as I was to do as little as possible for, to have as little as possible to do with, Johnny’s wife, it became increasingly plain in the days that followed that not merely was she not to be avoided, but that I would have to be associated with her far more than I had ever been in the past. For the circumstances, which she was quick to seize and turn to the advantage of enhancing her own importance, constituted her the main, indeed the only, link between Johnny and the outside world. To me, at any rate, already too accustomed to her vigilant form planted obstructively between us, it was excessively galling to have to accept it now in the same position though in a different guise. Usually idle and inert when she was not scratching Johnny’s face or hurling the crockery about in one of her jealous furies, she became as busy as a telegraph boy, dashing from place to place; and though she knew better than to direct towards Barnes the social energy with which she flew between Johnny and Millie, she was often on the phone. But she was smart. That Welsh voice which, I well knew, was capable of raising the roof, was now toneless and impassive, almost secretarial in its formality. From her I learnt that Johnny had been committed for trial to Quarter Sessions, that he was at Brixton, that he wanted to see me.
“When?” I asked.
“You can go any time,” said the dull voice. “I go almost every day.”
“What day are you not going?”
There was a pause the other end.
“I shan’t be going Thursday.”
“Very well. Tell him I’ll see him then.”
It was a more composed, almost, at first sight, the old gay, carefree Johnny who confronted me behind the glass panel in the visitor’s booth; but I soon sensed that the glittering eye and cheerful swagger were caused by the nervous excitement in which he was living. His mind was wholly preoccupied with the question of his impending fate, and his charming boyish face was flushed and eager. He talked a great deal, on a rather shrill note, of what the other denizens of the jail, wilder boys than himself, thought of his chances, using the prison slang he had already picked up. The general opinion appeared to be that though the “beaks” were inclined to be “ ’ot” on what he’d done, he wouldn’t get more than six months. That, with remission for good conduct, came to only four.
“I could do that on me ’ead,” said he.
It seemed that he could have a “mouthpiece”—a poor prisoner’s defense counsel—but there was a nominal fee of three guineas. I said I would pay it. Also he was “doing his nut” for some “snout.” I said I would provide cigarettes.
“Megan’s sorry for what she done, Frank,” he said, fixing upon me his beautiful luminous gaze. “She says she won’t never open your letters no more or stop me coming to see you. And I’ve told ’er I’m going away with you for your ’olidays when this lot’s over.” (This was an invitation I had often pressed upon him and which his wife had always defeated.) “She don’t mind. She thinks the world of you now.”
Possibly I was getting a little tired of that phrase. In this context it seemed too much. I made a rude noise.
“Will you go and see ’er for me, Frank, when I’m inside?”
The pane of glass sundered us, as we had been sundered by her these many lonely weeks. Out of reach still, behind it he stood, his clear, brown eyes gazing into mine. The collar of his shirt was open, and the tendons of his honey-colored neck were visible where it joined the shoulders. This warm color was not sunburn but the natural tint of his flesh; the whole of his smooth, unblemished torso to the flat stomach and narrow waist glowed with it as though bathed in perpetual sunlight. The word “Yes” rose to my lips, but——
“I’m sorry, Johnny,” I said.
“It don’t matter. I know ’ow you feel. I’ll be writing you.”
“I’ll be waiting for it, Johnny. And I’ll come and visit you whenever you ask me—so long as you don’t ask me with Megan!”
Soon afterwards he came up for trial and, in spite of his three-guinea mouthpiece, was sent to prison for a year.
The long bus ride down the Mile End Road to Stratford seemed interminable. It was Boxing Day, for Millie had written to say that although I would be welcome on Christmas Day itself, they had felt that Johnny would expect them to ask Megan then, and so perhaps I would prefer to come on one of the other days. “Not that I shall have the heart to do much, Johnny being where he is. This is the first Christmas at home he ever missed.” It was a mild, moist afternoon and, as the bus trundled along through the ugly, stricken landscape I thought sadly of the vanished days when, with the figure of Johnny standing at the end of it, this had seemed to me the most exciting journey in the world. Ah well, I could at any rate talk to Millie about him, and she always gave one a warm welcome.
Warm indeed! I had forgotten the fug of the Winders’ winter kitchen. Millie and Tom were both in it, and baby Dickie enthroned on a high chair which Ida had kindly lent. He was being fed with bread and jam at a table which, in spite of Millie’s lack of heart, was lavishly spread with good things. I gave her a kiss, clasped Tom’s horny hand, and turned to my “nephew,” as it seemed Dickie had now become, since I was referred to as his uncle. In view of the fact that he was Johnny’s son and heir I had always been well-disposed towards him and had gone out of my way to cultivate his good opinion; but for some reason, perhaps because I am not used to children and may not know the best way of approach, my overtures had never met with conspicuous success. As soon as I bent over him he burst into tears.
“Dear me!” I said. “That’s not very polite!”
“Now, Dickie,” said Millie, clucking round, “what will uncle think of you if you go pulling faces like that?”
“What indeed! I shan’t give him the present I’ve brought him!” And I nervously pressed a golliwog into the child’s sticky hand. He cast it to the floor with a howl.
“ ’E don’t seem to like you,” said Tom, with the cheerful self-satisfaction of those who consider themselves in a strong position.
“He’s not himself yet,” said Millie kindly. “Oh, Frank, you should have seen him when he come! He was in a state, poor kid! His little bottom and legs was all red and sore where he’d been laying in his own water! ‘Just look at that!’ I says to Tom when I comes to unpin him. ‘Fancy letting him go like that!’ But I never did think her much of a mother, whatever she may be as a wife. Of course she has her troubles, I know that, but it don’t excuse her for neglecting baby. She must be a lazy girl. . . .”
There was a good deal more of this; Millie was obviously enjoying being a mother again. When the theme seemed exhausted, I turned to Tom.
“Well, Tom, how are you? It’s some time since I saw you.”
“Mustn’t grumble,” said he in his chewing way. “I’ve a bit of a cold in me ’ead.”
Small wonder, I thought, considering the stifling atmosphere in which they lived. But I only said:
“I’m sure it couldn’t be in your feet!” He was wearing a pair of bright red carpet slippers. “Are they a Christmas present?”
“Ah-h, the wife give ’em me.”
“We can see him coming now, can’t we?” said Millie, with one of her cackles. “Do you like them, Frank?”
“Like them! I want them!” How thoughtlessly do we tempt providence! Little did I suppose that, to some extent at any rate, the preposterous objects would eventually be mine. . . .
Poor old Tom!—if one thought of him at all, one thought of him like that, and not merely because he suffered from piles. Bleak, scraggy, taciturn, and considerably Millie’s senior, he was no more than a background figure to her warm, expansive personality, and one came to accept him kindlily
as such, as part of the furniture of her life. It is idle, as I have already observed, to speculate about human relationships, but she herself once seemed to think he needed explanation and told me that his courtship of her had begun when she was quite a girl and persisted through all her previous marriages, becoming articulate again in the interregnums. Fourth time lucky, for she had taken him in the end. Such plodding constancy might have made him a romantic figure, but he was only a dreary one, and had for me not even the reflected glory of being Johnny’s father. Moreover, the inexorability he had shown in his courtship was also, if one was not careful, revealed in his speech. Generally a silent, ruminative sort of man, he was liable, if addressed, to respond, and would launch, in his slow, monotonous, complacent way, into reminiscences, usually concerned with the First World War, which seemed to have neither direction, end, nor point, excepting always to exhibit himself, in a climax one had learnt to foresee but which Millie seldom allowed him to reach, as having come off best. Poor old Tom! Though Millie constantly brought him in in her friendly way, it was the kind of bringing in that firmly left him out, for she either did not wait for replies to the questions she put to him or answered them herself. One came to follow her example in this humane and self-protective treatment, and to accord him always a hearty but perfunctory friendliness which invited him out of his silence, only to thrust him as rapidly as possible back into it again.
It was a pleasant visit (pleasanter for me when I had asked whether we might have the window open a little and been conceded a tiny crack), though subdued: the shadow of Johnny naturally lay somberly upon us all. While we were talking about him, the scullery door was pushed open and a dog came in.
“Hullo, Evie,” said Millie.
I had forgotten all about Johnny’s dog.
“So this is the creature he wanted me to take?”
We Think the World of You Page 2
