The Ballad of Peckham Rye

by Muriel Spark

  Trevor caught him by the coat and worked him to a standstill.

  ‘It’s all clean dirt,’ Nelly said.

  ‘Sit over there,’ Trevor said to Nelly, pointing to a chair beside the table. She did so.

  He sat himself on the edge of the table and pointed to the edge of the bed for Leslie and the lopsided armchair for Collie.

  ‘We come to talk business,’ Trevor said, ‘concerning a Mr Dougal Douglas.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Nelly said.

  ‘No?’ Trevor said, folding his arms.

  ‘Supposed to be police agents, are you? Well, you can be moving off if you don’t want trouble. There’s a gentleman asleep next door. I only got to raise me voice and —‘

  Collie and Leslie looked at the wall towards which Nelly pointed.

  ‘Nark it,’ Trevor said. ‘He’s gone to football this afternoon. Now, about Mr Dougal Douglas—’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Nelly said.

  Trevor leaned forward slightly towards her and, taking a lock of her long hair in his hand, twitched it sharply.

  ‘Help! Murder! Police!’ Nelly said.

  Trevor put his big hand over her mouth and spoke to her.

  ‘Listen, Nelly, for your own good. We got money for you.’

  Nelly struggled, her yellow eyeballs were big.

  ‘I get my boys to rough you up if you won’t listen, Nelly. Won’t we, boys?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Collie said.

  ‘Won’t we, boys?’ Trevor said, looking at Leslie.

  ‘Sure,’ said Leslie.

  Trevor removed his hand, now wet, from Nelly’s mouth, and wiped it on the side of his trousers. He took a large wallet from his pocket, and flicked through a pile of bank notes.

  ‘He’s at Miss Frierne’s up the Rye,’ Nelly said. Trevor laid his wallet on the table and folding his arms, looked hard at Nelly.

  ‘He got a job at Meadows Meade,’ Nelly said.

  Trevor waited.

  ‘He got another job at Drover Willis’s under different name. No harm in him, son.’

  Trevor waited.

  ‘That’s all, son,’ Nelly said.

  ‘What’s cheese?’ Trevor said.

  ‘What’s what?’

  Trevor pulled her hair, so that she toppled towards him from her chair.

  ‘I’ll find out more. I only seen him once,’ Nelly said.

  ‘What he want with you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  Nelly looked at the two others, then back at Trevor. ‘The boys is under age,’ she remarked, and her eyes flicked a little to reveal that her brain was working.

  ‘I ask you a question,’ Trevor said. ‘What Mr Dougal Douglas come to you for?’

  ‘About the girl,’ she said.

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘He’s after Beauty,’ she said. ‘He want me to find out where she live and that. You better go and see what he’s up to. Probable he’s with her now.’

  ‘Who’s his gang?’ Trevor inquired, reaching for Nelly’s hair.

  She jumped away from him. Leslie’s nerve gave way and he ran to Nelly and hit her on the face.

  ‘Murder!’ Nelly screamed.

  Trevor put his hand over her mouth, and signalled with his eyes to Collie, who went to the door, opened it a little way, listened, then shut it again. Collie then struck Leslie, who backed on to the bed.

  Trevor, with his big hand on Nelly’s mouth, whispered softly in her ear,

  ‘Who’s his gang, Nelly? What’s the code key? Ten quid to you, Nelly.’

  She squirmed and he took his moist hand from her mouth. ‘Who’s his gang?’

  ‘He goes with Miss Coverdale sometimes. He goes with that fair-haired lady controller that’s gone to Drover Willis’s. That’s all I know of his company.’

  ‘Who are the fellows?’

  ‘I’ll find out,’ she said, ‘I’ll find out, son. Have a heart.’

  ‘Who’s Rose Hathaway?’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  Trevor took Dougal’s rolled-up exercise book from an inside pocket and spreading it out at the page read out the bit about that Rose Hathaway who was buried at a hundred and three. ‘That mean anything to you?’ Trevor said.

  ‘It sounds all wrong. I’ll ask him.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll find out your own way. Not a word we been here, get that?’

  ‘It’s only his larks. He’s off his nut, son.’

  ‘Did he by any chance bring Humphrey Place here with him?’

  ‘Who?’

  Trevor twisted her arm.

  ‘Humphrey Place. Goes with Dixie Morse.’

  ‘No, never seen him but once at the Grapes.’

  ‘You’ll be seeing us again,’ Trevor said.

  He went down the dark stone stairs followed by Leslie and Collie.

  ‘Killing herself,’ Merle said, ‘that’s what she is, for money. Then she comes in to the pool dropping tired next day, not fit for the job. I said to her, “Dixie,” I said, “what time did you go to bed last night?” “I consider that a personal question, Miss Coverdale,” she says. “Oh,” I says, “well, if it isn’t a personal question will you kindly type these two reports over again? There’s five mistakes on one and six on the other.” “Oh! “ she said, “what mistakes?” Because she won’t own up to her mistakes till you put them under her nose. I said, “These mistakes as marked.” She said “Oh! “ I said, “You’ve been doing nothing but yawn yawn yawn all week.” Well, at tea-break when Dixie was out Connie says to me, “Miss Coverdale, it’s Dixie’s evening job making her tired.” “Evening job?” I said. She said, “Yes, she’s an usherette at the Regal from six-thirty to ten-thirty, makes extra for her wedding sayings.” “Well,” I said, “no wonder she can’t do her job here!”’

  Dougal flashed an invisible cinema-torch on to the sprightly summer turf of the Rye. ‘Mind the step, Madam. Three-and-sixes on the right.’

  Merle began to laugh from her chest. Suddenly she sat down on the Rye and began to cry. ‘God!’ she said. ‘Dougal, I’ve had a rotten life.’

  ‘And it isn’t over yet,’ Dougal said, sitting down beside her at a little distance. ‘There might be worse ahead.’

  ‘First my parents,’ she said. ‘Too possessive. They’re full of themselves. They don’t think anything of me myself. They like to be able to say “Merle’s head of the pool at Meadows Meade,” but that’s about all there is to it. I broke away and of course like a fool took up with Mr Druce. Now I can’t get away from him, somehow. You’ve unsettled me, Dougal, since you came to Peckham. I shall have a nervous breakdown, I can see it coming.’

  ‘If you do,’ Dougal said, ‘I won’t come near you. I can’t bear sickness of any sort.’

  ‘Dougal,’ she said, ‘I was counting on you to help me to get away from Mr Druce.’

  ‘Get another job,’ he said, ‘and refuse to see him any more. It’s easy.

  ‘Oh, everything’s easy for you. You’re free.’

  ‘Aren’t you free?’ Dougal said.

  ‘Yes, as far as the law goes.’

  ‘Well, stop seeing Druce.’

  ‘After six years, going on seven, Dougal, I’m tied in a sort of way. And what sort of job would I get at thirty-eight?’

  ‘You would have to come down,’ Dougal said.

  ‘After being head of the pool,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t. I’ve got to think of my pride. And there’s the upkeep of my flat. Mr Druce puts a bit towards it.’

  ‘People are looking at you crying,’ Dougal said, ‘and they think it’s because of me.’

  ‘So it is in a way. I’ve had a rotten life.’

  ‘Goodness, look at that,’ Dougal said.

  She looked upward to where he was pointing.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Up there,’ Dougal said; ‘trees in the sky.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.’

  ‘Look prop
erly,’ Dougal said, ‘up there. And don’t look away because Mr Druce is watching us from behind the pavilion.’

  She looked at Dougal.

  ‘Keep looking up,’ he said, ‘at the trees with red tassels in the sky. Look, where I’m pointing.’

  Several people who were crossing the Rye stopped to look up at where Dougal was pointing. Dougal said to them. ‘A new idea. Did you see it in the papers? Planting trees and shrubs in the sky. Look there — it’s a tip of a pine.’

  ‘I think I do see something,’ said a girl.

  Most of the crowd moved sceptically away, still glancing upward now and then. Dougal brought Merle to her feet and drifted along with the others.

  ‘Is he still there?’ Merle said.

  ‘Yes. He must be getting tired of going up and down in lifts.’

  ‘Oh, he only does that on Saturday mornings. He usually stays at home in the afternoons. He comes to me in the evenings. I’ve got a rotten life. Sometimes I think I’ll swallow a bottle of aspirins.’

  ‘That doesn’t work.’ Dougal said. ‘It only makes you ill. And the very thought of illness is abhorrent to me.’

  ‘He’s keen on you,’ Merle said. ‘I know he is, but he doesn’t.’

  ‘He must do if he’s keen —‘Not at all. I’m his first waking experience of an attractive man.’

  ‘You fancy yourself.’

  ‘No, Mr Druce does that.’

  ‘With your crooked shoulder,’ she said, ‘you’re not all that much cop.’

  ‘Advise Druce on those lines,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t take my advice any more. ‘‘How long would you give him with the firm?’

  ‘Well. since he’s started to slip, I’ve debated that question a lot. The business is on the decline. It’s a worry, I mean about my flat, if Mr Druce loses his job.’

  ‘I’d give him three months,’ Dougal said.

  Merle started to cry again, walking towards the streets with Dougal. ‘Is he still there?’ she said. Dougal did a dancer’s pirouette, round and round, and stopped once more by Merle’s side.

  ‘He’s walking away in the other direction.’

  ‘Oh, I wonder where he’s going?’

  ‘Home to Dulwich, I expect.’

  ‘It’s immoral,’ Merle said, ‘the way he goes back to that woman in that house. They never say a word to each other.’

  ‘Stop girning. You look awful with your red eyes. It detracts from the Okapi look But all the same, what a long neck you’ve got.’

  She put her hand up to her throat and moved it up her long neck. ‘Mr Druce squeezed it tight the other day,’ she said, ‘for fun, but I got a fright.’

  ‘It looks like a maniac’s delight, your neck,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Well, you’ve not got much of one, with your shoulder up round your ear.

  ‘A short neck denotes a good mind,’ Dougal said. ‘You see, the messages go quicker to the brain because they’ve shorter to go.’ He bent and touched his toes. ‘Suppose the message starts down here. Well, it comes up here —‘

  ‘Watch out, people are looking.

  They were in the middle of Rye Lane, flowing with shopping women and prams. A pram bumped into Dougal as he stood upright, causing him to barge forward into two women who stood talking. Dougal embraced them with wide arms. ‘Darlings, watch where you’re going,’ he said. They beamed at each other and at him.

  ‘Charming, aren’t you?’ Merle said. ‘There’s a man leaning out of that car parked outside Higgins and Jones, seems to be watching you.’

  Dougal looked across the road. ‘Mr Willis is watching me,’ he said. ‘Come and meet Mr Willis.’ He took her arm to cross the road.

  ‘I’m not dressed for an introduction,’ Merle said.

  ‘You are only an object of human research,’ Dougal said, guiding her obliquely through the traffic towards Mr Willis.

  ‘I’m just waiting for my wife. She’s shopping in there, Mr Willis explained. Now that Dougal had approached him he seemed rather embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t sure it was you, Mr Dougal,’ he explained. ‘I was just looking to see. A bit short-sighted.’

  ‘Miss Merle Coverdale, one of my unofficial helpers,’ Dougal said uppishly. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘to see what Peckham does on its Saturday afternoons.’

  ‘Yes, quite.’ Mr Willis pinkly took Merle’s hand and glanced towards the shop door.

  Dougal gave a reserved nod and, as dismissing Mr Willis from his thoughts, led Merle away.

  ‘Why did he call you Mr Dougal?’ Merle said. ‘Because he’s my social inferior. Formerly a footman in our family.’

  ‘What’s he now?’

  ‘One of my secret agents.’

  ‘You’ll send me mad if I let you. Look what you’ve done to Weedin. You’re driving Mr Druce up the wall.’

  ‘I have powers of exorcism,’ Dougal said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The ability to drive devils out of people.’

  ‘I thought you said you were a devil yourself.’

  ‘The two states are not incompatible. Come to the police station.’

  ‘Where are we going, Dougal?’

  ‘The police station. I want to see the excavation.’ He took her into the station yard where he had already made himself known as an interested archaeologist. By the coal-heap was a wooden construction above a cavity already some feet deep. Work had stopped for the weekend. They peered inside.

  ‘The tunnel leads up to Nunhead,’ Dougal said, ‘the nuns used to use it. They packed up one night over a hundred years ago, and did a flit, and left a lot of debts behind them.’

  A policeman came up to them with quiet steps and, pointing to the coal-heap, said, ‘The penitential cell stood in that corner. Afternoon, sir.’

  ‘Goodness, you gave me a fright,’ Merle said. There’s bodies of nuns down there, miss,’ the policeman said.

  Merle had gone home to await Mr Druce. Dougal walked up to Costa’s Café in the cool of the evening. Eight people were inside, among them Humphrey and Dixie, seated at a separate table eating the remains of sausage and egg. Humphrey kicked out a chair at their table for Dougal to sit down upon. Dixie touched the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin, and carefully picking up her knife and fork, continued eating, turning her head a little obliquely to receive each small mouthful. Humphrey had just finished. He set down his knife and fork on the plate and pushed the plate away. He rubbed the palms of his hands together twice and said to Dougal,

  ‘How’s life?’

  ‘It exists,’ Dougal said, and looked about him.

  ‘You had a distinguished visitor this afternoon. But you’d just gone out. The old lady was out and I answered to him. He wouldn’t leave his name. But of course I knew it. Mr Druce of Meadows Meade. Dixie pointed him out to me once, didn’t you, Dixie?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dixie said.

  ‘He followed me all over the Rye, so greatly did Mr Druce wish to see me,’ Dougal said.

  ‘If I was you,’ Humphrey said, ‘I’d keep to normal working hours. Then he wouldn’t have any call on you Saturday afternoons — would he, Dixie?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Dixie said.

  ‘Coffee for three,’ Dougal said to the waiter.

  ‘You had another visitor, about four o’clock,’ Humphrey said. ‘I’ll give you a clue. She had a pot of flowers and a big parcel.’

  ‘Elaine,’ Dougal said.

  The waiter brought three cups of coffee, one in his right hand and two — one resting on the other — in his left. These he placed carefully on the table. Dixie’s slopped over in her saucer. She looked at the saucer.

  ‘Swap with me,’ Humphrey said.

  ‘Have mine,’ Dougal said.

  She allowed Humphrey to exchange his saucer with hers. He tipped the contents of the saucer into his coffee, sipped it, and set it down.

  ‘Sugar,’ he said.

  Dougal passed the sugar to Dixie.

  She said, ‘Thank you.’ S
he took two lumps, dropped them in her coffee, and stirred it, watching it intently.

  Humphrey put three lumps in his coffee, stirred it rapidly, tasted it. He pushed the sugar bowl over to Dougal, who took a lump and put it in his mouth.

  ‘I let her go up to your room,’ Humphrey said. ‘She said she wanted to put in some personal touches. There was the pot of flowers and some cretonne cushions. The old lady was out. I thought it nice of Elaine to do that —wasn’t it nice, Dixie?’

  ‘Wasn’t what nice?’

  ‘Elaine coming to introduce feminine touches in Dougal’s room.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Feeling all right?’ Humphrey said to her.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Do you want to go on somewhere else or do you want to stay here?’

  ‘Anything you like.’

  ‘Have a cake.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Why does your brother go hungry?’ Dougal said to her.

  ‘Whose brother goes hungry?’

  ‘Yours. Leslie.’

  ‘What you mean, goes hungry?’

  ‘He came round scrounging doughnuts off my landlady the other day,’ Dougal said.

  Humphrey rubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled at Dougal. ‘Oh, kids, you know what they’re like.’

  ‘I won’t stand for him saying anything against Leslie,’ Dixie said, looking round to see if anyone at the other tables was listening. ‘Our Leslie isn’t a scrounger. It’s a lie.’

  ‘It is not a lie,’ Dougal said.

  ‘I’ll speak to my stepdad,’ Dixie said. ‘I should,’ Dougal said.

  ‘What’s a doughnut to a kid?’ Humphrey said to them both. ‘Don’t make something out of nothing. Don’t start.’

  ‘Who started?’ Dixie said.

  ‘You did, a matter of fact,’ Humphrey said, ‘with your bad manners. You could hardly say hallo to Dougal when he came in.’

  ‘That’s right, take his part,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not staying here to be insulted.’

  She rose and picked up her bag. Dougal pulled her down to her chair again.

  ‘Take your hand off me,’ she said, and rose. Humphrey pulled her down again. She remained seated, looking ahead into the far distance.

  ‘There’s Beauty just come in,’ Dougal said. Dixie turned her head to see Beauty. Then she resumed her fixed gaze.