London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

Young Percy, Mr Josser noticed, was nearly hysterical with delight at the outcome. And when the referee finally counted Battling Charley out – small desultory movements of the legs indicated either that the hairy body was still alive or that at least the muscles were still twitching – Percy’s feelings became almost uncontrollable. Taking his soft green felt in one hand he smashed it flat with the other.

  ‘Oh boy,’ he said over and over again, ‘was that a punch? Just you tell me. Was that a punch?’

  It was only a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Baths back to Dulcimer Street, but Mr Josser was grateful for every minute of it. He felt the need for fresh air, and he went along drinking in the night in great gulps. In a sense, it was taking Percy even longer to recover. A small envelope of violence still surrounded him. As he walked along he fought shadowy battles with himself. He made sudden, darting side steps as though to avoid imaginary adversaries, brought up short left jabs against chins that only he could see. He shook his head helplessly when some spectral invisible blow, harder than the last, landed full on him.

  ‘Oh boy’ he repeated from time to time. ‘Was that a punch? Tell me, was that a punch?’

  And then a strange mood of shyness overcame him because he remembered Doris. He was being led back to the house in which she lived. And by her own father, too. He was practically one of the family.

  ‘Come in and have bite of something,’ Mr Josser suggested when they got back to No. 10. ‘I could do with it.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said Percy, and then paused. ‘Think it’s all right, me coming in like this, without knocking?’ he asked.

  Mr Josser regarded him in astonishment for a moment.

  ‘Why ever not?’ he said. ‘It’s Liberty Hall.’

  Mrs Josser seemed, however, a somewhat severe custodian of so much freedom.

  ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘You’re back early. Did the police stop it or something?’

  Mr Josser didn’t reply. He hung his hat up on the hook outside and forced his companion into the room in front of him.

  ‘I’ve brought Percy back with me,’ he said. ‘We’ve just…’

  But he was cut short.

  ‘Oh Dad, you haven’t.’

  It was Doris who had spoken. She was kneeling in front of the fire and he hadn’t noticed her until that moment. Apparently she had been doing something to her hair. A brush and comb and a bottle of setting lotion was spread out on the rug beside her. Her jumper was off and there was a towel wrapped round her shoulders.

  ‘You’d better go through to the bedroom, Doris,’ Mrs Josser told her meaningly.

  ‘Sorry if I’m disturbing anyone,’ Percy said gallantly.

  ‘Oh you’re not disturbing me in the least,’ Doris answered. ‘I was just going, I assure you.’

  She got up very red in the face from hanging over the fire, and pushed her way past him. Percy was aware for a single moment of a delicious nearness, and the odour of the setting lotion. And then it was all over. The door shut behind her and she was gone.

  Mr Josser went over to the cupboard.

  ‘Cuppa tea, Percy?’ he asked.

  But Percy scarcely heard him. He was thinking ruefully of the whole wasted evening. It had been all right while the boxing had lasted. But after that – nothing. He had simply chucked away ten bob on giving Mr Josser a private treat. So far as his stock stood with Mrs Josser he was down lower than ever.

  ‘I’ve been made a sucker of,’ he thought miserably. ‘That’s what’s happened. I’ve been made a sucker of.’

  Chapter XV

  1

  It was Saturday, the day of Doris’ move. After dawning hopefully with a clear sky, it clouded over by breakfast time and, by ten o’clock, it was raining. The rain was still coming down by midday. And at 12.30 when the move was due to begin, it was a downpour.

  Because the furniture had to arrive from two different places it was complicated enough anyhow. Scouts had to be posted at Kennington, West Hampstead and Adelaide Road in an attempt to synchronise the various movements of furniture. And, even so, things went wrong. In the first place, the van that was calling at West Hampstead for Doreen’s settees and cushions and mirrors arrived early, and the van that was collecting Doris’ solider stuff from Kennington arrived late. This meant that Doreen’s boudoir was already in situ, drawn up alongside the kerb in the rain, while Doris’ bedroom was still trundling over Lambeth Bridge on its journey northwards.

  It was Mrs Smyth, Doreen’s mother, who had agreed to act as coordinator. A large, imposing woman who always wore pearls – big pinkish ones for preference – she had promised herself an easy, rather queenly afternoon simply presiding in the flat until the girls arrived. But, unfortunately, things weren’t working out that way. There was a sudden rush in the office and there were Doris and Doreen, hammering away at their typewriters, when they should have been lugging chairs about and trying out the new window curtains. In the end they got off at a quarter‐past one, ate a sandwich in a milk‐bar, drank a foaming raspberry drink called a Special and fought their way on to a No. 31 bus to Chalk Farm. They were both of them very excited, very impatient, and slightly apprehensive.

  They arrived to find a row going on with the moving men from West Hampstead. It was the iron staircase that was the cause of the trouble. Apparently the estimate would have been different if the firm had known about the staircase. And from the way the men spoke they made it clear that the difference would have been in blood money. Nor were the men from Kennington any more encouraging when they turned up. They were dark soured little fellows, and they had all the heavier pieces. They kept going round to the back of the house to have another look at the staircase, and each time they returned shaking their heads. Then the foremen said something about tackle, and the two teams went into a huddle to discuss it. The main difficulty seemed to be that neither side had brought any tackle with them. They were clearly in favour of calling off the whole operation and going quietly home.

  It was Mrs Smyth who finally over‐awed them into action. They emerged from their interview with her with the appearance of men who had drawn lots, and both lost. They turned up their coat collars, and, inverting their pipes to keep the raindrops from spoiling their tobacco, consented to climb up aloft once more and see for themselves. Mrs Smyth put up her umbrella and climbed with them. It was her second view of the inside of the flat, and it confirmed her first one. She was horrified. It seemed incredible, that because of Doreen’s mad infatuation for this girl from South London, her daughter should be sentencing herself to live in such a place. She kept on glancing at the painted window with the sloping window sill, and glancing away again.

  But at least it was dry. After the streaming rain that had slanted down the outside staircase even the bare boards and discoloured walls of the flat seemed luxurious. And from so much security, Mrs Smyth refused altogether to be budged. She simply begged the men to hurry, telling them that they could see for themselves that the outside staircase was nothing, and stayed where she was.

  After another pause that drove Doreen nearly frantic – she didn’t attempt to conceal that she blamed Mrs Smyth for the delay – the moving men came staggering up like small storming parties. The furniture had been swathed in layers of dust cloths to protect it from the rain, and wet figures appeared suddenly in the doorway carrying large shapeless cocoons.

  It was here that Doreen’s nervous energy showed itself. She rushed at the men as though attacking them and began tearing the winding cloths off the furniture. A moment later she was trundling chairs and settees across the floor, and standing back with half‐closed eyes to see how the room looked that way.

  By four o’clock the last of the storming parties had retreated and only the hard work of getting things tidied‐up remained. Here Doreen suddenly went under. Probably as a result of so much effort, one of her headaches came on. Whatever caused it, it came. And it laid her out. All the time while Doris was opening packing cases and trying to get the kitchen in order, po
or Doreen couldn’t do a thing. She just lay back on her own settee with her own cushion under her head, giving advice and promising to help as soon as she recovered.

  She was still lying there when Mrs Josser arrived. Doris hadn’t told Doreen anything about Mrs Josser’s visit and Doreen seemed to resent it. But when she found that Mrs Josser had brought tea with her – she was carrying a large wicker basket full of cake and buns and biscuits as well as a bottle of milk and a bag of sugar – Doreen, who was feeling hungry by now, softened a little in her attitude. She recognised that in a humble, rather pathetic way, Mrs Josser distinctly had her uses. And in the result she sat up and ate a good tea. So did Mrs Smyth.

  But not so Mrs Josser. Having carted the food all the way from Dulcimer Street she just drank a cup of tea and nibbled at a biscuit and said nothing. It was the first time that she had seen Doreen’s mother and she was having a good look at her. In the result, the study was not half so unsatisfactory as she had anticipated. Admittedly, Mrs Smyth was smart and well‐to‐do looking with her big pink pearls and a large crocodile skin handbag, and a fur strung over one shoulder. But there was something about her that Mrs Josser detected almost at once. Detected and liked. Underneath all that magnificence, Mrs Smyth was common.

  And Mrs Smyth, taking things more easily, had arrived at her own estimation of Mrs Josser. There was no point in denying that she cut a pretty unfashionable figure as she sat there. Any woman who cared for her appearance would long ago have changed those grim steel spectacles for something smarter in tortoise shell or coloured bone. But there was character there undeniably. And sense. Mrs Smyth felt more hopeful about the future.

  Finally, she came over and sat beside Mrs Josser on the settee that was to be Doreen’s bed as soon as Doreen had decided where she wanted it.

  ‘What do you think of this flat?’ she asked in a whisper.

  ‘I wasn’t asked,’ Mrs Josser snapped back at her.

  ‘But now you have been,’ Mrs Smyth said coaxingly, ‘you can tell me: I won’t pass it on.’

  ‘I think it’s a mistake,’ Mrs Josser said briefly. ‘A terrible mistake.’

  ‘Oh I’m so glad,’ Mrs Smyth answered. ‘I think it’s awful. Do you think they’ll be happy here?’

  ‘Not if I know them,’ Mrs Josser answered.

  Mrs Smyth seemed delighted.

  ‘I do so agree,’ she said. ‘It’s what I’ve been telling Doreen. Is Doris headstrong too?’

  ‘So so,’ Mrs Josser answered.

  ‘And what a time to choose,’ said Mrs Smyth suddenly. ‘Supposing there’s a war they can’t live on the top floor then. It wouldn’t be safe.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Josser agreed wearily. ‘I do so hope something goes wrong and they get tired of this flat idea.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Mrs Smyth. ‘For a start, Doreen isn’t strong enough…’

  The headstrong and delicate Doreen had, however, apparently recovered considerably by now. She was going about the flat rearranging things. Shrill shrieks of disappointment or delight indicated in which of the four rooms she was at any moment to be discovered.

  ‘Horrid flat,’ Mrs Smyth said suddenly. ‘So dirty.’

  Mrs Josser turned on her.

  ‘That it isn’t,’ she said. ‘I scrubbed it out myself.’

  ‘Did you really?’ Mrs Smyth said. ‘Couldn’t you get a woman?’

  ‘I didn’t try,’ Mrs Josser told her. ‘I just came and did it.’

  It was nearly six now and Mrs Smyth said that she would have to be going. Doreen put down the two lampshades that she was carrying and came forward, open‐armed, to hug her mother. It was a demonstrative kind of parting heavy with kissings and promises and squeezes.

  ‘You’ve been an absolute angel, mummy dear,’ Doreen told her. ‘Thank you so much for coming over and doing everything.’

  Mrs Josser beckoned Doris to come to her.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You may want this.’

  She handed Doris the bag from which the tea had been produced. Apparently there was still quite a lot in it.

  ‘There’s half a leg of cold lamb in there,’ she went on. ‘And a peach flan. You won’t be feeling like doing much cooking tomorrow.’

  Doris caught her mother’s eye as she said it. They were not an emotional family, the Jossers. Beside the Smyths, indeed, Mrs Josser and Doris seemed unnaturally frigid and aloof. But for a moment mother and daughter smiled at each other. It was an understanding smile. Mutely it expressed the simple truth of the situation – that though they might get on each other’s nerves to screaming point if they ever had to live together again, they would miss each other like mad if they were actually separated.

  The moving in was now finished, and there was nothing for it but to leave the girls to the discomforts of their new home. They made a very charming pair, Doreen and Doris, as they stood at the top of the staircase waving. But the staircase was far too tricky for there to be any turning and waving back. Neither Mrs Smyth nor Mrs Josser were prepared to risk a header even for the sake of a daughter.

  ‘How perfectly awful,’ Doreen exclaimed as she came back from the front door. ‘I thought they were never going.’

  Doris looked uncomfortable. For some reason or other she was suddenly feeling sorry for her mother. Not grateful or dutiful or anything like that, just plain sorry. And she didn’t like to hear Doreen saying that she was glad that she had gone away again.

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered,’ she said.

  ‘Not mattered?’ Doreen shrieked at her. ‘You must be mad. It would have spoilt everything.’

  As she said it, Doreen came to life again. What she had shown up to now was just a little eddy of energy. But this was the real full hurricane. There was something positively alarming about so much dynamism let loose in such a confined space. She went tearing about from room to room carrying even quite small things, like a cigarette box or a travelling clock, and putting them down somewhere different.

  But there was a reason for the rush. She had – it was one of those brilliant ideas of Doreen’s that came from simply nowhere – hit on the notion of throwing a moving‐in party. It wasn’t going to be a big affair, she had explained to Doris, and she wasn’t going to take any special trouble over it. All that she had done was to invite a few of the chaps round for a drink – and it was a part of the scheme that they should bring the drinks with them. In her enthusiasm, she rattled off again a selection of the fellows that she had invited. There was Tony and Christopher and Donald and Bill and Maurice and Hilary and Bernard. She couldn’t stop now, she said, to tell Doris anything about them. But they’d all said they were absolutely crazy to meet her.

  There had been a careless generosity about the manner of inviting them. They had all been asked to bring along with them any other chaps who might happen to be free that evening. In less than a couple of hours’ time, it seemed, dozens of unknown men, at least half of them strangers to each other, would be piling into the place. Doris asked Doreen if she would like her to go out and find a shop where she could buy some more food. But Doreen wouldn’t hear of it. She said that it was far more important to get the studio – it was ‘the studio’ that she had decided they should call it – looking respectable. In any case, it was drink, not food, they’d be wanting, and she had told them to bring that with them.

  She went on to say that if only they were on the phone up there she could have doubled the number that was coming. She must have been mad, quite mad, she decided to have left out all her very oldest friends. There was Hughie and Valentine and Frank and Quentin and about a score of others whom she’d only just remembered…

  By nine o’clock one out of the multitude had actually turned up. He was Bill, a quiet, rather serious‐looking young man wrapped up in an enormous striped muffler. He came in carrying a quart bottle of beer and saying that he hoped he wasn’t late. While they were waiting for the others to arrive, the time passed rather slowly because Bill, though frie
ndly, wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Even the best subjects simply died on him. He was a Bart’s man, a medical in his final year, and the most engaging thing about him was his grin. It appeared suddenly, almost without warning, completely transforming his whole face, and suggested a broad vein of sheer idiocy running somewhere right through him. Doris found herself rather liking Bill and wondering if all the other young men were going to be as nice. In whispers, in the kitchen, Doreen promised her far better: Bill was quite a pet in his way, she said, but it was Tony, his best friend, who was the real scream. He ought to be along almost any time now, she said.

  But she was wrong. Tony didn’t come. Nor did the others. Nobody came. By ten‐thirty there was still only Bill, and by then they had finished the beer that he had brought with him. They waited until eleven to see if there was going to be a chance of anything else to drink, and then Doris suggested that they might have some sort of meal. She produced the leg of lamb and the peach flan that Mrs Josser had left behind, and between them they polished it off.

  The one who didn’t make a hearty meal was Doreen. She was too busy explaining.

  ‘What a joke,’ she kept on saying. ‘I’ve only just remembered – I don’t believe I gave any of them the new address. If only I could see their faces now. You imagine how you’d feel if someone asked you to a party and then moved away without telling you.’

  She was still saying something of the kind when at midnight Bill announced that he had got to be going. He left assuring the two girls that he had had a wonderful time, and disappeared heroically down the iron staircase, his muffler flying. His ‘Cheerio’ sounded up from the darkness somewhere down below.

  ‘I wonder what did happen to all the others,’ Doris asked, as soon as they were alone together. ‘They must have known that it couldn’t be the old address if this was a moving‐in party.’

  ‘Oh them. I’ve forgotten about them,’ Doreen told her. ‘They were drunk probably. In any case, I shan’t speak to any of them again.’