The Ballad of Peckham Rye (12 page)

‘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.’ She 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 step-dad,’ 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.

Dougal whistled in Beauty’s direction.

‘I shouldn’t do that,’ Humphrey said.

‘My God, he’s supposed to be a professional man,’ Dixie said,
‘and he opens his mouth and whistles at a girl.’

Dougal whistled again.

Beauty raised her eyebrows.

‘You’ll have Trevor Lomas in after us,’ Humphrey said. The waiter and
Costa himself came and hovered round their table.

‘Come on up to the Harbinger,’ Dougal said, ‘and we’ll take
Beauty with us.’

‘Now look. I quite
like
Trevor,’ Humphrey said.

‘He’s to be best man at our wedding,’ Dixie said. ‘He’s got
a good job with prospects and sticks in to it.’

Dougal whistled. Then he called across two tables to Beauty, ‘Waiting for
somebody?’

Beauty dropped her lashes. ‘Not in particular,’ she said.

‘Coming up to the Harbinger?’

‘Don’t mind.’

Dixie said, ‘Well,
I
do. I’m fussy about my company.’

‘What she say?’ Beauty said, jerking herself upright in support of the
question.

‘I said,’ said Dixie, ‘that I’ve got another
appointment.’

‘Beauty and I will be getting along then,’ Dougal said. He went across to
Beauty who was preparing to comb her hair.

Humphrey said, ‘After all Dixie, we’ve got nothing else to do. It might look
funny if we don’t go with Dougal. If Trevor finds out he’s been to a pub
with his girl —’

‘You’re bored with me —
I
know,’ Dixie said. ‘My
company isn’t good enough for you as soon as Dougal comes on the scene.’

‘Such compliments as you pay me I’ Dougal said across to her.

‘I was not aware I was addressing you,’ Dixie said.

‘All right, Dixie, we’ll stop here,’ Humphrey said.

Dougal was holding up a small mirror while the girl combed her long copper-coloured hair
over the table.

Dixie’s eyes then switched over to Dougal. She gave a long sigh. ‘I suppose
we’d better go to the pub with them,’ she said, ‘or you’ll say I
spoiled your evening.’

‘No necessity,’ Beauty said as she put away her comb and patted her
handbag.

‘We might enjoy ourselves,’ Humphrey said.

Dixie got her things together rather excitedly. But she said, ‘Oh, it isn’t
my idea of a night out.’

And so they followed Dougal and Beauty up Rye Lane to the Harbinger. Beauty was half-way
through the door of the saloon bar, but Dougal had stopped to look into the darkness of
the Rye beyond the swimming baths, from which came the sound of a drunken woman
approaching; and yet as it came nearer, it turned out not to be a drunken woman, but
Nelly proclaiming.

Humphrey and Dixie had reached the pub door. ‘It’s only Nelly,’
Humphrey said, and he pushed Dougal towards the doorway in which Beauty was waiting.

‘I like listening to Nelly,’ Dougal said, ‘for my human
research.’

‘Oh, get inside for goodness’ sake,’ Dixie said as Nelly appeared in
the street light.

‘Six things,’ Nelly declaimed, ‘there are which the Lord hateth, and
the seventh his soul detesteth. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent
blood. See me in the morning. A heart that deviseth wicked plots, feet that are swift to
run into mischief. Ten at Paley’s yard. A deceitful witness that uttereth lies.
Meeting-house Lane. And him that soweth discord among brethren.’

‘Nelly’s had a few,’ Humphrey said as they pushed into the bar.
‘She’s a bit shaky on the pins tonight.’

A bright spiky chandelier and a row of glittering crystal lamps set against a mirror
behind the bar — though in fact these had been installed since the war —
were designed to preserve in theory the pub’s vintage fame in the old Camberwell
Palace days. The chief barmaid had a tiny nose and a big chin; she was a middle-aged
woman of twenty-five. The barman was small and lithe. He kept swinging to and fro on the
balls of his feet

Beauty wanted a Martini. Dixie, at first under the impression that Humphrey was buying
the round, asked for a ginger ale, but when she perceived that Dougal was to pay for the
drinks, she said, ‘Gin and ginger ale.’ Humphrey and Dougal carried to a
table the girls’ drinks and their own half-pints of mild which glittered in
knobbly-moulded glass mugs like versions of the chandelier. Round the wall were hung
signed photographs of old-time variety actors with such names, meaningless to most but
oddly suggestive, as Flora Finch and Ford Sterling, who were generally assumed to be
Edwardian stars. An upright piano placed flat against a wall caused Tony the pianist to
see little of the life of the house, except when he turned round for a rest between
numbers. Tony’s face was not merely pale, but quite bloodless. He wore a navy-blue
coat over a very white shirt, the shirt buttoned up to the neck with no tie. His
half-pint mug, constantly replenished by the customers, stood on an invariable spot on
the right-hand side of the piano-top. As he played, he swung his shoulders from side to
side and bent over the piano occasionally to stress his notes. He might, from this back
view, have been in an enthusiastic mood, but when he turned round it was obvious he was
not. It was Tony’s lot to play tunes of the nineteen-tens and-twenties, to the
accompaniment of slightly jeering comments from the customers, and as he stooped over to
execute ‘Charmain’, Beauty said to him, ‘Groove in, Tony.’ He
ignored this as he had ignored all remarks for the past nineteen months. ‘Go, man,
go,’ someone suggested. ‘Leave him alone,’ the barmaid said.
‘You just show up your ignorance. He’s a beautiful player. It’s period
stuff. He got to play it like that.’ Tony finished his number, took down his beer
and turned his melancholy front to the company.

‘Got any rock and cha-cha on your list, Tony?’