King Dido

by Alexander Baron

  “Got two nice rooms.” Dido still spoke in good-humoured reproach. “What more do you want?”

  “There’s no end to what you want if you’re ambitious,” Grace said. She turned to her mother-in-law. “Don’t you think Didy ought to be more ambitious?”

  Mrs Peach seemed barely able to whisper, “He’s a good, hard-working boy.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, mother. I’m his wife. I am grateful, Dido. You’ve made us a lovely home.”

  “Might as well enjoy it, then,” Dido said. “We’re all right here. Anything you want, just say.”

  “What do I want?” Grace said. “You give me everything.”

  She crossed the room with her cup and saucer and put them in the bowl. “There is one thing. We could bring water into the house.”

  Dido said mildly, “Why spend money for the landlord? It’s ’is place, not ours.”

  “It would be nice. It’s not as if we’re short of money. For that matter we could have some lino on the stairs.”

  Dido finished his shrimps before he spoke again. “All right. Consider it done. Happy?”

  Grace said, “Oh, you are a love.”

  Mrs Peach sat through it numb. She stared bitterly down at her hands. The girl had never had an affectionate word for her since she came. She spoke friendly enough but it was cold and uncaring. She was no daughter. She put an apron on for Dido and tidied her hair and sat in front of Dido, quite the little housewife, but she never did a hand’s turn. Just this minute she had put her cup and saucer in the bowl, not a thought of washing them up herself. And sending Dido upstairs like that to fetch and carry; to Mrs Peach it was like an offence against the Holy Ghost. She was a Christian woman. She only wanted to see her son settled but all of a sudden her denied grievances overflowed and every moment brought another blow to the heart. The way the girl patronised!

  “Bless her, she’s a treasure!” Once, in service, Emma Peach had heard the lady of the house speak of a scrubwoman like that. She had tried not to think before of the wicked waste of money but it was like a hot coal in her bosom every time she saw the girl come home with another dress or hat. The money that girl must be spending! And those two rooms upstairs — what must they have cost? She spent Dido’s money instead of being thrifty as a wife should. She put ideas into his head. She ordered him about. She had turned him against his mother. He wasn’t a son any more. He had always liked cold mutton and onions. Shrimps, indeed! This creature had changed Dido and made him a fool who could be led by the nose. She took away his breakfast mug that was his right as the master of the house. It was one slap in the face after another. It was plain she had lured him on (buried night after night it all erupted into thought again) before they were married. A good, clean-living boy led into sin and a forced marriage. It was madness, a sink in the house! Lino on the stairs! For thirty-four years it had been good enough for his mother; but what was good enough for his mother wasn’t to be thought of for his wife. On the surface of her mind she told herself that she must turn the other cheek. Dido had made his choice. As long as he was happy — She told herself that she was a Christian woman. She must turn the other cheek. But beneath these thoughts ran the anger. He had no time for his mother now. Easter had come and gone and he had not gone to church with her as in past years. At last, at a pause in their conversation, words forced themselves out of her. She made herself say the words in her ordinary, timid voice. “Dido — I was thinking. On Sunday morning — it’s a long time since you came to chapel. Would you like to come?”

  He frowned. Anyone would think he had never been before, instead of having taken her every year, dressed up in his best. “What for?”

  “I thought — you might like to.”

  He still looked puzzled. “I’m takin’ Shonny up Sclater Street. Promised to buy him a cock canary.”

  “I’m sure Shonny could wait.”

  It was the girl’s turn to watch, her face peaceful, all smug and silent. Dido said, “I promised ’im. For startin’ work. Mustn’t let the boy down.”

  Mrs Peach was silent. He had no time for his mother anymore. Hot bitterness poured through her against the girl who had lured her son to sin and made him like this.

  Every Sunday morning for decades past the Bethnal Green area of London has turned into a vast maze of street markets. There are markets for foodstuffs and cheap clothes, a market for bicycles where every other variety of decrepit vehicle is also to be seen on sale, streets in which nothing is to be seen but piles of mechanical spare parts of every kind. It is the great mart of London’s poorest, and till two in the afternoon the narrow streets are choked.

  Dido and Shonny started out for the bird fair in Sclater Street before nine o’clock, to get there before the crowds thickened.

  Dido asked, “How d’you feel after a week’s work?”

  “All right.” Seven days had worked a change in Shonny. Dido had remarked that he seemed a more serious boy and mother had said it only showed that they were making a little gentleman of him, thank heaven. “Like bringin’ home wages, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “My treat this morning. You can keep your pocket money.”

  “Ta.”

  “Boss treat you all right at the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the other boys, they treat you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Made any friends yet?”

  The boy’s eyes roamed over a gaily painted sarsaparilla stall. He shrugged his shoulders. “You know.”

  Dido smiled and left the boy alone. He reminded himself that he had been at work three years when he was Shonny’s present age; not quite as small as Shonny but a shrimp for all that, yet thinking himself a man. No doubt Shonny thought himself a man, too, now that he gave wages to his mother. He still looked a child with his chubby red cheeks, but he had stopped dashing about and yelping all over everyone like an eager puppy. He looked as if he had private thoughts now. He came home and sat down and buried his nose in books.

  When he looked up at anyone his face revealed nothing and he only spoke in brief snatches. It was best to leave the boy alone. He would find his feet.

  Outside the shops in Sclater Street another wall had been built, of cages and hutches piled six feet high, broken only where the shop entrances were. Another pile was springing up in the gutter. Shonny and Dido walked the narrow strip of pavement in between. The smell of birds clung in their nostrils. The street echoed with the din of singing birds, crowing poultry and screaming parrots.

  Shonny’s face brightened. He stopped every few moments to inspect a canary, a crate of proud pigeons, or a tiny, vivid tropical bird. Poultry clamoured at him from their chicken-wire coops and tethered ducks strutted in his path. He darted into the roadway where lone vendors wandered, to inspect the birds in the cages which they held up, and ran back to look at rabbits in their hutches.

  He was in no hurry. They would go all the way up and down the street to look at everything before they picked their canary. His big brother Dido was eyeing the line of cages with intent and expert eyes. Dido knew all about everything and would not let him pick the wrong bird.

  More and more often he stopped at a window or in front of a cage and called, “Hey, Dide! Didy!” — and Dido grinned, for each time Shonny’s voice was more high and boyish. With every step they took he became more his old eager self.

  Dido stopped indulgently as Shonny scurried away once more into a side alley. It resounded with the barking of hundreds of dogs. They were nearly all little dogs, every kind of mongrel and common breed. Here and there a grim, muzzled yard-dog stood as if on guard above the sea of puppy bodies that squirmed and frisked on the pavement. Some looked up from barred boxes with appealing eyes. Some peeped out of the lapels of kerb vendors. Some leaped at the end of their leashes with eager barks as if they wanted to pick their future owners.

  One terrier puppy was jumping and yelping around Shonny’s legs. He stooped to stroke it. He l
aughed and teased the puppy with his fingers. The office and all that had happened there was forgotten. He was a boy of the streets again, free. He and the puppy played and yelped in the same excitement.

  He was squatting in front of the puppy, holding it in both hands and nuzzling it against his cheek, when a sound shrilled in his ears. It failed to catch his attention. He turned to show Dido the dog and he saw Dido pushing away from him through the crowd with an odd, urgent violence. The shrill sounded again and again. He dropped the dog and rushed after Dido. He knew what police whistles sounded like. The police whistles were blowing in Rabbit Marsh.

  He ran after Dido into Rabbit Marsh and he saw the helmets of policemen bobbing among the crowd. The crowd poured past him, thinning out as the police pushed them back. A policeman was in front of him. He ducked past and caught up with Dido. From the pavement as the crowd was cleared, he saw what had happened. From the top of the street almost down to Blakers’ shop every stall, a half-dozen on each side, had been overturned. Their contents were spilled across the cobblestones. Heads clustered in every window. There was a hubbub of voices. The crowd in the street thickened with newcomers who tried to surge forward to see what had happened but more and more policemen appeared to hold them back and prevent looting.

  Dido looked terribly angry. Two policemen had started asking questions from door to door but Shonny turned his back on them and followed Dido. Dido ignored him and strode on, only stopping when he encountered Tommy Long in the arch that led to the stable yard. Tommy started telling what had happened but Dido looked very angry as if he knew already what had happened.

  Some men had rushed into the street, turned the stalls over and run off. Everyone had got out of their way. People knew better than to interfere. The intruders had vanished among the crowds in Brick Lane by the time the police whistles started to sound along the street.

  “Look at ’em —” Tommy indicated the policemen. “Askin’ questions. Why don’ they save their breath? They know it’s a waste of time. No one’s fool enough to split.”

  “No,” Dido said. “They stand there an’ let their stalls get smashed up in front o’ them.”

  “If they split they’ll ’ave every bone in their body smashed,” Tommy said. “Course they reckonised ’em. Everyone round about reckonised ’em. I see ’im in front as plain as I see you.”

  Shonny had already guessed before Dido grimly said, “Keogh.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dido lifted a corner of the curtain and from the bedroom window watched the street. Keogh was coming down the pavement, his three bravos crowding around him, gesticulating, letting the street hear their loud, confident laughter. They were all of Keogh’s age, in the late thirties; men hardened and matured by lifelong street fighting. One of them who darted on the edges of the group was small and thin; the others were big and muscular like Keogh, all of them as scarred, dangerous and crafty as warrior tomcats of the slums.

  They were not Murchisons. Of that tribe, besides Keogh, only children and youths remained at large. They were hangers-on of the clan, Jaggs Place bullies who had drunk the booze of their chiefs for years and had now come forward for mercenary service.

  The group stopped outside Arkell’s. Keogh went in alone. He came out and the four of them went in to Barsky’s, where the same thing happened. They continued along the street and disappeared into “The Railway”.

  A week had gone by. This was the second time they had come to the shops to collect their money. No tradesman failed to pay. From time to time they went down the street unchallenged. Sometimes they entered “The Railway” for a drink. The old masters of the street were back and there was no-one to challenge them; for Dido Peach kept out of their way.

  Their rule was harsher than his. On Sunday morning they roamed the market and helped themselves from the stalls. The shopkeepers had to supply them with food, clothing, cigarettes — anything from the shelves that the restored dynasty might fancy in the first flush of greedy delight. The poorer people, too, felt their presence. They beat up a coster in the Bug Hole who was too bronchitic to work and had borrowed money from Blakers. Dido, from his window, saw them stop old Mrs Hackett in the street and take her purse from her. He reflected that one person in Rabbit Marsh seemed not to be the worse off for their return.

  The shopkeepers did not have to appease two masters. From the moment that the Jaggs Place men had reappeared Dido kept out of the way. He did not go into the shops for money. He did not go into the pub. He only went out in daytime, and walked cautiously, close to the wall and alert to every door, archway and street corner ahead of him. Between forays Keogh and his men, with sovereigns in their pockets, held court in their own pub in Brick Lane. From here Keogh broadcast that Dido Peach was finished. He asked the neighbours who crowded around him each evening to go and tell Dido to come out and fight if he was a man. Dido did not respond. He walked the streets carefully by day, ignoring everybody, enclosed in his thoughts; and by night he was not to be seen. So, with little fuss, it was accepted that he had abdicated. The new order was accepted like a change in the weather.

  All the week he thought about his predicament. He was alone against four men. Overnight in the street he had become a man unfeared and despised. He mattered no more than a forgotten politician. His predicament was urgent for his money would not last long. During his time of power he had been lulled by the deceptive peace and had not saved greatly. He had lavished money on Grace. He did not know how he could confront Grace if he had no money. He could think of no other lies with which to conceal his true position. His pride made exposure unthinkable.

  He was tight with anger as he watched from the window; but he knew that he must contain himself. He could not hope for fair fight with Keogh alone and one man against those four would be murdered.

  Thoughts of retreat had crossed his mind but retreat was impossible. He could not go back to work. A man with such a demon of pride inside him could not go back to the wharf, where he had enjoyed status and respect, and beg to be allowed back in whatever inferior job might be going, humbled among men who knew him. Such a man would not seek elsewhere, jostling among the servile crowds of unemployed. He could not bring himself to walk down Rabbit Marsh every morning in working-clothes, and trudge back each night, parading his downfall in front of everybody. Above all he could not stand in front of Grace self-confessed in a cap and choker and shabby clothing as a wretched, common workman.

  Even to swallow humiliation would not save him. Keogh would not spare the vanquished. His adversary’s submission would only feed his lust for revenge. He was a bully who needed to trample and smash. He would want to destroy Dido to consolidate his rule over the Murchisons, to appear as the avenger of the dead patriarch. Fifty new hangers-on, made brave by the smell of an easy kill, would join him to scour the streets for Dido.

  Accepting defeat, Dido could be sure that sooner or later he would be smashed almost to death. He must fight them, or be destroyed. But time was short and he was alone against four.

  A week later Keogh and his men came for their money again. They went from shop to shop like a patrol of occupying troops, and all the street heard the clatter of their steelshod boots.

  It was a sunny Monday morning. Loud and confident in themselves, the four men came out from Blakers’ shop and started for home.

  Behind them, Tommy Long’s pony and cart emerged from the stable yard. Dido was up on the seat, alone. Barsky, arrested by the passage of the cart, glanced idly, then glanced again, for something out of the ordinary had caught his eye. Dido held in his right hand a whip that was monstrously at odds with the little cart — a six-foot waggoner’s whip, with a thong even longer and a butt two inches thick. Barsky hurried back to his shop.

  Dido swung the cart sharply out of the entry, so that the inside wheels mounted the kerb. He flicked the pony to a trot, and — it happened in seconds — pony and barrow were on the pavement, faster and faster, while women at the windows gaped.

 
; There were only a few people out of doors. The four men leaving the street heard only their own laughter and the conqueror’s clatter of their boots. They ignored the familiar sounds of a street, the rapid clop of hooves, the headlong rattle of a cart; and not one voice was raised in a warning shout, perhaps because it was all so quick, perhaps because the few onlookers knew better.

  It was only at the last moment when the noise and rush of the cart was upon them that they turned, one looking round and shouting, then all four scattered in amazement; scattering too late, for one of them, crushed to the wall by a swerve of the cart, fell to the pavement and did not rise. The others ran down the street and Dido, standing up with the reins like a charioteer, steered back into the road alongside them, lashing with the whip, herding them in towards the far wall. Keogh and his two underlings ran with heads down, arms raised protectively, and the long whip lashed rapidly one-two one-two from right and left, driving them in upon each other.

  They gained a few yards at the corner, where Dido had to slow to turn, but he caught them up in Brick Lane and lashed them towards their own street.

  There was one more corner before they could escape to Jaggs Place. Dido slowed again and turned into the side street. Two of the men, their faces welted red, were bolting into Jaggs Place; but one sprang forward, head down — Keogh with a knife, going for the pony’s hamstrings.

  Dido swerved the nimble beast and the knife slashed wide in a flash of sunlight. Dido reversed the whip and brought the solid butt down on Keogh’s arm. Keogh howled and dropped the knife. Dido struck again, at his head and missed. Keogh was running again. Dido raced alongside, lashing, until Keogh stumbled through the archway of Jaggs Place, out of range.

  Dido slowed the pony down and went on. He completed the round of the block at a walk, to cool the beast. In Rabbit Marsh, he saw people stooping over the injured man. He ignored them and drove into the stable yard.