London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  But not to rest. She had been lying down for hardly ten minutes when there was a knock at the door. She rose, smoothed herself and went upstairs. It was the Press. She was just on the point of sending the reporter away again when the door above opened, and Uncle Henry came down, hurrying. He was brusque and agitated, and his manners were intolerable. Without asking her permission, scarcely even acknowledging her indeed, he took the little man by the arm and led him upstairs.

  Mrs Vizzard turned. On the first landing a great black shape was standing, and she heard a rich baritone voice say: ‘Ah, a friend from Fleet Street. It is the moment for which we have been waiting…’

  And it was only the beginning. A photographer and a lady feature‐writer arrived later. But Uncle Henry was on the alert now. He worked upstairs with the door open and came down every time he thought he heard anything. The letters to editors had been his idea.

  With the house full of people in this way, it was not surprising that things went wrong. Connie put on her hat with the feather peony in it and was photographed on the doorstep holding a great bundle of papers, all prominently headed PETITION. But what particularly disgusted Mrs Vizzard was the fact that Mr Squales of all people somehow got himself mixed up in one of the interviews. It was only his abnormally good manners, she did not doubt, that had made it impossible for him to extricate himself. Out of her sight only for a moment, she found him pinned to the wall by the lady feature‐writer. Her notebook was open in her hand. Mr Squales’ dark eyes were fixed upon the creature, and he was saying, very slowly and distinctly: ‘Qualito is the name. Q‐u‐a‐l‐i‐t‐o.’

  Mrs Vizzard turned away, her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘And I’ve always tried to keep this house quiet and respectable,’ she told herself. ‘It was, till Mrs Boon came here. This settles it: she goes.’

  2

  But this was unfair. Because the only other person in No. 10 who appreciated all this publicity as little as Mrs Vizzard was Mrs Boon herself. Aloof and detached from everything that was going on around her, she remained in her room seeing no one.

  And, in this, Mrs Josser assisted her. Connie, Uncle Henry, the strange clergyman, even her own husband, could answer all the questions that the reporter or the lady feature‐writer cared to put to them. But she wasn’t going to have Mrs Boon upset.

  ‘She’s sleeping and she can’t be disturbed,’ was what she said whenever they inquired about her.

  Not that they would have got anything, even if they had been allowed to see Mrs Boon.

  ‘It’s very kind of them to take all this trouble,’ she had said earlier that afternoon. ‘Very kind, indeed. But they really needn’t bother. My Percy is going to be all right. I know he is.’

  But Percy appreciated the petition all right. And the change that it produced in him was remarkable. Moody and apathetic for the past two days, he suddenly perked up when Scottie showed him the papers. The blackness fell from his mind and his face lit up again.

  ‘That’s me on the front page,’ he said. ‘That’s Mr Barks’ doing. Or Mr Veesey Blaize’s. That’s me in my pin‐stripe.’

  Then he came to the lady feature‐writer’s article. There was a whole column of it and it took him sometime to read. It was nice seeing his name so often. But it was funny being called just Percy all the way through. It was as though she knew him. And he’d never heard of her. When he had finished it, he turned to Scottie.

  ‘What’s she mean?’ he asked. ‘What’s an “Oval‐born Lothario”?’

  Chapter LXV

  1

  There was no time to be lost. The calendar on the Home Secretary’s desk had the day after to‐morrow conspicuously ringed round in red. And there was a special reason for it. Dates with red rings round them were dates set aside for executions.

  Not that the preceding days had been unrewardful. On the contrary, the petition had acquired a snowball momentum of its own and every post brought in mysterious bulky envelopes from outlying parts, all containing names, names, more names. Some of them came from the unlikeliest quarters. Even Connie had managed to secure nearly two dozen signatures from the night‐club. They were written on rather shiny paper with an Apollinaris heading. And except for one man, a drunk, who had signed twice and for another, only half‐drunk, who had signed in the name of Nazi Party leaders, the list seemed valid enough.

  Under Uncle Henry’s supervision, Mr Josser had been sticking the various bits together. On this point – on a continuous scroll of names – Uncle Henry was emphatic and unshakable. Because it didn’t matter in the least, the Rev. Headlam Fynne gave way.

  ‘If it’s in separate pieces they could run through it like that,’ Uncle Henry said with a contemptuous whisk of his hand. ‘But if it’s in one colossal scroll they’ll see at once what they’re up against. They’ll recognise their own winding‐sheet.’

  And so, with paste and the help of six large sheets of brown paper, the petition was prepared ready for presentation. There was now some twenty‐two feet of it and nearly four thousand signatures. When rolled up it made a bundle about the size of a small barrel.

  Mr Josser signed it dubiously.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to get a taxi,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it a pity…’

  He stopped himself abruptly: he had nearly said that it was a pity Percy wasn’t there to drive them.

  But the Rev. Headlam Fynne wouldn’t hear of a taxi.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no. Not by taxi. No one would notice us. We should lose everything. We must march.’

  ‘March!’

  The idea appealed to Uncle Henry immediately. Even his sound eye was rolling now. ‘Over Westminster Bridge and past the House of Commons,’ he said exultantly. ‘Into Whitehall and up the steps of the Home Office. Right into the fortress of reaction.’

  ‘And one of us carry that?’ asked Mr Josser, pointing at the roll he had just been sticking.

  The Rev. Headlam Fynne paused. It certainly was a formidable packet, the petition.

  ‘Well, perhaps not carry it,’ he replied. ‘Push it.’

  ‘What in?’

  It was Mrs Josser who had spoken. She had been hovering round the outside of the committee, interested and helpful as occasion demanded, but still frankly sceptical.

  The Rev. Headlam Fynne shrugged his broad black shoulders.

  ‘In a pram. Or a mail‐cart,’ he answered. ‘The exact vehicle is immaterial.’

  Mrs Josser looked from the Rev. Headlam Fynne to Uncle Henry, and then on to Mr Josser.

  ‘Well, Fred’s not to push it,’ was all she said. ‘Not in public, he isn’t.’

  2

  This question, however, did not arise when the time came. Instead of finding someone to do the pushing, there was competition for it. Because it was a bassinette borrowed from one of his parishioners, the Rev. Headlam Fynne felt himself entitled to say who should direct it. But Uncle Henry felt differently.

  ‘You leave this to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got that cross of yours to look after.’

  The Rev. Headlam Fynne raised his eyebrows.

  ‘We will take it in turns,’ he answered. ‘First one will take the bassinette and then the other.’

  Uncle Henry shook his head.

  ‘Not me with the cross,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll stick to the pram.’ There was another awkward pause. The Rev. Headlam Fynne was annoyed.

  ‘As you please,’ he said. ‘Time is slipping past us while we argue.’ There were seven of them altogether. The Rev. Headlam Fynne went first carrying the cross. Then came Uncle Henry wheeling the perambulator. After him walked Mr Josser and Connie. Behind them were two lay evangelists from the Junior Guild of God. And, in the rear, marched a pale elderly lady – a stranger – who fell into place saying, ‘The few of us who feel this way must see that it doesn’t happen.’

  They were joined at intervals by such small boys as were temporarily disengaged and, at cross‐roads, by policemen who conducted the little cortege safely over.


  In Mr Josser’s calculation it was just half an hour from No. 10 to the Home Office. And so it would have been except for two mishaps. The first was the weather. Dark and overcast when they left Dulcimer Street, it was already drizzling by the time they had reached the Oval. The two lay evangelists were all right: they had umbrellas. And so had Mr Josser: he and Connie shared. But the Rev. Headlam Fynne had nothing. Not even a hat. He simply shook the dampness from his hair, held his head high and marched on. He was no worse off, in point of fact, than Uncle Henry. For even if Uncle Henry had been carrying an umbrella it would have been impossible to use it. The perambulator was taking up all his attention. He seemed to be finding difficulty in wheeling it on a straight and satisfactory course.

  Then the drizzle changed to rain without warning. At one moment they were walking through light filmy stuff like reduced spray and, at the next, the raindrops were beating on their faces. The Rev. Headlam Fynne kept shaking himself like a terrier and the elderly lady in the rear said, half to herself, half to Mr Josser: ‘It’s nothing. It’s just sent to try us.’

  But the elderly lady was wrong. It was far from nothing. Almost as she said the words, the real storm broke. The rain came pelting down in monsoon‐fashion. The broad black bosom of the Rev. Headlam Fynne was soaking and the folds of his habit collected the water in channels. He turned and addressed his followers.

  ‘This is too much,’ he said. ‘We must…’

  He did not finish his sentence because at that moment he was run into. Uncle Henry, head down, had been ploughing his way through the downpour, stopping for no one. The front of the pram, the hard part, drove full into the leader. Indeed, it was only the plywood cross that saved him.

  ‘Careful, careful,’ he said. ‘Festina lente, remember.’

  If he had been irritated earlier by Uncle Henry, he was now downright angry with him. Rubbing himself where it hurt, he led the party to the doorway of a shop. They sheltered there while the swollen raindrops burst like small watery crocuses in the swirling street.

  All except Uncle Henry. He was out in the thick of it trying to get the hood up. It seemed a difficult sort of hood. By the time he had fixed it, he was more than ordinarily wet. He was sodden. He came back and stood among them, steaming.

  The deluge was not a long one, however. Within twenty minutes, the rain had stopped and they were able to move on again. But those twenty lost minutes were important. They were vital. Instead of being in comfortable time, they were now late. Definitely late. They had to hurry. And it was because of this, directly because of it, that the second mishap occurred.

  The Rev. Headlam Fynne was striding on ahead again and the rest of the procession was following up behind, when suddenly there was a cry from Uncle Henry. He was in difficulties. Appalling difficulties. The perambulator was upright only because he was holding it. And, after a moment, the others saw what was happening. The thing was running on only three wheels. The fourth wheel, the one that had gone careering off on its own like a small hoop, was recovered later by one of the lay evangelists.

  This time the delay was really serious. So serious, in fact, that the Rev. Headlam Fynne proposed taking the bundle of names under his arm, and walking. But Uncle Henry wouldn’t allow it. He refused point‐blank to hand the scroll over. It would be a matter only of minutes, he said, to get the wheel back on again. And in a sense he was right. But only in a sense. For with the hub‐cap missing – gone down a drain somewhere, Connie suggested – the wheel came off again. And Uncle Henry would not let them start until it was mended properly. In the result, they were still there ten minutes later, and Uncle Henry was saying that if only he’d got his tool‐bag with him everything would have been fixed up by now.

  It was the Rev. Headlam Fynne who reminded him of the consequences of this tinkering.

  ‘If this petition means anything,’ he said sternly, ‘we must deliver it.’ Uncle Henry got up from his knees, and straightened himself.

  ‘I didn’t provide this pram,’ he answered. ‘I’m only trying to mend it.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘I have not. It’s too old. Too old and too broken. We go as we are. I’m ready.’

  With that, Uncle Henry gripped hold of the handle of the pram and started off with it. It was not easy. But Uncle Henry was determined. Setting his shoulders to take up the uneven strain, he persisted. The thing fairly rattled along. The Rev. Headlam Fynne even had to double up to get to his rightful place at the head of the procession.

  But the half‐hour that they had lost in all was irreplaceable. And, as though to remind them of this, dusk was now falling. The little column, cross in front, tramped through darkening streets under a steely sky. And it may have been the grim lowering landscape and grey streets and unlighted houses, or the distance that they had come, or the fear that already they were too late, or simply that they were thinking of Percy – whatever it was, dusk fell on their spirits, too, and they were silent. A small silent crusade with the citadel in sight.

  As soon as they had passed St Thomas’s and the County Hall, they could see Big Ben with the hands standing accusingly at ten past five. The Rev. Headlam Fynne instinctively stepped out and Uncle Henry, bent almost double, pushed harder. The wide camber of the bridge, Westminster Bridge, stretched out before them and they began to cross it. As they did so, the sudden wide expanse of black heaven and the smooth sliding water underneath, isolated them. Even to themselves they seemed a pathetically small contingent to go challenging the State.

  There was a traffic block at Parliament Square and they had to stand there for a moment, motionless. It was only when they had stopped that Mr Josser realised how tired he was. Tired and shaky. He took off his bowler hat and passed his handkerchief round inside the lining. He was dimly aware that people on the pavement were staring. But he didn’t mind any more. Somewhere on the march, he had ceased caring about anything.

  ‘He’d probably have been better without any of us,’ he thought. ‘And so would she. Better for both of them if we’d just let it happen and hadn’t interfered.’

  They were on the point of moving on again when Connie saw something. And because she was the only one who spotted it, she made a dive out of the line so that she could find out for certain. She came back a moment later waving an evening paper in her hand.

  ‘Take it easy, boys,’ she said. ‘It’s all off.’

  They crowded round to read the stop‐press column that Connie was holding out to them. But they need not have troubled. It was all there in chalk letters on the newspaper board that Connie had first spotted.

  ‘CAR MURDERER REPRIEVED’ was what it said.

  3

  The sudden ending of the tension, the snapping of the frightful and burning urgency that had been supporting them, left the little party flat and at a loose end. There they were, useless and unwanted, with a plywood cross and a perambulator, two miles from home, tired and soaked through, and with the sky looking as though at any moment it would start raining again. Nerves and tempers were frayed and jagged. And before Mr Josser could do anything to stop it, Uncle Henry and the Rev. Headlam Fynne had got into an argument together.

  ‘And do I understand that you still believe in a merciful God?’ Mr Josser heard Uncle Henry saying.

  ‘More than ever,’ the Rev. Headlam Fynne replied. ‘Oh, so much more. Look what He’s just done.’

  ‘Do you call it merciful to keep that poor boy locked up for a couple of months with the threat of the gallows hanging over him?’

  ‘It wasn’t God who did that, it was man.’

  Uncle Henry fixed him with his sound eye.

  ‘And who was it saved him?’

  ‘It was God who guided the Home Secretary,’ the Rev. Headlam Fynne replied guardedly.

  ‘Then why didn’t He guide the judge?’ Uncle Henry demanded. ‘Wasn’t he feeling quite so merciful then?’

  This time the Rev. Headlam Fynne did not answer him. He was looking at his hands. They
were scarlet like the cross. As a result of the rain, the colour had begun to run. The Rev. Headlam Fynne wiped his hands on the front of his habit and then regretted it. Even his black habit bore a broad scarlet streak on it now. He looked as though he had gashed himself. When he found out what had happened – it was his best habit – he lost his temper.

  ‘I refuse to stand here any longer listening to your silly blasphemies,’ he said. ‘You’re no better than an atheist.’

  ‘No better…’ Uncle Henry began.

  But it was too late. One of the lay evangelists had hailed a passing taxi and together they bundled the Rev. Headlam Fynne into it. Without even one word of farewell, and abandoning the pram, the property of one of his parishioners, the Rev. Headlam Fynne was swept away from them.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Connie. ‘There goes His Holiness.’

  She screwed her neck backwards so that she could peer up at Big Ben. It was five‐thirty.

  ‘Duty calls,’ she said. ‘Cheerio, chaps.’ Then she glanced down at the three‐wheeled perambulator up against the kerb, and gave a little giggle. ‘Can I trust you two lads with the baby?’ she asked.

  When she had gone, Uncle Henry turned to Mr Josser.

  ‘Let’s park this damn’ thing somewhere up a side street and go and get a drink,’ he said. ‘I’m cold.’