King Dido

by Alexander Baron

  “I give you a yell,” Tommy said.

  “I ’eard you.”

  “Couldn’t do no more,” Tommy said. “If I stood alongside Little Tich, ’e’d look like Jack Johnson.”

  “If Ginger ’ad done for me that night you’d ’ave ’ad all your bones broken. Just for opening your mouth.”

  “Too true I would, mate.”

  “An’ you still will if the Murchisons come back.”

  “Gawd,” Tommy said, “don’t talk abaht that!”

  “Right,” Dido said. “Then don’t you talk about me goin’ back to the wharf.”

  Without another glance at Tommy, but with a friendly pat on the rump for the pony, he walked out of the yard.

  It is hard to convey the effect of freedom on those who hitherto have risen daily in the dark, tramped for miles to do heavy work and tramped home too weary for anything but sleep. This had been Dido’s life for eighteen years and Chas’s for four. For six days in every week they had risen at five-thirty, lit the fire in the kitchen, washed in the yard or gone out into rain or snow to bring water indoors. They had trudged each day to and from their distant places of work in all weathers.

  Once a week, on Sunday mornings, they enjoyed the bliss of a “lay-in”. Sunday was not a day of rest in Rabbit Marsh. From eight in the morning the stalls went up, and by nine o’clock the weekly market had filled the street with a mass of people. The Peaches kept no stall and Sunday morning was all the sweeter for the hubbub that rose from the street while they lounged half-dressed about the house. They had a big fried breakfast, then brought out the entire family stock of footwear to be polished to perfection, a ritual established since childhood. Dido boiled up water and all of them enjoyed the profound, unhurried pleasure of a hot-water wash-down. Dido shaved carefully in front of the mantelpiece mirror, Chas flattered himself with a scrape of his smooth cheeks, and all the three sons put on their best suits. The two older sons pushed through the crowds to the pub for the one pint permitted by Dido, listening to the din of talk but rarely joining in; while they waited for their mother to come home from chapel. The hours of Sunday were glittering gold coins to be grandly spent.

  Now all their days were their own. Prisoners of their situation, they could not go to work, but “could not” meant “need not”. Dido’s response to the situation was a pointer to the man’s nature. Chas left to himself would have given himself up to the enjoyment of unlimited holiday. He soon learned that if he lay in bed too long Dido came up and whipped the blankets off. If at nine o’clock he was still unkempt, a curt word from his brother sent him about his business with soap, comb and razor. Dido performed his own daily toilet meticulously and before leaving the house inspected himself in the mirror as minutely as a Guardsman about to walk out of barracks.

  Dido showed the same military concern for the proper occupation of their time. Shonny continued working for his mother. Chas was set to work in the yard. Before he could go out each day he had to heat up the boiler, carry out the bundles of dirty rags his mother had bought the previous day and boil them thoroughly, poking them during the process with a long paddle. Afterwards he ran them through a big mangle.

  Dido even tried to make him take over the weekly scrubbing of the stairs but Mrs Peach suddenly showed a flare-up of spirit and refused to permit it. She was so used to toiling for her menfolk that it had somehow become transmuted from a degradation to an honoured part of her woman’s status. To put the scrubbing on to Chas would demean both her boy and her. She was also so bewildered at the rapid turn of events that, although she could neither comment nor intervene, she had an unexpressed fear that the gift of leisure would demoralise her altogether. On her knees, scrubbing, she could scrub the thoughts and fears out of herself.

  But it was also of Dido’s nature that he did nothing in the house himself. He did not enjoy idleness. On the contrary, such energies gnawed both in his mind and his muscles that he always had to be occupied, if possible strenuously. Pride, however, inextricable from these energies and perhaps their source, burned always through him; and it was natural to him that he should be head of the family. He must look after his mother but must perform no menial act within her home. He must regulate the lives of his brothers but always remain above their level. It was his due to sit upright at table while his mother in humble attitude set his food before him; always, of course, the first to be served.

  He made a routine for himself. He walked out at nine in the morning and looked in from door to door. Life in Rabbit Marsh was lived on three levels. Like a little kingdom, it had its social classes. The traders and artisans were its upper crust. Some prospered, some lived on such a knife-edge of poverty that they would have done better to go out to work. Status was the supreme possession of all this class. To them all the others came to buy the necessities of life, to plead for credit in hard times; they sometimes had work to give; and, being credited as business people, they were dispensers of advice to neighbours who were so terrified of all authority that even a typewritten letter was taken as a ukase that one dare not defy. Below the trading class were the regular labourers; and below these were the drifters — the pathetic sellers of matches and bootlaces, the hopeless seekers after odd jobs, the parasites upon charity organisations, the unemployed and other flotsam, who lived in the attics or in the Bug Hole. These were the ugly dregs of the street, the children pasty and barefoot, the men imprinted with the cunning that is required for survival in the gutter struggle, the women ageing quickly into shrivelled hags or mountainous termagants. They fought and drank and many of them had the scaly, bloated red faces of meth drinkers. Yet in spite of their misery they were not criminal. Crime seemed to confine itself to a number of well-known thieves’ kitchens like Jaggs Place. The people of Rabbit Marsh counted themselves as law-abiding.

  From all these three groups Dido now received greetings which were overtly those of friendly equals, but which were as respectful in tone as those of feudal vassals. For most he had only a brief nod. But among the handful of traders whose paid protector he had become, he had a regular morning round.

  He went from the stable yard into a cabinet-maker’s workshop. With the shutters always up, it was a den of gloom, lit by a shaft of sunshine from the open door and by the fire of chips and sawdust which burned even in the hottest weather. He sat on a bench, enjoying the smell of bubbling glue, the tang of resin and the strong-scented sawdust that impregnated the air. He sat, legs swinging, listening to the talk of the cabinet-makers, only throwing a brief phrase in now and again. When tea was brewed by an urchin just out of school who spent the rest of his time sweeping the floor or sandpapering, Dido accepted a mug. After a while one of the men went out on an errand. Dido took off his jacket, went across to the bench and started to drive the man’s plane efficiently, concentratedly and with untiring strength. Dido was one of those men who had the gift of doing any job as if they had been trained to it alone.

  When he left, he looked in to see Arkell. He contented himself with a “Mornin’,” and listened to Arkell’s conversation while he looked past him at the shelves on which stood rows of tanks in which tiny, painted fish glided through green water, and bowls through whose bulging glass hundreds of goldfish stared with magnified eyes.

  His next call was on the Jew cobbler, Barsky. The few Jews in Rabbit Marsh lived their own life and were left alone by their neighbours, whose dislike of the alien was often expressed violently in conversation but never seemed to direct itself against individuals. Dido felt so much apart himself and was so strongly possessed by bitterness against the weakness and meanness of mankind in general, that he felt no special urge to hostility against one section of it.

  In any case, Barsky was a man he felt inexplicably at ease with. The Jew was in his early forties, a broad, muscular man of middle height, with black hair bordering the bald crown of his head, a nose like the end of a small potato stuck over a thick black military moustache in the middle of a round, humorous face and keen eyes that scruti
nised from under thick black brows. He had been a Russian soldier for several years, and from the occasional brief anecdotes he had given of his experiences, Dido reckoned that the man had been through a harder school even than his own. Certainly Barsky was as tough and taciturn as Dido.

  The shop was crowded with great sheets of hide whose strong smell, and the rust-smell from heaps of iron lasts, filled it. A bell like the bell at Number 34 chinked as Dido came in and slipped into the small space between the hides and the bartered counter. Dido said his “Mornin’”.

  Barsky sat on a small round stool in the far corner, wearing an apron, holding with his left hand a piece of leather jammed against his chest while his right hand cut out a sole with a curved cobbler’s knife. He only grunted, and did not look up until he had finished.

  “Weather keepin’ nice.” It was only with this man who outdid him in reserve, that Dido could be compelled to take the lead in talking.

  The Jew gave a double-grunt of assent, not unfriendly, and turned the sheet of leather to cut out another sole.

  “Boys all right?” This was Dido again.

  “They work.” Barsky had two sons, aged fifteen and seventeen. Both were apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. His English was guttural but more strong and intelligible than the English the native Cockneys spoke.

  Dido said, “Give us.”

  He reached out. Barsky gave him a piece of leather, a curved knife and a paper pattern. Dido set the leather against his chest and started to cut out a pair of soles around the pattern. Dido said, “Busy?”

  “So long I make a crust I don’t grumble.” Barsky looked up. “And you?”

  “Me?”

  “You busy?”

  Sly humour glinted in Barsky’s eyes. Dido felt no rancour.

  “You’re keepin’ me busy,” he said.

  “I’ll keep you busy. Plenty more soles.”

  They worked in silence for a while. Then Barsky pushed the door to the kitchen ajar and called out in his own language. His wife opened the door wide and answered in Yiddish before she nodded to Dido and said, “Good morgen.”

  She was bony, with worried eyes and hollow white cheeks. She had a weak, querulous voice. “Is the mama all right?”

  “Keepin’ well, thank you. You all right?”

  “Gott sei dank.”

  Dido stood up. He said, “Be goin’ now. Mornin’. Mornin’, lady.”

  Barsky’s wife said, “Wait.”

  She went out of sight into the kitchen and came back. She held out to him a small bowl in which were four eggs. She said, jerking with her head towards the back yard, “From the hens.”

  The Barskys were the only shop-people in the street who had never yet offered him anything. He said, “Ah, don’t matter.”

  “For the mother,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “Ta.”

  As the opening door chinked the bell, Barsky said, “Mister Peach —”

  Dido turned. Barsky, smiling at him, said, “Don’t overwork.”

  Cockeye knew that his granddad was in hospital but this did not suggest to him that his way of life was to be changed any more than the man in the street realises that the withdrawal of garrisons from far-off places is going to change his life.

  He was not a pretty boy. Apart from the wild cast in his right eye he had a large ringworm scar that had never grown over on the back of his head, the rest of which sprouted clutches of dirty straw hair.

  His name was Sammy Keogh. He was fifteen. His whole family of seven lived in one room in a corner of Jaggs Place. He had not worked since he had left school a year ago. It paid him better to prowl the streets as a snapper-up of neglected trifles from unwatched stalls and shopfronts. He was patient and watchful and never took unnecessary risks. He was swift to pounce and to run. So far he had never been caught. He followed his career of theft in a spirit of complete innocence and boyish pride of achievement. He measured himself against the great men of his clan. His only strong feeling was of loyalty to the name of Murchison. To grow so as to emulate the skill and ferocity of such men as his uncle Harry who had been a housebreaker was his only ambition. To be a Murchison was to be feared, to possess ruling privileges. He had found this out as a small child at school and to him it was still the natural order of things.

  He was a self-sufficient little animal. No one ever cooked a meal for him. He lived on chips, saveloys and meat pies and in consequence his pinched dirty face was covered with boils and blotches. He smoked and when he could find his mother’s gin he swigged it, to show his grown-up status, but his only real pleasures were in the smelly paradise of the fish-and-chip saloon, in spending his gains on such other luxuries of the belly as sausages and onions, roast chestnuts or hot potatoes bought at the street corners; at travelling fairs, picture palaces or card schools with other gamblers as small as himself.

  Towards his own household his emotions were lethargic. Mother was a peevish creature best described by his father’s favourite term — “fat cow” — who had been ill since the last baby was born and lived in a heap of blankets on the mattress in the corner of the room. She peered at him wearily through a fall of ropy hair and when she was not complaining she was drunk.

  Towards his father he felt only a dull wariness. His father was a hulking ex-boxer who had only married mother because she was Ginger Murchison’s daughter. Cockeye knew this because mother was always flinging it in father’s face. He knew that his father had been a rotten boxer who had preferred the easy life of a bully to being battered several times a week; for this, too, was often stated forcibly to his father by Uncle Harry, who regarded him as an intruder. He knew that his father resented Uncle Harry being the boss, now that granddad was away, and thought that with his size and being handy with his fists he ought to be cock of the walk.

  He set out this morning dressed in a ragged jacket down to his knees, a ripped and filthy pair of man’s trousers cut crudely to size, and a pair of boots too large for him. He was as filthy as usual. He looked out for prey as innocently and naturally as a terrier trotting after rabbits in a wood.

  His victim this morning was a small boy, neatly dressed, the son of a warehouseman. The boy was on his way to school with a packet of sandwiches and a halfpenny when Cockeye caught him in a side street. Cockeye took the sandwiches and money. Then, kneeling on the ten-year-old, he banged his head on the granite kerb until the child, with nose bleeding, was dazed and almost senseless. After that Cockeye, who was inarticulately enraged by the sight of decent clothes, rolled the child into a pile of garbage in the kerb and trod him and his neat suit into it.

  He ate the sandwiches and bought a cup of coffee with the halfpenny. Breakfast over, he turned into Rabbit Marsh. He went into Blakers’ shop.

  He said to Blakers, “Gi’s five Woods.”

  In his family’s territory he neither snatched nor ran but swaggered in the knowledge of their power.

  Blakers was a large man on the portly side, with brilliantined hair parted in the middle. He was usually to be seen in a full suit of striped blue serge with celluloid collar and knitted tie but just now he was standing on a stool to load cardboard boxes on to an upper shelf, his braces over a woollen undervest and an apron protecting his trousers. He went on with his work.

  “’Ere,” called Cockeye. “I said five Woods. You can make it ten now. And sharp about it.”

  Blakers said, “Clear off, you.”

  Cockeye, triumphantly. “I’ll tell my ol’ man.”

  Blakers looked at him. “What was it you arst for?”

  “That’s better.”

  “What was it you was askin’ for?”

  “Ten Woods. And you can give us a glass o’ lemonade while you’re over there.”

  Blakers wheezed down from the stool. He went to the end of the counter, reached beneath it with one hand, straightened up and, sighing again, lifted the flap of the counter. With his free hand he picked up a packet of Woodbines. “This what you want?”

  “You ’e
ard.”

  “Come ’ere, then.”

  Cockeye stepped across to him. The hand clamped on Cockeye’s shoulder. Cockeye started to yell as he was flung to the ground. Blakers brought out the concealed hand, in which was a plaited dogwhip. He began to lash at Cockeye, grunting at each stroke, using his boot to jam Cockeye down every time the boy tried to escape.

  Cockeye’s screams brought people to the doorway. More and more pushed in to watch, talking and laughing. Cockeye screamed threats. Blakers whipped steadily. He gasped, “I’m givin’ you what you arst for. ’E been askin’ for it a long time.”

  “You wait, you wait,” Cockeye screamed. “I’ll tell my ol’ man.”

  “Yes?” Blakers gasped with the effort to speak and whip at the same time. “I’ll tell you what to tell your old man. Tell ’im compliments of Dido Peach. Get that?”

  Cockeye howled, as much with bewilderment as pain. Blakers panted, “Any time your old man wants a cracked noggin like your granddad, tell ’im come round ’ere. Plenty o’ nice beds in the ’ospital. Dido Peach’ll give ’im a ticket any time ’e asks.”

  He tossed the whip aside, grabbed Cockeye by the collar and the seat of his pants and threw him out. Cockeye scrambled to his feet. The neighbours crowded in, jostling each other for the chance to land a ritual blow on him. He wriggled and ducked out of their midst and bolted, pursued by their hoots.

  When he trotted through the archway into Jaggs Place, his mind still baffled by the astounding upset of his universe, his back stinging with pain from shoulders to buttocks, he saw Harry Murchison in the doorway of his home. His father glared out over Uncle Harry’s shoulder.

  “I’m tellin’ yer,” Harry was saying quietly.

  Cockeye approached as his father shouted back. “Nobody tells me.”

  Harry did not raise his voice. “I’m tellin’ yer. Keep away from there. I won’t tell you agen.”

  He walked away and went into his own door. Cockeye ducked indoors past his father. Indignantly, sure that he would be avenged, he began to tell his tale. He had not uttered a dozen words before a clenched fist swung, a dreadful blow caught the side of his head and hurled him across the room where he lay in a final extremity of astonishment. Half-stunned, he heard through the ringing in his head his father’s shout, “You little bleeder! You keep out o’ Rabbit Marsh!”