‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll start to‐morrow.’
‘What… what are you going to do?’ Mr Josser asked him.
If Mr Josser hadn’t asked him, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. But, as he listened to Uncle Henry’s answer, he was spellbound. Here, on his very doorstep, it seemed, was a vast adventure, a crusade with banners, and it was all going to happen without him. Quite suddenly, he forgot all his tiredness, forgot about the closed doors, forgot about the timid housewives, forgot even about Mrs Josser. In a flash, he realised that all his life he had been craving for adventures and crusades. He could hold back no longer.
‘You can count me in too, Henry,’ he said to Mrs Josser’s astonishment. ‘I’ll tackle Parliament.’
After that everything was easier between Mr Josser and Uncle Henry. It was only between Mrs Josser and her brother that a coldness lay. She just sat watching them, the two crusaders, as though at any moment she might have to intervene and call the crusade off. Then she spoke.
‘Mrs Boon had better do something herself,’ was what she said. ‘He’s her son. Those R.C.s always stick together.’
It was only a start, of course. But it was significant. Distinctly it showed softening. In the magnetic field of Uncle Henry’s enthusiasm she was being drawn forward irresistibly.
‘Not only the Catholics. All the churches,’ Uncle Henry corrected her. ‘They’re our chief ally, rightly handled.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ Mrs Josser retorted. ‘I have heard different from you in the past.’
‘Even opium,’ Uncle Henry replied coldly, ‘has its uses in emergency. I shall enlist the clergy personally.’ He paused. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do,’ he added, looking hard to Mr Josser. ‘Making up for lost time. I shall sleep here. This’ll be my campaign headquarters.’
2
It wasn’t Mrs Josser but Mrs Vizzard who objected.
Mrs Josser herself had become reconciled to having Uncle Henry in his shirt sleeves sitting at the dining‐room table, surrounded by paper, organising. But Mrs Vizzard would have nothing to do with it. It worried her and she refused even to add her name to the list of signatures.
And, in a way, it was understandable. She still wanted to give Mrs Boon notice. And all this – this fuss – was still further thwarting and frustrating her. If she attempted to turn Mrs Boon out now, she would have to face more than Connie and the Jossers. She would have had to face Uncle Henry as well.
Nor was Mrs Vizzard alone in her disapproval. She had company in Mr Puddy. He had his own views on murder and he was prepared to stand by them.
‘If he dud it, if he dud it I still say,’ he declared, ‘he deserves it. After all, burder’s burder.’
Mr Josser, in fact, was in favour of by‐passing Mr Puddy altogether. But Uncle Henry wouldn’t hear of it. He went up himself. And he was lucky. Mr Puddy was just sitting down to a cooked tea and he was so anxious to get on with it while it was still hot that he would have been ready to sign anything.
Even Mr Squales signed eventually. He slipped up quietly without telling Mrs Vizzard, and added his name in his broad backward‐sloping writing. It looked rather well on the page and he stood back for a moment studying the effect. With the right pen and the right coloured ink he could toss off a signature second to none.
And Mr Squales’ signature together with Connie’s and the Jossers’, accounted for the whole of No. 10. No one had approached Mrs Boon for her signature. That would have seemed somehow indelicate, and they let the list go out without it.
As it happened, Mr Josser very nearly stepped off with the wrong foot when he came to tackle Parliament. He tried to introduce something about the petition at the end of an answer to a question about the relations of His Majesty’s government with Turkey. The Speaker, however, flatly ruled it out of order. After that Mr Josser simply had to sit there patiently on the front bench for another half‐hour while one by one the members slipped away to their homes, taking their signatures with them. In the Wrexford Arms afterwards Mr Josser was able to assemble the few that remained, and he got their signatures without much difficulty. But there were only eleven of them, including Mr Speaker.
But he need not have worried: Uncle Henry was doing well enough for two. Like Mr Josser he had met with his rebuffs. But Uncle Henry had buffeted back. In his crusade of the churches he had started rows with a Methodist lay‐preacher, a low Churchman, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Plymouth Brother. And through sheer perseverance he had at last found what he wanted. He had found the Rev. Headlam Fynne, the Vicar of St Jude’s.
Fanatic recognised fanatic, and the two of them went into a corner straightaway to discuss things. They made a strange pair, Uncle Henry in his cycling knickers and the Rev. Headlam Fynne in the nearest thing to a monk’s habit that the Church of England would stand for. But between them they certainly got things going. The vicar announced that he would preach on capital punishment at both Mass and Benediction on Sunday and have the petition at the church door ready for people to sign as they went out. He also offered to speak at any public meeting, hall or street corner, that Uncle Henry cared to arrange. He spoke mysteriously, too, of detailing key members of the Junior Guild of God, of which he was secretary, to set up centres of outcry, as he called them, in other parts of London.
‘If we are prosecuted for what we do, at least we shall have the thrill, the joy,’ he said, ‘of knowing that we have dared. It is something to be a dare‐devil for once in His name.’
When Uncle Henry came away from the Rev. Headlam Fynne he had that peculiar satisfaction which only born organisers know – the satisfaction of having got something started. In consequence, he was in a good temper, almost jocular in fact, over supper. He became human and intimate and told them about other campaigns that he had conducted – campaigns against the eviction of a widow and her four children, against the destruction of an ancient doorway, against the closure of a footpath, against Sir Samuel Hoare, against the sale of song‐birds in cages. All his life he had been campaigning against something, and he recognised in this, the campaign for a human life, the ultimate challenge to all campaigners. Uncle Henry, in short, was in clover.
The only thing that rattled him was Mrs Boon. Mrs Josser insisted on having her down for companionship’s sake; and Mrs Boon obediently came. Supported into the room she sat down in Mr Josser’s chair apparently oblivious of everything that was going on around her. She was not excited. She was not grateful. She was not even – so far as he could judge – disturbed.
‘Everything’ll be all right,’ she said several times. ‘I know it. Don’t you worry.’
3
If there was one person with a right to worry, it was Percy. There was a small pocket calendar that Scottie had lent him, and he had been marking the days off. He knew just where he had got to by now.
But at the present moment there was nothing wrong with him. He was dreaming. And a very nice dream, too, while it lasted. He wasn’t doing anything much, just waiting at a bus stop. Then a piece came along, walking slowly like she wanted to be followed. He went after her. And, sure enough, it was the Blonde. They had a drink together and talked about everything that had happened to them both. The struggle in the car and the fatal blow and the fire and all that. And it turned out that the Blonde didn’t mind a bit. She’d forgiven him completely. Just to prove it she kissed him full on his lips. And he was surprised to find how a dead girl could kiss. Because, of course, he knew all the time, the way people do know things in dreams, that she was dead. It was because of the kiss, the first kiss he had been given for more than two months, now that he woke up crying. Woke up crying, and went on crying even after he was awake.
Scottie didn’t take any notice of him at first. Just left him so that he could get over it. Then when it didn’t stop and Scottie couldn’t stand it any more, he got up and went over to him.
‘Don’t take on so,’ he said kindly. ‘It isn’t going to hurt. It’
s all over so quickly you won’t feel anything.’
Chapter LXIII
Mr Puddy had cut his hand. On his birthday, too. And with a tin‐opener. He had been levering away at a prime cut of Alaskan salmon when the metal shaft of the opener went clean up through the wooden handle, and lacerated him. What made it so peculiarly maddening was that the tin, except for a small corrugated indentation in one side was practically as it had left the canners. Which meant that Mr Puddy, one‐handed – and left‐handed at that – had been forced to sit down to plain bread and margarine, while his fish‐course stood on the table beside him as inaccessible as if the salmon were still alive and jumping the falls of its original Columbia River.
‘What a bishap,’ Mr Puddy told himself sadly. ‘On be birthday, too. Fifty‐dide and no sabbud.’
And, because it was three o’clock in the morning, he was cut off from all hope of assistance. A night‐watchman’s is a solitary calling. He has to be practically as self‐supporting as a trapper. There he was, right in the centre of London with ten millions of people all round him, and he couldn’t so much as borrow a tin‐opener from one of them.
The sense of separation – simply because, when he was on the job, every one else was off it – played upon his nerves sometimes, and left him jumpy.
‘Subbose I was to fall ill, boisoning or hard‐addack or somethig like that,’ he reflected. ‘I should just lie here till bordig. I should be on the floor when the gleaners cub id.’
It was because of these grim fancies that Mr Puddy always tried to break up the silent monotony of watching. He was careful to keep his mind off himself. And he did it mainly by spacing out his eating. Coming on duty, winter and summer alike, he always began by getting himself a drop of something hot. And it was the simple fact that it was hot that rendered him so estimable. His predecessor in the basement cubby‐hole, and his predecessor before him, had both lost their jobs precisely because it was a drop of something cold that they were always taking. And that in watch‐keeping circles is ruination. A drunk night‐watchman – even a night‐watchman with liquor on his breath – is professionally finished. Once discovered, he is unemployable.
But Mr Puddy had got it all planned out. First, there was the cup of something hot, the freshener. Then, because it is a long stretch from 6 o’clock to midnight, he always had a snack round about nine – say a small pie of some sort, or a few sausages, and an apple – and then his sandwiches at ten to twelve. The real sit‐down, the tinned stuff, came on at three, when the human spirit is at its lowest. He took a drop more of something hot – cocoa usually – at six just to keep him going. And, with a parting cuppa for the road at 7.30, he was through. In between, he made his rounds and washed‐up.
The washing‐up was all right, because he was used to it. It was the hours of inspection that got him down. There was something positively eerie about patrolling that enormous building all alone at night. And not only eerie, but fatiguing. Imagine yourself doing it: nearly an acre of floor‐space, four storeys and a basement, and no lifts working after 6.30. No lifts, and fifty‐eight stairs.
It was partly his weight that did for him. Whereas a little fellow could have nipped up and down those stairs without noticing it, Mr Puddy climbed slowly and suffered. Climb he had to, because there was a blasted clocking‐on device on every floor that had to be punched when he got to it, and wouldn’t punch itself if he didn’t get there.
So, punctually at twelve every night, he would set out, ready for action, carrying the full regalia of his office – his electric‐torch, his bunch of keys, his police‐whistle. If any burglar had been about Mr Puddy would certainly have alarmed him. There was nearly 15 stone of him, remember. And his bowler hat on top seemed to carry with it something official, a touch as it were of the plain‐clothes man.
But rats are no respecters of even a bowler‐hat; and the rats are one of the big chief worries in tea importers’. Sometimes in the night Mr Puddy had to take a stick to them. Then the silence, the unnatural, unearthly silence of the tea‐warehouse would be shattered by the sound of blows. That would be Mr Puddy banging on the side of one of the packing cases to scare away the vermin. He rarely came to closer grips with them than that, rarely hit out at one of the rats themselves, because they were too nimble for him.
But, for the most part, these patrols of Mr Puddy’s were uneventful. It was, indeed, precisely this uneventfulness that rendered them so uncanny. He would open the heavy sliding door at the end of one of the storage bays and there, stretching before him in the tunnel of light from his torch, would be the endless double row of cases, all the same size, all neatly stacked one on top of another, all glittering along the reinforced metal edges. It was the unvarying sameness that got him down. For, at the end of the long bay, there would be another corridor of cases just like the first one. And another after that. And another after that.
Sometimes the cases threatened to come together and crush him, so that Mr Puddy – on one of his bad evenings, that is – would simply walk as fast as he could to the clocking‐in machine at the far end, punch it and examine the next bay without actually walking the length of it. Not that you could blame him. It was a queer business, being the one living creature, except for the rats, among these multitudes of boxes. And, in the light of his torch, the boxes cast long fantastic shadows. All connection with the tea‐trade disappeared, and the Mr Puddy, night‐watchman no longer, might have been exploring the deserted midnight ruins of Thebes or Karnak.
There was, of course, always the smell. On the first floor you were greeted by rich Darjeeling and ripe Assam; on the second by the cheaper Chinas; on the third by the really aromatic stuff, the Pekoes and Lapsangs; and down in the basement by dust, sweepings and dried grass‐stalks. Even if you shut your eyes you could still tell what floor you were on. But when Mr Puddy had a cold even that clue went, too.
To‐night, his birthday‐night, had been a particularly bad one for him. Low‐blooded and out of sorts when he had started work, the incident of the salmon had depressed him more even than he had realised. It seemed yet another piece of unsuccess with which to taunt himself. Shuffling along the bays, torch in hand, he couldn’t help comparing the present with other and better birthdays that he had known.
‘Whad I ought to have by rights,’ he grumbled to himself aloud, ‘is a bilk‐round. A bilk‐round with a norse. Something on wheels. And a little shob. A shob with an assistant. Then I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be in bed. And asleeb.’
He turned the corner and his torch alighted on a large red notice that said: ‘DANGER OF FIRE: NO SMOKING.’
In his present state, the notice annoyed him.
‘Thad’s another thing,’ he told himself. ‘No smoging. Might as well be in brison. I can tell the gompany this mudge – wodgeman or no wodgeman, if the warehouse gadges fire, it gadges fire. I’m not going to stob here and put it out for adywud.’
He had reached the last bay by now and his tour, save for one small extra excursion, was over. Once during the night he was supposed to go outside and examine the main gates to the yard. And this was something that he always did.
Except when it was foggy.
Or very cold.
Or raining.
Chapter LXIV
1
The extraordinary thing about the petition was that it wasn’t Uncle Henry’s petition any longer. It was the Rev. Headlam Fynne’s.
Within twenty‐four hours of the enrolment of this formidable new recruit, Uncle Henry had been thrust to the wall; the character of the street‐corner protest meetings had changed beyond recognition – they now opened with a prayer and had a hymn to end them; and even the campaign notepaper had altered. The heading now read: A PETITION FOR CHRISTIAN CLEMENCY ADDRESSED BY THE OBEDIENT CITIZENS OF LONDON TO THE KING’S MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY. Admittedly, it had taken hours of hard committee work to get Uncle Henry to agree. But the fact remained that he had agreed. He had, in short, been talked down, over‐ruled and trampled
under.
Even so, had the Rev. Headlam Fynne been content with a prayer here and an amendment there, the petition would probably have gone the quiet unheeded way of most petitions. But he was not content. During the terrifyingly short time that remained, he forsook everything – Bible classes, Zenana teas and whist‐drives – and, like the Good Shepherd, strove for the one strayed lamb. He lived the part, and he dressed the part. In particular, dressed the part. He didn’t wear his lounge suit once. His flowing black robe and his buckle shoes were set out beside his bed each night and he emerged each morning in full habit. Not that it was vanity that prompted him. The Rev. Headlam Fynne had lived through that stage long ago. It was sheer showmanship and common sense that prompted him. He knew from long experience that there is nothing that collects a crowd quicker than a clergyman in a habit. It awakens whole centuries of prejudice.
But it was the scarlet cross that finally did the trick. Nearly eight feet tall and made of plywood, he had previously carried it with him only when preaching in the open. Now he took it with him everywhere. And the sight of an athletic priest – his college oar was hung alongside the crucifix in his little study – dressed like something out of the Inquisition and carrying an eight‐four cross as bright as a pillar‐box, naturally caused a sensation. As soon as he left the vicarage, crowds of children – all that the L.C.C. scheme had left – followed him. By the time he reached Dulcimer Street it was like the arrival of the Pied Piper.
The first time Mrs Vizzard saw him through the basement window she could not believe it. She thought that it must be medical students from St Thomas’s, collecting. Then, when the black‐gowned figure swept up the front steps – her front steps – and into the house – her house – she realised that this was one more indignity that the Boons had heaped upon her. And there was worse to it than that. Even after the front door had closed again, the roadway and the railings outside remained littered with unevacuated urchins. And she couldn’t go up and chase them away because that would have been unladylike. Nor could she stay where she was because the sight was unbearable. In the result, she withdrew. Shamed and humiliated, she threw herself upon her bed.
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