London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  Mr Josser turned towards her.

  ‘It’s a fine morning, Mother,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a fine day.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ replied Mrs Josser, drawing the bedclothes round her again. There was a shuffling movement, a kind of shudder in reverse, and she was asleep again.

  The fact rather pleased Mr Josser.

  ‘It’s the sea‐air,’ he told himself. ‘It’s doing her good. She’s the one that really needs a rest. Not me.’

  And lying there on one elbow he looked out of the window at the day that was getting finer and brighter every minute.

  Chapter XXX

  1

  It’s a mistake that people always make. They imagine that when they’ve come away from a place the life they’ve left simply stops dead with their departure.

  Even Mrs Josser fell into this error. For the first two or three days, of course, she worried about things in London – whether Doris was all right up at Hampstead with that girl‐friend of hers, whether silly little Cynthia was giving her Ted enough to eat, whether the arrangements would work all right for Mrs Boon to give Mr Todds’ room a once‐over, and whether Uncle Henry had been run over yet while he was wearing those ridiculous placards. By the end of the first week, however, London had ceased to exist for her. She didn’t worry about it. She didn’t think about it. She didn’t even remember it. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t a lot of things – important things – still happening.

  For a start, Ted’s promotion had come. Within eighteen months of having been made a sub‐manager of soft goods, he’d been put temporarily in charge on the hardware side. It was a bit of a wrench having been switched from soft to hard just like that, and it meant saying good‐bye to all his old friends in the department. But Ted felt equal to it. After all there was another twenty‐seven‐and‐six a week in it straightaway, and, with Cynthia’s birthday on the way, that was exactly what Ted wanted. It wasn’t bad, he told himself, six pounds five a week at thirty‐four: it was better than he had ever hoped for. He was careful, however, to keep that side out of it when he was finally called before the board and offered the position. On that occasion, all that he said was: ‘I appreciate very deeply the confidence you have shown in me and I shall do my utmost to justify it.’ What was more he meant it. For a man who has been inside the movement all his working life, it’s a solemn moment coming up before the full board. Like going to Rome. Or being inspected in the Territorials. At that moment, hardware, particularly Co‐operative hardware, seemed easily the noblest end in life.

  It wasn’t until he had actually got the job that the hidden side of Ted’s nature showed itself. As soon as he had come down the steps of the head‐office, it asserted itself. Instead of going straight back to his branch as he was supposed to do, he cut loose. Ted Josser, the new deputy‐manager, went on the spree in his employers’ time.

  He went first into a chemists’ shop and bought a round flowered box of toilet‐powder called ‘Allurement.’ Then he called at a tobacconist’s and asked for Abdulla Turkish – the kind to make a room smell as though incense and orchids and dancing‐girls have been shut up there. And still he wasn’t satisfied. He continued down the street until he came to a large corner‐shop, all of plate glass and chromium. The lights were on in the windows, great rows of them, even though it was still broad daylight outside. Ted stood for some moments on the pavement, undecided. Then, having made up his mind, he went in.

  ‘I want one of the nineteen and eleven nightdresses,’ he said. ‘The black kind with the lace on it.’

  As he paid for it, his conscience smote him. It was the most feckless thing that he had ever done, spending his first week’s increase before he had actually got it. And that wasn’t all. He was spending it outside the Society – there was the taint of disloyalty in it. But it couldn’t be helped. Black silk nightdresses edged with pink lace aren’t the sort of thing that a hardware manager can afford to be seen buying in his own store.

  And every man has the right to a little private life sometimes.

  2

  If it was Ted’s big day, it was also Mr Todds’. He’d got everything ready. When he pulled down the blind of his back bedroom and raised it up again, his two friends who were waiting round the corner in Burma Street would take it for a signal and come along to No. 10. The drawing of the blind would mean that Percy Boon had just come in.

  Everything was ready from seven o’clock onwards. It was Thursday. And Thursday was one of Percy’s early nights. Not that there was any accident about that by now: Mr Todds knew about as much – just as much in fact – about Percy’s arrangements as Percy himself knew. After all, he’d been studying nothing else for the past three weeks. The bit about Battersea Power Station had been all eye‐wash.

  Mr Todds had been on C.I.D. work long enough to be pretty hard‐boiled about it in consequence. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling sorry round about 7.15 when he heard the front door slam, and Percy came upstairs, two steps at a time, whistling ‘Little Girl Blue.’ He was a natural whistler, was Percy, and he got plenty of tremolo into it. Sounded like a professional music‐hall turn, in fact. But Mr Todds only shook his head.

  ‘You’ll be whistling a very different tune in a moment,’ he told himself, as he drew down the blind.

  Mr Todds went down himself to let his friends in. And after he had gone upstairs with them to show them which was the Boons’ door, he left them to it. He still had some nice feelings in the matter and it was better that he should leave the final stage to strangers. After all, he had done all that was necessary. He had warned the inspector that Percy was dangerous and might put up a fight for it.

  All five of them were now bowling along to the Police Station together, the four cops and Percy, sitting between two of them, in the back seat. It was a very quiet and well‐behaved little party. There hadn’t been any violence: no knuckle‐duster stuff or attempted escape across the roof tops.

  When the inspector had explained what he had come for, Percy had just put down his knife and fork, and fainted.

  Chapter XXXI

  Brighton had done the trick and Mr Josser now looked a different man. From the way he squared his shoulders, as he marched along the front, there was really nothing to show that less than a month ago he’d been a dying man with his family gathered round him. He’d even bought himself a walking‐stick. It was a thin pliable sort of cane, in some dark mysterious wood that still had a hint of the jungle about it, and it carried a little silver shield for initials on the front. The stick had cost four and six, and been worth it.

  Mrs Josser looked better too. She had allowed herself once each day to be taken by Mr Josser into the Old Ship and given a glass of port. Except on holiday it was a thing that she would never have contemplated: she despised and disapproved of women who went into public houses. But here at Brighton it wasn’t quite the same. There was a freedom in the air that excused such behaviour. Even so, she hadn’t got the same swagger in her walk that Mr Josser had acquired. But perhaps that was simply because of her shoes. A fancy pair, with a bit of white suède let into the sides, she’d had them for seven years and worn them only on holidays. Too tight when she had bought them, they had already bitten into six holidays and were now in process of biting into the seventh.

  But it was only her feet that were troubling her. The spirit inside Mrs Josser was rekindled and unconsumed. With twelve good days at the seaside behind her, she had now reached the stage of buying presents. The purchase of postcards had been an earlier phase. Almost as soon as she had arrived, she had gone into a stationer’s and then into one of the glass‐sided shelters on the front and had written to everyone she could think of – to Doris, Uncle Henry, to Ted, to Baby – the last in large block capitals as though in expectation that Baby would somehow astonish them all by being able to read it – and to Mrs Vizzard. Then, recognising the way jealousy spreads like a fire inside any household, she had written to Mrs Boon and Connie as well, reassuring them about h
er safe arrival. On the first day of Mrs Josser’s holiday the Brighton postman had tottered back to the sorting office carrying a pile of coloured postcards, all saying the same thing to different people.

  But this bout of buying was on a larger scale altogether. More time had to be spent on it. More thought. And more money. Not that Mrs Josser made a labour of it. On the contrary, she did her best to minimise the whole undertaking so that it shouldn’t seem to be interrupting the holiday.

  ‘I’ve just got to get a little something for Doris,’ was all she said. ‘Just a little something for Doris. And something for Baby.’

  The idea of something for Cynthia hadn’t crossed her mind at the time. It cropped up only when she saw a small battlemented castle of shiny porcelain with an ink‐well in the middle of the castle courtyard. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Doris would like. It was no use to Baby who, even if she could read, certainly couldn’t write. It was no use to anyone in fact, but as small china castles go, it was irresistible.

  The emotion that went with the buying of all these presents was a complicated one. In the first place there was the simple pleasure of going into shops and spending money on something that was unnecessary. It was all part of the fairy‐tale atmosphere of the seaside – as though coming from Victoria on the Southern Railway, somewhere about Hayward’s Heath the whole value of money changed abruptly and, once South of the Downs, it became simply stuff to be chucked around and played with. Then there was the knowledge that buying presents really meant that the holiday was coming to an end. And, in the result, a kind of urgency crept into the enjoyment of everything. There was at once the sense of the upturned hour‐glass and of a strange telescoping of time. It seemed that the moment of arrival had been last night, and also a long while ago; that they had been living at Brighton all their life yet had only just arrived there. Mr and Mrs Josser both had this feeling and it translated itself into a rather lofty melancholy. They walked along the front together holding hands and thinking about how long they had known each other.

  Mrs Josser was the first to speak.

  ‘It’s the last couple of days that does you good,’ she said. ‘Father always said that he could do without the rest of the holiday if he could have the last two days.’

  It was the last day. Just getting on for lunch‐time. Mr Josser tilted his hat and began swinging his new jungle walking‐stick. He felt decidedly peckish and was glad that it wasn’t much further to the boarding‐house. He was glad too that Mrs Josser’s feet seemed to be holding out.

  ‘Rottingdean this afternoon,’ he said gloatingly. ‘Pretty little place, Rottingdean. Mustn’t go back to London without seeing Rottingdean.’

  The gloom of to‐morrow’s departure had mysteriously cleared a little, and Mr Josser was secretly looking forward to Dulcimer Street once more. He wasn’t thinking of anything very much when Mrs Josser spoke to him.

  ‘About that cottage of yours,’ she said suddenly.

  Mr Josser gave a little smile.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It was only an idea I had. It wasn’t anything really. Don’t worry about it.’

  But Mrs Josser ignored him and went on with what she had been going to say.

  ‘Why don’t we look up a few addresses while we’re down here?’ she suggested. ‘If there is anything going we might as well see it.’

  ‘You mean take a cottage down here by the sea?’ Mr Josser asked her.

  ‘Only if it’s suitable,’ she answered firmly.

  ‘Then you mean… ?’

  ‘I don’t mean something that’s going to be washed away by the next high tide,’ she told him.

  ‘But you do mean… ?’

  ‘Only if it’s suitable,’ she repeated.

  Mr Josser did not say anything. He was nearer to getting what he wanted than he had been at any time during the last thirty years. Between him and Mrs Josser there existed at this moment a bond of sacred understanding.

  They had reached the end of Medina Road by now and were approaching the boarding‐house.

  ‘Of course, there might be something at Rottingdean itself,’ Mr Josser suggested. ‘It’s worth trying.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Mrs Josser replied indulgently, as she might have replied to a child. ‘I don’t want you tiring yourself or I shall be sorry I mentioned it.’

  It gave a pleasant feeling going up the neat gravel path towards the white front door and knowing that there was a meal waiting for them. It was the life luxurious, and Mrs Josser felt at that moment that she could do with any amount of it.

  ‘There’s usually milk‐pudding on Fridays,’ Mrs Josser said aloud. ‘Or at least there was last week.’

  Mr Josser pushed the door open and, as he did so, they both saw the figure of a woman seated on one of the cane chairs in the hall. It was dark and muffled inside because of the hanging bead curtain and they couldn’t see very clearly who it was. But there was something in the lines of the figure to suggest that she had been sitting there a long time. Then as Mrs Josser parted the dangling threads of beads they saw.

  It was Mrs Boon.

  ‘Clarice,’ Mrs Josser exclaimed.

  ‘This is a nice surprise,’ Mr Josser began. ‘Did Percy bring…’

  But he did not finish the sentence. For he saw that Mrs Boon had been weeping. Her eyes were red and swollen and her eyelids looked puffy.

  ‘It’s about Percy I’ve come,’ she said, in a breathless pent‐up rush, the words tumbling over each other. ‘They’ve taken him away from me. Last night. He’s been arrested.’

  There was a pause. A blank incredulous pause.

  ‘What’s he done?’ Mr Josser asked. Then thinking that it might be more tactful, he added: ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘They’ve… they’ve charged him with stealing a car. A Bentley car…’

  But Mrs Boon could get no further. She began crying again. Crying in a forlorn helpless fashion that had lost all reticence. ‘I had to tell somebody,’ she managed to jerk out. ‘That’s why I came.’

  Mr Josser cleared his throat and tried to sort out the chaos of his mind.

  He looked down at the sodden figure of Mrs Boon in front of them and across then at Mrs Josser.

  ‘Mother,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go back. Straightaway.’

  Chapter XXXII

  1

  It was the simple fact of their premature return that betrayed everything. When, accompanied by Mrs Boon, they arrived home in Dulcimer Street, the day before they were due, it was obvious that something disastrous had occurred, that prearranged and inviolate order had been dislocated. No. 10 was mystified.

  Mrs Vizzard for a start was taken completely off her guard. And so was Connie. She was just going out to her night‐club when the three of them came in together. And it didn’t need anyone with her uniquely sensitive nose to detect at once that there was a catch in it. Mr Josser, looking sunburnt and swarthy, wore a strange anxious expression on his face, and he had his arm round Mrs Boon, vaguely as though he was guarding and protecting her. Mrs Boon herself seemed to have been crying. And as for Mrs Josser, she barely even said good‐evening to Connie. More tightly lipped and grim looking than ever, she went straight on up the stairs as though she were late for something.

  ‘It’s all a mistake, a horrible mistake. I know it is,’ Mrs Boon was saying. ‘It couldn’t be what they said. It’s a mistake. I know it is.’

  But the strain had been too much for her. All that she could do was to lie back in the chair smearing her face with the wet shapeless handkerchief with which she had been sponging at her eyes in the train.

  ‘And you say they won’t allow him bail?’ Mr Josser enquired wearily. The real trouble was that they had been over all this conversation before. There had been hours of it by now, and there was nothing that could be added.

  Mrs Boon stopped her crying for a moment. In defence of Percy, she was almost indignant.

  ‘He… he wouldn’t know how to ask for it,’
she said. ‘He’s never been in trouble before.’ She paused. ‘He will be all right, won’t he?’ she asked, appealing suddenly to Mrs Josser.

  Mrs Josser, however, merely pursed up her lips again.

  ‘I’ll get some tea,’ was all she said. ‘Fred looks just about done in again.’

  It was with positive relief that she found herself away from Mrs Boon for a moment. There is something about another person’s grief that is at once strangely exhausting and unshareable. And Mrs Josser was angry. Angry that the thing had happened at all. Instead of being sorry for Percy, she was furious with him. It seemed that simply through Percy’s carelessness, his folly, his wickedness, Mr Josser’s holiday had been ruined, and that magical, health restoring last day had been snatched from him. Mrs Josser wasn’t going to forget it.

  Before she had done more than put the brown enamel kettle on the gas stove, she was joined by Mrs Vizzard. Down below, the suspense had been too much for flesh and blood to endure. And Mrs Vizzard was human. Finally putting down the size eight sock that she had been knitting, she mounted the stairs wearing the expression of a woman who, though too well‐bred to ask outright, was equally not averse from being told. She stood at the door, smiling in polite surprise.

  ‘Have you got everything you need, Mrs Josser?’ she asked. ‘We weren’t expecting you home so soon.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it either,’ Mrs Josser replied.

  This was more encouraging than Mrs Vizzard had expected. It made the next stage so much easier.

  ‘Why? Did… did something call you back?’

  ‘Nothing called me back,’ Mrs Josser answered. ‘It was Fred who decided.’

  ‘Not… not his health?’ Mrs Vizzard enquired.

  ‘Fred’s never been better,’ Mrs Josser told her. ‘Or at least he would have been if he could have stayed.’