London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  The arrangement in any case suited him admirably.

  ‘Just see Mrs Boon through her bit of trouble,’ Mr Josser told himself. ‘Then off we go.’

  But in the meantime, of course, there were the rents to be collected as usual. And Mr Josser made the same old rounds with the same old thoroughness. It was astonishing the way nothing had altered. The kitchener in 23, Birkbeck Street was out of order again, and the rent was withheld in consequence. Mr Josser made a note of it in the rent book as he had done before, and warned the tenant that there might be court proceedings. The tenant (who was a bit short‐tempered from doing all her cooking for a family of five on a single‐burner oil stove) threatened Mr Josser’s Society to go ahead with the summons and said that she’d hire a van to take the kitchener into court to show the magistrate. Mr Josser smiled sadly and went along to 143, Arkley Rents. As usual, the rent book was missing. They were a cheerful, feckless lot at No. 143. The wireless was kept playing at full blast all the time so that it was like stepping into a band contest when they opened the door to you, and, in the general uproar, they preferred paying half a crown for a new rent book – they had two already since the beginning of the year – to putting the old one away in a safe place. Then on to 17, Guinevere Street. As Mr Josser expected there was no one in – it might have been a family of ghosts who inhabited the place. He’d have to come back later. So, even though it meant retracing his steps, he went round to No. 1 Cranmer Terrace first, and knocked. Knocked loudly, as he remembered he had to. No. 1 Cranmer Terrace was getting deafer as she grew older. Mr Josser brought most of the street out before she opened the door to him.

  Because it was no use returning to Guinevere Street until after seven, Mr Josser bought an evening paper and took himself into a tea‐shop. It was one of Lyons’s little local palaces, all marble and mirrors and bright chromium. Mr Josser liked Lyons’s. For quite trifling sums like three pence and four pence‐halfpenny, you could go into a Lyons’s out of the surrounding drabness and bask in its more than renaissance brightness while gay little Nippies brought you your order on a near‐silver tray. Mr Josser had made up his mind as to what he would have. He wanted a cup of tea and two pieces of chocolate Swiss roll. For a man of his age, he was still very fond of fancy things.

  As he sat there munching, he was in a very comfortable and contented frame of mind. The tea was hot and rather sweet as he liked it, the chocolate cream came oozing out of the sides of the roll, and he had undone his waistcoat. He felt so well that he might almost have been back in Brighton again.

  Then in the corner of the evening paper, in the Stop Press, he saw something that made him stop drinking and put the cup down so hurriedly so that it spilt onto the glass table top.

  ‘CAR BANDIT MURDER: MAN CHARGED’ it said. And underneath came two short paragraphs, a bit sideways across the column. ‘Percy Boone, motor mechanic of Dulcimer Street, S.E., already in custody, to‐day at Brixton Prison charged with the murder of Rose Sinclair, on May 23rd. Murdered woman had been employed as cashier in a Fun Fair.’

  That was all the space it got. But it was enough. It turned Mr Josser quite sick at the sight, so that he had to push away the rest of the chocolate roll uneaten.

  ‘Can’t be Percy,’ he said. ‘They haven’t spelt his name right. All the same, I’d better be getting back,’ he told himself. ‘Can’t leave Mother alone at a time like this.’

  So far as he was concerned they could go on living rent‐free in Guinevere Street for ever.

  3

  Even so, he was beaten to it by Connie.

  She had been round to Madame Marie’s Dress Agency to change her best frock – her summery‐mummery – for something a bit more generally useful. And, for the transparent chiffon, plus seven and sixpence, she’d picked up a rather nice piece in moire with a nearly new sailor collar. It was an attractive little dress, even though it had gone a bit under the arms. As usual, the chief trouble in choosing it had been the size. At five foot one she didn’t even come into Small Ladies. In the eyes of the trade, she was still a Juvenile. The new frock had got a label that said ‘Business Miss,’ sewn into the back.

  But she was excited about more than the dress. Clutching the paper carrier from Swears and Wells that Madame Marie had given her, just as though the dress had been a new one, she was hurrying back to Dulcimer Street as fast as she could go. She was almost running in fact. And the reason for this was that she had an evening paper in her hand. She had seen about Percy, too.

  She had her first success sooner than she expected. Just as she was going in, she met Mr Puddy coming out. He’d been resting all the afternoon, with his handkerchief spread over his face to help him concentrate, and he hadn’t seen anything about anyone. Connie was therefore able to knock him all of a heap right on the doorstep.

  He read the paragraph all the way through twice – it was the Evening News that Connie had bought, and there was more about it in there – before speaking. Then he shook his head and drew his breath in noisily between his teeth.

  ‘He’s god himself broberly in the soub, he has,’ he said thickly. ‘He’ll have to wodge his steb.’

  ‘Isn’t it terrible?’ Connie asked him. ‘Can you think of anything worse?’

  Mr Puddy paused.

  ‘Does his buther know?’ he enquired.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ she said, still a bit breathlessly. ‘I’m just going to find out. I only knew myself five minutes ago.’

  Mr Puddy would have liked to be able to turn back and go in with her. But he couldn’t. He was late. And he hadn’t yet made any preparation for the night watches. On his way to the factory he had got to do a bit of shopping. He wanted a tin of baked beans, some cheese and half a pound of rich fruit cake. If he left things any later he might not be able to get them.

  ‘God to be booving on,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’ll buy a baber beself.’

  But Connie wasn’t bothering any more about Mr Puddy. As soon as he had left her she went bolting on up the stairs to Mrs Josser’s. She hurried so much in fact that when she got there she couldn’t even speak. And in her agitation she had quite forgotten to knock. All that she could do was to push the evening paper under Mrs Josser’s nose and point.

  For a moment, Mrs Josser had great difficulty in adjusting herself to Connie. She had been sitting quietly thinking about Mrs Vizzard and Mr Squales, and was unprepared for sensation. The paper had been folded carefully into three, and it was a flat sword‐like object that came thrusting at her. Connie’s finger hovered somewhere over the middle of it.

  And then she saw. ‘RUN‐AWAY KILLER,’ she read. ‘Percy Aloysius Boon, aged 20, garage‐hand of Dulcimer Street, S.E.1., already in custody on another charge, was to‐day at Brixton Prison charged with the murder of Rose Sinclair, cashier in a Fun Fair. The murder took place on Wimbledon Common on the night of…’

  But Mrs Josser read no further. She handed the paper back indignantly as though she didn’t want to be caught holding it.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t believe it?’ Connie repeated incredulously. ‘It’s him all right. There aren’t two Percy Boons in Dulcimer Street.’

  Mrs Josser seized hold of the paper and re‐read it.

  ‘Whatever makes you think Percy would want to go and do a thing like that?’ she demanded.

  Connie shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘That’s just the seamy side of it,’ she explained. ‘You can’t ever be sure with men.’

  There was a pause. Then Mrs Josser looked up sharply.

  ‘Does Mrs Boon know?’ she asked.

  Connie moved towards the door.

  ‘I’m on my way up there now,’ she told her. ‘I only just dropped in here first.’

  ‘We’ll go up together,’ Mrs Josser said firmly.

  Percy Boon arrested for murder! Young Percy charged with killing someone! she kept on repeating it over to herself incredulously as she climbed the stairs. It was going to be bad eno
ugh for Mrs Boon to have the news broken to her, even without Connie doing the breaking. But Mrs Josser need not have worried. Mrs Boon’s room was empty. On the table of the dining‐room was a dirty plate with the knife and fork still crossed on it and a half‐eaten piece of bread resting against the side. In the bedroom the wardrobe door had been left open. It was as though at the very moment of finishing a simple meal something urgent had called Mrs Boon away.

  Connie and Mrs Josser looked across at each other.

  Then Connie puts her thumbs down.

  4

  Mr Josser had got back. Had got back nearly half an hour ago, in fact. But he still gave the appearance of having only just arrived. His hat and attaché case were on the table beside him, and his umbrella – his new one – was crooked over the back of a chair. They made a small, mournful group, the three of them. And, at the moment, nobody – not even Connie – was saying anything.

  Mrs Josser was the first to pull herself together.

  ‘Mrs Vizzard ought to be told,’ she announced suddenly. ‘It’s only fair.’

  Mr Josser glanced up from the spill that he was rolling. It was a spill made with the same paper that had contained the news.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Mrs Josser’s lips were drawn in and determined.

  ‘Because she’ll have to hear sooner or later, and I’d rather she heard it from me,’ she replied.

  There was a pause. Connie raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. It was Mr Josser who spoke. He put down the spill and got up.

  ‘You don’t want to face this alone, Mother,’ he said. ‘I’ll come down, too.’

  But Mrs Josser wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘You go and sit down,’ she said. ‘You look tired enough already. Sit down and talk to Connie.’

  With that Mrs Josser left them. They heard her footsteps descending the stairs, and there was silence again. At the thought of the bombshell, her bombshell – well, properly speaking, Percy’s bombshell – that Mrs Josser was about to deliver single‐handed, Connie sat there writhing. For two pins, she’d have gone down with Mrs Josser herself. But she could see that she wasn’t wanted, and she didn’t want to cause unpleasantness now. Something told her that this wasn’t going to be the end of the evening.

  All the same, it called for self‐control having to sit there doing nothing while things were happening. Somehow Mr Josser didn’t seem to count. He was absorbed in thoughts of his own, fiddling absent‐mindedly with the spill again, folding it in half, rolling it sideways, doubling up the ends. It quite startled her when he spoke.

  ‘I wonder if there’s anything he’d like,’ he said.

  He had not said who ‘he’ was. But it was obvious.

  Connie gave a little titter. It was one of her inevitable moments of bad taste.

  ‘He’d like to get out, that’s what he’d like,’ she answered.

  But Mr Josser only shook his head.

  ‘I meant something to read. Or some cigarettes, or something. Something to take his mind off things.’

  Connie thought.

  ‘No harm in cigarettes,’ she said. ‘He can smoke all he wants to now. It’s later on he’ll miss it.’

  Mr Josser looked across at her.

  ‘Then you really think he did it?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think, it’s what they think,’ Connie answered. ‘They’ve got to prove it, that’s all.’

  There was silence again after that until Connie started humming in a distant preoccupied sort of way.

  ‘Do you reckon she knows, or doesn’t she?’ Connie asked with a jerk of her head in the direction of the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t like to think,’ Mr Josser answered simply.

  Connie paused.

  ‘Just imagine if she doesn’t,’ she said. ‘What a sad, sad home‐coming.’

  It was the sound of voices on the stairs that interrupted them. Mrs Josser’s voice and Mrs Vizzard’s. As they reached the door they stopped suddenly. Connie swung round in her chair expecting they were getting somewhere now. It wasn’t Mrs Josser’s bombshell any longer. Then the door opened. And Mrs Josser, very red in the face, and Mrs Vizzard, very white, stood there.

  Under the shock of events Mrs Vizzard’s transformation had half slipped from her. The black dress with the artificial flowers was still as smart as ever. But to‐night it looked simply out of place. Under the new hairdressing, the expression was hard and angry.

  ‘Mrs Vizzard had heard,’ Mrs Josser said shortly.

  There was a little gasp from Connie as she said it. She had never really liked Mrs Vizzard. Had disliked her on and off for years in fact. But this was too much: knowing something like that, and keeping it to herself!

  ‘Did Mrs Boon tell you herself ?’ she asked.

  ‘Mrs Boon?’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘I’ve not spoken to the woman.’ Mrs Josser turned towards her husband.

  ‘Do you hear that, Fred?’ she asked.

  Mr Josser felt uncomfortable. For no reason that he could think of, all three women were looking towards him at once.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered.

  ‘Mrs Vizzard’s going to give Mrs Boon notice when she gets back,’ she said. ‘She thinks it’ll get the house a bad name if she stops.’

  Connie gave a little whistle. She had never imagined any circumstances in which Mrs Boon could be disreputable and she herself respectable. But if she was surprised at what Mrs Josser had just said she was far more surprised at Mr Josser’s answer. He put his pipe down and, even though he was only quite a small man, he got up looking the way Connie liked to see men look. Almost big and commanding.

  ‘If she goes, we go too,’ he said.

  As Mrs Josser didn’t speak, it was clearly Connie’s cue to say something. It was a big moment. A positive build‐up.

  ‘Me, too,’ she declared. ‘On the dot.’

  Mrs Vizzard’s face wrinkled up, almost as if she were going to cry. ‘It’s all so horrible I can’t believe it,’ she said weakly. ‘We thought…’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Mr Squales and I. We have been discussing it ever since we heard.’

  Mrs Vizzard did not raise her eyes from the floor as she was speaking.

  ‘And who’s Mr Squales to say what’s to happen to Mrs Boon?’ Mr Josser asked her.

  ‘He was only thinking of the rest of us, thinking about No. 10, as a whole,’ she answered faintly.

  ‘That’s right, Kitty. That’s all it was,’ said a deep soft voice from the doorway. ‘For myself, I’m sorry for her. Deeply sorry.’

  It was Mr Squales himself who was standing there. He must have come upstairs on those pussy, panther feet of his and been listening to them. His presence seemed to infuriate Mr Josser.

  ‘So this was your little idea, was it?’ he asked.

  Mr Squales’ smile left him for a second.

  ‘N‐o‐o‐o,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Not entirely, that is. But… but the publicity, and all that. It just seemed better what we were suggesting.’

  ‘Much better,’ Mrs Vizzard echoed him.

  ‘If you turn her out,’ said Mr Josser, ‘she comes and stays with us until she’s got somewhere else to go. Then we go, too, like I said we would.’

  ‘Sshh!’

  Mrs Josser stopped him. She raised her hand warningly. In the sudden silence, they heard the front door shut below them. They held their breath. There was only one person whom it could be.

  As they listened, there was the faint noise of footsteps on the stairs.

  Mr Squales took Mrs Vizzard’s arm.

  ‘Kitty,’ he whispered. ‘We’d better be going down.’

  But Mrs Vizzard only shook off his hand.

  ‘Quiet,’ she said.

  Then, in a flash, it was all over. There was the Jossers’ living‐room with the door open and every one standing there. The light streamed across the landing, lighting up the stairs. And the figure of Mrs Bo
on walked straight past them, like a shadow. They had one glimpse of her, bowed, secretive, silent. And then she had gone on upstairs to her empty flat. She was shading her face with her hand.

  Mrs Josser took out her handkerchief. ‘She knows,’ was all she said.

  5

  It was midnight. The last of the twelve strokes of Mr Josser’s Westminster chimes had just floated up through the floor‐boards, round, pulsating, and tremulous like soap bubbles filled with sound.

  There were no lights burning any longer in No. 10. But that didn’t mean that everyone was asleep. The evening had been too disturbing for that. In their separate and individual ways there were five of them awake in the house at this moment.

  Mrs Vizzard, for instance. She was lying face downwards on the pillow as though she had been crying.

  ‘Oh God, the shame of it,’ she was saying. ‘The awful, awful shame. And just when there seemed to be so much happiness. I’ve never been like this before. It’s only because I love him so. I didn’t want anything like this to happen in my house while he was there. Why couldn’t it all have been beautiful and pure, the way it was? I hate Percy. Hate him! Hate him! Hate him! And Mr Squales so good and gentle.’

  And at the thought of that gentle, good man, and of what his presence in the house meant to her, she shuddered. Before going to bed she had locked her door on the inside. Not to protect herself from him. But to protect him from his own desires. She knew that if at this moment he had been able to come to her, she would not have had it in her to resist.

  And Mr Squales himself, the cause of this profound disquiet? He was lying on his back with his hands behind his head and his dark fingers laced together. He was not in the least enthusiastic about things. He had stopped thinking about Percy and was thinking about himself.

  ‘So this is what it’s to be,’ he pondered. ‘This is what I’ve come to.’ He remembered other women he had known, other prospects, and the promise of earlier years. It was like sitting in the sunset of a day that had dawned too brightly. ‘It’s really remarkable,’ he told himself philosophically, ‘that with all my talents I shouldn’t have been able to support myself. Men with half my brains manage to make quite a good thing of it. It’s simply that with me there’s something somewhere that doesn’t always click.’ The sunset feeling came over him more strongly than ever and blackened slowly into night. He lay there in the darkness, counting his tragedies. Then, in his own private midnight, the moon, full and triumphant, rose over the pattern of his thoughts. ‘All the same,’ he told himself, ‘it might be worse. Might be a lot worse. It was worse last week. I couldn’t see my way then. Now, at least, I’m provided for. I don’t have to worry about to‐morrow’s dinner.’