London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘You know you wanted to go on and be a surgeon,’ she continued. ‘That’ll take years.’

  Bill paused and began stirring his coffee with his free hand. ‘You’ve got your job,’ he said. ‘We could manage.’

  Doris shook her head.

  ‘It isn’t only that,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot of things. It’s me and my people, and the way I’ve been brought up, and where I come from. It’s lots of things. I might be just about right as a doctor’s wife. But a surgeon’s different. You’ll be in Harley Street, and you ought to have someone awfully grand.’

  She removed her hand from his for the second time and began searching about in her bag for a handkerchief.

  ‘You’ll make a marvellous surgeon’s wife,’ he told her. ‘You’ll make the most bloody marvellous surgeon’s wife in the world.’

  ‘Oh Bill, you’re crazy.’

  They sat for a moment without speaking.

  ‘Then you will marry me?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Better hurry up,’ he told her. ‘There’ll be war at any moment. No sense waiting till I’m sent abroad.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘I do,’ Bill answered, suddenly feeling about twenty years older than she was. ‘I do. And I mean that we shouldn’t see each other for years. I may be sent anywhere. I may go to India, I may go to Singapore. I may go to Hong Kong. And in the meantime we’ve got to snatch at every minute we can get.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be sent abroad?’

  The single possibility seemed the climax to everything. The news on the wireless and in the papers, General Ironside going to Moscow, the row in the Danzig Senate, the Indian troops reaching Suez, all the rubbish that Uncle Henry was always talking, seemed to culminate in this one awful thought.

  ‘Certain,’ Bill told her. ‘They’ll want all the doctors they can get.’

  ‘Doctors don’t go right into the firing line, do they?’

  Bill grinned.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They send the ambulance men.’

  Doris put her hand in his again. ‘Oh Bill, I do love you so,’ she said. ‘There won’t be a war, will there?’

  ‘Not a chance of it,’ he told her. ‘I was only joking.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What are you going to do to‐night?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘To Dulcimer Street?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I can’t go back to Doreen now.’

  ‘Have you told them?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, let’s go somewhere first.’

  And it was his second evening of revision – Pathology to‐morrow – that went down the drain as he said it.

  Chapter XXXVI

  Mrs Josser was taking the daily paper down to Mrs Vizzard. It had gone on for so long, this habit of lending her the daily paper after the Jossers had finished with it, that Mrs Vizzard had come to regard it as a kind of right. And it was even better now that Mr Josser had left the City. It meant that instead of having to wait until the evening, she got the day’s news in the afternoon while there was still some of the morning sparkle left on it.

  As Mrs Josser descended the dark staircase the thought crossed her mind that it was sad that anyone of Mrs Vizzard’s background should, through the impeccable accident of widowhood, have been reduced to a front basement in her own lawful house. She felt sorry for her. Not deeply sorry, just regretful. Taking everything into consideration Mrs Vizzard had made a remarkably efficient job of widowhood.

  There seemed, when she knocked on the door, to be something oddly hesitating about Mrs Vizzard’s reply. It was preceded by something that sounded like whispering. And then, when she went inside, she saw why she had been kept waiting. Mrs Vizzard was not alone. In front of the fireplace, in a very new‐looking pale grey suit, Mr Squales was standing. He was fingering a fresh and shiny tie. His dark eyes fixed themselves on Mrs Josser and he smiled in that deep, enigmatic way of his as though he were either about to say something or conceal it. But, after one glance, Mrs Josser scarcely noticed him. It was at Mrs Vizzard she was staring. Something remarkable had happened. It was not the same Mrs Vizzard who faced her. Instead of the dark blue serge cut very high at the throat, which she usually wore, she was decked out in a smart black dress with a large bunch of artificial flowers pinned on to her shoulder. It was the sort of dress that a lady – even a young lady probably – in Bond Street, might wear. But most astonishing of all was the change which Mrs Vizzard had wrought in her own person. Since Mrs Josser had seen her earlier in the day she had re‐modelled herself. Even her hair dressing had changed. Instead of screwing her hair viciously into a small hard roll that she pinned remorsely to the nape of her neck, she had wound it round the top of her head in two plaits. In the result, it made a kind of halo so that her face seemed set in a tall frame. And the high cheekbones that had appeared so disfiguring before, now appeared positively distinguished looking. Her temples, which had not been visible when the hair had been dragged across them, now showed themselves; and they were beautiful. Mrs Vizzard looked ten – fifteen – even possibly more – years younger.

  Mrs Josser stood there still staring. She looked from Mrs Vizzard to Mr Squales, and back to Mrs Vizzard again. And as she did so Mrs Vizzard intercepted her glance. She blushed.

  ‘We’ve been buying clothes,’ she announced stupidly.

  ‘Buying clothes?’

  Mrs Josser repeated the words as though they had no meaning for her. She turned to Mr Squales again. Under his pale grey suit, he was wearing a bright mauvish shirt with cuffs that came right down over his wrists. Mauve cuffs over hickory coloured wrists. She could bear it no longer. She looked up at him for an explanation. But Mr Squales only smiled back at her. She was unpleasantly aware of a double row of strong white teeth in a lean dusky face.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘this is rather an important occasion. Kitty – that is Mrs Vizzard – and I have just become engaged.’

  ‘Engaged!’

  In her amazement Mrs Josser had done it again. She was repeating everything that was said to her.

  ‘Engaged to be married,’ Mr Squales said slowly and distinctly after her as though there were something magical in having the words uttered for the third time.

  He paused.

  ‘And I feel sure you’d want to be the first to congratulate us,’ he continued in the same deep purring voice. ‘The first to share our joy.’

  Mrs Josser tore her gaze away from Mr Squales and looked across at Mrs Vizzard. The expression that she saw there startled her. Mrs Vizzard wasn’t smiling in the least. Her face was set. She was looking hard at Mrs Josser as though daring her not to congratulate them.

  Mrs Josser moved her lips. She was trying, trying hard, to say something. But what? She could think of nothing that she would like to hear herself saying.

  It was Mr Squales himself who saved her in this moment of confusion. He appeared suddenly beside her, a wine glass in his hand. Mrs Josser glanced up and saw that on the sideboard – the respectable mahogany sideboard where the tea caddy and the biscuit barrel had always stood – a bottle of white port and a row of glasses were standing.

  ‘You will drink to our health?’ he asked her.

  But before she could answer, he had transferred his smile, fixed and gleaming as ever, to Mrs Vizzard.

  ‘And you too, Kitty?’ he added. ‘A glass of port wine to celebrate?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mrs Vizzard replied.

  She spoke faintly, like a child, as she thanked him for her own port wine.

  Then Mr Squales turned to Mrs Josser. She felt the wine glass being pressed into her hand. The stem was smooth and icy cold. She drew back instinctively.

  ‘No. No thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t drink to our marriage?’ Mr Squales enquired.

  His smile increased in intensity until it was glowering at her.

  ‘It’s… it’s not that,’ Mrs Josse
r told him. ‘It’s simply that I can’t stop. I want to… to go and tell Mr Josser.

  The smile reached its uttermost limits.

  ‘Of course. Of course,’ he told her. ‘You must invite him down. Then we will all four drink together.’

  As soon as she reached her own living‐room upstairs, Mrs Josser sat down herself on the corner of the couch. Then she burst into tears. ‘It’s horrible, that’s what it is,’ she said. ‘Just horrible.’

  Mr Josser put down his paper and came over to her.

  ‘Don’t take it to heart so, Mother,’ he told her kindly. ‘I know just how you feel about Percy.’

  Chapter XXXVII

  1

  It was boring, waiting. And that was all Percy ever did nowadays, wait. There had been a second remand, and he was getting fed up with it. If They didn’t know Their own mind, if They were regretting having collared him, why didn’t They come clean and let him go again? He wasn’t doing Them any good just sitting there, was he?

  ‘They wouldn’t treat me this way, not if I was a rich man,’ he told himself. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’ Bail allowed on two sureties of five hundred… there were paragraphs like that in the paper every day. If he’d had his own Rolls‐Royce he could have driven away in it the same day they’d come for him. Talk about one law for the poor and another for the rich, somebody ought to get up in Parliament and do something. He paused and ran his pocket‐comb through his hair. ‘They wouldn’t treat me this way, not if I was a rich man,’ he added. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’

  Then the other thought, the warm comforting one, swept into his mind, sweetening it.

  ‘The laugh’s on Them if They only knew it,’ he went on. ‘If They knew anything about me They’d do something. They’re just wasting their time trying to fix a Bentley on me. It’s an Austin they ought to be busy about.’

  But he remembered suddenly what he was really waiting for. It was his mother. She’d be along at two‐thirty. It must be nearly that now. He hadn’t got his watch so he couldn’t tell the time. And there weren’t any clocks. Why weren’t there any clocks? There wasn’t anything wrong about wanting to know the time, was there? It was just another of those pin‐pricks.

  Thinking it over he wished that his mother weren’t coming. It would only upset her. And he didn’t like to see her that way. What was the use of it anyhow? She didn’t understand. Prison wasn’t in a woman’s line. It was a man’s job. A man’s job right through. He was in a bit of a jam, that was all. And it was up to him and Mr Barks to get him out. Women were simply in the way in a thing like this.

  He didn’t like thinking about what would happen to Mrs Boon with no money coming in from him. But she’d saved something. He knew that because she’d told him so. And Mrs Vizzard would never turn her out. She’d know that Percy would square things when he got back. Square things for everybody. He’d make things all right for his old Mum, he would. He’d buy her a fur coat. He’d give her something to wear like jewellery. He’d take her to Brighton for a summer holiday. He wouldn’t disappoint her.

  Then he forgot all about his mother and began wondering about the others. Connie was all right. She’d been in plenty of jams herself. She wouldn’t turn up her nose. And Mr Squales. Well, he was potty anyway. He didn’t matter. He’d just burrow his head in all that astrakhan and sleep out the winter. Mr Puddy was O.K. too. And Mr Josser was O.K. Very much O.K. It was Mr josser who had arranged for the meals that were being sent in.

  Why was he doing it? Percy wondered. And then, of course, he saw why. It was because of Doris. Mr Josser must have seen the way she’d thrown him over, and felt ashamed about it. The price of those meals was conscience money really. All the same it was nice of him to feel that way.

  It was Mrs Josser he wasn’t so sure about. She’d always disliked him, he could feel that. But why worry? Disliking was something that two could do. What he was really concerned about was Mrs Josser getting together with Mrs Vizzard, and plotting behind his back. He wasn’t quite clear what harm they could do him. But he didn’t like it. In his present helpless, unprotected state he was aware of a general unpleasant foreboding. Things were happening. And he didn’t know what things.

  But quite suddenly it wasn’t Dulcimer Street that he was thinking about at all. It was the Blonde. Not even Jackie, but the Blonde. That was the worst of being shut away from life like this – your brain kept on working and you couldn’t stop it. It played tricks on you. Very unpleasant tricks sometimes. This was one of them. She was just as she had been when he’d first fallen for her. He kept seeing her very smart and dolled up with plenty of lipstick on and her hair swept up in front à la West End. And she was smiling at him as though she could eat him. It was all just as though nothing had ever happened.

  He was still thinking about her – not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t stop – when there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Keys jingled and after one of those clumsy pauses that were always occurring in prisons, the door opened.

  ‘This’ll be Mum,’ Percy told himself. ‘This is where things get difficult.’

  He got up and stood there ready, a grin of uncertain welcome spreading itself across his face. He knew just how she’d look, with her cheeks sunken from all the worry – his worry, really – she’d been through, and tears waiting in her eyes ready for the moment when she actually saw him.

  But it wasn’t Mrs Boon at all. It was the warder with the thick black eyebrows like George Robey’s and a Police Inspector and an ordinary copper and a quiet elderly man in a dark grey suit who looked like anyone in the corner of a first‐class railway carriage. He was the Deputy‐Governor. But Percy only found that out afterwards.

  The warder, who couldn’t help looking as though he were about to say something funny, stood himself up at attention beside the door and then closed and locked it after the others had come in.

  Just to show that They hadn’t got anything on him, that They couldn’t bounce him round as They wanted, Percy went over and leant against the table, his hands in his pockets. He was grinning.

  ‘Stand up properly, Boon,’ the quiet elderly man told him.

  Percy stood up.

  ‘Now pay attention and listen carefully,’ the Deputy‐Governor went on. ‘The Inspector wants to speak to you.’

  Percy’s grin came back again. But it wasn’t the same grin. This was something quite different. This was pure nervousness.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said. And because he wanted to show that he wasn’t being difficult, that he was on Their side really, he added, ‘Sir.’ He was trying hard to make everything go easily.

  But the Inspector didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘You are Percy Boon?’ the Inspector asked, in a heavy flat‐footed sort of voice.

  ‘That’s me,’ Percy answered.

  To his surprise the copper was writing down his answer in a notebook as though it were all new and important.

  ‘Of 10 Dulcimer Street in the Borough of Kennington?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Percy said again.

  ‘You are charged,’ the Inspector went on, in the same expressionless voice, ‘with the murder of Lily Ann Watson, otherwise known as Rosa Sinclair, on the night of June third 1939 in the Borough of Wimbledon.’

  There was a pause.

  The Inspector stopped, and Percy answered: ‘I never.’ Even that went down in the notebook.

  Then the Deputy‐Governor spoke again.

  ‘Anything that you say may be used in evidence.’

  But Percy wasn’t listening any more. He was trying hard to keep control of himself, and not cry or anything. Trying to behave sensible in fact.

  ‘I never done it,’ he said firmly. ‘I can prove where I was at the time. I got witnesses.’

  The policeman was writing hard and Percy realised that perhaps he had said too much.

  ‘I decline to make any statement until I have consulted my solicitor,’ he said remembering that those were the classic w
ords in these circumstances. ‘I’m not saying nothing,’ he added.

  The Inspector stepped back, the policeman – the ordinary copper – closed his notebook, and the Deputy‐Governor came forward.

  ‘You fully understand, Boon?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the words came faintly.

  ‘The warder will make the necessary arrangements for your solicitor to see you.’

  At this mention of him the warder drew himself even more sharply to attention and his eyebrows arched themselves even higher as though he were about to utter the wisecrack of the whole performance. But he said nothing. And the Deputy‐Governor went on.

  ‘You are still at liberty to write any letters that you want to write,’ he said.

  Percy nodded. He couldn’t speak at all now. He was just thinking desperately.

  ‘I’ll be O.K. when I’ve seen Mr Barks,’ he told himself. ‘I’ll tell him everything. I won’t keep nothing back. Not now, I won’t. I’ll just rely on him. He’ll know what to do. He’s clever. I’ll be O.K. when I’ve seen Mr Barks.’

  He kept on telling himself that. Had to keep on telling himself. But he couldn’t help feeling a bit doubtful.

  Things had got a lot worse suddenly.

  2

  Despite all Mrs Josser’s warnings, Mr Josser was back on the job again. He was rent collecting. But his heart wasn’t properly in it any more. He was too much upset about Percy’s having got himself arrested.

  Besides, there wasn’t the same permanent feel about rent collecting that there had been before he went away. He was really only filling in time. And it is always hard to be interested in something that you aren’t going on with. Not that the Building Society didn’t want him back – they were always ready for elderly reliables who were content to work for what they were prepared to pay. No, it was Mr Josser who didn’t want them. And that was because of the change in Mrs Josser’s attitude. From being a Londoner, born in London and bred in it, she had now definitely decided to try the dangerous, even reckless experiment of living somewhere in the country. The only thing that she still persisted in was that it was for the sake of Mr Josser’s health that she was doing it. Otherwise, it would have looked as though she had changed her mind.