Young Man, I Think You're Dying

by Joan Fleming

  W. Sledge’s father was a sour bus-driver, sour because most of his day was spent breathing in diesel fuel fumes, feeling ill and adding to the carcinogens in his lungs by chain smoking; he had no interests, he felt too rotten to go out to his favourite pub except on Sunday mornings. When he came home at night he flung himself into a comfortable chair in front of the television and his wife served him with tele-snacks. There was no conversation between the couple because there was nothing to talk about except how awful he felt and there was no point in talking about it because it was all too obvious.

  His wife was a sharp-tongued woman with blazing red hair; in her earlier life she had been a post office clerk but had been sacked for pilfering. She hated being an office Mrs. Mop getting up every morning at four o’clock and working till 8.30, but she was well paid though she spent a large proportion of her earnings on Bingo, to which she went twice a week, never winning anything worth having but always hopeful.

  Mrs. Sledge’s mouth was full, she was having breakfast when Joe called. Having opened the door to him she immediately sat down at the kitchen table and went on having it. He stared at her tea-cosy, which was really obscene, the stuffing bursting out, it was black with grease, an object for a coal hole rather than a table. With part of his mind Joe thought complacently about the okay tea-cosy at home in mock patchwork quilting, that he had omitted to use that morning.

  “Come to tell me our Winston has been up to something?” Mrs. Sledge guessed. “He didn’t come home this weekend, he didn’t. We haven’t seen him for ten days. Oh that boy! One of these days there’ll be a dick at the door and I’ll drop dead, sure as I’m sitting here I will.”

  “I just wondered …”

  “Yes, what?”

  “We were out together last night and I left my pullover in his car; I just wondered … He was sick, Mrs. Sledge, in the car.”

  “Well, that’s a bad sign, for a start!”

  “That’s what I thought, I thought …”

  “Sick, was he? Highly strung, that brain doctor I took him to said. It’s his nerves, takes after me. Feels things!” she explained. “Oh, he was a naughty boy, it was only luck kept him from one of these approved schools. I did my best; he went on and on and on, doing the same thing no matter how often I told him not to. And when I smacked him, no I had to thrash him with a slipper, he was sick.”

  Joe had heard all this before, he knew he would have at least to appear to be listening but he was worried to the point of being sick himself; he knew W. Sledge as well as his mother knew him, if not better.

  “… So don’t ever punish him, never lay a finger on him in anger, those was the doctor’s very words, his very words. I reckon I’m glad I don’t have any more kids, they’re more trouble than they’re worth, reelly they are!”

  “But the point is …”

  “And the cheek of it, living up there in Colindale and won’t even give us the address. Suppose one of us reelly was to drop dead? His Dad’s none too well. We couldn’t even let him know if anything happened, we’d be dead and buried by the time he turned up ’ome. He ‘likes his freedom’ he says. Cor! I’d give him freedom if I had my way!” She was lashing herself into a state. Joe wished he had not come but he had felt that maybe, perhaps W. Sledge had decided to come home last night for a little bit of sympathetic mother-love, for a change.

  He tried to go but she detained him, saying everything she had said and much more in the same vein, over again. If he had not disliked her, he might have been sorry for her, she had no chance of a good talk in her home life, unless she talked to herself.

  Finally he extricated himself and went to look in the north-side car park to see if the Jag had returned. It had not. He leaned against the railings and watched the river, half hoping that the Jag would turn up but knowing that if W. Sledge was having a successful morning there would be customers and his sensitivities would forbid his return until evening.

  TREBLE CHANCE WIN FOR BLIND MAN

  the first edition of the evening paper mildly announced and Joe went to a coffee-bar in Soho where he met some friends and stayed until late afternoon, during which the evening papers had received news worth shouting about:

  GENERAL’S WIDOW FOUND STRANGLED

  not a first-class selling line such as those on the posters which the newsmen kept to intrigue the shoppers up in the West End for a “shopping spree,” such as SON FOR SOPHIA LOREN or ROYAL DIVORCE HITCH.

  But one citizen, however, was deeply affected by the headline; though he had been expecting it, when it finally came he was hit amidships, a crashing blow.

  With poisoning, drowning, shooting, pushing out of the window and even hanging, “foul play” could often be discounted and suicide suspected instead. But with strangling there was no let out, nobody ever strangled themselves successfully.

  He bought a paper, his fingers shaking so much that he could scarcely hold it still enough to read it: “… the widow of General Sir Edward Bellhanger of Tripoli fame … an interrupted burglary … son supplied a list of missing silver objects to the police …” The sort of thing that appeared only too often, he almost knew it by heart.

  He crushed the paper up angrily and threw it down. It had come to this, he ought to have known that it would. W. Sledge had been altogether too successful, too confident, too boastful, too contemptuous of others; he had become careless, thought himself immune from ordinary mishaps; there was nothing he couldn’t do in his own opinion. That inherent violence of his…

  He was a spoiled boy, Joe considered, someone who had had everything he had wanted always and then, when he was frustrated, suddenly saw that he would be deprived of this snuff-box haul he had planned so cheerfully and confidently, he had to brush aside, in fact, exterminate, that which was standing in the way of immediate success.

  It was the spoilt boys, Joe thought bitterly, who did the murdering; the deprived ones, like himself, were too used to being deprived to do anything other than stick the frustrations; he had heard these sober and serious discussions about the young delinquents on the radio and they made him blow rude raspberries.

  He’d known all these things all along but nonetheless, they had not caused him to drop his friendship with W. Sledge; it was because of them, rather than in spite of them, that he enjoyed his friendship, or had done so to date; he had been privileged to know W. Sledge, in fact, had been proud of the fact that W. Sledge confided in him and treated him as a friend and servitor.

  So now, Joe Bogey was about to smash up this friendship for ever; he would do the only sensible thing, which was to take himself off immediately to Chelsea Police Station and tell them the whole story. It was the only sensible thing to do, he kept repeating to himself: to tell a policeman.

  He was standing in Piccadilly Underground, sheltering from the drizzle, crowds passing, no one looking at him or, indeed, at anyone else. Unobservant, intent upon their own business, hundreds and hundreds of people! Nobody of the passing thousands knew who he was; he had no distinguishing marks; Joe Bogey and his ridiculous surname could come to an end from now on. Simply vanish.

  But he could not do it for a very elementary reason; though under torture he would never have admitted it, he loved his family; he simply could not inflict the misery upon them that he would by disappearing.

  And it was only when he had travelled two miles and stood within a few yards of Chelsea Police Station he decided not to go in and tell his story for the same, and what seemed to him utterly nauseating, very simple reason.

  And since simplicity seemed to be the keynote of today’s thinking, he decided to trust his luck which, so far, had not failed him. W. Sledge was a lucky type too; in fact, Sledgey’s luck up to now had been fantastic, almost a legend in their set; maybe this would hold and the murder of the General’s old lady would go into the dossier amongst the many unsolved crimes. By this time next week … over and forgotten, even by the police themselves, since there would be a lot to fill their minds between now and this tim
e next week; several more murders and a bloodless revolution in Trafalgar Square on Sunday afternoon, to say the least.

  It would be utterly selfish of him, Joe decided, to tell the police all he knew about last night’s robbery and cause his family endless anguish, simply in order to clear himself (or perhaps indict himself, who knew?).

  So turning his back on the Police Station and walking rapidly away he swore aloud; using words which somehow winged back to him from the days when he and his sister were forced by their mother to go to Sunday school: “I swear that I shall never help W. Sledge again in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and that means for ever, so help me God, Amen.” He licked his fingers and crossed his heart.

  Silas was out when he arrived at work. Mrs. James Trelawny was elegantly pushing the mop over the floor of the bar. “Well, my dear Joe,” she said kindly, “how is everything with you?”

  Joe always felt she was making fun of him but she wasn’t a bad old stick, giving him a good tip come Christmas; part of her payment being a pizza to herself before she left work, Joe would take special trouble over this “solo” as he called it, giving her mushroom instead of aubergine, which she did not like because she always used to pick out the bits. But this was something between them that she had the tact never to mention; nothing would have annoyed Joe more than to be thought considerate. Whilst he was making her pizza, inevitably she picked up the evening paper and glanced at the headlines, clicking her tongue disapprovingly at what she read.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” she sighed as Joe put down the food in front of her, and the knife and fork daintily wrapped in their napkin. “Being poor has its advantages; no burglar’s likely to break in on me for my silver gadgets because I haven’t got any … that’s one comfort.”

  He made a point of not responding to Mrs. James Trelawny’s monologues; wearing his habitual expression of disgust and contempt he withdrew behind the counter and concentrated on making his lines of vegetable on the uncooked pastry. He had washed his hands, pulled on his horizontal-striped apron, tied the cotton square sweat rag round his neck, put on his chef’s hat as though everything were as usual.

  But how much further away he was from this time last evening, when the prospect of having his own bar seemed almost within his reach. Last time he had made these same movements, arranging his pieces with such care, how happy, free and adventurous the prospect had seemed, and now … how black and fearful the future: he was a wanted criminal, or at least the paid assistant of a wanted criminal. How was it that he had never thought it might happen?

  But he had, that was it, he had.

  What would now happen to his brave fellow-clubmen of The Wotchas, meeting usually on Wednesdays in the café in the wrong end of Chelsea? Some of them had graduated from watchers to performers themselves and Joe had been considered one of the slow ones, poor chap, still living with his family; he knew they thought him a softy. How were they feeling now? Some of them smoked marihuana; one or two of them had gone the way of harder stuff and had been dropped because they had become sloppy and untrustworthy. Joe himself had never smoked pot because, quite simply, it gave him a headache and he did not experience the heightened enjoyment of the moment of which others boasted.

  Mrs. Trelawny organised the washers-up and kept a keen eye on the customers so that none of them escaped without paying, until Silas arrived half-way through the evening, having evidently been to a party because he was dressed in his excellent dark mauve velvet jacket and bow tie. The bar was full, the air redolent with a delicious appetising smell and the owner mooched about, tall and droopy, having a word here and there with those who were feeling pleasant amongst his motley customers.

  Joe worked hard, still taking some pleasure in arranging each tray of pastry differently so that there were no two patterns of vegetables alike. The evening wore on; what if W. Sledge appeared again like last night? Since he had sworn never again to have anything to do with him it was going to be awkward.

  Besides … he would owe Joe money for last night’s assignation, his percentage on the night’s takings, if there had indeed been robbery, as the paper had said there had. One thing of which Joe was sure was that if there had been a robbery W. Sledge would have disposed of the loot within the hour, or less. That was one of the things which made him seem reliable; he inspired the confidence of his selection of receivers and they never failed him; the day after he had done a job he would come up with the money for his Wotchas without fail. So what was he going to do if he came? “Eff off, and take your (literally) bloody money with you”?

  Pulling the last sizzling tray of the evening out of the oven Joe stood above it, hands on his hips, and surveyed the eaters, thinning out now, towards midnight.

  At a nod from Silas he came out from behind the counter with a plate of the pizza which he put on the table by the door in front of the boss. He took a plateful himself and sat down at the table nearest to the counter; picking up a fork he started his own supper; he got up and helped himself to a Pepsi-Cola and sat down again.

  His mind was so far away and his memory suffering from shock trauma that he did not at once recognise the girl when she came in; most girls who came into the pizza bar had boys with them, they nearly all wore their hair down to their shoulders and longer and looked deathly ill; this girl was unlike the others in that her hair was short, like a boy’s, and she looked healthy. That striped fur coat too!

  From somewhere, way, way back in his dim past, he remembered her and swore. It was the familiar exercise book she was carrying which he vaguely recognised. He now had worries enough without this waif and stray.

  She came over to him at once, leaning across the table and hissing dramatically: “Oh Joe, for God’s sake give me something to eat; I’ve been waiting for you for hours, absolutely hours.”

  “How did you know where I was?” he asked sulkily.

  “I went to your flat. I had to, Joe; I tell you I’m starving.”

  An intercom telephone had been fixed in the Bogeys’ flat in such a way that when the bell was pressed at the front door his father was just able to pick up the receiver and press the button to open the front door, if he so wished, when he heard the caller’s business.

  Reluctantly Joe got up and filled yet another plate with food; bringing it to her, and putting it down smartly in front of her, he sat down scowling.

  “I rang the bell and your father answered, I said I was a girl friend of yours … she looked defiantly across the small table at him. “He said to come in, wanted to have a look at me I suppose, but I said I hadn’t time and where did you work? So he asked my name and I told him; he sounded as though he was lonely …”

  “So Mum’s not back?”

  “I’ve had nothing to eat all day, only cups of tea offered me. I didn’t spend any of the ten bob you gave me, only getting here.”

  She was enjoying her food, simply shovelling it down; soon she was ready for another. Silas was eyeing them across the room, it was nearly closing time; Joe got up and brought her another pizza.

  “Did you make these?”

  “Um!”

  “Lovely!”

  “Look,” Joe said patiently, “last night’s rooftop meeting was all right, nothing’s quite real up there, it was like a dream; but it can’t go on.” He gesticulated feebly before her aghast expression, “I mean I haven’t time, I simply haven’t time for … for this responsibility. Haven’t you any money … or a friend in London, or something?”

  “No, I haven’t, only the ten bob you gave me, can’t you see I haven’t? That’s the whole point!” There were only two customers left in the bar and Silas was lighting his last Balkan Sobranie of the evening. “I’m derelict, don’t you realise? I mean destitute …” Predictably she started to cry. “I’ve been robbed by that beastly red-haired bloke in your block of flats, whatever his name is …”

  “How do you know him?”

  “I don’t know him,” she practically screamed querulously.
“I’ve come to London to get a job because I’m not staying at home one more day, not one more hour, in fact! So, of course, I get picked up instantly, would you believe it? But he’s not bad looking, or so I thought, and he’s full of beans …”

  She sobbed openly now, in the absence of a handkerchief she wiped her eyes on the tablecloth and her nose on the back of her hand. “I was on my way to look for a room in Chelsea I saw advertised in the newspaper shop window, and I thought I’d have a cup of coffee first at one of those dark, fascinating coffee bars in King’s Road. And well he … you know, I don’t have to tell you, surely. He was kind and helpful, said he could put me in the way of getting a job in a clothes’ shop a few streets away. So … well, I went with him. It was a fairly kinky place called: ‘I Was Napoleon’s Mistress,’ can’t say I liked it much but they said I could start next week. Then he said as that was done and it was a nice day, why not come for a run in the car? He’d got a Jag parked in an underground car park not far away, and off we went, down to Maidenhead along the M4. Phew! He went so fast I screamed. He teased me, going faster and faster; I was frightened out of my wits.”

  She stopped to pile some of the second pizza into her mouth.

  “And then?”

  “It was nice down by the river. We walked about a bit and I—that is—and he said it was too cold to make love, and besides, he said, he was busy in the evening. So I started wondering where I was actually going to spend the night; I’ve lots of friends who share flats with other girls in London but I couldn’t trust one of them not to tell my father where I was. Most of them come home for the week-ends and they all think my father’s a jolly good sort, everyone does.”

  She became thoughtful for a moment.

  “And so?”

  “So he dropped me out of the car, that’s what. When we were nearly back where we’d started, he opened the door and I got out and when I turned to get my handbag and zipper-case with my things in it he slammed the door in my face and zizzed off. I screamed to a chap in a car behind and he stopped and I told him to follow that Jag, I’d been robbed, and he tried, he really did his best but he didn’t know his geography like him, we lost him. Then, of course, I had to have a drink in a pub with this chap who’d been so kind, whose advice to me was to return home quick … I ask you! He had to go back home to his wife and all I had left to do was to wave good-bye.”