Flowers on the Grass (12 page)

He could not take the sleeping powders any more, because Max, who was paying him by the day, was angry if he did not turn up on time. When Max was angry, he took it out on Rosie, who took it out on Daniel. Mumma knew that he was not sleeping well. Sometimes, worrying about him in the night, for she did not have to worry about her family, who could be heard snoring in different keys all over the house, she would get up and go half-way up the stairs to see the line of light under Daniel’s door. Once she had heard him go downstairs, and following after, amorphous in her dressing-gown, had found him trying to wash the remains of his drawing off the kitchen table. Mumma thought he was sleep-walking. He looked at her in a bemused, hurt way, and she turned him gently round and propelled him upstairs again.

The whole family went to the opening night of the club. Daniel behaved as if it was opening solely to exhibit his pictures. At the last minute he refused to go. But they gave him some drinks and pushed him into a hired dinner-jacket and took him along. Mumma stayed at home to mind the children and to open the door to a man wanting to see Lew about a radiogram and another who had brought a fur to show Hymie, and to answer the telephone to Morrie’s racing friends and a chilly-voiced woman who wanted Daniel.

She was sitting wrapped in an eiderdown by the kitchen fire, waiting for them with coffee when they got home with the sky already light.

“Hell,” said Daniel, when she told him about the telephone.

“How on earth-? I didn’t think anyone knew I was here.”

“And why not?” shouted Esther, who was tired and not very sober and spoiling for a fight. But Daniel would not fight. He sat muttering about God-damn interfering families and how
they couldn’t keep their hands off a person, until Mumma began to think that perhaps Lew had been right and he had embezzled something. She could think of no other reason why anyone should not want to see their family. She got someone to push the eiderdown in the small of her back to help her upstairs, and climbed into the vast double bed where Pa, from habit, lay neatly on the extreme edge, although he had lain there four hours without her.

Max got other jobs for Daniel, and he paid his rent. He called it prostituting his art, which Mumma interpreted as a reference to the kind of places in which he worked, and began to worry about Rosie. She was a good girl. She had been brought up right, but her very innocence might lead her into trouble. If only she would cast off this fat, cocksure Max who spoiled her with presents, and give up these clubs, and this dancing every night with goodness knows who, and settle down with someone that Mumma could love more as a son than a son-in-law. In August perhaps they could all go away for a holiday. Lew knew a man who had a hotel at Bournemouth. They could go away without Max, and Rosie and Daniel would walk on the beach under the moon, just as Mumma and Pa had walked at Southsea forty-five years ago.

Sitting in her kitchen, which in this heat-wave was getting more like an oven lit full speed for a
buffeten kuchen
, Mumma saw it all, down to the last blossom in Rosie’s hair and the last whirl of icing on the cake that she would make.

In the evening when the sun was off the street, Mumma took a chair to the top of the area steps and sat there looking Italian, talking to friends and greeting the family as each one came home. Joey from school, jostling another boy in and out of the gutter; Esther red-faced from shopping, with the baby submerged under parcels and tins in the pram; Rosie from the cinema. “It’s cooler inside,” said the posters and she had believed them until she paid her three-and-six and found that they lied. Daniel came sweltering from some work he had been doing on the new bar of Max’s club.

“It’s like Hades down there,” he sighed, draping himself over the railings while he talked to Mumma. “Imagine— people go there for pleasure.”

“It’s cooler at night, remember.”

“It’s not. It’s like an inferno down there with that mass of sweating, pawing bodies.”

“Oh dear,” Mumma did not like to think of Rosie down there among all that. Yet what other job could she do? She called this “being an actress” and would contemplate nothing else.

“I’ll have to get some thinner clothes,” Daniel said, trying to cool his cheek against the spear-shaped top of the railing and finding it burning hot. Pa was making him a summer suit, but it would be winter long before it was finished. “I think I’ll go to the cottage this evening and get some things.”

Mumma had quite forgotten about his house in the country. He never talked about it. She hoped that when he saw it he would not want to start living there again, for how anyone who had a house in the country could bear to live in Walworth in this weather baffled her. She never liked losing her lodgers. She hated break-ups of any kind, but when Daniel went it would be like one of the boys leaving home.

“I can’t face that train,” he said. “D’you think Hymie would mind if I took his car?” Hymie, who had begun to dabble a little in the car market, had brought home only last night an elegant blue Jaguar, which was now in a disused builder’s yard at the back of the house.

“It’s not for me to say.” Mumma did not think Hymie would like it. He was funny sometimes about his things. “I’ll ask Pa. Pa!” she called, but he had the window of the front room shut and could not hear. He smiled and nodded and waved to her.

“I’ll risk it,” said Daniel. “He won’t mind. It’s too hot to mind anything.”

When Hymie came home he did mind. He said that he had planned to drive out in the car to a roadhouse on the Brighton Road, although Mumma thought that had only occurred to him when he heard that Daniel bad taken the Jaguar.

“After all,” he grumbled, “it’s not as if it was mine for good. It’s a saleable article. In fact, it’s going to be sold next week, with a satisfactory profit for little Hymie Weissman, thanks very much. But how do I know what Daniel will do to it? You shouldn’t, Mumma.”

“I’m sorry, Hymie. I didn’t tell him he could-”

“You didn’t tell him he couldn’t.”

Everyone was feeling sultry and cross in the kitchen, toying
with their food, disinclined for rich, greasy cooking. Hymie would not let the subject drop. “I mean,” he groused, “it’s just as bad as if Rosie took one of the minks up there and wore it to go out. She’d be sure to tear it.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would.”

“Children, children!” But no one paid any heed to Pa, so he picked up his coffee-cup and his plate of cherry tart and went away to his workroom.

“I wouldn’t,” said Rosie. “I often have worn them, and you’ve never known—so there!”

This started a first-class dispute, in which everyone was involved. Whether Rosie ever had worn any of Hymie’s fur coats, or had just said that to goad him, Mumma was not sure, but at least it took his mind off the car. They were still arguing, when there was a quick clatter of feet on the area steps and Max came in by the open back door. Rosie got up and went to meet him in the passage, but he pushed her aside and came straight into the kitchen. He looked round at the family sitting in various attitudes of heat and fatigue round a tableful of dirty plates, laughed in a self-conscious way, and said casually: “Any of you boys got a hot car?”

Hymie jumped to his feet, his face yellow, his skimpy moustache twitching. “W hat are you talking about?” he croaked. “I’ve got a car. Yes. But it’s strictly on the level.”

The atmosphere was cold suddenly with fear, in spite of the airless heat. Mumma, at the sink, went on making the motions of washing up, not daring to look round.

“How d’you know?” asked Max in his clipped, nasal voice. “Who did you get it from?”

“Hymie,” said Lew in a low voice. “You fool. Who was it?”

“It was all right. You know Harry Speed-”

“Harry Speed! Oh, my God!” Lew covered his face with his hands and laid the whole lot on the table.

“Harry Speed!” said Max. “This young boy wants a keeper. What in heaven made you think that Harry would come by any car that didn’t either have something wrong with it or the price of a king’s ransom on its head?”

“Max,” said Rosie, who was still standing in the doorway. “What are you trying to say? Get on with it, for God’s sake.”

“It’s only—” he flashed his gold tooth at her, “it’s only that your beloved brother, whom the gods preserve, has come tonight within a split hair of the cooler. Saved”—he held up his hand for silence, as they all broke into a babble—“saved, I blush to tell you, by the presence of mind of yours truly. I thank you one and all.” He bowed round the room as if receiving applause. “Is that a chair? May I sit down? Is that a bottle of whiskey by any chance? May I? Ta very much.” He helped himself, and leaned back, enjoying the excitement he had caused.

“But Daniel,” Mumma kept saying, from the sink. “What about Daniel?” But nobody heard her. They were too busy reviling Hymie. She came up to the table, drying her hands on her black flowered apron. “Max,” she said. “Tell me what has happened to Daniel. He was in the car.”

“You’re telling me,” he said.

“Yes, and if he hadn’t taken it, this would never have happened-” began Hymie heatedly; but his mother said:

“Hush, son, we don’t know yet what has happened. Tell us, Max.”

Max finished his drink deliberately, and reached for the bottle again. “O.K.,” he said. “Here’s your bedtime story.” Rosie came to stand by his chair. While he was talking, he put his hand on her arm and ran his fingers up and down it.

“So this Daniel friend of yours,” he said, “comes round to the club, see, about—what would it be?—about an hour and a half ago. Left his jacket at my place, with his wallet in it. Trusting kind of guy. I always thought he had an honest face. Who’d have thought he’d get mixed up in this kind of thing?”

“Max, please.” Mumma leaned forward, gripping the table. “I beg of you, tell us what has happened. You talk as if you were enjoying yourself.”

“Well, it was a scream really, you know.” Max leaned back and played with Rosie’s fingers. “He comes into my office, see, and we were having a quick one. ‘One for the road,’ he says. ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘where are you going?’ ‘Down to the country in Hymie’s car,’ he says. ‘Hymie’s car?’ I says. ‘The boy’s coming on in the world.’ ‘Smashing job it is, too,’ he says. ‘Take a dekko.’ So I took one, but I can tell you, I pulled my head in from that window pretty damn quick. There was this
car—dead right, too, Hymie, it is a smashing job.
Was
, rather, as far as you’re concerned—well, there was this smashing wagon. Only snag about it was that there was coppers advancing on it from every corner of London, crawling round it like flies round a cow-pat.”

Hymie groaned. “If I ever get my hands on that Harry Speed-”

Everyone shushed him, and Max, having collected his audience again, went on: “Well, no offence, Hymie, seeing that I thought the car was yours, but naturally, being a man of the world, I put two and two together, and ‘Daniel, my boy,* I says to him, ‘here’s where you make-a da lightning exit, or make no exit at all, for-’ Let’s see, what is it for car stealing? About six months, isn’t it? ‘Show me the door,’ he says, so I nips him away through my private escape route. Now don’t get me wrong, but you have to have one these days, when they raid you just for the hell of it.”

“Yes, yes, and what happened to him then?” Mumma’s voice was unsteady.

Max studied his nails. “Last seen flitting down the mews in the gloaming. I wonder he’s not home by now.”

“And the car?” Beads of sweat the size of hailstones stood on Hymie’s forehead.

“Bottle stoppers took it, of course. Oh, they came in to see me, but I was O.K. Didn’t know a thing.”

“Thank God.” Hymie slumped like a doll and mopped his face.

“Of course,” said Max cheerfully, “I don’t know whether anyone saw Daniel in the car. If they did, he’s as hot as the car is, so watch out when the wandering boy comes home. With which pretty thought, I leave you.” He stood up. “Ta for the whiskey. Coming, Rosetta?”

“No.” She looked at him sulkily. “I’ve got to see you later, in working hours. That’s bad enough.”

He chuckled. “Happy at your work?” He raised her chin, gave her the kind of kiss one does not give a girl when her mother is in the room, laughed again when she struggled free and went whistling away up the area steps.

Rosie did not go to the club that night. She stayed with her mother waiting for Daniel. Lew came in and sat down on
the edge of the bed, where his mother was propped against the pillows like a prehistoric mammal, and his father slept quietly, clicking in his nose a little at the other side. They had tried to tell Pa what Max had told them, but it was too involved, and with everyone talking at once he could not understand, so he had gone up to sleep, knowing that he could not do any good, whatever the trouble was. Someone would explain it all to him in the morning.

“Mumma,” Lew said. “Daniel can’t stay here any more. Too risky. We might all be on the spot. We’re O.K. otherwise, because there was no record of the sale, and Harry won’t be doing any talking.”

“We must stick by him.” Mumma tried to raise herself to a sitting position to emphasise her words, but gave it up and fell back on the squashed pillows. “Wouldn’t I have you or Hymie back if the police were on your trail—God forbid it should ever be.”

“But that’s different.” Hymie appeared in the doorway, very tall and thin in a zebra dressing-gown. “He’s nothing to do with us. He’s not the family.”

“Ah!” Mumma raised her hands, which emerged like pork cutlets from the frilled cuffs of her nightgown. “That is what I always have said. Poor Daniel. He can be family with us when all goes well. When it goes bad for him, he has no one. Then he is only the lodger.”

“Not any more if I know it.”

“How can you say such things, Hymie, when it was your car? It’s all your fault.”

“It isn’t, Mumma.” He whined as he used to when he was little. “You let him take it.”

“Oh, very well.” Mumma spread her hands on the sheet. “So it was all my fault. I got him into trouble. Well, I will make it up to him when he comes back. We shall all be happy as we were before.”

“He won’t come back,” said Rosie, picking fluff out of a corner of the eiderdown. “I have a feeling.”