‘YES, Cheese?’ Dougal said.
‘Look, Doug. I think I can’t have this story about the Dragon at Dulwich, it’s indecent. Besides, it isn’t true. And I never went to Soho at that age. I never went out with any managing director -‘
‘It will help to sell the book,’ Dougal said. He breathed moistly on the oak panel of Miss Frierne’s hall, and with his free hand drew a face on the misty surface where he had breathed.
‘And Doug dear,’ said the voice from across the river, ‘how did you know I started life in a shoe factory? I mean to say, I didn’t tell you that. How did you know?’
‘I didn’t know, Cheese,’ Dougal said.
‘You must have known. You’ve got all the details right, except that it wasn’t in Peckham, it was Streatham. It all came back to me as I read it. It’s uncanny. You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you, Doug?’
‘Aye,’ Dougal said. He breathed on the panel, wrote in a word, then rubbed it off.
‘Doug, you mustn’t do that. It makes me creepy to think that people can find out all about you,’ Miss Cheeseman said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to put in about the shoe factory and all that. Besides, the period. It dates me.
‘It only makes you sixty-eight, Cheese.’
‘Well, Doug, there must be a way of making me not even that. I want you to come over, Doug. I’ve been feeling off colour.’
‘I’ve got a fatal flaw,’ Dougal said, ‘to the effect that I can’t bear anyone off colour. Moreover, Saturday’s my clay off and it’s a beautiful summer day.’
‘Dear Doug, I promise to be well. Only come over. I’m worried about my book. It’s rather… rather too…’
‘Rambling,’ Dougal said.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘I’ll see you at four,’ Dougal said.
At the back of Hollis’s Hamburgers at Elephant and Castle was a room furnished with a fitted grey carpet, a red upholstered modern suite comprising a sofa and two cubic armchairs, a television receiver on a light wood stand, a low glass-topped coffee table, a table on which stood an electric portable gramophone and a tape recorder, a light wood bureau desk, a standard lamp, and several ash-trays on stands. Two of the walls were papered with a wide grey stripe. The other two were covered with a pattern of gold stars on red. Fixed to the walls were a number of white brackets containing pots of indoor ivy. The curtains, which were striped red and white, were drawn. This cheerful interior was lit by a couple of red-shaded wall-lamps. In one chair sat Leslie Crewe, with his neck held rigidly and attentively. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit of normal cut, and a peach-coloured tie, and looked older than thirteen. In another chair lolled Collie Gould who was eighteen and had been found unfit for National Service; Collie suffered from lung trouble for which he was constantly under treatment, and was at present on probation for motor stealing. He wore a dark-grey draped jacket with narrow black trousers. Trevor Lomas, dressed in blue-grey, lay between them on the sofa. All smoked American cigarettes. All looked miserable, not as an expression of their feelings, but as if by an instinctive prearrangement, to convey a decision on all affairs whatsoever.
Trevor held in his hand one of the two thin exercise books he had stolen from Dougal’s drawer. The other lay on the carpet beside him.
‘Listen to this,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s called “Phrases suitable for Cheese”.’
‘Suitable for what?’ said Collie.
‘Cheese, it says. Code word, obvious. Listen to this what you make of it. There’s a list.
‘I thrilled to his touch.
I was too young at the time to understand why my mother was crying.
As he entered the room a shudder went through my frame. In that moment of silent communion we renewed our shattered faith.
She was to play a vital role in my life.
Memory had not played me false.
He was always an incurable romantic.
I became the proud owner of a bicycle.
He spoke to me in desiccated tones.
Autumn again. Autumn. The burning of leaves in the park.
He spelt disaster to me.
I revelled in my first tragic part.
I had no eyes for any other man.
We were living a lie.
She proved a mine of information.
Once more fate intervened-
Munificence was his middle name.
I felt a grim satisfaction.
They were poles apart.
I dropped into a fitful doze.’
‘Read us it again, Trev,’ Leslie said. ‘It sounds like English Dictation. Perhaps he’s a teacher as well.’ Trevor ignored him. He tapped the notebook and addressed Collie.
‘Code,’ he said. ‘It’s worth lolly.’
An intensified expression of misery on Collie’s face expressed his agreement.
‘In with a gang, he is. It’s bigger than I thought. Question now, to find out what his racket is.’
‘Sex,’ Leslie said.
‘You don’t say so?’ Trevor said. ‘Well, that’s helpful, son. But we happen to have guessed all that. Question is, what game of sex? Question is, national or international?’
Collie blew out his smoke as if it were slow poison. ‘Got to work back from a clue,’ he said in his sick voice. ‘Autumn’s a clue. Wasn’t there something about autumn?’
‘How dumb can you get?’ Trevor inquired through his nose. ‘It’s a code. Autumn means something else. Everything means something.’ He dropped the notebook and painfully picked up the other. He read:
‘Peckham. Modes of communication.
Actions more effective than words. Enact everything. Depict
Morality. Functional. Emotional. Puritanical. Classical.
Nelly Mahone. Lightbody Buildings.
Tunnel. Meeting-house Lane Excavations police station yard. Order of St Bridget. Nuns decamped in the night.
Trevor turned the pages.
Entry Parish Register 1658.5 May.
Rose, wife of Wm Hathaway buried
Aged 103, who boare a sonn at the age
of 63.
Trevor said, ‘Definitely a code. Look how he spells “ son”. And this about bearing at the age of sixty-three.’
Collie and Leslie came over to see the book. ‘There’s a clue here,’ Collie said, ‘that we could follow up.’
‘No,’ said Trevor, ‘you don’t say so? Come on, kids, we got to look up Nelly Mahone.’
‘If we’re going to have a row,’ Mavis said, ‘turn on the wireless loud.’
‘We’re not going to have a row,’ said her husband, Arthur Crewe, in a voice trembling with patience. ‘I only ask a plain question, what you mean you can’t ask him where he’s going when he goes out?’
Mavis switched on the wireless to a roar. Then she herself shouted above it.
‘If you want to know where he goes, ask him yourself.’
‘If you can’t ask him how can I ask him?’ Arthur said in competition with the revue on the wireless.
‘What’s it matter where he goes? You can’t keep running about after him like he was a baby. He’s thirteen now.
‘You ought to a kept some control of him. Of course it’s too late now -‘Why didn’t you keep some control -‘
‘How can I be at my work and control the kids same time? If you was -‘There’s no need to swear,’ Mavis said.
‘I didn’t swear. But I bloody well will, and there’s no need to shout.’ He turned off the wireless and silence occurred, bringing a definite aural sensation.
‘Turn on that wireless. If we’re going to have a row I’m not letting the neighbours get to know,’ Mavis said.
‘Leave it be,’ Arthur said, effortful with peace. ‘There’s not going to be any row.’
Dixie came downstairs. ‘What’s all the row?’ she said. ‘Your stepdad’s on about young Leslie. Expects me to ask him where he’s going when he goes out. I say, why don’t he ask if he wants to know. I haven’t got eyes the back of my head, have I?’
‘Sh-sh-sh. Don’t raise your voice,’ Arthur said.
‘He’s afraid to say a word to Leslie,’ Dixie said.
‘That’s just about it,’ said her mother.
‘Who’s afraid?’ Arthur shouted.
‘You are,’ Mavis shouted.
‘I’m not afraid. You’re afraid…‘
‘Keep time,’ said Trevor. ‘All keep in time. It’s psychological.’
And so they all three trod in time up the stone stairs of Lightbody Buildings. Twice, a door opened on a landing, a head looked out, and the door shut quickly again. Trevor and his followers stamped louder as they approached Nelly Mahone’s. Trevor beat like a policeman thrice on her door, and placed his ear to the crack.
There was a shuffling sound, a light switch clicked, then silence.
Trevor beat again.
‘Who is it?’ Nelly said from immediately on the other side of the door.
‘Police agents,’ Trevor said.
The light switch clicked again, and Nelly opened the door a fragment.
Trevor pushed it wide open and walked in, followed by Collie and Leslie.
Leslie said, ‘I’m not stopping in this dirty hole,’ and made to leave.
Trevor caught him by the coat and worked him to a standstill.
‘It’s all clean dirt,’ Nelly said.
‘Sit over there,’ Trevor said to Nelly, pointing to a chair beside the table. She did so.
He sat himself on the edge of the table and pointed to the edge of the bed for Leslie and the lopsided armchair for Collie.
‘We come to talk business,’ Trevor said, ‘concerning a Mr Dougal Douglas.’
‘Never heard of him,’ Nelly said.
‘No?’ Trevor said, folding his arms.
‘Supposed to be police agents, are you? Well, you can be moving off if you don’t want trouble. There’s a gentleman asleep next door. I only got to raise me voice and -‘
Collie and Leslie looked at the wall towards which Nelly pointed.
‘Nark it,’ Trevor said. ‘He’s gone to football this afternoon. Now, about Mr Dougal Douglas-’
‘Never heard of him,’ Nelly said.
Trevor leaned forward slightly towards her and, taking a lock of her long hair in his hand, twitched it sharply.
‘Help! Murder! Police!’ Nelly said.
Trevor put his big hand over her mouth and spoke to her.
‘Listen, Nelly, for your own good. We got money for you.’
Nelly struggled, her yellow eyeballs were big.
‘I get my boys to rough you up if you won’t listen, Nelly. Won’t we, boys?’
‘That’s right,’ Collie said.
‘Won’t we, boys?’ Trevor said, looking at Leslie.
‘Sure,’ said Leslie.
Trevor removed his hand, now wet, from Nelly’s mouth, and wiped it on the side of his trousers. He took a large wallet from his pocket, and flicked through a pile of bank notes.
‘He’s at Miss Frierne’s up the Rye,’ Nelly said. Trevor laid his wallet on the table and folding his arms, looked hard at Nelly.
‘He got a job at Meadows Meade,’ Nelly said.
Trevor waited.
‘He got another job at Drover Willis’s under different name. No harm in him, son.’
Trevor waited.
‘That’s all, son,’ Nelly said.
‘What’s cheese?’ Trevor said.
‘What’s what?’
Trevor pulled her hair, so that she toppled towards him from her chair.
‘I’ll find out more. I only seen him once,’ Nelly said.
‘What he want with you?’
‘Huh?’
‘You heard me.’
Nelly looked at the two others, then back at Trevor. ‘The boys is under age,’ she remarked, and her eyes flicked a little to reveal that her brain was working.
‘I ask you a question,’ Trevor said. ‘What Mr Dougal Douglas come to you for?’
‘About the girl,’ she said.
‘What girl?’
‘He’s after Beauty,’ she said. ‘He want me to find out where she live and that. You better go and see what he’s up to. Probable he’s with her now.’
‘Who’s his gang?’ Trevor inquired, reaching for Nelly’s hair.
She jumped away from him. Leslie’s nerve gave way and he ran to Nelly and hit her on the face.
‘Murder!’ Nelly screamed.
Trevor put his hand over her mouth, and signalled with his eyes to Collie, who went to the door, opened it a little way, listened, then shut it again. Collie then struck Leslie, who backed on to the bed.
Trevor, with his big hand on Nelly’s mouth, whispered softly in her ear,
‘Who’s his gang, Nelly? What’s the code key? Ten quid to you, Nelly.’
She squirmed and he took his moist hand from her mouth. ‘Who’s his gang?’
‘He goes with Miss Coverdale sometimes. He goes with that fair-haired lady controller that’s gone to Drover Willis’s. That’s all I know of his company.’
‘Who are the fellows?’
‘I’ll find out,’ she said, ‘I’ll find out, son. Have a heart.’
‘Who’s Rose Hathaway?’
‘Never heard of her.’
Trevor took Dougal’s rolled-up exercise book from an inside pocket and spreading it out at the page read out the bit about that Rose Hathaway who was buried at a hundred and three. ‘That mean anything to you?’ Trevor said.
‘It sounds all wrong. I’ll ask him.’
‘You won’t. You’ll find out your own way. Not a word we been here, get that?’
‘It’s only his larks. He’s off his nut, son.’
‘Did he by any chance bring Humphrey Place here with him?’
‘Who?’
Trevor twisted her arm.
‘Humphrey Place. Goes with Dixie Morse.’
‘No, never seen him but once at the Grapes.’
‘You’ll be seeing us again,’ Trevor said.
He went down the dark stone stairs followed by Leslie and Collie.
‘Killing herself,’ Merle said, ‘that’s what she is, for money. Then she comes in to the pool dropping tired next day, not fit for the job. I said to her, “Dixie,” I said, “what time did you go to bed last night?” “I consider that a personal question, Miss Coverdale,” she says. “Oh,” I says, “well, if it isn’t a personal question will you kindly type these two reports over again? There’s five mistakes on one and six on the other.” “Oh! “ she said, “what mistakes?” Because she won’t own up to her mistakes till you put them under her nose. I said, “These mistakes as marked.” She said “Oh! “ I said, “You’ve been doing nothing but yawn yawn yawn all week.” Well, at tea-break when Dixie was out Connie says to me, “Miss Coverdale, it’s Dixie’s evening job making her tired.” “Evening job?” I said. She said, “Yes, she’s an usherette at the Regal from six-thirty to ten-thirty, makes extra for her wedding sayings.” “Well,” I said, “no wonder she can’t do her job here!”’
Dougal flashed an invisible cinema-torch on to the sprightly summer turf of the Rye. ‘Mind the step, Madam. Three-and-sixes on the right.’
Merle began to laugh from her chest. Suddenly she sat down on the Rye and began to cry. ‘God!’ she said. ‘Dougal, I’ve had a rotten life.’
‘And it isn’t over yet,’ Dougal said, sitting down beside her at a little distance. ‘There might be worse ahead.’
‘First my parents,’ she said. ‘Too possessive. They’re full of themselves. They don’t think anything of me myself. They like to be able to say “Merle’s head of the pool at Meadows Meade,” but that’s about all there is to it. I broke away and of course like a fool took up with Mr Druce. Now I can’t get away from him, somehow. You’ve unsettled me, Dougal, since you came to Peckham. I shall have a nervous breakdown, I can see it coming.’
‘If you do,’ Dougal said, ‘I won’t come near you. I can’t bear sickness of any sort.’
‘Dougal,’ she said, ‘I was counting on you to help me to get away from Mr Druce.’
‘Get another job,’ he said, ‘and refuse to see him any more. It’s easy.
‘Oh, everything’s easy for you. You’re free.’
‘Aren’t you free?’ Dougal said.
‘Yes, as far as the law goes.’
‘Well, stop seeing Druce.’
‘After six years, going on seven, Dougal, I’m tied in a sort of way. And what sort of job would I get at thirty-eight?’
‘You would have to come down,’ Dougal said.
‘After being head of the pool,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t. I’ve got to think of my pride. And there’s the upkeep of my flat. Mr Druce puts a bit towards it.’
‘People are looking at you crying,’ Dougal said, ‘and they think it’s because of me.’
‘So it is in a way. I’ve had a rotten life.’
‘Goodness, look at that,’ Dougal said.
She looked upward to where he was pointing.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Up there,’ Dougal said; ‘trees in the sky.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.’
‘Look properly,’ Dougal said, ‘up there. And don’t look away because Mr Druce is watching us from behind the pavilion.’
She looked at Dougal.
‘Keep looking up,’ he said, ‘at the trees with red tassels in the sky. Look, where I’m pointing.’
Several people who were crossing the Rye stopped to look up at where Dougal was pointing. Dougal said to them. ‘A new idea. Did you see it in the papers? Planting trees and shrubs in the sky. Look there – it’s a tip of a pine.’
‘I think I do see something,’ said a girl.
Most of the crowd moved sceptically away, still glancing upward now and then. Dougal brought Merle to her feet and drifted along with the others.
‘Is he still there?’ Merle said.
‘Yes. He must be getting tired of going up and down in lifts.’
‘Oh, he only does that on Saturday mornings. He usually stays at home in the afternoons. He comes to me in the evenings. I’ve got a rotten life. Sometimes I think I’ll swallow a bottle of aspirins.’
‘That doesn’t work.’ Dougal said. ‘It only makes you ill. And the very thought of illness is abhorrent to me.’
‘He’s keen on you,’ Merle said. ‘I know he is, but he doesn’t.’
‘He must do if he’s keen -‘Not at all. I’m his first waking experience of an attractive man.’
‘You fancy yourself.’
‘No, Mr Druce does that.’
‘With your crooked shoulder,’ she said, ‘you’re not all that much cop.’
‘Advise Druce on those lines,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t take my advice any more. ‘‘How long would you give him with the firm?’
‘Well. since he’s started to slip, I’ve debated that question a lot. The business is on the decline. It’s a worry, I mean about my flat, if Mr Druce loses his job.’
‘I’d give him three months,’ Dougal said.
Merle started to cry again, walking towards the streets with Dougal. ‘Is he still there?’ she said. Dougal did a dancer’s pirouette, round and round, and stopped once more by Merle’s side.
‘He’s walking away in the other direction.’
‘Oh, I wonder where he’s going?’
‘Home to Dulwich, I expect.’
‘It’s immoral,’ Merle said, ‘the way he goes back to that woman in that house. They never say a word to each other.’
‘Stop girning. You look awful with your red eyes. It detracts from the Okapi look But all the same, what a long neck you’ve got.’
She put her hand up to her throat and moved it up her long neck. ‘Mr Druce squeezed it tight the other day,’ she said, ‘for fun, but I got a fright.’
‘It looks like a maniac’s delight, your neck,’ Dougal said.
‘Well, you’ve not got much of one, with your shoulder up round your ear.
‘A short neck denotes a good mind,’ Dougal said. ‘You see, the messages go quicker to the brain because they’ve shorter to go.’ He bent and touched his toes. ‘Suppose the message starts down here. Well, it comes up here -‘
‘Watch out, people are looking.
They were in the middle of Rye Lane, flowing with shopping women and prams. A pram bumped into Dougal as he stood upright, causing him to barge forward into two women who stood talking. Dougal embraced them with wide arms. ‘Darlings, watch where you’re going,’ he said. They beamed at each other and at him.
‘Charming, aren’t you?’ Merle said. ‘There’s a man leaning out of that car parked outside Higgins and Jones, seems to be watching you.’
Dougal looked across the road. ‘Mr Willis is watching me,’ he said. ‘Come and meet Mr Willis.’ He took her arm to cross the road.
‘I’m not dressed for an introduction,’ Merle said.
‘You are only an object of human research,’ Dougal said, guiding her obliquely through the traffic towards Mr Willis.
‘I’m just waiting for my wife. She’s shopping in there, Mr Willis explained. Now that Dougal had approached him he seemed rather embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t sure it was you, Mr Dougal,’ he explained. ‘I was just looking to see. A bit short-sighted.’
‘Miss Merle Coverdale, one of my unofficial helpers,’ Dougal said uppishly. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘to see what Peckham does on its Saturday afternoons.’
‘Yes, quite.’ Mr Willis pinkly took Merle’s hand and glanced towards the shop door.
Dougal gave a reserved nod and, as dismissing Mr Willis from his thoughts, led Merle away.
‘Why did he call you Mr Dougal?’ Merle said. ‘Because he’s my social inferior. Formerly a footman in our family.’
‘What’s he now?’
‘One of my secret agents.’
‘You’ll send me mad if I let you. Look what you’ve done to Weedin. You’re driving Mr Druce up the wall.’
‘I have powers of exorcism,’ Dougal said, ‘that’s all.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The ability to drive devils out of people.’
‘I thought you said you were a devil yourself.’
‘The two states are not incompatible. Come to the police station.’
‘Where are we going, Dougal?’
‘The police station. I want to see the excavation.’ He took her into the station yard where he had already made himself known as an interested archaeologist. By the coal-heap was a wooden construction above a cavity already some feet deep. Work had stopped for the weekend. They peered inside.
‘The tunnel leads up to Nunhead,’ Dougal said, ‘the nuns used to use it. They packed up one night over a hundred years ago, and did a flit, and left a lot of debts behind them.’
A policeman came up to them with quiet steps and, pointing to the coal-heap, said, ‘The penitential cell stood in that corner. Afternoon, sir.’
‘Goodness, you gave me a fright,’ Merle said. There’s bodies of nuns down there, miss,’ the policeman said.
Merle had gone home to await Mr Druce. Dougal walked up to Costa’s Café in the cool of the evening. Eight people were inside, among them Humphrey and Dixie, seated at a separate table eating the remains of sausage and egg. Humphrey kicked out a chair at their table for Dougal to sit down upon. Dixie touched the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin, and carefully picking up her knife and fork, continued eating, turning her head a little obliquely to receive each small mouthful. Humphrey had just finished. He set down his knife and fork on the plate and pushed the plate away. He rubbed the palms of his hands together twice and said to Dougal,
‘How’s life?’
‘It exists,’ Dougal said, and looked about him.
‘You had a distinguished visitor this afternoon. But you’d just gone out. The old lady was out and I answered to him. He wouldn’t leave his name. But of course I knew it. Mr Druce of Meadows Meade. Dixie pointed him out to me once, didn’t you, Dixie?’
‘Yes,’ Dixie said.
‘He followed me all over the Rye, so greatly did Mr Druce wish to see me,’ Dougal said.
‘If I was you,’ Humphrey said, ‘I’d keep to normal working hours. Then he wouldn’t have any call on you Saturday afternoons – would he, Dixie?’
‘I suppose not,’ Dixie said.
‘Coffee for three,’ Dougal said to the waiter.
‘You had another visitor, about four o’clock,’ Humphrey said. ‘I’ll give you a clue. She had a pot of flowers and a big parcel.’
‘Elaine,’ Dougal said.
The waiter brought three cups of coffee, one in his right hand and two – one resting on the other – in his left. These he placed carefully on the table. Dixie’s slopped over in her saucer. She looked at the saucer.
‘Swap with me,’ Humphrey said.
‘Have mine,’ Dougal said.
She allowed Humphrey to exchange his saucer with hers. He tipped the contents of the saucer into his coffee, sipped it, and set it down.
‘Sugar,’ he said.
Dougal passed the sugar to Dixie.
She said, ‘Thank you.’ She took two lumps, dropped them in her coffee, and stirred it, watching it intently.
Humphrey put three lumps in his coffee, stirred it rapidly, tasted it. He pushed the sugar bowl over to Dougal, who took a lump and put it in his mouth.
‘I let her go up to your room,’ Humphrey said. ‘She said she wanted to put in some personal touches. There was the pot of flowers and some cretonne cushions. The old lady was out. I thought it nice of Elaine to do that -wasn’t it nice, Dixie?’
‘Wasn’t what nice?’
‘Elaine coming to introduce feminine touches in Dougal’s room.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Feeling all right?’ Humphrey said to her.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you want to go on somewhere else or do you want to stay here?’
‘Anything you like.’
‘Have a cake.’
‘No thank you.’
‘Why does your brother go hungry?’ Dougal said to her.
‘Whose brother goes hungry?’
‘Yours. Leslie.’
‘What you mean, goes hungry?’
‘He came round scrounging doughnuts off my landlady the other day,’ Dougal said.
Humphrey rubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled at Dougal. ‘Oh, kids, you know what they’re like.’
‘I won’t stand for him saying anything against Leslie,’ Dixie said, looking round to see if anyone at the other tables was listening. ‘Our Leslie isn’t a scrounger. It’s a lie.’
‘It is not a lie,’ Dougal said.
‘I’ll speak to my stepdad,’ Dixie said. ‘I should,’ Dougal said.
‘What’s a doughnut to a kid?’ Humphrey said to them both. ‘Don’t make something out of nothing. Don’t start.’
‘Who started?’ Dixie said.
‘You did, a matter of fact,’ Humphrey said, ‘with your bad manners. You could hardly say hallo to Dougal when he came in.’
‘That’s right, take his part,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not staying here to be insulted.’
She rose and picked up her bag. Dougal pulled her down to her chair again.
‘Take your hand off me,’ she said, and rose. Humphrey pulled her down again. She remained seated, looking ahead into the far distance.
‘There’s Beauty just come in,’ Dougal said. Dixie turned her head to see Beauty. Then she resumed her fixed gaze.
Dougal whistled in Beauty’s direction.
‘I shouldn’t do that,’ Humphrey said.
‘My God, he’s supposed to be a professional man,’ Dixie said, ‘and he opens his mouth and whistles at a girl.’
Dougal whistled again.
Beauty raised her eyebrows.
‘You’ll have Trevor Lomas in after us,’ Humphrey said. The waiter and Costa himself came and hovered round their table.
‘Come on up to the Harbinger,’ Dougal said, ‘and we’ll take Beauty with us.’
‘Now look. I quite like Trevor,’ Humphrey said. ‘He’s to be best man at our wedding,’ Dixie said. ‘He’s got a good job with prospects and sticks in to it.’
Dougal whistled. Then he called across two tables to Beauty, ‘Waiting for somebody?’
Beauty dropped her lashes. ‘Not in particular,’ she said.
‘Coming up to the Harbinger?’
‘Don’t mind.’
Dixie said, ‘Well, I do. I’m fussy about my company.’
‘What she say?’ Beauty said, jerking herself upright in support of the question.
‘I said,’ said Dixie, ‘that I’ve got another appointment.’
‘Beauty and I will be getting along then,’ Dougal said. He went across to Beauty who was preparing to comb her hair.
Humphrey said. ‘After all, Dixie, we’ve got nothing else to do. It might look funny if we don’t go with Dougal. If Trevor finds out he’s been to a pub with his girl -‘
‘You’re bored with me – I know,’ Dixie said. ‘My company isn’t good enough for you as soon as Dougal comes on the scene.’
‘Such compliments as you pay me!’ Dougal said across to her.
‘I was not aware I was addressing you,’ Dixie said. ‘All right, Dixie, we’ll stop here,’ Humphrey said. Dougal was holding up a small mirror while the girl combed her long copper-coloured hair over the table.
Dixie’s eyes then switched over to Dougal. She gave a long sigh. ‘I suppose we’d better go to the pub with them,’ she said, ‘or you’ll say I spoiled your evening.’
‘No necessity,’ Beauty said as she put away her comb and patted her handbag.
‘We might enjoy ourselves,’ Humphrey said.
Dixie got her things together rather excitedly. But she said, ‘Oh, it isn’t my idea of a night out.’
And so they followed Dougal and Beauty up Rye Lane to the Harbinger. Beauty was half-way through the door of the saloon bar, but Dougal had stopped to look into the darkness of the Rye beyond the swimming baths, from which came the sound of a drunken woman approaching; and yet as it came nearer, it turned out not to be a drunken woman, but Nelly proclaiming.
Humphrey and Dixie had reached the pub door. ‘It’s only Nelly,’ Humphrey said, and he pushed Dougal towards the doorway in which Beauty was waiting.
‘I like listening to Nelly,’ Dougal said, ‘for my human research.’
‘Oh, get inside for goodness’ sake,’ Dixie said as Nelly appeared in the street light.
‘Six things,’ Nelly declaimed, ‘there are which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth. Haughty eyes. a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood. See me in the morning. A heart that deviseth wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief. Ten at Paley’s yard. A deceitful witness that uttereth lies. Meeting-house Lane. And him that soweth discord among brethren.’
‘Nelly’s had a few,’ Humphrey said as they pushed into the bar. ‘She’s a bit shaky on the pins tonight.’
A bright spiky chandelier and a row of glittering crystal lamps set against a mirror behind the bar – though in fact these had been installed since the war – were designed to preserve in theory the pub’s vintage fame in the old Camberwell Palace days. The chief barmaid had a tiny nose and a big chin; she was a middle-aged woman of twenty-five. The barman was small and lithe. He kept swinging to and fro on the balls of his feet.
Beauty wanted a Martini. Dixie, at first under the impression that Humphrey was buying the round, asked for a ginger ale, but when she perceived that Dougal was to pay for the drinks, she said, ‘Gin and ginger ale.’ Humphrey and Dougal carried to a table the girls’ drinks and their own half-pints of mild which glittered in knobbly-moulded glass mugs like versions of the chandelier. Round the wall were hung signed photographs of old-time variety actors with such names, meaningless to most but oddly suggestive, as Flora Finch and Ford Sterling, who were generally assumed to be Edwardian stars. An upright piano placed flat against a wall caused Tony the pianist to see little of the life of the house, except when he turned round for a rest between numbers. Tony’s face was not merely pale, but quite bloodless. He wore a navy-blue coat over a very white shirt, the shirt buttoned up to the neck with no tie. His half-pint mug, constantly replenished by the customers, stood on an invariable spot on the right-hand side of the piano-top. As he played, he swung his shoulders from side to side and bent over the piano occasionally to stress his notes. He might, from this back view, have been in an enthusiastic mood, but when he turned round it was obvious he was not. It was Tony’s lot to play tunes of the nineteen-tens and -twenties, to the accompaniment of slightly jeering comments from the customers, and as he stooped over to execute ‘Charmain’, Beauty said to him, ‘Groove in, Tony.’ He ignored this as he had ignored all remarks for the past nineteen months. ‘Go, man, go,’ someone suggested. ‘Leave him alone,’ the barmaid said. ‘You just show up your ignorance. He’s a beautiful player. It’s period stuff. He got to play it like that.’ Tony finished his number, took down his beer and turned his melancholy front to the company.
‘Got any rock and cha-cha on your list, Tony?’
‘Rev up to it, son. Groove in.’
Tony turned, replaced his beer on the top of the piano, and rippled his hands over ‘Ramona’.
‘Go, man, go.’
‘Any more of that,’ said the barmaid, ‘and you go man go outside.’
‘Yes, that’s what I say. Tony’s the pops.’
‘Here’s a pint, Tony. Cheer up, son, it may never happen.’
At ten past nine Trevor Lomas entered the pub followed by Collie Gould. Trevor edged in to the bar and stood with his back to it, leaning on an elbow and surveying as it were the passing scene.
‘Hallo, Trevor,’ Dixie said.
‘Hi, Dixie,’ Trevor replied severely.
‘Hi,’ Collie Gould said.
Beauty, who was on her fourth Martini, bowed graciously, and had some difficulty in regaining her upright posture.
The barmaid said, ‘Are you ordering, sir?’
Trevor said over his shoulder, ‘Two pints bitter.’ He lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke very very slowly.
‘Trev,’ Collie said in a low voice, ‘Trev, don’t muck it up.
‘I’m being patient,’ Trevor said through half-dosed lips. ‘I’m being very very patient. But if -‘
‘Trev,’ Collie said, ‘Trev, think of the lolly. Them notebooks.’
Trevor threw half a crown backwards on to the counter.
‘Manners,’ the barmaid said as she rang the till. She banged his change on the counter, where Trevor let it lie.
Dougal and Humphrey approached the bar with four empty glasses. ‘Ginger ale only,’ Dixie called after them, since it was Humphrey’s turn.
‘One Martini. Two half milds. One gin and ginger ale,’ Humphrey said to the barman. And he invited Trevor to join them by pointing to their table with his ear.
Trevor did not move. Collie was watching Trevor.
Dougal got out some money.
‘My turn,’ Humphrey said, fishing out his money.
Dougal picked half a crown from his money and, leaning his back against the bar, tossed it over his shoulder to the counter. He then lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke very slowly, pulling his face to a grave length and batting his eyelashes.
Beauty shouted, ‘Doug, you’re a boy! Dig Doug! He’s got you. Trev. He does Trevor to a T.’ Tony was playing the ‘St Louis Blues’.
‘Trev,’ Collie said, ‘don’t, Trev, don’t.’
Trevor raised his sparkling pint glass and smashed the top on the edge of the counter. In his hand remained the bottom half with six spikes of glass sticking up from it. He lunged it forward at Dougal’s face. At the same swift moment Dougal leaned back, back, until the crown of his head touched the bar. The spikes of glass went full into one side of Humphrey’s face which had been turned in profile. Dougal bent and caught Trevor’s legs while another man pulled Trevor’s collar until presently he lay pinned by a number of hands to the floor. Humphrey was being attended by another number of hands, and was taken to the back premises, the barmaid holding to his face a large thick towel which was becoming redder and redder.
The barman shouted above the din, ‘Outside, all.’
Most of the people were leaving in any case lest they should be questioned. To those who lingered the barman shouted, ‘Outside, all, or I’ll call the police.’
Trevor found himself free to get to his feet and he left, followed by Collie and Beauty, who was seen to spit at Trevor before she clicked her way up Rye Lane.
Dixie remained behind with Dougal. She was saying to him, ‘It was meant for you. Dirty swine you were to duck.’
‘Outside or I call the police,’ the barman said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.
‘We were with the chap that’s hurt,’ Dougal said, ‘and if we can’t collect him I’ll call the police.’
‘Follow me,’ said the barman.
Humphrey was holding his head over a bowl while cold water was being poured over his wounds by Tony, who seemed to take this as one of his boring evening duties.
‘Goodness, you look terrible,’ Dougal said. ‘It must be my fatal flaw, but I doubt if I can bear to look.’
‘Dirty swine, he is.’ Dixie said, ‘letting another fellow have it instead of himself.’
‘Shut up, will you?’ Humphrey seemed to say.
They got into Humphrey’s car, speedily assisted by the barman. Dougal drove, first taking Dixie home. She said to him, ‘I could spit at you,’ and slammed the car door.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Humphrey said, as well as he could.
Dougal next drove Humphrey to the outpatient department of St George’s Hospital. ‘Though it pains me to cross the river,’ Dougal said, ‘I think we’d better avoid the southern region for tonight.’
He told a story about Humphrey having tripped over a milk-bottle as he got out of his car, the milk-bottle having splintered and Humphrey fallen on his face among the splinters. Humphrey nodded agreement as the nurse dressed and plastered his wounds. Dougal gave Humphrey’s name as Mr Dougal-Douglas, care of Miss Cheeseman, 14 Chelsea Rise, SW3. Humphrey was told to return within a week. They then went home to Miss Frierne’s.
‘And I won’t even see her again till next Saturday night on account of her doing week-nights as an usherette at the Regal,’ Humphrey said to Dougal at a quarter to twelve that night. He sat up in bed in striped pyjamas, talking as much as possible; but the strips of plaster on his cheek caused him to speak rather out of the opposite side of his mouth. ‘And she won’t think of taking one day off of her holidays this year on account of the honeymoon in September. It’s nothing but save, save, save. You’d think I wasn’t earning good money the way she goes on. And result, she’s losing her sex.’
Dougal crouched over the gas-ring with a fork, pushing the bacon about in the frying-pan. He removed the bacon on to a plate, then broke two eggs into the pan.
‘I wouldn’t marry her,’ Dougal said, ‘if you paid me.’
‘My sister Elsie doesn’t like her,’ Humphrey said out of the side of his mouth.
Dougal stood up and took the plate of bacon in his hand. He held this at some way from his body and looked at it, moving it slightly back and forth towards him, as if it were a book he was reading, and he short-sighted.
Dougal read from the book: ‘Wilt thou take this woman,’ he said with a deep ecclesiastical throb, ‘to be thai wedded waif?’
Then he put the plate aside and knelt; he was a sinister goggling bridegroom. ‘No,’ he declared to the ceiling, ‘I won’t, quite frankly.’
‘Christ, don’t make me laugh, it pulls the plaster.’
Dougal dished out the eggs and bacon. He cut up the bacon small for Humphrey.
‘You shouldn’t have any scars if you’re careful and get your face regularly dressed, they said.’
Humphrey stroked his wounded cheek.
‘Scars wouldn’t worry me. Might worry Dixie.’
‘As a qualified refrigerator engineer and a union man you could have your pick of the girls.’
‘I know, but I want Dixie.’ He put the eggs and bacon slowly away into the side of his mouth.
The rain of a cold summer morning fell on Nelly Mahone as she sat on a heap of disused lorry tyres in the yard of Paley’s, scrap merchants of Meeting-house Lane. She had been waiting since ten past nine although she did not expect Dougal to arrive until ten o’clock. He came at five past ten, bobbing up and down under an umbrella.
‘They come to see me Saturday,’ she said at once. ‘Trevor Lomas, Collie Gould, Leslie Crewe. They treated me bad.’
‘You’ve got wet,’ Dougal said. ‘Why didn’t you take shelter?’
She looked round the yard. ‘Got to be careful where you go, son. Stand up in the open, they can only tell you to move on. But go inside a place. they can call the cops. Her nose thrust forward towards the police station at the corner of the lane.
Dougal looked round the yard for possible shelter. The bodies of two lorries, bashed in from bad accidents, stood lopsided in a corner. On a low wooden cradle stood a house-boat. ‘We’ll go into the boat.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t get up there.’
Dougal kicked a wooden crate over and over till it stood beneath the door of the boat. He pulled the door-handle. Eventually it gave way. He climbed in, then out again, and took Nelly by the arm.
‘Up you go, Nelly.’
‘What if the cops come?’
‘I’m in with them,’ Dougal said.
‘Jesus, that’s not your game?’
‘Up you go.
He heaved her up and settled in the boat beside her on a torn upholstered seat. Some sad cretonne curtains still drooped in the windows. Dougal drew them across the windows as far as was possible.
‘I feel that ill,’ Nelly said.
‘I’m not too keen on illness,’ Dougal said.
‘Nor me. They come to ask after you,’ Nelly said. ‘They found out you was seeing me. They got your code. They want to know what’s cheese. They want to know what’s your code key, they offer me ten quid. They want to know who’s your gang.’
‘I’m in with the cops, tell them.’
‘That I would never believe. They want to know who’s Rose Hathaway. They’ll be back again. I got to tell them something.’
‘Tell them I’m paid by the police to investigate certain irregularities in the industrial life of Peckham in the first place. See, Nelly? I mean crime at the top in the wee factories. And secondly-’
Her yellowish eyes and wet grey hair turned towards him in a startled way.
‘If I thought you was a nark -‘
‘Investigator,’ Dougal said. ‘It all comes under human research. And secondly my job covers various departments of youthful terrorism. So you can just tell me, Nelly, what they did to you on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Ah, they didn’t do nothing out of the way.’
‘You said they treated you roughly.’
‘No, not so to get them in trouble.’
Dougal took out an envelope. ‘Your ten pounds,’ he said.
‘You can keep it,’ Nelly said. ‘I’m going on my way.’
‘Feel my head, Nelly.’ He guided her hand to the two small bumps among his curls.
‘Cancer of the brain a-coming on,’ she said.
‘Nelly, I had a pair of horns like a goat when I was born. I lost them in a fight at a later date.’
‘Holy Mary, let me out of here. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going with you.’
Dougal stood up and found that by standing astride in the middle of the boat he could make it rock. So he rocked it for a while and sang a sailor’s song to Nelly.
Then he helped her to climb down from the boat, put up his umbrella, and tried to catch up with her as she hurried out of the scrap yard. A policeman, coming out of the station, at the corner, nodded to Dougal.
‘I’ll be going into the station, then, Nelly,’ Dougal said. ‘To see my chums.’
She stared at him, then spat on the rainy pavement. ‘And I don’t mind,’ Dougal said, ‘if you tell Trevor Lomas what I’m doing. You can tell him if he returns my notebooks to me there will be nothing further said. We policemen have got to keep our records and our secret codes, you realize.’
She moved sideways away from him, watching the traffic so that she could cross at the earliest moment.
‘You and I,’ Dougal said, ‘won’t be molested from that quarter for a week or two if you give them the tip-off.’
He went into the station yard to see how the excavations were getting on. He discovered that the tunnel itself was now visible from the top of the shaft.
Dougal pointed out to his policemen friends the evidence of the Thames silt in the under-soil. ‘One time,’ he said, ‘the Thames was five miles wide, and it covered all Peckham.’
So they understood, they said, from other archaeologists who were interested in the excavation.
‘Hope I’m not troubling you if I pop in like this from time to time?’ Dougal said.
‘No, sir, you’re welcome. We get people from the papers sometimes as well as students. Did you read of the finds?’
Towards evening a parcel was delivered at Miss Frierne’s addressed to Dougal. It contained his notebooks.
‘I hope to remain with you,’ Dougal said to Miss Frierne, ‘for at least two months. For I see no call upon me to remove from Peckham as yet.’
‘If I’m still alive…‘ Miss Frierne said. ‘I saw that man again this morning. I could swear it was my brother.’
‘You didn’t speak to him?’
‘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.