The Ballad of Peckham Rye (4 page)

‘What funny ways? Come on, tell me,’ Dougal said. ‘There’s no
good telling the half and then stopping.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right to discuss Mr Druce with
you. He’s your boss and mine, after all.’

‘I haven’t seen him,’ Dougal said, ‘since the day he engaged me.
He must have forgotten about me.’

‘No, he talked a lot about you. And he sent for you the other day. You were out of
the office.’

‘What day was that?’

‘Tuesday. I said you were out on research.’

‘So I was,’ said Dougal. ‘I was out on research.’

‘Nobody gets forgotten at Meadows Meade,’ she said. ‘He’ll want
to know about your research in a few weeks’ time.’

Dougal put his long cold hand down the back of her coat. She was short enough for his
hand to reach quite a long way. He tickled her.

She wriggled and said, ‘Not in broad daylight, Dougal.’

‘In dark midnight,’ Dougal said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to find my
way.’

She laughed from her chest.

‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘what is the choicest of Mr Druce’s
little ways?’

‘He’s childish,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I stick to
him. I could have left Meadows Meade many a time. I could have got into a big firm. You
don’t think Meadows Meade’s a big firm, do you, by any chance? Because, if
you do, let me tell you, Meadows Meade is by comparison very small. Very
small.’

‘It looks big to me,’ Dougal said. ‘But perhaps it’s the effect
of all that glass.’

‘We used to have open-plan,’ she said. ‘So that you could see everyone
in the office without the glass, even Mr Druce. But the bosses wanted their privacy
back, so we had the glass partitions put up.’

‘I like those wee glass houses,’ Dougal said. ‘When I’m in the
office I feel like a tomato getting ripe.’

‘
When
you’re in the office.’

‘Merle,’ he said, ‘Merle Coverdale, I’m a hard-working fellow.
I’ve got to be out and about on my human research.’

They were moving up to the Rye where the buses blazed in the sun. Their walk was nearly
over.

‘Oh, we’re soon here,’ she said.

Dougal pointed to a house on the right. ‘There’s a baby’s pram,’
he said, ‘stuck out on a balcony which hasn’t any railings.’

She looked and sure enough there was a pram perched on an open ledge only big enough to
hold it, outside a second-floor window. She said, ‘They ought to be prosecuted.
There’s a baby in that pram, too.’

‘No, it’s only a doll,’ Dougal said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve seen it before. The house is a baby-carriage works. The pram is only
for show.’

‘Oh, it gave me a fright.’

‘How long have you lived in Peckham?’ he said.

‘Twelve and a half years.’

‘You’ve never noticed the pram before?’

‘No, can’t say I have. Must be new.’

‘From the style of the pram, it can’t be new. In fact the pram has been there
for twenty-five years. You see, you simply haven’t noticed it.’

‘I don’t hardly ever come across the Rye. Let’s walk round a bit.
Let’s go into the Old English garden.’

‘Tell me more,’ Dougal said, ‘about Mr Druce. Don’t you see him
on Saturdays?’

‘Not during the day. I do in the evening.’

‘You’ll be seeing him tonight?’

‘Yes, he comes for supper.’

Dougal said, ‘I suppose he’s been doing his garden all day. Is that what he
does on Saturdays?’

‘No. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, on Saturday mornings he goes up to the
West End to the big shops. He goes up and down in the lifts. He rests in the afternoons.
Childish.’

‘He must get some sexual satisfaction out of it.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.

‘A nice jerky lift,’ said Dougal. ‘Not one of the new smooth ones but
the kind that go yee-oo at the bottom.’ And Dougal sprang in the air and dipped
with bent knees to illustrate his point, so that two or three people in the Old English
garden turned to look at him. ‘It gives me,’ Dougal said, ‘a sexual
sensation just to think of it. I can quite see the attraction these old lifts have for
Mr Druce. Yee-oo.’

She said. ‘For God’s sake lower your voice.’ Then she laughed her laugh
from the chest, and Dougal pulled that blonde front lock of her otherwise brown hair,
while she gave him a hefty push such as she had not done to a man for twenty years.

He walked down Nunhead Lane with her; their ways parted by the prefabs at Costa Road.

‘I’m to go to tea at Dixie’s house tonight,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what you want to do with that lot,’ she said.

‘Of course, I realize you’re head of the typing pool and Dixie’s only a
wee typist,’ he said.

‘You’re taking me up wrong.’

‘Let’s go for another walk if it’s nice on Monday morning,’ he
said.

‘I’ll be at work on Monday morning. I’ll be down to work, not like
you.’

‘Take Monday off, my girl,’ Dougal said. ‘Just take Monday
off.’

‘Hallo. Come in. Pleased to see you. There’s your tea, Mavis said.

The family had all had theirs, and Dougal’s tea was set on the table. Cold ham and
tongue and potato salad with bread and butter, followed by fruit cake and tea. Dougal
sat down and tucked in while Mavis, Dixie, and Humphrey Place sat round the table. When
he had finished eating, Mavis poured the tea and they all sat and drank it.

‘That Miss Coverdale in the pool,’ said Mavis, ‘is working Dixie to
death. I think she’s trying to get Dixie out. Ever since Dixie got engaged
she’s been horrible to Dixie, hasn’t she, Dixie?’

‘It was quarter to four,’ said Dixie, ‘and she came up with an estimate
and said “priority” — just like that — priority. I said,
“Excuse me, Miss Coverdale, but I’ve got two priorities already.” She
said, “Well, it’s only quarter to four.” “
Only,
”
I said, “
only
quarter to four. Do you realize how long these estimates
take? I’m not going without my tea-break, if that’s what you’re
thinking, Miss Coverdale.” She said, “Oh, Dixie, you’re
impossible,” and turned away. I jumped up and I said, “Repeat that,” I
said. I said —’

‘You should have reported her to Personnel,’ Humphrey said. ‘That was
your correct procedure.’

‘A disappointed spinster,’ Mavis said, ‘that’s what she
is.’

‘She’s immoral with Mr Druce, a married man, that I know for a fact,’
Dixie said. ‘So she’s covered. You can’t touch her, there’s no
point in reporting her to Personnel. It gets you down.’

‘Take Monday off,’ said Dougal. ‘Take Tuesday off as well. Have a
holiday.’

‘No, I don’t agree to that,’ Humphrey said. ‘Absenteeism is
downright immoral. Give a fair week’s work for a fair week’s pay.’

Dixie’s stepfather, who had been watching the television in the sitting-room and
who suddenly felt lonely, put his head round the door.

‘Want a cup of tea, Arthur?’ said Mavis. ‘Meet Mr Douglas. Mr Douglas,
Mr Crewe.’

‘Where’s Leslie?’ said Arthur Crewe.

‘Well, he ought to be in. I let him go out,’ Mavis said.

‘Because there’s something going on out the front,’ Arthur said.

They all trooped through to the sitting-room and peered into the falling dusk, where a
group of young people in their teens were being questioned by an almost equal number of
policemen.

‘The youth club,’ Mavis said.

Dougal immediately went out to investigate. As he opened the street door, young Leslie
slid in as if from some concealment; he was breathless.

Dougal returned presently to report that the tires of a number of cars parked up at the
Rye had been slashed. The police were rounding up the teenage suspects. Young Leslie was
chewing bubble-gum. Every now and then he pulled a long strand out of his mouth and let
it spring back into his mouth.

‘But it seems to me the culprits may have been children,’ Dougal said,
‘as much as these older kids.’

Leslie stopped chewing for an instant and stared back at Dougal in such disgust that he
seemed to be looking at Dougal through his nostrils rather than his eyes. Then he
resumed his chewing.

Dougal winked at him. The boy stared back.

‘Take that muck out of your mouth, son,’ said his father.

‘You can’t stop him,’ said his mother. ‘He won’t listen to
you. Leslie, did you hear what your father said?’

Leslie shifted the gum to the other side of his cheek and left the room.

Dougal looked out of the window at the group who were still being questioned.

‘Two girls there come from Meadows Meade,’ he said. ‘Odette Hill,
uptwister, and Lucille Potter, gummer.’

‘Oh, the factory lot are always mixed up in the youth club trouble,’ Mavis
said. ‘You don’t want anything to do with that lot.’ As she spoke she
moved her hand across her perm, nipping each brown wave in turn between her third and
index fingers.

Dougal winked at her and smiled with all his teeth.

Mavis said to Dixie in a whisper, ‘Has
he
gone?’

‘Yup,’ said Dixie, meaning, yes, her stepfather had gone out for his evening
drink.

Mavis went to the sideboard and fetched out a large envelope.

‘Here we are again,’ Dixie said.

‘She always says that,’ Mavis said.

‘Well, Mum, you keep on pulling them out; every new person that comes to the house,
out they come.’

Mavis had extracted three large press cuttings from the envelope and handed them to
Dougal.

Dixie sighed, looking at Humphrey.

‘Why you two not go on out? Go on out to the pictures,’ Mavis said.

‘We went out last night.’

‘But you didn’t go to the pictures, I bet. Saving and pinching to get
married, you’re losing the best time of your life.’

‘That’s what I tell her,’ said Humphrey. ‘That’s what I
say.’

‘Where’d you go last night?’ Mavis said.

Dixie looked at Humphrey. ‘A walk,’ she said.

‘What you make of these?’ Mavis said to Dougal.

The cuttings were dated June 1942. Two of them bore large photographs of Mavis boarding
an ocean liner. All announced that she was the first of Peckham’s G.I. brides to
depart these shores.

‘You don’t look a day older,’ Dougal said.

‘Oh, go on,’ Dixie said.

‘Not a day,’ said Dougal. ‘Anyone can see your mother’s had a
romantic life.’

Dixie took her nail file out of her bag, snapped the bag shut, and started to grate at
her nails.

Humphrey bent forward in his chair, one hand on each knee, as if, by affecting intense
interest in Mavis’s affair, to compensate for Dixie’s mockery.

‘Well, it was romantic,’ Mavis said, ‘and it wasn’t. It was both.
Glub — that was my first husband — Glub was wonderful at first.’ Her
voice became progressively American. ‘Made you feel like a queen. He sure was
gallant.
And
romantic, as you say. But then … Dixie came along …
everything sorta wenna pieces. We were living a lie,’ Mavis said, ‘and it
was becoming sorta immoral to live together, not loving each other.’ She sighed
for a space. Then pulling herself together she said, ‘So I come home.’

‘
Came
home,’ Dixie said.

‘And got a divorce. And then I met Arthur. Old Arthur’s a good
sort.’

‘Mum’s had her moments,’ Dixie said. ‘She won’t let you
forget that.’

‘More than what you’ll have, if you go on like you do, putting every penny in
the bank. Why, at your age I was putting all my wages what I had left over after paying
my keep on my back.’

‘My own American dad pays my keep,’ Dixie said.

‘He thinks he do, but it don’t go far.’

‘Does. Doesn’t,’ Dixie said.

‘I better put the kettle on,’ Mavis said.

Dougal said then to Dixie, ‘I didn’t never have no money of my own at your
age.’ He heaved his shoulder and glittered his eyes at her, and she did not dare
to correct him. But when Humphrey laughed she turned to him and said,
‘What’s the joke?’

‘Dougal here,’ he said, ‘he’s your match.’

Mavis came back and switched on the television to a cabaret. Her husband returned to find
Dougal keeping the cabaret company with a dance of his own in the middle of their
carpet. Mavis was shrieking with joy. Humphrey was smiling with closed lips. Dixie sat
also with closed lips, not smiling.

On Saturday mornings, as on Sundays, the gentlemen in Miss Frierne’s establishment
were desired to make their own beds. On his return at eleven o’clock on Saturday
night Dougal found a note in his room.

Today’s bed was a
landlady’s delight. Full marks in your end-of-term report!

Dougal stuck it up on the mirror of his dressing-table and went downstairs to see if Miss
Frierne was still up. He found her in the kitchen, sitting primly up to the table with
half a bottle of stout.

‘Any letters for me?’

‘No, Dougal.’

‘There should have been a letter.’

‘Never mind. It might come on Monday.’

‘Tell me some of your stories.’

‘You’ve heard them all, I’m sure.’ He had heard about the
footpads on the Rye in the old days; about the nigger minstrels in the street, or rather
carriageway as Miss Frierne said it was called then. She sipped her stout and told him
once more of her escapade with a girl called Flo, how they had hired a cab at Camberwell
Green and gone up to the Elephant for a drink and treated the cabby to
twopenn’orth of gin, and returned without anyone at home being the wiser.

‘You must have had some courting days,’ Dougal said.

But her narrow old face turned away in disdain at the suggestion, for these were early
days in their friendship, and it was a full month before Miss Frierne, one evening when
she had finished her nourishing stout with a sigh and got out the gin bottle, told
Dougal how the Gordon Highlanders were stationed at Peckham during the first war; how it
was a question among the young ladies whether the soldiers wore anything underneath
their kilts; how Miss Frierne at the ripe age of twenty-seven went walking with one of
the Highlanders up to One Tree Hill; how he turned to her and said, ‘My girl, I
know you’re all bloody curious as to what we have beneath the kilt, and I
forthwith propose to satisfy your mind on the subject’; how he then took her hand
and thrust it under his kilt; and how she then screamed so hard, she had a quinsy for a
week.