London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘Of course, if it looks even the least bit all right on a day like this you can imagine what it would be like on a sunny day,’ she said.

  The house in front of which they were standing was large and detached and of yellow stucco; a real plaster castle. But whatever family of local barons had inhabited it, they seemed long since to have abandoned it, and discharged the serfs. In the result, the privet bushes that sprouted out of the black earth in the front garden were ragged and untidy, and the lawn with the round flower bed in the middle was gradually reverting to open heath.

  They went up the stone‐flagged path, past the iron gate that had come off its bottom hinge and now rested permanently on the stone‐work. But at the tall flight of steps leading up to the massive important looking porch, Doreen turned to the side, through the green wooden doorway that was marked ‘Tradesmen.’

  Doris felt a little abashed at this, but Doreen seemed to be delighted.

  ‘We’ve got our own separate little entrance, you see,’ she said over her shoulder.

  They were at the side of the house by now, standing on a short path that was made up of two drain covers and an inspection slab laid down by the electric light company. Above them loomed the blank, stucco wall and up this zigzagged a cast‐iron fire‐escape.

  Doreen patted it affectionately.

  ‘This is my little surprise,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have given it away for the world. I told you we had our own way in but I didn’t say how.’

  They went up the fire‐escape together. And at the top they came out on to a large balcony that was really the top of one of the second floor bedrooms. Round the balcony there was a trellis that needed nailing up in places; and one or two tubs with the skeletons of plants in them stood about in the corners. But right in front of them was what they had climbed for. It was a yellow front door quite newly painted, bearing the words ‘The Studio.’ Beside the door was an ornamental bracket supporting an old‐fashioned storm lantern.

  ‘I really can’t imagine how anyone can have left a darling thing like this – simply walked out and left it, I mean,’ Doreen exclaimed. ‘I went absolutely crazy when I saw it.’

  Doris put her hand up to examine it. But already Doreen had found something else to be excited about. She had got out her key and was opening the yellow front door.

  ‘It’s a marvellous colour, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Doris followed her inside and stood there looking round her. Apparently the storm lantern on its hanging bracket wasn’t the only thing that the late tenant had left behind him. Inside the front door was a cardboard box containing a pile of old newspapers, two beer bottles, one arm of a pair of tongs and a lady’s shoe. Next to it stood a brown earthenware tea‐pot without a spout, and a further huddle of bottles.

  But Doreen didn’t stop to notice things like that. She had gone on ahead and opened the door in front of her. As the wall opposite was nearly three‐quarters window a great rush of dampish yellow light suddenly seeped into the flat; it was like being transported into the middle of a cloud. But there was no doubt about it; it was certainly a fine big room. The walls were sky‐blue and the doors scarlet. And it was so high it was nearly cubical – a cube with the top corners knocked off where the roof slanted sideways. There were no other windows except the enormous tall one. But, on the wall facing it, someone – possibly the late tenant – had painted a window. It was a window complete with a flower‐pot on the window sill, lace curtains and a view of trees beyond. It had been slapped on in good bright colours like the back‐cloth to a child’s ballet.

  ‘That’s something else I hadn’t told you about,’ Doreen shrieked at her – she always raised her voice a little when she was excited. ‘That’s what comes of taking a flat from an artist.’

  It occurred to Doris that the man who had drawn the window couldn’t have been a very good artist. But as Doreen seemed to like it all so much she didn’t mention it.

  ‘My goodness, it’s cold up here, isn’t it,’ was all she said.

  ‘But look at that marvellous big stove over there,’ Doreen went on. ‘Just imagine when it’s actually been lit.’

  Black, and about the size of a pillar box, the stove stood on a little brick dais all its own. A large flue like a drain pipe rose from the back and mounted mysteriously through the ceiling. Written across the front of the stove in large letters were the words ‘Poele Albert Freres.’

  Doreen pointed to them in triumph.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘French.’

  She spoke as though alone among the nations, the people of France had thought of the idea of warming their rooms, and she seemed to be proud of being associated with such a people. She opened the door of the stove and a lot of ash and the remains of a wire flue brush fell out on to the floor.

  ‘Of course the whole place needs cleaning up,’ she said. ‘It’s just as it was left.’

  Doris agreed with her. It was rather as though the artist tenant had absent‐mindedly set out one day and forgotten to come back again.

  Behind the stove was a large pile of old newspapers. And there was just a hint of a rough‐house before he had walked out. Over in one corner stood a bed with a broken spring mattress and its casters off, and underneath the painted window a chair with three legs had collapsed on to its side. More cardboard boxes, containing saucers, electric light bulbs, nail brushes, bits of cloth, china ornaments, a sink tidy and a comb with most of the teeth missing, stood about on the floor. On either side of the window, two long curtains striped like zebra‐hide hung down on a tilt because the rod had come off the support on one side.

  The window worried Doris because there was so much of it. She raised her eyes to the discoloured, sloping ceiling above it. Then a thought struck her.

  ‘Supposing there was a war,’ she said suddenly. ‘Wouldn’t this be an awful place in an air‐raid?’

  ‘Oh my pet, don’t think about such things,’ Doreen told her. ‘I shall positively always be thinking of air‐raids now.’

  They went on into the other rooms and found more evidence of the sudden flight of the late tenant. There was a cupboard with some ties hanging on a wire, a pull‐over on which moths had been gorging, another shoe – a man’s shoe this time, more newspapers, more beer‐bottles and a box of night‐lights. In the kitchen there was a toothbrush on a hook on the wall, a saucepan still cemented to the gas stove by something that had boiled over on to it – milk probably – and in a zinc meat safe fixed on to the wall there was the bluish green wraith of what had once been half a loaf of bread. There was even an old newspaper inside the safe as well, as though the previous occupant had been a connoisseur of such things and had put his extra choice specimen – it was a copy of the Daily Mirror for the 23rd of September, 1938 – inside for special safety.

  ‘Well,’ Doreen was saying. ‘Now you’ve seen it all. And I want you to say just what you think of it. I shan’t mind a bit if you simply detest it. I only want you to say so.’

  They were back in the big studio again with its sky‐blue walls and scarlet doors and Doreen was standing there with her eyes half closed and a dreamy look spread across her face.

  ‘As I see it,’ she went on, without waiting for Doris to speak, ‘we don’t want a lot of furniture in here. Only a great enormous divan with a lot of cushions on it over by the stove, and perhaps an easy chair or two, and a little flat table for drinks and some of those big glass ash trays and my gramophone.’ She broke off suddenly in delight. Her voice rushed up half an octave and she began shrieking again. ‘Just imagine having dances up here. We could have the most marvellous dances.’

  ‘Do you think the floor’s level enough?’ Doris asked.

  It was a bare board floor with wide cracks between some of the boards, and the heads of rows of small nails as though scores of tenants, one after another, had laid down oil cloth and then ripped it up again.

  But the question had offended Doreen.

  ‘You’ve been simply horrible ab
out my darling little flat ever since you came here,’ she said. ‘You haven’t said one nice thing about it. If you don’t like it, I wish you’d say so. You know I shan’t care. It’s no good setting up somewhere Dutch‐treat unless we both like it. If you’d rather go on as you are, I shall quite understand.’

  But Doris was remembering Dulcimer Street. Remembering Uncle Henry in his cycling stockings. Remembering the smell of cooking from Mr Puddy upstairs. Remembering Connie. Remembering a lot of things.

  ‘Oh, but I do like it. I do really. I like it very much,’ she said.

  2

  They had said good‐bye and gone their separate ways – Doreen to a perfectly marvellous show at the Cambridge with a friend of hers who was doing a terribly important job and doing it frightfully well but was really a perfect dear and screamingly funny when you got to know him. And Doris back to Dulcimer Street.

  But she didn’t go straight back.

  She was too much pre‐occupied and jumpy about things. There she was with one half of an expensive new residence on her hands, and only twenty pounds in the Post Office. It was like getting married in a hurry and ruining herself. And whose idea was it she asked herself – hers or Doreen’s?

  It seemed that she had merely mentioned quite casually that she didn’t like living at home and the next thing that she had known was that she was being whisked off to that bare, bleak‐looking barn of a place with its silly painted window and hideous scarlet doors somewhere under the roof tops.

  That window that looked as if it were tumbling back into the room still worried her. But so did a lot of other things as well. She was worried about her share of the rent. About the furniture. About the awful iron staircase up the side of the house. About who would wash‐up and get the evening meal – somehow she didn’t see Doreen doing it. About the electric light bills and the gas and the water rate. About getting the place cleaned. About buying an alarm clock so that she could get to the office in time. Also, about telling Mrs Josser.

  She’d been putting it off because there hadn’t seemed to be any point in breaking the news until she’d actually seen the flat. But now that the time had actually come, she felt more strongly than ever like putting it off again. That was why instead of turning down Kennington Lane in the direction of Dulcimer Street she went along to the Toledo instead.

  The Toledo was new. It had only been open for a couple of months. And she was using it for the very purpose for which it had been erected – as a retreat. It was a huge ferro‐concrete refuge from the cares and troubles of life, complete with a marble fountain in the forecourt, carpets like bog‐moss, the largest organ in South London, attendants like chorus‐girls who went up and down during performances with the latest kind of antiseptic scent‐spray, an ice‐cream fountain, Acousticon‐aids for the deaf, Synchro‐Harmonic Reproduction, and deep rubber padded chairs for the refugees. It seemed just the place to go and forget about having to tell Mrs Josser.

  And as it turned out, she didn’t go alone. She had just left the paybox when someone spoke to her. It was Percy. He was in his smartest suit – the purplish one with a shirt and handkerchief and tie to match – and it was obvious that he was at a loose end. Also it was obvious that he wanted to be friendly.

  ‘Mind if we see this together?’ he asked, in the easy manner that he had been cultivating.

  ‘No‐o‐o,’ said Doris.

  He liked her for accepting it that way. It was all so simple and straightforward. Most of the other girls he knew always fooled about first before accepting anything even when they wanted it. But Doris was different. She was ladylike.

  The girl with the antiseptic scent‐spray had just passed down the aisle when they reached their seats and their nostrils were full of the musty fragrance of peach and sandalwood. It was like a trip out East for nothing. Percy distended his nostrils and sniffed. Then another girl, a twin sister of the first one with the scent‐spray only clothed all in white this time came along selling ices, and Percy bought two three‐penny cartons with flat wooden spoons. When he had finished his, Percy took out a pocket comb and combed his hair. He always tried to keep himself looking nice when he was out anywhere.

  On the screen a lot of well‐developed girls of the kind that Percy usually liked looking at were singing a song called ‘Lido Blues.’ They were dangling their legs over the edge of the swimming pool and wearing very tight‐fitting bathing costumes. Every so often – the song was a long one – one of the girls would throw up her arms and dive out of sight.

  But Percy wasn’t looking at the film at all. He was looking at Doris. He could see her profile silhouetted against a distant illuminated ‘Exit.’ It was a nice profile, something he liked looking at. Not exactly his type, he told himself. But all right. Very much all right. She was O.K. in a quiet way. He wondered vaguely how much she knew about things. It was something that he always wondered when he went out with a girl.

  The blonde from the Fun Fair had been a failure. She had known more about things than Percy did. And she was married. She’d told him that while they were parked in the car under the trees on Wimbledon Common. Even up to that moment it had not been a good evening. They’d gone to the Palais de Danse, and the Blonde had been a positive menace. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she kept on saying. ‘Go on: hold me tighter. I don’t bite.’ In the result his arms had ached and he had got a lot of lipstick smeared across his collar. And then on top of all that, after he’d gone to the trouble of borrowing somebody’s car from the garage to make everything cosy for them both, to have her tell him that she was married. A bit of a moralist in his way, he dropped her on principle as soon as he found out.

  But he was looking at Doris now and had forgotten the Blonde. Or, at least, she and all the other blondes in the world had become merged. It was Doris versus the All‐Blonde.

  ‘If I had a girl like Doris, I’d be O.K.,’ he was thinking. ‘You can see she’s all right just by looking at her. She’s not like those mucky blondes. And she’s just a little girl. She needs looking after. She needs someone to look after her who knows his way about. She doesn’t know anything. She’s the sort of little girl who’d get hurt just because she doesn’t know what’s bad for her. She’s only a baby.’

  Because he felt sentimental he reached out and tried to take hold of her hand. At first she thought that he wanted her to pass him something. But when she discovered what he was up to, she avoided the hot groping hand that had come working its way towards her. She just sat there as she was, her hands clasped in her lap and her bag over them. Her refusal hurt Percy. Hurt him more than he cared to admit. It was the first time that anyone had ever declined to hold his hand in a cinema. And it hurt him still further to think that after the way so many women had been ready to grant him so much he should trip up over a little thing like this. But perhaps that was the whole point, he told himself. He’d been going about with the wrong kind of women. The cheap sort. They’d let you do anything; and Doris wouldn’t. That was just the difference. That was what made her worth while.

  ‘If I’d got a decent girl like Doris, I’d be O.K.,’ he thought again. ‘I’d be in clover.’

  He stared at the screen for a moment – the swim‐and‐sing girls had changed into sombreros and cowboy suits while he wasn’t looking – and then stared back at Doris again.

  ‘If I’d got a girl like Doris,’ he told himself, ‘I’d buy her a cocky little hat and a lot of smart stuff from the Burma Gem. That’s the way brunettes look best – with jewellery on. She ought to wear earrings. And a diamond clip. She needs more lipstick.’ He eyed her up and down in the half darkness thinking of ways in which he could improve her, and fell back on his old thought again. ‘She’s only a little girl,’ he told himself. ‘She’s only a baby really.’

  Then a new idea struck him.

  ‘I’d give her a good time,’ he told himself. ‘I’d take her round and show her places. I’d watch her come to life. I’d stand by and see her unfold. She’d go places with me
.’

  Percy Boon was no longer thinking that he’d be all right, O.K., if he had a girl like Doris to take about with him. He wanted Doris herself. Wanted her desperately.

  ‘If I had her,’ he went on, ‘I’d give up all those peroxide blondes. I’d leave them to the chaps who want them. They’d have to get along without me. Doris and me would be different. We’d go to the Palais and the cinema, of course. But everything quite open. Everything O.K. from the start. I’d take her up the river to Hampton Court. We’d go punting together. I’d buy a portable gramophone to take along with us, so we could have dance tunes. We’d go ice‐skating. I’d give her a pair of skates with white kid boots and everything if she’d come skating with me. She’d wear a short skirt with a lot of pleats. And a tight jumper. I’d show her what money can buy. I bet she’s never had a real day of it, with a decent sports car and drinks on the way and all that. We’d go to Brighton. I could fix the car all right. I’d get hold of something snappy. I’d attend to everything. Leave it all to Percy.’

  The film was drawing to its close now and Doris let him help her on with her coat. It was just the moment he had been waiting for. His arm went round her and he was most unnecessarily tender. As he was bending over her, his cheek brushed across her hair and he sniffed expectantly. But he was disappointed.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything yet,’ he told himself. ‘She doesn’t use perfume. She doesn’t even use a strong shampoo. She doesn’t know anything yet.’

  Chapter VIII

  Mrs Vizzard was off to enjoy herself. But somehow her appearance didn’t suggest enjoyment. At least there was no hint of the riotous about it. The whole effect was formal and rather frigid. She was dressed all in black, with a large shiny black handbag. It might have been something rather sedate in the way of funerals that she was going to attend.