The Ballad of Peckham Rye

by Muriel Spark

  ‘No. Something stopped me.’ She began to cry. ‘Who put the pot of indoor creeping ivy in my room?’ Dougal said. ‘Was it my little dog-toothed blonde process-controller?’

  ‘Yes, it was a scraggy little blonde. Looks as if she could do with a good feed. They all do.’

  Mr Druce whispered, ‘I couldn’t manage it the other night. Things were difficult.’

  ‘I sat at the Dragon in Dulwich from nine till closing time,’ Dougal said, ‘and you didn’t come.’

  ‘I couldn’t get away. Mrs Druce was on the watch. If you’d come to that place in Soho—’

  Dougal consulted his pocket diary. He shut it and put it away. ‘Next month it would have to be. This month my duties press.’ He rose and walked up and down Mr Druce’s office as with something on his mind.

  ‘I called for you last Saturday,’ Mr Druce said. ‘I thought you would care for a spin.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Dougal said absently. ‘I believe I was researching on Miss Coverdale that afternoon.’ Dougal smiled at Mr Druce. ‘Interrogating her, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Her devotion to you is quite remarkable,’ Dougal said. ‘She spoke of you continually.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, what did she say? Look, Dougal, you can’t trust everyone —‘

  Dougal looked at his watch. ‘Goodness,’ he said, ‘the time. What I came to see you about — the question of my increase in salary.’

  ‘It’s going through,’ Mr Druce said. ‘I put it to the Board that, since Weedin’s breakdown, a great deal of extra work falls on your shoulders.’

  Dougal massaged both his shoulders, first his high one, then his low one.

  ‘Dougal,’ said Mr Druce.

  ‘Vincent,’ said Dougal, and departed.

  Chapter 8

  JOYCE WILLIS said, ‘Quite frankly, the first time Richard invited you to dinner I knew we’d found the answer. Richard didn’t see it at first, quite frankly, but I think he’s beginning to see it now.’

  She crossed the room, moving her long hips, and looked out of the bow window into the August evening. ‘Richard should be in any moment,’ she said. She touched her throat with her fine fingers. She put to rights a cushion in the window-seat.

  Still standing, she lifted her glass, and sipped, and put it down on a low table. She crossed the room and sat on a chair upholstered in deep pink brocade.

  ‘I feel I can really talk to you now,’ she said. ‘I feel we’ve known each other for years.

  She said, ‘The Drovers were getting the upper hand. Richard was, well, quite frankly, being pushed into the position of subordinate partner.

  ‘The nephew, Mark Bewlay — that’s her nephew, of course — came to the firm two — was it two? — no, it was three years ago, imagine it, in October. And he was supposed to go through the factory from A to Z. Well, quite frankly he was sitting on the Board within six months. Then the son John came straight down from Oxford last year, and same thing again. The Board’s reeking with Drovers.

  ‘One of Richard’s great mistakes — I’m speaking to you quite frankly,’ she said, ‘was insisting on our living in Peckham. Well, the house is all right — but I mean, the environment. There are simply no people in the place. Our friends always get lost finding the way here; they drive round for hours. And there are blacks at the other end of the Avenue, you know. I mean, it’s so silly.

  ‘Richard’s a Scot, of course,’ she said, ‘and in a way that’s why I think you understand his position. He’s so scrupulously industrious and pathologically honest. And it’s rather sweet in a way. Yes, I must say that. He simply doesn’t see that the Drovers living in Sussex in a Georgian rectory gives them a big advantage. A big advantage. It’s psychological.’

  She said. ‘Yes, Richard insists on living near the job, as he says. And quite frankly, I have to put up with a good deal of condescension from Queenie Drover, although she’s sweet in a way. She knows of course that Richard’s a bit old-fashioned and prides himself on being a real merchant, they both know, the Drovers. They know it only too well.’

  She filled both glasses with sherry, turning the good bones of her wrists and holding the glasses at the ends of her long fingers with their lacquered nails and the bright emerald. She looked at herself, before she sat down, in the gilt-framed glass and turned back a wisp of her short dark-gold hair. Her face was oval; she posed it to one side; she said, ‘Of course it has been a disappointment that we had no children. If there had been a son to support Richard on the Board … Sometimes I feel, quite frankly, the firm should be called Drover, Drover, Drover Willis, not just Drover Willis.

  ‘Richard was touched a few weeks ago,’ she said, ‘he told me so, when he met you one Saturday afternoon while he was waiting for me outside the shop, and he saw you working away on your Saturday afternoon, spending your Saturday afternoon with a Peckham girl, trying to get to know the types. Richard thinks you are brilliant, you know. A fine brain and a sound moral sense, he told me, quite frankly, and he thinks you’re absolutely wasted in the personnel research job. The thing about you — and I saw it long before Richard and I’m not just saying it because you’re here — you’re so young and energetic, and yet so steady. I suppose it’s being a Scot.

  ‘Not many young fellows of your age,’ she said, ‘— I’m not flattering you — and of your qualifications and ability would be prepared to settle down as you have done in a place like Peckham where the scope for any kind of gaiety is so limited, there’s nothing to do and there are no young people for you to meet. I’m speaking quite frankly, as I would to my own son if I had one.

  ‘I feel towards you,’ she said, ‘as to a son. I hope — I would always hope — to count you as one of the family although, as you know, there are only Richard and me. I was so interested in your conversation the other night about so many things I didn’t quite frankly know existed in this area. The Camberwell Art Gallery I knew of course; but the excavations of the tunnel — I had only read of its progress in the South London Observer — I didn’t dream there was anything so serious and learned behind it.’

  She turned and plumped out the cushion behind her. She looked at her pointed toes. ‘You must sometimes come to town with us. We go to the theatre at least once a week,’ she said.

  She said, “The idea that you should come on the Board with Richard in the autumn is an excellent one. It will almost be like having a Willis in the firm. Your way of speaking is so like Richard’s — I mean, not just the accent, but well, quite frankly, I mean, you don’t say much, but when you say something it’s the right thing. Richard needs you and I think I’m right in saying it’s an ideal prospect for a young man of your temperament, and it means serious responsibility and an established position within a matter of five or six years. You have this way of approaching life seriously, not just here today and gone tomorrow, and it appeals to Richard. Richard is a judge of character. One day the firm might be Drover, Willis & Dougal. Just a moment —‘

  She went over to the window, smoothing her waist, and glanced through the window as a car drew up in the small curved drive. ‘Here’s Richard.’ she said. ‘He’s been looking forward to having a serious chat with you this evening, and getting things settled before we go abroad.’

  ‘Is that you, Jinny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you got any milk on the stove?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When can I come and see you?’

  ‘I’m getting married next week.’

  ‘No, Jinny.’

  ‘I’m in love with him. He was sweet when I was ill.’

  ‘Just when I’m getting on my feet and drawing two pays for nothing,’ Dougal said, ‘you tell me —‘

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked between us, Dougal. I’m not strong in health.’

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Miss Cheeseman’s thrilled with her autobiography so far,’ Jinny said. ‘You’ll do well, Dougal.’

&
nbsp; ‘You’ve changed. You are using words like “sweet” and “thrilled”.’

  ‘Oh, get away. Miss Cheeseman said she was pleased.’

  ‘She doesn’t tell me that.’

  ‘Well, she has some tiny reservations about the Peckham bits, but on the whole —‘

  ‘I’m coming over to see you, Jinny.’

  ‘No, Dougal, I mean it.’

  Dougal went in to Miss Frierne’s kitchen and wept into his large pocket handkerchief.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she said.

  ‘No. My girl’s getting married to another chap.’

  She filled the kettle and put it down on the draining board. She opened the back door and shut it again. She took up a duster and dusted a kitchen chair, back and legs.

  ‘You’re better off without her,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Dougal said, ‘but I’ve got a fatal flaw.’

  ‘You’re not drinking at nights, Dougal?’

  ‘No more than usual.’

  She lifted the kettle and put it down again.

  ‘Calm down,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Well, it upsets me inside to see a man upset.’

  ‘Light the gas and put the kettle on it,’ he said.

  She did this, then stood and looked at him. She took off her apron.

  ‘Sit down,’ Dougal said.

  She sat down.

  ‘Stand up.’ he said, ‘and fetch me a tot of your gin.’

  She brought two glasses and the gin bottle. ‘It’s only quarter past five,’ she said. ‘It’s early to start on gin. Here’s to you, son. You’ll soon get over it.’

  The front-door bell rang. Miss Frierne caused the bottle and glasses to disappear. The bell rang again. She went to answer it.

  ‘Name of Frierne?’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’

  ‘Could I have a private word with you?’

  Miss Frierne returned to the kitchen followed by a policeman.

  ‘A man aged about seventy-nine was run over by a bus this morning on the Walworth Road. Sorry, madam, but he had the name Frierne in his pocket written on a bit of paper. He died an hour ago. Any relation you know of, madam?’

  ‘No, I don’t know of him. Must be a mistake. You can ask my neighbours if you like. I’m the only one left in the world.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the policeman, making notes.

  ‘Did he have any other papers on him?’

  ‘No, nothing. A pauper, poor devil.’

  The policeman left.

  ‘Well, there wasn’t anything I could do if he’s dead, was there?’ Miss Frierne said to Dougal. She started crying. ‘Except pay for the funeral. And it’s hard enough keeping going and that.’

  Dougal fetched out the gin again and poured two glasses. Presently he placed a kitchen chair to face the chair on which he sat. He put up his feet on it and said, ‘Ever seen a corpse?’ He lolled his head back, closed his eyes and opened his mouth so that the bottom jaw was sunken and rigid.

  ‘You’re callous, that’s what you are,’ Miss Frierne said. Then she screamed with hysterical mirth.

  Humphrey sat with Mavis and Arthur Crewe in their sitting-room, touching, every now and then, two marks on his face.

  ‘Well, if by any chance you don’t have her, it’s your luck,’ Mavis said. ‘I say it though she’s my own daughter. When I was turned seventeen, eighteen, I was out with the boys every night, dancing and so forth. You wouldn’t have caught me doing no evening work just for a bit of money. And there aren’t so many boys willing to sit round waiting like you. She’ll learn when it’s too late.’

  ‘It isn’t as if she parts with any of her money,’ Arthur Crewe said. ‘You don’t get the smell of an oil-rag out of Dixie. The more she’s got the meaner she gets.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Dixie’s mother said. ‘You don’t want anything from her, do you?’

  ‘I never said I did. I was only saying —‘

  ‘Dixie has her generous side,’ Mavis said. ‘You must hand it to her, she’s good to Leslie. She’s always slipping him five bob here and five bob there.’

  ‘Pity she does it,’ Arthur said. ‘The boy’s ruined. He’s money mad.’

  ‘What you know about kids? There’s nothing wrong with Leslie. He’s no different from the rest. They all like money in their pockets.’

  ‘Where’s Leslie now, anyway?’

  ‘Gone out.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘How do I know? You ask him.’

  ‘He’s with Trevor Lomas,’ Humphrey said. ‘Up at Costa’s.’

  ‘There you are, Arthur. There’s no harm in Trevor Lomas.’

  ‘He’s a bit old company for Leslie.’

  ‘Grumble, grumble, grumble,’ Mavis said, and switched on the television.

  Leslie came in at eleven. He looked round the sitting-room.

  ‘Hallo, Les,’ Humphrey said.

  Leslie did not speak. He went upstairs.

  At half-past eleven Dixie came home. She kicked off her shoes in the sitting-room and flopped on to the sofa. ‘You been here long?’ she said to Humphrey.

  ‘An hour or two.’

  ‘Nice to be able to sit down of a summer evening,’ Dixie said.

  ‘Yes, why don’t you try it?’

  ‘Trevor Lomas says there’s plenty of overtime at Freeze-eezy if anyone wants it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want it,’ Humphrey said.

  ‘Obvious.’

  ‘Who wants to do overtime all their lives?’ Mavis said.

  ‘I was just remarking,’ Dixie said, ‘what Trevor Lomas told me.’

  ‘Overtime should be avoided except in cases of necessity,’ Humphrey said, ‘because eventually it reduces the normal capacity of the worker and in the long run leads to under-production, resulting in further demands for overtime. A vicious circle. Where did you see Trevor Lomas?’

  ‘It is a case of necessity,’ Dixie said, ‘because we need all the money we can get.’

  ‘That’s how she goes on,’ Mavis said. ‘Why she can’t be content to settle down with a man’s good wages like other people I don’t know. With a bungalow earmarked for October —‘ .

  ‘I want it to be a model bungalow,’ Dixie said.

  ‘You’ll have your model bungalow,’ Humphrey said.

  ‘She wants a big splash wedding,’ Mavis said. ‘Well. Arthur and I will do what we can but only what we can.

  ‘That’s right.’ Arthur said.

  ‘Dixie’s entitled to the best,’ Mavis said. ‘She’s got a model dress in view.’

  ‘Where did you see Trevor Lomas?’ Humphrey said to Dixie.

  ‘Up at Costa’s. I went in for a Coke on the way home. Any objections?’.

  ‘No, dear, no,’ Humphrey said.

  ‘Nice of you. Well, I’m going to bed, I’m tired out. You still got your scars.’

  ‘They’ll go away in time.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Trevor’s got a scar.’

  ‘I better keep my eye on Trevor Lomas,’ Humphrey said.

  ‘You better keep your eye on your friend Dougal Douglas. Trevor says he’s a dick.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Mavis said.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Arthur.

  ‘No more do I,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘I know you think he’s perfect,’ Dixie said. ‘He can do no wrong. But I’m just telling you what Trevor said. So don’t say I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Trevor’s having you on,’ Humphrey said. ‘He doesn’t like Dougal.’

  ‘I like him,’ Arthur said.

  ‘I like him,’ Mavis said. ‘Our Leslie don’t like him. Dixie don’t like him.’

  ‘I like him,’ Humphrey said. ‘My sister Elsie doesn’t like him.’

  ‘Is Mr Douglas at home?’

  ‘Well, he’s up in his room playing the typewriter at the moment,’ said Miss Frierne, ‘as you can hear.’

  ‘Can I go up?’

 
; ‘No, I must inquire. Come inside, please. What name?’

  ‘Miss Coverdale.’

  Miss Frierne left Miss Coverdale in that hall which was lined with wood like a coffin. The sound of the typewriter stopped. Dougal’s voice called down from the second landing, ‘Come up.’ Miss Frierne frowned in the direction of his voice. ‘Top floor,’ she said to Merle.

  ‘I’m miserable. I had to see you,’ Merle said to Dougal. ‘What a nice little room you’ve got here!’

  ‘Why are you not at work?’ Dougal said.

  ‘I’m too upset to work. Mr Druce is talking of leaving the country for good. What should I do?’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Dougal said.

  ‘I want to go with him but he won’t take me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He knows I don’t like him.’

  Dougal stretched himself out on the top of his bed.

  ‘Does Mr Druce mention any date for his departure?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing settled. Perhaps it’s only a threat. But I think he’s frightened of something.’

  Dougal sat up and placed one hand within the other. He shortened his eyesight and peered at Merle with sublime appreciation. ‘Dougal,’ he said, ‘there is a little place in Soho, would you not come to spend the evening and have a chat? Mrs Druce is just a bit difficult, she watches —‘

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Merle said. ‘It brings everything back to me. I can’t tell you how I hate the man. I can’t bear him to be near me. And now, after all these years, the best years of my life, the swine talks of leaving me.

  Dougal lay back with his arms behind his head. ‘What’s he frightened of?’ he said.

  ‘You,’ Merle said. ‘He’s got hold of the idea that you’re spying on him.’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Yes, you could.’

  ‘If you’re working for the police, Dougal, please tell me. Think of my position. After all, I told you about Mr Druce in all innocence and if I’m going to be dragged into anything —‘

  ‘I’m not working for the police,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Well, of course, I knew you wouldn’t admit it.’

  ‘What guilty wee consciences you’ve all got,’ Dougal said.