‘Well, you know what your dog thinks about cats. There was a disturbance, a fracas. Kitty went for the handbag and Mad Maggy tried to fight him off. Maggy says the dog got a mouthful of her hair, and she hasn’t got much. Certainly Kitty was sick. Maggy says you’ll be hearing from her solicitor.’
‘Her old main got legal aid,’ complained Davies. ‘Now she’s got a solicitor.’
‘Or so she says. You may hear nothing more of it. But she’ll consider that you owe her a favour. Perhaps next time her husband is in trouble …’
‘Knock for knock,’ nodded Davies. ‘She’ll try and get her old man put away for longer.’
‘That’s more like it,’ approved Mod his chins folding in a grin. ‘Joking again. You’re feeling better.’ He leaned confidingly. ‘I had a word with the surgeon,’ he whispered, then nodded: ‘Your usual one. He says that the injuries are not serious. Not by your standards. You could be out of here in a few days.’
‘Thanks.’ Davies sighed. ‘Well, it will give me something I can look forward to … Bournemouth.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ enthused Mod. While Davies watched with a sort of dull surprise, his friend half turned, woke up the torpid patient in the next bed, and asked if he might borrow his Daily Mail. The man groaned and pushed his hand towards the newspaper. Mod thanked him but the head was already below the bedclothes again. Mod took the paper and opened it. ‘Let’s see,’ he said squinting. He searched for and found his grubby glasses, putting them on with difficulty as though unsure of the location of his nose. ‘That’s better … Here we are … Weather at the resorts … Bournemouth … sleet … temperature twenty-nine.’ He looked up reassuringly. ‘That’s not too bad,’ he ventured. ‘It’s almost above freezing.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ said Davies grimly.
Davies watched Jemma come into the ward and look around for him. How beautiful she was, brown and beautiful with her long body, her fine face and deep eyes and the gap in the middle of her teeth. But it was her walk that caught the eye, an unselfconscious, upright, but languid stroll. She glanced from side to side. Sick and prostrate men began to sit up.
She stopped at the bottom of Davies’ bed and regarded him seriously. ‘All this for me,’ she said shaking her head and smiling at him. ‘How do you feel, Dangerous?’
‘Better now,’ he said painfully. ‘A bit better.’
She sat on the side of the bed, found an unbruised portion of his cheek and kissed him on it. His lips were too tender. A silence had dropped over the ward and other patients were straining to get a view of her. A man fell with a cry from his bed and a bedpan went clanging.
‘They say you’re not too serious,’ she said patting him comfortingly.
‘No, it feels better than usual,’ he admitted. ‘A couple of days and I’ll be out on the streets again. Tempting providence.’
She regarded him reprovingly. ‘You’ve got to have some sick leave,’ she said.
‘Bournemouth,’ he nodded. ‘Mod said I’m going to Bournemouth. It’s said to be nice down there in January. I suppose you put that idea into his head.’
‘We did discuss it,’ Jemma agreed. ‘I’ll come with you.’
He attempted a smile and said: ‘That should warm it up.’
She laughed lightly and gave him a gentle push on the chest. He winced. She said: ‘I could do with a break myself.’
‘Social Services busy is it?’ he asked. ‘The troubles of the world tend to multiply after Christmas.’
‘Like the end of a truce,’ she shrugged. ‘You know young Valentine. His parents – both of them – have separately pissed off. Couldn’t stand each other any more so they left him. Ten years old. I may bring him to Bournemouth. He’s never seen the sea.’ She glanced at him sadly. ‘Dangerous, I’m sorry about last night. You didn’t have to protect my honour. I’ve been called worse things than a Schwarzer.’
‘Not in my hearing you haven’t.’
Jemma sighed. ‘It was such a pity. A European Friendship Dinner-Dance and it ends in a punch-up.’
‘It was when they’d drunk a lot and started singing,’ he remembered. ‘There’s nothing more likely to raise the ugly face of nationalism than singing.’
She nodded wryly. ‘It was that Australian who started it.’
‘Australian? What’s an Australian got to do with European Friendship?’
‘He got in somehow. Attracted by the drink, I suppose. Everyone thought he said he was Austrian. It was only when he started making trouble …’
‘I saw him. He was bawling over that poor little bloke from Luxembourg. “Clip Go The shears”, that’s what he was singing. I ought to have realised.’
Jemma regarded her hand sadly. She still wore her wedding ring, bright on her slender finger. ‘Everything got out of control,’ she admitted. ‘And after all that organising. And all for friendship.’
‘Friendship’s not an easy thing to organise,’ Davies observed thoughtfully. ‘Was there a lot of damage?’
‘Only to people. There’s two Frenchmen in Willesden General. One was hit in the Adam’s apple with his own bow tie. One of those elastic jobs. There’s a Dutchman down the corridor from here.’
‘What about the German I clobbered?’
‘Well you didn’t. You’d had a few yourself by then, Dangerous. You missed him and hit the Dutchman. The one down the corridor.’
He looked regretful: ‘You can’t plan these things.’
‘I don’t think he’ll recognise you. Everyone was at it. It never ceases to amaze me how men will attack other men at the first opportunity. At least women only bitch behind each others’ backs. Fortunately, there was not a lot of damage to the place though. It belongs to the Maccabi Jewish Club and it’s built to withstand attack. They’ve been rather expecting an assault from the National Front.’
‘There’s no peace,’ sighed Davies. He regarded her glumly. ‘Kitty had old Mad Maggy’s hair last night. In the Babe. Pulled out a lump of it apparently.’
Jemma pursed her lips. ‘I was trying to keep that from you,’ she confessed. ‘Until you felt better. I suppose Mod told you.’
‘He would, wouldn’t he,’ said Davies.
‘Well, let’s look on the bright side. Just think. We’re going to Bournemouth.’
As she spoke a fistful of rain splattered against the hospital window.
Two
Between Basingstoke and Winchester there was some damp but encouraging sunshine. The train ran by sparkling green fields and ploughed acres of curved, chocolate earth. Above the low Hampshire hills and wiry trees the sky was blue, pale and cold.
Davies surveyed it hopefully and mentioned that it might turn out all right. Jemma touched his dog’s forehead and the animal groaned with pleasure. Valentine looked from the window and asked: ‘Why don’t they fill all this empty stuff with houses an’ that?’
‘I expect they will,’ Davies assured him. ‘Once the country’s on its feet again.’
‘When’s that then?’
Davies shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m only a detective. I’m baffled.’
Jemma smiled her singular smile at him, the teeth set in the brown face and the gap in the centre of the teeth where the gaze went every time, no matter how long you knew her. He could tell she was grateful that they could bring Valentine. She had feared that his father might snatch him back or, worse, his mother. They would do it to spite each other.
‘He’ll have to come into my room, Dangerous,’ she had said apologetically. ‘I don’t want him out of my sight. All this is a bit unofficial.’
‘I thought it might be,’ said Davies who sometimes wondered why a social worker had to take work home.
‘You’ll have Kitty for company.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said grimly. ‘There’s always that to it.’ He regarded his great dog who growled malevolently. ‘A holiday at the seaside might repair our relationship. Walks along the beach, me throwing stones.’
There had been no question o
f taking the car. Davies doubted if it would make the hundred and some miles anyway, and he feared the ravages of salt winds and exposed coastal weather on metalwork that scarcely left the garage in the yard these days.
Kitty sat with unusual aplomb, apparently enjoying the movement of the train and the delicate scent of Jemma. He growled warningly at the man who came to look at their tickets.
Mod, full of regret, had been left behind. He voiced his belief that somewhere, lodged in the back of his mind, was a government provision to reward the chronically unemployed with short holidays at the public expense but, fumble through the regulations though he did, he could not discover the statute.
‘I could do with a break too,’ he had announced morosely. ‘Sometimes the library gets me down. The standard of reader in this area is not lofty. A woman came in yesterday and asked for The Seven Pillars of Willesden.’
Davies was privately not too sorry for Mod’s absence. He needed respite from both Willesden and wisdom. His friend had already given him an extended lecture on Robert Louis Stevenson’s sojourn in Bournemouth. ‘There he wrote Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’ he announced, having just looked it up. ‘It was the latter work which brought him fame. It was quoted from the pulpits of England, you know.’
Davies said he did not. They had been in the Babe In Arms and Mod piled on fact upon fact about Stevenson’s life. Davies always knew when he had been swotting it up because he tended to repeat verbatim the phrases of the crib. He had reached in the caverns of his overcoat and produced a small, shabby book. ‘This is on loan,’ Mod had whispered. ‘Although the library is not aware of it. A potted life of R.L.S.’ He said it as though he had known the writer personally.
Sitting in the train Davies thought of Mod and Robert Louis Stevenson. They stopped at Winchester and Jemma quietly, her face close to him, sang the song ‘Winchester Cathedral’ to Valentine when he asked about the city. At Southampton the boy looked from the window and reported: ‘There’s a lot of posh people getting off ’ere. They got blokes to wheel their suitcases.’
Jemma and Davies joined him at the window, their three faces framed. Well-coated and hatted people were progressing from the first-class section of the train. Brightly capped porters conveyed piles of good luggage along the platform. The black boy thrust his head out and inquired: ‘Where you lot goin’ then?’
A man with his head projecting from a thick scarf turned. His grey moustache waggled as he spoke. ‘On a cruise, son,’ he said. ‘West Indies.’
‘I been in the West Indies,’ said Valentine truthfully. ‘My dad says I was born there.’
‘I expect you have,’ said the man, who had paused while the rest of the party moved on. ‘Where are you going now?’
‘Bournemuff.’
‘You’ll like it,’ the man answered. ‘I wish I were going there. Some places are such a long way when you get older.’
The train pulled away and soon ran beside choppy, dark sea-water; a scuffed ship was lying by a Southampton wharf. The sun had gone, the sky was low and melted into the sea. They went through the grey-green of the New Forest where they saw wild horses, on to Christchurch and then the train echoed into the tall-roofed station at Bournemouth.
Jemma helped Valentine down to the platform. Kitty, un-protestingly on a lead, wagged his rump furiously. His breath came out in short clouds. As Davies gained the platform one of the locks of his elderly suitcase burst. He embraced it frantically like someone trying to restrain a suicide.
‘One thing you’ll need to do while you’ve got time here, Dangerous,’ advised Jemma, ‘is to get yourself another case.’
Afterwards she thought how prophetic her words had been.
In Bournemouth the wintry sun was out again. The taxi drove along the sea front where they saw the waves were shining, toppling on the empty beach white as feathers. Valentine asked if they were real.
‘This time of the year we get a lot of mornings like this,’ the taxi driver claimed. It was odd how people only a short distance from London spoke as though they lived in a foreign land. The driver had agreed to take the dog only after giving him a long stare. Kitty acknowledged the situation and appeared to grin ingratiatingly. ‘Trouble is the weather changes its mind about two in the afternoon.’ The driver nodded forward through his windscreen. ‘You can see it coming from the west. From the Old Harry Rocks.’
‘Where are the boats?’ asked Valentine. Nothing was floating on the sea. All their eyes swept the bay. The driver appeared a little discomfited. ‘There’s not all that many boats these days,’ he admitted. ‘In the summer they run a steamer trip over to the Isle of Wight, but, there’s not a lot doing boatwise just now.’
They reached the Sea Breeze Hotel and while Jemma and the boy surveyed its bay windows Davies paid the driver. ‘Fancy him noticing that,’ mentioned the driver nodding at Valentine. Davies felt pleased. Then the man said: ‘But I suppose some of them are quite intelligent.’
‘Kids, you mean,’ said Davies. The man looked embarrassed and said: ‘Yes, kids.’ Davies smiled at him and gave him a small tip, then turned to regard the Sea Breeze Hotel.
The windows and the glass of the revolving door mirrored the January sunshine. ‘He’ll never get through that,’ said Davies nodding first at the dog and then at the door. A face appeared inside the glass. Valentine had already gone through it and was on his second circuit causing his face to appear curiously oblique. ‘I’ll ask,’ said Jemma. She went through the door and caught the boy as he was about to take another turn. Davies waited with his dog. A man and a woman wearing identical grey expressions and cardigans took turns to come through the door. They stood inspecting Davies and Kitty.
‘I thought it was a small dog,’ said the woman tartly. She adjusted her ornamental spectacles. ‘It’s a big dog for a small dog,’ the man said.
Kitty was doing his act of staring beseechingly into people’s faces. The man’s cardigan was saggy around his middle and Davies feared that the dog might be measuring it up for an attack.
‘I’ll pay the full big-dog rate,’ he promised.
The woman sniffed up and down the road as if hoping some alternative business might present itself. None did and Davies could see that she had grudgingly made up her mind. ‘Open it up,’ she ordered the man. Muttering, the man began to pull bolts to fold one section of the revolving door. ‘Gives the hotel a touch of class this door,’ he mentioned. Kitty put his nose close to the lowered head. Davies eased him back. Jemma and Valentine were inside, the boy watching the conversion of the door.
‘Of course, we don’t discriminate at all about our guests,’ sniffed the woman. ‘As long as everyone behaves. But dogs, that is different.’ She looked at Kitty again. ‘I hope he’s sanitary.’
‘Pisses everywhere,’ mentioned Davies. He had already made up his mind. Now he surveyed the hotel and the shocked faces of the couple. ‘But I don’t think this establishment will be good enough for him.’
Jemma had taken the cue and led Valentine out by the hand. Davies picked up the cases and they went down the road leaving the couple speechless in the doorway. When Davies eventually turned the woman was shaking her fist in their direction but her words were wafted by the wind. ‘Old cow,’ he said.
‘Where we going?’ asked Valentine. ‘I didn’t do nuffin.’
Jemma patted his hand and Davies said: ‘No you didn’t, son.’
‘Don’t you just hate them,’ muttered Jemma. He could see how angry she was.
Davies was wearing a sly smile, however. He said: ‘In the next issue of Dogs Weekly there’s going to be an advert welcoming all dog owners to the Sea Breeze Hotel, Bournemouth. The bigger, the smellier, the more incontinent, the better. And the second dog is free.’
Jemma began to laugh. He set the cases on the pavement. ‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Jemma. He was conscious of her, the boy and the dog all regarding him trustingly.
‘We’re going in … there,�
� he decided, pointing to the other side of the road where a large, old hotel stood blocking the low sunlight. ‘That looks the sort of place where they don’t discriminate against dogs.’
Jemma smiled at him and squeezed his arm. ‘It’s going to cost more,’ she warned.
‘Only the best is good enough for my dog,’ muttered Davies. He patted Kitty’s head and the animal growled threateningly. ‘He knows,’ he said.
They crossed the road. There was a wide band of sunshine between the buildings along the sea front and all three blinked and felt its slight welcome warmth.
At the Promenade Hotel there was no revolving door. They walked into a lobby where there were comfortably worn chairs, a shabby indoor palm and a polished reception desk. An old lady sat reading the Daily Telegraph and she looked up and smiled. A plump, pleasant-faced girl sitting behind the desk, her appearance slightly awry, smiled too.
‘Have you got any rooms?’ asked Davies.
‘Rooms?’ replied the girl. She blinked vaguely. ‘Rooms? We’ve got so many rooms we’re thinking of having a sale.’
‘What a nice dog, Mr Davies,’ said the old lady with the Telegraph.
‘Thank you,’ said Davies on behalf of Kitty. The lady lowered her newspaper to her lap and now smiled sweetly at the whole group.
‘Mrs Dulciman likes dogs,’ said the receptionist. ‘You used to have one didn’t you, Mrs Dulciman.’
‘A while ago,’ confirmed the lady. ‘Broadbent, a basset-hound. Before my husband went.’
Davies, faced with a fragment of information like that, was tempted to inquire where Mr Dulciman had gone. He desisted and signed the register.
‘Two rooms is it?’ asked the receptionist in her turn studying the group and attempting to ascertain who was with whom.
‘Two, that’s it,’ confirmed Davies. ‘I have to guard the dog.’
‘It’s off-season rates,’ she said pushing her wayward hair back from her round face. ‘Being January.’ She moved a little closer. ‘Thirty pounds a day for each room,’ she confided. ‘No extra for the dog. How long will it be for?’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 49