We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  “What did you want to tell me?” Honey said. “It’s getting late. I have to get down to the café.”

  “It won’t be open this morning,” Howard said. “I’m afraid something has happened to Victor.”

  When he’d finished telling her, Honey stood up, tears were welling into her eyes. “I’ve no hanky,” she said, and accepted the one which Howard held out. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and put the handkerchief into her pocket. “Filthy louts!” she said. “Thank you for telling me. It’s been quite a morning what with one thing and another.”

  Howard saw her out, and watched her go down the stairs. She didn’t go right down to her own flat but stopped outside the Dexters’ and rang the bell.

  Arthur Dexter opened the door.

  “Yes?” he said, his voice revealing the kind of night he had spent.

  “I’ve come to see if there’s anything I can do to help,” Honey said.

  Howard saw her go in and the door close behind her.

  “Despise not any man,” he said to himself, “and carp not at anything; for there is not a man that has not his hour, and there is not a thing that has not its place.”

  He wondered how soon the police would come, and went inside to make his breakfast.

  Honey, a cup of tea in her hand, knocked on Vanessa’s door. There was no reply so she opened the door softly and went in. Among the pink and white stripes, through which the sun was filtering, Vanessa slept. As Honey put the tea down by the bed she opened her eyes, then shut them again, then opened them and looked uncomprehendingly at Honey.

  “What are you doing here?” she said as Honey opened the curtains and let the sun flow into the room.

  “I came to see if I could help. Your mother’s in rather a state this morning.”

  Vanessa was silent for a moment then she sat up, leaning on her elbow, and said: “Of course. It must have been that tablet that Doctor Gurney gave me to help me sleep. I didn’t remember for a moment about Victor. I just had the vague sort of feeling you sometimes have when you wake up that something unpleasant has happened, and that it isn’t going to be a very nice day, but I couldn’t remember what or why. Have they heard anything?”

  “He’s all right, but they’re still keeping him heavily doped because of the pain. He hasn’t said anything yet.”

  “I was hoping it was only a nightmare. I can hardly believe it’s actually happened to Victor. It’s the sort of thing you read in the newspapers. It happens to other people and you say ‘Tut tut, how shocking’ or ‘Oh, dear’, and go on to read the women’s page. You never actually know how it feels to have it happen to your own family, your own brother. I suppose you never can until it actually does. Poor old Vic! Did they say anything more about his eye?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you think it was just an accident, Honey? I mean do you think they were just looking for somebody to beat up, or do you think they had it in for Vic? That he got mixed up in something down here?”

  “I don’t know, Van. Why don’t you drink your tea?”

  “I feel sick.”

  “You’ll be better if you have something. Just think how lucky it was that you found him. It might have been a lot worse.”

  “Yes, I suppose it might,” her mind going back to the night before and Howard and the beach and the moment when he had been about to kiss her and then the horror of tripping over Victor, and the warm stickiness of Victor’s blood…

  “How’s it going with Howard?” Honey tried to change the subject.

  Vanessa looked at her, silhouetted against the bright window. She looked like an advert for something, a pin-up on a calendar.

  “I wish I knew,” she said. “He’s awfully sort of difficult to get anywhere with. I mean…”

  “You’re in love with him, obviously.”

  Vanessa sighed. “I can’t think about anything else. The trouble is he doesn’t… I suppose I’m not old enough or sophisticated enough or something…he treats me as if I were a child. Honey?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’ve had lots of boyfriends. You know how to talk to them. Tell me what to do. How can I make him take me seriously?”

  Honey looked at her. Sitting up in bed, Vanessa looked almost a schoolgirl still. What advice could she give to a girl who came from another world? When she was Vanessa’s age she had known for years how to get her man. It was a knowledge she could never remember not having, but even if she could put it into words it wouldn’t help Vanessa. It had little to do with love, certainly nothing at all to do with marriage.

  “I suggested going swimming with nothing on,” Vanessa said. “He just looked shocked.”

  Honey smiled. “I’m not surprised. It isn’t exactly you.”

  “Oh, you think I’m so stuck up,” Vanessa said, “and when I’m with you, you make me act like it and conscious that I’ve been to good schools and have got clothes and can play tennis and the piano and all those things, but I don’t think I wouldn’t like to change, any day at all, with you.”

  “For what?”

  “For knowing how to make men look at you like they do. I’d give anything for Howard to look at me like that. I think I’d die of happiness. Until last night I hadn’t dreamed of anything else since we’ve been here. It seems awful talking like this with Victor lying there in hospital all cut up, but even now, you see, I can only think of Howard and how I can get him to marry me. I wish I was a man, then I could ask him.”

  “You could ask him,” Honey said. “I don’t suppose he realises…”

  “I’d be making myself awfully cheap. I’d even seduce him if I knew how.”

  Honey smiled. How could one explain to this child what she could do, without thinking, with her eyes alone. Suddenly she felt protective, wise, as if life had given her more than it had Vanessa, like a mother to her daughter.

  “I would give it time,” Honey said, “sooner or later he will see it in your eyes.”

  Louise trailed down the side streets of Merrydown, on what she hoped was the last lap of her chase. When she had started out she had been so worried and upset about what had happened to Victor that she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that Harry might be annoyed with her for coming to his digs. He hadn’t told her where he lodged, except that it was somewhere in Merrydown, and it had taken her almost half the morning to find out. She had gone first to the main pavilion, in the garden of which the children’s concert parties were held. The notices were outside leaning against the hedges advertising the afternoon’s show, but the place had appeared deserted. She went down the long flight of stone steps and peered, her face cupped in her hands, through the glass panels of the doors; she could see nothing, the place appeared to be in uninterrupted darkness. A gardener trimming the flowerbeds looked at her curiously.

  “Do you know where anyone from the concert party might be?” she asked him. “I have to find one of them. It’s awfully important.”

  The gardener had been helpful and glad of a chat. He told her that this year’s show was a sight better than last summer’s, that there was one real good-looking young lady in the company, and why did people throw their ice-cream papers on the lawns when there were all them litter bins plain as plain. He then told her that with any luck she might find the caretaker if she went round to the stage door, and he might be able to help her.

  The stage door was open, but nobody seemed to be about. Louise walked in, and down a dark, damp-smelling corridor. She peered into dusty dressing-rooms and musty corners. Bits of electrical equipment, old, curling advertisements and a crudely painted tree were lying about. At the end of the corridor, in a tiny room lit by a single bulb, an old man with a yellow moustache was drinking tea from a tin mug and picking a horse from the back page of a newspaper. He said ‘Oh’ and ‘Ah’ and ‘Yes, Miss’ and ‘No, Miss’, and finally admitted that he had a list somewhere with the information that she required. She waited while he finished his tea, folded his newspaper, got stiffly up, complai
ned about his lumbago, found his glasses which had only one side-piece to them, picked up his bunch of keys and ambled off down the corridor. Not knowing whether she was supposed to wait or accompany him, she followed him down a further dark passage and up some stairs. With much selecting and rejecting, he found a key from his bunch and opened a door into a small room in which there seemed to be nothing much but a gas stove and a dressing-gown hanging behind a door. On the wall, amongst other notices, was pinned a list. The old man, peering over the tops of his glasses, ran a filthy finger down the names. “Mabel ’Enderson,” he said, “Olive Campbell, she’s the one what does the disappearin’ for the kiddies, ah, ’ere we are, ’Arry Jessup, that’s ’im, le’ssee, 51 Poet’s Road, Merrydown, tha’ssit.”

  “I’m very grateful,” Louise said, looking in her bag for half-a-crown. “Where exactly is Poet’s Road?”

  “Poet’s Road? Well, Miss, you know the ‘Penny Whistle’, corner of the ’Igh Street opposight the ’arbour? Well, it’s back o’ there. Be’ind the ‘Green Man’, be’ind the ‘Iron Dook’ and be’ind the gas-works. Not that you wouldn’t be better off, being a stranger like, to take the bus to the market place and go round by the Tudor ’ouses…”

  “I’ll find it,” Louise said, giving him half-a-crown, “and thank you for your help.”

  His “Much obliged, Miss,” followed her down the corridor, as did his slow and curious stare.

  She asked three visitors to Merrydown, who looked at her blankly and said they were ‘strangers here’ themselves, before she found a coal-man who directed her reasonably sensibly to Poet’s Road. The smell from the gas-works pursued her as she walked past terrace after terrace of dingy houses, some of which had cards in the window which announced greyly ‘Vacancies’, and some of which did not. Poet’s Road was no different from Clitheroe Road, Fountayne Road and Hewitt Road, down which she had already walked. She wondered what poets had to do with it. Number Fifty-One had no card in the window, curtains with bobbles on the bottom, and an unwashed step. After she had rung twice and was really sorry that in the heat of the moment she had come, the door was opened by the ageing soubrette of the concert party who had sung ‘Only a Rose’ and ‘Because’. She was in, or rather, half in, a pink satin dressing-gown, and had her hair in curlers. She removed the cigarette from her mouth with slightly grubby-looking, nicotine-stained fingers, and looked through half-closed eyes at Louise.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry,” Louise said, meaning she was sorry to have got her out of bed. “I’m looking for…er…for Uncle Harry. Mr Jessup, that is.”

  The woman turned round abruptly, gathered her dressing-gown around her until it clearly outlined her buttocks and started heavily up the stairs, her legs white above the dingy, pale blue, fluffy slippers.

  “’Arry!” Her voice was shrill from the top of the stairs. “Fer you.” A door slammed, then there was silence.

  Louise, her cheeks burning, wished she could go away. She waited a long time, then Harry, in the chalk-striped trousers of his grey suit, came down the stairs. His shirt was open at the neck but looked clean. She could see his prominent Adam’s apple. He was surprised to see her, and looked anxious, worried. When she had told him why she had come he seemed relieved, and asked her to come in. He took her into what he called the ‘front room’, an overstuffed parlour with defiant-looking furniture, beige wallpaper, sporting prints and a drooping aspidistra in the fireplace above which a faded sampler said, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’.

  Harry offered Louise a cigarette, then said, of course, he knew who it was her young friend was with that night they had seen them in the pavilion. It was Petal. Everyone who knew Merrydown knew Petal. She was a well-known…er…well… er…you know…everyone round here knows Petal. Worked in Merrydown Park. Why did she want to know, anyway?

  Louise told him. She told him about Victor and what had happened to him, and how Howard had found him and seen this blonde girl running off with the Teddy boys and how the police were going to question them and she was anxious to do something to help. When she had finished she noticed that Harry had gone quite pale.

  “You should have told me before,” he said, “that that was why you wanted to know.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Then I wouldn’t have said anything about Petal. I don’t want to be mixed up.”

  “Don’t be angry. I only want to help Victor and the police; then they can find out who did it.”

  “You shouldn’t have interfered,” Harry said, stubbing his cigarette out fiercely in the ashtray. “There’s no sense getting mixed up. I’m not even sure it was Petal. As like as not it wasn’t. I couldn’t see very well. Did they do him bad?”

  “Bad enough,” Louise said. She was upset that she had made him angry. “I’d better go.”

  “I don’t want to get mixed up,” Harry said. “Don’t say anything to the police about me telling you it was Petal. I don’t want to get mixed up.” He lit another cigarette and Louise opened the door and went out into the dark, oilclothed hall.

  “I’m sorry I worried you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s all right, Louise. I just don’t want to get mixed up, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’ll see you on Saturday,” Louise said by the coat stand.

  He opened the door. “That’s right,” he said, although he seemed still agitated, preoccupied. “Saturday.”

  She wished she hadn’t gone. The cheap lodging-house, the front room, the soubrette in the grubby dressing-gown, the fact that she had upset Harry, the unpleasantness of it all depressed her. Harry had looked nice though, masculine in his open-necked shirt, and not at all bad-looking. Once she got him out of his sleazy environment and showed him what a proper home could be like… Petal. She must remember the name. And worked in Merrydown Park. She hoped it would help the Dexters and Victor.

  Back at Shore Court, two long, low police cars were waiting.

  Twenty

  Victor would not talk to the police, and neither would he talk to Doctor Gurney. To the police he said, Yes, he had gone into ‘Le Casse-Croûte’, no, he had not gone with a girl, yes, he had asked Louise for the keys because he wanted to borrow some records from the café. Lying there with his face, all but one eye, obscured by bandages, he did not attempt to make his story sound particularly convincing. What he invented he stuck to, and watched from his one eye while the sergeant, slowly and painstakingly, recorded what he said in his little book. It was dark, he said, and he had not seen much of his assailants; yes, he thought there were two or three of them; no, he hadn’t seen any girl with them; no, he definitely would not be able to recognise any of them again; yes, he realised it was his duty to help the police, if not for his own good, that similar offences might not perpetrated upon others; yes, he realised he must tell the truth, but he was tired, he said, and he wanted to go to sleep. The sergeant buttoned up his book in his breast pocket and sighed. Victor closed his eye but opened it again to watch him plod heavily over the polished boards of the ward and out through the swing doors. That had been at ten o’clock. By two o’clock, when Doctor Gurney went to visit him, Louise had come home with her news about Petal, and the police were already investigating it. Victor repeated his story about the records.

  “Know anything about a girl called Petal?” Doctor Gurney said.

  Victor looked at him. “No. Do you think my eye will be all right? I’ve heard them whispering about it but can’t catch what they say. Why do they always treat one like some low-grade moron in hospital?”

  “They’re going to try to save it. It might be a bit tricky because bleeding has occurred into the orbital cavity. You’ve got about a fifty-fifty chance of retaining the sight. About Petal. You’ve been seen with her, you know. In the pavilion bar. I should come clean if I were you, Vic. You aren’t helping anyone. Not now that they know about Petal. The police have probably been to see her already.”

  “Why can’t everyone mind his
own business?”

  Doctor Gurney stopped smiling and, leaning back in the chair by the bed on which he sat, said: “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped being childish, Victor? I’m afraid you’re going to look a bit of a mess when you get out of here; probably for quite a while. If you aren’t concerned on your own behalf you might consider your parents. Possibly you haven’t considered the shock they have had. Of course, it’s entirely up to you, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to tell me what’s been going on and exactly what you’ve got yourself mixed up in, before the police ferret it out for themselves?”

  Victor shut his eye. Everything felt sore; his face, his arms, his hands; particularly his hands. His head ached, and with his eye closed he had the sensation that he was floating in a kind of soft, cotton-wool void. He supposed it was the effect of all the dope he had been given. It gave him a feeling of unreality. He hadn’t felt real, that he was actually there, in a white hospital bed, since he had woken, properly conscious for the first time this morning. When the house-surgeon had told him what had happened and why he was there at all he hadn’t at first remembered, then slowly, a small portion at a time, it had all come back. Last night and Petal; particularly Petal. When he thought about her he was filled with a curious mixture of desire, disgust and shame. The desire was for Petal, the disgust for himself, and the shame for what would be thought of him if the story came out, if Petal talked, for instance…

  The evening had started well; very well, in fact. The preparations had begun earlier, as soon as he had left ‘Le Casse-Croûte’. Very much a man of the world, he had realised that whatever happened Petal mustn’t, as a result of the evening, become pregnant. That was most important. It did not occur to him that Petal might be capable of looking after herself. With this in mind he had set out for a chemist’s shop. Not in Whitecliffs, where the dispenser at the tiny pharmacy now knew him by name, but in Merrydown itself, where the shops were many and crowded, mostly with strangers to the town. As he set out to make his purchase he smiled to himself at the old school joke of the man who set out on the same mission as himself and came home with twenty-four razor blades. After he had visited three chemists’ shops he didn’t think the joke so frightfully funny. In the first shop, a blonde eighteen-year-old with orange lipstick had said, “Yes, sir?” pertly and he had mumbled something and left hurriedly; in the second, an elderly woman with glasses had looked at him severely and served him with some hair tonic he hadn’t wanted, and in the third, a man in a white coat had enquired what it was he wanted, and waited, eyebrows raised, wrists on the counter, for him to reply. Since he was hemmed in on the one side by an old lady with a prescription in her hand, a fat woman who couldn’t take her eyes off him on the other, and the shop was full of people who seemed to be standing there hanging on his words, he had said he would call back later, and escaped. Disheartened, he went into an ice-cream parlour where he had a cold drink and a stern word with himself for his own stupidity. He made a list on a piece of paper of one or two toilet items he did not need, and the small requisite he did. He then marched into a fourth chemist’s shop and thrust the list at the lad behind the counter. Without comment his package was handed to him, and he left the shop kicking himself mentally for his own stupidity in the first place.