London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  She got off at the Temple and started up Norfolk Street. It wasn’t a bad sort of morning really. There was a sparkle of sunlight in the air that helped to clean things up a bit, and the cold wind had dropped. It no longer came driving through the cañons of brick and concrete like an invisible avalanche that had started somewhere near the Pole. Altogether, as Monday mornings in January went, it might have been worse.

  But Dulcimer Street couldn’t have been worse. It was bad enough living in Kennington. Bad enough living anywhere south of the river. Nobody who was anybody lived there: she had long ago realised that. In the best of circles to say Dulcimer Street, S.E. 11, when you were asked for your address, was as bad as saying that you slept out on the Embankment. And, as she walked along, she began once again going over the whole complicated business of being born in the wrong place. And on the wrong side of the river. As she saw it, she’d missed her chance by a mere couple of miles or so.

  She knew the solution, of course. Had known it for the last six months, in fact. And the only reason why she hadn’t done something about it was that she’d been afraid. Not afraid in one sense – it wasn’t a crime to go and share a flat with a girl friend – simply afraid of all the fuss and commotion that it was going to cause. She knew just what her mother was like when she drew in her lips because something had upset her. And to suggest leaving home would be just about the biggest upset that Mrs Josser had ever known. It would be every bit as bad as when Ted had married Cynthia.

  But she’d decided now. Or rather it was Connie who’d decided her. The memory of that awful Christmas party with Connie sitting up at the table like a tarnished old idol, dipping the corner of her cake surreptitiously into her third cup of tea, still rankled. And she wasn’t going to risk another Christmas like the last one. Doris Josser, in fact, was walking out on Dulcimer Street.

  As soon as she got to the office she phoned Doreen about it. And Doreen seemed quite excited. But she couldn’t stop then because one of the partners wanted her, and she was frightfully behind with his stuff already. In the end, it wasn’t until lunch‐time that they could talk about it properly. And even then Doreen really wanted to talk about the simply gorgeous week‐end she’d been having. It had been divine, perfectly divine, with lots of cocktails and music and young men. It was the kind of week‐end that might have been staged in Hollywood and put down all ready cast, in Belsize Park.

  As a matter of fact, she was now showing the strain of it. She was a dark handsome girl like a well‐bred gipsy. But at this moment she was a slightly frayed and ravelled‐looking sort of gipsy. There were deep shadows under her eyes and she still seemed a little dazed by remembering how utterly marvellous everything had been. She would go on talking about it. First of all she’d gone to a simply heavenly film with a young doctor friend who was only twenty‐six but was doing absolutely marvellously, and then they’d gone on somewhere to dance and the doctor had danced divinely. On Sunday morning she’d had to go home, which was a frightful bore anyhow; but they were really awfully sweet and darlings really, even though they did make her want to scream sometimes. Then another friend – in the Navy this time – had suddenly turned up from nowhere and had rushed her down to the West End where everything had been simply too marvellous and divine; they had fed marvellously in an adorable little restaurant in Soho and then, most marvellous of all, this rugged seaman had turned out to be as divine a dancer as the doctor. They had finished up round about 1.30 in the morning, this morning it was, at a simply wonderful coffee stall near Baker Street Station where the most incredible people had gathered. Then, when they couldn’t get a taxi, the naval officer had offered to carry her.

  Doris listened, enviously and a little stunned: it was obvious that her friend Doreen had just emerged from something terrific, – and was adjusting herself only slowly and with difficulty to ordinary, unmiraculous existence. And then she remembered that life for Doreen was always pretty much like that. That was why she wanted to join her, in fact.

  She was interrupted in her thoughts by Doreen asking if she’d got an aspirin. After searching about in her bag for a moment Doris found the small Bakelite holder and tipped one of the tablets out into the palm of her hand. There was only one other tablet left in the case. And, as Doris dropped it back in again, she couldn’t help remembering that Doreen had had all the other eleven on previous occasions when life – her life – had proved too much for her. She didn’t mind, however: some kind of sedative was obviously needed if Doreen was to be kept going at all.

  ‘I do hope it isn’t my eyes,’ Doreen was saying. ‘I’m too scared to go and see an oculist in case he says I need glasses. I should look an absolute fright in glasses.’

  They had finished their lunch by now. And because there were two other girls standing behind their table they got up and went out.

  ‘I don’t know why we come here,’ Doreen said as they went down the stairs. ‘It’s always so hideously crowded.’

  Doris didn’t attempt to make any reply to this. She knew perfectly well why she went there and she intended to go on going. It was because she got a perfectly good meal for one‐and‐three, with coffee and roll and butter thrown in.

  But Doreen’s quick mind was already working.

  ‘Of course, it wouldn’t be the least bit of good suggesting my present flat. There wouldn’t be room for two people to turn round in it.’ She paused. ‘But there’s a perfectly marvellous flat in Adelaide Road,’ she went on. ‘I saw it when I took mine. It’s right at the top and it used to be a studio. We could make a simply divine living‐room out of it.’ She paused again. ‘How much can you afford to pay?’ she asked.

  ‘I give them a pound a week at home now,’ Doris told her.

  As she said it she felt uncomfortable. It seemed one of those family secrets that are better kept inside the family.

  ‘We might just manage it,’ Doreen said dreamily. ‘It’s a heavenly room.’

  They went on up Fetter Lane together. And Doreen, who evidently was something more than just a dreamer, put another question.

  ‘How much furniture can you bring?’ she asked.

  ‘I… I haven’t got any furniture of my own,’ Doris answered.

  Doreen gave a little laugh: it was a dry husky sort of laugh.

  ‘Oh my pet,’ she said. ‘Then how are we to manage? I haven’t got enough.’

  ‘There’s my bedroom furniture,’ Doris replied doubtfully. ‘They wouldn’t want that if I leave home. At least I don’t think they would.’

  Doreen, however, didn’t seem to be at all impressed.

  ‘But we can’t have that sort of furniture,’ she said. ‘There wouldn’t be room for it. All the other rooms are frightfully small. They’re just boxes. I meant divans and rugs and easy chairs and that sort of thing.’

  As she said it Doris was glad that she had never actually taken Doreen back home to Dulcimer Street. She’d debated it a lot of times. But always at the last moment she’d decided against it. If Doreen had ever been there she would have realised that divans and Dulcimer Street just didn’t go together. She felt re‐humiliated. And she wanted to do something to re‐establish herself in Doreen’s eyes.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘We could buy some.’

  Doreen raised her eyebrows. She seemed interested again.

  ‘How much do you want to spend?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, about twenty pounds,’ Doris said airily.

  She had got precisely twenty‐two pounds, four and six in her Post Office Account. And she felt safe enough in saying about twenty. She only hoped that Doreen didn’t think she meant twenty‐five, or twenty‐four, or even twenty‐two pounds, five shillings.

  ‘That’d be marvellous,’ Doreen told her. ‘We could get a lot with that. Second‐hand, of course. But I adore old furniture. And we might have my big divan recovered. It’s all falling to pieces anyhow.’

  They’d reached the office by now. It was a tall sooty building, sublet into business
suites. But Doreen made no attempt to go up for the moment.

  ‘There’s only one other thing, my lamb,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to live together you’d better know the worst. I’ve got rather a lot of friends and some of them stop quite late. I hope you’re broadminded.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Doris answered.

  And, because it didn’t sound convincing, she added, ‘Very.’

  3

  The third person to feel depressed was Mr Josser. And that was very unusual in him.

  It had all started very early – as Doris left the house in fact. Everything was still all right as he sat watching her gulp down her cup of tea. Then as the front door slammed after her – there was no time for proper good‐byes in this regular morning rush – he suddenly felt sorry for himself. As he sat there and realised that he need never go again unless he wanted to, he felt old. Very old. And useless. Except for the pension, he was just a dead‐weight in the family.

  The feeling passed off, of course. He got over it during the day in a placid, odd‐jobbish sort of fashion. There were any number of things that he’d been meaning to do for years. And he had at last started – in a fiddling, desultory way – on several of them. Twice he’d had all the things out of the kitchen tool‐box and twice he’d had to put them all away again because Mrs Josser had a meal ready for him. As a result, he’d got nothing done and was already a bit late for his appointment.

  It was quite a big do, this evening. It was on Wednesday that the South London Parliament and Debating Society had their meetings. And to these meetings the fanatical and persevering Uncle Henry had committed him. Not that he really minded any more. At first he had resented trailing to Camberwell to hear a discussion on ‘Evolution or Divine Creation?’ or ‘Bi‐Metallism the Way Out.’ But after a bit he had got used to it. Provided that he got a seat in the corner somewhere towards the back where he could smoke, it was not really so very different from spending an evening at home. Simply because he was adaptable and unresistant Mr Josser became one of the best‐informed men in London. For five seasons he had barely missed a debate. And in the result he acquired views – both for and against – the League of Nations, State Medicine, Sport for Girls, the Colonies, Compulsory Religious Education, Free Trade and Cremation. But as Mr Josser was the last person in the world to want to impose his views either one way or the other on anybody, that was the end of it. It was simply that, as views went, he had a great many of them.

  And then, just when Mr Josser had got used to listening to all these subjects, there came the fateful change in Uncle Henry. He suddenly switched over from general knowledge to politics. He left the Camber‐well Debating Society to look after itself and went into the South London Parliament. The ragged moustache, the open sports collar, and the glittering and unfocused eye became familiar symbols of the Front Opposition Bench. And all the things that Mr Greenwood and Mr Attlee left unsaid at Westminster, came booming out just one postal district away.

  Mr Josser, however, had got into the habit of debates. He couldn’t give them up. And everything would have been all right, except that Uncle Henry couldn’t give up Mr Josser either. One night just as he was setting out to hear ‘Flats or Houses? The Architect’s Viewpoint,’ Uncle Henry called at Dulcimer Street to intercept him. Flats or Houses, Uncle Henry explained, was just playing with life. It was Capitalism or Socialism that really mattered. And questions like that, real burning questions, were settled in Parliament, not in Debating Societies.

  All that had been four years ago. And for the last three, Mr Josser had represented Bolton in the Conservative interest.

  The actual business of election in the South London Parliament was comparatively simple. In the first place, the seat had to be vacant – that much was obvious. Secondly, if you were an arch‐Tory, you couldn’t represent a constituency that was notoriously Socialist. And thirdly, you had to take your job seriously. It was no good, as it was just across the river in the other House, getting yourself elected and then turning up only when you felt like it. The Honorary Secretary – a Mr Linnet – took a weekly census of all attendances. And as elections were annual there had been more than one frivolous young politician who had found himself round about the beginning of March without a seat simply because he had relapsed into going to the pictures when he should have been shadow‐governing his country. So far as Mr Josser was concerned, his own seat was almost uncomfortably secure – with Uncle Henry in the background prodding him it could scarcely be otherwise – though he consoled himself with reflecting that it was always possible that there might be a landslide up at Bolton.

  The Ministers of the Crown were elected annually as well. Even the Prime Minister had to take his chance with the others. The reason for this was of course perfectly simple. You just couldn’t expect a self‐respecting man to turn up indefinitely as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or Minister without Portfolio, without the hope of anything better. And so it was that towards the end of February the seals of office were all handed in and a new Government was formed. The P.M.G. was given India, the Treasury swapped over with the Foreign Office, Health went across to the Dominions, the Colonies gave way to Education and Scotland did a deal with Transport. All anyhow. Just like the real thing, in fact.

  To‐night, everything began smoothly enough. Mr Muspratt, the retiring P.M., sank his pride and expressed himself perfectly content with being First Lord. And Mr Plumcroft, a retired gentleman’s outfitter, who was almost the father of the House, got where he had always wanted to be. Mr Josser had known Mr Plumcroft for years, and he was delighted to see his old friend in Downing Street at last. Mr Plumcroft was a more genial manner of man than Mr Muspratt, as well as more substantial – Mr Muspratt was only a booking clerk on the Southern Railway – and under Mr Plumcroft’s captaincy it seemed certain that they were in for a good year of common sense, retrenchment and sound finance.

  Mr Plumcroft’s essential conservatism – it wasn’t just a label with him, but something fundamental like his stiff cuffs and his butterfly collar – was evident in the men he picked for the key jobs. There weren’t any exactly young ones to choose from. But there were at least some who weren’t so old as the others, including one really brilliant orator, a Mr Whipple from Barclay’s Bank, who emphasized his points most effectively with a pair of gold pince‐nez whenever he spoke in public. Mr Plumcroft, however, passed him over without a thought. He chose discreetly, cautiously, unadventurously.

  Mr Josser wasn’t exactly listening when Mr Plumcroft called his name. He was as a matter of fact thinking of something entirely different: he was thinking of a new and rather complicated clothes‐airer that he was going to fix up for Mrs Josser if the kitchen ceiling was strong enough. And then quite suddenly through the maze of pulleys and strings and lengths of rope with which his mind was full he heard himself addressed.

  It was quite understood that anyone could refuse, if he wanted to do so: in any Parliament there are always some who prefer to remain back benchers. On the other hand when the entire Conservative Party is only fifty‐four strong and there are the usual number of offices to be filled, it isn’t very helpful if members don’t rise to their responsibilities.

  Mr Josser rose and cleared his throat.

  ‘Would the right hon. member for Birmingham Central mind repeating what he just said?’ he asked.

  Mr Plumcroft obliged.

  ‘I nominate the hon. member for Bolton for the post of Secretary for Foreign Affairs.’

  Mr Josser felt an icy shudder run through him. The only views he had on Foreign Affairs were those he had absorbed from Uncle Henry. And though Uncle Henry made them sound so convincing that disagreement was unthinkable, he had rather gathered that they weren’t what the Conservative Party believed. Looked at either way there would be trouble. If he said what Uncle Henry told him to say the Party Whip would only discipline him for it afterwards. And if he took the orthodox Central Office line – that Hitler only wanted to restore German self‐respec
t and tidy up some of the weak points in the Versailles Treaty – he would get in trouble with his own brother‐in‐law.

  So he tried to wriggle out of it.

  ‘The right hon. member is paying me a big compliment,’ he said gratefully, ‘but… but it isn’t quite in my line.’

  The sentence had started off in the true Westminster manner, but had tailed off somewhat disappointingly towards the end.

  Mr Plumcroft, however, had set his heart on Mr Josser and he meant to have him.

  ‘The hon. member is not doing himself justice,’ he said flatly and emphatically. ‘I’ve considered the matter in all its aspects and I still ask him.’

  He spoke as though Mr Josser, though not perhaps quite persona grata in Moscow, was nevertheless a name to conjure with in the Wilhelm‐strasse – and still acceptable in the Quai d’Orsay.

  Mr Josser shifted from one foot to the other.

  ‘I… I’m not much of a speaker,’ he said diffidently.

  But Mr Plumcroft only smiled.

  ‘I think we can safely leave the oratory to the hon. member for Spen Valley,’ he said blandly.

  Mr Plumcroft had spent nearly seventeen years on the Borough Council and he had an easy way with him in Committee or out of it. He had ingeniously turned an objection into a pretty compliment to his colleague, the Home Secretary, Mr Beeman – of Warbell and Beeman, Estate Agents and Auctioneers.

  Mr Josser looked down at his feet. He disliked these occasions when everyone was staring at him. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Henry he would simply have chucked up the whole thing and gone back to the Debating Society – or even have stayed at home. But as he was there, he couldn’t let everyone down.