London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘It’s just one of those things that had to happen,’ he explained. ‘If he hadn’t volunteered now he’d have been sent for in a few months’ time. They’ll be wanting all the doctors they can get, especially the young ones. As it is, he’s gone in on his own terms and that always counts double.’

  The Davenports on the other hand sided heavily with Doris. Dr Davenport wrote Bill a long, rambling letter asking him what was going to happen about his Fellowship now; and Mrs Davenport was so convinced that he was going to be killed straightaway that she could not get further than repeating over and over again that he was her only son and that it was his duty to take care of himself.

  The one point on which Mrs Josser and the Davenports were absolutely agreed was that it was a good thing that Bill and Doris were only engaged and not actually married.

  3

  Doris took a day from the office, to help Bill buy his uniform. She didn’t tell Mrs Josser anything about it. So far as No. 10 Dulcimer Street was concerned, she left at the usual time. But instead of keeping on the tram as far as the Temple, she got off at Charing Cross and made her way to the hospital.

  She found Bill in an engrossed, preoccupied state of mind. He was studying a long roneo‐ed list and ticking off such items as ‘Sam Browne, 1’; ‘Toilet case, 1’; ‘Steel mirror, 1’; ‘Khaki socks, 4 pairs’; ‘Revolver, 1.’ There was something strangely mediæval about the whole business. Because he was an officer and a gentleman, the army was providing him with absolutely nothing. It expected him to present himself to his monarch fully equipped for the battlefield, and ready to die in his own clothes. Admittedly, there was the grant. But this, too, had a mediæval flavour to it. The thought was kindly, but the amount was not enough. If any officer had presented himself on parade without his socks and forage cap, not to mention things like a swagger cane and kid gloves, the army would have had only itself to blame for it.

  It was Moss Bros. they went to. And Moss Bros. have been in the game for a long time. There is nothing about army etiquette that is not known to the brothers Moss and their descendants. In war‐time the shop is practically a government department. Without it, the quartermaster‐general wouldn’t be able to equip an army in time. As it is, you can rush in at one door, a civilian, and come out of the other, fitted up with a uniform and knee‐boots and a pith helmet and a safari collapsible bath and an aluminium water‐purifier, a complete soldier, in fact, all within half an hour.

  It took Bill rather longer because Doris was with him. She wouldn’t let him have the first thing the assistant showed him, even though it seemed all right to Bill. She made the little assistant go backwards and forwards with his arms full of jackets and khaki pullovers and greatcoats. And she made Bill stand up properly and not sag from the shoulders in the way he generally did. If he had to be a soldier at all, she was determined that he should be the neatest, most immaculate modern man‐of‐war, one pip up, who had ever presented himself at the gates of Sandhurst.

  While they were still there another officer recruit arrived. Aged apparently about sixteen, and as innocent‐looking as a choir‐boy, he came in with a large, masterful lady – obviously his mother – and asked nervously if he could look at uniforms. On the whole, the mother seemed the more promising officer material. She might have been playing the Spirit of Knightsbridge in a civic pageant. Doris looked from Bill to the choir‐boy and back at Bill again. It was going to be a queer war before it was over.

  But for some reason or other, the fun of buying uniforms had ended abruptly. They had left Moss Bros. and walked along together arm‐in‐arm. It was a part of London where the buildings were uniformly dingy and the streets were uniformly full of odds and ends from Covent Garden Market – old sacks, and banana ends and cabbage stalks. She felt dingy, too. Quite suddenly she disliked everything to do with military uniforms – their silly little bits and pieces, the trousers without turn‐ups, the sparkling buttons, the catches for the belt – everything.

  She simply wanted Bill to go on sagging about in an old sports coat and a pair of flannels for ever.

  Chapter LIV

  In the end, when he had heard nothing, it was Mr Squales who wrote to Mrs Jan Byl suggesting that he should go down to the country to visit her. He spent a lot of time on the letter, even making a few rough notes on the backs of old envelopes. After all it was an important letter. A large part – remembering Mocking Bear’s inaccurate predictions, possibly the only part – of his professional future lay in that direction. That was why he had to be so deucedly careful. One false sentence and he might as well have saved the stamp.

  He felt better once he’d actually put the letter into the pillar‐box. There was a kind of cheering magic to it, like a bet on long odds or the promise of an engagement. And it went deeper than that. It kindled something right down inside him. Because he was naturally a profound and psychological sort of chap he went on thinking about it. And in the end he saw it all quite clearly. It was only natural really. It was because his fiery independence, that had been damped down lately, was now blazing up again. Some men would have been ready to batten on a woman’s love and lose themselves with it. But not, he thanked God, this one. No, he was a doer, not a done‐by. He was, he supposed, really more of the Leader‐Type.

  Mrs Vizzard noticed at once that his high spirits had returned. And she was glad of them. For the last two or three days he had been moody, aloof, preoccupied, and she had been worried about him. But this was the original Enrico Qualito with whom she had fallen in love. He took her hand in his and kissed it before he kissed the face that was put up for him, and his conversation had the whimsical lift to it that she found so adorable.

  ‘Was my little kitten really so worried,’ he asked her teasingly, ‘because her big strong man went out for a walk without her? Did she think that he was never coming back?’

  Adorable. But, at the same time, frightening. And even sinister. She enjoyed the teasing – Mr Vizzard, the departed, had never been a teaser – but it was the subtlety of it that alarmed her. It was almost as though Mr Squales had guessed where her deep fears lay.

  But, for the sake of the long delicious evening that stretched ahead of them, she concealed her feelings. The weekly copy of The Spirit World lay on the occasional table and perhaps later Mr Squales would read her extracts from the letter‐column. They were wonderful letters – full of glimpses through the veil, and teleportations and proofs of survival – and read in Mr Squales’ rich baritone they were like listening to a vox humana that could actually pronounce words.

  But before the letters, there was the Guinness. Twelve small dark bottles of the stuff were ranged along the wall of the pantry outside. It had been Mr Squales’ idea, the Guinness. Mrs Vizzard herself was a teetotaler, an abstainer, almost a Rechabite. Or, at least, had been until a month ago. Then Mr Squales – practically a Rechabite himself, he had told her – had become worried about her. It was her paleness in particular that was distressing to him. He had thought first of pills, patent medicines, proprietary tonics – but he had dismissed the idea. Then the idea of Guinness suddenly occurred to him. And, in the matter of Guinness, he was inflexible. He insisted. For supper every night she now had half a glass of Dublin stout; and because it was no good since it had been opened, as Mr Squales explained to her, he finished the bottle for her. It was the first of the third dozen that she was preparing to open for him – no, for her – to‐night.

  The meal was a simple one. But it included something that was very dear to Mr Squales – pickled onions. And there was a reason for it, he said. It was a throw‐back to his Spanish and Italian ancestors who had practically lived on onions and garlic. He had just eaten the last one and, a thin mist of perspiration across his forehead, he was back in his chair waiting for Mrs Vizzard to make the tea.

  But it was actually a changed and saddened Mr Squales who now sat beside the fire. All through the meal he had been supported and exalted by the thought of visiting Mrs Jan Byl. The prospect had e
xpanded and developed itself within his mind. Unless there was a frequent local bus‐service – which seemed unlikely – she would have to send the car to the station to meet him. And she would surely have to invite him to lunch. And tea as well. And possibly dinner. Dinner: he fastened on the thought. If dinner, how could she avoid asking him to stay the night? And then it would truly have been a worth‐while outing, a real buster. ‘She must surely invite me for the night,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘After all she’s sixty miles from London.’

  Then, quite suddenly a cloud had descended on him. Suppose she did invite him for the night, what on earth was he going to wear? And how was he going to explain to Mrs Jan Byl that Enrico Qualito, the well‐known West End medium, hadn’t got so much as a dinner‐jacket to his name? Or should it be tails? Or hunting pink? How the devil was he to know what guests at country‐house parties wore in the evenings until he’d been to one to find out? And by then it would be too late and he might have disgraced himself.

  In the end, just as the tea came in, he had decided on a dinner‐jacket; a dinner‐jacket with a white waistcoat and something a trifle out of the ordinary in the way of ties. A sort of bow‐cravate, for example. And possibly a fob. But only possibly. Unsure as to its uses, indefinite as to its method of suspension – was it from a brace‐button? he wondered – a fob was nevertheless something that he had always hankered after.

  But even the plain dinner‐jacket presented a man‐sized problem for the moment. He could of course ask for it outright, and he had no doubt that Kitty would give it to him. But there was something inside him that made it impossible to ask. No, he told himself, it was just one of those things that he couldn’t do. It was the price of pride.

  And so, after he had drunk a cup of tea and read a letter from a dead cat taken down in trance state by its mistress in Tulse Hill, he tried a different approach altogether. Leaving The Spirit World open on his knee, he addressed Mrs Vizzard in a thoughtful, far‐away sounding kind of voice as though he were speaking his thoughts aloud.

  ‘Would it disappoint you, Kitty,’ he asked pensively, ‘if I gave up my calling altogether and entered commerce? A bank perhaps. Or possibly insurance.’

  Mrs Vizzard was startled.

  ‘Insurance might be all right,’ she answered. ‘I’m sure you could sell insurance.’

  It was the wrong response altogether, and Mr Squales was temporarily thrown out by it. But he recovered himself.

  ‘Tell me first,’ he said, ‘would it disappoint you? Would you feel that I had betrayed anything?’

  Mrs Vizzard paused. Her eyes were shining.

  ‘Not if you went on with Spiritualism in the evenings,’ she told him. ‘There are plenty of mediums who do other jobs as well. Good jobs, too, some of them.’

  This was getting worse and worse. Mr Squales got up from his chair and faced her.

  ‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘If I turn my back on mediumship I turn my back on it for ever. I cannot play with my talents.’

  There was a deep rusty rumble in his voice as he said it and Mrs Vizzard’s heart began to break. She realised now what a struggle was going on inside him.

  ‘But why should you give it up when you’re just… just getting started?’ she asked him.

  Mr Squales paused.

  ‘That is what I cannot tell you,’ he replied slowly.

  Mrs Vizzard grasped the arms of her chair.

  ‘But you must,’ she told him. ‘Has anything gone wrong?’ ‘Nothing has gone wrong,’ he answered. ‘Nothing that you in your sweetness, or I in my folly, could have prevented.’

  There was another long pause and Mrs Vizzard let go of the arms of her chair to reach for her handkerchief. She was on the edge of tears already.

  ‘But what is it?’ she insisted. ‘What is it that we couldn’t prevent?’ This time the answer came soon enough. Covering his face with his two hands he told her.

  ‘My poverty,’ he said. ‘My accursed poverty.’

  And it was the voice of a soul in agony speaking.

  ‘But you’ve got me,’ Mrs Vizzard blurted out between her tears. ‘Everything that I’ve got is yours, too.’

  She rose and tried to fling herself into his arms as she said it, but Mr Squales repelled her.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t. You must let me bear my load alone. You make everything too easy. Too easy, and too difficult.’

  Now Mrs Vizzard was really crying. After all, it had come as a most unexpected shock to her. At one moment the two of them had been sitting quietly in front of the empty grate with the Japanese fan stuck into it in place of the coals, and then at the next Mr Squales was suddenly laying his poor ruined life at her feet and refusing to let her help him to pick it up again. It was enough to make any woman cry.

  They stood there like that for some moments, completely separate, like strangers. Then, under the strain, Mr Squales broke down as well. He came towards her.

  ‘Oh, Kitty, Kitty,’ he said in a low voice, ‘how can I ever forgive myself ? I’ve made you cry.’

  With that he opened wide his arms and she came to him.

  After that, the actual matter of the dinner‐jacket was really ridiculously simple. He didn’t, of course, tell her outright. She had to wheedle the truth out of him bit by bit. But when she learnt it there wasn’t a trace of resistance on her part. Rather the contrary in fact. She had always liked the late Mr Vizzard best on Lodge evenings when he wore a boiled shirt. And in looks – though she hated to confess it even to herself – Mr Vizzard had been absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison to Mr Squales.

  So that was settled. And Mr Squales, now that his first embarrassments were over, explained to Mrs Vizzard that for the best séances, the really serious West End ones which the international mediums attended, every one wore dinner‐jackets. He didn’t defend the practice. Privately he even thought it rather silly that Revelation should depend on such things. But there it was. And there was nothing that he could do to alter it.

  ‘It’s a sorry reflection of the times we live in,’ he summed up, ‘to think that between some of us and the other world, between groping blindly like moles and seeing the bright light like eagles, the only barrier is a mere trumpery matter of dress…’

  They said good‐night very tenderly before Mr Squales withdrew into his lonely little room. Mrs Vizzard was like a child as she put up her face to be kissed. But not altogether like one. She was standing exactly under the harsh light of the gas‐bracket above the mantel, and when Mr Squales put his arms around her, she closed her eyes. He stood there regarding her. Admittedly it wasn’t altogether a fair inspection. Crying had done its worst to her. But, even without the swollen eyelids and the redness round the nostrils, it couldn’t by any stretch have been called a young face. Those high cheek‐bones had an unmistakably stretched and ageing look about them.

  Because the awaited kiss didn’t come, Mrs Vizzard opened her eyes again and their gaze met. He smiled at her – his deep, perplexing smile – and she smiled back.

  ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to be careful,’ he told himself. ‘She’d half kill me if she knew what I was thinking.’

  Chapter LV

  Percy had grown a moustache. Not just from vanity either. But because he had to have something to do.

  It wasn’t any fun waiting. Not by any means it wasn’t. He’d had too much of it lately. Two of them in a room about the size of a lock‐up in a garage – and They called this a civilised country. He hadn’t got any personal quarrel with the particular warders who used to come in and sit with him. As warders go, he supposed they were all right. He didn’t even think of them as Them. But it doesn’t take a thought‐reader to calculate how sick you can get of the same faces in the same setting day in and day out. Worked it in shifts too, as though he were too precious to be left for a single moment. When the bald one went off, Scottie took over and when Scottie handed in his ticket, there was a dark melancholy one who came in. Then the bald one ag
ain, then Scottie, and so on.

  On the whole it was the dark melancholy one who was the worst. But Scottie was bad, too. He told stories. He had a whole collection of them. Seven or eight at least. And he enjoyed telling them. They weren’t bad stories, and the first time he heard them Percy thought he was going to enjoy them too. Even now, they were better than the bald one’s attempts at conversation. He was a one man’s Brains Trust, was Scottie, and used to begin every fresh incident with ‘When I was in…’ He’d been a sailor and was an awful liar, too. Either that or he’d had the same things happen to him over and over again in Johannesburg and Melbourne and Vancouver and Trinidad. Percy tried nowadays not to listen when Scottie started talking.

  It was really because of the stories, and Scottie’s experiences, and the sheer murky gloom of the dark warder that Percy had started off on his moustache. Not that it was anything new to him. He’d had two moustaches before. One when he was about seventeen just to show that he could grow it. And the second only a year ago when he’d played about with the idea of a toothbrush. But this was something a whole lot more ambitious. This was one right across. Only thin, like à la Colman. He’d been working on it for a week now. And the one thing about it that was wrong was that Percy was so fair that it was only when the light caught it that you could see it at all.

  In any case, shaving in prison was a funny business. They didn’t just give you a razor and a shaving‐brush and some soap and leave you to it. Not Them. They were far too anxious about Their razor‐blades. From the time you’d got the thing in your hand They didn’t take Their eyes off you. Just to tease, Percy used to turn his back sometimes and pretend to start fiddling. It was comic, and it always worked. Trying not to look anxious, the warder used to come sliding round to see what he was up to … On the whole, Percy supposed that They were right to take precautions. After all, there are some pretty desperate characters in every prison. He’d read about men who’d picked their veins open with a pin in the night just so that they should escape what the Law had intended. Plucky all right. But messy to clear up in the morning.