The Ballad of Peckham Rye (8 page)

Dougal waited.

‘You have to be broad-minded,’ Mr Druce protested. ‘In this
life.’ He laid his elbow on the desk and, for a moment, his forehead on his hand.
Then he shifted his chin to his hand and continued, ‘Mrs Druce is not
broad-minded. Mrs Druce is narrow-minded.’

Dougal had an elbow on each arm-rest of his chair, and his hands were joined under his
chin. ‘There is some question of incompatibility, I should say,’ Dougal
said. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘you have a nature at once deep and
sensitive, Mr Druce.’

‘Would you really?’ Druce inquired of the analyst.

‘And a sensitive nature,’ Dougal said, ‘requires psychological
understanding.’

‘My wife,’ Druce said, ‘… it’s like living a lie. We
don’t even speak to each other. Haven’t spoken for nearly five years. One
day, it was a Sunday, we were having lunch. I was talking away quite normally; you know,
just talking away, And suddenly she said, “Quack, quack.” She said,
“Quack, quack.” She said, “Quack, quack,” and her hand was
opening and shutting like this — ‘Mr Druce opened and shut his hand like a
duck’s bill. Dougal likewise raised his hand and made it open and shut.
“Quack, quack,’ Dougal said. ‘Like that?’

Mr Druce dropped his arm. ‘Yes, and she said, “That’s how
you
go on — quack, quack.”’

‘Quack,’ Dougal said, still moving his hand, ‘quack.’

‘She said to me, my wife,’ said Mr Druce, ‘she said,
“That’s how
you
go quacking on.” Well, from that day to this
I’ve never opened my mouth to her. I can’t, Dougal, it’s
psychological, I just can’t — you don’t mind me calling you
Dougal?’

‘Not at all, Vincent,’ Dougal said. ‘I feel I understand you. How do
you communicate with Mrs Druce?’

‘Write notes,’ said Mr Druce. ‘Do you call that a marriage?’ Mr
Druce bent to open a lower drawer of his desk and brought out a book with a bright
yellow wrapper. Its title was
Marital Relational Psychology.
Druce flicked over
the pages, then set the book aside. ‘It’s no use to me,’ he said.
‘Interesting case histories but it doesn’t cover my case. I’ve thought
of seeing a psychiatrist, and then I think, why should I? Let
her
see a
psychiatrist.’

‘Take her a bunch of flowers,’ Dougal said, looking down at the back of his
hand, the little finger of which was curling daintily. ‘Put your arms around
her,’ he said, becoming a lady-columnist, ‘and start afresh. It frequently
needs but one little gesture from one partner —’

‘Dougal, I can’t. I don’t know why it is, but I can’t.’ Mr
Druce placed a hand just above his stomach. ‘Something stops me.’

‘You two must separate,’ Dougal said, ‘if only for a while.’

Mr Druce’s hand abruptly removed from his stomach. ‘No,’ he said,
‘oh, no, I can’t leave her.’ He shifted in his chair into his
businesslike pose. ‘No, I can’t do that. I’ve got to stay with her for
old times’ sake.’

The telephone rang. ‘I’m engaged,’ he said sharply into it. He jerked
down the receiver and looked up to find Dougal’s forefinger pointing into his
face. Dougal looked grave, lean, and inquisitorial. ‘Mrs Druce,’ Dougal
said, ‘has got money.’

‘There are interests in vital concerns which we both share,’ Mr Druce said
with his gaze on Dougal’s finger, ‘Mrs Druce and I.’

Dougal shook his outstretched finger a little. ‘She won’t
let
you
leave her,’ he said, ‘because of the money.’

Mr Druce looked frightened.

‘And there is also the information which she holds,’ Dougal said,
‘against you.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m fey. I’ve got Highland blood.’ Dougal dropped his hand.
‘You have my every sympathy, Vincent,’ he said.

Mr Druce laid his head on his desk and wept.

Dougal sat back and lit a cigarette out of Mr Druce’s box. He heaved his high
shoulder in a sigh. He sat back like an exhausted medium of the spiritualist persuasion.
‘Does you good,’ Dougal said, ‘a wee greet. A hundred years ago all
chaps used to cry regardless.’

Merle Coverdale came in with the letters to be signed. She clicked her heels together as
she stopped at the sight.

‘Thank you, Miss Coverdale,’ Dougal said, putting out a hand for the
letters.

Meanwhile Mr Druce sat up and blew his nose.

‘Got a comb on you?’ Dougal said, squeezing Merle’s hand under the
letters.

She said, ‘This place is becoming chaos.’

‘What was that, Miss Coverdale?’ Mr Druce said with as little moisture as
possible.

‘Mr Druce has a bad head,’ Dougal said as he left the room with her.

‘Come and tell me what happened,’ said Merle.

Dougal looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, can’t stop. I’ve got an urgent
appointment in connexion with my human research.’

Dougal sat in the cheerful waiting-room looking at the tulips in their earthy bowls.

‘Mr Douglas Dougal?’

Dougal did not correct her. On the contrary he said, ‘That’s
right.’

‘Come this way, please.’

He followed her into the office of Mr Willis, managing director of Drover Willis’s,
textile manufacturers of Peckham.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Dougal,’ said the man behind the desk. ‘Take a
seat.’

On hearing Mr Willis’s voice Dougal changed his manner, for he perceived that Mr
Willis was a Scot.

Mr Willis was looking at Dougal’s letter of application.

‘Graduate of Edinburgh?’ said Mr Willis.

‘Yes, Mr Willis.’

Mr Willis’s blue eyes stared out of his brick-coloured small-featured face. They
stared and stared at Dougal.

‘Douglas Dougal,’ the man read out from Dougal’s letter, and asked with
a one-sided smile, ‘Any relation to Fergie Dougal the golfer?’

‘No,’ Dougal said. ‘I’m afraid not.’

Mr Willis smiled by turning down the sides of his mouth.

‘Why do you want to come into Industry, Mr Dougal?’

‘I think there’s money in it,’ Dougal said.

Mr Willis smiled again. ‘That’s the correct answer. The last candidate
answered, “Industry and the Arts must walk hand in hand,” when I put that
question to him. His answer was wrong. Tell me, Mr Dougal, why do you want to come to
us?’

‘I saw your advertisement,’ Dougal said, ‘and I wanted a job. I saw
your advertisements, too, for automatic weaver instructors and hands, and for
twin-needle flat-bed machinists, and flat-lock machinists and instructors. I gathered
you’re expanding.’

‘You know something about textiles?’

‘I’ve seen over a factory. Meadows, Meade & Grindley.’

‘Meadows Meade are away behind us.’

‘Yes. So I gathered.’

‘Now I’ll tell you what we’re looking for, what we want
…’

Dougal sat upright and listened, only interrupting when Mr Willis said, ‘The hours
are nine to five-thirty.’

‘I would need time off for research.’

‘Research?’

‘Industrial relations. The psychological factors behind the absenteeism, and so on,
as you’ve been saying —’

‘You could do an evening course in industrial psychology. And of course you
‘Id have access to the factory.’

‘The research I have in mind,’ Dougal said, ‘would need the best part
of the day for at least two months. Two months should do it. I want to look into the
external environment. The home conditions. Peckham must have a moral character of its
own.’

Mr Willis’s blue eyes photographed every word. Dougal sat out these eyes, he went
on talking, reasonably, like a solid steady Edinburgh boy, all the steadier for the hump
on his shoulder.

‘I’ll have to speak to Davis. He is Personnel. We have to talk over the
candidates and we may ask to see you again, Mr Dougal. If we decide on you, don’t
fear you’ll be hampered in your research.’

The factory was opening its gates as Dougal came down the steps from the office into the
leafy lanes of Nun Row. Some of the girls were being met by their husbands and boy
friends in cars. Others rode off on motor-scooters. A number walked down to the station.
‘Hi, Dougal,’ called one of them, ‘what you doing here?’

It was Elaine, who had now been over a week at Drover Willis’s.

‘What you doing here, Dougal?’

‘I’m after a job,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve got
it.’

‘You leaving Meadows Meade too?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘oh, no, not on your life.’

‘What’s your game, Dougal?’

‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, ‘and my Christian name is Douglas on
this side of the Rye, mind that. Dougal Douglas at Meadows Meade and Douglas Dougal at
Willis’s, mind. Only a formality for the insurance cards and such.’

‘I better call you Doug, and be done with it.’

Dixie sat at her desk in the typing pool and, without lifting her eyes from her shorthand
book or interrupting the dance of her fingers on the keyboard, spoke out her reply to
her neighbour.

‘He’s all one-sided at the shoulders. I don’t know how any girl could
go with him.’

Connie Weedin, daughter of the Personnel Manager, typed on and said, ‘My Dad says
he’s nuts. But I say he’s got something. Definitely.’

‘Got something, all right. Got a good cheek. My young brother doesn’t like
him. My mum likes him. My dad likes him so-so. Humphrey likes him. I don’t agree
to that. The factory girls like him — what can you expect? I don’t like him,
he’s got funny ideas.’ She stopped typing with her last word and took the
papers out of her typewriter. She placed them neatly on a small stack of papers in a
tray, put an envelope in her typewriter, typed an address, put more papers in her
typewriter, turned over the page of her shorthand notes, and started typing again.
‘My dad doesn’t mind him, but Leslie can’t stand him. I tell you who
else doesn’t like him.’

‘Who?’

‘Trevor Lomas. Trevor doesn’t like him.’

‘I don’t like Trevor, never did,’ Connie said. ‘Definitely
ignorant. He goes with that girl from Celia Modes that’s called Beauty. Some
beauty!’

‘He’s a good dancer. He doesn’t like Dougal Douglas and, boy,
I’ll say he’s got something there,’ Dixie said.

‘My dad says he’s nuts. Supposed to be helping my dad to keep the factory
sweet. But my dad says he don’t do much with all his brains and his letters. But
you can’t help but like him. He’s different.’

‘He goes out with the factory girls. He goes out with Elaine Kent that was
process-controller. She’s gone to Drover Willis’s. He goes out with her
ladyship too.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘I do say. He better watch out for Mr Druce if it’s her ladyship he’s
after.’

‘Watch out — her ladyship’s looking this way.’

Miss Merle Coverdale, at her supervisor’s seat at the top of the room, called out,
‘Is there anything you want, Dixie?’

‘No.’

‘If there’s anything you want, come and ask. Is there anything you want,
Connie?’

‘No.’

‘If there’s anything you want, come up here and ask for it.’

Dougal came in just then, and walked with his springy step all up the long open-plan
office, bobbing as he walked as if the plastic inlay flooring was a certain green and
paradisal turf.

‘Good morning, girls.’

‘You’d think he was somebody,’ Dixie said.

Connie opened a drawer in her small desk in which she kept a mirror, and looking down
into it, tidied her hair.

Dougal sat down beside Merle Coverdale.

‘There was a personal call for you,’ she said, handing him a slip of paper,
‘from a lady. Will you ring this number?’

He looked at it, put the paper in his pocket and said, ‘One of my
employers.’

Merle gave one of her laughs from the chest. ‘Employers — that’s a good
name for them. How many you got?’

‘Two,’ Dougal said, ‘and a possible third. Is Mr Weedin in?’

‘Yes, he’s been asking for you.’

Dougal jumped up and went in to Mr Weedin where he sat in one of the glass offices which
extended from the typing pool.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Mr Weedin, ‘I want to ask you a personal question.
What do you mean exactly by vision?’

‘Vision?’ Dougal said.

‘Yes, vision, that’s what I said.’

‘Do you speak literally as concerning optics, or figuratively, as it might be with
regard to an enlargement of the total perceptive capacity?’

‘Druce is complaining we haven’t got vision in this department. I thought
perhaps maybe you had been having one of your long chats with him.’

‘Mr Weedin,’ Dougal said, ‘don’t tremble like that. Just
relax.’ He took from his pocket a small square silver vinaigrette which had two
separate compartments. Dougal opened both lids. In one compartment lay some small white
tablets. In the other were a number of yellow ones. Dougal offered the case to Mr
Weedin. ‘For calming down you take two of the white ones and for revving up you
take one of the yellow ones.’

‘I don’t want your drugs. I just want to know —’

‘The yellow ones make you feel sexy. The white ones, being of a relaxing nature,
ensure the more successful expression of such feelings. But these, of course, are mere
by-effects.’

‘Do you want my job? Is that what you’re wanting?’

‘No,’ Dougal said.

‘Because if you want it you can have it. I’m tired of working for a firm
where the boss listens to the advice of any young showpiece that takes his fancy.
I’ve had this before. I had it with Merle Coverdale. She told Druce I was
inefficient at relationship-maintenance. She told Druce that everything in the pool goes
back to me through my girl Connie. She —’

‘Miss Coverdale is a sensitive girl. Like an Okapi, you know. You spell it
O K A P I
. A bit of all sorts of beast. Very rare, very
nervy. You have to make allowances.’

‘And now you come along and you tell Druce we lack vision. And Druce calls me in
and I see from the look on his face he’s got a new idea. Vision, it is, this time.
Try to take a tip or two, he says, from the Arts man. I said, he never hardly puts a
foot inside the door does your Arts man. Nonsense, Weedin, he says, Mr Douglas and I
have many a long session. He says, watch his manner, he has a lovely manner with the
workers. I said, yes, up on the Rye Saturday nights. That is unworthy of you, Weedin, he
says. Is it coincidence, says I, that absenteeism has risen eight per cent since Mr
Douglas came here and is still rising? Things are bound to get worse, he says, before
they get better. If you had the vision, Weedin, he says, you would comprehend my
meaning. Study Douglas, he says, watch his methods.’