London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  What was more, the rooms upstairs were all ready. There wasn’t a thing more that needed doing to them. And it all happened just as Mrs Vizzard had threatened. She insisted on showing them to him in their finished state. With fingers laced romantically – it was Mrs Vizzard who thrust her hand in his – they went up and inspected them together. It had not been Mr Squales’ idea, this visit, and it had got him down. It had saddened him unutterably. The little room at the side – Percy’s room – that had been made into a dressing‐room for him, was bad enough. All Mr Squales’ clothes, the clothes that Mrs Vizzard had given him, were now arranged so neatly, so methodically, that he realised gloomily that in future even if he mislaid a sock or a tie it would be missed immediately. As for pawning anything… It was the end of all privacy and personal pride, that room.

  But it was nothing to the bedroom. That was terrific. No sooner had he peered inside than he felt himself sweating. A ponderous sepulchral magnificence hung over the apartment. Standing there in the doorway, he realised that it was really the late Mr Vizzard’s bedroom that he was regarding. That peep was really a glimpse into the dead past. The furnishings had about them a genuineness, a solidity, that could only have come from within the trade itself. The big mahogany double bed with its massive claw‐feet looked cold and ominous like a converted sideboard.

  ‘Aren’t… aren’t you going to say anything?’ Mrs Vizzard asked softly.

  Mr Squales pulled himself hurriedly together.

  ‘What is there left for me to say?’ he asked.

  Mrs Vizzard caught her breath.

  ‘You might say that you’re looking forward to the day,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s not long now.’

  There was a pause. An awkward pause. Then he recovered himself. ‘Looking forward to the day,’ he repeated, very low in his throat like a church organ peeling. ‘I think of nothing else.’

  Chapter LXXVI

  Bill had got embarkation leave. That was why Doris was there at King’s

  Cross waiting for him.

  The train was late. Very late. Nearly two hours out of the forty‐eight had gone already in simply standing at the barrier of the arrival platform. Not that Doris was the only one who was lounging about like that. The gloomy cavern of the station was full of tired men and drooping women all waiting patiently for someone. On one of the seats by the indicator there was a woman with a baby. She had been there since seven.

  And it was after ten o’clock already. Outside, the light had faded from the evening sky and King’s Cross was settling down to its nightly blackout. The platform lamps, like so many blue inverted night‐lights had been turned on by the stationmaster and made a melancholy and futile star‐shine of their own. Through the murk, the word ‘BUFFET’ on the tea‐room door showed up magically in 6‐inch letters cut out of cardboard. Every ten seconds or so the word would disappear altogether as a soldier, carrying the war on his back, pulled the door open and went inside.

  It was the same wherever you looked. Tired, thirsty soldiers. Soldiers going, soldiers coming. The tramp of their boots mingled with the smell of train oil and the hiss of high‐pressure steam. It might have been the Tottenham Court Road and not the Siegfried Line that they were going to storm at any moment.

  Doris had drunk her third cup of coffee and didn’t want another one. It wasn’t anybody’s fault that it was bad coffee: it was just that things worked out that way in wartime. A thin scalding stream of something that tasted of nothing gushed out of the urn into the chipped cup, the girl behind the counter popped in a chip of sugar with her fingers, and gave a whisk round with a captive spoon. And that was that. All the other spoons were missing.

  At 10.20 the train was signalled and Doris took up her place at the barrier again. It would probably still be some time before the train was actually in. But she was too excited to wait anywhere else. Absurdly excited. And in consequence she felt slightly sick. But that may have been because she hadn’t eaten any lunch. She had been so sure that she would be having dinner with Bill that she stayed in at lunch‐time so that she could be sure of getting off early. And now it was supper‐time already. Just when every second was precious, when things like honeymoons and normal married life were being handed out by the thimbleful, the railways went and poured a whole evening down the drain for you.

  The lights on the front of the engine appeared suddenly at the far end of the platform and the crowd came to life again. The women stopped drooping and ticket collectors turned up professionally from nowhere in particular to safeguard the interests of the shareholders.

  As soon as the train stopped, the doors opened and out poured – soldiers. With gas‐mask and knapsack and tin‐hat and water‐bottle and bayonet and bandoliers slung about them, and clutching a rifle and a kit‐bag, they came lurching through the murk like ghosts from Passchendaele.

  At first Doris could not see Bill anywhere. Then she spotted him. He came right towards her but, at the last moment, the woman next to her claimed him. And that happened again. Bill, unmistakably Bill, turned into someone quite different. In those uniforms every one had mysteriously been transformed into one and the same person. The platform was full of Bills, all in khaki and all lugging a floppy oversize valise.

  When Bill did at last come up to the barrier, Doris wondered how she could ever have mistaken anyone else for him. His arms as they went round her had the old familiar feel and it was the same voice that was in her ears again. She clung to him. But for some reason or other she was crying. Large, disconcertingly wet tears were running sideways down her cheek into her mouth. ‘God, what a fright I shall look: I shall look awful,’ she thought. And as she stood there she was aware that the gloom all around her was full of other figures embracing. Small women were being absorbed in great bear‐like hugs, and raw looking privates, in uniforms which didn’t fit anywhere, were fastening themselves in an orgy of reunion on to promising young ladies with a lot of fair hair worn over their shoulders. The sound of big smacking kisses came through the darkness from all sides.

  But that was only half the story. Because in the darkness there were just as many other couples saying good‐bye. It was all part of the crazy pattern of the thing. One train full of soldiers came rolling in from the North and deposited its garrison in London while from another platform another train, also full of soldiers, was drawing out to keep up the occupation of the North. Altogether it was as though someone who had a grudge against home‐life had thrust a large ladle into England and given the place a stir. It was the Schlieffen plan itself in operation inside England.

  But with Bill’s arms round her, Doris had given up thinking about other people. He was there, and that was all that mattered. The magic of having him had worked and she had stopped crying now.

  ‘Oh Bill, it’s heavenly,’ she said. ‘It’s just… just… heavenly.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s go and eat something.’

  There wasn’t a taxi. And it was in the Underground that she noticed what was wrong with him. Bill had grown himself a moustache. A neat clipped moustache like a colonel’s. It didn’t seem to belong to him. And what was so puzzling was that in some ridiculous way he appeared to be proud of it. He kept running his thumb down it as though, now that he had it, the thing had to be petted. The moustache made Doris cross. It was something that he had done without telling her. And it contrived to separate him from her. From certain angles he simply didn’t look like Bill at all. And there were other changes, too, Doris noticed. The uniform which she had bought with him no longer looked like someone else’s: he was filling it entirely. And the Sam Browne had lost its first newness. Altogether, he was the complete soldier, in fact. The Army had got hold of him, and he belonged to it.

  It was only his voice and his hands that remained the same. They were strong, competent hands and Doris sat looking at them because they were the one thing that really seemed to belong to her.

  ‘Those are my husband’s hands,’ she kept on telling herself.
‘Those are my husband’s hands.’

  And then another disquieting thought came to her.

  ‘Perhaps I’m not the same either,’ she wondered. ‘Perhaps he sees differences in me.’

  But Doris need not have bothered. Bill had one knee pressed up hard against hers and the fingers of her hand were laced tightly between his. He was in high spirits and he kept on squeezing her fingers until it hurt.

  When they got to Piccadilly Circus, he seized hold of her and picked up his case.

  ‘This is where we get something to eat,’ he announced.

  They pushed their way to the door of the carriage and forced a passage through the crowd on to the platform. It might have been the evening rush‐hour instead of eleven o’clock at night from the way people were lined up there. And they weren’t just ordinary people, either. It was as though a new war‐time race of sharks and trollops had suddenly invaded London and made the Underground their headquarters; as though the Passenger Transport Board had called in Hogarth and Daumier, to choose their passengers for them. From one end of the platform to the other, the place had the air of a thieves’ kitchen into which hot, confused men in uniform had irresistibly been lured. It might have been Port Said outside, and not Piccadilly.

  Bill, however, did not appear to be unduly troubled.

  ‘God, it’s good to be back,’ was all he said.

  They went up the escalator behind a Canadian sergeant with his arm round a girl who looked as if she wouldn’t go down too well back in Saskatchewan, and came out in the packed booking‐hall. A couple of sedate policemen patrolled the place seeing nothing, and all round them the armed forces struggled manfully to forget the war. The telephone kiosks were full of soldiers urgently ringing up improbable numbers.

  The blackness of the street outside was sudden and unpleasant. At one moment you were climbing a few concrete steps under a row of dimmed electric lights. And, at the next, you were in the open air, and everything was as dark as the tomb. It was as though someone had slipped up and put a blanket over your head.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ Bill asked. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  And then gradually the darkness opened up and unfolded and they could see the portico of the Atlas Assurance and the vague curving outline of Regent Street. Under the arches, women with the eyes of owls and electric torches which they kept on flashing down at their legs, were assiduously hunting.

  ‘It’s this way,’ Bill told her. ‘There’s the Regent Palace.’

  It was bright and cheerful again as soon as they got inside, almost like stepping out of wartime into peace again.

  ‘This is more like it,’ Bill remarked. ‘This is what I came up for.’ He left Doris for a moment and went over to the reception desk. She thought that he was taking rather a long time when he came back, grinning.

  ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘They don’t trust me. They want to see your identity card, too.’

  ‘But we’re not stopping here…’ Doris began.

  ‘Yes we are,’ Bill told her. ‘I’ve got it all arranged. We’ve had enough hanging about for to‐day.’

  ‘But what about Cynthia?’ Doris began. ‘She’ll be expecting us. So’ll mother.’

  ‘Fortune of war,’ Bill answered. ‘Hold‐up on the railways. Direct hit with a bomb. Lost our way. I was drunk when you met me. Anything you like, only for Pete’s sake stop here with me. This is the rest of our honeymoon.’

  They were in bed together in the darkness. Bill’s arm was under her neck and his other thrown loosely across her.

  ‘Seems more like two years than just a couple of months,’ he was saying.

  His voice was sleepy now and his whole body was placid and inert. It was Doris who was wide awake and sleepless. She tried to rouse him.

  ‘You don’t think anything did… did go wrong, do you?’ she asked. ‘It would be awful if I had a baby with you going away.’

  Bill held her close for a moment and kissed the back of her head. ‘Shouldn’t worry,’ he said sleepily. ‘Only one chance in a million. I’m not such a rotten doctor as all that.’

  Then his embrace loosened again and his breathing became slow and regular. Bill was fast asleep by now.

  But Doris was still awake. Wide awake in fact. She lay there staring out into the darkness. It was a funny world. You married someone and you weren’t allowed to live together. You spent a night in a hotel and you had to prove that you really were man and wife before you were allowed to go upstairs to your room. And finally the possibility of having a baby, which is what you had married for, was the most alarming thing that could come into your mind. It didn’t make sense living life that way. The more you thought of it, the less sense it made.

  Chapter LXXVII

  1

  Doris need not have worried about Cynthia. She was all right. When they didn’t turn up she guessed that they had planned to spend the night together somewhere in town because it would be so romantic that way. She dropped off to sleep thinking about them. And in the morning there was a letter from Ted.

  It was a lovely letter. Everything that a letter from an absent husband could be.

  ‘My own darling Cynthie,’ it ran, ‘I love you more than ever. All night, I think about you. You are my only girl. Don’t be angry if I tell you that I have got Veronica Lake’s picture over my bed. It’s only because she has got hair and shoulders like you. Honest it is, Cynthie. Sometimes I think I can’t bear it any more not having you with me. After the war I want you to have a tight black costume with a white blouse, and I’ve seen some lace nightdresses like I’ve always meant to give you but couldn’t get in London. Have you still got the red shoes with the open toe‐caps? Don’t wear them out before I come home. And don’t have any of your hair off, not even if it’s ever so long. I want to see it right over your shoulder when I get back to Blighty. And now, darling, don’t be angry with me if I say something. Some of the chaps out here can’t trust their wives once they’re away from them. There are two cases in our camp. If I ever heard that there had been anyone hanging round you I would know what to do about it. I would kill him – I mean it – if I found that you had let somebody else come into your life while I wasn’t there. I have bought you a pair of French slippers with real swansdown on them. They’re pink and they’ll look pretty under your pink dressing‐gown. As they’re fives they ought to be all right but I expect they’ll get pinched like everything else. The post is awful. One man had a letter saying his father had died and it took seven weeks to reach him. Two of your letters arrived at once so you can guess how I’d been worrying. Take care of yourself and don’t stop up too late reading. All my love, sweetest, Ted.’

  PS. – ‘Kiss Baby for me and tell her I’m going to buy her a present as soon as I can find anything decent. Keep cheerful and don’t forget what I said.’

  Because it was such a beautiful letter she wanted to read it again. And she didn’t want to re‐read it out there in the kitchen with the washing‐up all round her. So she went through into the drawing‐room. She hadn’t been in there yet this morning. But she didn’t trouble to draw the blinds. She just put the light on and sat down on the couch beside the crumpled evening paper that was left over from last night. Then she started on the letter for the second time. She didn’t mind a bit about Veronica Lake if that was only why Ted had her picture up. She wanted a black costume, too. It was something that she had always wanted, only somehow or other she’d always bought a bright one when the time had come. And the bit about her hair. Ted had always loved her hair. She used to tease him sometimes by saying that she was going to have it shingled.

  When she came to the bit about what Ted would do if anyone else came into their lives, she cried. Cried like anything. But she enjoyed crying over that sort of thing. It was thrilling having a husband who was as jealous as all that. It made life worth living even when he wasn’t there.

  But it was silly, too. What chance had she got to give him any cause to be jealous, even if sh
e wanted to? She’d only been out with a man once since Ted had been away. And that had been to the Co‐op. dance with someone from Ted’s department. What was more Ted had asked him to take her. There had been three of them because he had to take his own wife, too. She wished now that Ted hadn’t said what he had done about being faithful, it made her feel cheap. What right had he got to tell her how to behave? If he didn’t trust her he shouldn’t have married her. Come to that how did she know that Ted had been faithful to her? She did know, of course, because Ted was the sort who would always be faithful. Always and for ever and for ever, because he was built that way. But it just showed that he shouldn’t have written such things. Because then she wouldn’t have had thoughts of that kind about him…

  She’d remember that bit about the red shoes. But it wasn’t really as simple as that. It was just like a man to think that it was. Even if she wore them when Ted came back, she wouldn’t be the same. Her hands were getting awful with all the work she had to do. And looking after Baby, even though she was such a darling, was beginning to tell on her. If Ted wanted to find her as she had been when he went away the best thing that she could do would be to get herself a job as soon as possible so that she could see someone sometimes.

  It was Baby that was the difficulty, of course. But she knew other girls with babies who managed somehow. There were crèches, weren’t there? She’d seen pictures of them in the papers. Hundreds of happy babies all playing under artificial sun‐lamps, while their mothers made munitions and had lunch‐time concerts and things. It wasn’t, as a matter of fact, really munitions that appealed to her. She wanted to be an usherette again. And usherettes were wanted just as much as munition workers. They were advertising for them at the Granada and the Astoria and the Ritz. She could walk into a job anywhere. And then she’d be able to see some decent films while she was actually doing a war‐job, and it wouldn’t seem so much like being buried alive with Baby.