The Ballad of Peckham Rye

The
Ballad
of
Peckham
Rye

 

Muriel
Spark

A NEW DIRECTIONS CLASSIC

‘G
ET
away
from here, you dirty swine,’ she said.

‘There’s a dirty swine in every man,’ he said.

‘Showing your face round here again,’ she said.

‘Now, Mavis, now, Mavis,’ he said.

She was seen to slam the door in his face, and he to press the bell, and she to open the
door again.

‘I want a word with Dixie,’ he said. ‘Now, Mavis, be
reasonable.’

‘My daughter,’ Mavis said, ‘is not in.’ She slammed the door in
his face.

All the same, he appeared to consider the encounter so far satisfactory. He got back into
the little Fiat and drove away along the Grove and up to the Common where he parked
outside the Rye Hotel. Here he lit a cigarette, got out, and entered the saloon bar.

Three men of retired age at the far end turned from the television and regarded him. One
of them nudged his friend. A woman put her hand to her chin and turned to her companion
with a look.

His name was Humphrey Place. He was that fellow that walked out on his wedding a few
weeks ago. He walked across to the White Horse and drank one bitter. Next he visited the
Morning Star and the Heaton Arms. He finished up at the Harbinger.

The pub door opened and Trevor Lomas walked in. Trevor was seen to approach Humphrey and
hit him on the mouth. The barmaid said, ‘Outside, both of you.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn’t come here,’ a
woman remarked.

He was standing at the altar with Trevor, the best man, behind him. Dixie came up the
aisle on the arm of Arthur Crewe, her stepfather. There must have been thirty-odd guests
in the church. Arthur Crewe was reported in the papers next day as having said: ‘I
had a feeling the wedding wouldn’t come off.’ At the time he stepped up the
aisle with Dixie, tall in her flounces, her eyes dark and open, and with a very little
trace round the nose of a cold.

She had said, ‘Keep away from me. You’ll catch my cold, Humphrey. It’s
bad enough me having a cold for the wedding.’

But he said, ‘I want to catch your cold. I like to think of the germs hopping from
you to me.’

‘I know where you got all these disgusting ideas from. You got them from Dougal
Douglas. Well, I’m glad he’s gone and there won’t be him at the
wedding to worry about in case he starts showing off the lumps on his head or
something.’

‘I liked Dougal,’ Humphrey said.

Here they were, kneeling at the altar. The vicar was reading from the prayer book. Dixie
took a lacy handkerchief from her sleeve and gently patted her nose. Humphrey noticed
the whiff of scent which came from the handkerchief.

The vicar said to Humphrey, ‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded
wife?’

‘No,’ Humphrey said, ‘to be quite frank I won’t.’

He got to his feet and walked straight up the aisle. The guests in the pews rustled as if
they were all women. Humphrey got to the door, into his Fiat, and drove off by himself
to Folkestone. It was there they had planned to spend their honeymoon.

He drove past the Rye, down Rye Lane roundabout to Lewisham, past the Dutch House and on
to Swanley, past Wrotham Hill and along the
A20
to
Ditton, where he stopped for a drink. After Maidstone he got through the Ashford by-pass
and stopped again at a pub. He drove on to Folkestone, turning left at the Motel Lympne,
where yellow headlamps of the French cars began to appear on the road as they had done
before. He stayed in the hotel on the front in the double room booked for the honeymoon,
and paid double without supplying explanations to the peering, muttering management.

‘Outside,’ said the barmaid. Humphrey rose, finished his drink with a
flourish, regarded his handsome hit face in the mirror behind the barmaid, and followed
Trevor Lomas out into the autumn evening, while a woman behind them in the pub remarked,
‘It wouldn’t have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn’t come
here.’

Trevor prepared for a fight, but Humphrey made no move to retaliate; he turned up towards
the Rye where his car was parked and where, beside it, Trevor had left his
motor-scooter.

Trevor Lomas caught him up. ‘And you can keep away from round here,’ he
said.

Humphrey stopped. He said, ‘You after Dixie?’

‘What’s that to you?’

Humphrey hit him. Trevor hit back. There was a fight. Two courting couples returning from
the dusky scope of the Rye’s broad lyrical acres stepped to the opposite pavement,
leant on the railings by the swimming baths, and watched. Eventually the fighters, each
having suffered equal damage to different features of the face, were parted by onlookers
to save the intervention of the police.

After Humphrey had been sent away from the door, and the matter had been discussed, Dixie
Morse, aged seventeen, daughter of the first G.I. bride to have departed from Peckham
and returned, stood in her little room on the upper floor of 12 Rye Grove and
scrutinized her savings book. As she counted she exercised her pretty hips, jerking them
from side to side to the rhythm of ‘Pickin’ a Chicken’, which tune she
hummed.

Her mother came up the stairs. Dixie closed the book and said to her mother through the
closed door, ‘Quite definitely I’m not taking up with him again. I got my
self-respect to think of.’

‘Quite right,’ Mavis replied from the other room.

‘He wasn’t ever the same after he took up with Dougal Douglas,’ Dixie
said through the wall.

‘I liked Dougal,’ Mavis replied.

‘I didn’t like him. Trevor didn’t like him,’ Dixie said.

Hearing the front-door bell, Dixie stood attentively. Her mother went down and said
something to her stepfather. They were arguing as to who should go and answer the door.
Dixie went out on the landing and saw her stepbrother Leslie walking along the
ground-floor passage in the wrong direction.

‘Leslie, open that door,’ Dixie said.

The boy looked up at Dixie. The bell rang again. Dixie’s mother burst out of the
dim-lit sitting-room.

‘If it’s him again I’ll give him something to remember me by,’
she said, and opened the door. ‘Oh, Trevor, it’s you, Trevor,’ she
said.

‘Good evening, Mavis,’ Trevor said.

Dixie returned rapidly to her room to comb her black hair and put on lipstick. When she
came down to the sitting-room, Trevor was seated under the standard lamp, between Mavis
and her stepfather, waiting for the television play to come to an end. Trevor had a
strip of plaster on his face, close to the mouth.

The play came to an end. Mavis rose in her quick way and switched on the central light.
Her husband, Arthur Crewe, smiled at everyone, adjusted his coat and offered Trevor a
cigarette. Dixie set one leg across the other, and watched the toe of her shoe, which
she wriggled.

‘You’ll never guess who came to the door this evening.

‘Humphrey Place,’ said Trevor.

‘You’ve seen him?’

‘Seen him — I’ve just knocked his head off.’

Dixie’s stepfather switched off the television altogether, and pulled round his
chair to face Trevor.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you did right.’

‘
Did.
right,’ said Dixie.

‘I
said
did. I didn’t say done. Keep your hair on, girl.’

Mavis opened the door and called, ‘Leslie, put the kettle on.’ She returned
with her quick little steps to her chair. ‘You could have knocked me over,’
she said. ‘I was just giving Dixie her tea; it was, I should say, twenty past five
and there was a ring at the bell. I said to Dixie, “Whoever can that be?” So
I went to the door, and lo and behold there he was on the doorstep. He said,
“Hallo, Mavis,” he said. I said, “You just hop it, you.” He
said, “Can I see Dixie?” I said, “You certainly can’t,” I
said. I said, “You’re a dirty swine. You remove yourself,” I said,
“and don’t show your face again,” I said. He said, “Come on,
Mavis.” I said, “Mrs Crewe to you,” and I shut the door in his
face.’ She turned to Dixie and said, ‘What about making a cup of
tea?’

Dixie said, ‘If he thinks I would talk to him again, he’s making a great
mistake. What did he say to you, Trevor?’

Mavis got up and left the room, saying, ‘If you want anything done in this house
you’ve got to do it yourself.’

‘Help your mother,’ said Arthur Crewe absently to Dixie.

‘Did he say whether he’s gone back to the same job?’ Dixie said to
Trevor.

Trevor put a hand on each knee and gave a laugh.

Dixie looked from the broad-faced Trevor to the amiable bald head of her stepfather, and
started to weep.

‘Well, he’s come back again,’ Arthur said. ‘What you crying
for?’

‘Don’t cry, Dixie,’ Trevor said.

Dixie stopped crying. Mavis came in with the tea.

Dixie said, ‘He’s common. You only have to look at his sister. Do you know
what Elsie did at her first dance?’

‘No,’ said Mavis.

‘Well, a fellow came up to her and asked her for a dance. And Elsie said,
“No, I’m sweating.”’

‘Well, you never told me that before,’ Mavis said.

‘I only just heard it. Connie Weedin told me.’

Trevor gave a short laugh. ‘We’ ll run him out of Peckham like we run Dougal
Douglas.’

‘Dougal went of his own accord, to my hearing,’ Arthur said.

‘With a black eye,’ Trevor said.

Round at the old-fashioned Harbinger various witnesses of the fight were putting the
story together. The barmaid said: ‘It was only a few weeks ago. You saw it in the
papers. That chap who left the girl at the altar, that’s him. She lives up the
Grove. Crewe by name.’

One landlady out of a group of three said, ‘No, she’s a Dixie Morse.
Crewe’s the stepfather. I know because she works at Meadows Meade in poor Miss
Coverdale’s pool that was. Miss Coverdale told me about her. The fellow had a good
position as a refrigerator engineer.’

‘Who was the chap that hit him?’

‘Some friend of the girl’s, I daresay.’

‘Old Lomas’s boy. Trevor by name. Electrician. He was best man at the
wedding.’

‘There was I,’ sang out an old man who was visible with his old wife on the
corner bench over in the public bar, ‘waiting at the church, waiting at the
church.’

His wife said nothing nor smiled.

‘Now then, Dad,’ the barmaid said.

The old man took a draught of his bitter with a tremble of the elbow and a turn of the
wrist.

Before closing time the story had spread to the surrounding public bars, where it was
established that Humphrey had called at 12 Rye Grove earlier in the evening.

Even in one of the saloon bars, Miss Connie Weedin heard of the reappearance of Humphrey
Place, and the subsequent fight; and she later discussed this at length with her father
who was Personnel Manager of Meadows, Meade & Grindley, and at present recovering
from a nervous breakdown.

‘Dixie’s boy has come back,’ she said.

‘Has the Scotch man come back?’ he said.

‘No, he’s gone.’

Outside the pub at closing-time Nelly Mahone, who had lapsed from her native religion on
religious grounds, was at her post on the pavement with her long grey hair blown by the
late summer wind. There she commented for all to hear, ‘Praise be to God who
employs the weak to confound the strong and whose ancient miracles we see shining even
in our times.’