London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  Chiddingly?

  Chiddingly! Good heavens, it was his destination. And already the train was moving out again.

  That was how it was that Professor Enrico Qualito flung himself on the platform for his country‐house week‐end, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat undone and his shoes gaping. A crumpled copy of Everybody’s Weekly was clutched in his hand.

  2

  It was Mrs Jan Byl’s chauffeur who sorted him out, picked up the big leather valise that had once been Mr Vizzard’s, and recovered the copy of Everybody’s Weekly when Mr Squales dropped it.

  ‘I… I must have been asleep,’ Mr Squales said vaguely.

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  He seemed a respectful, deferential sort of man, the chauffeur. And Mr Squales’ spirits returned to him. He retied his cravat and buttoned up his waistcoat. Except that his shoes were still sliding about like small pontoons under him, he felt more himself again. This, after a false start, was more like it. Walking behind the chauffeur he allowed himself, so far as his shoes permitted, a faint swagger, an undefinable something, in his gait.

  And the car in the station yard fully justified it. The chauffeur opened the door and Mr Squales stepped into a large, rather old‐fashioned drawing‐room, upholstered entirely in Bedford cord. He sank back further than he expected so that his feet momentarily rose in the air, and when he had recovered himself the chauffeur wrapped a fur rug round him as if he were delicate.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Squales involuntarily.

  It was some distance to the house and he amused himself by playing with the little cut‐glass bottles that were mounted into the side of the car at his elbow. Only one had anything in it and it nearly took his head off when he sniffed it. It was smelling‐salts. After that, he left Mrs Jan Byl’s playthings alone and rehearsed his policy for the week‐end.

  ‘If there’s any suggestion of hunting or shooting or anything like that,’ he told himself, ‘I shall just have to be firm about it. It’ll be all right so long as I don’t seem to be apologising. I’ll just go up to my room and stay there till they come back. They can’t be gone all day. And Mrs Jan Byl couldn’t possibly hunt. Not with that figure.’

  Bridge? That was another difficulty. Mr Squales didn’t play bridge. ‘I may have to have a shot at it all the same, just to make up a foursome,’ he reflected unenthusiastically. ‘I know the rules.’

  Or family prayers with all the servants standing in a semi‐circle? Another difficulty. He wondered if he would know when to kneel.

  Or going‐up‐to‐bed? Did he wait for Mrs Jan Byl to rise like royalty? Or because he was the guest would Mrs Jan Byl wait for him? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want the two of them sitting there till morning simply because he was holding things up himself.

  ‘Never mind,’ he consoled himself. ‘Nothing’s so tricky when you’ve done it once.’

  Besides he had evolved a formula, an infallible solution to the social maze.

  ‘It’s no use pretending to be other than you are,’ he mused. ‘I will remain a creature of the great cities on a brief visit to the rural landscape. After all, it’s perfectly in keeping – my clothes, my appearance, everything. I’ll keep myself a bit apart deliberately. I’ll be different. And once I’ve built the part up a bit I can do anything. Anything.’

  The car slowed down, turned sharply and Mr Squales found himself following a winding drive across a small park. An immense inner gratification came over him. He had hoped that there was going to be a drive. But it was even better than he had hoped. For no reason except his own supreme happiness that involuntary ‘Ah!’ slipped out again.

  And now the great moment, the moment of actual arrival, was on him. This was Withydean. The car slowed down, drew in and came to rest beside a large white front door in a big red house. Mr Squales struggled forward and tried to disentangle the fur rug that was smothering his knees. Then he stopped himself abruptly.

  ‘Sit back you fool,’ he told himself. ‘Let someone else do the unwrapping. If they put this blasted thing round you, let ’em take it off again.’

  It was even more delightful than he had expected. For the large white front door opened and a butler came out. Like the chauffeur he seemed a decent respectful sort of man. He let the chauffeur carry the late Mr Vizzard’s leather valise as far as the doorstep and then took it from him. Mr Squales followed, a faint smile of satisfaction softening the hard unsuccessful mouth. Then he stopped.

  ‘My hat,’ he said. ‘I must have left it in the car.’

  The chauffeur shook his head.

  ‘You weren’t wearing one, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Not wearing one?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  So he had left it in the train, had he? At this very moment sixteen shillings and ninepenceworth of spreading black felt was quietly trundling on across the countryside to an unknown destination. Anyhow he settled it. Without a hat, the creature‐of‐the‐great‐cities line would be a bit too difficult. He must think up something else. And he had it! The absent‐minded professor, of course. It would explain anything and everything.

  ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It’s of no consequence.’

  But wasn’t it? Suppose the hat turned up again, handed in by the station‐master or something, with Mr Jan Byl’s obituary sticking up inside the lining?

  3

  It was Sunday evening now. The week‐end, golden and blissful lay behind him. Even the ridiculous episode of the hat was forgotten. He had eaten well, drunk well and slept well. And more than that: he had been introduced to an Honourable and a retired General. Admittedly, Mrs Jan Byl hadn’t made him any actual offers of professional engagements. But she had been affability itself. No, affability wasn’t the right word. It was something at once stronger and more tender. Friendliness perhaps. Or even affection. They had enjoyed some beautiful talks together in the conservatory. Talks about the Beyond and the Other Self, with the butler hovering with the silver tea things in the background. The tea – scented China stuff that was like drinking an actress’s handbag – had a profound effect on Mrs Jan Byl. It broke down all reticence. She became personal and intimate. He heard about the Little One Who Had Died, about Mrs Jan Byl’s own girlhood, about a dream that she had once had, and about Mr Jan Byl’s death‐bed. Mr Jan Byl, it seemed, had died not only openly mocking the Spiritualism in which his wife believed, but even doubting that there was another life at all. Had died, mocking and doubting, and been convinced after death. Within forty minutes of his decease, there he was standing beside the cheval glass in Mrs Jan Byl’s bedroom, holding out his hand as if to apologise. He had remained in that abject position for nearly half a minute, she said, before he faded slowly, like a rainbow.

  Mr Squales said little. There was no chance of saying very much. Mrs Jan Byl was a great talker and this was her favourite subject. But he listened well. Very well. Mrs Jan Byl was entirely pleased with him. It was a flower that she had picked specially for him that he was wearing in his buttonhole at this moment.

  He sat back, a cigar – a real cigar, not a railway one, this time – between his fingers. He had just drank two glasses of port in the dining‐room and was in the happy condition of feeling inwardly at peace. The sturdy simplicity of country‐life, he was ready to admit, had much to commend it.

  That was not to say, however, that Sunday night dinner hadn’t come as something of a disappointment. For a start, except for the soup, it had been a cold meal. And Mr Squales disliked cold meals. Moreover, he resented not having been allowed to wear his new dinner‐jacket. But as Mrs Jan Byl very pointedly said, ‘We don’t dress on Sunday evening,’ what was there that he could do? Nothing. But it was a pity all the same, because the dinner‐jacket hadn’t, he felt, been seen at its best on the previous night. A long mysterious fold had humped itself up across the shoulders and if you weren’t careful how you stood there was a gap wide enough to thrust your hand down in between the collar band and the waistcoat. But all that was over n
ow. He had discovered the secret of wearing the thing. If you kept your elbows into the side all the time as though you were riding a horse it could hardly have fitted better. It was only when you reached out for anything that the seams at the shoulders gave out little crackling noises as though invisible fingers were stealthily unpicking them…

  But what was specially annoying was that Mrs Jan Byl herself, after telling Mr Squales not to dress, came down the stairs wearing a mass of beige lace that Mr Squales hadn’t seen before and a necklace of uncut amber that looked like native trophies. Not dress indeed!

  And the coldness of the meal had been reflected in the company. After the magnificence of the Hon. and the General on the Saturday night, there was a definitely served‐up look about this evening’s guests – a retired civil servant who had been out East, and the vicar from the next village who believed in ghosts. Nor did the solitary lady do anything to relieve the party. The wife of the civil servant, she was even more retired than her husband. A vague wispy presence she seemed to have lost touch with the world years ago. The vicar, who was a bachelor, kept glancing nervously across at her as though expecting her at any moment to vanish altogether.

  The conversation was left mainly to Mrs Jan Byl and Mr Squales. The vicar had a slight impediment in his speech which led him to abandon most sentences half finished. The vague wispy woman said nothing. And the retired civil servant who had been out East, having announced that he had once seen the rope trick but did not know how it was done, relapsed into complete silence, as though reluctant to be drawn further.

  For the past ten minutes gathered round the fire in the drawing‐room no one except Mrs Jan Byl had said anything. And she was talking about flowers – a subject which Mr Squales found boring.

  ‘The beautiful things,’ he allowed himself to say at last. ‘Earth spirits is how I always think of them. So fresh, so rare’ – dammit, the conservatory next door was positively blocked with them – ‘and so… so pure.’ He broke off. ‘Have you noticed,’ he asked, ‘how frequently they come through to us from the other world?’

  Mrs Jan Byl’s face lit up.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we do what?’ Mr Squales asked apprehensively.

  He felt sure that Mrs Jan Byl was going to suggest a séance, and he was equally sure that in loyalty to his profession he should refuse. It was unfair to struggling mediums everywhere that he should be asked to perform on a hearthrug for nothing except his keep.

  ‘The planchette board!’ Mrs Van Byl answered. ‘It’s such an opportunity. With you here. It may write anything.’

  ‘I knew someone who found some b… buried t… tr… treasure with a pl… pl… planchette b… b… b… b… board,’ the vicar began. ‘It told him wh… where to l… l… look.’

  ‘In India,’ observed the retired civil servant, ‘they use beans.’

  The vague wispy lady drew a transparent wrap across her grey hair and said nothing.

  And then another of those inexplicable things happened to Mr Squales as soon as he had got his fingers on the planchette. It was as though a magnet had made contact with its keeper. His fingers seemed fastened to it. He sat down at the green baize card table with the sheet of paper on it, a smile of sheer ecstasy lighting up his face.

  ‘I shall close my eyes,’ he observed simply.

  And as soon as he had closed them, he was remote from the others. Quite remote. He was floating, distinctly floating. So distinctly, indeed, that he would not have dared to open his eyes again for dread of the chasms that lay beneath him. But all the time he was aware that the planchette was writing for him. Desperately writing words that poured through him.

  The change in Mr Squales was so sudden that the vicar who believed in ghosts grew quite alarmed.

  ‘D… d… do they always b… b… b… breathe like that?’ he asked.

  ‘Only in the trance state,’ Mrs Jan Byl whispered delightedly. ‘Anything may happen now.’

  The retired civil servant bent forward to study the paper underneath the moving planchette, but Mrs Jan Byl motioned him back into his chair again.

  ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Afterwards. We mustn’t disturb him.’

  And still the writing went on. Up and down the paper the pencil raced, sometimes dancing about in curves, sometimes merely scribbling but always breaking off every so often to write furiously. Mr Squales’ forehead was covered with a thick beady perspiration. Then the pencil ran off the paper ploughing up the smooth green baize and Mr Squales abruptly slumped forward in his chair. He was obviously completely exhausted.

  It was the vague wispy lady who was the first to get hold of the paper. She snatched it up almost as though she were stealing it from under Mr Squales’ nose, and held it to the light.

  ‘I’ll read it to you,’ she said.

  Then she paused.

  ‘How funny,’ she went on. ‘It says the same thing over and over again.’

  ‘It may do,’ Mrs Jan Byl answered tartly. ‘But what is it, that it says?’

  She was annoyed that anyone other than she herself should have been allowed to read it first. Mr Squales was her guest and she felt that she had a prescriptive right to his spirit writings.

  As she spoke, Mr Squales himself sat up and looked about him. He felt dazed and the first words he heard were those of the vague wispy woman reading from the piece of paper.

  ‘It says, “For God’s sake don’t look inside my hat,”’ she answered loudly. ‘Just that. All the way down the page.’

  4

  They were alone together now, Mr Squales and Mrs Jan Byl. The guests had departed early, country‐fashion; and Mr Squales, pleasantly conscious of the whisky and soda that stood at his elbow, was suffused with a rich glow of physical and spiritual contentment. The mystery of the spirit message was forgotten.

  It seemed delightfully intimate, somehow, just the two of them. And in a way his conversation only served to make it more so. For no matter on what subject Mrs Jan Byl started, Mr Squales always contrived to jerk things round again to the personal and particular.

  ‘What you were saying just now interested me so much,’ he told her. ‘About the hours you spend aloone. I have been so much aloone myself that I know the meaning of looneliness full well.’

  He always added another ‘o’ to the word because it made it sound so much more expressive.

  ‘Haven’t you got any friends?’ Mrs Jan Byl asked him.

  Mr Squales shook his head.

  ‘What are friends?’ he answered. ‘They come, they stay for a short space and they go away again. Life – all Life – is like a pitcher. A jug, y’know. Full at one moment, empty at the next.’

  ‘But don’t you meet a lot of interesting people in your profession?’ Mrs Jan Byl asked him. ‘The sort of people that you want to go on knowing.’

  Mr Squales turned his dark eyes full on her. She hadn’t been looked at in that way for years, and it was positively tingling.

  ‘Mine,’ he replied, ‘is a solitary calling. There are the hours, the days, the weeks sometimes, while one is shut away pondering, probing, groping, peering. And then for a short moment one emerges into the harsh limelight. Perhaps one has something important to offer. Perhaps there is only dust and ashes. Mediumship is not a safe bet like other professions.’

  ‘A safe bet?’ Mrs Jan Byl repeated.

  Safe bet! Had he really allowed himself to use such an expression? He could hardly believe it. The commonness of it, the vulgarity, staggered him.

  He smiled.

  ‘You are surprised?’ he asked. ‘I used the words of course in their popular context. An expression of the people, you know. A bit of hoipolloierie.’

  ‘Some mediums have been family men,’ Mrs Jan Byl observed. ‘When Stieger was at the height of his powers he married again and had five more children.’

  ‘Happy man,’ Mr Squales answered. ‘How happy and how rare. For him the crowded fireside, for m
e the loonely chair.’

  He hadn’t intended it for a rhyming couplet when he began the speech, and it seemed to spoil it completely. Mrs Jan Byl would think that he was merely reciting to her.

  But it was quite all right as it turned out. And better than all right. It was magnificent.

  ‘You must come down here more often,’ she said. ‘This house is usually full of people.’

  ‘You are too kind,’ Mr Squales answered her. ‘Really too kind to me.’ He paused. ‘It is only my work that keeps me. There is nothing else. Nothing.’

  Mrs Jan Byl glanced across at him.

  ‘Why don’t you stop down here over Monday?’ she asked. ‘They’re not expecting you back, are they?’

  Mr Squales paused again.

  ‘There is no one to expect me,’ he said. ‘As I told you – no one.’

  ‘It must be strange being quite so alone as that,’ Mrs Jan Byl said reflectively. ‘Haven’t you got a secretary or any one?’

  Once more Mr Squales did not reply immediately. When he did his voice was lower and more vibrating than Mrs Jan Byl had ever heard it. It was obvious that the poor man was struggling to conceal his feelings, and she blamed herself for being tactless.

  ‘It is probably my fault,’ he said. ‘All my fault. When I entered my ivory tower I should have left the door ajar. But I didn’t. I bolted it upon the world. Now, still a young man, I am like a hermit. If I were to die to‐morrow – to‐night – at this moment – there would be no mourners because there would be no one to mourn. I am like a man from Mars, a creature with no ties on earth…’

  He took out his handkerchief as he said it and blew his nose. Then he happened to glance down at the rug. Mrs Jan Byl was glancing down, too. There on the hearth‐rug was a little label that said: ‘To Rico in case he is hungry in the train.’ Mr Squales covered it hurriedly with his foot.