Ben on the Job

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  ‘“Maudie” still sticks in your throat, doesn’t it, Eric?’ she answered.

  20

  Re-enter Blake

  A countryman who shared with Ben a compartment from Applewold to Penridge proved disturbingly talkative. His conversation was harmless enough, and in another mood Ben would have been willing to exchange the time of day and state of the weather with him, but Ben’s need during these final few miles of his long journey was silence for contemplation of the ordeal ahead, and such silence was denied him by the countryman’s wagging tongue.

  ‘Be yew from these paarts?’ was the countryman’s opening.

  ‘Not me, I’m from Lunnon,’ replied Ben.

  ‘I be from Naarfolk,’ stated the countryman. ‘There bean’t no mountains in Naarfolk. Do yew know Naarfolk?’

  ‘I bin ter Yarmouth.’

  ‘Ah, a rare fine place, Yarmouth,’ said the countryman. ‘I’d a sight sooner be in Yarmouth than where I be goin’ so I would!’

  And then Ben had to learn where he was going, and that he was on a visit to a sister who had married a Cumberland grocer and who had seven children and a goat. The village she lived in was eight miles from the station, so how he was going to get there if no one met him he had no idea. Ben had no idea, either, and he couldn’t have cared less. But, impervious to his companion’s lack of interest, the countryman rambled on. He hoped the beer was good in Cumberland, as good as it was in Naarfolk, because good beer cheered one, and dang it!—one needed cheering in this sort of weather. Mist was the something limit, weren’t it? Of course, yew got mist in Naarfolk, but that was sea mist, that was, and sea mist was more friendly. Mountains weren’t friendly. They got on top of yew. No, he would never have come up here but for his sister and the seven children and the goat. Chew-chew, they called it. The goat. Because of the noise it made when it chewed. What had brought Ben up?

  Ben pretended not to have heard the question the first time, but when it was repeated he replied:

  ‘’Ollerday.’

  ‘Oh! Yew be hikin’?’

  ‘Tha’s right.’

  ‘Yew better been in Naarfolk fer that.’ How much longer was he going on? ‘’Tis easy hikin’ in Naarfolk, there bean’t no big hills. Hills, ay, in some parts, there be some round Trimingham tu make an old ’un puff, ay, but no real big ’uns. And there be holiday camps at Runton, in the summer ’tis a sight, sure. No, yew never get me hikin’ among mountains. Mountains ain’t friendly.’

  He glanced out of the window at a high peak. Ben himself felt a little oppressed by the towering skyline, although most of it was obscured by coiling clouds creeping slowly and with seeming stealth down to the valleys. The peak at which the countryman was glancing was the only one visible, and even that became blotted out a few moments later. Ben hoped that the countryman’s conversation would be blotted out, also, but this was not to be.

  ‘What I say is,’ resumed the countryman, ‘yew go up mountains too slow and yew come down ’em too quick! Ay! And when ’tis misty like now, yew doan’ know where yew be comin’ down tew! But I got a cousin, now, he lives at Thetford—yew ever been tu Thetford? and he was tellin’ me once …’

  The cousin lasted for the rest of the way to Penridge. Indeed, the old man from Naarfolk was so voluble that the train stopped at Penridge before either of them realised it, and when realisation came they both leapt out in a panic.

  This was not a good preparation for Ben’s next ordeal, and he hoped the countryman would not continue to be a nuisance and would speedily take himself off. No one else had got out of the train, and the platform was deserted but for themselves and a distant porter. There was no sign of either Oscar Blake or the countryman’s sister.

  ‘Wimmen!’ muttered the countryman, gazing around in disgusted disappointment. ‘Yew can’t depend on ’em no more’n the weather!’

  Ben stooped down, pretending to be busy with a loose boot-lace. It was an anxious moment, because women, once started, could become an endless subject. With anyone possessing a knowledge of Ben, or watching him closely, the ruse could not have succeeded, because normally Ben did not care whether his boot-laces were loose or not, or even if he had any at all, and his present technique was to untie the laces as soon as he had tied them up so he could tie them up again. But the countryman, apparently, observed nothing irregular, being too concerned at the absence of his sister—the absence of the seven children and the goat was less disturbing—and soon he began to drift away towards the distant porter. Out of the corner of his eye Ben watched the two men meeting and conversing, and then he saw the countryman drift away completely through the little grey brick ticket office.

  Good! Ben had got rid of one little trouble before the next, many sizes bigger, arrived!

  Completing his drawn-out work on his boot-lace, Ben straightened himself as the porter approached him leisurely.

  ‘Lost your ticket?’ inquired the porter.

  ‘Eh? No, I was jest lookin’ ter see as I’d tied me boot-laice proper,’ answered Ben.

  ‘Oh! Then could I have your ticket?’

  Ben groped in his pocket, and suddenly his expression went glum.

  ‘Lummy!’

  The porter grinned.

  ‘What’s that sticking out of the side of your shoe?’ he asked.

  Stooping once more, Ben found his ticket. It was by no means the first time his boot had formed the terminus of some possession’s tortuous journey through his pocket holes.

  ‘I reckon you was born lucky,’ remarked the porter as he took the ticket, tore it across, and gave Ben back the return half. ‘It would have cost you a pound or two if you’d had to pay all over again.’

  ‘I’m lucky orl right,’ returned Ben. ‘I’m knowed as the ’Uman ’Orse-shoe.’

  ‘You might have brought us along some brighter weather, then!’

  ‘It weren’t no brighter in Lunnon when I left.’

  But Ben was not here to discuss the weather, and he glanced around at the deserted platform, while the porter watched him curiously.

  ‘Expecting somebody to meet you, like that other one?’

  ‘Eh? Well, I thort there might be some ’un.’

  ‘There was a man here five minutes before the train came in, but he seems to have gone away again.’

  ‘Wot was ’e like?’

  ‘No need to describe him,’ said the porter, turning his head towards the booking office. ‘There he is, come back.’

  Ben twisted his head galvanically, and saw Oscar Blake standing in the doorway, regarding him with half-amused, half-cynical eyes.

  Lummy! Yus! There he was. Large as life. If not larger. Now fer it!

  Blake walked towards him.

  ‘Morning, Eric,’ he said.

  ‘Sime ter you,’ replied Ben.

  Blake paused, glanced around casually, and then inquired,

  ‘All alone?’

  ‘Did yer expeck me ter bring the family with me?’ retorted Ben.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a family.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t.’

  ‘I’m relieved,’ smiled Blake, placing a large hand on Ben’s shoulder, twisting him round, and beginning to walk with him back to the ticket office. There was something unpleasantly compelling in the pressure of Blake’s hand. ‘Not because you haven’t a family, Eric, but because I find you just the same as when we met the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was it on’y the day afore yesterday?’

  ‘That’s all, so perhaps you haven’t had much time to change. But, to tell you the truth, Eric, when I thought about you after we had separated I could hardly believe you hadn’t been a dream. Now I find that you are indeed real flesh and blood. How has the world been treating you?’

  ‘’Ow’s it been treatin’ you?’

  ‘Ca’ canny, eh? Well, perhaps you’re right till we can talk in private. I expect we’ve both got plenty to tell each other.’

 
‘Yer’ve sed it. Where are yer goin’ ter tike me?’

  ‘Where do you suggest?’

  ‘Are yer stoopid or jest pertendin’? ’Ow do I know? I never bin ’ere afore. ’Ow abart where yer livin’?’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ answered Blake blandly.

  ‘Then I votes we hacts upon it.’

  ‘A little later, perhaps. Where I am living has another guest at the moment. You may meet this guest presently—but not, I think, till after our little chat.’

  Ben took a chance and, lowering his voice, he asked sepulchrally:

  ‘Yer don’t mean the bloke wot done it?’

  ‘Done what?’ inquired Blake.

  ‘Corse, yer’d never guess, would yer?’

  ‘I might have a shot when we get inside.’

  ‘Inside where? Nah we’re comin’ ter it!’

  ‘As you say, we are now coming to it.’

  Blake, with his hand still on Ben’s shoulder, had kept him walking all the while, through the ticket office, out into the open, and across a yard. Ahead of them now loomed a building not dissimilar to the hotel in which Ben and Maudie had conversed. Above the grey brick porch were the same words: ‘STATION HOTEL.’

  Ben’s steps grew slower.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Blake.

  ‘Are we goin’ in there?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The reason why not was that in about an hour’s time Maudie would be going in there, too! But it was hardly a reason Ben could give to Blake.

  ‘Well—a bit public like, ain’t it?’ he said uneasily.

  ‘It’s not opening time yet,’ Blake replied, urging Ben forward by an increased pressure of his large hand—nuisance, it’s being so large. ‘And, besides, I can get a private room. The boss is an old pal of mine.’

  Ben didn’t quite like the sound of that, either, and as they went in through the porch an old tune began to worry through his mind. It worried him because he didn’t know why it had come into his mind or what it was. Then, suddenly, the answers to both questions came to him, worrying him even more. The tune was that of ‘“Will you come into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.’

  The boss who was said to be an old pal of Blake’s met them in the hall.

  ‘Ah, you’ve found your friend,’ he said to Blake.

  ‘He’s come along,’ replied Blake. ‘Wonder if we could have the same room you gave me yesterday?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. You know your way?’

  Blake nodded. ‘And could you send along something a bit livelier than coffee? You know. On the house. And no questions answered.’

  The proprietor winked, and Blake winked back.

  ‘Straight ahead, old boy,’ said Blake to Ben, ‘and round the corner on the right.’

  He gave Ben a shove forward. The proprietor lowered his voice and whispered in Blake’s ear as he passed by.

  ‘You certainly do pick ’em up!’

  ‘I’m a Christian all right, all right,’ answered Blake.

  The proprietor gazed after them as they went along the passage, then shrugged his shoulders and went to fetch something a bit livelier than coffee.

  Round the corner on the right were six steps, then another turning on the left, and then a door. Behind Ben, Blake reached out with his hand and gave the door a shove. It swung inwards, and another shove, this time on Ben’s back, took him into a bare room with a bare, stained table and some bare, stained chairs, illuminated by a small and very dirty window half-obscured by ivy … Blast that tune!

  ‘Well, here we are,’ said Blake. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Reg’ler ’ome from ’ome, ain’t it,’ commented Ben, as he sat.

  ‘I don’t suppose you expected cushions?’

  ‘I expeck wot I get.’

  ‘Damn good motto! Don’t tune up for a moment. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

  Blake ran from the room, closing the door after him. Ben was surprised not to hear a key turn. Though, after all, why should Blake imagine he would run away the moment after he had arrived? And why should he run away? He’d come up here to do a job, hadn’t he? Very well, then! The one thing was to get this first part of the job done before Maudie turned up. If Blake bumped into Maudie, what would happen then? It might prove a spanner in the works! And what had Blake wanted this room for yesterday? And who was this other guest at the place where Blake was living?… Will you come into my parlour?… And where …?

  The door opened, and Blake returned with a small tray adorned with bottles and glasses.

  ‘All set,’ said Blake, putting the tray down on the table. ‘So now for the low-down!’

  ‘Yus, and you start,’ suggested Ben.

  But Blake shook his head as he poured out the drinks.

  ‘No, visitors first,’ he replied. ‘I want to hear what happened to you after I left you know where! Let’s have the lot. Don’t miss anything out.’

  Don’t miss anything out! Ben meant to miss a great deal out, and the tricky question was just how much. After thinking a moment, and fortifying himself with a first swallow of Cumberland beer—if the countryman was going to strike the same brand he’d find it all right!—Ben began cautiously.

  ‘I expeck yer knows a bit?’

  ‘Never mind what I know,’ retorted Blake. ‘You keep talking as if I didn’t know anything.’

  ‘It’d saive time—’

  ‘Then don’t you waste it! I’ve not seen anything in any paper up here—you can have that much.’

  ‘Okay.’ Ben took a second swallow, and gained a little confidence. ‘Yer remember givin’ me that address—’

  ‘Of course I remember!’ interrupted Blake. ‘If you want to save time cut out the frills and make it snappy! Did you go there?’

  Ben fought back.

  ‘Corse I went there!’ he returned. ‘Wot abart your frills? ’Ow’d I get your messidge ter come up ’ere if Maudie ’adn’t give it ter me, and would she give it ter me if she jest passed me in the street and we ’adn’t ever met afore?’

  ‘Carry on, carry on, don’t start losing your wool!’ exclaimed Blake impatiently.

  ‘I’ll keep mine if you keep yourn,’ answered Ben. ‘I ’aven’t come orl this distance fer a barkin’ match, I come ter be friendly. ’Ow far ’ave I got?’

  ‘You haven’t got anywhere, unless you count the Kentons’ doorstep. What happened when they opened the door to you?’

  ‘They wasn’t too pleased at fust. Yer see, Maudie—she’s a tart, ain’t she?—Maudie didn’t know nothink abart your goin’ orf like yer did, and that mide ’er ’uffy. Is she sweet on yer?’

  Blake’s eyebrows went up, and he laughed.

  ‘What makes you think that, you mug?’

  ‘Mug yerself! I got an idea yer’d been pretty thick together—’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘Abart wot?’

  ‘About—us?’

  ‘I don’t git yer,’ blinked Ben innocently.

  ‘Oh, yes, you do! You must have had some reason for thinking what you’ve just said?’

  ‘It was the way she went on, but mind yer I was on’y guessin’. She’s close, that one! Kind o’ gal, I should think, yer’d never get ter tork, not with a red-’ot poker.’

  ‘Did you try to get her to talk?’

  ‘Wasn’t my bizziness.’

  ‘Let’s have a straighter answer?’

  ‘Orl right, ’ow abart this ’un. You told me that if I went to the Kentons and waited, I might do a bit o’ good fer meself. Well, if I’d spent me time pokin’ inter bizziness wot wasn’t mine, and you got ter ’ear of it, would I be ’elpin’ meself—?’

  ‘You bet you wouldn’t, sonny!’

  ‘Orl right, then, so stop arskin’ me questions like I was a mug. Yer note ter Ma Kenton sed, “No questions,” so I reckoned that went fer me, too.’

  Pleased with himself, Ben finished his glass and poured himself out another, while Blake watched him thoughtfully.

&
nbsp; ‘How about their side?’ came Blake’s next question. ‘Did they ask questions?’

  Ben responded diplomatically: ‘Yer must fergive ’em if they arst a bit. Yer don’t ’ave a strainger suddenly plarsted on yer withaht bein’ a spot curious, do yer?’

  ‘All right. They asked questions. And how much did you tell them?’

  ‘’Ow much was I supposed ter?’

  ‘Can’t you answer any question of mine the first time?’

  ‘That’s your fault fer arskin’ such rum ’uns. ’Ere’s one fer you. Was I supposed ter tell ’em abart the murder or ’ow you and me fust met?’

  ‘By God, you weren’t!’

  ‘Well, so I didn’t,’ returned Ben, accepting the cue, ‘and ’ere’s somethink fer yer ter mike a note of. Yer sent me orf ter the Kentons, but yer didn’t tell me ’arf enough wot I was ter do or ’ow ter act when I got there. Tike Maudie ter the pickchers, that was orl yer sed, so I ’ad ter do orl the thinkin’ fer meself. I didn’t tell the Kentons abart the murder—mind yer, if it was murder, we gotter fix that yet, ain’t we, when we come ter your part? And I didn’t tike Maudie ter the pickchers. I’m leavin’ that ter you. But, corse, nex’ mornin’, when the paipers comes aht, there’s a bit abart the body bein’ fahnd in the ’ouse in Norgate Road, and that hupset ’em—’

  ‘Why should that upset them,’ demanded Blake sharply, ‘if you hadn’t said anything?’

  Lummy! That was a slip, that was! Or wasn’t it? Taking another drink, Ben plunged.

  ‘If yer want the truth,’ he said, ‘I wunnered the sime thing. Maudie was the one that was hupset the most. See, they give ’oo it was—Mr George Wilby, that’s right, ain’t it, like we fahnd on ’is card—and they give the address in Drewet Road—Nummer 18, wer’n’t it?—see, Mrs Wilby idenchified the body—’

  ‘Oh! Did she?’

  ‘Eh? Yus, corse! So I thort Maudie might know something abart the Wilbys, but—well, wot I sed, Maudie’s a fair oyster and when I arst ’er wot was bitin’ ’er, and wot was a dead body, we’ll orl be one some day, she—she …’ He stumbled as his inventive powers broke down for a moment, then got an idea and went on: ‘She called me a nime and then rushed up to ’er room, and I didn’t see ’er agine not till she went orf ter Woolworth’s, that’s where she works, Woolworth’s.’