London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  Chapter LXVI

  1

  Mr Josser found himself put to bed as soon as he got back home. Even the tremendous news of the reprieve was obscured in Mrs Josser’s eyes by the fact that his trouser‐legs were soaking from the knees down. If he had been deliberately trying to make himself ill… she began. But it was no use attempting to argue. There he was tucked up in bed with a cup of hot lemon when he should have been upstairs with Mrs Josser congratulating Mrs Boon.

  But this wasn’t going to be Mr Josser’s funeral. It was Uncle Henry who should have been drinking the hot lemon.

  102.5º F.

  Uncle Henry stood at the window of his bedroom – that large untidy double bedroom that was littered with pamphlets and manifestoes and cuttings out of newspapers – and looked angrily at the thermometer. It was the first time he could remember ever having used it – the little metal case had remained in the dressing‐table drawer undisturbed ever since Mrs Knockell had left him. But, come to that, it was the first time that he could remember ever having been ill. Certainly the first time he had ever felt ill. He had a headache. His heart was hammering. His hands were sticky. And across his chest tight invisible bands had been drawn together. After a further look at the thermometer – which still showed 102.5º – he prescribed himself two aspirins and prepared to open up the shop for Friday’s trading.

  But it was no use. The faint shiverings which he had noticed earlier grew more intense. His fingers – lean, skilful fingers – felt swollen and stupid. And his eyelids had a disconcerting tendency to close as he stood there. Half‐way through the morning he gave up trying to be well, and decided to nurse himself. Leaving the business to the care of the two assistants, he walked over to the chemists and bought himself a large bottle of special influenza mixture. Then, with two more aspirins and with his overcoat spread across him as he lay down on the bed, he left the shop to the assistants.

  It was nearly 3 o’clock when he woke. But instead of feeling better, he felt worse. Even under his overcoat he was still shivering, and the pain in his chest was worse. He gave himself two more aspirins and a double dose of the mixture and made himself a cup of tea. Before he drank the tea he took his temperature again. It was rising steadily. Since this morning it had climbed to just over 103º. And the tea turned out to be better than a silly mistake. As soon as he had drunk it, he was sick.

  Even so, there is no reason to suppose that the chill, or whatever it was, could not have been checked if Uncle Henry had done the sensible thing and called in a doctor. But in all his life, Uncle Henry had never done the sensible thing. And at sixty‐three it is too late to begin. Instead, he took a strong laxative, another double dose of the special influenza mixture, two more aspirins and a thing called a pick‐me‐up which he had had by him for years. With this mixture of rubbish inside him he retired to bed again and set the alarm clock for 5 o’clock to be ready for Covent Garden in the morning.

  That night – it was the beginning of ten nights and days that were largely indistinguishable – he suffered strange and disturbing thoughts. The shiverings continued, despite the fact that he had crept in under the bed clothes with his coat and trousers on. But, by now, there was more than shivering to contend with. The bed had somehow become detached from its moorings and was wandering crazily about the floor. After a while, enjoying its new mobility, it did more than merely nose round the corners. It floated. Floated and returned to the floor every so often with a sudden bump. But even this was not the worst. Inside his mind, terrible things were happening. He was being marched over. Lying there in the lonely front bedroom of his shop in the High Street, endless armies in field‐grey were tramping across him. He kept tossing from side to side of the bed to avoid the Panzer divisions that kept appearing suddenly from behind the wardrobe.

  Sometime during the night he put the light on and tried to take his temperature again. But his fingers were thicker and clumsier than ever and he dropped the thermometer. He heard the tinkle of the glass as it broke on the oil‐cloth beside his bed. And then, without even switching off the light, he returned beneath the bed‐clothes to the world of nightmares. There was an execution in progress now and he was striving desperately to cut the rope.

  Then the execution vanished like the Panzer divisions, and he was back in Covent Garden Market again, going through the fragrant lofty halls, buying a couple of cases of apples here, a crate of bananas there, and a box of cut flowers elsewhere. But this didn’t last long enough. The alarm‐clock had roused him before he had finished buying.

  Dressing was not difficult because all his clothes were still on him. And shaving presented no difficulty because he never shaved until he had come back from market – Covent Garden is always an affair of black jowls in the early morning. He even managed to keep down a cup of tea which he made himself. But he felt far from well, very far from well, he told himself, as he began to go down the stairs. There seemed to be things in his way and he couldn’t avoid them. He had to hold on to the banisters to support himself. And by the time he had emerged into the little shop, which smelt overpoweringly of earth and onions and the skins of oranges, he could go no further. He made his way at the third attempt into the little cash‐desk and picked up the telephone. Then he read the instructions as though he’d never seen them before, and dialled O. After the third attempt, the thing worked and a voice answered.

  ‘This is Henry Knockell speaking,’ Uncle Henry said slowly and distinctly. ‘I’m ill and I need help. I’m all alone.’

  Then when the voice at the other end asked him where he lived, Uncle Henry proceeded to talk it down. He went on about capital punishment and air‐borne infantry and the Panzer divisions that were in the bedroom.

  2

  It is an organised community, London. Wonderfully organised. Nothing can ever happen there without other people knowing about it. Take Uncle Henry, for instance. His disjointed telephone call was traced through the exchange. And by 8.30 there was a policeman on the doorstep to see what was going on. By 9.15 the ambulance had arrived and carted Uncle Henry off to the City Hospital. And by a quarter to twelve there was a telegram for Mrs Josser in Dulcimer Street to tell her what had occurred.

  Mrs Josser wept when she received it. Wept because of the sheer suddenness of the shock. And also because her conscience was troubling her. She reproached herself bitterly. It was all too plain now how short‐sighted she had been in thinking only of Mr Josser. If he had come back home soaked through, it was obvious that Uncle Henry must have been just as wet. And she had never given him a thought. The whole incident was just one more vivid piece of proof that men left to themselves were feckless and unreliable.

  Clearly she would have to go along to the hospital at once to see if they were looking after him properly. But how? Mrs Boon still couldn’t be left for a single minute. And Mr Josser, after his chill, certainly wasn’t well enough to look after her. Unless Connie – who had tired noticeably of her role of sick‐nurse – could be found, there would be nothing for it but to ask Mrs Vizzard to sit with the poor woman. And Mrs Vizzard wasn’t on speaking terms with Mrs Boon.

  In the end, it was Mr Puddy who sat with Mrs Boon. He brought his lunch down with him and ate it with her. She was a quiet sort of person, Mrs Boon, and she didn’t interrupt him. Indeed, throughout the whole meal, she made only one remark.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said at last, as Mr Puddy was thumbing up the cake‐crumbs. ‘There wasn’t anything to worry about, was there? I knew my Percy would be all right.’

  After a bit of discussion, Mr Josser finally persuaded Mrs Josser to let him go with her. It was the first time he’d been out since his soaking and she gave him permission only if he wrapped up properly. In consequence it was a bulky, muffled figure that sat beside her on the bus.

  ‘Just fancy,’ the figure kept saying. ‘Poor old Henry. Let’s hope it isn’t anything serious.’

  Even though it was really lunch‐time when they got there, they were allowed i
n straight away – which, as Mrs Josser whispered to her husband, just showed how bad Uncle Henry must be.

  But they need not have hurried. He didn’t know them. Even made no attempt to know them. He was lying on his back – his eyes closed, breathing fast and heavily. The flush on his cheeks was just because of something that the doctor had given him, the nurse said. And she added that they could come again in the evening.

  As it turned out, it was only the first of ten similar visits that they were to pay him.

  3

  But where had Mr Squales been all this time? Why hadn’t he gone along with the rest of them for the presentation of the petition?

  The answer is that he couldn’t go because he wasn’t there. He had left the evening before for Chiddingly. And what was more he was still there. Three whole days of the good life now lay behind him, and he was due to leave to‐morrow. In his philosophic way he tried not to think about the return. And, trying hard enough, he succeeded.

  At the present moment he was sitting in Mrs Jan Byl’s blacked‐out conservatory. The scent of the orchids was a little overpowering, and it made him feel sleepy. But he was blissfully happy. Sitting back almost full‐length in the wicker chaise‐longue he had that feeling of rich and perfect contentment that comes of knowing that there is a drink all ready at one’s elbow, and another one to be had simply by making it clear that the first one has been finished.

  He was really doubly content. For this time he hadn’t had to ask to be invited. Quite unprompted by him, Mrs Jan Byl had written suggesting it. And Mr Squales basked in the arrangement.

  ‘No‐o‐o‐o,’ he had just said slowly in answer to Mrs Jan Byl’s last question. ‘Not exactly working. Merely experimenting.’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘And most of the night,’ he told her. ‘It’s a long road.’

  He would like to have added that the pavements were not exactly laid with gold. But the moment did not yet seem ripe for it. Above all, he did not want to give the appearance of trying to rush things.

  And in any case Mrs Jan Byl was already speaking.

  ‘But sometimes there is a human life at the end of the road, isn’t there?’ Mrs Jan Byl asked quietly.

  ‘Er?’

  Mr Squales was startled. He cocked himself up on one elbow and looked across at her. To his amazement, she was staring at him in breathless admiration.

  ‘Don’t imagine that I hadn’t read this,’ Mrs Jan Byl warned him, holding out a folded newspaper. ‘I was only waiting to see if you were going to tell me yourself.’

  Mr Squales was sitting right up now.

  ‘May… may I see!’ he asked.

  It was the lady feature‐writer’s article that Mrs Jan Byl had somewhere got hold of. And, when Mr Squales saw it, he almost snatched it from her hand. Somehow or other he had missed it himself because he had forgotten which paper she represented and after buying the Express and the Mail and the Mirror at the station he had given up. But there it was. And very charmingly phrased, too.

  ‘Behind this last minute effort to save the car‐bandit murderer,’ the article ran, ‘is… dark, aquiline, bass‐voiced medium, Enrico Qualito. Temporarily forsaking the séance room for the public rostrum, this modern Rudi Schneider’s flowing signature adorns the first page of the petition now being presented…’

  The rest seemed to be all about the Rev. Headlam Fynne and Uncle Henry, and Mr Squales lost interest.

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps I did play my part. I may not have been unuseful.’

  ‘You saved him,’ Mrs Jan Byl replied emphatically. ‘That’s what you did.’

  ‘I… like to think so.’

  ‘But tell me,’ Mrs Jan Byl said, leaning over towards him, ‘after so much excitement, how could you bear to come away in the middle of it? How could you tear yourself away to come down to see an old woman in the country, when you didn’t know what the outcome would be?’

  This was a bit of a stumper for the moment. Until Mrs Jan Byl had mentioned it, Mr Squales had forgotten all about Percy. He shaded his eyes with his hands while he was thinking.

  ‘But I did know,’ he answered at length. ‘I came down knowing that my work was done.’

  ‘Knowing it?’

  Mr Squales nodded.

  ‘I often think,’ he said, ‘that Time is like a wheel, really. It revolves and what was once the past becomes the present. We have only to turn it backwards and there is the future facing us, doncher know?’

  Why had he said ‘doncher know?’ It was little vulgarities like this that was always spoiling even his best remarks. But Mrs Jan Byl was apparently ready to overlook it.

  ‘You really are a most interesting man, professor,’ she told him. ‘That’s just what I’ve always believed about Time. Only I always think of it as a great river. A great river flowing in a circle.’

  Mr Squales smiled back at her.

  ‘Wheel or river, it’s all the same thing,’ he said magnanimously. If she had said that it was a moving staircase he wouldn’t have contradicted her.

  Mrs Jan Byl shifted her chair imperceptibly towards him. It was more of a gesture than an actual movement.

  ‘Sometimes I think that I shall never go back to London,’ she said. ‘Not even after the war’s over. Living here among the birds and the flowers one is somehow so much closer. To the spirits, I mean.’

  Mr Squales yawned. The odour of the lilies all round was practically anaethetising him. And then he realised what it was that she had said. In a single sentence she had all but obliterated his whole professional future.

  ‘It’s certainly a very nice little bit of property you’ve got here,’ he agreed unenthusiastically.

  ‘Boanerges tells me to stop here,’ Mrs Jan Byl said simply. ‘Boanerges?’

  Mr Squales squared himself. He smelt a rival.

  ‘My spirit guide,’ Mrs Jan Byl explained. ‘He often comes to me. It was Boanerges who told me to ask you here.’

  Mr Squales sighed.

  ‘Dear Boanerges,’ he said.

  ‘And you must come down more often,’ Mrs Jan Byl went on. ‘Perhaps you’ll bring Boanerges back to me. Sometimes he’s naughty. He stays away for weeks.’

  ‘Boanerges ’ll come all right,’ Mr Squales told her. ‘I… I feel it.’ And beneath his breath – at least he hoped that it had been beneath it – he added: ‘Come? He’ll practically live here.’

  As he said it he remembered Dulcimer Street. Remembered Dulcimer Street, and remembered Mrs Jan Byl’s remark about coming down more often.

  Why couldn’t he be like Boanerges?

  Chapter LXVII

  1

  Considering the delirium that had gone before, Uncle Henry’s end was peaceful enough. After another bad night dreaming of total war and tall priests in black habits, he had rallied. The mists cleared away and he knew himself for what he was – a very sick man. Even a dying man. He asked where he was, how long he had been there and what was the matter with him. He also asked for Mrs Josser, and didn’t seem surprised when he was told that she was expected along at almost any moment. His rationalness and sanity quite startled the little nurse who had known him only when he was damply raving. He looked about him for a few minutes and then addressed her.

  ‘Do these screens mean that I’m for it, young lady?’ he asked.

  She told him pertly that screens didn’t mean anything of the sort – that they were only put there to keep the other patients from disturbing him, in fact. And she fastened a fresh piece of sticking plaster on to his lip to keep the little oxygen tube in place. Then she tried to slip away to tell the Sister that No. 18 was back in his senses again.

  But, on the way, Uncle Henry stopped her.

  ‘And you might bring me a piece of paper and a pen,’ he told her. ‘I shall want witnesses.’

  The Sister came along as soon as the Nurse called her. She recognised this sudden recovery for the bad sign that it was. She wouldn’t hear of pen and paper until Uncle Henry
himself had explained things to her. Then she sat down and wrote to Uncle Henry’s dictation.

  ‘I, Henry George Knockell, greengrocer and fruiterer,’ – Uncle Henry insisted on the ‘greengrocer and fruiterer’ – of Dalston High Street,15 being in my right mind,’ he said slowly, and distinctly, ‘do hereby bequeath everything of which I die possessed, both moneys in the bank and my aforesaid business, to my sister Emily Josser of 10 Dulcimer Street in the Borough of Kennington, subject only to that she pay my two assistants Alfred Armitt and Charles Evans the sum of twenty‐five pounds apiece if they be in my employ at the time of my decease. Signed… Witnessed… Witnessed.’

  Then he closed his eyes and lay back, exhausted. He was too weak for the moment even to sign his name at the foot of the piece of notepaper. But suddenly the eyelids flickered and a trace of colour returned to his cheek. At the thought of being able to score off organised religion he had rallied.

  ‘And put in this bit,’ he said. ‘I want no clergyman and no religious service. Nor do I want flowers or any mourners. My body is to be cremated and the ashes scattered…’ He went on to say something that sounded like ‘superstitions and unhygienic Christian burial’ but his voice trailed off and the nurse could not follow him.

  This time he was scarcely breathing at all. But he was pleased with himself. Very pleased. He had always entertained a deep and burning contempt for all lawyers, as well as for all clergymen, and it was gratifying to know that on his death‐bed he could beat them at their own game and in their own language. The will, very formal looking with its signatures and the date – the Sister had put that in as Uncle Henry had overlooked it – was left at his request propped up against the water jug. He felt no false shame in the matter and he wanted to tell his sister how much to ask for the business. In his impulsive, enthusiastic fashion Uncle Henry was quite looking forward to dying as soon as he could get the details settled.