Everything else, however, was perfect. For a start, there was Bill waiting for her down on the pavement in Lincoln’s Inn when she came out of the office. He made her put on the wrist‐watch straightaway despite the fact that she was already wearing one. He even insisted on breaking one of the roses off short and giving it to her to wear. She’d never known him gayer and more lively and it all seemed a part of the evening when, bulging with money as he was, he insisted on taking a taxi all the way home.
The party started from the moment they arrived. It was Ted’s half‐day at the Co‐op., and Ted and Cynthia had arrived early. But Ted was preoccupied. His only thought was for his wife. He just sat there silently worshipping her. There were dark romantic places in his soul that no one would ever have suspected from his appearance, and it still seemed to him miraculous that the golden‐haired usherette of the electric‐torch, she who had once seemed so aloof and goddess‐like, should now be the mother of his child. He encouraged her to wear that idiotically unsuitable little bow in her hair because it reminded him of the first time he had seen her, and made the present moment seem more wonderful still.
Doris was very fond of her brother. He was so sensible and unworrying. He was the sort of person you could always go to if you were in trouble. She saw him as someone – almost as something – that would be there for ever, solid, untalkative, and very, very reliable. She wished all the same that he would be a bit more free and easy in his dress. Beside Bill’s sports coat and grey flannels, Ted always looked so frightfully formal and unrelaxed.
It was the black coat and striped trousers and stiff collar that did it. And it was even worse when he wore his bowler as well. But it would have made no difference even if she had spoken to him about it. He knew what he was up to. The Co‐operative Movement is a steady‐going unflashy affair with a nonconformist tradition and no frills to it. And Ted dressed carefully to match.
When they sat down at the table Mr Josser, who’d seemed rather quiet and preoccupied at first, sprang his little surprise on them. He’d bought a bottle of South African sherry‐type wine and they all had a glass. It was good strong stuff with the sun‐baked heat of the Veldt in it, and it rather took your breath away if you weren’t prepared for it. Cynthia choked, and even Bill said ‘Ah’ when he’d had a mouthful. But it was just the stuff to set an evening going. Within five minutes they were all chattering like natives.
The only thing was that the conversation took a wrong turn from the start. When Bill’s glass had been filled for the second time, he insisted on drinking toasts. And one of the toasts was, ‘To the cottage in the country, to the honeysuckle over the door.’
It seemed an innocent enough sort of thing to say because he and Mr Josser had spent a lot of time in talking about cottages: by now he knew almost as much about the sort of cottage that Mr Josser wanted as Mr Josser did himself. And, when he said it, Mrs Josser raised her glass at once and looked affectionately across in Mr Josser’s direction.
‘Have you found anything yet?’ Ted went on.
‘We’re on to a little beauty,’ Mrs Josser said enthusiastically. ‘We’re going down to see it, together. Aren’t we, Fred? Have you heard from the agents yet?’
Then the extraordinary thing occurred. Mr Josser went very red and bent low down over his plate.
‘Not yet,’ he said at last.
‘You did write, didn’t you?’ Mrs Josser asked him.
Mr Josser shook his head.
‘Not write!’ Mrs Josser said in amazement.
Mr Josser only shook his head again.
‘But it was Monday I showed you.’
‘I know.’
He did know only too well. And the tragic thing was that even though he knew he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t get up in front of every one and say that it was on Monday that he’d had a silly thought about Percy. Besides he didn’t want to be reminded. He wanted to forget all about it for this evening at least. And by then perhaps he’d have been able to sort things out in his mind a little better.
But Mrs Josser was mystified and indignant.
‘It’s a downright shame,’ she said. ‘That’s what it is. It was on a bus route and everything. And now someone else has probably got it. I’ve always said you didn’t get after things.’
It was only the fact that they had finished the veal and ham pie and were now waiting for the fruit salad that interrupted her. She got up angrily and began clearing away. It didn’t help things that Mr Josser was angry with himself as well.
The meal brightened up again, however, with the fruit salad. It very nearly brightened up too much, in fact. There was apparently only one thing that Bill and Ted had in common – and that was usherettes. Bill had made a dead set on Cynthia right from the start, even though it was Doris’ birthday. He even showed her how to drink water out of the wrong side of the glass as a cure for hiccoughs. And Cynthia, like the silly little thing she was, of course responded. She had made quite a mess on the tablecloth before Mrs Josser put a stop to it.
But Mr Josser was relieved by the distraction. Even a little tension and unpleasantness between Bill and Mrs Josser was preferable to talking about cottages. And, though he didn’t know it, there was another distraction already on its way. It was Connie. She’d been timing things to the minute, fitting in a social call before she had to go along to the night club. She would have liked to come down earlier. But how could she? She hadn’t been invited. All that she could do was to pay an unexpected fleeting visit, and stop on. So she tiptoed down and stood at the door listening. Then, with the look of surprise all ready on her face, she knocked on the door and peeped inside.
‘My, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know it was a party. I only looked in to see how Doris liked the lipstick.’
Doris looked up.
‘Oh, Connie, it’s simply lovely,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’ Connie remained hanging in the doorway.
‘What a relief,’ she exclaimed. ‘I was afraid about the colour. I thought perhaps it was too… too…’ She had succeeded in disengaging herself from Doris and catching Cynthia’s eye. ‘And how’s the little baby?’ she asked. ‘She’s getting to be quite a big girl now, isn’t she?’ Then it was Bill that she managed to fasten on to. ‘So your young lady’s grown up at last,’ she observed. And turning to Mrs Josser she added, ‘You’ll have to look out now. You never know what may happen.’
There was silence when she had finished and Connie thought for a moment that she had lost – that they weren’t going to invite her to join them. It looked as though Connie, sixpence out of pocket over the refill, would simply have to make her way to the night club, solitary and uncheered. But it was Mr Josser who rescued her.
‘Why don’t you come in for a minute?’ he asked. ‘We’ve just finished.’ Connie paused.
‘Well, I really don’t know if I should,’ she answered, closing the door behind her and going over to one of the vacant chairs. ‘But just to drink Doris’ health as it were.’
It was Bill who helped her over the next stage. He winked across at Mr Josser.
‘But you haven’t got anything to drink it in,’ he said.
Mrs Josser looked at him hard. She was still annoyed with Bill because of that piece of silliness about water‐drinking. And this open hospitality to Connie, coming on top of Mr Josser’s indiscretion in having invited her in, was intolerable. But, without being openly rude, there was nothing that she could do about it.
‘Pour her out a drink, Fred,’ was all she said.
‘Well, I didn’t expect this. I certainly didn’t,’ Connie replied exultantly.
She raised the glass gaily to her lips and smiled across at Doris. And then something happened that even afterwards Connie couldn’t excuse in herself, much less explain. It was simply that a little trigger in her mind ticked over and she remembered an earlier evening in the same room, when Percy and his mother had been there, too. The rest just followed naturally.
‘To absent fri
ends,’ she said.
She tried, of course, to laugh it off. But the laugh wouldn’t come. Not naturally, at least. And no one else laughed at all. From the silence, the perfectly horrid silence, it was obvious that every one knew exactly whom she meant.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to drink up and get off. Within five minutes of going down there she was back upstairs again, putting her hat on. She stood quite still in the centre of the room looking round at the bleakness of it.
‘You’re getting old, Connie,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost your touch. You’re breaking up…’
2
It was the dream that did it. Just when Mr Josser had finally put his silly thought right out of his head – and it was a silly thought, flinging away a hundred pounds of his own money on Percy’s defence, which had all been arranged for any way – he had to go and have a dream about Percy. As it turned out, it was a very expensive, almost a crippling, sort of dream.
Not that it was a nightmare, or anything grisly. But it woke Mr Josser up, and after he was awake, he couldn’t get off to sleep again. It started innocently enough in just the sort of cottage that Mr Josser had been wanting. It was white. With lots of honeysuckle. And a dove‐cot. And one of those great over hanging trees of the kind that spread their arms in dreams. It was four o’clock – for some reason or other Mr Josser was very sure about the time – and they were all having tea on the lawn. There was Mrs Josser, and Ted and Cynthia and Baby, and Bill and Doris with a baby of their own by now, and even Connie in her summery‐mummery. All of them in fact. There was lettuce for tea. And some freshly made rock‐cakes. And there were wasps round the jam. Altogether it was a perfect garden tea in summer. Perfect except for one thing, that is. And that one thing was Percy. He was walking round and round the cottage outside the thickset hedge that marked the limits of the garden. In places where the hedge was high they could only see his head or his head and shoulders. In other places, they could see nearly the whole of him. He was wearing his light check suit and his pale grey hat and he was smoking. The cigarette hung out of his mouth as it always did, almost as though it were on a hinge. And all the time Percy was walking round, he was looking at them. Looking at them as though he wanted to say something. As though he wanted to join them. But not saying anything. Not attempting to lift the latch of the little wicket‐gate and come in to them. Finally, it was Connie who said what they were all thinking. And she said it in between bites of rock‐cake.
‘He’ll feel better when he’s been dead a bit longer,’ she remarked. ‘Naturally he feels a bit strange at first. He hasn’t got any other friends. And probably no one’s told him that we aren’t expected to take any notice of him. Not after he’s been hanged…’
Mr Josser woke up with a jerk. ‘Better when he’s been dead a bit longer. Not expected to take any notice of him,’ he kept repeating, until Mrs Josser woke up, too, and asked him why he was muttering.
At breakfast there was only one letter for Mr Josser. And that was a bill. A bill from the caterer for Percy’s meals in prison. Judging by the size of it, too, Percy must have got his appetite back. It was the biggest bill yet. Three and sixpence more than last week. And, studying it in detail, Mr Josser saw why. Percy had been having puddings. They must have been Percy’s own idea, the puddings, because Mr Josser hadn’t said anything about them.
The sight of the bill temporarily banished the memory of the dream. At the sight of the one pound two and sixpence that he would have to pay, Mr Josser grew angry. It was one pound two and sixpence that he should have been spending on his own family. And apparently there was to be no end to it. He had paid five weeks’ bills already, and still the trial didn’t look like coming any nearer. Mr Josser felt he’d had enough of it.
Mrs Josser glanced across at him for a moment.
‘It ought to be the Government that pays, not Clarice,’ was what she said.
Mr Josser did not attempt to explain. He hadn’t done so earlier and it seemed a bit late now.
The amount of the bill was still rankling inside him when he set out on his rounds to go rent‐collecting. The amount of the bill, and the dream. Particularly the dream. For some reason it had come back clearer than ever. And this annoyed him. Because in the ordinary way he rather enjoyed getting on with his own private thoughts while on the Building Society’s business. Mr Josser was the only one who knew how little his mind was really on his work. While one part of him was padding from doorstep to doorstep picking up the seven and sixes and ten shillingses, the other part – the more important part – was training wisteria up the sides of little thatched cottages or holding a warm brown egg in his hand and admiring the chicken that had just laid it.
But now, because of the dream, all that was impossible. He kept remembering, very plainly, how things were. If he had the cottage, Mr Barks couldn’t have the extra hundred pounds. And if Mr Barks didn’t have the extra hundred, Percy was as good as done for. It knocked all the fun and sparkle out of the cottage thinking about it like that. And it didn’t seem fair to have his cottage spoiled for him in this way before he’d even got into it. It didn’t seem fair. Especially not now when Mrs Josser was so keen on it, too. It didn’t seem right.
In the result, Mr Josser was sharper and more brusque than he had ever been. He simply pocketed the half‐crowns and sixpences, scribbled his initials in the right‐hand column and went away again. He didn’t even stop to ask after people whom he knew perfectly well were ill. And as for excuses about non‐payment, he came down on them with both feet. No. 23 Birkbeck Street was so surprised that it paid up without objection.
Mr Josser was in such a vile temper, in fact, that he was rude to the girl in the Express Dairy where he had lunch. It wasn’t in the least the girl’s fault. Mr Josser recognised that. It wasn’t even anything to do with the cabinet pudding that had custard with it instead of white sauce. It was simply the old business of Percy and the cottage. Mr Josser was so much ashamed of himself that he tried to apologise to the girl before leaving. But it was no use. He didn’t remember properly which waitress had served him and he picked out the wrong girl to apologise to. She couldn’t make head or tail of what he was saying and thought that he was complaining again. She was rather a rude girl.
Mr Josser came away from the tea‐shop more out of sorts than he had gone in. And all the time on his afternoon calls the figure of Percy went with him. Not side by side. But some distance ahead. His cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and his head half‐turned over his shoulder as though he wanted to say something. As though he wanted to wait for Mr Josser to join him.
‘He’ll feel better when he’s been dead a bit longer,’ Mr Josser found himself saying. ‘Nobody’s told him we aren’t expected to take any notice of him.’
3
Taken altogether, it was Mr Puddy’s bad week. First, the collapse of his store cupboard. And now – a sharp difference with his employers. As a result they’d parted. It hadn’t been any of Mr Puddy’s choosing and he was frankly sorry about having to go. But there was a point of principle at stake. And, from the way they had put it to him, there was nothing for it but to resign. It all began over the matter of a few boxes. They were empties admittedly. But in size and awkwardness they were crates. And they had a habit of turning up on a van just after the works had closed for the night and Mr Puddy had taken over.
On the first two occasions, the foreman had put it to Mr Puddy as a favour that he should shift the boxes so that the work‐people wouldn’t go falling over them next morning. And, as a favour, Mr Puddy had agreed. But only as a favour. For it soon became apparent that the thing was going to be a pretty serious imposition. If Mr Puddy didn’t look out he realised that he’d very soon find himself shifting boxes all night instead of just quietly going on his rounds, or sitting in his little room waiting in the manner of his profession for something to happen so that he could go and attend to it.
And when the foreman got nasty, Mr Puddy got nasty, too. He refused.
So the whole matter was referred to the manager. And that didn’t do Mr Puddy any good. The manager was a rough, unpolished sort of man who said that for the better part of thirty years he’d wondered what night‐watchmen did to keep awake, and suggested that a bit of lifting and carrying would be good for Mr Puddy’s figure.
This was too much for Mr Puddy. He said that two people could be personal if one started it, only he didn’t propose to make himself the other one. He also said that if the firm wanted a heavy‐labourer to work right through the night, they ought to advertise for him instead of trying to get the work done on the cheap by someone who’d been engaged for something else. Keeping dignity on his side and declining to bandy so much as one further word with the foreman, Mr Puddy just walked out. It made in all the seventeenth different job that he’d seen the back of.
Not that there was any real cause for despair. Only for a sort of general depression. Seventeen was an awful lot of jobs to have got through. But this time he had been let down gently. Just opposite the gate was the warehouse of the United Empire Tea Company. There was a little frame hanging up beside the front door announcing vacancies. And one of the vacancies was for a night watchman. Within one hour of resigning – on principle, remember – Mr Puddy was fixed up in a new job. The pay wasn’t quite so good. It was five shillings a week less, in fact. But there were compensations. The United Empire Tea Company gave their night watchman a nice little room of his own with a proper stove where he could do his bit of cooking. Mr Puddy quite looked forward to the evenings that he would spend there. Apart from the money – and no man likes earning less as he gets older – the only difference in the two jobs was that he was now guarding the south side of Larkin Street instead of the north.
London Belongs to Me Page 47
