London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘…never had anything like it happen in this house before,’ she was saying.

  ‘Same with me,’ Connie told her. ‘Victimised. That’s what I was. Victimised.’

  ‘Your private life is no concern of mine,’ Mrs Vizzard went on. ‘It’s no part of my business to speak about it.’

  ‘I see your point,’ Connie agreed with her.

  She was swinging her foot as she was talking and this time the swansdown bedroom slipper dangled for a moment and then fell off. Mrs Vizzard waited for her to replace it. It took some time, however, as several rolled‐up bits of old newspaper which Connie used for stuffing up the toes – the shoes were a full size and a half too big for her – came tumbling out, and had to be gathered up again.

  ‘But remember it’s my house and I can’t have goings on here,’ Mrs Vizzard resumed.

  ‘I’ll remember,’ said Connie contritely. ‘I was canned. I don’t deny it.’

  While she was remembering how canned she had been, she started to hum. The humming annoyed Mrs Vizzard.

  ‘I shall have to ask for your room,’ she said.

  Connie started.

  ‘You mean you want me to hop?’ she asked.

  Mrs Vizzard merely nodded. She disliked vulgarity on all occasions and she wished that Connie could have avoided it now.

  ‘I mean I shall have to ask for your room,’ she repeated.

  Connie gave a little laugh.

  ‘And how d’you think you’ll get your money if I buzz off?’ she asked her. ‘There’s three weeks now, isn’t there?’

  She hadn’t originally intended to mention it. She hadn’t, in fact, thought that there would be any need as Mrs Vizzard would do so. But she was playing for time now.

  ‘I’m quite aware of how much is owing,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘And I’m prepared to forgo it.’

  Connie raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I always said you were a generous woman,’ she told her.

  Mrs Vizzard sniffed.

  ‘I don’t want to be hard on anyone,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got my own interest to look after.’

  ‘Are you sure you won’t sit down?’ Connie asked her.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to sit down for,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘I’ve said what I came to say.’

  ‘Have you got anyone else in mind?’ Connie enquired. ‘It’d be a shame to have this beautiful room standing empty.’

  ‘What I want is to have this room available by Saturday,’ Mrs Vizzard replied. ‘I’ll attend to the rest.’

  ‘Saturday night?’

  ‘First thing Saturday,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘And I want it left clean and tidy.’

  It looked as though it really were the end this time. All that she could do was to admit defeat. But it would be nice to admit it sportingly. With a bit of a flourish, in fact.

  So she kicked the swansdown slipper off again – right up in the air in Mrs Vizzard’s face.

  ‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘See you on the Embankment.’

  As the door shut she thumbed her nose at Mrs Vizzard’s retreating back. She stood there like that for a moment. But it only relieved her feelings temporarily. It didn’t really comfort her. She sat down on the bed again.

  ‘Connie, my old dear,’ she said. ‘You’re for it. Better pack your toothbrush and your tiara. To‐morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’

  Then, because she couldn’t help feeling miserable at the idea of leaving, she began to cry. The tears ran down her cheeks carrying smudges of eye‐black with them. But she was past minding. It was no fun – no fun at all – starting afresh at her time of life.

  2

  Mr Squales had bought a bunch of violets.

  Alone in his room, and with the door locked, he was playing with them. He was practising concealing them about him – in his armpits, stuffed into the waistband of his trousers, inside his shoe – and withdrawing them with one sweep of the hand. He had been distinctly amateurish at first. But as the morning wore on he improved. In the end, underneath his collarband at the back turned out to be the best place. Three times in succession he was able to produce them almost spontaneously from there, and send them flying across the room with a little flip of his fingers. After the third success, he sat back satisfied. Producing flowers from nowhere was now something else that he could do. And he was determined that his next séance should be a flowery one. The only thing he needed was a fresh bunch of violets.

  It had been a funny life, his, when you came to think of it. He had done so many things. So many, and so different. Phrenology, for example. Reading bumps on people’s heads. He’d still got the charts and the diagrams in one of his bags somewhere. And the skull. It was rather a good skull, complete with all the teeth. A child’s. Somewhere between twelve and thirteen. He’d paid two pounds ten for it. And if the phrenological text books were correct, in life the child had been by way of a musical genius with a flair for agriculture. Indeed, it seemed sad that anyone so remarkably gifted should have died so young. Not that the bumps were really anything to go by. He’d run his fingers over scalps that had disproved everything the experts had written – Guardsmen and ex‐Sergeant‐Majors with strong maternal instincts, and women tied by unsuspected cravings for adventures and the open sea.

  In those days he had occupied one of the little kiosks on the West Pier at Brighton. His cloak and broad black hat had once been a familiar sight on the Front and his practice had brought him in a steady six or seven pounds a week from May to September. If it hadn’t been for the remaining seven months of the year when it brought in next to nothing, he might have been a Brighton Front phrenologist still.

  Then there had been the short experiment of palmistry. He had taken a room in Westbourne Grove and done a little discreet advertising – your hand is your fortune and let professor x read the lines of your life. But it wasn’t serious, like Phrenology. The clients who called on him always wanted to know when they were going to get married and how many children they were going to have. So in the end he’d told them – promising flat‐chested spinsters tall, dark husbands with a small private fortune and a knowledge of foreign parts, and telling tired unhappy men in their late fifties to expect a young golden‐haired bride with small teeth and violet eyes. Just sex, that was all it was. And in the end it disgusted him.

  It might, all the same, have been very paying if only the fat, stupid looking female who pathetically wanted to know about her love chances hadn’t in the end turned out to be a police woman. After that, they had closed him down. So all his acquired knowledge of the human hand had gone the way of his knowledge of the head, and he had turned to astrology instead.

  The stars, for a time, had seemed unusually encouraging. For a start, the police couldn’t get at them. And, though it was illegal to tell a smouldering, red‐faced girl that there was a clean‐shaven young seaman with robust biceps somewhere around the corner of the year, it was perfectly in line with the public interest to predict wars, train disasters, shipwrecks, fires in orphanages and pit explosions. But, of course, all that meant a lot of study, too. You couldn’t set up in astrology without being familiar with Scorpions and Bulls and Fishes and Water‐Carriers and that sort of thing. It wouldn’t stand a chance.

  The top men, the Sunday‐paper astrologers, the real modern Merlins, were solid with real sound knowledge – all book stuff – from the neck up. They could cast a horoscope with their eyes shut. That was why they commanded such enormous salaries – as much as a Cabinet Minister, some of them. But somehow Mr Squales had never managed to get himself into the Big Money class. All down Fleet Street there were men foretelling floods in China and Royal Divorces – some of them charlatans too – and drawing their two or three thousand a year for doing so, while the best that he could get was a syndicated half column in a group of local papers at a couple of guineas weekly.

  In the end, the sheer hard work and the lack of recognition had led him to abandon astrology as well. He had turned over a lot of other pos
sibilities in his mind. There was psychology for example – but there was a lot of reading in that, too. And the market was crowded. Or nude photography. A good glossy nude called ‘Eve’ or ‘Bubbles’ was always a profitable property. You paid the model a guinea and you could go on selling prints of her to art students over eighteen for ever. But he didn’t know anything about photography. He hadn’t got a camera. He hadn’t got a model. He hadn’t even got the guinea.

  Then massage and chiropody suggested themselves. But there again there were difficulties. The L.C.C. took a close interest. And granted licences – or didn’t. Mr Squales thought of setting up quietly without a licence and relying on personal introductions from friends. But he abandoned the idea as too risky. Besides, he had so few friends.

  So finally – after nearly two months of living on his savings – his cigarette case, his watch, his fountain pen, his cuff‐links had all gone – he decided to pool all his talents and go in for Spiritualism. At the time, it had seemed like the finger of God pointing.

  Not that it was easy. There was a heart‐breaking fortnight while he rehearsed. Rolling back his eyes and going off into trances, and that sort of thing. And that was only the elementary stage. He had to practise voices as well. A variety of them. In fact, it was like learning to be Houdini and Hamlet at the same time.

  But the real trouble was supply and demand. Even without him, the market seemed over‐crowded. Neat, efficient professionals with their prayer‐books and bits of cheese‐cloth in little attaché cases went about from séance to séance picking up their three guineas a time, leaving no room for a new‐comer. No room at least for an ordinary new‐comer.

  As in all other professions, however, there was always room at the top. Always room for someone who could produce spirit faces and ectoplasmic hands and strange scents and sudden drops in temperature. Even a few mysterious flowers arriving suddenly from nowhere in the centre of the table was a good deal better than just plain voices. That was why Mr Squales was not sparing himself.

  He was going to practise with a concealed scent spray as well tomorrow.

  3

  And Connie?

  She hadn’t been wasting her time. Bless your heart, no. That wasn’t Connie’s way of doing things.

  At the moment she was busy in front of the mirror. She’d already brushed her hair down very flat, smothering out the little curls that were so difficult to make, and now she was fairly plastering the powder on her face. It was a dead white powder and it gave her a startling corpse‐like appearance. Even so, the result was not yet to her liking. She went over to the wash‐stand and came back with a small sponge in her hand. Then holding back her head she allowed a few drops to fall on each eyelid. It was magical. Down the wrinkled chalky face large tears were running once again, carving their channels through the thick layers of powder. By the time they had dried, Connie was just the way she fancied herself. She might have been in mourning for mankind.

  ‘Go on, Connie dear,’ she told herself. ‘Give ’em a turn. Get downstairs and smash ’em.’

  She selected two depressed looking handkerchiefs from her bag and left the room, her shoulders heaving. By the time she reached the Jossers’ door she was right inside her part and the sobs were uncontrollable. It was like an encore to her Christmas performance. She felt almost sorry for Mrs Josser, knowing that the spectacle of tears always broke her good kind heart.

  But it was not Mrs Josser who answered when she knocked. It was Mr Josser. He’d been sitting with his feet up on the fender and a copy of Popular Gardening open on his knees, and he was appalled by this spectre of desolation that had suddenly crept in on him.

  ‘Why what ever’s the matter, Connie?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen you this way before.’

  ‘I’ve never felt this way before,’ she told him between sobs. ‘It’s the end. It’s my swan‐song.’

  Mr Josser drew another chair over to the fire, and Connie sank gratefully into it. But only for a moment. Almost as soon as she had sat down, she began climbing up again.

  ‘But I mustn’t be stopping,’ she said miserably. ‘I told myself I wouldn’t. I didn’t ought to go about pestering happy folks.’

  ‘You sit there until you feel better and then you try and tell me,’ Mr Josser advised gently.

  There was a pause while Connie was too muffled up with crying to be able to answer.

  ‘It’s no use,’ she said at last. ‘All I came down for was a good cry on another woman’s shoulder.’

  Mr Josser got up and stood over by the mantelpiece.

  ‘Better get it off your chest, Connie,’ he said. ‘We’re all friends here.’

  The gentleness of his voice, the fact that he called her his friend, were too much for her. There were fresh paroxysms, interrupted by odd phrases ‘…one of Life’s unfortunates… not wicked just because I’m poor… never harmed a fly.’

  In the end Mr Josser had to ask her to start again.

  ‘I’m being turned out,’ she said finally, as soon as she could speak properly. ‘Turned out because I’ve been to prison.’

  Mr Josser shook his head sadly. He was shocked but not surprised. Mrs Vizzard had certainly taken the whole matter very much to heart.

  ‘Not that I bear her any grudge,’ Connie went on as though reading Mr Josser’s thoughts. ‘She’d got herself to think of. And if everyone complained about me I don’t see that she had any choice.’

  ‘Complained about you?’ Mr Josser repeated. ‘We didn’t do any complaining.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Connie answered. ‘You’re both of you much too kind. It was probably that Boon woman.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Josser firmly. ‘She was on your side like the rest of us.’

  Connie pursed up her lips.

  ‘Then it must just have been Mrs Vizzard’s spite,’ she replied. ‘She thinks she can treat me this way just because she’s got a hold over me.’

  ‘Got a hold over you?’ Mr Josser asked unguardedly.

  ‘The arrears,’ Connie told him. ‘Three weeks at seven‐and‐sixpence. It’s blackmail. And me with only ninepence.’

  ‘But couldn’t you come to some arrangement?’ Mr Josser suggested. ‘You know – so much a week until it’s all cleared off.’

  Connie gave a contemptuous little laugh.

  ‘Not with her,’ she said. ‘Not with Mrs Shylock. I’m her pound of flesh.’

  ‘Did you try?’ he asked.

  ‘I did,’ Connie answered. ‘I grovelled and she spurned me with her foot.’

  There was a pause, a long awkward pause, during which Connie glanced once or twice in Mr Josser’s direction. When she saw that he did not apparently intend to add anything more in the way of consolation, she rose weakly and remained standing with one hand on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I only really came to say good‐bye,’ she went on. ‘I didn’t want to leave all my old friends without seeing them. I knew there wasn’t nothing you could do to help me – not with all that money hanging over me.’

  She went limply towards the door and stood there holding out her hand from which the bangle drooped like a hoop‐la quoit.

  ‘If you don’t never see me alive again don’t think too badly of little Connie. Tell Mrs Josser I tried to say good‐bye.’

  Mr Josser came over and shook the hand that was held out to him. It was a small and feeble hand like a child’s. The feel of it broke down something inside him.

  ‘Do… do you think Mrs Vizzard would let you stop if you could pay her?’ he asked.

  ‘She’d let Jack the Ripper stop if he could pay,’10 she answered. She broke off. ‘But what’s the use of talking about it?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t got it, and that’s that. Under the stars for me to‐morrow if I’m still here.’

  ‘Just you wait where you are for a minute,’ Mr Josser said. ‘I’m coming back.’

  As soon as he got outside he told himself that he was making a fool of himself. But that didn’t stop him. He went throu
gh into the bedroom and shut the door behind him. In the little pink vase on the mantelpiece was a key. He tipped the vase upside down so that the key spilled out into his hand and then went over and unlocked the top drawer on Mrs Josser’s dressing table. In a tin box with ‘Cash’ written on it were two one pound notes. They were Mrs Josser’s emergency hoard. She kept them there as a kind of charm against sudden disaster.

  Mr Josser took out one of the pound notes. He had a strangely guilty feeling as he did so.

  ‘Go round to the Post Office first thing in the morning and draw out a pound to replace it,’ he told himself.

  Then he felt about in his trouser pockets and extracted half‐a‐crown.

  ‘Now she’s all square, the poor old thing,’ he reflected.

  Connie was waiting there obediently when he got back. He could tell from her face that she had no notion of the good fortune that was coming to her. She was so completely unaware, indeed, that Mr Josser found great difficulty in giving her the money. He simply thrust the note and the half‐crown into her hand – luckily her hand was open – and stepped back.

  As soon as Connie felt the convincing stiff paper of the pound note against her palm the fingers closed together like a bird’s claws. There were real tears in her eyes this time.

  ‘You’re a corker,’ she said. ‘You’re a real Good Samaritan, you are. You’re just about the kindest thing in trousers I’ve ever met.’

  To Mr Josser’s embarrassment she took hold of his hand and kissed it.

  ‘Don’t say anything about this,’ he asked. ‘Just let it be private between the two of us.’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ Connie promised. ‘Sealed lips, that’s me.’

  Chapter XIV

  1

  Mrs Vizzard glanced at her clock. It showed a quarter to four. Because she was eager and impatient she went straight over to the sideboard and took out the best table‐cloth. When she had smoothed out the folds, she set it elegantly cornerwise so that four little triangles of dark mahogany were left at the corners. Then she got out the best cups – the ones with a voluptuously opening rose painted passionately on the side – and the silver tea‐pot. By the time she had put the cake rack on the table as well it was evident that she was doing things in style. The table was laid significantly for two.