London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  But Mrs Josser was still not there. And the strain had been too much for him. That simple piece of dictation had drained him dry of energy. His breathing quickened and he lay there his eyes closed, picking at the hem of the sheet.

  ‘Tell – her – to – hurry – up,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve – got – a – lot – I – want – to – say – to her.’

  Then he went off to sleep. A deep gentle sleep that made him feel like a little boy again.

  Mr and Mrs Josser had been with him for some time before Uncle Henry woke again. His mind was still fresh and clear – he was able to handle with professional keenness one of the oranges that Mrs Josser had brought him – but he was noticeably weaker. The young nurse who was unfamiliar with death wanted to cry a bit. He couldn’t say more than one or two words at a time. In fact the advice about the business was something that was definitely beyond him. After one or two attempts he gave it up as hopeless, and just repeated the name of Swales & Hunter as being reliable agents for the kind of sale. But even this served no useful purpose. He said it too faintly for any one but himself to hear.

  There was nothing more that any one could do. It was now simply a matter of waiting. The Sister increased the oxygen a little – but it was only a gesture, not a service. And the young nurse fetched another hot‐water bottle. Uncle Henry, however, was far away from oxygen and hot‐water bottles. He was drifting slowly and peacefully on a great warm tide that was carrying him further and further away from war and hangings and the stranglehold of Covent Garden. It was like free wheeling on his green bicycle down an endless gentle hill. And as there was nothing but darkness, thick velvety darkness, surrounding him there seemed to be no point in opening his eyes again.

  At 12.15, they decided that he had stopped breathing.

  The Sister wouldn’t let Mrs Josser take the will away with her because it had to pass through the Almoner’s Office first, to be put on record. But Mrs Josser was in that strange exalted mood which proximity to death produces and the thought of touching Uncle Henry’s money seemed at the moment abhorrent and even sinful to her. She went out of the ward, her handkerchief to her eyes and her arm through Mr Josser’s.

  ‘It’s just too much,’ she said. ‘First of all Percy. And then the war. And everything.’

  Mr Josser tightened the grip on her arm.

  ‘Don’t take it to heart, Mother,’ he said. ‘Henry was happy anyway. The war turned out just the way he said it would.’

  2

  The man who was really depressed by Uncle Henry’s death was Mr Puddy. Not that he had seen much of him. Or even liked him. It was simply that Mr Puddy was in his sixtieth year himself. And, judging by Uncle Henry, the sixties were pretty dangerous years for widowers. In consequence, he became more moody and morose than ever. He ruminated. He spoke to no one.

  And all the time, had he only known it, he had got a piece of good luck coming to him.

  It wasn’t his good luck, really. It was Connie’s. Because of Mr Barks, she had just pulled off her claim against the driver of the Daimler. And it had all been just as she surmised – the motorist was a real gentleman, with the best sort of insurance company. After only a short exchange of letters with Mr Barks – who was always at his best in running‐down cases – the other side had agreed to settle out of court.

  And no wonder. With each letter of Mr Barks’ Connie’s state had grown more alarming. By the fourth, she was half paralysed down one side and her power of speech was failing.

  Sixty‐five pounds, and costs, was what Mr Barks finally got out of them. Simply by asking for it, as you might say. And when Connie heard the news she broke down and cried. There in Mr Barks’ office, on one of his Rexine and Chippendale chairs, she wiped her old eyes from sheer happiness. While it wasn’t quite so enormous as she had first imagined – not ten thousand pounds, or anything like that – it was still a pretty good round sum. With the great advantage over any other round sum in her life that this one didn’t have to be imagined. Even fifty pounds would have had the same quality. And here was an extra fifteen thrown in for nothing.

  No wonder that she had been too much preoccupied with her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to Uncle Henry. Usually a death bowled her clean over. But with this one, she hadn’t turned a hair. Not that Connie was one of the mean ones. Not our Connie. She wasn’t going to keep the whole of it for herself. There was Mr Puddy’s share, remember. If it hadn’t been for his advice about putting the case in the hands of a solicitor she might still have been writing to the nice gentleman on her sixpenny mauve writing pad. And in all probability she wouldn’t even have got so much as an answer.

  ‘I’ll give him half,’ she promised impetuously. ‘Thirty‐two pounds ten something just for thinking of it.’

  It wasn’t quite so easy as that, however. Not straightaway at least. Mr Barks insisted on giving her a cheque, and there remained the question of what to do with it. She couldn’t simply cut it in two and give Mr Puddy one end. Clearly she had to open a banking account. Connie with a banking account! The idea tickled her so much that, like a fool, she let them put it on deposit. She had the foresight, however, to keep back five pounds while she still had a chance. And with the five pounds rolled up inside her little moiré bag she came out of the bank feeling that somehow she’d been swindled. Five pounds wasn’t very much to have kept back out of a fortune.

  But still, it was something. It was more than she’d had on her since her gay days. And all out of the makeweight, too. Leaving the solid capital untouched.

  ‘I suppose I ought to buy Savings Certificates,’ she reflected. ‘Save your money and shorten the war.’

  But the idea was not attractive. Compared with what a war cost, five pounds wouldn’t even shorten it by much. Besides, it meant a lot to her, that five pounds. There were so many things that she needed. Things that she’d been getting along without for years.

  Like a new cage for Duke, for instance. Poor little thing, his old cage wasn’t fit for a sparrow. It was lucky for the pet that he could fly because, with the bottom of the cage as loose as it was, he might have had to save himself at any moment.

  The thought of a new cage filled her with the happiness of sheer unselfishness. And she wasn’t going to lose any time about it, either. Duke had roughed it long enough. But bird‐cages, good ones, aren’t the sort of thing that can be picked up just anywhere. She remembered a pet‐stores over at Balham. Suppose, however, that when she reached it they hadn’t got what she wanted. What about Duke then, sentenced by her carelessness to spend another night in his present contraption? Thinking over the risk, she decided that it wasn’t fair to him and resolved to go straight off to Gamages.

  It was quite a journey from Kennington. And she had plenty of time to think about things on the way. Up in the top front seat of the bus, she mused. She realised now how silly it would be to give away half the damages to Mr Puddy. After all, he hadn’t really done anything. And whose accident had it been? His or hers? No, thirty‐two ten was out of the question. He’d think she was balmy if she gave him all that. And so she would be. On the whole, half the amount – say the odd fifteen – seemed about right. She could just see herself presenting it.

  ‘A little token of my appreciation, Mr Puddy. Don’t open the envelope now. Keep it till later. And please don’t trouble to thank me. It is I who should be thanking you.’

  Pretty, wasn’t it? But, as she said it, the thought of what fifteen one pound notes would actually look like made her blood run cold. It still seemed a terrible lot of money…

  There was a moment’s trouble when she reached Holborn because the conductor had just rung his bell when Connie got to the bottom of the stairs, and he had to stop the bus again specially for her. He asked her to make up her mind next time she was going anywhere. And Connie had to tell him that she’d take good care she never went anywhere with him. She added from the kerb side that it was lucky for him that he was such a little man as otherwise she’d ha
ve seen to him.

  ‘Little whippet,’ she said to herself. ‘How much does he think he’s worth anyway? He’d fall off the bus if he knew what I’d got on me.’

  Once inside Gamages, however, she forgot about him. It was like being transported into an everlasting Christmas bazaar going into the shop: it was the lighter side of life organised on the scale of heavy industry. There was everything – cricket bats, air‐guns, conjuring‐tricks, card games, bicycles, dolls’ houses, teddy bears, tropical fish – and bird cages.

  She wished for a moment that she could have brought Duke with her so that he could choose for himself. But as that was impossible she went ahead and bought a glittering wire creation with two porcelain dishes for his food, for twenty‐five and six. The assistant offered to send it for her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And then, just as it was all wrapped up, she saw the one she really wanted. The moment she spotted it, she knew that it was the one that Duke would have wanted if he only could have come along, too. There was just something about it. And it made the twenty‐five and sixpenny one look like prison. This one was a whopper with coloured glass sides down low where the wires started and a perch made out of a bit of real branch. The shape, too, was more imposing: there was a sort of double dome to it that suggested it might have been designed by an architect. And, finally, to protect the little occupant from the ill effects of its own jumpings, there was a big coil spring on top to cushion the shock.

  ‘Bless his little yellow head.’ Connie told herself. ‘He’ll think he’s swinging in the tree tops.’

  It was three pounds two and six; and Connie paid the difference. She even went further and bought a packet of proprietary bird‐seed, some grated sea‐shell, and a piece of cuttle‐fish bone for Duke to clean his beak on. She could hardly walk as she came out of the shop with the enormous bird‐cage banging against her knees with every step she took. But she was happy. A sublime ineffable radiance filled every part of her.

  ‘Was the accident worth it, or was it?’ she asked herself.

  During tea at the Corner House, with the bird‐cage under the table where the Nippies wouldn’t trip up over it, she thought more about Mr Puddy. And she rebuked herself.

  ‘After all, Dukey, if it wasn’t for your uncle you wouldn’t be having a nice new home. Mustn’t forget your manners just because you’re all excited.’

  It struck her now that perhaps it would be better to give Mr Puddy a present of some sort rather than the actual money. There was something about a lady’s giving a man money that, no matter how delicately it was done, wasn’t quite the thing. Now, a gold watch or a pair of enamel cuff‐links would be different. Any book of etiquette would allow her that in the circumstances.

  She looked in one or two jewellers’ afterwards. But it wasn’t much use. She saw nothing she liked. And, besides, she hadn’t got enough on her now to buy anything. Before Mr Puddy could come into his bit of luck she’d have to make another expedition to the bank specially for him.

  She had got back as far as the Oval before she remembered that she’d got nothing in the house for supper. She’d need something else before she went on to the night‐club. And she blamed herself for not having had one of Lyons’s Specials when she’d had the chance. It was all because she’d been so eager to see Duke in his new cage that she’d come rushing out of the place again.

  It was only a snack that she wanted, and she went into the Payantake stores at the corner to buy a tin of soup. Then, realising that her station in life had altered, and that she could afford anything in the place, she bought another one for to‐morrow night. They made an awkward sort of parcel in their flimsy paper‐bag, and she wished that she could have put them inside the bird‐cage along with the bird‐seed and the cuttle‐fish bone. But it wasn’t far. And the thought of Duke’s face when he saw his present…

  She’d transferred him. And apart from some silly fluttering on his part when she first put her hand in the cage – wouldn’t he ever trust her? wouldn’t he ever realise that she was the only mother he’d got – he seemed to like his fresh surroundings. She sat there, her old face pressed up against the new bars, while Duke went up and down his bit of real branch and put one of his feet into the bird‐seed.

  Mr Josser’s clock boomed five times – five separate reverberations that filled the whole of No. 10 – and Connie straightened herself. As she did so, a sharp splinter of pain ran through her left side at the point where the car bumper had hit her. The twinge appalled her. Suppose the hospital had blundered and she really had hurt herself! For all she knew she might really be half paralysed before the month was out. Someone with only sixty pounds in cash between her and destitution.

  It was hard on Mr Puddy that she should have felt the pain at that moment because it knocked on the head all hope of that fifteen pounds. Or of the watch. Or of the cuff‐links. Instead of a well‐provided old age, it was penury that she now saw facing her. She’d known that it was all a gamble right from the start. But it was only now that she saw so clearly that it was her life, her precious darling old life, that she had been gambling with.

  But even so – even with the death standing in the wings – she didn’t forget Mr Puddy altogether. On the contrary, she decided quite spontaneously that she’d give him the second tin of soup that she’d brought back. She’d make him, in fact, a present of to‐morrow night’s supper. But when it actually came to it, when it was time for her to go upstairs with the tin held in her hands like a perishing bouquet, she just couldn’t do it. If she’d attempted it, she’d have died laughing.

  ‘Dear Mr Puddy, – In recognition of your kindness in securing for me the sum of sixty‐five pounds here is a tin of soup as a token, price fourpence. Yours gratefully, Connie.’

  It wouldn’t look good on paper, would it? And besides there was something a bit odd in the notion of giving a grown man a tin of soup. Then the happiest of solutions came to her. She decided that she’d make the soup for him and take it up in a cup all ready. That was quite different. It was still generous. And, somehow, charming and ladylike as well.

  When she actually got down to mixing the soup, however, she found that, with just a splash of water, it was easily possible to get two cups of strong nourishing soup out of one tin. Indeed, that was what the label recommended. So there was no point in opening the second one.

  Pouring the hot soup into a cup, she wiped the edge round with her hanky to give that well turned‐out restaurant appearance and carried it carefully upstairs.

  She knocked and waited politely for Mr Puddy to open the door for her.

  ‘I had some of your supper the other night,’ she said brightly. ‘Here’s a bit of mine to make up for it.’

  Mr Puddy turned a blank astonished face in her direction. Then he sniffed, savouring the fragrance of the steam.

  ‘Bulligatawny,’ he said. ‘A dice gub of bulligatawny.’

  And he reached out his hand for his reward.

  BOOK FIVE

  Dissolution in Dulcimer Street

  Chapter LXVIII

  1

  The episode of Uncle Henry was over. The business had been sold, his collection of books and pamphlets had gone to salvage and Uncle Henry himself had gone to his hygienic and fiery burial. All that remained of him was the green bicycle. Mrs Josser had kept that in case there was a bus strike or something. You never knew in war‐time.

  It was Mrs Boon who was now the problem. There she was shut away in her room, and nobody knew what to do about her. She hadn’t any friends. She hadn’t any occupation. And, once the rent had been paid, she hadn’t any money. She simply sat there, thinking about Percy.

  Inevitably, she was a burden on Mrs Josser. She ate all her meals with them. All except breakfast, that is. And that, Mrs Josser carried up on a tray to her bedroom. It was nearly six weeks since the reprieve. And, from the way Mrs Boon was behaving, it might have been only yesterday. She had no plans. No proposals. Not even any apologies.

  In the result, sh
e drove Mrs Vizzard nearly demented with anxiety. All during the trial, and during that awful period afterwards, Mrs Vizzard had tried to close her eyes to her. Had sought to forget that Mrs Boon existed. It was merely a matter of waiting, she had told herself, until everything was over. But she was not now so sure. Mrs Boon’s vagueness baffled and defeated her. And what was so peculiarly infuriating was that Mrs Boon herself was apparently quite unconcerned. The only time Mrs Vizzard had mentioned the subject to her, Mrs Boon had spoken vaguely about doing something when she felt a little stronger. But she had not said what or how soon. And, meanwhile the bridal suite – Mrs Vizzard’s and Mr Squales’ bridal suite – was as far away as ever. It was excruciating for Mrs Vizzard in her own house not to be able to make even the most elementary preparation for her own wedding.

  She had her own private reasons for urgency. Reasons that she could confess to no one. Least of all to Mr Squales. But they were there, goading and terrifying her. The simple fact was that she was jealous. In those professional visits to Chiddingly – visits which she herself had financed for him – she smelt something sinister. His behaviour alternately saddened and angered her. To‐day in particular – with Mr Squales out at the Public Library looking up something about the habits of the Incas – she was in despair.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ she admitted. ‘That’s the whole point. I love him, but deep down something tells me not to trust him. It’s only when I’ve got my eyes on him that I know what he’s doing. When he’s out of my sight he… he…’ But she could not complete the sentence because she did not know what it was that she feared when he was away from her. It was merely a vague all‐embracing dubiety that surrounded him. ‘It may be simply my money he’s after, the wretch,’ she said fiercely. ‘And he’s had a lot of it already. I don’t trust him. I shall never see any of it back. He’ll just go away and leave me when he’s bled me dry. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll go out of this house one day and never come back.’