London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘Is there any news?’ she asked even before Mrs Josser had pulled the chair up beside the bed.

  ‘Now you’ve got to be calm and hear me out,’ Mrs Josser told her, her own voice trembling. ‘The trial’s all over now, but there’s still the appeal. Mr Barks is going to see about that straightaway. He’d have come himself – I know he would – only he’s so busy arranging things.’

  She paused and caught the Sister’s eye. Under that grotesque black and white head‐dress with the starched side‐pieces like a horse’s blinkers, anything might have been going on. But, outwardly, the Sister looked quite unmoved. She seemed to belong to a world from which emotion in its cruder forms had been excluded. Mrs Josser was the only one who was showing any signs of disquietude. Mrs Boon herself was simply lying back again, eyeing her. Then she spoke.

  ‘You mean they found him guilty?’ she asked.

  Mrs Josser nodded.

  ‘The jury made a special recommendation,’ she added.

  But, being a woman herself, Mrs Boon like Mrs Josser was interested only in flesh‐and‐blood.

  ‘Was he brave?’ she asked.

  ‘Very,’ Mrs Josser answered. ‘He just stood there at attention like a soldier.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mrs Boon actually smiled. ‘That’s like my Percy,’ she said. ‘Always brave.’

  ‘Don’t tire yourself too much, Mrs Boon,’ the Sister interrupted placidly. ‘Remember what the doctor said.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Mrs Boon promised. Then she turned to Mrs Josser. ‘Don’t you worry too much,’ she said. ‘He’ll be all right. We’re all praying for him.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Josser saw the Sister cross herself. The sight moved and disturbed her. She realised that she resented it. And not only the sign of the cross. Resented the fact that after tearing halfway across London in time to arrive at Walham Green at 9.30 on an errand of mercy she should be the one who was being comforted. It was as though in a world of terror and anticipation these two women had discovered some special secret composure of which she knew nothing.

  There was a pause. Mrs Boon seemed to be very far away, her eyes staring out over the bed‐rail into space which extended far beyond the buff‐distempered wall with the brightly‐coloured crucifix on it.

  Then she turned to Mrs Josser again.

  ‘Was he wearing the rosary I sent him?’ she asked.

  Mrs Josser drew in her lips.

  ‘I couldn’t see,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t near enough.’

  For the first time, Mrs Boon seemed to experience some real alarm. She clasped her hands together.

  ‘You’re sure Mr Josser gave it to him?’ she asked, craning forward. ‘You don’t think that he might have forgotten it?’

  ‘If Fred said he’d do something,’ Mrs Josser answered loyally, ‘you can be sure of him.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Boon for the second time. And a smile, a pale watery smile – but a smile nevertheless – broke out on her face again. ‘Then he’ll be wearing it all right.’

  Her immediate anxiety removed, Mrs Boon lay back against the pillows. She closed her eyes, and the Sister gave a little nod to Mrs Josser.

  ‘That must be all for now,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t overtire her.’

  To Mrs Josser’s ears there was just a trace of rebuke in the words. But she got up obediently and put the chair back against the wall.

  ‘Thank you very much for coming,’ Mrs Boon was saying. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  Mrs Josser and the Sister walked back down the long corridor without speaking, but when they came to the head of the stairs the Sister turned to her.

  ‘Next time you come,’ she said, ‘can you bring a dressing‐gown and slippers? The doctor may be letting her up for a little.’

  3

  Mr Puddy was fed‐up, properly fed‐up.

  And no wonder. They’d been messing his job about. Nothing less than a revolution, in fact, was taking place in his profession. And by the time it was over and the shouting had died down again, it looked as though everything that had attracted him to such a calling – the quiet life, the regular meals, the absence of bustle, the absolute nothingness of it – would have gone for ever. As Mr Puddy, in his caretaker’s basement, ponderously bent over the two printed handbooks and three roneo‐ed sheets issued by the Ministry of Home Security, he felt himself a stranger in his own house; a would‐be émigré with nowhere else to go.

  And all on account of stirrup‐pumps. It was easy enough for a man of Mr Puddy’s sober discernment to detect – reading between the lines, of course – that the government was in a state of panic. And Mr Morrison in particular had evidently allowed himself to get into a shocking state of jitters about fires. If he hadn’t, he would simply have done the calm and dignified thing and said: ‘In case of emergency, lift the receiver and ask for Fire.’ He could have left it at that, couldn’t he? What was wrong, Mr Puddy wanted to know, with the blue coats and brass helmets of the London Fire Brigade? Did Mr Morrison know something that he wasn’t saying?

  And there was another thing. Mr Puddy wasn’t the build for stirrup‐pumps. To keep the plunger going up and down as though pumping up a punctured bicycle tyre called for a shorter and a slimmer man. He wondered bitterly whether any one in the government had actually tried to work a stirrup‐pump before ordering them in such colossal quantities. Winston, for example. Or Mr Bevin. He would have liked to have seen either of them after the instruction meeting that he’d just been to. Pumping with one hand and directing the jet with the other. It wasn’t dignified.

  And stirrup‐pumps were only the beginning. There was sand, for instance. The otherwise tidy yard of the United Empire Tea Co. now looked like some kind of a blooming children’s play‐park. You couldn’t even get away from the stuff by coming indoors. There were buckets of it on every landing, alongside the buckets of water that had always been there.

  Nor did the government panic stop at sand. There was sillier still in store. Like special shovels on the end of long brown handles so that you could scoop up the incendiaries as they came down and carry them away to the nearest horse‐trough, or the Thames, or anywhere else that looked wet enough. An acquaintance of Mr Josser’s in the same line of business had been issued with a pair of asbestos‐covered tongs…

  Mr Puddy turned back to the instructions par 3, sub‐section 2a: ‘If the incendiary has fallen but has not yet ignited, keep the bomb covered by a fine spray. (For sand, Application of, see Sub‐section 3.) If the bomb has ignited, press the adjusting switch on the nozzle of the pump over to the right and direct the jet on to the blaze. IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES direct a JET of water on to an unignited bomb.’

  There was more of it over‐leaf. Another three‐quarters of a page of closely‐typed instructions. There were even drawings of three different types of incendiaries, and a picture of a stirrup‐pump with the various parts rather obviously named ‘HANDLE,’ ‘HOSE,’ ‘PLUNGER,’ ‘NOZZLE’ and so on.

  Mr Puddy could see that they’d tried their hardest to explain the thing. But it was no use. He couldn’t concentrate because he was hungry. Putting down the leaflet, Mr Puddy went over to his coat‐pocket and took out a grease‐proof packet containing half a pound of liver sausage.

  He pressed his thumb into the middle of it, momentarily screwing up his eyes in suspense as he did so. But it was all right: it gave. Liver sausage was funny stuff. Before now, he’d known it dry up while it was just lying there on the plate waiting for him to get round to it.

  Chapter LII

  It was because of a letter from Mrs Boon that Mr Josser was there in Mr Barks’ office. The letter had arrived only that morning. And its urgency was obvious. It must have been written immediately after Mrs Josser had left.

  The Jossers had been discussing the contents all through breakfast, passing the single sheet of notepaper backwards and forwards across the table between them. Not that it wasn’t clear enough. It was crystal‐clear and pathetic. It said –
not in Mrs Boon’s handwriting because she still couldn’t write, but in one of the Sisters’ – that if the appeal was going to cost extra, would Mr Josser please arrange with Mr Barks to auction the furniture and use the proceeds. It was the last paragraph that brought a lump into Mr Josser’s throat.

  ‘It’ll be a shame all those nice things going,’ she wrote, ‘and I’m glad that I shan’t be there to see them go. Please don’t tell Percy, as it would only worry him. It won’t matter really because we shall soon be able to get a home going again when we’re together once more. But please specially don’t say anything to Percy at the moment.’ The last sentence was even underlined.

  The peculiar pathos of the letter left Mr Barks unmoved, however. And Mr Josser respected him for it. After all, it was only right that he should be giving the whole of his mind to the legal aspects. Nevertheless, it did seem to Mr Josser just a little unfeeling, especially when it was a friend of the family that he was speaking to, when Mr Barks dismissed the whole scheme as inadequate.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Just three rooms. Two bed and a living. Bedrooms don’t fetch anything. Say twenty pounds the two. Living‐room another ten. Thirty pounds. What’s the use of that?’

  ‘Are appeals very expensive?’ Mr Josser asked.

  ‘Depends who you get. Someone like Veesey Blaize’d charge another hundred and fifty. No use skimping. Simply lose appeal.’

  ‘Don’t… don’t you think Mr Blaize might be willing to do it for a little less because of the way it… it turned out?’ Mr Josser asked diffidently.

  But Mr Barks only shook his head.

  ‘Wouldn’t hear of it,’ he said. ‘Probably forgotten the case by now. Very busy man, Veesey Blaize.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ask him?’ Mr Josser persisted. ‘Couldn’t you put it to him that Mrs Boon is very ill. It means a lot to her, you know.’

  Mr Barks shook his head again.

  ‘Means a lot to every one,’ he said. ‘Means a lot to the prisoner. Means a lot to me. Very bad impression to lose a case. Means a lot to Mr Veesey Blaize. Won’t do his name any good if he can’t appeal. But no funds, no appeal. Most unfair to Mr Veesey Blaize.’

  ‘Mightn’t there be someone else who’s cheaper?’ Mr Josser inquired diffidently.

  But Mr Barks did not take the suggestion in good part.

  ‘Change horses in mid‐stream?’ he asked. ‘Throw Mr Veesey Blaize over halfway through? Very bad business. Very bad business indeed.’ He paused. ‘Do it if you want to,’ he said. ‘No one to stop you. Find some junior probably. May be someone good. May not. Can’t say. Taking big risk. May lose appeal.’

  Mr Josser sat rebuked, his hands clasped on the handle of his umbrella. The office was close and stuffy, and he felt helpless. Also trapped. It may have been the effect of the black gauze stretched tightly across the lower half of the windows, or the double lock on both the doors, or the massive hinges of the black Chubb safe in the corner. Whatever it was Mr Josser suddenly found himself inwardly struggling to escape.

  But it wasn’t as easy as that. He couldn’t back out now. Why couldn’t he? He didn’t know. He just couldn’t.

  And to his own amazement he heard himself asking the old fatal question.

  ‘How… how much do you need?’ he asked.

  Mr Barks took out his gold Eversharp and began making some marks on his blotting pad.

  ‘One day affair,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Quite short really. Say seventy‐five for Mr Veesey Blaize and the junior. Then my fees on top. Lot of work in appeal. May be another seventy‐five.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty!’

  Mr Josser had spoken the words aloud.

  ‘Near as I can say,’ Mr Barks told him. ‘Haven’t asked Veesey Blaize yet.’

  There was a pause. Mr Josser’s hands were damp inside.

  ‘I’ll go up to a hundred,’ he said.

  ‘And the thirty from the furniture?’ Mr Barks inquired.

  ‘No,’ Mr Josser replied firmly. ‘Just the hundred. The furniture’s stopping where it is.’

  Mr Barks contemplated his gold pencil.

  ‘Probably no use,’ he answered. ‘Cutting things too fine. But we’ll see. We’ll see what we can do.’

  And without looking up again he began making crosses and underlinings on the dossier of papers that were on the desk in front of him.

  ‘I’ll guarantee up to a hundred.’ Mr Josser was still repeating the words to himself as he came away. That meant two hundred in all. And that, in turn, meant that three hundred pounds was all that he and Mrs Josser had in their old age between them and starvation.

  Chapter LIII

  1

  Bill had passed his Finals. Astonishingly, had passed them. And the rest had been his idea entirely.

  It was simply that a notice had been stuck up on the green baize board in the Common‐room saying that qualified doctors were wanted in His Majesty’s Forces, and Bill had written offering himself. Not that there was anything unusual in that. For weeks now he had been answering every advertisement he had seen – locum tenens, large Panel practice in Wood Green; House Physician, Stoke‐on‐Trent Infirmary; anaesthetist, City Dental Hospital; Child Specialist (vacancy open to a woman) somewhere or other in the Midlands. And one after another they had turned him down. Or rather ignored him. A polite postcard from Stoke‐on‐Trent was all that he had to show for his trouble. And, for the first week, the army behaved in much the same way. Indeed, by the time he had heard from them, he had already written off to a fever and isolation hospital where a knowledge of tropical diseases was essential.

  Then a letter arrived on inferior official stationery asking him to present himself immediately to an address in Victoria. There was something rather flattering about the ‘immediately.’ He had understood from one or two other men who had tried, that this looked like being a pretty difficult war to get into. And it seemed now that he was as good as in it already.

  All the same, there was the hospital to be considered. They were paying him £60 a year, and they naturally expected to get their money’s worth. He had to fix things up with the resident so that he could skip over to Victoria in the afternoon. And all the morning he kept telling himself that probably the job would be gone by then.

  When he arrived it wasn’t quite what he had expected. The War Office doesn’t waste a lot of money in making its servants comfortable. There is a kind of battlefield severity about everything. In an upstairs room that looked as though it had recently been used for storing things, a major was sitting on a folding chair at a trestle table. There was a makeshift look about the set‐up, rather as though the war had caught the army unawares. The whole place might have been a parliamentary agent’s office at some scrap bye‐election. The major was filling up buff forms with a nib mounted in an unpolished half‐penny penholder. The ink‐well was an ordinary bottle with a cork.

  He brightened up, however, as Bill entered, almost as if Bill had been his first customer that day. And, for a moment, Bill had misgivings. Perhaps the others had been making a few inquiries before applying. But since he was here, he answered all the questions on the form which the major gave him – whether his parents were both British, where he was born and what his qualifications were. He wrote in ‘M.B.’ and ‘B.Ch.’ with a flourish, filling in the date when he had qualified a bit smaller – because he didn’t want to look too much as if he were rushing things. Then the major told him where to go for his medical examination, asked him whether he’d like to go out East, and shook him warmly by the hand.

  The medical examination – also in hospital time – was nothing. Standing stripped, he looked like a prize‐fighter. The little doctor who went over him had to stretch up on tiptoe to do so. He had as a matter of fact lost interest right from the start when he found that Bill played rugger.

  It was nearly a fortnight after that when Bill received another letter, still on the same inferior stationery. And this one was even more surprising. It told him in rat
her cold, formal language that he had been granted a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and it enclosed a further batch of forms for him to fill in. Between these forms and the earlier ones, however, there was a subtle but discernible difference. The first batch had been designed to catch him, whereas this lot made it apparent that now he had agreed to come in, had gone too far in fact to be able to back out again, the army had cooled off a bit. They were full of safeguards, all on the army’s side, just to make sure that they hadn’t landed themselves with a dud. The covering letter gave him advice about buying his uniform and told him where to present himself at Sandhurst for an officer’s training.

  They didn’t give him much time and there was a somewhat peremptory ring to the wording.

  He hadn’t wanted to worry Doris while the whole thing was still in the air. But this looked definite enough. He supposed now that he would have to tell her, and he wondered how she was going to take it.

  2

  What really mattered, however, was what Mrs Josser was going to say. And she did not try to disguise her feelings. She was all in favour. But, then, she was prejudiced. With the possibility of Ted’s conscription, it seemed unthinkable that any living male should remain. Besides, it wasn’t as though – unlike Ted – he had got anything to keep him. There was no job worthy of being called one; no immediate prospects so far as she could see; and, thank God, no wife and family. It was really the fact of Bill’s wifelessness that pleased her most. She saw, in this, evidence of her own peculiar wisdom. She had, in short, stopped Doris doing something silly.

  And she almost lost her temper when Doris said that she didn’t want Bill to go. It would do Bill good, she insisted: it would be the making of him.

  Mr Josser, however, was very nice and understanding about it when he got Doris to himself for a few minutes.