‘Duke,’ she was screaming. ‘Duke. Don’t you know me? It’sh your mother.’
The canary hit the chain that dangled from the chandelier, and Connie put her hand over her eyes.
‘He’ll burn hish wings. The little angel’ll scorsh himself,’ she was sobbing. ‘It’sh shuichide.’
Chapter XII
1
Italy had invaded Albania. And Uncle Henry had been suspended.
The two facts were connected. Closely connected. And the unfortunate part was that Mr Josser, innocent and unsuspecting, got wedged in between. At first when he heard the news about Albania, he didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. But the B.B.C. news‐reader said it calmly and confidently as though he’d been keeping his eye on Albania for some time, and Mr Josser supposed that he had to believe it. Then he got angry. Very angry. It seemed that Mussolini really was what Uncle Henry had always said he was. And on a Good Friday, too! That was really shocking. There was only one consolation. But it was quite a sizable one, when you came to reason it out. Mussolini had struck East, and not West: that was the point. His ambition had carried him into the Balkans. And the Balkans were always at war about something. If it had been France, for instance, that Mussolini had attacked then the fat would really have been in the fire. But the very fact that he hadn’t done so showed that he daren’t. He’d gone, typically enough, for the little chap. And even if he got him down, Europe – or at least Mr Josser’s end of it – would still be all right.
It meant writing a new speech, of course. Because the P.M., Mr Plumcroft, was down at the moment with a quinsy. The quinsy was still intact and unsloughed, and not so much as a word could be choked out of him. But Mr Josser had intended in any case to begin by saying: ‘We are living in a page of history in the making…’ And if you are living in a page of history, a foot‐note or two on the way is probably inevitable. He had spent a lot of time getting his facts right. He had looked up Albania on a map – and found it. And he had checked the number of bayonets that Mussolini had behind him. The general outlook, he admitted, was certainly dark. Entirely dark except for that one ray of light about striking Eastwards. When he went along to the South London Parliament, he was deeply conscious of the fact that to do justice to a speech like this someone in the top flight – a Mr Whipple or a Mr Beeman, at least – was needed.
The first person he met when he got inside was Uncle Henry who thrust a piece of paper into his hand. Mr Josser thanked him for it and then started to read. The paper said in large rough capitals – the whole thing had been hurriedly Roneo‐ed – ‘THIS IS WAR. GET READY!’ And underneath it there was a lot about Sanctions and Guarantees and Hopeless Isolationism. Mr Josser folded it up and put it into his pocket to read afterwards.
There was a full house to‐night, and Mr Josser led off straight away. He was speaking by ten‐past eight. He could see Uncle Henry sitting on the front Opposition bench just opposite and he smiled nervously across at him. But Uncle Henry was in no mood for smiling. He looked madder than ever to‐night, Mr Josser thought. And he was on his feet even more than usual. ‘Had His Majesty’s Government already signified that they were going to the aid of Albania, and if not what was the cause of the delay?’ ‘Were arrangements being made for the intake of refugees?’ ‘Where was the Navy?’ Mr Josser tried to deal with the points one by one as they came up, but they were troublesome and distracting. He was tired already by the time he came to his point about war in the Balkans not mattering so much as war in Western Europe. And he was just beginning to prove that the storm would blow over as storms always do when Uncle Henry leapt to his feet and began waving a bundle of his little pamphlets in Mr Josser’s face.
‘There are times,’ he began, ‘when blindness is not an affliction. It is a curse. And more than a curse it is a sin. There on the wall before us is the writing, and we are so criminally blind that…’
Here the Speaker interrupted him.
‘I’m afraid that the Hon. Member is attempting to make a speech,’ he said. ‘That is not what was intended. He may only ask a question.’
Uncle Henry paused. Then he turned towards the Chair.
‘Are you aware,’ he asked, ‘that within the next few months – weeks possibly – we shall be fighting for our lives. The dead bodies of our young men will be…’
The Speaker rapped sharply with his hammer.
‘Now you are addressing questions to me,’ he told Uncle Henry. ‘I cannot allow that either.’
A good background of vestry‐work had prepared the Speaker for most awkward situations and he was as calm and unrattled as Mr Plumcroft in the face of crisis. But he wasn’t prepared for Uncle Henry.
Nor was Mr Josser.
Suddenly pointing full at him, Uncle Henry raised his voice until he was shouting.
‘Mr Speaker is a fool,’ he said. ‘An ignorant, credulous fool…’
The Speaker brought down his little gavel as though he were cracking nuts.
‘I cannot allow such language to be used,’ he said. ‘It must be withdrawn before you can continue.’
‘Withdraw nothing,’ Uncle Henry shouted back. ‘He’s more than a fool. He’s a murderer. If we enter this war unprepared…’
‘I have no alternative but to suspend you from the sittings of this House,’ the Speaker said sternly. ‘And stop pointing your finger at me!’
The House adjourned shortly afterwards because, by then, feelings were running dangerously high on both sides.
And Uncle Henry did not stay behind as he usually did. Having stalked out of the Chamber with his arms full of his alarmist pamphlets he had apparently mounted immediately on his green bicycle and gone pedalling off home alone.
That was a great pity, Mr Josser thought. And a mistake. Breaking up a regular weekly party was carrying your convictions a bit too far.
It was the worst of cranks: they spoilt things.
2
Young Percy was on to something pretty hot. It was, in fact, about the hottest thing that he’d ever handled on his own. That was why he was smoking faster than ever and the cigarette stubs were scattered all round him on the floor of the compartment. It wasn’t a smoking compartment. But what the hell? He was worried, wasn’t he?
Not that worried quite described it. He was excited. And jittery. But something else as well. He was flattered. Flattered, because he’d been picked out for the job. Somebody – he didn’t know the man yet – must have asked: ‘Do you know anyone big enough to fix a thing like this?’ And the answer had come slap out: ‘Percy Boon.’ That was the advantage of having connections. Without them, he would have been missed, passed over. People – particularly the big people – just wouldn’t have heard of him. They’d have had to go elsewhere to get their jobs done for them. And what would have become of his percentage then?
It had been in Smokey Joe’s that he’d first heard of this particular little bit of business. And it was his friend, Jack Rufus, he had to thank. Apparently a friend of a friend of Jack Rufus’ – Jack Rufus was a man of many and far reaching friendships: they made a constantly changing zigzag pattern right across the population of London – was on to something good just at the very moment when he couldn’t avail himself of it. ‘They,’ Jack Rufus had explained in the undertone in which he conducted all his conversations, were watching him and he couldn’t move. He didn’t say who ‘They’ were. And he didn’t have to say it. Percy understood without being told. ‘They’ was just an impersonal, almost inhuman force. A hostile influence. Like Fate. Something that was forever interfering with an easy living in a free country.
Percy had been cautious at first. Flattered, but cautious. Just because a man of Jack Rufus’ size had asked him, he wasn’t going to give everything away at once.
‘What do I get out of it?’ he had asked.
And when Jack Rufus had told him, he had laughed.
‘Chickenfeed,’ he had said contemptuously, turning down the corner of his mouth. ‘Just chickenfeed.’
>
The phrase and the facial expression were something that he had practised. It was a proof that all the years at the films hadn’t been wasted.
And Jack Rufus had come up step by step just as Percy knew he would. By the time Percy and Jack Rufus had separated, the job was worth fifty pounds to Percy. No, not fifty. A cool fifty. That was the word that Percy kept repeating to himself. A cool fifty.
‘Easy as walking off a plank,’ he kept telling himself. ‘Easy as breathing. And a cool fifty at the end of it.’
It was the biggest single sum of money that he had ever earned. And it seemed to hold out the promise of even bigger and sweeter things.
‘All I need is a bit of capital. Then I can get started on my own,’ he repeated over and over again. ‘If I had a thousand a year on the level I should be O.K. I’d marry Doris. Not some mucky blonde.’
The hot job was getting rid of a stolen car. In the ordinary way this was easy enough. Austins and Morrises changed hands like sixpences. But this was different. This was a Bentley coupé that was waiting to be delivered. And Bentleys were tricky cars to handle. Too classy and ultra. They were almost as bad as a Rolls. People noticed them. You couldn’t leave a Bentley in some cheap lock‐up somewhere until things had cooled off a bit without people beginning to get talking. The insurance people were always after missing Bentleys like a pack of bloodhounds. Little private investigation agents in grey Trilbys and greasy raincoats went round garages and lock‐ups, sniffing. In Percy’s own personal circle of friends there were two reliable men who had got in bad simply because they’d started fooling about with Bentleys instead of sticking to Austins and Morrises and Fords.
But it was a cinch, this particular Bentley, Jack Rufus had assured him. The buyer was already waiting for it, and no questions asked. So long as he got the car and a pair of perfectly good number plates he wasn’t the suspicious sort. All that Percy had to do was to drive the car over from Brook Green to Kennington and get to work on it. If anyone said anything he could say he was doing it for a customer. One of the great advantages of a lad like Percy was that he had such a nice open face and the police hadn’t got anything on him yet.
All the same, when Percy saw the car he thought twice about it. It wasn’t just an ordinary Bentley, It was a Cambridge Blue town coupé with one of those fancy bodies that looked as though they had come out of a Lord Mayor’s Show. There was bassinet work down the sides and a pair of silver coach lamps with blue glass in them, standing out on little brackets. The radiator cap was fitted with the glass statuette of a dancing girl.
Percy shook his head and sucked in his teeth.
‘Too risky,’ he said. ‘Get stopped before the next corner.’
Jack Rufus’ friend’s friend, the man who couldn’t move because ‘They’ were watching him, shrugged his shoulders. If Percy didn’t want to make a bit of easy money, he said, he wasn’t going to help him. As a matter of fact, he’d been able to tell from the moment he saw him that Percy wasn’t the right man for the job. He was too pansy altogether. Too pansy. And just a bit yellow.
Percy didn’t like that, so he compromised a little. He offered to take the Bentley away if he could put in a couple of hours of work on her in the lock‐up beforehand. But that was exactly what Jack Rufus’ friend’s friend wouldn’t hear of. He said that he wasn’t going to have anyone fooling about with the Bentley while it was still on his premises. It had got to be a clean job, or nothing.
Percy lit another cigarette – the old one was only half smoked through – and thought the matter over. It was silly to be in any doubt with the cool fifty just sitting there waiting for him. But ‘They’ were waiting for him, too. So far, he and ‘They’ were strangers. And he wanted to keep them so.
But another thought was going through his mind all the time. ‘Nothing venture, nothing gain.’ It seemed like a challenge. Something showing him which way his duty lay. He remembered the cool fifty. He remembered the thousand pounds capital that he needed. He remembered Doris.
‘O.K.,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it when it gets a bit darker. Have you got a shuvver’s hat anywhere?’
The friend was able to fix him up with that all right. He ran a hire service on the side, and he had quite a collection for Percy to choose from. While he was trying them on the friend told him that he knew all the time that he’d do it. He said that you couldn’t be in his game for long without becoming a pretty good judge of character, and he’d known what Percy was worth as soon as he’d clapped eyes on him. All the same, he made Percy sign a delivery chit for the Bentley before he let him take it away. For himself, he didn’t mind, he said. But there was more than him in it. It was a syndicate. And he couldn’t, he explained, have Percy Boon or anyone else going off with a valuable car without signing for it.
It was about five‐thirty when the doors of the lock‐up were swung open and Percy wearing a chauffeur’s cap drove out. Dusk had already come down, but it would have needed more than dusk to kill the magnificence of that Bentley. In the twilight, the long pale blue bonnet glittered like a satin dancing slipper.
He avoided main roads so far as possible. ‘They’ were sure to be hanging about on the main roads and he didn’t want to run into them. And, on the whole, he was successful. It was only once that he got himself into a tight spot and felt the sweat all ready to break out down his backbone. That was when he had to draw up in a traffic block right alongside a policeman. There was a street lamp exactly overhead and the Bentley seemed every moment to be growing longer and lower and shinier. It was like sitting in the middle of a shiny coloured supplement in a motoring paper. Percy didn’t shift his eyes. He just sat there without moving, the motor running and one foot ready on the accelerator. He was all ready for a quick getaway. The policeman turned his head and inspected the radiator for a moment. Then he ran his gaze along the bonnet. He seemed interested in what he saw. Very interested. He sauntered up in a suspiciously slow and casual kind of fashion. Percy just sat there without moving. He was sweating now. He could feel the drops forming.
‘Nice car you’ve got there,’ said the policeman.
‘It’s O.K.,’ Percy answered.
‘What’ll she do?’
‘Ninety.’
‘Keep it up?’
‘You bet.’
‘Ever get a chance to let her out?’
‘Not often.’
The lights changed and Percy revved up a bit. He let the car slide forward without even saying good‐evening to the policeman. The policeman seemed harmless enough. He was evidently just a motoring enthusiast. He’d have been interested in any Bentley, and not in this particular pale blue one. All the same, Percy wished that he hadn’t spoken to him. ‘They’ could be at their worst even when they were apparently only being friendly.
Just to be on the safe side he kept glancing into the driving mirror to see if he were being followed. But there was no one. Absolutely no one. It was fifty pounds for sweet Fanny Adams.
He had reached the garage and was just congratulating himself on having got there without having been recognised when a voice hailed him.
‘Hallo Percy,’ it said. ‘I was wondering if I should see you.’
It was the Blonde. She was standing right at the bottom of the ramp, just where he had to go down to second to go up the slope. He hadn’t seen her until she stepped out into the glare of the flood lighting.
‘Hallo,’ he said, without even turning his head to look at her.
He had got rid of the Blonde. She had looked like stopping. But he had been cold with her. Very cold. He’d frozen her out of the garage by just not speaking to her. She didn’t know but he was waterproof against blondes by now. Because of Doris the Blonde could jump into the river for all he cared.
And he’d been busy. If the previous owner of the Bentley had come in now he wouldn’t have recognised it. The head‐lamps and the pass light were off, and he’d removed the statuette of the dancing girl. He was standing there with it in his hand.
‘Look all right, on the mantelpiece,’ he told himself.
And then he remembered Doris.
‘Give it to her for a present sometime,’ he decided. ‘Make some little joke about it, and give it to her for a present.’
But the practical side of him re‐asserted itself.
‘Have to get a capital “B” to put on instead,’ he went on musingly. ‘If the owner’s looking out for a glass dancing girl and he sees a capital “B” instead, where is he?’
He put in about another half‐hour’s work on the car and then stepped back again and looked at it. The silver coach lamps were off by now, and he’d got the radio set out as well. Altogether he was pretty pleased with what he’d done.
‘Spray her over in navy,’ he was thinking, ‘and she’s a different car. And pick her out in something. Doesn’t matter how bright, so long as it’s different.’
Before he stopped for the night he removed the floor rug from the well of the coupé. It seemed too good to leave there. And in any case all the fittings would have to be changed before the new owner took over. You wouldn’t get anyone in his senses driving around with a lot of other people’s stuff still in the back.
In the end he took both the rug and the glass dancing girl home with him. The glass dancing girl he put away in the drawer of his dressing‐table until later. But the rug he gave to his mother.
Mrs Boon was delighted. The sad expression left her face for a moment as she stroked the rich deep pile.
‘Oh Percy, you are good to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know any other son…’
‘S’nothing, Mother,’ he cut her short.
Chapter XIII
1
Mrs Vizzard was attending to her little bit of unpleasantness with Connie. She had declined to take the chair – her chair – that Connie had offered her. And, in consequence, the interview was stilted and formal. Connie perched herself on the corner of the bed and sat looking down at her old feet in their swansdown bedroom slippers. And Mrs Vizzard stood over her.
London Belongs to Me Page 17
