London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  He had to sit tight because they have a style of their own, trams; especially four‐wheeled ones. Their motion is a mixture of all known movements. On apparently straight stretches of level road they turn corners and mount hills. And the number EX lurched and vaulted along as though it were dodging things. Past Cleopatra’s Needle and the Sphinxes it went, heeling over as though it were at sea with a beam wind blowing, until it came sharp to rest under the shadow of Hungerford Bridge like a horse that has been reined in too abruptly. Then the driver gave the tram its head again and it rocked and bounced its way up to St Stephen’s Tower until the thing had to be curbed to take the corner that would lead it across Westminster Bridge.

  It was then that Mr Josser remembered the envelope that Mr Battlebury had given him. He had simply stuffed it away in his pocket and done nothing whatever about it. For a moment he thought that perhaps he had lost it, and with his free hand – the one that was holding only his office‐coat and his umbrella, that is – he began feverishly trying to get inside his overcoat and into the pocket of his jacket. At the third attempt when he was getting really frightened at not finding it, the man next to him complained and Mr Josser had to proceed more gently.

  Even when he had got hold of it – and the thing was apparently sticking straight up simply asking to be removed – he was not much better off. He had to put the envelope between his teeth and tear it open with his left hand in little snatches.

  He was still only picking at it when the conductor called out ‘Oval.’4 That roused him. Stuffing the frayed envelope back into his pocket he began desperately making for the stairs. The tram was just starting again when he reached them. And if the top hadn’t emptied considerably he would never have got as far as that. As it was, the conductor who had violently helped him up now had to prevent him from plunging with his parcels straight into the roadway. He was openly scornful about Mr Josser’s qualities as a passenger.

  By the time Mr Josser had recovered himself, the tram was on its way again, plunging onwards towards Camberwell and Brixton. The only thing that Mr Josser had against trams was that they left you standing right out in the middle of the traffic like a sand bin. He started to cross.

  It was a pleasantly rural spot where he had landed, a kind of woody oasis in the surrounding desert of cement and brick. The iron railings of Kennington Park ran beside him and the outline of the Prince Consort’s châlet showed through the trees. But it was the other side of the road that he wanted to get to, the side where the shops were. He was going to do a little late Christmas shopping.

  The first shop that he went into was a wine merchants and he bought a bottle of Fine Rich Ruby Connoisseur’s Port. He paid four shillings for it and stowed the bottle away in the pocket of his greatcoat. Then he went next door into a tobacconist’s and bought two eightpenny cigars – Pride of Perth (Havana) they were called. They were good robust‐looking cigars with scarlet‐and‐gilt bands round them, and they looked as though they could stand a lot of handling. Finally he went to a small shop a little further up the road and bought a box of floral crackers. His small grand‐daughter was coming to spend Christmas with them and he foresaw the afternoon passing off more agreeably if she had plenty to play with – gilt whistles to blow, and tooters, and little glass cats that could hang on a watch chain, and dice, and toy fire balloons and puzzles. Mrs Josser had already bought the child a fairy‐doll, and Mr Josser was really only being indulgent now.

  If he hadn’t bought the crackers he might not have dropped the clock. But the third parcel, and the big bulge in his pocket that the port bottle made, were too much for him. Almost as soon as he got out of the shop the trouble began. The office coat started slipping and Mr Josser gripped his arms into his sides like a Guardsman to hold it in place. Then his umbrella, still hung over his arm, came obstinately swinging round in between his legs, and tried to trip him up. And then everything happened at once.

  In trying to release the umbrella, the box of crackers got squeezed too tight and began to split open, and in seeking to protect the crackers he temporarily loosened his hold on the clock. The clock was far too heavy for anything but the firmest holding. For a single frantic moment Mr Josser played with the thing like a juggler. Only not a good one. The trick just went to pieces before his eyes. Before he could stop it, the clock hit the pavement with the awful crash of stone on stone, and a long hollow booong rolled up into the night.

  The clock itself was extraordinarily difficult to pick up – difficult that is for a man who is already carrying his office coat, an umbrella and a box of crackers. He would never have managed it, in fact, if a passer‐by hadn’t come along and offered to help him. With his aid, Mr Josser finally got the clock up – there were queer jangling noises inside it as he moved it – and then the stranger piled the box of crackers on top of everything else. Mr Josser was simply a pair of legs walking along under a large and awkward load. He was the man with the ledgers again.

  By the time he reached Dulcimer Street and turned in at the gateway to Number 10 he was sweating. Sweating on a night like this. And having reached Number 10 he was not much better off. There he was face to face with his own front door and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He was an Englishman locked out of his own castle. His key was on a ring at the end of a long nickel‐silver chain. And even if he hadn’t been all loaded up like a camel he would still have had to undress himself to get at it. As it was, he had to proceed very cautiously, first of all setting the clock down on the stone balustrade, then balancing the box of crackers on top of the clock and finally crowning the crackers with his office coat. What was more, as soon as he had opened the front door he had to gather the whole lot up again, and re‐close the front door with his heel. But there was nothing very difficult in that: he had done it that way for years.

  The door of the sitting‐room in front of him opened and Mrs Josser came out. She put her hand up to the chain hanging from the gas chandelier and the hall was filled with a warm yellow light. The light showed Mrs Josser as a small elderly woman with steel‐frame glasses and grey straying hair. At first glance, she was extraordinarily like her husband. It was as though the two of them had agreed to share everything, including a likeness.

  ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘I thought something had happened to you.’

  Mr Josser shook his head.

  ‘Just shopping,’ he said. ‘Just been doing a bit of shopping.’

  He bent forward and kissed her. It was a perfunctory, husbandly sort of kiss.

  ‘You with your chest, hanging about on a night like this,’ Mrs Josser went on.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he began.

  Then he stopped short and gave a little laugh.

  ‘Seems funny that it matters,’ he said. ‘All my time’s my own now.’

  He paused because something else had come into his mind. And suddenly he went over to Mrs Josser and kissed her again. He kissed her once on the forehead, once on the side of her face, and once full on her lips. It was no longer Mr Frederick Josser, retired, who was standing there. It was the ghost of Mr Josser, junior, the courageous young clerk who was getting married on twenty‐five shillings a week and his prospects.

  But Mrs Josser did not realise that. She remained surprised, hungry and a trifle incredulous. Incredulous, but still flattered.

  Chapter II

  1

  Standing at the corner of Dulcimer Street you can see down the length of the whole terrace. It stretches in an unbroken row from Dove Street at one end to Swan Walk at the other. And they are certainly fine houses. Or have been. They date from eighteen thirty‐nine, when the neighbourhood was still select, exclusive and sought‐after. They now front the street – solid‐looking and graceful – receding in a gentle curve towards the river, like a monument erected to the good taste of our grandfathers; an inhabited historical monument with the history flaking off in great chunks of discoloured stucco that occasionally comes flop‐ping down into the areas.

  There
had been changes, of course, during the last hundred years. And most of them had been for the worse. Down at the Swan Walk end, for instance, the large letters J. M. Bill & Sons, Builders and Decorators had been painted right across the frontage, and ladders and planks were stored openly in the basement. No. 24 next door was a normal private residence, a bit too thickly sublet perhaps, but a private residence nevertheless. Next door again, however, at No. 22, commerce had killed home life and the look of the whole place was spoiled by a framed canvas screen let into the front window with the words A. LEVINE, HIGH‐CLASS TAILOR, ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS A SPECIALITY written there. The rest of the houses were private dwellings, with a vague and easily missed, but nevertheless real and important, social lift‐up, as you got to the Dove Street end.

  They all had three storeys above ground and one below. And they all had porches supported on slender imitation Grecian pillars, and high, rather steep steps – like the ones that Mr Josser had floundered up the night before – leading to the panelled and bevelled front doors with the fanlights over them. They were large houses with eight to ten good rooms apiece.

  Across the road on the South Side of the street it was different. The houses there had been built in 1888. They were simply six‐roomed affairs in grey brick with small box‐like bow‐windows, and no pillars. The two end ones had even long since decided to give up even trying to look like houses, and had become shops – one a general grocery store and the other a newsagent’s and tobacconist’s.

  The whole of the south side was mean, ungracious and undeniably depressing. And of course it was the south side that Mr Josser saw every time he looked out of his window. It was at the south side that he was looking now, while he was waiting for the kettle to boil.

  It was Christmas morning and he had got on all his clothes except his collar and tie. His feet were encased in a pair of carpet slippers that had once been rich and plushy but were now bald and drab. And his blue cardigan was buttoned right up to the throat because it was chilly.

  The tea things were ready on the tray beside him, and he had mopped up the wet circle that the bottom of the milk‐bottle had made on the kitchen table. Altogether, he was pretty expert at getting tea. It was the result of long practice. He always helped to soften the shock of each new day by bringing Mrs Josser a cup of early morning tea. It was good strong stuff the way he made it. And it needed only a handful of fresh tea leaves added to make it an equally rousing cup for breakfast time. This small stratagem had the merits of economy, time saving and body. Those cups of brewed tea fairly routed sleep.

  But this morning he had more than teacups on the tray: there were two large parcels there as well. The parcels had labels on them, addressed in Mr Josser’s handwriting – high, cursive and flourishing. The labels read: ‘To Carrie, to wish her a Happy Christmas from Fred’ – it was, he worked out, the forty‐first Christmas present that he had given his wife; and ‘To Doris, with love from her Dad.’ He had bought Mrs Josser a large Spanish shawl which in the shop‐window he had seen described as a bargain and he had bought Doris an ornamental jar of jasmine Bath Salts.

  It was the shawl that was worrying him. Now that it was too late to change the thing he wondered why he had ever bought it at all. For, when he came to think of it, he realised that Mrs Josser never wore shawls. And, if she had done, she would have been certain to choose something rather quieter. Something in brown, or dark grey, or black even. But there it was. The kettle was boiling, and it was the shawl or nothing. He made the tea, gloomily pondering.

  Mrs Josser was already sitting up when he reached the bedroom. She had hauled up the Venetian blinds, and the blank morning light came seeping into the room through the lace curtains, revealing the red mahogany wardrobe, the wash‐hand stand, the chest‐of‐drawers, the dressing‐table.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ said Mr Josser.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ Mrs Josser answered.

  Mr Josser sat down on the side of the bed and carefully lowered the tray on to the counterpane.

  ‘Got a little present for you, dear,’ he said, adding after a pause, ‘Always change it if you don’t like it.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Mrs Josser, beginning to open the paper.

  Seen against the pale blue of the quilt, the shawl looked even more lurid and foreign and exclamatory than Mr Josser had remembered it. It seemed to be crying out for hot sun and a bull fight. But Mrs Josser did not waver. She gave the thing a twist as though she had been wearing shawls all her life and folded it round her shoulders. She even rubbed her cheek against it.

  ‘It’s a real beauty,’ she said. ‘You never ought to have.’

  ‘So you do like it, do you?’ Mr Josser asked, relieved.

  ‘It’s ever so nice,’ Mrs Josser answered him. ‘Just what I wanted.’

  She paused and gave Mr Josser a small flat parcel that she had been hiding.

  ‘And here’s a little something for you,’ she said. ‘You know you haven’t got any.’

  Before he opened it, Mr Josser knew what it was: it was handkerchiefs. It was always handkerchiefs. During the whole of his married life he had never bought any handkerchiefs himself, and never been without them.

  ‘They’ve got your initial on them,’ Mrs Josser told him.

  Balancing the tray carefully with one hand so that the things shouldn’t slide, he bent forward and kissed her.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ he said. ‘I was needing them.’

  He was sitting back, absent‐mindedly sipping his tea – he had a noisy, rather succulent hiss that irritated Mrs Josser at times – when he happened to glance up and catch sight of his wife’s face. She was looking at the shawl and her expression had altered. She seemed to be taking the measure of the thing. Sizing it up like an enemy.

  Mr Josser leaned forward.

  ‘You do like it, don’t you?’ he asked again.

  ‘It’s ever so nice,’ Mrs Josser repeated with less conviction. ‘I said so.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You don’t think it’s too bright, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a bit bright, isn’t it,’ Mrs Josser admitted.

  ‘Will it go with anything you’ve got?’ he asked.

  Mrs Josser thought.

  ‘I should have to try it,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Because I could change it,’ Mr Josser went on mechanically.

  Mrs Josser did not reply immediately.

  ‘Where did you buy it?’ she asked.

  ‘In the City,’ he answered vaguely.

  There was another pause.

  ‘Did you notice if they had any thick winter gloves?’ she asked. ‘Knitted ones.’

  2

  But there were more than the Jossers waking up to Christmas morning south of the river. There were even more than the Jossers in No. 10 Dulcimer Street.

  Starting from the top of the house, with the attic suite, there was Mr Puddy. Mr Puddy was a widower, a morose, fattish man. Sometimes he said ‘Good‐evening’ when he met you on the stairs, and sometimes he didn’t. You could never quite be sure of him. In age, he was about midway across the grey wilderness between the fifties and the sixties. And he had known better days. Indeed, from the way he referred to it, he seemed to derive a gloomy satisfaction from the fact that he had come down a bit in the world. He was, as a matter of fact, still coming down. And, at his present rate, there would soon be no stopping him. At thirty‐five he had been manager of a small dairy; at forty‐five he had been reduced to a common roundsman; and at fifty the dairy had got rid of him altogether. Since then he had been employed on and off at various odd jobs – though sometimes for months on end Society managed to get along without asking Mr Puddy to raise a hand to help. He had been caretaker to a succession of different firms and in his time he had taken care of ladies’ clothing, celluloid combs – a lot of care was needed here because of the danger of fire – and gramophone cabinets. He had been hotel‐porter, polisher in an undertakers, despatch clerk in a laundry,
and temporary postal sorter.

  He was a postal sorter at the moment. But looking into the future, the very near future – next week, in fact – he saw another of his free periods looming up.

  It was greatly to Mr Puddy’s credit that in all his ups‐and‐downs he had contrived to dress respectably. This was specially creditable as each new up started on the level of the last down. But it was also to his advantage. Because, if he hadn’t taken pains about his appearance he would never have been seriously considered even for the skylight rooms. It was a very respectable house, was No. 10. As it was, however, Mr Puddy used to go off in the morning to the most undazzling of jobs with the responsible air of managerial dignity still wrapped about him. And the house gained rather than lost by housing him.

  He always, except on quite short journeys, carried an attaché case. Admittedly, nowadays his case contained nothing but his lunch. But stray passers‐by weren’t to know this. And they weren’t to know that, in the really bad periods, Mr Puddy, a man who liked his chop or steak and his boiled suet roll or treacle pudding, was sometimes reduced to several thick slices of bread and butter – packed face to face, so when he separated them they came apart with the sound of a long sticky kiss – and a piece of soapy yellow cheese.

  Food and Mr Puddy were in the same order of things. It occupied the place in his life which drinking occupies in some weaker natures. In consequence, he was almost always at it. On some nights he would go straight on with his evening meal consuming a whole cold pie followed by slice after slice of bread and jam, or bread and syrup, or bread‐and‐fish‐paste, until the loaf was a gaunt ruin, and Mr Puddy was sitting back in his chair, his waistcoat undone, satiated, sickly, but in a dumb way happy and contented. One of the recurrent sadnesses of his single state was that boiled puddings no longer appeared on the table. On the other hand there was no one to expect him to talk at meals. And Mr Puddy was against talking.