London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  They were starting for the Trocadero at six sharp, she told him. And she wasn’t going to be rushed for anybody.

  2

  Because she wanted to do things properly she took the bus straightaway to Oxford Street. There were other shops south of the river that would have done quite as well – Brixton and Clapham, for instance, were full of small, select dress‐shops called Yvonne and Sybille St Clair and that sort of thing. But to‐day Mrs Josser wanted to be sure of a real West End cut. Sometimes the little shops skimped you under the arms, or tried to get away with a false hem if the stuff had been running a bit short. She was taking no risks and went straight to Bourne and Hollingsworth’s. So long as she could remember she had always gone to Bourne’s when she wanted something that was good. The only reason why she wasn’t better dressed was that she didn’t go quite often enough.

  But even at Bourne’s it wasn’t easy. There was such a selection. The assistant unhooked a likely half‐dozen and then, when Mrs Josser was still undecided, went back for more. The little alcove of mirrors in the fitting‐room revealed Mrs Josser in a variety of guises – as a very elderly schoolgirl, as a young matron, as a rather skittish dowager. In the end Mrs Josser decided on the first one that the assistant had shown her. It was a simple little blue two‐piece, and could be had in two styles, one with a white ornament on the left bosom, and one with a red. Mrs Josser tried on both and came down on the side of the white one.

  Then, because the dress was only three guineas, and she had brought five pounds with her, she decided that she would have a look at hats. She hadn’t even made up her mind yet that she was going to buy a hat, and she sidled warily into the hat department, like an enemy, avoiding the eyes of the assistants and trying to look as though she were a woman with a whole cupboardful of hats. Right up to the moment of going over to the ten‐and‐sixpenny counter, she and Bourne and Hollingsworth were of no use to each other. Bourne and Hollingsworth were trying to sell hats and she was trying to resist. And she would probably have succeeded if, purely to see what the thing looked like, she hadn’t furtively slipped one of the half‐guinea models on her head for a moment. As it happened, it was perfectly dreadful. It gave her a sallow sideways appearance, and she snatched it off again. But, by now, the young lady in charge of the ten‐and‐sixpenny counter had turned up and offered to help her. Then she was really trapped. She couldn’t admit that she didn’t want to buy a hat because the young lady had just seen her trying one on – it would seem almost like ringing at a door bell and running away again. And she couldn’t say that there wasn’t one that suited her because on that enormous counter there were obviously hats that could suit any one. Moreover, once she was actually there with the smell of felt in her nostrils she wasn’t by any means so sure that she didn’t want one. In the end, it was the nineteenth, a hat remarkably like her old one, that she bought. It was in hard black felt with the brim turned up in front, and a sort of buckle, also black, set flush in line with the ribbon.

  And that, she told herself, would be all. She had gathered up her two parcels and set off for the door, pleased and self‐confident, when the idea of gloves crossed her mind. This time the struggle was more brief. She went straight back to have a look at them. And there was her size, right on top waiting for her. They cost four and eleven, and were guaranteed real kid. All the same, it gave her a little pang as she paid for them. During the past hour she had fairly been flinging money away. She now had only a one pound note and a handful of small change left.

  Altogether, by the time they were all gathered round the ceremonial spot, the evening of tribal customs looked as though it would have cost some of them a nice packet.

  3

  Mr Josser had been feeling a bit self‐conscious about his visit to the prison. But when the time came it passed off all right. It was only when he got near to the prison that it was rather embarrassing. And that wasn’t because he was the only one going there. On the contrary, the whole street was full of quietly dressed men and women – women mostly – going in the same direction. There must have been twenty or thirty of them, all planning to arrive punctually at 2 o’clock when the gates opened. And the sight of them gave Mr Josser a pained, sad feeling again.

  He took another glance at his companions. They were an extraordinarily respectable‐looking and mouse‐like crowd. Somehow he would have expected them to look different – if he had expected them at all. It seemed impossible that these sedate, quiet‐looking folks should be the wives, mothers, daughters and intimates of burglars, coiners, gangsters, murderers even. Then a taxi with two men in black Homburgs and a woman with a fur coat, passed him and drew up outside the prison. The woman had a veil over her hat and drew it down as she got out. They weren’t at all mouse‐like, these visitors. These must be the belongings of someone of importance, someone who had side‐slipped in the city or run amok in Mayfair.

  There were still a few minutes to go, and the visitors lined themselves up in a rough queue, avoiding each other’s eyes. Mr Josser took a sideways look at them and noticed something else extraordinary about them – they were all in black. It was like an outing of widows and mourners. Then he glanced down at his own legs. He had put his best suit on and he was all in black, too.

  It was evidently a very efficiently run sort of prison because punctually at the hour the door opened. But it was a slow business getting in. There was a policeman standing at the gate and two warders in flat caps. They scrutinised every one as though they didn’t like the look of them, and there was a veiled suggestion about their attitude – colder and more sullen somehow than that of policemen on point duty – that if there were any attempt to rush the gate they’d open fire. In consequence, there was no pushing or jostling. The mourners, or visitors, or whatever they were, filed in slowly and silently.

  Then they arrived at a door. It was a good thick door studded with nails. Mr Josser was still thinking about the thickness of the door when the policeman touched him on the shoulder and pointed down at the bag.

  ‘Open up,’ he said briefly.

  It had been an innocent little caseful when it was packed. But under the policeman’s eyes everything assumed a sudden guiltiness. The Gladstone bag might have been full of skeleton keys and dynamite from the way the policeman went through it. He turned over the two clean shirts and the pair of underpants, fingering the seams as though to make sure that there weren’t any files or lock‐saws concealed in them, and then he came upon the packet of cigarettes that Mr Josser had bought.

  ‘Any matches?’ he asked.

  Mr Josser shook his head. He saw now how silly it was of him to have forgotten the matches. You could hardly expect a prison to provide little things like that.

  ‘You’ll have to hand these over,’ the policeman said. ‘No tobacco allowed inside a prison without a permit.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mr Josser replied. ‘I didn’t mean any harm by it.’

  He was suddenly afraid that his action might have compromised Percy in some way.

  But the policeman, being treated with respect, became temporarily quite jovial.

  ‘You haven’t done any yet,’ he said.

  When the cigarettes had been handed over, Mr Josser was directed into the waiting‐room. It was a long, cold apartment with a dark green dado waist‐high running round it, and three small windows set almost flush in the ceiling. Mr Josser noticed, with a slight sinking of the heart, that the windows were barred as though even visitors tried to escape sometimes. At either end of the room an electric light bulb in a plain china reflector was burning. The lamps were low‐powered and you could look at them without blinking. Two wooden benches down either wall comprised the furnishings. Altogether it was rather like a waiting‐room in a railway station that had given up expecting any trains. The whole place smelt strongly of carbolic.

  It has a clean rather than a friendly smell, carbolic. And it may have been the carbolic, or the iciness of the air, or the barred windows, or the rattling of keys s
omewhere in the corridor, or the combination of all of them together, that made Mr Josser shudder. Whatever it was, he became uncomfortably aware of a new and overpowering quality about the room that swamped all the others, a unique and distinctive quality – oppressiveness. To his immense surprise, after only about five minutes of prison life, Mr Josser found himself looking forward to getting outside again.

  The efficiency that he had noticed earlier at the gate was discernible inside as well. It might have been an out‐patients’ department in one of the big hospitals that he was watching. The patients were called in a very strictly arranged rota. When the warder was ready for them he came inside and called out, ‘Waiting for 13796,’ or ‘27345,’ whatever the number might be. Most of the visitors simply went along to the special visitors’ room where they saw their loved ones through a screen of rabbit‐wire. Mr Josser, however, was taken right along to the cell because Percy wasn’t a convicted criminal yet. He was still Percy Boon, Esq., a British citizen with all his rights. There wasn’t anything actually against him yet. It was simply that They had certain doubts.

  It was quite a distance from the waiting‐room. The smell of carbolic persisted, and the way led down a long stone corridor – an endlessly long corridor it seemed – past the doors of cells from which Mr Josser feelingly averted his eyes in passing. The waiting‐room was something free and open to the outside world compared with this stone corridor. Here was the very heart of the prison itself, and the weight of the surrounding stone had borne down on it, crushing and flattening. Then the corridor opened – another door; another unlocking – into a wide hall that was arranged like the inside of a gigantic pigeon‐loft. There were three tiers of the pigeon‐boxes, all round the sides. And, in between the tiers, sheets of wire‐netting were slung. There were no short cuts that way.

  Mr Josser paused and looked upwards. The roof was arched in a high V and had windows let into it. But the glass that they were made of was thick and yellow. And there was another piece of the same wire‐mesh spread across them. In the result, the light came through strained and pallid. It made the whole place seem as though a cold wet mist was filling it.

  But they were there now, they’d reached Percy’s private bed‐sitting‐room in this enormous block. The warder selected an out‐size key and thrust it into the out‐size key‐hole.

  ‘Why don’t they use Yale locks?’ Mr Josser found himself wondering. ‘Safe enough, aren’t they?’ – and opened the door.

  But the warder didn’t give him much time for stray thoughts. ‘In you go,’ he said.

  It wasn’t any easy interview.

  Percy seemed pleased enough to see Mr Josser. But he was preoccupied. Preoccupied and restless. And the boy didn’t look well, Mr Josser thought. He’d had a hair‐cut in the prison, and the barber had made a strictly regulation job of it. It was short at the back and sides and on top as well, with a broad fringe left in front for parting. The barber, who had been on this work for years, had only two styles up his sleeve. There was Percy’s kind, and the other kind. The other kind, for the men actually under sentence, didn’t have any fringe. Because his hair was cropped, the lines on Percy’s face stood out all the more strongly. And somehow they weren’t young lines any longer. The skin across the cheeks was drawn tight, and the skin under the eyes had dropped into little pouches. If Mr Josser hadn’t known where he was, he’d have said that Percy had been giving himself a few late nights.

  ‘I brought you some cigarettes, but they kept ’em downstairs,’ he said by way of an opening.

  Percy gave a kind of self‐conscious grin.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Ten a day. Doctor’s orders.’

  ‘Well, I’m… I’m glad they’re looking after you.’

  It was Mr Josser’s turn to give a self‐conscious grin.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ Percy asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Mr Josser told him. ‘Just a bit run down. She’s got to rest. That’s all it is.’

  ‘Is she asking after me?’

  ‘All the time, Percy boy. All the time.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Any one else asking?’

  Mr Josser considered.

  ‘They’re all asking,’ he explained. ‘All of ’em wanted to be remembered to you.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Who’s all?’ Percy asked.

  Mr Josser considered again.

  ‘Well, there’s Mrs Josser,’ he said. ‘She’s always asking.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Mr Josser answered. ‘There’s Connie. And Mr Puddy. They both ask.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Mum write?’

  ‘They won’t let her. I told you – she’s got to rest.’

  ‘It isn’t like Mum, not to write. She isn’t bad, is she?’

  ‘Oh, no, she’s not bad,’ Mr Josser said hurriedly. ‘Just got to take things easy.’

  ‘The last time Mum wrote the Sister wrote for her,’ Percy observed.

  It was in a flat detached sort of voice that he said it, as though he weren’t talking to Mr Josser directly. It was rather as though he weren’t talking to any one in particular, just stating a personal grievance.

  ‘Any of the others ever ask?’ he said at length.

  ‘Well, there’s Mr Squales: he does. And Mrs Vizzard, of course. She’s always asking.’

  ‘It isn’t Mum’s hands, is it?’

  Mr Josser pulled himself up. He’d been intending to mention Mrs Vizzard’s engagement. All the way up in the train he’d thought that Percy would like to hear about it. But the boy didn’t seem interested in anything ordinary like that any more.

  ‘Oh, no, her hands are all right,’ he said. ‘It’s simply that she’s lying down.’

  ‘Any of the chaps at the garage ever ask?’

  This stumped Mr Josser.

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ he said. ‘I don’t come across ’em. I guess they ask all right.’

  Then he thought of something else.

  ‘Doris asks,’ he went on. ‘She’s come back to Dulcimer Street now.’ This piece of information seemed to annoy Percy.

  ‘What’d she do that for?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s come home to get married,’ Mr Josser said.

  And as soon as he’d said it he was sorry. It seemed callous to talk about getting married to a man who was in Percy’s position. And he was right. Percy didn’t answer.

  ‘I’ve left you some clean clothes,’ Mr Josser said at length. ‘If there’s anything special you want you’ve only got to let me know.’

  Percy sucked in his cheeks and thought.

  ‘I’d like some more papers,’ he said. ‘I don’t see any papers here. Not new ones at least. Anything in them?’

  Mr Josser thought for a moment.

  ‘You’ve seen about the Pact?’ he asked.

  Percy shook his head.

  ‘The Nazis and the Bolshies have signed a non‐aggression pact. At least it isn’t signed yet, it’s only just been announced.’ Mr Josser paused. He’d forgotten about Percy for the moment and was wondering how he was going to explain that one away at the next Sitting: he couldn’t help looking as though he, as Foreign Secretary, had let things slip pretty badly. ‘It’s pretty serious,’ he went on. ‘There isn’t anything to stop Germany…’

  But Percy wasn’t listening.

  ‘I didn’t mean that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I meant anything about me.’

  4

  Mr Josser forgot all about the hairdresser until he was nearly home. And, because it was late already, he couldn’t risk the extra journey on to the Oval. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to go just across the way to Epson’s.

  It was clearly a mistake, because he wasn’t one of their regulars. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them. Or perhaps he didn’t make himself quite clear. Or perhaps it was an inexperienced assistant. Or perhaps it was just Epson’s way of turning out a hair‐cut. Whatever it was, they pretty nearly cro
pped him. He might have been Percy. Before Mr Josser could stop the man, he had run those galloping electric clippers all round the back and sides, and then he settled down in a grim determined sort of fashion to level off what remained. Even the little quiff of hair in front disappeared. Ten minutes after he had gone into Epson’s, Mr Josser emerged looking like a choirboy.

  He was so alarmed, indeed, by his appearance that he wouldn’t let the barber do anything about his moustache. His own man on the other side of the street would have known exactly what to do – three quick clips and it would have been finished. But here, Heaven knows what might have happened. He might have found himself with a Charlie Chaplin or a Ronald Colman or anything.

  Because he couldn’t get it attended to properly, it would have been better if he had simply left the thing alone altogether. But when he came to have a look at himself in the big mirror of the dressing‐table, he didn’t like doing that because the rest of his hair was so short. He was like an almost bald man with a great ragged moustache hanging down in front. After regarding it carefully from all angles he took out a pair of Mrs Josser’s cutting‐out scissors from the drawer and began making a few cautious snips.

  It was probably because the scissors were so large that he took off more than he had intended at the first operation. He was so busy with the part of the blade that he was looking at that he didn’t notice what the point was doing. And taking the thing as a whole it wasn’t a straight cut either. It made his entire face look lop‐sided. After that, there was nothing to do but to cut the other side level. And this made the moustache too shallow for its width. After studying it carefully again for a few minutes he decided to bring in the sides a bit. By the time he had finished it was a very tidy but also a very small moustache.