London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  She wished now that she hadn’t let Mr Josser go on ahead. It had seemed such a good idea at the time that he should hare off immediately after breakfast and have the rooms aired and a kettle boiling. It had been his idea anyway. She recognised now, however, that she needed him. If Doris could have been there it would have been all right. But that was out of the question because Doris was at the office. Even Cynthia would have been better than no one. Or would have been up to last night.

  As it was, things in that quarter had finally come to a head with faults no doubt on both sides. At the last moment, on the very eve of departure, in fact, Mrs Josser had suddenly decided that Mr Josser had been right and that it was her duty to have Cynthia and Baby at the cottage with them. Over‐crowding or not, it was her duty: and Cynthia had refused. Refused point‐blank. The rejection of the offer and, above all, the reason for the rejection had hurt Mrs Josser profoundly. She told Cynthia as much. Then Cynthia said that Baby wouldn’t feel free in anybody else’s house. And Mrs Josser’s visit, embarked upon in a mood of Samaritan compassion, ended in recriminations. The memory of it came back to her at this moment and raising her hand she brushed away a tear. She had, after all, only been trying to do her duty.

  She was still standing there by the bare window without its curtains, looking down at the large deck‐like top of the moving‐van, when there was a knock at the door and Mrs Vizzard came in. Mrs Josser felt both relieved and ashamed. Ashamed because she had been crying and relieved because it was another human being. She faced Mrs Vizzard.

  ‘I think you’ll find it all in order,’ she said. ‘There’s some paper in the grate. But apart from that I’ve cleared up everything.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you have, Mrs Josser,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘It wouldn’t be like you not to.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Vizzard.’

  It was a formal, absurdly formal, conversation for two women who had known each other for as long as they had. And it was one of those conversations that cannot easily go on.

  ‘I’m sorry to be going,’ Mrs Josser said at last. ‘Very sorry in a way.’

  ‘I’m sorry to lose you,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘It’ll leave a gap.’ There was another pause.

  ‘What I really came up about,’ Mrs Vizzard explained, ‘was to ask whether you’d come down for a cup of tea before you go off.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. Very kind indeed.’

  There was still the same formality about the conversation. Altogether, it was more like two strangers meeting than two old friends parting. And there was a reason for it. In her present state, Mrs Josser didn’t trust herself to say very much. She took one last look round the room, and silently followed Mrs Vizzard downstairs.

  It was the hot tea – served, Mrs Josser noticed, in Mrs Vizzard’s best china – that broke down the awkwardness and restraint. The conversation got round at last to Mr Squales. Over the second cup, Mrs Vizzard looked up suddenly.

  ‘Thirty‐seven pounds ten was what he cost me,’ she announced. ‘Thirty‐seven pounds ten, including three loans and the dinner‐jacket.’

  Mrs Josser drew in her breath.

  ‘It doesn’t bear speaking of,’ she said.

  Mrs Vizzard dropped her eyelids.

  ‘I often wonder,’ she said, ‘what Mr V. would have thought of me. It was his money.’

  As she spoke she lifted her head and regarded the three‐quarter portrait of Mr Vizzard. But there was nothing there to provide a clue. The face with its half‐rainbow of moustache wore the same expression of stolid failure that it had worn for nearly thirty years. There was even a suggestion in the hang‐dog look of the eyes that he was past caring.

  ‘You can only thank Providence it wasn’t more,’ Mrs Josser told her.

  ‘It nearly was,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘He wanted an overcoat.’ ‘The peacock!’

  The words slipped Mrs Josser’s lips almost before she was aware of them.

  But Mrs Vizzard didn’t hear. She was simply staring into space, her lips moving. It was almost as though she were silently adding something up. Then suddenly she spoke.

  ‘Not that I shan’t get it back when I find him. And more besides. If his lady friend wants him she’s got to pay.’

  Mrs Vizzard checked herself abruptly. It was difficult to sound vindictive without also sounding vulgar.

  But Mrs Josser only looked across at her admiringly.

  ‘I respect you more than I can say,’ she told her. ‘Most women in your place would simply have gone to pieces.’

  Mrs Vizzard was looking at her husband’s portrait again.

  ‘So should I if it hadn’t been for him,’ she said. ‘I owe it to his memory to get every penny I can. Mr Barks thinks so, too.’

  There was a pause. Mrs Josser glanced up uneasily at the cabinet clock on the mantelshelf.

  ‘It’s time I was off, Mrs Vizzard,’ she said. ‘That cup of tea was just what I needed. But I really must be going now. I don’t want Fred putting all the things in their wrong places.’

  ‘I’ll come up with you. Just to see you off,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. In the hall, they met Mr Puddy. He was just coming in from shopping. He presented a blurred, indefinite outline because of the paper‐bags. He stood back for Mrs Josser to pass.

  ‘Da‐da for the last dime,’ he said.

  There was a sinister note of finality, of doom almost in his voice that disturbed Mrs Josser.

  ‘Not the last time,’ she said. ‘You’re going to come down and see us.’

  But Mr Puddy only shook his head doubtfully.

  ‘If the drains are still rudding,’ he said. ‘If id isn’t dodal war by then.’

  To cover up the gloom of Mr Puddy, Mrs Josser turned and kissed Mrs Vizzard. It was the first time that the two women had ever kissed. And in normal times they would probably never have done so. But these weren’t normal times. Mrs Josser and Mrs Vizzard had faced a lot together. And, remembering Mr Puddy’s words, Mrs Vizzard might still be facing it. It was terrible leaving her there alone, betrayed, ageing, defenceless. Mrs Josser pulled herself together.

  ‘Say good‐bye to Connie for me,’ she said. ‘Tell her I’m sorry to have missed her.’

  ‘Bissed her!’ Mr Puddy repeated incredulously. ‘She’s god ahead.’ There was silence.

  ‘She’s done what?’ Mrs Josser demanded.

  ‘God ahead,’ Mr Puddy answered. ‘I saw her. Id the vad. Ub with the driver.’

  Chapter LXXXIV

  1

  It was silent nowadays in Dulcimer Street. Suddenly and unnaturally silent. The tall, pale stucco house was full of echoes and bare rooms. It might have been a household of ghosts over which Mrs Vizzard was presiding.

  Not that she wasn’t doing her best to re‐people it with flesh and blood. On the contrary as soon as she had properly realised that the Jossers were going – her mind at the time still had the utmost difficulty in apprehending even the simplest of facts, and kept returning inescapably to Mr Squales – she had advertised the rooms. And she had taken the precaution of re‐curtaining the Jossers’ front windows and the Boons’ so that the house shouldn’t appear to be going downhill. If the place once looked the deserted human derelict that it was, it might – and this was her real terror – become unlettable.

  But in May, 1940, it needed more than curtains at the windows to let rooms in London. Everyone who could get out – the aristocracy of places like Streatham and Golders Green, the real local cream – was going. It was a new evacuation. A second Exodus. And those who remained, the real Londoners who belonged there, weren’t in any mood for moving. They were just holding their breaths and sitting tight.

  And there was another difficulty so far as No. 10 was concerned: there was such an awful lot of it to let. Mr Squales’ room. The Boons’. The Jossers’. She couldn’t, Mrs Vizzard decided, insert just one advertisement to cover the whole lot – it would make her look wholesale like an agency. That would be fatal for the kind of tenant that she
wanted. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to advertise the suites one by one with discretion. And that was terrible. Advertisements simply ran away with money.

  It was because of her panic about money that she was so implacable in her pursuit of Mr Squales. No, not of Mr Squales himself. Of the rich woman who had enticed him. If Mrs Vizzard, jilted and unprotected, was to be forced to sit out the war in Kennington alone, she was going to make somebody pay her for it. That was why she made those frequent visits to Mr Barks to see how his investigations were getting on. But, like the advertisements, it all cost money. She returned each time from Mr Barks’ office, her palms damp and sticky, thinking of the bills to which her impatience was committing her.

  Taken all in, however, it was the silence – particularly at night when both Connie and Mr Puddy were at work – that was the worst. It was then that Mrs Vizzard remembered how full, how lively, No. 10 had always been. Remembered and wept. She might have been living through the first days of widowhood again. And from the way she recalled the Dulcimer Street of last month, it was as though Mrs Josser, tight‐lipped and steel‐spectacled, had been accustomed to keep the whole household awake right into the small hours with lyrics and snatches of gay song.

  Without the Jossers there was desolation.

  And with only three of them – Mrs Vizzard, Connie and Mr Puddy – in the whole house, they tended irresistibly and inevitably to come together. In some mysterious fashion – prompted possibly by a consciousness of the brooding universal danger – they cohered. As the news from France got worse – and this was happening all the time – they became one family. Within a fortnight of the Jossers’ departure, Mrs Vizzard to her own astonishment found not only that she could now tolerate Connie’s company but that she actually looked forward to her visits. And to Mr Puddy’s. She sat there in her front basement sitting‐room listening for a step on the stairs, either a mincing, tripping one or a good solid monumental tramp.

  It was naturally Connie who came the more frequently. She looked in most mornings round about eleven when there was usually a cup of tea and perhaps a dry biscuit going. And it is a tribute to her common sense that she did not abuse the privilege. Recognising her new status for the promotion that it was, she carefully kept the conversation to painless and uncontroversial subjects. Like the war, or the Jossers’ country cottage. For the time being, she avoided all reference to Mr Squales.

  In the result, Mrs Vizzard had heard half a dozen times already how Connie, if she had her way, would land the whole British army and navy and air force right on the coast of Germany and tell them to fight their way to Berlin instead of trying to defend France; and how she was convinced that the walk to the village was going to be too much for Mrs Josser.

  On the latter, she spoke as an expert and an authority. Mr Puddy was quite right: it was Connie he had seen on the van that day. Defying every one, even the driver, she had gone the whole way to Ditchfield. And had Mr Josser been surprised to see her! She had stopped there as long as she could. And it was only that she had to get a lift back in the same van as soon as it was empty that prevented her greeting Mrs Josser on arrival. That, and the fact that she didn’t know quite how Mrs Josser would take it.

  But even if Connie’s repertoire was limited, it was better in a way than what Mr Puddy had to offer. He always had something fresh. Something fresh and disquieting. Sitting up there in his top‐flat, his ear pressed against his wireless‐set for any scrap of battle‐news that the thing would impart to him, he terrified himself. And when it was too much to be borne alone he would come down to tell Mrs Vizzard.

  ‘Id’s all ub,’ he would announce, breathing heavily and emphatically. ‘You cad dell thad frob whad Widstod says. He’s over there dow. Id was a dent. Dow it’s a bulge. There’s dothing cad stob them. The French aren’t drying broberly any longer. Id’s all ub. Our durn next.’

  Despondency and Mr Puddy had become practically synonymous.

  2

  It is dark. And drizzling. And bitterly cold. The sea, which was choppy earlier, has quietened down by now. But the little waves still slap spitefully against the windward side of the vessel.

  In the lee, another and smaller vessel is moored. It is a rubber dinghy. Two seamen are trying to hold it in position while a third lowers something into it. This isn’t easy. In the first place, the side of the submarine bulges so far outward that the dinghy is at more than arm’s length from the stanchion that the seaman is holding on to. Secondly, because it’s dark and because he isn’t allowed to show even a glimmer from a torch, he cannot see what he is doing. And, finally, the thing that he is holding is awkward and intractable. Part of it keeps swinging round and hitting him. It is a bicycle. A second‐hand B.S.A., with a Brookes saddle and Dunlop Magnum tyres.

  Then up the ladder of the conning tower climbs the captain. With Otto Hapfel after him. Otto Hapfel is muffled up in standard‐issue oilskins with a big sou’wester and rubber boots. Underneath it, he’s got on a Burberry raincoat, a suit with a Simpson’s label, a pair of Lilley and Skinner’s shoes and Wolsey socks and underwear. His hat comes from Dunn’s. Everything about him is typically English. And everything has a carefully well‐worn appearance. He wore his going‐away clothes right through the intensive six weeks’ course. They’re a bit bulky under the oilskin. But they’re his uniform now. It’s going to be no picnic in that dinghy. And, even with the tide in his favour all the way he’s got a three and a half mile row ahead of him. Also he’s got exactly two hours in which to do it. Two hours until dawn, that is.

  Before he climbs in he checks the contents of the dinghy. But he need not worry. The navy is always efficient. Everything is there. His rations. His compass. His little parcel of belongings in the fibre suitcase. His smuggled copy of last Wednesday’s Daily Mail. His bicycle. He’s got all that he could need for his English holiday.

  Then he turns and shakes hands with the captain. ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ he says.

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ the captain answers.

  ‘Heil Hitler.’

  ‘Heil Hitler.’

  Both arms go up, and Otto Hapfel turns away. He is momentarily glad that it is dark. That is because he is so much moved. There are tears in his eyes. And he does not want the captain to see them.

  It is very tricky getting into the dinghy. But not entirely unfamiliar. He’s been attending special dinghy classes. Though naturally this is a bit different. This is the real thing. And he is trembling as he takes up the sculls.

  With one of them he pushes himself away from the side. And immediately the outline of the submarine fades into the surrounding darkness. Otto Hapfel is alone. Alone in the German Ocean. The Scottish coast lies somewhere ahead of him. He wonders whether he will ever get to it. And, if he does get there he wonders if he will ever get away again.

  In the darkness and the rain, with the spray freezing as it flecks on to him, he remembers – not his mother, or his Führer, or the mission that brings him here, or even his own danger. None of these. He remembers the colonel‐general’s last words to him.

  ‘In spring England is very beautiful. It is a flower garden…’

  He says the words over and over to himself as he trys to prevent the dinghy from going round in circles. It seems such a long time since War was declared and he was sitting up in the gallery making notes on the South London Parliament.

  Chapter LXXXV

  1

  There was still, however, at least one man in England without a care in his head. There was Mr Squales.

  The improvement in his condition since his stay in the country had been remarkable. Truly remarkable. For a start, he was sleeping better. And, because of all the exercise he was getting going round the garden with Mrs Jan Byl, he was eating better. He was even drinking better. His appearance, too, had improved – though that may have been simply because Mrs Jan Byl had persuaded him to wear his hair just a little shorter. It was now only a two‐inch lock that fell over his forehead when he leant forwa
rd. And, in the result, both she and Mr Squales had been repaid. He looked a new man. Almost like his own younger brother.

  In face of such rejuvenation why should he worry? It was like being twenty again, and there wasn’t a hitch anywhere. The banns had been read the three necessary times, and no one had objected. The church had been booked. And the matter of the ring which might have been awkward, had been solved by Mrs Jan Byl’s generously insisting that it should be ordered from her own jeweller and put down to her account. In the circumstances, he had gone all out for platinum. But it was the thought, he told himself, rather than the value of the thing that mattered. And in this he found it strangely touching that Mrs Jan Byl should have shown such understanding. But there it was. She adored him, and there was no blinking the fact.

  She had even spoken of building him a little den, a kind of Swiss chalet in the grounds so that he could continue with his work undisturbed when visitors came. The idea still amused him but he had thanked her at the time for thinking of it. Indeed, life at the moment was one long thank you. He positively had to be careful not to admire too much things that he didn’t like because they were almost invariably given to him.

  But the sense of freedom, the escape from want, was marvellous. It was this that made him feel so much better in himself. Better and ready for anything. Ready even for to‐morrow.

  2

  Because of the occasion Mr Squales took particular pains with his toilet. He had bought himself a bottle of Rosebay Scalp Stimulator and he spent nearly five minutes rubbing the stuff into his scalp before he started shaving. Then he began lathering himself, patiently and laboriously like a barber. In consequence, it was a good shave the first time round. But not good enough – with hair as dark as his, he looked like an Italian ice‐cream vendor if he wasn’t careful. So he re‐lathered and started again. And it was this time that he cut himself. A great three‐cornered snick came out of the centre of his chin, and he had to staunch the wound with a tuft of cotton‐wool.