'I suppose you are real?' said Kif and laughed.
'You bet! And what are you doing now, chum? This is luck. I lost your address down a German drain.'
'L'me see. I don't remember what I did last. Yes, I do. The day before yesterday it was. Watched a car for a fat gentlemen in spats. Very heavy day's work.' He laughed again.
Carroll's blue eyes scanned him searchingly for a moment; they came to rest on his friend's boots and then slid away.
'That the way? Well, I'm on the way to eat and you'll come along. There's a lot to talk about. It's my turn anyhow,' he added casually. 'You stood me that last blow-out in Amiens.'
'It's all right,' said Kif. 'Don't apologise. There's only two men on earth I wouldn't take a meal from just now, and you're neither of them.'
The sleet thinned suddenly to drizzle. Carroll propelled Kif out of the doorway and down a side street into Soho Square. At a restaurant in Old Compton Street they ate, satisfyingly. At first Carroll talked—the old Carroll talk, infinitely amusing and infinitesimally informative—while he watched the dark face opposite in furtive solicitude. As Kif ate, the world slid back to cold reality, and he ceased to find things amusing. At the apple-tart stage, Carroll fell silent and let him unburden himself, and Kif in his bitterness talked unreservedly.
At the mention of Collins, something leaped in Carroll's eyes.
'Know him?' asked Kif.
'Know of him,' amended the other.
'I'm going to kill him some day,' said Kif, as one announces a golfing appointment.
'You have my blessing,' said Carroll. 'There will be no wreaths.'
And Kif took up the tale again. He told everything except his visit to the Barclays; that was not for Carroll; and Tim had come, even if he had found out too late. He told of the jobs he had got and those he had not got. He made no comment as he went along, but bitterness dropped from his curt phrases like blood.
'My landlady put me up for a fortnight after I was broke, and I still owe her for that. Even when her rooms were let she used to give me a meal in the evenings. Five or six nights she did that, till I refused to go back. She's hard enough up herself. For the last nine or ten days I've been sleeping in models or wherever I had enough money for.'
'What about that chap who got a commission? Haven't you seen anything of him?'
'Barclay? He came to the office one day I was out, and they forgot to tell me. I only found it out when things had gone bust.'
'You wouldn't look him up now?'
'What do you think,' said Kif. It was not a question.
'Well, I don't know,' said Carroll, mendaciously considering. 'You were very good pals, weren't you? And—'
'Shut up,' said Kif. 'If I didn't before I'm not going to now.'
'I was only going to point out that he would probably be fed up if he thought you didn't. Besides, Pa was something in the city, wasn't he? And—'
'Shut up!'
'All right, all right,' Carroll said amiably. 'Have some more coffee?'
Kif shook his head and took one of the cigarettes from the case Carroll was offering him.
'Are you a pro. yet?' he asked.
No. I've given that up. Haven't the energy to start training again. The army spoils you for that, somehow. My Dad has a newsagent's shop and I'm in the business now.'
'Good for you! Well, it's lucky for me you came along when you did. I was just wondering whether I had the nerve to break a window and spend a night in quod. Funny, isn't it? but I hadn't.'
Carroll smiled his angelic smile. 'Never found you lacking in that way,' he remarked. 'Well, listen. There's a bed vacant at home. It's only one degree removed from prison—the chap who occupied it is there now—but it's a dashed sight more comfortable, and you can go out when you like. Are you on?'
Kif hesitated painfully. 'It's awfully decent of you.' (Shade of Tim!) 'I haven't a bean, you know. What will they say if you bring in a—'
'It's my room,' said Carroll succinctly. 'Besides, they're not used to introductions. Not the social kind anyhow. We're not a bit a Sunday-school crowd, but that's no reason you shouldn't take the bed till something turns up.'
'I'll take it,' said Kif; and Carroll pressed the butt of his cigarette down on the ash-tray.
As Kif was getting into his sodden overcoat Carroll asked if he had belongings anywhere. They were with his landlady, Kif said. 'Well, you can send for them later on. We'll go home now. It'll be good to see a fire.'
When their bus came it was full inside and as the rain had stopped they climbed to the top rather than wait on the wet pavements. As they sat down Carroll laid Kif's pocket-book gently on his knees with a 'Yours, I think.'
'How did I drop it?' asked Kif, amazed. 'It was in my inside pocket.'
'You didn't. A chap took it from you when we were getting on to the bus, and I took it from him. That's all. He'll be a very surprised little fellow at this moment.' In answer to Kif's questioning look he added: 'I've been able to do that since I was eight, but I haven't indulged since I was about thirteen. Dad beat it out of me. It isn't in his line. But I did it a darn sight better than that chap. He was an amateur.' And he smiled in unregenerate satisfaction.
Kif was very much more interested than shocked. But Carroll relapsed to his habitual bright superficiality and Kif devoted the rest of the journey to the difficult task of believing he was warm.
Carroll lived in a terrace of narrow, three-storied houses in Wandsworth. About a hundred yards away was a block of business premises; the usual semi-suburban collection of butcher, baker, grocer and tobacconist-newsagent. 'The shop's down there,' Carroll informed him, and led him through a spick-and-span doorway into a spick-and-span passage. A bright green carpet, cheap and hard, but gay, covered the middle of the stairs, and the woodwork was painted white. Very conscious of his muddy boots he followed Carroll to the second floor, on which were two minute bedrooms. 'Here's yours,' said Carroll, and opened the door of the back one.
The abode of vice consisted of an irregularly shaped attic hung with a cream-and-roses paper and furnished with a black iron bedstead, a crazy basket chair cushioned in turkey-red, a grey-painted washstand with most of the paint worn off round the basin, a brown-painted chest of drawers, and a board with a row of hooks nailed to the wall. On the floor was a very shiny linoleum patterned with brown-red cabbage roses on a green ground, and at the bed a strip of violet carpeting. Everything was gleaming and clean, and to Kif at the moment it looked like heaven.
'Sammy won't be wanting it for two years so you're quite safe,' said Carroll. 'It doesn't look so bad on a fine day.'
'It looks all right tome! What is Sammy in for?'
'Burglary.'
Kif whistled.
''M,' agreed Carroll. 'Used to be a swell at it, but he's lost the knack in the army. Joined up of his own accord, too. Awful luck. My room is next door.' He had turned to lead the way when there were footsteps outside, and a woman's voice said: 'Is that you, Tommy?'
'Hullo, Baba, I was just going to look for you. Come here. This is Vicar, who was my pal in France. My sister—christened Barbara.'
It seemed that sunshine had come into the grey room of a sudden. The girl who stood looking at him had all her brother's fairness, but her hair. instead of being straw-coloured as his was, stood round her head in a fine golden cloud that glowed as if illuminated from within. Kif had never seen hair like it. Her face was slav-like in its smooth pallor, and the curve of cheek and chin bones, and her wide grey eyes were outlined with dark lashes. Her mouth was full and pale; her hands short and broad with stubby fingers and ugly thumbs. She gave him her hand now and smiled at him. Carroll was explaining that he was going to stay for a few days until he got a job.
'You can stay as long as you like,' she said. 'Can you dry dishes?'
'You bet!' said Kif.
'In that case you can stay for ever,' she laughed. 'This room will look better when the bed is made up. I'll put the things on presently. Come down now and get warm. It's freezing up her
e. Bring your coat to the kitchen. And you, too, Angel.' And Kif followed her down to warmth and comfort with his eyes on her glowing misty hair.
Kif went to bed that night in the little back room filled with a mild amaze at the unexpectedness of life, and a deep thankfulness for the security of a friendly roof. To-morrow there would be breakfast as a matter of course, and dry clothes, and no immediate need to turn out in the pitiless weather to look for work. Carroll senior had made him welcome as a friend of his son, and had said, 'Stay as long as you like, my boy', as if he had meant it. There had been no discussion of his financial position, but Kif had felt that when he retired to the kitchen to wash up with Baba after the abundant high-tea Carroll had told his father all about him. In that he guessed correctly.
'Your chum in low water, Angel?' his father had asked him.
'Yes. Birdie Collins did him down.' He recounted what Kif had told him, and said heatedly: 'Fancy a—swine like that never having seen the inside in all his days, and a good chap like Sammy gets put away first go-off!'
'Distressing,' said Mr Carroll. He was a mild pink little man with his son's blue eyes and a gentle manner. His phraseology was so restrained that on occasions it was disconcertingly like sarcasm until one became used to it. He never swore, but on the other hand he never appeared pained when others exploited their vocabularies in his presence. His abstention was due to inability rather than conviction, it seemed. It was a long time before Kif discovered that Mr Carroll's gentleness could be infinitely more intimidating than any thunderings of wrath.
In the kitchen Baba had fallen suddenly from animation to a busy abstraction. She treated Kif as if he were not there, swilling cups and plates diligently before slipping them into the hot water. Kif dried expertly and watched her hair and her profile; but in a little it annoyed him that she should find him so negligible. The Kif who had been full of gladness that Ann should take him for granted did not in the least want to be taken for granted in the eyes of Baba Carroll. Ann's acceptance of him had been promotion; Baba's was depreciation. He made a few polite and tentative remarks—after all she was his hostess—but she answered them absently. Kif was piqued. Was she regretting perhaps that she had seconded her brother's invitation so warmly? That roused a slight panic in him.
'Do you do all the work of this house yourself?' he ventured.
'No, a girl comes in for three hours in the morning and a char once a week. But for the rest I do like to have the house to myself.'
'Well, I won't be round much during the day,' said Kif, half in fun, half in earnest.
At that she smiled. 'Funny!' she mocked.
And Kif went to sleep wondering whether she were lovelier smiling or serious.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was Angel who woke Kif next morning as he put a tray of breakfast down on the chest of drawers.
He was fully dressed and very good to look upon in the morning sunlight. 'Eleven o'clock, sir,' he said, and hung Kif's trousers dry, cleaned and pressed, over the back of the chair. 'Shall I turn on your bath?'
'Who did that?' asked Kif with a jerk of the head to the trousers.
'Well, it was a sort of company affair. I took them out of your room last night when you were sleeping sound enough to be safe, and Baba did the rest. She rather fancies herself as a tailoress. It's the only thing she'll ever do for me—press my pants. She makes an edge you could shave with—so that it hurts to sit down.'
But Kif was not listening. His long muscular arm was groping agonisedly on the floor. 'My boots!' he said.
Angel laughed at the dismay in his face. 'It's all right,' he said, 'I did them with my own. They're outside the door. And you needn't be so scared of Baba. She's not at all perishable goods. Her label's, 'No matches to be lit in the vicinity of this package'. They wouldn't take her in the post. She'd have to go by rail. I'm off out. There's no hurry to get up. Have a holiday. I'll be back to dinner. See you then. S'long.'
Kif, eating the ample breakfast, pondered Carroll's apparently meaningless remarks. This was the first time he had heard him make a comment on any possession of his own. It was not in accordance with the Carroll he knew. Was it just that he treated Kif as being inside the family circle now and therefore privileged? Or was there a note of warning?
'Oh, rot!' he thought, swinging his legs to the floor. 'You're going balmy. Nerves.'
Half an hour later he presented himself before Baba in the kitchen. She was baking, and a bright green cretonne apron covered her entirely. She looked like some exotic flower. 'Sleep well?' she asked, casting him a glance and going on with her work.
Kif thanked her and asked if there was anything he could do for her before he went out.
'You're not going job-hunting to-day? Have a rest.'
Kif shook his head. 'There are two places in this morning's paper that I must go after. It's rather late in the day to get a good place in the queue, but you never know. I look so smart this morning that someone may be impressed.'
'Well,' she said, not smiling as he had hoped, 'if you don't get them come right back. I'll keep some dinner hot for you.' She propped herself for a moment on the rolling-pin, and looking straight at him said matter-of-factly: 'Have you got enough cash for bus fares? If not, I can lend you some.'
'Oh yes, thanks,' said Kif, 'I can just manage that.' He had eightpence ha'penny in his pocket.
When he had gone she finished the pie she had been making, put it into the oven, tidied the table, and went upstairs humming a music-hall song and breaking into the words at intervals. With a duster and a mop she went into Kif's room and her song ceased. The bed was faultlessly made, the corners folded on the slant and turned in hospital-wise, the top cover level as a billiard table. The room was tidy and—yes, shining. She swept a swift and experienced finger over the top of the chest of drawers and examined it. Yes, it had been dusted.
'Would you look at this!' she said to the small maid who had followed her up to ask some question. The maid looked round with the air of one to whom no event which might occur in a world like this would occasion shock.
'I know,' she said. 'I was doin' the landin' 'ere when he comes up from the baffroom. "Wot's yer nime?" 'e ses. "Pinkie," I ses. An' 'e smiles' (That was bad of Kif, but excusable; there was nothing pink about Pinkie except the rims of her eyelids), 'an' 'e ses, "Lend me yer duster just a tick." So I give 'im the good one, an' 'e give it to me back when 'e went dahnstairs. Fowlded, if y' please.' She surveyed the room again. 'Brought 'em up well in the army, didn't they? 'Orspital, I suppose.'
'I wish to god Tommy'd had a dose of it! Oh yes, use the methylated, and buzz off.' As the clatter of the maid's footsteps died into the lower regions Baba crossed to the small case which had been rescued from Fitzmaurice Lane the previous evening and was now lying by the fireplace, and lifted the lock with a tentative finger. It was not locked. She raised the lid and propped it carefully against the wall. Squatting on her heels she let her eyes wander over the contents. Nothing was visible except Kif's army uniform, which the pawnshops had presumably refused, and in one corner, half-hidden under a fold of the tunic, a worn pocket-book. Gingerly, as though it had been red-hot, she lifted the fold and abstracted the wallet. It contained all the photographs that Kif had collected in the last five years. She did not disturb them, but viewed them all satisfactorily by squeezing the pliable leather at top and bottom so as to form a cavity. There were no letters; Kif kept none. She paused over the trio at the depot, over a group taken at a picnic during his Golder's Green leave, and at the Parisian Nymph; but Marcelle she did not see. Her photograph Kif carried along with his army papers in the pocket-book which Carroll had rescued on the bus step. When she replaced the wallet in its original resting-place not a millimetre's deviation was visible to shout a warning to the most suspicious eye. Her stubby fingers sought again under the folds but there was nothing there. She replaced the lid, mopped the floor hastily but comprehensively, and betook herself with mop and duster to her brother's room.
Kif told them the tale, his eyes bright with laughter, as they sat round the table consuming fried fish and mashed potatoes. There was a new-comer in the gathering to-night—a small round-shouldered man who might have been anything from twenty to thirty, thin and swarthy, with a pouting lower lip, high cheek-bones, and fine dead-black hair which he wore without oil, so that it had a matt surface and hung straight and free like a child's. He was introduced as Danny Anderson, but that was the last time that Kif ever heard his surname mentioned; he was known to all his world, he found, as Danny the Dago or Dago Danny. Not that there was any dago in his blood. His grandfather had been a Highland ghillie who knew the ways of red deer and cock and grouse, but nothing of the world. The ghillie's youngest son had come to London to make his fortune and had married a domestic servant from Cornwall whose knowledge of the world was too extensive. The mixture of Cornish and Highland Celt had produced Danny, who looked like an assassin and who earned his living as a barber's assistant. I have met Danny once, and have always thought that the men who sat calmly in a chair while Danny flourished a razor were either extraordinarily brave or extraordinarily unimaginative.
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