Keogh’s wife lifted her head up. “Yeh,” she said, “an’ ’e was dead drunk in kip after. No good to me for two days.”
“No wonder,” Keogh said, “I’d been shaggin’ the welt orf your sister all that arternoon.”
The women went off into fresh howls of laughter and the children on the floor laughed obediently. Mr Merry turned away. He moved on to another doorway. A woman said, “’Ere, ’Arry. Visitor.”
Harry turned his head. “Mr Merry. Pleasure, Mr Merry. ’Ere —” With a free hand he poured whisky into a mug and held it out. Merry stepped forward and took it. He made no attempt to drink out of the filthy mug.
“Where’s the old man?” Merry put the mug down on the window-ledge.
“Come to see the ol’ man, ’ave yer?” Merry followed him out. They went to another door. Harry opened it. The gas-mantle in the scullery was broken and a tall flame fanned out blue and yellow with a throaty noise. On a wooden chair by the table sat Ginger Murchison. He was slumped down as if there was no longer a backbone to support his massive body. His large, grey-crowned head had sunk between his shoulders as if the neck had disappeared inside him. He looked dully towards the door. Beer dribbled from a corner of his mouth as he drank with a loud sucking noise.
“’Ere, guv’nor,” Harry shouted. “Got a visitor.”
The old man went on sucking his beer.
“It’s Mr Merry,” Harry said. No gleam of interest showed in his father’s eyes.
“Copper?” Old Murchison’s wife sat on the other side of the table. She was as skinny and fierce as a starved alleycat. Her eyes were blazing. “Copper? Can’t yer leave ’im alone, jus’ come ’ome?”
“’E’s all right,” Harry said. “Friendly visit, that’s all. Eh, Mr Merry?”
Merry said to the old man, “Came to have a look at you.”
The old man mumbled, “Copper.”
Merry said. “I see you’ll give no trouble.”
Harry said, “’E won’t give you no trouble, Mr Merry.”
“He’d better not,” Merry said. “His brain’s damaged. If he gets another knock, any excitement even, he could drop dead. Or paralysed for life.”
Harry grinned. “’Ear that, guv? Drop dead any time, you could.”
The old man lifted his head as if it was very heavy. He said, “Di’o Peach.”
“Never mind Dido Peach,” Harry said.
The slurred voice mumbled again, the lips working with the effort of speech, and the eyes now glaring with hatred. “Di’o Peach. Git Di’o Peach. Git that fucker, I will.”
“Never you mind ’im,” Harry said to Merry. “I’ll keep ’im out of ’arm.”
Ginger’s voice struggled out of caverns, distorted. “Watch ’ow you talk, ’Arry.”
The mother, shrill, “Don’t you talk to your father like that!”
“Belt you yet,” the old man managed.
“You? Belt me?” Harry showed his teeth in a sardonic grimace. “You couldn’t git your own belt orf to do a crap.”
The old man began to heave in his chair, trying to raise himself, “Show you oo’s boss.”
Harry’s voice hardened. “Boss? Sit down, will yer?” He shoved his father back into the chair. “You, too —” He silenced a screech of protest from his mother. “You ain’t the boss any more. Old tub o’ guts, that’s all you are. Finished. Sit there an’ die, that’s all you can do. Fuckin’ die, do us a favour. Only one boss round ’ere. Me. Ask Mr Merry. Now you sup your ale, see? No more trouble. Enjoy yourself.”
Merry went out with him. Harry walked at the detective’s shoulder. Merry pushed through the cavorting throng, ignoring him. They reached the street. Harry said, “You leave it to me, Mr Merry. No more trouble.”
Merry turned. The other man was very close to him. He spoke softly. “Harry —”
He moved his foot a little, so that the heel of his boot was on Harry’s instep. He let all his weight bear down on the heel. He waited. Harry’s breath reeked in his face. Harry stared perplexed, searching Mr Merry’s face. For a few long seconds Mr Merry waited, grinding pain into the other man’s foot. Satisfied when his challenge was shirked, he said, still quietly, “Who did you say was boss, Harry?”
No answer.
“Who’s the boss round here?”
Quietly, “You are, Mr Merry.”
He shifted his foot. “That’s right. Goodnight, Harry.”
In the city of a million chimneys, fog was the rule rather than the exception in winter-time. At seven in the evening a yellow haze hung on a mist of rain to make a light fog which thickened dusk into premature night. High up the white globes of street lamps glimmered eerily, their posts invisible. Grace Matthews came out of the teashop, turned left along Great Eastern Street and almost at once knew that the dark-clad man who had hurried out of the gloom to her side was Mr Peach.
Dido said, “’Evenin’, Miss Matthews.”
She said, “Good evening,” not turning her head, and walked rapidly on, frightened.
He remained at her elbow. “Which way you goin’?”
Her mind could not work fast enough to outwit him with an excuse or a deception. She was an orphan. She lived in a Working-Girls’ Hostel in City Road. It was little more than ten minutes on foot from where she worked. She said, “City Road.”
He kept his pace down to match her quick, short steps.
“You don’t mind?”
“No.”
“No offence. Just passin’.”
“Were you?”
“Always go this way. This time of an evenin’.”
She was stung to say, “Funny I’ve never met you before. Been walking it every night for two years.”
“Funny. You been workin’ that place two years?”
“Yes. I remember telling you.”
“Where were you before that?”
“Another branch. This one was nearer to the hostel.”
“You in a hostel?”
“Yes.”
“Not much of a life.”
“It’s a very nice place.”
The hostel had long tiled corridors that echoed. It smelled of kitchen grease and menstruation.
“Ah,” he said. “That’s a good thing anyway.”
Her heart thumped faster than the tap of her feet. When he left nowadays, after holding her by his table in talk, the girls would make fun of her, and say, “See, he does fancy you.”
Once she had said in answer to this, “He gives me the cold shudders.”
Men came in all day, and crowded in at midday. Some of them joked with her. Some acted too familiarly. They were a herd, a species, she was able to think of them in the mass and so not be frightened of them. She was lonely and dreamed of someone nice, but she saw hundreds of men, and they were nearly all ugly or furtive or greedy. She would like to be taken out by a man, to go up West on the open top deck of a bus, not with girl friends but with a shadowy someone nice. Someone polite, gentle, handsome. She had never been out with a man. Sidney was not handsome. Sidney was the only one she had ever liked even a little. He came in every day at one o’clock, welsh rarebit, cup of tea, a book propped up in front of him. She knew his name because sometimes one of the other clerks from the railway was with him. It was a nice name, she sometimes said it to herself, Sidney. He was shorter than her, and he wore glasses. Not the one she was looking for. But she could feel sorry for him. She thought she would go out with him if he asked but he seemed the shy type. He looked at her as if he would like to ask her. Some hopes! Him take her out, on a railway clerk’s pay? Besides, he was busy after work; classes at the Bishopsgate Evening College. They talked sometimes when no other chaps were with him. He was studying English Literature, poetry, all that kind of thing. He said it enriched the mind. She used to like poetry ever so much at school. Him ask her out, some hopes! And this Peach man was still walking next to her. What should she do? Every time he came into the teashop she was frightened but she couldn’t get away from him. It w
asn’t just that she couldn’t think of an excuse. Something gripped her. His eyes, the way they seemed to dwindle down and stare into her, they just kept her there. She had never known this thumping of the heart before, feeling breathless, scared, yet it made her feel alive, funny, did he attract her? She never thought anything like this would happen to her, not to her.
He was talking, talking, and she gave him answers. People thronged in the foggy dusk, hurrying bowed, in flight from the chill mist, jostling past, vanishing into it. Great shire horses loomed out of the fog, sparkles of moisture on their backs and manes, high-laden wagons from docks and rail depots rumbling behind them, carters huddled, grotesquely wrapped, on their perches. The clash of the great hooves on cobbles, the iron rims of wheels mingling their noise in a thunder, the wide road a jam of wagons, here and there the gawky, coloured upper deck of a bus among them, all in a pale yellow cavern of light that blurred away into fog. Her voice and his were small, senseless sounds among all the noise and movement. She was walking in a dream. Oh, she was frightened of him! Yes, she was. Why? He was a respectable man. In business, he was. It was funny the way some men, the more they seemed to want you, the more they frightened you. Not the joky ones. The serious ones. They put you off, that staring way they looked, looking at you, hardly talking. What was he talking about now?
Relief pierced her as, his words unheard sounding against her thoughts, she saw the steps, the wide, arched doorway, the lit hall inside with its black-and-white pavement and vaulted ceiling. She stopped. “I live here.”
“Oh, this is where you live, is it?”
“Yes, well. Thank you. Good night.”
“Miss —” His voice halted her. “Miss Matthews.” He was going to ask her out. A man was going to offer to take her among the coloured lights, the crowds, perhaps into a dazzling restaurant with music, perhaps the Pop in Piccadilly where some of the girls had been. All he said was, “You didn’t mind? Just as well in the fog, have someone with you.”
“Yes,” she said. “You never know in the fog.”
“I often go this way of an evening,” he said. “You never know. Perhaps another night. Just walkin’ the same way.”
“Yes,” she said. “Good night.”
Chapter Six
On Christmas Day, 1911, the people of Rabbit Marsh spent the greater part of the morning in bed, as was their custom. The street was deserted when the Peach family went to morning service; but here and there above the row of blank shutters a tousled head peered down from an upper window to watch them. Their pace was slow, almost stately. Mrs Peach wore a high, old-fashioned bonnet and a black coat tight at the waist, its high collar lined with fur, falling to the toecaps over her black silk dress. Dido, her arm through his, wore a gent’s black overcoat, a natty trilby narrow at the top and with rolled narrow brim, his best suit, a high winged collar, striped shirt and knitted silk tie. Chas and Shonny walked in step behind. Their shoes, like his were highly polished. They wore their best suits with bowler hats. It was not a new sight but this year Dido’s position made it something of a procession of state.
At twelve o’clock they were back home and preparing to go out again. Chas stood in the hall doorway and said, “Oh, come on, mum.”
Mrs Peach paused and put a hand uncertainly to her cheek. She murmured, “I was looking for something.” She stared at him beseechingly. “I can’t remember.”
“What’s the use of wandering about if you can’t remember.”
But she was moving helplessly around the kitchen again, looking behind ornaments on the mantelpiece, opening the cupboard, trying to jog her memory. A shout came from Dido in the street. Chas shouted back, “It’s mum.”
Dido shouted, “Her glasses? Tell ’er they‘re in ’er bag.”
The shout roused Mrs Peach. Like a sleeper awakened she snapped open the reticule bag that hung by a chain from her wrist. She peered in, and with a moue of annoyance as if someone else had hidden them there said, “Why didn’t he say so?” Then, pettishly, “Shonny, what are you about now?”
Shonny had opened the canary’s cage. He put in a slice of apple and a piece of sugar and closed the door. “That’s ’im ’appy.”
The canary was Shonny’s responsibility and his passion. He made its care a life work. Twice a day he changed the water and cleaned the cage with scrupulous care. He was for ever putting fresh sand in, feeding the bird, coaxing it to sing or taking it out carefully in the palm of his hand to exchange kisses with the tip of its beak. He was small for a boy of fourteen and in spite of his long trousers and bowler looked like a school child with rosy cheeks and eyes bright with innocence and good nature.
They went out. Chas locked the street door. Dido was waiting with the pony and cart he had borrowed from Tommy Long. The boys helped their mother up on to the front seat next to Dido, then climbed into the back which was stacked with bags and parcels.
They were going to their older sister Ada for Christmas dinner. She was two years senior to Dido and lived four miles away in Walthamstow, on the marshes by the Lea. She had three children and a husband who made a good living growing vegetables.
Mrs Peach said, “Dido — you be careful with Herbert.”
Ada had met Herbert at a revival meeting where they were both stewards. Every week for a year he had come to Rabbit Marsh to court her at solemn meals with the family, but he let his distaste for the background be seen. Then he married her and carried her off to Walthamstow. Mrs Peach was delighted at her daughter’s escape. She approved of Herbert’s dislike of Rabbit Marsh and hoped he realised that it was only through unfortunate circumstances that such a respectable family dwelt there. But after the marriage their visits became less and less frequent. When the children came they stopped. To see her daughter and grandchildren, Mrs Peach had to go to Walthamstow, for Herbert did not wish to recall that his wife came from Rabbit Marsh or let his children know of it. In this, as in every other aspect of life Ada ardently adopted her husband’s views. Mrs Peach could not help feeling a little hurt. Her daughter might at least have come occasionally on her own.
Dido did not bother to answer his mother. From his first meeting with Herbert Fulcher he had known that he in particular was the object of Herbert’s distaste. Herbert was a big, booming fellow who spoke in a tradesman’s accent, genteel but Cockney at the edges, and Ada had soon learned to imitate him. To him Mrs Peach might just pass muster, but the boys seemed a rough lot, particularly Dido, a common labourer with a hard, dangerous look. Dido’s ever-sensitive pride was inflamed in turn by the knowledge of this, and he had to keep a grip on himself in Herbert’s presence.
The journey was pleasant, clop-clopping along Mare Street, across Clapton, down Lea Bridge Road and over the river in broad streets that were still sparsely peopled, cold air whipping their faces. They pulled up outside the neat little cottage of brick and slate in which the Fulchers lived. It had gardens in front and behind, a green wooden fence, a green trellis porch round the front door and a view across the flats to the river. Ada and her family came out with effusive welcomes as the Peaches climbed down, stiff with cold.
The boys carried the bags into the front parlour where a fire blazed in the grate. Ada at once began her annual presentation of gifts, which brought no surprises. She had sewn a handkerchief sachet for her mother and knitted for each of the boys a cumbersome pair of socks. In the past the Peaches had responded with trifling trinkets and cheap toys. But this time Dido took charge. He stood over the bags and parcels with an air of expectant calm that vaguely puzzled Ada. He reached into a bag and gave Ada the usual tin of mince pies baked by mother. Then, with no change of countenance, he brought out successively a huge candied cake that could only have come from a pastrycook’s, a ham sewn in sacking, a flowered hat for Ada, a box of cigars for Herbert and (for although Herbert was chapel he did not despise the comforts of life) a bottle of port.
Ada crowed with gratitude but her eyes stared with astonishment and there was astonishment in Herbe
rt’s frown. Dido wore the expressionless face of triumph as he brought out the children’s gifts, a huge and costly doll, a train set, a set of Chinese bricks and picture books, crackers and boxes of Russian bon-bons.
“Here, I say,” Herbert broke out at last. “You’re goin’ it a bit.”
“Christmas.”
“You ’aven’t been robbing the Post Office or something, have you?”
“No.” Dido permitted himself a faint smile. “Have you?”
Herbert, his back warming at the fire, thought it best to let this go with a chuckle while Ada, half-joking, half-offended, cried, “The idea!”
Herbert asked, “Still workin’ on the wharf, are you?”
Shonny was already on the floor, joining together the rails of the train set. He glanced up. “Our Dido’s —”
“Be quiet,” his mother said. “You speak when you’re spoken to, Shonny. My Dido’s doing very well.”
“Looks like it,” said Herbert. “On the wharf?”
Dido said, “Where else?”
Ada said, “What were you going to tell us, Shonny?”
Shonny’s mouth fish-opened but his mother spoke with unusual promptitude. “He was going to say Dido’s bettered himself. He’s a kind of foreman now. Aren’t you, Dido?”
“I’m doin’ all right,” Dido said.
“And the business is doing all right,” Mrs Peach added, her voice eager with desperation.
“I can see that,” said Herbert. “Very handsome, I must say. Money in rags, eh? Nice drop of port, this.”
Mrs Peach’s bosom subsided with relief. The critical moment of explanation was past; she had dreaded it for days past. The gifts or the money to buy them had all come from the tradesmen of Rabbit Marsh. They had not been solicited. In fact Dido forbore from his rounds of the shops during the week before Christmas. He could not bear to be thought of like some dustman or milkman calling for a Christmas box. But the gifts were brought to the door of Number Thirty-four. The street had enjoyed half a year of peace. And in contrast with the former innumerable exactions of an entire clan, there was only one man to placate, who pocketed in silence what he was offered but made no demands. Dido was a cheap protector.
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