Late Night on Watling Street

by Bill Naughton

  “I’ll go for the doctor, Mum,” I said.

  “Stay with me, Alfie,” she said.

  “I’ll go and tell a neighbour, Mum,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m real glad you came,” she said. “I thought I was going to be left alone.”

  “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “Out—enjoyin’ themselves,” she said. “I like to see ‘em happy. Have a peppermint cream, Alfie——” She rested back.

  After a time she was able to speak.

  “I’ve been to the pictures,” she said. “It was a nice film. But when the lights came up I looks round, sees it’s packed, everyone chatting to somebody else, but there’s not a soul I know. I felt ever so lonely.”

  I knelt down beside Mum. “Let me go for the doctor, Mum,” I said.

  “What’s the use? It’s my ticker,” she said. “Anyway, I like restin’ here, Alfie. That heavy polisher did it. They got ones that work by ‘lectricity today. Cor’ stone the crows, I’d never have thought I’d be all alone of a Sat’day night. Good job you came round, Alfie.”

  She smiled at me. Then she closed her eyes.

  I took hold of Mum’s hand. It had the same old cracks, only now it seemed smaller, and colder. And she herself looked tiny. You’d never have thought that sixteen of us had come from that little body.

  I looked down at her. It seemed that lots of little wrinkles suddenly began to dart across her face. All the years of hard work, and the keeping under, of pains and worrying, I expect, and now they were out. And there was a floor polish smell seemed to go with them.

  But when I stooped down and kissed her, I could see nothing of all this had really got hold of Mum. Although her skin was drawn, her face had a good motherly look.

  My old Mum, I thought, she looks real lovely. She does, straight.

  Spiv in Love

  She was a bit of a drip was old Myra, but absolutely gone on me. If she hadn’t have been I don’t suppose I’d have looked on the same side of the street she was on, let alone take her out. But I’m like that I am. I can’t turn my back on a woman who looks up to me and thinks I am somebody, even if, what you might say, I can’t bear the sight of her otherwise. I must admit a bit of the old flannel goes a long way with me, especially if a woman tells me I dress well. I do like anything like that. Another thing I’ve got to have is a woman around that I can be off-hand with, blow my top with if I feel like it, and generally say what I want to, clean or dirty. Most women won’t stand for it, because they ain’t got the savvy to see it don’t matter, and that once you’ve said what you want and done what you want, all the best what was underneath is on top. But them dames that can see it can make a bloke feel at home. Not that I like to go regular with that sort of woman—because as a rule they’re on the scruffy side, and a bloke can’t show ‘em off to his mates in the dance hall or in the pubs, which I like to do with a woman—but if they ain’t good enough for a steady, I do like to have one on the side as a fill-in.

  Although I say it myself as shouldn’t, I was dead smart when I first picked up Myra. I’d a coronation-blue suit at the time, double-breasted, with a pair of dead wide sloping shoulders, and lapels that had piped seams what looked like hand-stitched; suede shoes what looked like real buckskin, coming up a nice shade of London-brown, a Tortilla collar and shirt (they were just coming in again at the time), and I’d nicked a bit out of the back of the collar and stiched it together again, so that it gave the front points a nice spivvy cutaway look. Best of all was my hat, a trilby, gunsmoke-blue, a good three-quarters of an inch off of the brim the whole way round, I’d cut it off, I mean, then pressed it down with a hot iron and damp cloth, so that it had come up with a smashing curl what you wouldn’t know but I’d paid thirty bob for it in Charing Cross Road. And thirty bob would have been a lot for a hat in them days.

  To give you an idea of how I felt about that little gun-smoke-blue, there was one night I got drawn into a rough-house with the Hammersmith gang, and when it was all over my mate looks at me under a lamp-post: “Strewth,” he says, “y’oughter see your eye!” “Never mind the eye,” I says, “where’s my bleedin’ titfer?” And I picks it up out of the gutter only to find that one of the Hammersmith hounds had put his foot right through the crown. I sat on the kerb and fair wept I did when I saw it. I don’t object to knife fights, knuckle-dusters, or bicycle chains come to that, but I object to having my clothes spoilt.

  But to get back to Myra. It was a fluke on her part that she ever struck up with me at all. Eunice, I had a girl went by the name of Eunice at the time, and she was as different as chalk from Myra. Eunice was my steady, and a real classy dresser.

  Now this night I have in mind Eunice wanted to go and see a film I didn’t want to see. Come to anything like that and this Eunice could be dead mulish. She wouldn’t go and see the film I wanted to see. I can’t stand women who want all their own way. So I said to her: “If that’s the way you want it you can hop off this minute,” or words to that effect.

  As luck would have it a 37 bus hove in sight as I spoke, and before either of us had time to change our minds she was on it and the conductor had rung the bell. I watched it out of sight, and said what I thought to the back of it.

  “Eh?” said somebody at my elbow.

  I looked round: “Hello, Myra,” I knew her by name and sight in the dance hall. “Where you off?”

  “Nowhere in partic,” she said.

  “Fancy the Troc?” I said. “It’s a gangster film.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “It’s on me,” I said.

  “That’s good of you,” she said.

  It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she looked at me that started it. I could see she was thinking she’d struck lucky at last. And in a way she had. She was dead flattered. But same as I say, she was only a drip, and I’d no intention of sticking it with her. And as the weeks went by, I kept telling her as much.

  “I’m only passing my time on,” I’d tell her when we were separating at night and she was mentioning arrangements, “until summink better comes along.”

  “Alright, alright, you’ve told me a dozen bleedin’ times,” she’d say. She wasn’t a bit refined when she was needled.

  “Well, I want you to keep it in mind, see,” I’d say. I wanted her to understand I didn’t want her to get any big ideas so far as I was concerned.

  Then like as not she’d say “What kind of collar do you want me to cut out for you on your next shirt?”

  Myra was handy with scissors and needle and thread, and she’d made a few special collars to my fancy. She knew she could always get round me with anything of that kind. So then we’d start talking about the exact specifications of my next collar, cutaway or points and so on. I love talking about clothes I do.

  Now though I was having it off with Myra it did seem to me I was missing something, being as I could do better for myself. Myra wasn’t the sort you could show off anywhere. So I’d been telling myself that I’d have to get back with Eunice. As luck would have it I bumped into her at New Cross one Saturday dinner time, and within five minutes we’d fixed it all up again. I took her to the pictures that very same night, but when I’d seen her home, I nipped off—just out of curiosity—nothing else—round to the old dance hall to see if I could catch Myra going off with a bloke. As it happened, she was on her own; so I took her off to tell her it was all over.

  “That’s the last time, Myra,” I said, as we were coming out of the shop doorway, “I’ve struck up with Eunice again.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said “You won’t be seeing her every night, will you? I could see you in between.”

  “Out of the question!” I said, “I warned you, didn’t I? You can’t say I ain’t been fair. I told you from the start you was only a fill-in.”

  “Here,” she said, tugging at the rolled lapels on my coat, “make it next Thursday at the usual place, and if you don’t come it’ll be al
l right.”

  “Okay,” I said quickly, for I didn’t want them pulling out of shape. “But I can promise you I’ll not be there.”

  “Come—if you feel like it,” she said.

  That’s got rid of you, mate, I thought to myself as I strolled home, and what a relief too! But when Thursday came round I was there waiting for her. Eunice was very good in her way, but it needed a bit of Myra to get her down. That started a caper of meeting Myra on my free nights, and some nights I’d meet her on my way back home. But came one Sunday and she must have had them on her proper:

  “If I’m good enough to meet at half-past eleven,” she said, “I’m good enough to meet at half-past seven; and if I’ll do for a Thursday I don’t see why I’m not up to scratch for a Saturday!”

  “What you hinting at?” It griped me to hear her putting on airs.

  “I’m not playing second-fiddle—”

  “Second-fiddle! blimey, you said that well! You’re bleedin’ lucky to be in the band at all, you are! Second-fiddle—an’ me only seeing you out of sympathy!”

  I was going to give her a swipe, see, to lend weight to my words, when she ups with her mitts and grabs me by the collar and with one mad tug she ripped the lot apart. I all but collapsed on the spot, for just like some people can’t stand the sight of blood I can’t bear to hear anything tearing especially if it’s mine. I put my fingers up to estimate the damage, and at the first touch I knew it was beyond repair. “If I could only lay my hands on you!” I shouted after her. All I got in return was a long-drawn-out raspberry.

  There comes one night about a week later and I’m doing a bit of smoodging with Eunice, when she says to me: “What’re you thinkin’ about?”

  “Who—me?” I says. “What d’you mean, what am I thinking about?”

  “You’ve got something on your mind,” she says. “I can see it by the look in your eyes.”

  “Come off it,” I says.

  “You know what,” she says. “You’ve got that Myra on your mind.”

  As soon as she said it I knew she was right.

  “You know, Eunice,” I said, “I think you’re right.”

  “I knew I was. Goodnight.”

  And it’s been the same ever since. I’ve met a dozen or more Eunices, and though I’ve respected every one I’ve never given them a second thought after packing in. But that blasted little Myra, drip that she is, is still on my mind. Understand me, I don’t want her no more than fly-in-the-air, and I wouldn’t please her so far as put my finger up—that would bring her running—yet the gorge fair chokes me when I think of other blokes going with her.

  The Half-Nelson Touch

  At the time there were three of us—The Cosh, Feline Fred, and myself—working what was known as The Interrupter at wrestling halls up and down the country. In those days there wasn’t an all-in wrestling fan in the country wide to it—and it must have looked a dead hit. Wherever we went it filled the halls—though it was always the promoters and not us that got the dough.

  The Cosh and Feline were billed to meet each other— always the bout after the main one, and the last on the bill. The Cosh, in his purple silk dressing-gown, his name in fancy gold-lettering on the back, would draw the crowd’s goat right from the start, with his swanky tactics: refusing to show his hands, not wanting to wipe the oil from his skin, and turning aside from Feline Fred’s outstretched hand. Fred, slim and fair, would draw approval at once with his modest ring manner. In the third row of the ringside seats I’d be sitting, a simple spectator out for an evening’s sport.

  The first two ten-minute rounds had to be good clean wrestling, with The Cosh coming the worst off, and being flung about a bit by Feline’s clean stylish throws. Feline had to make the first fall of three at the end of the second round. Up for the third round The Cosh had to get dirty. A few low blows, then a quick eye-gouging when the ref’ couldn’t see it, but the crowd could. He used to keep his thumbs doubled-up and press them against the bone of the socket, so that Fred never felt a thing. But he’d come out rubbing his eyes and making out he was half-blinded. Now The Cosh would take advantage, and try to put Fred out with a series of back slams. He used to pick him up and slam him on the mat with a wallop that could be heard all over the place. Feline always landed with shoulders and feet, and it was the soles of his wrestling boots that made the resounding wallop. It was real skilful and needed lots of rehearsing. Time after time he’d hit the floor, and win all the crowd’s sympathy by his gameness in coming up for more.

  In the next round, Feline, after just losing a fall, would recover. Then The Cosh would get really dirty. Biting, kneeing in the groin, foul holds, and kicks. And when he got Feline writhing in agony on the mat, and the crowd on its feet against him, he would run round the ropes making dirty gestures and challenging the entire hall.

  When the uproar was at the worst, that would be my cue. I’d jump up, spring over the ropes, and let The Cosh have a smack clean on the jaw. That used to send them into frenzied applause. Then I’d fling off my coat, roll up my sleeves, and I’d stand there, a British sportsman in grey flannels and open-necked shirt, challenging the dirty Cosh to a fair fight.

  In a fury he’d rush at me, and come straight into a Flying Mare. Then as the cheers went up I’d drive at him on the mat, and fastening him with a Russian Armlock, I’d take him for a ride round the ring, crashing him on the mat at every turn, and him screaming for mercy.

  How the crowd loved it! There wouldn’t be a bloke in the place that didn’t see himself in me—and some got so excited that they’d throw money to me. I once saw a fat chap with tears of excitement running down his cheeks fling a quid in the ring for me!

  When the ref and seconds finally separated us, and the announcer and promoter quietened things down, it would suddenly come out that I was none other than Billy the Kid, and if The Cosh wanted to make something of it I’d be glad to meet him in the ring any time he cared. And in five minutes a match would be announced—a real top of the bill match—between The Cosh and myself.

  “A blood match!” you could hear them saying. “It’ll be worth coming fifty miles to see!” And you couldn’t get them out of the hall, they’d be so excited; and we’d set rumours going that The Cosh and myself had started fighting in the dressing-room and so on.

  When we’d managed to creep out and get back to our digs, we used to have Guinness and Scotch Broth for supper, because we’d got so weary in the stomach from wrestling that all we wanted was liquid stuff. Feline Fred was a teetotaller, and he used to have pobs every night in the week.

  Before going to bed I always read an Edgar Wallace* story. I was crazy about Bosambo and Bones, and Sanders of the River, though I’d read his murder and racing tales rather than look at any other author. Fred used to work for an hour or so on his doll’s house furniture, which he’d been making for years, though nobody knew who for. But the Cosh was a curse with his ironing. He was a very fancy dresser, and the minute we went into any digs he used to grab all the wardrobe space and hang the rest of his togs on coat hangers round the room. He’d some stuff that smelt like sulphur, which he used to stick into his little iron and set it on fire, and he’d iron away for a couple of hours at a stretch, one pair of trousers after another, and coat lapels and all that kind of stuff, with his sulphur stuff stinking the place out.

  Next day we’d move off to a town north, or east, or west, and work The Interrupter trick again. Of course we always got back for the blood match, and this never failed to be a big attraction. We didn’t need to train, and we seldom rehearsed, because we did enough time in the ring to give any spectator his money’s worth. The Cosh had to lose most of his fights with me, because it didn’t go down well when he won—though sometimes we’d make a draw of it, just to top the bill again at a later date.

  At a hall in South London, The Cosh picked up Katie. Or perhaps more like it, he got picked up by her. She was dark and looked foreign, and wore rings, brooches, earrings and all that caper, and
to see her outside she looked sort of mysterious, but she was, in fact, a nice ordinary sort of girl when you got to know her. The Cosh went mad about her—I think what he liked most was how she admired all his suits, and, because she’d worked in a sweat shop, knew a vicuna from a herringbone—and nothing would do him but that she should tie up with us and come round the country. She was at a loose end and so she did. But from that time on we had no peace.

  The Cosh always wanted digs with her in the same place as us, because he always liked company around him. He used to keep talking and ironing, and he didn’t care whether you listened or not so long as you were there. He was a bit frightened of the dark too, and he never liked to be left alone. What I hated about Katie was the way she would always keep borrowing my Edgar Wallaces. I’m funny like that: if I have two books I like to read one and have the other there beside me.

  “You ain’t a-reading of it now,” she used to say, when I’d refuse her.

  “No, but I am going to,” I’d say. But I could never make her understand.

  “I’ll give it you back when you’re ready,” she said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake take it!” I’d snort. But it used to upset me, and I’d look to Feline Fred for sympathy. He didn’t like Katie at all, because he didn’t like any women, and he’d always shake his head understandingly. And if she saw it she’d tuck him under the chin and say: “Would you like your bread-an’-milk, ducks?” And some nights she used to make it for him, and poor Feline would go red in the face, for he didn’t like women mollycoddling him.

  But the worst bother came about because she kept geeing The Cosh about my always licking him. She got him so upset one night that he came bursting into my room, when I was asleep, and challenged me to have a showdown there and then.

  “Cosh,” I said, “you’re all bavock and no brain. Get back to bed, an’ stop behaving like a baby.”