Mr Josser, however, was too much preoccupied to take much notice. He had been sitting up in his uncomfortable little chair, remembering Mr Barks. He and his silly thought were still with him. Looking across at Mrs Josser, he wondered more than once what she would say if she knew what he was thinking. And in between the bouts of silliness he found himself pondering on men to whom two hundred pounds was merely a bad taste in the mouth. It was a sober and chastening reflection.
Then suddenly Mrs Josser addressed him. She had the evening paper in her hand – the absence of the evening paper had been one of the things that were irritating her in the bedroom – and she was leaning forward eagerly.
‘Read that,’ she said.
Mr Josser took the paper, and his eyes followed her pointing finger. ‘Unique Tudor cottage, ½‐acre,’ was what he read. ‘3 bedrooms, large lounge, sitting‐room, usual offices, indoor san. 45 mins. town, high ground. Wonderful views. £500 or near offer.’
Mr Josser gave a gulp. What was the use? Unless he were able to curb that silly thought of his, he wouldn’t have £500 any more. He’d only have four hundred. And four hundred wasn’t a near offer. It would be for someone else – someone who didn’t have silly thoughts – for whom those wonderful views would be spread out.
‘Sounds like what we’re looking for,’ Mrs Josser remarked, evidently pleased at having found it herself. ‘I should write before it gets snapped up.’
There was a pause.
‘Don’t forget,’ she went on. ‘I’m never really sure with you unless I can see you actually doing it.’
Again Mr Josser didn’t answer immediately. Percy might have been there beside him, he seemed so near. Percy and Mr Barks and Mrs Boon and the rest of them.
‘I won’t forget,’ he said at last.
4
Uncle Henry was at his worst. His absolute worst. He would keep talking about the war. And nothing that you could say would persuade him that there wasn’t going to be one. He gave the peace another month at the outside.
He’d arrived, as usual, very late. Just as the Jossers were going to bed in fact. Mrs Josser was actually reaching up her arm to extinguish the gas when there was the sound of a bicycle wheel scraping up against the kerb outside and the faint tinkle – as though its owner had accidentally touched it – of one of those revolving bells.
Mr and Mrs Josser exchanged glances.
‘That’s your brother,’ Mr Josser remarked.
He always called Henry Mrs Josser’s brother when he was particularly annoyed with him. It was a simple and easy device for passing on the irritation.
And Mrs Josser did her best to pass it back again. She faced Mr Josser squarely, while they were waiting for the knock at the door, and addressed him.
‘And don’t you start any of your arguments,’ she said. ‘Just let him say what he has to say and seem to be agreeing with him. I don’t want it to be midnight before I’m in bed.’
A clatter on the knocker downstairs indicated that Uncle Henry was really there. He always announced himself as though he were a telegram.
‘You go down, Fred,’ Mrs Josser said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
From the moment Uncle Henry came inside the front door Mr Josser could tell that he was going to be difficult. There was a wild, cantankerous look in his eye and his hair was even more unruly than usual. He scarcely answered when Mr Josser remarked that it had turned quite chilly and looked like rain. Instead, he went straight on upstairs, looking like a tall gaunt schoolboy in those ridiculous knee‐breeches of his, and sat himself down in the centre chair. Even before Mrs Josser had rejoined them with the tea he had started off about Hitler and the writing on the wall.
And the tea did nothing to calm him down. On the contrary, it roused him and made him more eloquent. Under its influence he became inspired and Cassandra‐like and sat there, with his cup suspended, prophesying disaster. His customary historical sketch – Manchukuo… Abyssinia… Albania… the Spanish Civil War – was just over, and he had reached the present moment. It was now to‐day, August 24th, 1939, that was under discussion.
‘At this very moment,’ he was saying, ‘there is the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. The Pope’s broadcast to‐day. That means war if anything does.’
Mr Josser nodded his head sadly.
‘One by one,’ Uncle Henry went on, ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe – like in 1914.’
‘Certainly looks that way,’ Mr Josser admitted.
‘And in Downing Street,’ Uncle Henry continued, ‘there is a dead hand at the helm steering us to disaster.’
‘We’re getting Winston back,’ Mr Josser reminded him. ‘That’s something.’
‘Winston’s no dove of peace,’ Uncle Henry retorted.
Mr Josser was about to say something when he caught Mrs Josser’s eye. She was reminding him. Mr Josser allowed himself to go limp again.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said weakly. ‘Maybe he isn’t.’
The conversion of his brother‐in‐law to his point of view was so sudden that for the moment it caught Uncle Henry unawares. Then he recovered himself.
‘Do the common people want war?’ he demanded.
This didn’t seem quite fair. It was easy enough to agree with a man who had just said something. But it wasn’t nearly so easy to be sure that you were giving the right answer to someone who had merely asked a question. Mr Josser was on his guard.
‘No‐o‐o,’ he said warily.
‘And what’ll happen when their lords and masters in Whitehall tell them to go out and fight?’ Uncle Henry continued.
Mr Josser took a pull at his pipe before replying. Unless he were careful this was going to be Uncle Henry’s big opportunity. Mr Josser glanced at the clock – it showed five minutes to eleven already – and gave his answer. It was a brave one.
‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘They’ve had their lesson. 1914 taught it to them. They’ve seen what it’s like living in a land fit for heroes.’
They were almost Uncle Henry’s own words that he was using, and Mrs Josser was afraid for a moment that he was rather overdoing it.
His own words or not, however, the answer didn’t please Uncle Henry in the least. He dismissed the whole thing out of hand as nonsense.
‘Bah!’ he said. ‘They’ll go all right when the trumpet calls. They’ll go like a lot of bleeding sheep.’
Mr Josser suddenly found his brother‐in‐law even more vexing than usual. Vexing and silly. He wanted to tell him that sheep were quite unresponsive to trumpet calls. But he kept control of himself very carefully.
‘You know best,’ was all he said. He was very tired.
The very meekness of the answer seemed to stir up something in Uncle Henry. He felt that he was losing his grip on his audience. And, like a touring actor playing to a flat house, he gathered himself up for the attack across the footlights. Setting his cup down on the small table beside him, he stroked his moustache down over his mouth. Then blowing it up again, he began.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘I do know best. And perhaps if you read a little more you’d know, too. If you knew what was behind the Arcos case, you’d know the sort of people that were running this country. Only you don’t know and that’s what’s wrong with you. Well, I’ll tell you: Big Business. Vested Interests. Show me an M.P. and I’ll show you a Vested Interest. Cartels and combines – bah! Join the Left Book Club, and then you’ll know. There’s only one thing that may stop this war, and that’s a deal with Hitler. And let me tell you that there’s plenty in the City – and up in Birmingham for that matter – that’ll be ready to do a deal with him.’
‘Meaning Mr Chamberlain?’ Mr Josser asked.
He was leaning forward a little in his chair as he put the question.
‘Meaning Mr Chamberlain,’ Uncle Henry replied.
‘And meaning that he’d sell out to the Germans?’ Mr Josser went on.
‘Meaning exactly that,’
Uncle Henry told him. ‘Him and his kind like him. Profit motive, that’s what it is. Give them plenty of nice cheap labour and plenty of unemployment to keep it cheap and that’s all that they’re interested in. If they thought that Hitler was coming between them and their profits they’d sell their grandmothers to buy him off. That’s what England’s come to – profit before principle.’
Mr Josser got up from his chair and going over to the mantelpiece, set his shoulders against it.
‘The trouble with you, Henry,’ he said, ‘is that you’ve been reading too much. It’s gone to your head because you’re the excitable kind. If Hitler does anything else he’s for it. And he knows it.’
‘And what are we going to stop him with, I’d like to know?’
‘With our hands,’ said Mr Josser, who was surprised to find that his own hands were trembling. ‘With our hands because a lot of blooming cranks like you tried to do away with the whole bleeding army.’
In the end, it was nearly one o’clock before Uncle Henry left. The night was fine and very beautiful. Mr Josser stood on the top of the steps and watched Uncle Henry pedalling away down the long avenue of lights that the street lamps made. It seemed strange that in a world so peacefully sleeping there should be even one man as mad as Uncle Henry. Except that you didn’t have to go up in a steel‐lined, bomb‐proof lift, there wasn’t very much to choose between Uncle Henry’s book‐lined bedroom and the Führer’s tapestried study at Berchtesgaden.
Uncle Henry’s rear‐lamp flickered and was lost to sight round the corner.
‘Just the bomb‐proof lift. That’s the only difference,’ Mr Josser repeated. ‘The bomb‐proof lift. And the view.’
5
Dr Otto Hapfel, the little Nazi visitor, was taking a course in English Phonetics and Elocution. The lessons were held in an Acting Academy off Baker Street and Dr Hapfel, sitting very upright on a small gilt chair with his notebook open on his knees, was facing his teacher attentively. She was a large Duchess‐like woman who still played character parts when she could get them.
‘Remember, the “t” is almost entirely elided in colloquial speech,’ she was saying. ‘Try this one: “Wozzatime?”’
‘What is the time?’ Dr Hapfel repeated carefully.
‘Again: “Wozzatime?”’
‘Whatisthetime?’ Dr Hapfel intoned faster than before.
‘Say: “duzbin.”’
‘Dustbin.’
‘No: “duzbin.”’
‘Dustbin.’
‘Say: “brembutter.”’
‘Bread‐and‐butter.’
‘No: “brembutter.”’
‘Brem‐and‐butter.’
The teacher took a deep breath and went on.
‘Pickcher.’
‘Pic‐ture.’
‘Pickcher.’
‘Picture.’
‘Pynter milderbitter.’
‘Pint of mild and bitter.’
The old actress sighed. The intense little man was… was unproduceable.
‘Don’t move your lips. Don’t move your tongue. Don’t move your jaws,’ she told him. ‘Just say it. Try: “Hammernegs, roller‐butter.”’
‘Ham and eggs, roll and butter.’
‘Arjerdoo?’
‘Pliss?’ asked Dr Hapfel, puzzled.
But the old actress had given him up.
‘Yoowerd,’ she said.
Dr Hapfel understood that one.
‘You heard,’ he repeated delightedly.
Really he was trying very hard, because it was important that he should be able to speak this extraordinary language as well as write it. Otherwise he would not have been making the maximum use of his opportunities. All the way back in the bus he was saying over to himself ‘Wozzthetime?’ ‘Pynter mild and bitter,’ ‘Arjer you do?’
Really the study of High Cockney could be most interesting. It was only the idea of actually having to speak the language that appalled him.
Chapter XLIII
1
They’d known for a long time – for twenty‐one years in fact – that Doris’ twenty‐first birthday was coming. But somehow when it came they weren’t ready for it. Or, at least, it wasn’t what they had expected. After the engagement, it was an anti‐climax. And there was so much else in the air – Percy’s trial and troops moving on frontiers and gas‐mask inspections – that they didn’t really get down to the serious business of presents. Not until the last minute, that is.
All the same, the birthday party was a success. There was only one thing that spoilt it. And that was an unfortunate remark that someone made. But by then the evening was nearly over anyhow, and it was only for a passing moment that the whole evening seemed to have been ruined by it.
Admittedly, so far as Bill was concerned, the birthday had come at the worst possible moment. He’d been taking Doris out a good deal lately – nearly every night, in fact – and it had all been steadily eating up money in a quiet unspectacular fashion with nothing big and exciting to show, or even remember, for it. It was simply a succession of two‐and‐fours, and even one‐and‐nines, at the Regals and Orpheums and Lidos that had conspired to break him.
What was more he didn’t feel like asking his father for a special loan at the moment. The last time he had written – the time after asking for money for the ring – the old man hadn’t shown himself particularly understanding. All that Bill had got was a long rambling letter promising him a practice of his own one day, complaining of income tax at five shillings and sixpence in the pound and enclosing three one‐pound notes. It was the three pounds that hurt. Five was what he had expected and he felt as though he’d been docked somehow of the outstanding two. There is moreover something magical about five which is entirely lacking from a sum like three. Three, though generous in the circumstances, had all the elements of meanness about it.
But anyhow the three pound notes had gone long ago. For all the good that they had done him, his father might just as well have posted them straight off to the Regal or the Orpheum direct. As for himself, he was high and dry again. By the time he’d paid for his room he had twenty‐two and sixpence a week all told. And that wasn’t a lot of money when it came to evenings for two.
He had, as a matter of fact, been pretty badly depressed about himself lately. Being in love had something to do with it. But not all. He had carefully taken stock of himself and had decided that he was a failure. Nothing dramatic or sensational. Not a wrecked life – no morphine, no gambling, no mysterious women. Just a large, easygoing failure of twenty‐five with no qualifications, and no prospects.
He had even given up looking forward to the result of the Finals because he was so perfectly sure of what the result would be. And rather than wait for a slap in the eye from the Bursar, he decided to do something about it now. That was why he got out his suitcase, packed it full with text‐books and took it down to Lewis’s in Gower Street.
They are good people, Lewis’s, a kind of dignified Medical Faculty with commercial book‐selling as a side‐line. Like the serious‐minded academic beings they are, they care for second‐hand books almost as much as new ones, and they bought the whole suitcaseful without argument.
Then, with five pounds ten shillings in his pocket, Bill went straight along to Oxford Street and bought Doris a wrist‐watch for four guineas. It was a nice little thing in chromium about the size of a small trouser‐button and life began again for Bill from the moment he’d bought it. He spent another five shillings on a dozen roses, and armed with the two birthday presents he set off to meet Doris with all his self‐respect restored.
The watch and the roses weren’t the only presents that Doris was getting. Mr and Mrs Josser had bought her a string of imitation pearls. It was really Mr Josser’s present, and Mrs Josser hadn’t had much to say in it. For as long as he could remember Mr Josser had looked forward to the day when he could give his wife a pearl necklace: and for as long as she could remember Mrs Josser had resisted it. She had finally
told him that if the pearls were good ones she’d never know another moment’s peace with such a piece of extravagance in the house; and, if they weren’t, she wouldn’t be seen dead wearing them.
So that was that. And, in the result, Mr Josser packed nearly forty years of pleasure into the purchase of the pearls for Doris. He paid thirty‐five shillings for them, and that included a snap‐over morocco leather case with the name of the jeweller on it. Every time he took the pearls out and looked at them, Mr Josser became a reflective and philosophic man: his feelings as a father were all mixed up with his emotions as a husband, and he found himself going back over the years in a great flood‐tide of sentiment. Doris looked at times very much as her mother had once looked and Mr Josser derived a lot of simple satisfaction from the fact.
There were other presents as well. A pair of paste earrings arrived from Dawlish together with a note from Bill’s mother. Ted and Cynthia between them gave Doris a new handbag. And Uncle Henry, rendered indulgent by the occasion, posted her a fountain‐pen. It was rather a good fountain‐pen, specially labelled ‘Lady’s Model’ on the box. The only thing against it was that instead of a clip it had a ring on top; it was the sort of thing that was meant to be carried on the end of a long ribbon. Mrs Josser, however, wouldn’t hear anything against it. She said that Uncle Henry had meant it very nicely, and that Doris might be glad of that kind of pen some day.
Apart from the family, No. 10 itself showed up pretty handsomely, too. Mrs Vizzard sent her up a handkerchief sachet that she’d embroidered herself. Mr Puddy wished her many happy returns of the day when he met her on the stairs. And Connie passed on a lipstick with a new refill that she happened to have picked up at the Club. Added to all this, the girls in the office had collected together and given her a large box of chocolates.
The only person who didn’t send her anything – not that she really expected it – was Doreen. As the birthday drew nearer Doris had found herself thinking quite a lot about Doreen. And not forgivingly, either. She told herself that if Doreen should send her a present of any sort she would send it straight back again. And she meant it. All the same, when the morning arrived and there was nothing, she was disappointed.
London Belongs to Me Page 46
