“Listen!—when we fight at Birkenhead next Friday,” he snarled, “it’s no joey, but the best man for it. An’ the winner takes the woman.”
“Dead easy,” I said. “Now get back to bed an’ let me have some sleep.”
I thought he’d forget it—and I suppose he would have —but she wouldn’t let him. Nor would she let me: “You’ll need all these Edgar Wallaces,” she would gloat at me returning a copy, “in hospital.”
The four of us went along together to the hall that night, and it wasn’t a very happy party. We got paid before going on—a procedure on which I always insisted, having been knocked a few times by welshing promoters. I put my ten quid inside my Post Office savings book ready to enter next morning. The Cosh put his inside his wallet, which was getting pretty fat in spite of all the suits he bought, and after tying it up carefully with string, gave it to Katie to put in her bag. He trusted her, but only when Feline Fred was there, keeping an eye on her. A flea couldn’t get away from Fred, he was that quick.
I never had my heart in wrestling, not in the same way as The Cosh had, because I did it just for a comfortable way of earning dough instead of using a spade, but The Cosh gloried in grappling, and he loved the crowd and the atmosphere. In the long run, you can say, a bloke who hasn’t got his heart in a thing isn’t a match for one who has—and that was true for me.
Oh, but I was crafty. And there wasn’t a hold in the entire game you could tell me about. I tied him up in knots at the start—because he was so eager to get milling it that he walked right in. I slammed him that often to the mat with hips, shoulder throws, and half-nelsons that some of the crowd began to shout: “Joey! Joey!—get up and fight.”
But given time the spirit of the heart will overcome all opposition. And that was the way it went that night. After fifty minutes—it was a sixty-minute bout—I’d just about had enough. I felt as sick as a dog, and if The Cosh had wanted to pin me no doubt he could have done, but he was all out for a spectacular finish—just to please Katie.
It came while there were still a few minutes to go. I was just struggling to my feet after being slammed from an Aeroplane Spin, and I was only half conscious, but could dimly make out The Cosh—hurling himself from one side of the ring to the other, pressing his back flush tight against the ropes and catapulting himself across to the other side, and whipping himself off again, working up a terrific impetus for his head dive at me. After hitting the ropes for the last time I saw his eye fasten itself on me—and across he came at me like a cannon shell. I ducked. Yes, I ducked just low enough, and I felt the wind of him as he whizzed over my back. There was a roar and a scatter, as he went clean through the ropes and landed head first in about the fourth row of the ringside seats. I kept on my feet while the ref’ counted him out.
They carried him back into the ring and laid him flat out on the mat, but it was a good twenty minutes before he came round and able, between boos and cries of “Joey! Joey!” to struggle back to the dressing room.
“So you’ve won her—” he grunted, fastening his shoes.
“Shut up, you flamin’ mutt!” I roared at him. “I wouldn’t walk the same side of the street she was on.”
“Eh?”
“I can get my own woman,” I said, “now let’s be gettin’ back.”
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Gone back to the digs, I expect, with Fred,” I told him.
We both felt pretty done up, and staggering out of the side entrance we had to laugh at each other. We got a taxi that night, and went straight back to the digs. I seemed to sense there was something amiss going up the stairs, but I didn’t take any notice until I heard a cry of alarm from The Cosh.
“Me suits?” he yelled, running into my room, “where are they?”
“Round the wall,” I said.
“Not a sign of ‘em!” he moaned. “Come an’ have a look!”
All his suits were gone. And his cases too. And then I looked in my room and saw that the Edgar Wallaces were all gone. So we ran downstairs to the landlady.
“Ee, they left about an hour ago,” she said, “that young man and the lady with him. They took a taxi and ever so many cases. They said they were going ahead and that you’d be following after them.”
“So they done a bloody bunk,” groaned The Cosh, “and my wallet with ‘em!”
“I always told you,” I said to him, “to join the Post Office Savings Bank.”
The Little Welsh Girl
This one I’m going to tell you about, me and my mate met her in an all-night caff near the Elephant.* It was when times were bad, and around midnight you always got the same sort of crowd. There’d be a few beggars off the street, hanging it out over a cup of tea, elbows on the table and trying to get a bit of sleep in without being spotted. You’d get some of the young Elephant gang in as well, wide boys, and a dirty old man or two, some brass that had come off the streets to rest their feet and have a jaw and a smoke in peace, a ponce or two, and like as not, a stranger.
On this night she was the stranger. A little Welsh girl, with a nice singy voice. She was at our table and she let us chat her—not that we were so much ourselves at the time, but we were the best dressed there. I kept asking her things, just to hear the up and down way she spoke. It only shows how easy you can be dragged into something. Course you could see she wasn’t a brassnob, by the way she looked at you, and she hadn’t the look of one of these kids that have been riding the lorries either. But she was fresh to London, and she was broke. In fact, she asked us to give her a couple of bob. That was what knocked me back a bit. She didn’t try a dodgey touch like you’d expect. She asked straight out. She said she’d go off and get a gaff for the night, and after some sleep and a wash, she thought, she might be fresh next day and feel like getting down to work. She’d been walking around for a couple of days and nights. And in spite of her voice and the way she looked at you, you could see it. We didn’t refuse her—we couldn’t do that—and we didn’t give it to her either; we just kept talking to her until we could hit on some way of getting out of it and getting rid of her. But there was no hurry.
Then my mate Jimmy turns to me and says: “What about taking her home with us?” Now I didn’t fancy that. I like a woman to be a good dresser, which this little Welsh girl definitely wasn’t. I go for a woman’s clothes as much as I go for her. Another thing, anybody with no money is nearly always depressed, and it’s not long before they start off depressing you. And I’ve always got enough to depress me without having someone else do it for me.
“Good idea, Jimmy,” I says. Perhaps he fancies her, I thought. I know it never does to come between people and what they fancy. “Here,” I says to her, “did you hear what my mate said? He said you could come back with us and we’d put you up for the night.”
She shook her head straight away, like I knew she would. “No,” she says.
“We ain’t after anything,” says Jimmy.
Now when he said that she believed him. And when Jimmy saw that, I could see he believed himself. “I only spoke on the spur of my feelings,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. But you could see she wasn’t coming.
“Come on, mate,” said Jimmy to me looking huffed. So we went off together and left her. That was one way to get out of it, I thought.
“I thought you fancied her,” said Jimmy, as we went up the New Kent Road.
“Me? nah!” I said. “I thought you did.”
“Me?” says Jimmy, “nah, I didn’t fancy her, I thought you did.”
“She’ll find somebody,” I said.
“Course she will,” said Jimmy.
The next thing we heard somebody come running up behind us. “Oh, changed your mind?” says Jimmy. For a minute it looked a bit ribby, but then Jimmy got a comical stroke come over him. He started saying things as we all three walked along the street in the dark, and every one was dead funny, and before she knew it, he’d set the little Welsh girl off laughing. Now
I’ve only to hear a woman laughing like that, all light and bouncy, and it seems I can get very jokified myself. I starts saying things what if I was to tell you now you wouldn’t think a bit funny, but if you was there hearing me I’ll bet you couldn’t stop laughing.
We’d a job to keep quiet when we came to where we were living then. But old Mrs Hopkins, the landlady, was in bed, and we all three crept up to our room without being seen. Not that she’d have minded much, being a goodhearted old sort herself, but we thought the less seen the soonest mended.
It was a real handy gaff we had, with a big iron bed, a table, a horsehair sofa, chairs, a gas jet, and things for cooking all in the one room, and a tap on the landing. First thing I did was to creep out and fill the kettle full and come back in and boil it on the gas jet. When the little Welsh girl saw the hot water, and a bowl to wash in, with a bucket for slops, she nearly went mad she was that pleased. So we let her have half the water for washing in whilst we used the other half for making tea. I lent her my special soap, elevenpence a tablet, for anyone inclined to pimples or skin blemish, and Jimmy brought out a little clean towel for her.
What she did then was to fix up a place for her to wash herself at the other side of the room. She got the clothesline we dry our shirts on, and with a bit of an old sheet and a towel she fixed herself up a little partition. Course we could have blown it down, what you might say, but we didn’t. I like anything like that—a woman knowing she’s a woman.
Over the other side of the room old Jimmy decides to make some toast. He’s the only bloke I know who can make good toast on a gas-ring. And behind the sheet you could hear the little Welsh girl soaping and splashing and singing and sighing away like she was in a foam bath.
“Here, you’re not goin’ to be there all night?” says Jimmy. “Supper’s ready.”
That’s the trouble with women who do wash, once they start there’s no end to it.
When she comes out from behind the screen, all washed and freshened up, she’s got a lovely little face, and eyes too, nice and brown, and skin all fresh and tight, and not saggy-like same as you get with so many women—I hate all that saggy stuff—and a nice smell too, and not all from that special soap of mine. She was wearing her little raincoat over some underthings.
“Ain’t you got no clobber with you?” says Jimmy.
She said she’d a little bag left at Tottenham Court Underground Station cloakroom, and she’d get it next day. I said I’d lend her an old shirt of mine—a clean one. I did. She said would it be all right if she washed a few things, stockings and that lark. We said she could wash one or two bits. I mean we’re not fussy, but there’s something puts me off about washing hanging about the place, especially if it’s a woman’s.
Now what I could see had been in her mind since she came in was where she was going to sleep. So I points to the old horsehair sofa: “That’s your’n,” I said. “Unless,” said Jimmy, “you want to sleep with us.” She said the sofa would do. And everything went nice and bright, and we all went to bed. It was funny how it went, because we never tried nothing on with her. She gets on her sofa and me and Jimmy get into the bed. And all I hears out of her during the night was a little whimper now and again like what you hear out of a dog.
When it comes morning it’s not just the same as it was the night before. For one thing, me and Jimmy hardly ever talk in the mornings. We ups and dresses, and there’s the little Welsh girl on the sofa, and it seems like she don’t want to get up, or even look up. She’s got her head turned to the sofa, and she don’t say nothing. Her stockings and things on the line, what didn’t look too bad the night before, don’t look too good next morning.
Jimmy just makes a quick cup of tea for me and him, but we’ve ate all the bread the night before, so we can’t have our usual toast. It always happens when you have people around, they put you off your stroke.
I nipped in to Mrs Hopkins and tells her we’d put a mate up for the night and for her not to bother if she hears him moving round. Course she knows what’s going on, but she don’t mind, so long as it all looks respectable. Then when we’re out to the front door something strikes me. “Hold on a tick, Jimmy,” I says, and I go back and lock our door. It has a proper lock, not a snack-lock, so I knows she can’t get out.
‘What’s up?’ says Jimmy.
“I didn’t want to put temptation in her way,” I says. “Them suits of mine hanging up there—it might suddenly strike her to nick one or two and flog them.”
“She don’t look that sort to me,” says Jimmy.
“I don’t look that sort,” I says, “but it’s what I’d do.”
Me and Jimmy had a nice little job all set up for that morning. A pal of ours called Joe was a chauffeur for one geezer in the City. He had to run him in at mornings, and pick him up at lunch. So we fixed up with him to borrow the car for a couple of hours whilst his boss wasn’t using it, so that we could do a job for a bloke called Mark Blanchton who dealt in secondhand clothes. We got the car all right from Joe, and we dropped him off at a caff, and we went over to a toff’s flat in Knightsbridge to pick up what they call the effects of a gent’s wardrobe. There were some cracking little suits all hand-stitched down the lapels, with genuine cuff buttons, what you could unfasten like proper buttons. Mark’s lad, Benny, was a-checking of all the stuff, and all we could nick with him watching was the makers’ tabs out of two of the suits, to sew on ours after. We made a quid apiece out of that job, and there was a quid for Joe for letting us have the car. Then we hurried back to our little room, both of us feeling a bit uneasy in case she’d got out some way and nicked some of our clothes.
But she was there all right. When we opened the door we hardly knew the place. The first thing that hit you was a smell of polish. She must have dug out an old tin from the bottom of the cleaning box, and she’d gone over the table and the bits of furniture, and she’d polished up the bed-rails as well. She must have wiped the windows over too, for the place seemed nice and bright. She had made the bed, fancy-like, and everything looked like it was in a different place.
“You been at it, gal,” says Jimmy.
“I’d have made a good job of it,” she says, “only I couldn’t get out to the tap.”
“The door wasn’t locked, was it Jimmy?” I says.
“Not that I know of,” says Jimmy.
“Do you like it?” she says, looking round.
“It’s nice and cleanified,” says Jimmy.
“Yeh, it is,” I says. It was homified too, but not the way I like it. You could see a woman had been around.
“I’d have cooked you something to eat,” she says, “only there was nothing to cook.”
“I’ll go out and get some sausages,” says Jimmy.
“Wouldn’t you like a proper meal?” she says.
“Sausages is a proper meal,” says Jimmy. He gave me the griff to hang on and he went out for some sausages, bread, margarine, and tea. While he was out I started laying the table, but she had been tidying things, and I couldn’t put my hands on what I wanted. So she nips in ahead of me and starts doing it. I sat down and had a smoke. She was a funny little girl to watch. She was quick, and shy, and I couldn’t think what to say to her. She wasn’t a bit like a London girl. She had this nice rosy sort of skin, all freshified and smooth, but I like women with pale skin and lots of powder on and plenty of lipstick; it looks more natural somehow to see a woman done up.
Anyway, when we had our sausages, Jimmy asks her would she like to go and get her bag. But she seemed dead upset at the idea of going out. Well, we had to go over the West, so we said we’d pick it up for her. She said if we’d let her get some water in, she’d do all the washing and cleaning. We couldn’t see no washing or cleaning to be done, but we let her have the water just the same. Well, we went off and we got her bag, and we bought one or two things for her from a stall in Tower Bridge Road. I got her some face powder, and lipstick, and old Jimmy bought her some ear-rings, and a green comb. I don’t k
now what it was come over us, because we was getting nothing for it. But there are times when you do things like that and you don’t know why.
That kid was pleased like we might have had her out shopping in Bond Street. Cried a bit she did, but we told her to turn it in. Then she gave us both a kiss, me first, then Jimmy. And when she got her things out of her bag I showed her how to dress a bit better. And what with the lipstick and powder and one thing and another she began to look dead good. Good enough to take out. But she wouldn’t come out. That was the funny thing. She might have been searching for years for that little room at Mrs Hopkins, the way she clung to it.
“Stone me,” says Jimmy, “anyone might think you’d done a murder.” She wouldn’t go out that door. She spent all the day tidying up and cleaning, and it got that you’d no sooner took a pair of dirty socks off, than she’d grab them before they reached the floor, and wash them. Now at first it felt real good to get back and find the place clean and something cooked. But after a week it began to get on my wick. You began to feel that the place wasn’t yours any more. She wasn’t fussy, but you found yourself getting fussy. You began to look before you threw things down. She gets all the curtains washed, and everything washed she could lay hands on. Then she starts a-bringing flowers into the room. I hate anything like that.
“That’s just about the limit,” I says to my mate Jimmy. “She’s got to go.”
Then we began to talk about how much it cost us to keep her, and all that lark, and all the soap she was using.
The way we fixed up to get rid of her was dead simple. One Thursday evening I says to Jimmy: “What about going to the Regal, mate? It’s Spencer Tracy.” So Jimmy says: “I’ve got a dame to meet. Why don’t you take Jenny?” So I says: “You know she won’t come.” She says nothing for a bit. Then she says: “I will, if you want me to.”
Near the Elephant there is a cottage for men, and it goes under the street. You can go down a lot of steps and come out across the street. So when we got there, Jimmy says he has to go and meet his girl. I says: “I’d better go down there. I’ll be up in a minute.” She stands there on the street and we go down and nip across to the other side of the road. We came up, and peeped out. And there she was standing waiting. So we nipped back to the room and got her little case and shoved everything she had into it. Then we told old Mrs Hopkins that if she came back not to let her in. Then we went off to our caff and met Joe.
Late Night on Watling Street Page 14
