The Complete Dangerous Davies

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘Why don’t you walk your dog in the park?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s too far. Tiredness sets in and then he collapses, and then it’s one hell of a job to get home. Anyway, we’re not welcome. Last spring he destroyed two-thirds of the daffodils in North-West London.’

  ‘How come the dog is a he and gets called Kitty?’

  ‘A drunken Taff,’ shrugged Davies. He thought he saw someone staring at them from a bus and he waved. ‘A Welsh git. At The Babe In Arms. The Taff said it was a girl dog and it was a few days before I noticed and the name had stuck by then. He’s so contrary, he doesn’t care anyway. I think sometimes he thinks he’s a cat.’

  They had reached the cemetery gates. ‘Here we are then,’ paused Davies, concluding it was the separation of their ways.

  ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been in here. I’ll walk with you.’

  His eyes grew. ‘Oh … oh, all right then. It’s a good cemetery.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. She recited: ‘Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green!’ They walked through the gates. Jemma’s missing tooth showed at its best in the dimming afternoon light. She took hold of his arm. ‘I read it all up,’ she said. ‘The history of this area, including the cemetery, when I knew I was coming here to work.’ They walked along the gravel path between the tombs and vaults. ‘The roofs make it look like a little town,’ she said.

  Davies blinked. ‘I s’pose it does in a way,’ he said. ‘Never thought about it like that.’

  ‘It’s a good address,’ she said solemnly. ‘There’s all sorts here. Writers, actors, statesmen. Also Blondin, the tightrope man.’

  ‘And Gilbert Harding,’ put in Davies. He glanced up. It had begun to rain.

  ‘It would now, wouldn’t it.’ She looked about them, then said: ‘Here,’ and moved sideways towards an elaborate vault with a covered marble patio at its front. Uncertainly Davies followed. They crouched under the portico, the dog pushing at Davies’s legs for more room.

  ‘Gilbert who? Who did you say?’

  ‘Gilbert Harding.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘He was on television.’

  Her face had become very dark, her eyes luminous.

  ‘Before your time,’ he said. ‘He used to be on quizzes and such-like. And advertised indigestion tablets.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … not very long ago … in the fifties.’ He glanced at her.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ she smiled. She touched the marble column of the tomb as though testing its soundness.

  ‘I wonder who’s in here?’ Her smile became mischievous. ‘Maybe some famous police officer.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said, examining the sheltering marble roof. ‘Not a copper. Bit too ornate. If coppers get memorials they’re generally on walls. Donated by a grateful public.’

  The rain had thinned. ‘We’d better go,’ she said. The torn remnants of the day’s sky showed between dripping boughs. A bird chirped coldly. They moved off along the wet gravel. Kitty edged across the lawn beside Jemma. She motioned for the rope and Davies, grimacing at the dog, passed it to her. At the gate the cemetery custodian was pacing, sounding his keys like a knell.

  ‘G’night,’ called Davies cheerfully. ‘Thanks very much. Very nice.’ When they were outside he said to her: ‘Fancy a cup of tea? And a meat pie or something?’

  ‘It’s a little early for me, for a meat pie,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’

  They walked together along the pavement to a steamed window with a yellow sign which said ‘Texas Café’. He paused, regarded it doubtfully and said: ‘There’s not much else around here.’

  A battery of noises, voices, clanking cups and plates and the pounding of a juke-box blew out when Davies opened the door. ‘You’re sure?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said. She pushed him into the café.

  They manoeuvred along the tight aisle between the laminated tables. There were about twenty desultory men in the place, their faces propped on elbows, blowing smoke, lifting heavy mugs of tea, a few biting into meat pies. Some played at a fruit machine, others at a pin table; two thin youths hung languorously over the juke-box.

  ‘Youth,’ sighed Davies. ‘What d’you do about it? There’s not many places they can go like this. Welcoming and warm, between the DHSS and the pub.’

  A blotchy boy, so engulfed by a greasy woollen sweater that he looked trapped in a hole, passed them and said: ‘’Ello, miss.’

  ‘One of my clients,’ said Jemma.

  ‘And mine,’ grunted Davies. ‘Grievous Bodily Harm.’

  ‘Not him. It must have been an accident.’

  ‘It often is. Accidental GBH.’

  He rose heavily. ‘Alfie’s busy,’ he said, looking towards the counter. ‘I’ll get them. Hang on to kitty, will you.’ He looked down threateningly at the dog. ‘Behave, or no pie.’

  Jemma watched him pull his overcoat collar up symbolically around his neck, and he pushed towards the counter. A man with smarmed hair and an earring regarded her speculatively.

  ‘Can’t they play that row a bit quieter,’ Jemma remarked to him, nodding towards the juke-box.

  ‘Stone bloody deaf, they are.’ He opened a cave of a mouth and bawled: ‘Order! Order! – Leave it out, will you?’

  ‘Finished anyway,’ sniffed one of the youths who had been hanging over the machine. ‘I notice no uvver fucker puts any money innit.’

  ‘Less of the verbals,’ threatened the smarmed man, ‘in ’ere.’

  Davies returned and set down the teacups and the plate supporting the meat pie, a single curl of steam ascending like a signal or a prayer. His troubled eyes were on the juke-box youth. He moved clumsily between the tables. ‘Like the man said, watch the verbals,’ he said.

  ‘All right, all right,’ sniffed the youth. ‘We was just going, wasn’t we?’ He glanced at his companion who nodded minimally. They moved towards the door.

  Davies turned back towards Jemma. A cold stream of air caught his neck. The door was swinging open. He put the cups down and went to the entrance. ‘Hey,’ he called up the street. ‘Hey, Robert Redford. The door.’

  He returned to the table. A figure returned past the misted window and the door was shut heavily from outside. Davies divided the meat pie. Steam gushed out. Jemma was regarding him with deep amusement over her thick cup. ‘Sure you don’t want one?’ he said.

  ‘You know, Dangerous,’ she said quietly, ‘I think I will. All the excitement has made me quite hungry.’

  By the time they left, the five o’clock darkness had closed in; the little shop windows, the windows of the buses and homeward cars, all squares of illumination. In such an unpicturesque place it was often the best time of the day.

  ‘Where,’ inquired Davies after some hesitation, ‘do you come from?’

  He asked around the corner of his overcoat collar and she replied likewise. ‘Forty-two, Westwood Road, NW6,’ she recited deliberately. A vivid eye rose to observe his reaction.

  ‘No … no, I mean …’ They sidled through some Sikhs heading home to Willesden. ‘No … where … originally … if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I was born in Martinique,’ she told him.

  ‘Ah, Martinique …’ he nodded, striding alongside.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Well, I know of it.’

  ‘French West Indies.’

  ‘Yes, well of course. Naturally.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Me?’ said Davies. ‘Here. Well, Kensal Rise. Born, went to school, and nicked my first bike driver without lights all within a couple of yards. I’ve not been that much further since.’

  ‘I went to school in Paris and London,’ she said. ‘My father was in the Consular Service. Then I went back to Martinique. That’s where I was married.’

  His face came from his collar. ‘You’re married then, are you?’

  ‘I have a son,’ she s
aid. ‘He is seven now. He is with my mother.’

  ‘In Kilburn?’

  ‘Martinique. I had to leave him. Some day I’ll go back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that,’ said Davies genuinely. ‘I bet you miss him.’

  ‘I do. He’s called Anthony.’ Her head dropped into her coat again. He lowered his also and they walked silently through the homing people and the traffic. Davies gave bogus orders to the dog.

  ‘You married?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘In name only,’ he admitted.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the same house as me. It’s only digs, lodgings … a boarding house. But we don’t speak. Separate rooms and all that. I’m closer to the dog than I am to her – and you can see how close I am to the dog.’

  ‘Why don’t you move out? One of you?’

  ‘God knows. It’s getting around to it. And one not going to move to spite the other.’ He regarded her woefully. ‘I’m a nineteen fifties’ man, I suppose,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Like Gilbert …’

  ‘Harding.’

  She halted. ‘I can get my bus here,’ she said. There were people hunched like stones at the stop.

  Davies said, ‘Right. Number fifty-two.’ She stood, all at once a little awkward. He said: ‘Thanks for coming, anyway. It made my day. Sorry it wasn’t quite Maxim’s.’

  Jemma laughed freely. ‘It certainly wasn’t.’ She leaned forward and touched his hand. ‘I’ve been on some dates,’ she said. ‘But a walk through the cemetery followed by a meat pie …’

  ‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘It wasn’t all that good, was it? That café’s the sort of place you wipe your feet when you come out.’ He looked up. ‘Here’s your bus,’ he said with regret and relief. ‘Fair amount of room.’

  He remained standing on the pavement, feet splayed. She boarded the platform of the bus. She was the last one. The conductor called: ‘’Old tight!’ and rang the bell. Abruptly she leaned out and kissed Davies on the cheek.

  ‘It was lovely, Dangerous,’ she said.

  The bus jolted and groaned off. Speechless, he stood and slowly raised his hand after it. The dog looked up to see who he was waving at. The bus joined the traffic. Through the diminishing windows, he saw that she had gone on the top deck. He waved again and then, with a suddenly soaring heart, he started out with his dog towards home. ‘God help me,’ he said, so loudly that people turned. ‘I’m in bloody love.’

  Three

  ‘Nomenclature,’ mused Mod. ‘Names, terms, appellations. Fascinating, fascinating. Why are Clarks Nobby? How intriguing to know that Bert Pollard’s agricultural ancestor cut poles and Nicky Fletcher’s fashioned arrows.’ He peered roundly over the verge of his beer. Davies said: ‘I’m sure it’s of great interest to you academics. It was poor old Lofty I was thinking about.’

  It would be difficult to force Mod to desist now. ‘You are probably not aware,’ interpolated the rotund philosopher, ‘that the word “tawdry” emanates from Audrey. Tawdry Audrey. Derived from St Audrey’s Fair held annually on the Isle of Ely, I believe. The shoddy goods were called “tawdry”.’

  ‘That,’ admitted Davies, ‘is something which somehow seems to have slipped my attention.’ He rose, the only method he knew of stemming Mod’s flow. Mod’s tankard swung out in his extended hand like a weight on the end of a crane jib. Davies went to the bar and returned with the replenishments. It was early evening at The Babe In Arms.

  A concerned expression now moved across Mod’s large face. ‘As I have told you previously, Dangerous, I have a major disability. Everything I glean from my studies, no matter how intense, has gone in a couple of weeks. It seeps down inside me somewhere.’ He ran an untidy finger down his front.

  ‘Like sediment,’ suggested Davies, putting down his glass. He habitually drank without a handle, Mod drank with one. He described it as a safety measure to prevent spillage. ‘Sediment,’ he nodded. ‘If you like.’ He rubbed his stomach. ‘But it’s all there inside me, somewhere. Piled up, fact upon fascinating fact.’

  Davies surveyed the mufflered figure. ‘I can imagine that,’ he said.

  Mod let his hollowed eyes travel around the bar. ‘One day it might all explode,’ he forecast theatrically. ‘Right here in The Babe. Like a bursting atom, shattering the bar stock, making staff and customers duck for cover! An explosion of knowledge.’

  They left and trudged through the damp dark of the autumn streets, the pavements padded with leaves. ‘It’s funny,’ said Davies, pushing his toes through the vegetation. ‘You hardly notice the trees in this place until they’re under your feet.’

  ‘Until they descend to our level,’ nodded Mod massively. ‘And then, of course, it’s too late. So many things are, Dangerous.’

  They walked along the large and shabby Victorian house-fronts. ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens, in the better part of the borough and with a monkey tree at the front, was a ten- sober minutes’ journey.

  ‘If you were going to commit suicide …’ began Davies, ‘what would you take with you?’

  Mod sniffed the clammy air. ‘It’s always been my understanding that you can’t take anything with you. No matter which way you go. We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.’

  Davies said: ‘Why should Lofty suddenly do himself in? He didn’t have much of a life but he’d had the same life for years and he was apparently content. But, even if he did drown himself, would he have taken his pram?’

  Mod paused and with his foot made a runic pattern in the leaves. ‘It’s a nice thought. Operatic. Charging into the Grand Union pushing a pram in front of you. But I don’t think Lofty was operatic. If he had been, he’d have altered his act once in a while.’ He scraped the side of his shabby shoe across the figure he had fashioned in the leaves. They walked on. Lights yellowed the windows of the bulky houses, lending even to the most pessimistic of them a gloss of welcome.

  ‘I wonder what was in that pram, anyway?’ said Davies.

  ‘Perhaps a baby,’ suggested Mod. ‘Perhaps Lofty was a secret male nanny. Over the years he may have cared for many concealed infants. As far as I remember, whatever was in there was hidden below an old blanket.’

  ‘Now we’ll never know,’ said Davies.

  ‘You seem to have got one of your occasional bees in your bonnet about this one,’ said Mod. They opened the creaking gate of ‘Bali Hi’ and went up to the stained-glass front door. The front hall light illuminated a pattern of glass flowers in the door with the virginal face of a young girl peering innocently through them. Davies bent gently and gave the glass face a kiss. ‘Good evening, darling,’ he whispered. ‘I’m home.’

  Mod had produced a key and opened the door. ‘You’ve had too much time to think lately,’ he said. ‘After your sick leave, when you’re back investigating big-time crime, stolen bicycles, vandalised bus shelters, knocking-on-doors-and-running-away, you’ll soon forget Lofty.’

  Davies hung his coat on the grim hall-stand. There was an unfamiliar garment, a good grey coat. Davies touched the lapel. ‘We’ve got a new lodger,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure this is the time to bring it up,’ mentioned Davies when they had sat down to the suet pudding, potatoes and two vegetables. ‘But my bed was wet this morning.’

  Eyes lifted from plates. The suet was heavy and hot, and Mrs Fulljames, who had just put some in her mouth, juggled with it painfully. She fanned her hand in front of it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said as haughtily as she could at that moment.

  ‘My bed,’ repeated Davies. ‘Wet. The leak in the ceiling has reappeared.’

  The landlady sniffed. Mod read the folded Guardian at the side of his plate, his fork, like a tuning fork, poised near his ear. ‘You’re supposed to eat suet pudding, not listen to it, Mr Lewis,’ Mrs Fulljames remarked tartly. Mod swung the food to his mouth and continued reading the paper. ‘So sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I was absorbed in the Higher Management Vacancies.’ Doris, Da
vies’s estranged wife, regarded her estranged husband with everyday displeasure. Mr Smeeton, The Complete Home Entertainer, was memorising jokes from a book in preparation for a professional engagement. He privately placed a Groucho Marx combination – nose, eyebrows and spectacles – on his face and then took them off, continued eating and reciting under his breath. Minnie Banks, a distraught schoolteacher, stared through the steam at some approaching fate. Only the newcomer, a pale pipe-like young man, looked uncertainly around the table.

  ‘Mr Tennant,’ said Mrs Fulljames. ‘Perhaps he can help. I can’t keep the rent at the present level and have the roof repaired every time it leaks. Mr Tennant, as it happens, works in water.’

  ‘I’m an aquatic engineer,’ said the young man. Minnie Banks gave him a skinny smile.

  ‘Have you got a diver’s suit?’ inquired Davies.

  The new lodger looked unsurprised. ‘Not of my own but I use one at the subaqua club,’ he answered. ‘At work I’m usually concerned with tanks and suchlike. I’m working at the power station for a couple of weeks.’

  Davies balanced a dripping sprout on his fork like a projectile. ‘If you hear a lot of noise in the next street, it’s the Irish beating somebody up. Usually me,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve never known anybody spend so much time in hospital,’ tutted Doris. Her nose curled. ‘A burden on the National Health.’

  Davies studied the loaded sprout but dropped it back to the plate. ‘Mrs Davies,’ he said coldly, ‘I don’t end up in the casualty department out of a sense of fun. I get there through my attempts, sometimes misguided, I agree, to keep law and order. So that the streets are safe.’

  ‘Well, they’re not,’ complained Doris. ‘I had a man followed me today.’

  ‘I shouldn’t complain about that,’ he muttered.

  ‘I wish someone would follow me,’ sighed Minnie Banks. She blushed. Mod’s brooding eyes moved like twin planets to her stick-like face. He said nothing.

  Mrs Fulljames got up to clear the plates. ‘Lovely, Mrs Fulljames,’ enthused Davies. ‘That suet was a real treat.’