England's Lane

by Joseph Connolly

  So. I was being asked to be a confidence trickster. John Somerset’s insight into the human condition seemed to be as sound as his son Adam’s appreciation of fine antiques. For in me, he had a natural.

  “But it seems, John, that between the two of you, you rather have the ground quite adequately covered. Why would you want me …?”

  “Yes. I can see how you might think that. But the truth is, Jonathan, that more and more I am in London actually placing the items. The personal touch—so terribly important. Spot of lunch in the right sort of restaurant, drop of decent wine—works miracles, I assure you. My contacts are not insignificant, of course. So I am away these days rather a good deal. And two gentlemen, as you now understand, are quite essential to the working of the thing. How very serendipitous, then, that you should literally have ambled into my ken. Also … I could hardly help but observe, my dear chap, that you are a tall and finely built sort of a fellow, if you’ll forgive my pointing it out. And often, so physical an appearance—bearing, as it were—can hold us in very good stead. Because there are some, you know, who can at the very sticking point—the nub, if you follow me—become of a sudden really quite mawkish and over-sentimental about, I don’t know—granny’s necklace, say, or the portrait of some old chap above the fireplace. And on such occasions, well … just the teensiest little scrap of persuasion can work absolute wonders, we’ve found in the past. Just to, you know … tip the balance, as it were. Well, Jonathan. There you have it. The bones of it, anyway. I could guarantee you an initial, shall we say … what? One hundred pounds per week? Cash, naturally. Later, though, there will be much much more, I can assure you of that.”

  So. I was now being asked to be a confidence trickster who is not above coercion, intimidation and very probably bodily violence in exchange for something approaching five thousand pounds a year (and then later, much much more, he assures me). I confess to finding the gall of the man quite utterly breathtaking.

  “Well, dear Jonathan—what do you say? I have laid my cards upon the table, fairly and squarely, I hope you’ll agree. Now … this really might well be quite overly presumptuous of me, but ideally I was rather hoping you might care to try an inaugural sally this coming Monday morning. Too soon? Have a stab at it. See how you feel. Too soon? Adam you can meet this evening, should you be inclined. He is coming to the house. Where—and I do hope by now that you are aware of this, Jonathan—Anna and I will always be most delighted to welcome you.”

  Yes … we had been drinking champagne: I remember it now. For it was of course at this juncture that he recharged my glass. The sun was warm, and I drank it quickly. I stood up to face him, and smiled.

  “Monday would be quite convenient. And I very much look forward to meeting you and your son this evening. And Anna, of course.”

  Anna. Yes, of course—oh my God, yes of course. For could you imagine I had missed or forgotten that glimmering detail? It lit up his monologue like a fiery beacon. That he is away, yes, and rather a good deal. More and more he is in London, actually placing the items. His blandishments were already beguiling, but here had resided the absolute decider. And so then, it was done. Though of course it very quickly became plain to me that he hadn’t at all, John, laid his cards upon the table—not by any means all of them, at least. And as for fairness and squareness, well—such plain and noble concepts as those, they simply never once intruded. Soon the venture grew. I was decidedly instrumental in that—the driving force, in point of fact: expanding considerably the initial admittedly brilliant but severely limited idea. Within considerably less than a year, I was rather rich. John, of course, was already rather rich, though as a result of my efforts he now had become much more so. Fiona, but naturally, was quite girlishly delighted: always she had a taste for the finer things in life, which now I was very pleased to be able to furnish. And I had Anna. Of course I did. And as long as I walk this earth, never shall I forget what she told me when later that evening I walked across to The Grange. Over cocktails in the orangery I had been briefly introduced to Adam, and quite soon after she drew me through the French windows and on to the parterre (I was hardly unwilling) and then we were in the shadow of a rhododendron bush. As she spoke, I thought I must, I just have to, haul my eyes away from the radiance of hers: if I continue to fall so very deeply into them, I could come close to passing out.

  “So then Jonathan. It seems you are to join us. That comes as no surprise to me. Though tell me—did you like him? What was your impression?”

  “Of Adam, you mean? Oh—nice young man, he seems.”

  “You’re lying to me, Jonathan.”

  “Lying …? No no. He appears to be, as I say …”

  “He is odious. Of course he is. It is plain for all to see. You think his own mother could be unaware? He is perfectly despicable—and if you are sincere in what you say and you genuinely have failed to perceive this in him, which I cannot for a moment believe … then very soon you will, I do assure you. I simply want to tell you just two things. We will not again ever be speaking of any of this, so allow me to tell you, please … just these two things: the first, of course, you already know. We are to be lovers.”

  I gasped from the shock of the jolt in my heart. I moved on instinct quickly toward her: I was cupping her two bare shoulders under the palms of my hands—had barely been electrified by such sensation before she was shrugging me away.

  “Not here. Not now. I think that soon you must return to the orangery, or else John, he will come to find you. So I shall be brief. The other thing I have to tell you is simply this: I know what Adam is. I know you will think him vile. He will rile you, very possibly disgust you. You will be provoked, though it must never be beyond endurance. I know too that in this line of business, strong temptations will be coming your way. Spurn them, for your own sake. Adhere to the principle of partnership—do not surrender to your maverick instinct. And should any harm ever come to my boy—if ever I even suspect you of doing him down in any way at all … should any apparently inexplicable accident ever befall my boy … then that is the very last you will ever see of me. Do you understand? I do so hope that you know I am sincere. Detestable though he undoubtedly is, no harm must ever come to Adam.”

  Yes well. It did, of course. Harm. Come to Adam. And there was the undoing of us all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Flesh and Blood

  Blimey—can’t hardly recall the last time I were out the shop on a bleeding Tuesday. Nor no other day of the week, come to that. Saving Sundays, course. But I had to. It come upon me, like. Couldn’t see to it Sunday, could I? Tried to put it out my mind for all of yesterday, I did. But now I got to. Sundays is when I usually sees to it because Mill, normal way of things, she be taking the boy out of a Sunday afternoon, and that’s when I can slip off out, see? Partly why I cuts my losses and gone to the bloody Zoo. If Mill were going to be in the house, I couldn’t just up and say to her well see you later alligator, could I? Smell a rat, she would. Never go nowhere on a Sunday. That’s what she reckons, any road. Except for after my tea, when I’ll walk down the Washington, couple of jars. Yeh well she wrong about that, ain’t she? Me never going out of a Sunday. Just because I never take them nowhere. And she give me that, Mill—she give me that all the bleeding time: her and Paul, I don’t never take them nowhere. Yeh but look—they don’t want it, do they? Course they bloody don’t. Don’t never want to be seen with me. Rather go out with Dr. Crippen than they would with me. It’s wrote all across their faces. Hitler—them two, they’d sooner go out with Adolf bleeding Hitler than they would with me. So I goes on my own. My little secret. Yeh because what I do is, I makes it look like I snoring my bloody head off on the settee there, look … and then when she nip off out with the boy—up the Hill, down the pictures, whatever it is they’s always doing, them two—I gets my coat on sharpish and I’m off round Adelaide Road, see my Daisy. Don’t never take too long. Then Mill, when she come back in, there I is again—back on the settee, large as you like,
fag in my fingers, and then I hears her going Oh look, Paul—there’s your Uncle Jim. Still fast asleep. Still snoring like a … what is it she say? Hog. Something like that. Not nice anyway, whatever it is she say.

  Dead set on it Sunday, I were. That urge. And then I get all this palaver about bloody Stan and his bloody day out at the Zoo. And Mill saying it give her a chance to get on with her knitting and all the rest of the caper … bloody hell, I were that let down, I don’t know … so I just ups and says I’ll go along with the buggers to the Zoo. Never planned it, nor nothing: it just come out. Least I got a bit of air in my lungs. Because if I weren’t going to nip round Adelaide Road, see my Daisy … well … couldn’t stay cooped up in here, could I? Proper give me the hump, that would. So there I am in the bleeding Zoo. And that Stan—there ain’t no life in that boy. Telling you. Like you’s out with your teacher, or something. Vicar, or something. Got a bit better once he’d had a belt or two down him, I’m not saying—but still he’s a dry old bastard and no mistake. Yeh and just before we come back home, just before I goes and lights a fag down the shop with Cyril—see how he doing, stick him a bit of millet, have a little natter—I says to Pauly: here, Pauly … let’s you and me have a chat like, ay? Little word. Before we goes in to see your Auntie Mill, ay?

  “What about …?”

  “What about? Well—this and that. Nothing in particular. Like—what we done today. Had a good time, didn’t you? Got your toffees, look. And that elephant, ay? What about that elephant? Big, ay? That elephant? Yeh. Some of them animals—proper make you laugh, don’t they? Chimps, and that …”

  “You had a lot of whisky. May I go now, please?”

  “Yeh yeh—in a minute, Pauly. It’s just that, well—your Auntie Mill, right? She maybe don’t want to know about all of that, ay? You just tell her about your ice cream and all them animals. Best way. She’ll like that, she will. You telling her all about the animals what you seen. And your mates. Anthony. Amanda. That other one. Nice, she were. Didn’t you think? What was her name? Nice, she were. Make a good little girlfriend for you, ay? What you reckon? Not so stuck up as that Amanda, didn’t seem to me. Laughed a lot.”

  “May I go now, please?”

  “Yeh just hold your horses, can’t you? What’s all the hurry? So listen, Pauly—you’ll remember what I said to you then, ay? About your Auntie Mill. And here—here, Pauly. Two bob. How’s about that? Two-bob bit. What a day you’s having! Ay? You can get one of them Matchbox cars, can’t you? Like them, don’t you? Bit left over for a Mars bar.”

  “I don’t eat Mars bars.”

  “Crunchie, then.”

  “I don’t eat Crunchies.”

  “No well—tube of Rolos, if you want. Smarties—you like them.”

  “I don’t eat Rolos. I don’t eat Smarties.”

  “Yeh you do—I seen you.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Yeh well get whatever you bleeding well want, you little sod …! Oh buzz off—get out my sight. Bleeding Bertrand Russell … you don’t know you’re born, you don’t! That’s your trouble! Bleeding Bertrand Russell …!”

  So yeh, I thought: that gone like it always do. And then I gets a few bottles of Bass inside of me and Mill’s put out a warmed-up slice of that steak and kidney with gravy and all of the doings, so come the evening I weren’t feeling too bad. Still go down the Washington, though: got to do the thing proper. Got through Monday somehow, but it were on my mind. Yeh and this morning, I’m up early like usual—cup of tea, bit of toast—but I ain’t feeling settled within myself. Urge, see? Still got it. Ain’t gone away. So I reckon I got to see to it. Tried it before, not seeing to it, and it don’t do you no good. No, son—believe me it don’t. Makes you all out of sorts. And it’s for Mill I does it, really—she don’t know the half of all what I does for her, Mill don’t. Else I’m only going to take it out on her. I know she don’t deserve it, but you got to face it—it’s all I’m going to do. So now I’m needing to cobble up some great load of codswallop, and it got to be done now before I goes and opens up the shop.

  “Busy are you, Mill? Next hour or so? Don’t have to be now. Later, you like.”

  “I’m always busy, Jim. You maybe haven’t noticed.”

  “Yeh no but I only ask on account of I’m wondering if you want to sit in the shop, like. Like I say, hour’ll do it easy. It’s just I got to go dentist.”

  “Dentist, Jim? Why?”

  “Why? Why? Why you bloody think? Because I got a bleeding wossname, that’s why. Ain’t I? Wossname. Got a—what the bleeding hell you call it …?”

  “Toothache …?”

  “Yeh. Toothache. Course I got a bloody toothache. Why else I want to go up the dentist?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yeh it hurt. Course it bloody hurt. It’s a toothache, ain’t it? It’s what they do, hurt …”

  “Which tooth?”

  “Which …? How the hell do I know which bleeding tooth? One of them. Up the back.”

  “I see. And it’s bleeding, you say?”

  “Hey? I never said nothing about that.”

  “Oh but you did, Jim. And I quote: which bleeding tooth …?”

  “Here … you being funny, or what?”

  “It would seem not, no Jim. Well now let me see … am I busy? Mm. I must think. Well this morning I have to do the shopping, clean the bathroom, scour the lavatory, polish the floors, hoover the rugs, rake out the grate, reline the kitchen shelves, sew that button on to your shirt, change the bed linen, attend to the laundry, the washing, the ironing … but apart from that, no Jim—I don’t seem to be busy at all.”

  “Right, then. Good. So—about an hour suit you?”

  Look—I know she were being wotsit—sarky. I do know that—I ain’t a bloody idiot. But sometimes you just got to let it go by. Else I would’ve been up there half the morning arguing the toss, wouldn’t I? So I bung her the keys to the shop—and yeh I could just be sticking a “Back in Half an Hour” sort of a notice in the window, yeh I could do that, but nah—I don’t like to. Never done it, see? Not in all the time I been here. And I’m known for it, ain’t I? Opening up bright and early. Famous, you could say. Always the first of a morning to be open for business in the whole of England’s Lane: it’s a bit of a tradition. Yeh but about Mill—don’t get me wrong: it’s me what’s going to go down and put out all of the gubbins on to the pavement, I ain’t asking her to do none of that. Hang up the bath—the brushes and the brooms. Pile up them galvanized buckets before that toffee-nosed Barton bastard can come and have the bleeding lot off of me. Yeh because I wouldn’t want no one to turn round and catch a butcher’s of my wife humping stuff about like that. I’m the man, after all. Ain’t I? Got to be. Can’t have your missus doing nothing like that. Wouldn’t do. That’s the way it go in England, and quite bloody right too. Island Race, that’s us. Just ask Churchill, you won’t take my word for it. They maybe do it different in Frogland, I’m not saying—and yeh I wouldn’t put nothing past them Wops and the bloody Krauts … blimey, in bongobongo land they maybe get their wife to, I don’t know—build their bleeding houses for them, and then when they finished cook her up on the fire there and have her for their tea, what do I know? You want to know all about that, you be best asking them sambos down the woodyard. Anyway—bugger all that: I’s off now. Yeh and just before I does that, Mill, she says to me: still hurt …? And just for a mo there, I don’t know what she on about. Then I gets it. Yeh it do, I goes to her: it hurt something terrible. And it do, it do—yeh but it won’t for much longer. Daisy—she soon sort me out. Yeh—she a good girl, Daisy is.

  It were Charlie in the Washington that one time, the bugger—it were him what put me on to her. I were just off, pretty much had it, but Charlie, he get hold of me by the arm and he go to me—here, what’s your game? Your round, ain’t it? And I says to him listen to me, Charlie mate—we had so many pints tonight I couldn’t tell you my bleeding name let alone whose round it is. But here—never
let it be said, son: you want another, that’s all right by me. So I gets them in—can’t have been much off closing, but Reg, he’s a good lad: always give Charlie and me a little bit of leeway. And so he bloody should: what I ain’t spending on hoity-toity Pauly’s bleeding la-di-da girls’ school, it all go to the Reverend Stan Miller of this parish for me ton of bleeding fags—and the rest end up with Reg here. But be fair—he do keep a good drop, Reg. A very fair pint. Bass, course. There’s a Charrington’s house down Haverstock Hill, but nah—bloke there, he don’t know how to keep his ale: watered down with piss, is what it taste like. One place up Hampstead Village way, Charlie were telling me, they gone over to all of that fizzy sort of keg muck. Watney’s Red bloody Barrel? Do me a favor: must be joking. Young people, he were saying—it’s them what go for it. Yeh well they would wouldn’t they, stupid little bastards.

  So anyway, there we was in the Washington that time, Charlie and me, propping up the bar over in our usual little corner, having a fag, enjoying a jar. I like it in there. Dead lucky really, having it right on my doorstep. They still got all that fancy woodwork and all them big mirrors and that. Sort of boozer Sherlock Holmes is going to go in—and he have a glass of whatever it were he were drinking, nice big glass of opium, something like that, and then he can go to his mate Cheers, ay? Elementary my dear wossname! Yeh. It all old-fashioned, is what I getting at, and Charlie and me, that’s the way we likes it. And there ain’t never no kids nor women in to bugger it up.