The Ballad of Peckham Rye

by Muriel Spark

  He looked at it, put the paper in his pocket and said, ‘One of my employers.’

  Merle gave one of her laughs from the chest, ‘Employers — that’s a good name for them. How many you got?’

  ‘Two,’ Dougal said, ‘and a possible third. Is Mr Weedin in?’

  ‘Yes, he’s been asking for you.’

  Dougal jumped up and went in to Mr Weedin where he sat in one of the glass offices which extended from the typing pool.

  ‘Mr Douglas,’ said Mr Weedin, ‘I want to ask you a personal question. What do you mean exactly by vision?’

  ‘Vision?’ Dougal said.

  ‘Yes, vision, that’s what I said.’

  ‘Do you speak literally as concerning optics, or figuratively, as it might be with regard to an enlargement of the total perceptive capacity?’

  ‘Druce is complaining we haven’t got vision in this department. I thought perhaps maybe you had been having one of your long chats with him.’

  ‘Mr Weedin,’ Dougal said, ‘don’t tremble like that. Just relax.’ He took from his pocket a small square silver vinaigrette which had two separate compartments. Dougal opened both lids. In one compartment lay some small white tablets. In the other were a number of yellow ones.

  Dougal offered the case to Mr Weedin. ‘For calming down you take two of the white ones and for revving up you take one of the yellow ones.’

  ‘I don’t want your drugs. I just want to know —‘

  ‘The yellow ones make you feel sexy. The white ones, being of a relaxing nature, ensure the more successful expression of such feelings. But these, of course, are mere by-effects.’

  ‘Do you want my job? Is that what you’re wanting?’

  ‘No,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Because if you want it you can have it. I’m tired of working for a firm where the boss listens to the advice of any young showpiece that takes his fancy. I’ve had this before. I had it with Merle Coverdale. She told Druce I was inefficient at relationship-maintenance. She told Druce that everything in the pool goes back to me through my girl Connie. She —‘

  ‘Miss Coverdale is a sensitive girl. Like an Okapi, you know. You spell it OKAPI. A bit of all sorts of beast. Very rare, very nervy. You have to make allowances.’

  ‘And now you come along and you tell Druce we lack vision. And Druce calls me in and I see from the look on his face he’s got a new idea. Vision, it is, this time. Try to take a tip or two, he says, from the Arts man. I said, he never hardly puts a foot inside the door does your Arts man. Nonsense, Weedin, he says, Mr Douglas and I have many a long session. He says, watch his manner, he has a lovely manner with the workers. I said, yes, up on the Rye Saturday nights. That is unworthy of you, Weedin, he says. Is it coincidence, says I, that absenteeism has risen eight per cent since Mr Douglas came here and is still rising? Things are bound to get worse, he says, before they get better. If you had the vision, Weedin, he says, you would comprehend my meaning. Study Douglas, he says, watch his methods.’

  ‘Funny thing I’ve just found out,’ Dougal said, ‘we have five cemeteries up here round the Rye within the space of a square mile. We have Camberwell New, Camberwell Old — that’s full up. We have Nunhead, Dept. ford, and Lewisham Green. Did you know that Nunhead reservoir holds twenty million gallons of water? The original title that Mendelssohn gave his “Spring Song” was “Camberwell Green”. It’s a small world.’

  Mr Weedin laid his head in his hand and burst into tears.

  Dougal said, ‘You’re a sick man, Mr Weedin. I can’t bear sickness. It’s my fatal flaw. But I’ve brought a comb with me. Would you like me to comb your hair?’

  ‘You’re unnatural,’ said Mr Weedin.

  ‘All human beings who breathe are a bit unnatural,’ Dougal said. ‘If you try to be too natural, see where it gets you.’

  Mr Weedin blew his nose, and shouted at Dougal: ‘It isn’t possible to get another good position in another firm at my age. Personnel is a much coveted position. If I had to leave here, Mr Douglas, I would have to take a subordinate post elsewhere. I have my wife and family to think of. Druce is impossible to work for. It’s impossible to leave this firm. Sometimes I think I’m going to have a breakdown.’

  ‘It would not be severe in your case,’ Dougal said. ‘It is at its worst when a man is a skyscraper. But you’re only a nice wee bungalow.’

  ‘We live in a flat,’ Mr Weedin managed to say.

  ‘Do you know,’ Dougal said, ‘up at the police station they are excavating an underground tunnel which starts in the station yard and runs all the way to Nunhead. You should ponder sometimes about underground tunnels. Did you know Boadicea was broken and defeated on the Rye? She was a great beefy soldier. I think you should take Mr Druce’s advice and study my manner, Mr Weedin. I could give you lessons at ten and six an hour,’

  Mr Weedin rose to hit him, but since the walls of his office were made mostly of glass, he was prevented in the act by an overwhelming sense of being looked at from all sides.

  Dougal sat in Miss Frierne’s panelled hall on Saturday morning and telephoned to the Flaxman number on the little slip of paper which Merle Coverdale had handed to him the previous day.

  ‘Miss Cheeseman, please,’ said Dougal.

  ‘She isn’t in,’ said the voice from across the water. ‘Who shall I say it was?’

  ‘Mr Dougal-Douglas,’ Dougal said, ‘spelt with a hyphen. Tell Miss Cheeseman I’ll be at home all morning.’

  He next rang Jinny.

  ‘Hallo, are you better?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got soup on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’

  Miss Frierne was ironing in the kitchen. She said to Dougal, ‘Humphrey is going to see to the roof this afternoon. It’s creaking. It isn’t a loose slate, it must be one of the beams loose in his cupboard.’

  ‘Funny thing,’ Dougal said, ‘it only creaks at night. It goes Creak-oop !‘ The dishes rattled in their rack as he leapt.

  ‘It’s the cold makes it creak, I daresay,’ she said. The telephone rang. Dougal rushed out to the hall. It was not Jinny, however.

  ‘Doug dear,’ said Miss Maria Cheeseman from across the river.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Cheese.’

  ‘We really must get down to things,’ Miss Cheeseman said. ‘All this about my childhood in Peckham, it’s all wrong, it was Streatham.’

  ‘There’s the law of libel to be considered,’ Dougal said. ‘A lot of your early associates in Streatham are still alive. If you want to write the true story of your life you can’t place it in Streatham.’

  ‘But Doug dear,’ she said, ‘that bit where you make me say I played with Harold Lloyd and Ford Sterling at the Golden Domes in Camberwell, it isn’t true, dear. I was in a show with Fatty Arbuckle but it was South Shields.’

  ‘I thought it was a work of art you wanted to write,’ Dougal said, ‘now was that not so? If you only want to write a straight autobiography you should have got a straight ghost. I’m crooked.’

  ‘Well, Doug dear, I don’t think this story about me and the Gordon Highlander is quite nice, do you? I mean to say, it isn’t true. Of course it’s funny about the kilt, but it’s a little embarrassing —‘

  ‘Well, write your own autobiography,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Oh, Doug dear, do come over to tea.’

  ‘No, you’ve hurt my feelings.’

  ‘Doug dear, I’m thrilled with my book. I’m sure it’s going to be marvellous. I can’t say I’m quite happy about all of chapter three but—’

  ‘What’s wrong with chapter three?’

  ‘Well, it’s only that last bit you wrote, it isn’t me.’

  ‘I’ll see you at four o’clock,’ he said, ‘but understand, Cheese, I don’t like crossing the water when I’m in the middle of a work of art. I’m giving all my time to it.’

  Dougal said to Humphrey, ‘I was over the other side of the river on business this afternoon, and while I was over that way I called in to see my girl.’

 
‘Oh, you got a girl over there?’

  ‘Used to have. She’s got engaged to somebody else.’

  ‘Women have no moral sense,’ Humphrey said. ‘You see it in the Unions. They vote one way then go and act another way.’

  ‘She was nice, Jinny,’ Dougal said, ‘but she was too delicate in health. Do you believe in the Devil?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know anyone that believes in the Devil?’

  ‘I think some of those Irish —‘

  ‘Feel my head,’ Dougal said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Feel these little bumps up here.’ Dougal guided Humphrey’s hand among his curls at each side. ‘I had it done by a plastic surgeon,’ Dougal said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He did an operation and took away the two horns. They had to shave my head in the nursing home before the operation. It took a long time for my hair to grow again.’

  Humphrey smiled and felt again among Dougal’s curls. ‘A couple of cysts,’ he said. ‘I’ve got one myself at the back of my head. Feel it.’

  Dougal touched the bump like a connoisseur. ‘You supposed to be the Devil, then?’ Humphrey asked.

  ‘No, oh, no, I’m only supposed to be one of the wicked spirits that wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Have you mended those beams in the roof yet, that go Creak-oop?’

  ‘I have,’ Humphrey said, ‘Dixie refuses to come any more.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘WHAT strikes me as remarkable,’ Dougal said, ‘is how he manages to get in so much outside his school hours.’

  Nelly Mahone nodded, trod out her cigarette end, and looked at the packet of cigarettes which Dougal had placed on the table.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Dougal said, and he lit the cigarette for her.

  ‘Ta,’ said Nelly. She looked round her room. ‘It’s all clean dirt,’ she said.

  ‘You would think,’ Dougal said, ‘his parents would have some control over him.’

  Nelly inhaled gratefully. ‘Up the Elephant, that’s where they all go. What was name?’

  ‘Leslie Crewe. Thirteen years of age. The father’s manager of Beverly Hills Outfitters at Brixton.’

  ‘Where they live?’

  ‘Twelve Rye Grove.’

  Nelly nodded. ‘How much you paid him?’

  ‘A pound the first time, thirty bob the second time. But now he’s asking five quid a week flat.’

  Nelly whispered, ‘Then there’s a gang behind him, surely. Can’t you give up one of the jobs for a month or two?’

  ‘I don’t see why I should,’ Dougal said, ‘just to please a thirteen-year-old blackmailer.’

  Nelly made signs with her hands and moved her mouth soundlessly, and swung her eyes to the wall between her room and the next, to show that the walls had ears.

  ‘A thirteen-year-old blackmailer,’ Dougal. said, more softly. But Nelly did not like the word blackmailer at all; she placed her old fish-smelling hand over Dougal’s mouth, and whispered in his ear — her grey long hair falling against his nose — ‘A lousy fellow next door,’ she said. ‘A slob that wouldn’t do a day’s work if you paid him gold. So guard your mouth.’ She released Dougal and started to draw the curtains.

  ‘And here’s me,’ Dougal said, ‘willing to do three, four, five men’s jobs, and I get blackmailed on grounds of false pretences.’

  She ran with her long low dipping strides to his side and gave him a hard poke in the back. She returned to her window, which was as opaque as sackcloth and not really distinguishable from the curtain she pulled across it. On the floorboards were a few strips of very worn-out matting of a similar colour. The bed in the corner was much of the same hue, lumpy and lopsided. ‘But I’m charmed to see you, all the same,’ Nelly said for the third time, ‘and will you have a cup of tea?’

  Dougal said, no thanks, for the third time.

  Nelly scratched her head, and raising her voice, declared, ‘Praise be to God, who rewards those who meditate the truths he has proposed for their intelligence.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ Dougal said, ‘that my course in life has much support from the Scriptures.’

  ‘Never,’ Nelly said, shaking her thin body out of its ecstasy and taking a cigarette out of Dougal’s packet.

  ‘Consider the story of Moses in the bulrushes. That was a crafty trick. The mother got her baby back and all expenses paid into the bargain. And consider the parable of the Unjust Steward. Do you know the parable of —‘

  ‘Stop,’ Nelly said, with her hand on her old blouse. ‘I get that excited by Holy Scripture I’m afraid to get my old lung trouble back.’

  ‘Were you born in Peckham?’ Dougal said.

  ‘No, Galway. I don’t remember it though. I was a girl in Peckham.’

  ‘Where did you work?’

  ‘Shoe factory I started life. Will you have a cup of tea?’

  Dougal took out ten shillings.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Nelly said.

  Dougal made it a pound.

  ‘If I got to follow them fellows round between here and the Elephant you just think of the fares alone,’ Nelly said. ‘I’ll need more than that to go along with.’

  ‘Two quid, then,’ Dougal said. ‘And more next week.’

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘Otherwise it’s going to be cheaper to pay Leslie.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘They go on and on wanting more and more. I hope you’ll remember me nice if I get some way to stop their gobs.’

  ‘Ten quid,’ said Dougal.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But suppose one of your bosses finds out in the meantime? After all, rival firms is like to get nasty.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘how old are you?’

  ‘I should say I was sixty-four. Have a cup of tea.’ She looked round the room. ‘It’s all clean dirt.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘what it was like to work in the shoe factory.’

  She told him all of her life in the shoe factory till it was time for her to go out on her rounds proclaiming. Dougal followed her down the sour dark winding stairs of Lightbody Buildings, and they parted company in the passage, he going out before her.

  ‘Good night, Nelly.’

  ‘Good night, Mr Doubtless.’

  ‘Where’s Mr Douglas?’ said Mr Weedin.

  ‘Haven’t seen him for a week,’ Merle Coverdale replied.

  ‘Would you like me to ring him up at home and see if he’s all right?’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ Mr Weedin said. ‘No, don’t. Yes, I don’t see why not. No, perhaps, though, we’d —‘

  Merle Coverdale stood tapping her pencil on her notebook, watching Mr Weedin’s hands shuffling among the papers on his desk.

  ‘I’d better ask Mr Druce,’ Mr Weedin said. ‘He probably knows where Mr Douglas is.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Merle said..

  ‘Doesn’t he?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Wait till tomorrow. See if he comes in tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Mr Weedin?’

  ‘Who? Me? I’m all right.’

  Merle went in to Mr Druce. ‘Dougal hasn’t been near the place for a week.’

  ‘Leave him alone. The boy’s doing good work.’ She returned to Mr Weedin and stood in his open door with an exaggerated simper. ‘We are to leave him alone. The boy’s doing good work.’

  ‘Come in and shut the door,’ said Mr Weedin. She shut the door and approached his desk. ‘I’m not much of a believer,’ Mr Weedin said, quivering his hands across the papers before him. ‘But there’s something Mr Douglas told me that’s on my mind.’ He craned upward to look through the glass panels on all sides of his room.

  ‘They’re all out at tea-break,’ Merle said.

  Mr Weedin dropped his head on his hands. ‘It may surprise you,’ he said, ‘coming from me. But it’s my belief that Dougal Douglas is a diabolical agent, if not in fact the Devil.’

  ‘
Mr Weedin,’ said Miss Coverdale.

  ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, yes, you’re thinking I’m going wrong up here.’ He pointed to his right temple and screwed it with his finger. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that Douglas himself showed me bumps on his head where he had horns removed by plastic surgery?’

  ‘Don’t get excited, Mr Weedin. Don’t shout. The girls are coming up from the canteen.’

  ‘I felt those bumps with these very hands. Have you looked, have you ever properly looked at his eyes? That shoulder —‘

  ‘Keep calm, Mr Weedin, you aren’t getting yourself anywhere, you know.’

  Mr Weedin pointed with a shaking arm in the direction of the managing director’s office. ‘He’s bewitched,’ he said.

  Merle took tiny steps backward and got herself out of the door. She went in to Mr Druce again.

  ‘Mr Weedin will be wanting a holiday,’ she said.

  Mr Druce lifted his paper-knife, toyed with it in his hand, pointed it at Merle, and put it down. ‘What did you say?’ he said.

  Drover Willis’s was humming with work when Dougal reported on Friday morning to the managing director.

  ‘During my first week,’ Dougal told Mr Willis, ‘I have been observing the morals of Peckham. It seemed to me that the moral element lay at the root of all industrial discontents which lead to absenteeism and the slackness at work which you described to me.’

  Mr Willis looked with his blue eyes at his rational compatriot sitting before him with a shiny brief-case on his lap.

  Mr Willis said at last, ‘That would seem to be the correct approach, Mr Dougal.’

  Dougal sat easily in his chair and continued his speech with half-dosed, detached, and scholarly eyes.

  ‘There are four types of morality observable in Peckham,’ he said. ‘One, emotional. Two, functional. Three, puritanical. Four, Christian.’

  Mr Willis opened the lid of a silver cigarette-box and passed it over to Dougal.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Dougal said. ‘Take the first category, Emotional. Here, for example, it is considered immoral for a man to live with a wife who no longer appeals to him. Take the second, Functional, in which the principal factor is class solidarity such as, in some periods and places, has also existed amongst the aristocracy, and of which the main manifestation these days is the trade union movement. Three, Puritanical, of which there are several modern variants, monetary advancement being the most prevalent gauge of the moral life in this category. Four, Traditional, which accounts for about one per cent of the Peckham population, and which in its simplest form is Christian. All moral categories are of course intermingled. Sometimes all are to be found in the beliefs and behaviour of one individual.’