Mr. Love and Justice (19 page)

Frankie, released on bail from the charge of living off immoral earnings, and waiting while his lawyers hoisted his case from the rough justice of the magistrate’s court to the dangerous impartiality of a judge and jury, had met his former girl for a chat about it all at the drinking-club now fashionable in ‘the game’: the other having suffered an eclipse as these clubs do, rising and falling with the fickle inclinations of their clientele and the slow-grinding machinery of the law. She was as desirable as ever though perhaps a shade more
elderly
– a bit wiser to a world about which she was already far too wise. He was relaxed, resigned, and
saddened
as only those born innocent can be when by folly or misjudgement they have behaved in some way that violates this quality of their natures.

‘My chances?’ said Frankie, summing up the situation.
‘Slender, but they exist. After all’ – he pressed her hand – ‘I won’t have the principal witness in the box against me.’

‘If only your lawyers would let me speak
for
you, Frankie. Say you were a handsome, silly boyfriend who knew nothing and I never gave you anything. You sure that’s no use to you at all?’

‘Dear – who’d believe it? And they say the sight of a – excuse me – common prostitute speaking up for me will damn me as a ponce at once with any jury.’

‘Yeah, I know. But I’m scared of that copper’s evidence, honey, when you come up at the Sessions. It’s always so thorough and so damn
convincing
.’

She drained her B and S – a drink which, now banished from stately clubs and homes where it so flourished in Edwardian times, survives in our day as a favourite of this very Edwardian profession. ‘Which cops will it be, I wonder? That bastard who got the box, and I suppose the Kilburn kiddy.’

‘He’s bound to speak against me, honey. After all why shouldn’t he? It’s his graft.’

Frankie rose and leant over to work the cigarette-machine behind her back. She reached for her bag, said, ‘I’ve got florins,’ but he smiled, bent down and clicked the bag shut, then undid the packet standing close beside her stool in the tenderly sexy posture of bar lovers: girl’s face level with boy’s belt. She took her fag, held it unlit, looked up at him and said, ‘You really think, dear, you couldn’t try to skip?’

‘We’ve been into that. They’ve got my passport and
they’ll be watching me this time. I’ve thought of trying: stow away and get duff papers – it’s not that difficult, I know. But it seems this thing is coming to me and I might as well take it on the chin.’

‘The nick’s the nick, dear, don’t forget. And with a previous conviction for
that
, they can whip you in for nothing and get a judgement on you till the day you die.’

‘I’ve thought of that.’

‘
And
– can you travel, after? I mean, go anywhere? Once you’ve got a record, honey, you’ve got a record.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Frankie! I believe you
want
to go inside!’

‘No … you think I’m crazy? But I don’t mind telling you, baby, I
do
think it’s written in my book.’

‘Fuck that! And when you come out, dear. There’ll be some loot?’

‘Oh, sufficient. Though the lawyers are getting most of what I’ve had …’

‘There’ll be me, too, honey. I’ll be your banker, never fear …’

Frankie looked at her and smiled. ‘Never again,’ he said. ‘Baby, I’ve thought it over and it seems I’m really not the type.’

‘No? Well, darl, they all say that. They all say “never again” the first time they get nicked, and they all head straight back to the chicks when their bit of trouble’s over.’ Frankie was silent. ‘You know, dear,’ she went on, ‘there’s only one thing does really trouble me a bit. I believe if I’d had that kid of ours you really might have grown to love me.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘Yes, I do. I think you’re the type of man who never loves a girl but loves a mother.’

‘I don’t know about mothers, babe,’ he said, giving her a lipstick-avoiding kiss, ‘but I do know you’ve been great to me – a good chick in bed, yes, but in many ways just like my flesh and blood – my sister.’

‘Oh, thank you! Do you mind? Your sister! Well – what next?’

Frankie went over to replenish glasses, and glancing round the room he felt for the first time in what seemed so long a while quite
different
once again from all these people there: a non-ponce, in fact: a man whose sex life was once more his own absolute and undisputed property. Not that he judged them in the slightest, being no hypocrite, nor given by nature to imagine that to judge one’s fellows has anything much to do with having a real sense of justice. But he did feel altered: and he had, for the first time in his life, an informed opinion on the easy-money boys.

Looking up, he saw one of them who entered and seeing him, withdrew. This was the star ponce whom Frankie, quickly abandoning the glasses on an indignant table, caught up with at the stairs. ‘Hullo, man,’ he said. ‘Where you been hiding yourself? I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Hi, Francis. And you, man! Where
you
been, feller – have you been away?’

‘Not
yet
,’ said Frankie. ‘But it seems I’m going to just because someone who got scared felt they had to speak up out of turn.’

‘Oh, yeah? That so? That really so?’

‘That really so. Without that one man’s coward’s word I’d be in Africa or South America by now.’

‘You would? Well now, Francis! Please don’t
stare
at
me
like that, old-timer. Why! The way you stand there, making insinuations and just threatening a bit, anyone who didn’t know might take you for a copper!’

The star ponce (in whose life this scene had occurred more than once before) knew exactly what he had to do: and that was get his blow in first. The wronged and righteous party in a quarrel often makes the capital mistake of forgetting – if it’s going to come down to a set-to – that the villain, being such, is likely to be quicker off the mark because to counteract the power of towering indignation, he has only speed and swift decision. At least six seconds before Frankie got in his knock-out punch the star ponce had bent, pulled the blade from its plastic sheath inside his nylon sock, and stabbed Frankie neatly in the groin.

Preferring for reasons best known to himself (no doubt financial) to travel like the emigrants of old by sea, Edward’s father-in-law-to-be set sail (seen off by Edward not so much to shed a parting tear as to make sure he
went
) from the grubby and antique shores of Fenchurch Street railway station. Though his departure now seemed so much less important the thing, once set in motion, could not be stopped because his girl’s dad had grown fond of the idea, and neither Edward nor she regretted it. The older man was in high spirits, haloed already with the aura of a tropical remittance-man; and only subdued, as Edward was much more so, by anxiety about his daughter’s critical condition: the night before, attacked by sudden pains, she had been carried off to hospital. ‘Send me a radiogram, boy,’ the father said, ‘as soon as ever they tell you what it is. And if it’s serious, even if I
have to get off the ship at the first port of call – well, rely on me, I’ll face the journey back across old Biscay.’

‘I hope that won’t be necessary,’ said Edward.

‘Me, too. But note down my cabin number all the same.’

Edward reached by long habit for his little book, took it out, looked at it, and wrote the number there.

‘Well,’ said the expatriate, ‘I won’t keep you any longer: I know you’ve got to fly back to your headquarters. Well, lad, there it is. Cheerioh! All the very best! And thanks for all you’ve done for me and all you’re going to do.’

Repressing with great difficulty an overpowering desire to say, ‘Farewell, you old bastard, and whatever you do, don’t come back,’ Edward said (using the word for the first time), ‘Good-bye, Dad, and good luck.’

The men shook hands, waved and separated, and Edward made off to the underground. At the foot of the escalator he dropped the black notebook, after looking at it once again, in the litter basket there provided. As he travelled west the docile public in the carriage, massed in long-suffering wedges of impatient and resigned humanity, now seemed to him as they had often done since his suspension not the
them
they used to be, but
us
: an us he still disapproved of in so many respects and still mistrusted: a great, confused, messy, indeterminate ‘us’ in need of regulation, guidance from above and order.

He had made in the past weeks several visits to the station on routine matters concerning his three rather contradictory appeals (to resign, to get married, and against unjustified suspension), but had no longer been
admitted to the inner chambers of his erstwhile protector the Detective-Sergeant. But to see him an imperative summons had now come; and so after a brief, fruitless telephone call to the hospital where his girl had just been taken, he walked up the breeze-block stairs and knocked, at exactly the appointed hour, upon the door.

Within he found the Detective-Sergeant and, now restored to health, his own Iago, the star sleuth. The Detective-Sergeant, most unusually for him, was in uniform which somehow made him look, though more official, less redoubtable. The star sleuth was in neat, expressionless plain-clothes. ‘Sit down,’ said the Detective-Sergeant.

He picked up a file, then putting on spectacles (giving him the appearance of a modern British general) he said to Edward, ‘I don’t want to see you just at present, Constable, and I dare say you don’t want to see me. Unfortunately, though, we’ve both got to. It’s about this ponce. He’s been involved in an affray in addition to being on bail on a much more serious matter. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of it yet, but as it was a quarrel between ponces I don’t suppose it very much matters either way. At all events, as he’s out on bail and subject to the jurisdiction of the courts we’ve had him put into a hospital where we can keep an eye on him, so as to be ready for him when
he’s
ready to face either of these charges.’

Edward and the star sleuth, neither looking at the other, preserved a silence of the kind that indicated all this had so far registered.

‘Now, as regards the poncing charge,’ said the Detective-Sergeant looking at Edward, ‘if that comes up first we’re calling you as a prosecution witness. You can refuse to appear, of course, that’s entirely up to you, but if you do I’d suggest you take counsel’s opinion as to what your own legal position might then be. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m ready to testify.’

‘Oh. You are?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve decided it’s my duty to the Force even though I have to leave it.’

‘I’m not much interested in your motives, Constable, any longer. What I’m interested in is facts. Now. If you and your colleague here are going to testify you’ll have to get together and make sure your statements correspond. We’ll be up at the Sessions, don’t forget, with defending counsel and the whole bag of legal tricks. So I want some co-operation so that you both get the whole thing absolutely crystal clear within your two minds. What I
don’t
want,’ the Detective-Sergeant added, putting down the dossier, ‘is any conflict of evidence that might lead to an acquittal. I do
not
want, in short, if you can grasp this, the Force to be made a fool of. Any questions?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well. That’s it. You can carry on.’

The telephone rang and the Detective-Sergeant, answering, looked up angrily. ‘Constable,’ he said to
Edward. ‘Did you tell them downstairs they were to put your private calls through to
my
office
here
?’

Edward got up. ‘It’s from the hospital, sir. My girl. She’s very ill.’

‘Oh. Oh, all right then. Take it.’

Edward picked up the apparatus, listened, hesitated, then said, ‘Thank you. All right, thank you,’ and put it down.

There was a short silence.

‘Bad news?’ said the Detective-Sergeant, a faint glint of a former light appearing through the thunder on his brow.

‘My girl’s had a child, stillborn, sir.’

‘Oh. Sorry, lad. Very sorry.’

The star sleuth said to Edward, ‘I hope it’s a natural miscarriage, not the other thing.’

Edward stared at him and tensed, but as he rushed the star sleuth saw him coming, and picking up a truncheon the Detective-Sergeant used as a paper-weight he cracked it on Edward’s skull between his eyes.

Than a prison there is only one place more impressive to the human spirit and even more a symbol of our mortal condition: a hospital. In prison there is the allegory of sin, punishment and (in theory at any rate) redemption. In a hospital, the deeper allegory of birth, death and (occasionally) resurrection.

Thus when respectable citizens pass by prisons (which they rarely do because jails are tucked away in improbable places) they avert their hearts and eyes from the reality that a prison is a particular extension of a society and not in any essential way a thing apart from it. And if one ponders upon prisons and, better still, goes inside one (other, of course, than as a visitor), one is forced to the conclusion that the prisoners are us: one fragment of those outside who save for chance and technicality might very well be inside; and that insofar as
sin is universal all are criminals, even if not deemed so by the conventions of temporary self-invented laws.

But when it comes to hospitals the healthy man may avert his eyes and heart with greater trepidation: for birth, death and healing are by much more general consent our inescapable lot. And these beneficent places are, in their way, even more awe-inspiring because from the sentences they can pass there may be no release and no appeal on earth. And that is why the only place which coppers and criminals
really
fear are the white wards where those temporal imperfect figures, the screws and wardresses of the jails, become as guardians of something greater, the white-robed nurses and physicians.

As for the inmates, in either case they have a strong if momentary sense of solidarity. If you’re in jail ‘the others’ is the world outside; if you’re in hospital you belong to the fraternity of the sick – an aching body set apart from the community of the healthy beyond the disinfected walls. And it was not surprising that Frankie, convalescing from his wound on crutches, and Edward whose skull was healing likewise beneath an impressive turban of lint and bandages, should often have been thrown even closer together than their fates as healthy men had already brought them.

Their favourite rendezvous was the long
sun-parlour
where in this progressive establishment the walking-wounded were permitted to foregather, free from the martial disciplines of their wards, for chats, draughts, reading, at evenings telly-viewing, and for the calls by flower-laden visitors at the appointed hours.
The nurses, in the brisk and bossy manner of their calling, came frequently to disturb the comfort and tranquillity of the patients with thermometers and pills, and summonses to X-ray rooms and distant theatres, and charts to fill in with dots and crosses indicating such things as whether or not their charges had been, as they put it, ‘good boys’. The doctors in their more remote and stately fashion made periodical forays, often, as with the colonel on his inspection, in files that indicated seniority and which trooper, in this army of good-health, held commissioned or non-commissioned status. But mostly the patients, attired in government dressing-gowns much too short for them (or else too long), were left to their own devices of boredom, pain, amity and tiffs.

Edward and Frankie had long ago put each other entirely ‘in the picture’ as to their respective pasts: the bonds of solitude, and ennui, and suffering, and even more the discovery that both were now outcasts from the law soon overcame any slight initial reluctance on either side. There was also the enormous interest and satisfaction of meeting ‘the enemy’ as equals on this neutral ground: as if they were two warriors of opposing camps interned, as a consequence of the misfortune of arms by some Swiss-like power, now pleased and eager with clear consciences to betray military secrets to each other.

When their two girls came to visit them in the evenings, the broken ice formed again ever so slightly: for these were both creatures from the outside world, living reminders of a troubled past and a most uncertain
future. Not that either man was anxious or embarrassed by his own girl’s behaviour to her sister: each woman had been most correct, and as the days passed even cordial; and the men learnt to their astonishment, mild alarm, and then hilarity that the two girls carried on, outside the hospital, a certain degree of cautious social intercourse: phone calls, requests to convey parcels on a day either couldn’t come and even joint excursions to their respective Odeons. And when both of the girls retired as the end of their visit was heralded by the clanging, by some eager authoritative nurse, of a bell that did more harm to broken nerves in a minute than the hours spent in the sun-parlour had healed, the two men gathered up the mags and fruit and fags they’d left, and laughed: though handing by mutual, unspoken agreement any
flowers
either girl had brought them to a horticulturist cleaning-woman to carry home. For each of them felt what many patients must have done – that it’s a bit tactless of most kindly souls to bring flowers only when they visit hospitals, or graves.

Time after time they speculated on the days that lay ahead: chewing with joint professional gusto over every aspect of their own case and each other’s. ‘So Frankie, you don’t think,’ Edward said, ‘you’ll go down on either charge?’

‘Honest, Ted, no, I don’t. In the affray I was the victim, there were bags of witnesses and the feller’s not marked at all himself, it seems. As soon as he comes up for trial I just can’t see how they can bring me into it except as an absent witness with the affidavit that I gave them.’

‘Yes, boy. But the other thing?’

‘Well – you say you’re out of the cowboy forces now. Of course, cop, I still don’t believe you – not till I see you busted anyway, then I might. But even so I just can’t see they’ve got the evidence, if, as you say, you’ve finally decided not to testify: and – remember this – the
longer
the thing’s delayed the harder it is to prove.’

‘Correct. What happened a year – even a month – ago convinces juries far less than what happened yesterday.’

‘And what about you, boy? I’d say you’re in the clear as well: dismissed, okay, but wedding bells and an honest job of some kind for the first time in your life.’

‘Well, there’s the inquiry I’ve still got to face, of course. But from what I gather although they think that officer acted within his rights by bashing me when I attacked him, they’re not very pleased at it all happening inside a station. So they’ll try to keep it very quiet. Otherwise, if they don’t …’ Edward’s eyes gleamed slightly ‘… I might bring a civil action for assault.’

‘You’ve been having a chat with your lawyers, too. I can see. And what of the future, sonny? What are you going to do?’

‘I dunno: it’s too early to say, really. Besides, outside my career I don’t really
know
anything at all.’

‘No coppers do.’

‘Why should they? A job’s a job. One thing I
had
thought of, though, is setting up with my wife when we get married in a dressmaking business: that’s her own trade, you see.’

‘You’ll need capital for that …’

‘Well, we’ve got a little bit of that put by.’

‘We won’t ask from where. So – dressmaking: what does that mean? Little fitting-room upstairs? Places where the mugs who pay for the chicks’ gowns can come in and admire their undies as they try them on?’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘While you and your missus go out and leave them alone there for a while? Boy, that’s it! A little high-grade brothel’s what your establishment will be.’

‘Don’t be foolish, Frankie.’

‘I’m not! You’ll see! The idea will grow on you.’

Edward drank reflectively from some repellent but no doubt curative beverage. ‘And you, Frank,’ he said. ‘You’ll be going back to sea?’

‘Me? Oh, I’m not sure. As a matter of fact I’ve been turning the thing over and I think I might consider opening up a little investigation agency.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You know – divorce and such-like. It’s quite a busy trade and with hardly any overheads. I know a lot of the angles now and contacts, and it seems to me it’s a possibility.’

‘You’ll have to be careful, sonny, that’s all I have to say.’

‘And so will you, son! We’ll both of us have to be.’

An uneasiness in easy chairs, a creaking of un-oiled wheel-carriages, and a rapid extinction of pipes and cigarettes all signalled the evening visit of the house doctor. He was accompanied (as not in his formal, perilous visits to the wards by day when he came flanked by assistants
and by students, and himself followed sometimes behind some mighty specialist) only and informally by the ward sister – a fierce and dreadfully cheery martinet whose days of maximum glory, as her huge, sexless, medalled breast bore witness, had been spent on hospital ships in time of war. The doctor himself was young, fair-haired, sharp, and amiable – a man of the new and blessedly rising school who believe that patients are best consulted, to obtain results, about themselves and no longer treated, in the style of some of the older physicians, as culpable and rather tiresome imbeciles.

‘Having a natter?’ the doctor said sitting down beside Frankie and Edward and, to the scandalised but respectful glare of the ward sister, offering them each a cigarette and taking one himself.

‘That’s about it, doc,’ Frankie answered.

‘It passes the time, sir,’ Edward added.

‘Your girls both well?’ the doctor asked, a glance of friendly complicity coming into his sandy eyes.

They each said they were.

‘Well, we hope to be turning you both loose among them before so very long,’ the doctor continued, ‘but please don’t ask me
when
because, of course, only your specialists can give me the final okay for your release –
and
what’s more we’ll need the permission of the sister here.’

The three men smiled. The sister looked severe.

‘Anyway,’ said the doctor, rising, ‘when you
do
get out you’ll both have to take it easy for a bit: ’specially with the women and – this’ll please you – work. You’ve
both’ (his tone became suddenly professionally grave) ‘sailed very close to the edge in your two very different ways. When you get your discharge come and see me, if you like, and I’ll tell you all the gory details of just how bad you were. But not now. We want you to get fit, not turn into a pair of hypochondriacs.’

Left to themselves Frankie and Edward watched the night come on, a bit restive (as beasts are when they know the summons will soon be coming to the manger) and talking only spasmodically.

‘You know,’ Edward said, ‘these hospitals are really terrific. All this goes on – all these people here – they treat you whoever you are – no questions asked – not even any money. Just so long as you’re sick you’re welcome. People should know about it,’ he continued. ‘People should know what goes on inside these places.’

‘You might say, Ted,’ said Frankie, ‘they should know what goes on inside the cells and jails and station headquarters, too. Over in other countries where I’ve been and even in Europe on the Continent, thousands of people – and the very best among them – have had experience of the law from the inside on account of the political upheavals. But here everyone is so damn innocent: so simon-pure. They unload all their moral problems on to the law’s shoulders and leave you boys to get on with doing just what you like in the public’s name. Well, if they do that one day they’ll wake up and find they’ve given you not physical authority but all their own moral authority as well.’

‘Citizens,’ said Edward, ‘broadly speaking, just don’t
want to be responsible. I’ve always said that: they just don’t want to know. They lack the sense of responsibility themselves and only the Force is left with any sense of obligation to the community.’

‘That’s just what I say, man! If you hear a scream in the night these days you say, “Oh, the law will take care of it”. A hundred years ago or even fifty, our grandfathers would have grabbed hold of the poker and gone out and taken a look themselves. They’d have
done
something: not just dialled 999.’

‘I guess that’s the age we live in,’ Edward said.

‘Yes, but I don’t like it, Ted. Because you cops – well, you’ll switch to any boss: any boss whatever. Whoever’s got a grip then you’ll obey him however good or bad his acts and his ideas may be.’

‘Well, Frankie, tell me! What else do people believe in any more but just authority! Whatever it may represent?’

‘That’s it: nothing at all! Not religions, anyway. As religions have got weaker coppers have got stronger – you ever noticed that? The cop is the priest of the twentieth-century world, inspiring fear and if you’re obedient, giving you absolution. But there is one very, very big difference from the old religions. The god of the coppers
is
the copper: you’re the priests of a religion without a god.’

In the gloaming Edward’s face was indistinct and so was Frankie’s and they talked in the direction of each other’s voices. Edward said, ‘If that is true, boy – and I really just don’t know – all I can say is we coppers are exposed to very great moral stress: we have to deal more
with Satan every day than the rest of you possibly ever dream of.’

The lights burst on and a high female voice cried, ‘Beddy-byes! Come along, boys, or I’ll have to spank your little bottoms! Back to your wards you go: last one turns off the telly – and the lights!’

Neither man moved – as much by disinclination as in rebellious assertion of their manhood. ‘These nurses!’ Frankie cried. ‘The first thing I’m going to do when I get out is date
that
one and break her bloody heart for her!’

‘I doubt if she’d be interested,’ Edward said, returning from the light-switch where he’d gone to restore the soothing, healing twilight. ‘I know you kill them, Frankie, but that one, I think you’d find she’s wed to her sputum mugs and bedpans.’

‘
All
chicks are interested,’ Frankie said, ‘unless they’re frigid.’

‘You sure of that? I think there are some who centre it all on their vocation or on just one single man.’

‘Sex, boy,
is
a woman’s chief vocation: and plenty of it.’