My Name is Michael Sibley (10 page)

Herbert Day drove with Fred in front beside him. Margaret, Prosset and I were behind as before. But now Margaret was sitting on Prosset’s knees; she had her arms about his neck. From time to time Prosset leaned forward and kissed her; they were long kisses, lasting twenty or thirty seconds. They put Fred off somewhere in South Kensington and then drove me to Earl’s Court.

On the pavement, I turned round to thank Herbert Day once more for the lift and to say a final good night. He was leaning over the driver’s seat looking at Prosset and Margaret. He said, “What about you two? Oxford Terrace for you, Margaret, too, I suppose?”

He sniggered in his nasal, muffled kind of way.

I envied Prosset, with Margaret, in his own basement flat. Fundamentally, I suppose envy and jealousy, and their evil progeny called malice, were at the root of most of my trouble with Prosset.

Two days later I left to take up my job on the
Palesby Gazette.

As I brooded over the police visit, I was aware that something, some small, forgotten incident, had occurred while I was a reporter at Palesby which I would prefer the police not to know. It was nothing that I had done, nothing illegal, but I felt that in the present circumstances, though it was trivial in itself, it might have some significance to the Inspector. I thought it was something I had said, or something which somebody had said to me, but what it was I could not for the life of me recall.

I mixed myself another drink. As I sat in my chair I kept worrying about Palesby, and about Cynthia Harrison, who lived there.

A
lthough I am a southerner, not merely by birth, but by preference, I must confess that I never encountered in the south such warm-heartedness among townspeople or such comradeship among newspapermen as I met with on the
Palesby Gazette.

The town is a fishing port on the east coast, and is itself unattractive, though the country just outside it is lovely. There are smoking factories in Palesby, a number of industries connected with the fish trade, and docks where the little trawlers berth side by side in the intervals between their long trips to northern waters. There is not much else.

There is one broad street where the smarter shops are situated, and two or three fairly important long streets served by rattling trams. There are three cinemas, a music hall and a repertory theatre; and there is the City Centre, as they call it, dominated by the Guildhall with its police courts, council chamber and numerous rooms for committee meetings. The rest of the town consists of a great number of small side streets composed of little red-brick houses.

In retrospect, it seems to have rained a great deal, so that the streets were always covered with a thin, watery mud.

There is also the Central Park. I must not forget that, because it played a not unimportant part in my life.

Palesby is not inspiring, then, but it has an
esprit de corps
second to none in the whole of Britain. Its citizens, brought up within sombre confines, regard people who live elsewhere with a sort of restrained pity. Its aldermen and councillors when opening bazaars or making any kind of speech at all will hardly ever sit down without somehow dragging in the name of Palesby in a complimentary manner.

If the occasion should be the presentation of prizes at the police sports, the speaker will point out, amid a seemly round of applause, that Palesby has a police force which is second to none in the country; if it is the annual Guest Night at the Society of Protestant Vigilantes, it will be pointed out that there is no more vigilant, protesting set of defenders of the Church of England than the citizenry of Palesby; on the other hand, if it is a Catenian dinner, it will transpire that nowhere on this side of the Channel is there a more devout body of Roman Catholics than in Palesby. It would not surprise me to learn that the Governor of the local prison stoutly maintained that though crime might be unfortunately increasing, at least the convicts in Palesby were as skilful and yet as peaceful as any in the land.

Even when the local football team was defeated, as it often was, it was heartening to note that this was clearly no reflection upon the skill of the players, who indeed played as cleverly as any in the league; only a mysterious concatenation of cosmic circumstances could account for their ill-luck.

They were, and I suppose still are, a forthright people, like so many in the north and Midlands; but though outspoken they were not offensive unless you were looking for offence.

The
Gazette
offices were in a modern building in St. Mark’s Street, which is the main thoroughfare. The reporters worked in a large room on the first floor; the Chief Reporter, a man called Grimshaw, had a small room to himself leading off from the main reporters’ room, the connecting door being always open. He was a tall, heavily built man with a red face, thinning hair and very thick spectacles. Almost his first words were: “How did you get this job, lad? Influence?”

This was too near the truth for my liking. I said, “No. I applied for it in London. Why?”

“I just wondered, lad. Reporters’ jobs are a bit difficult to get these days.” He had not believed me, of course, and I knew it, and he knew I did. He went on looking at some newspaper cuttings for a moment. He and I were the only people in the room. The other reporters were all out on jobs.

After a while he looked up and said, “Got any digs to live in, lad?”

“Not yet. I’ve left my luggage at the station.”

“What’s your salary?”

“Two pounds a week.”

“Any experience?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t get the job through knowing somebody?”

“No.”

He said nothing. Eventually he heaved himself up and went out of the room. I began idly turning over a file of newspapers. In three or four minutes he was back again.

“About your digs. You might like to try Mrs. Martin’s place. Here’s the address. She’s the mother of one of our telephonists; she’ll probably make you comfortable. One of the others, Hailey, the sports man, lives there. Off you go. You needn’t come back till tomorrow. Nine sharp, lad.”

The address was No. 2 Oaks Street, about half a mile from the centre of the town in a district called Summerfields. I walked back to the station, commissioned a taxi, piled my luggage in, and gave the driver the address. I do not know why Summerfields has not long since changed its name. It lies on a tram route, and is composed of the inevitable streets of red houses, shabby and smoke-begrimed. There are no fields, and when summer comes with its heat, the place is almost as unpleasant as in winter, when the mud covers the footpaths. Oaks Street, long denuded of any trees at all, let alone oaks, lies about twenty yards from the level-crossing gates. Periodically throughout the day and night trains rumble across. On the corner is a public house called The Greyhound, though inevitably more often known as The Dirty Dog.

I kept the taxi waiting while I negotiated with Mrs. Martin, just so that she could see that I had not made up my mind for certain. The talk took place in the front parlour, a room which in all the years I lived in the house I cannot remember ever sitting in again.

It had a fawn carpet, a sofa, four high-backed chairs in light oak with rush seats, a round polished table and an upright piano. Near the window was a tall pedestal bearing an empty birdcage. The room was ostensibly kept clean and tidy for special occasions, but after my arrival there never seemed to be an occasion considered by Mrs. Martin to be so special as to warrant its use.

She herself was a small, nervy little woman, thin and grey-eyed with regular features which at one time had certainly been attractive. But she was now in her late sixties, her hands were worn, and she had ill-fitting teeth which clicked. I was to discover that she had a keen sense of humour and took a close personal interest in “her gentlemen” and in everybody at the
Gazette
office. Every evening she would closely cross-question her daughter Phyllis on the day’s doings and the day’s gossip. She certainly took a closer interest in my own activities than my kind but absent-minded Aunt Edith.

After she had shown me my room, she asked if it would suit.

“How much will you charge me if I take it?”

“Well, I charge Mr. Hailey twenty-five shillings a week, Mr. Sibley.” She spoke diffidently, watching the effect of the words on me. Maybe I looked surprised, for she added hastily, “That includes everything, Mr. Sibley, three meals a day and a snack before you go to bed, if you like, and lighting and laundry and everything.”

If I looked surprised, it was because it was so much cheaper than I expected. I paid the taxi and moved in. The date was October 2nd, 1930.

Behind the best parlour which was never used were the living room and the kitchen. The living room was a shabbily comfortable place, with a big square table covered with a red-tasselled cloth, a large black grate and two well-worn easy chairs stuffed with horsehair and covered with black leather. These two chairs were at the disposal of Mrs. Martin’s “gentlemen,” and there was a smaller chair for the daughter Phyllis. Mrs. Martin, on the rare occasions when she was in the living room with us, always sat at the table mending and darning.

Phyllis was a young woman of about thirty-five with brown hair and grey eyes. She was not good-looking, but she was pleasant; she wore good warm jumpers and thick woollen stockings, and in wet weather galoshes. Phyllis had her meals with Hailey and me, but I never once saw Mrs. Martin eat, though I sometimes saw her drinking a cup of tea. She alleged she had “a bit of something” in the kitchen now and then, but though I came in at all hours of the day and evening I never caught her at it.

On the first floor were two bedrooms furnished with small iron beds, a cupboard, a patch of carpet, and a washstand with a basin and water-jug. On the second floor, at the top of the steep, dark staircase, under the sloping roof, were two more bedrooms. One was occupied by Mrs. Martin, Phyllis and the mongrel dog Peter; and in the other Mr. Martin lived and had his being.

When I was taken up to be introduced on my first evening I saw a man of about sixty-eight, completely bald except for some hair round his ears and neck. He sat in a big, old-fashioned brass bedstead, wearing a grey woollen cardigan. He was almost bedridden as a result of heart trouble incurred during the First World War. He would totter out of bed and wash each morning, and then go back to bed again; his hands trembled a little, but otherwise he was alert and bright. Like his wife, he was cockney born, and still retained a trace of a London accent.

If this description gives the impression that he was a gentle, doddering old invalid with a quavering voice and a mild manner, I must correct it by adding that never in my life have I met a man whose conversation was so besprinkled with “damns,” “blasts” and “hells.” It was as though a forceful character confined to bed through ill-health found in this way some outlet for his natural energy and high spirits. He had a loud voice and rarely slept, so that at almost any hour of the day or night a roar and a string of strong adjectives might send Mrs. Martin or her daughter, or even me, hurrying to his bedroom to see what he wanted. They loved him dearly, and I am not surprised.

He was never morose or bad-tempered; on the contrary, he was a great talker, read the papers avidly, and had decided opinions, which he sometimes scribbled on paper and sent to the Editor of the
Palesby Gazette.
His hobby was knitting and crochet work, and around Christmastime he would order dolls, naked, from a wholesaler, knit clothes for them and dispose of them to shops in the town. At other times he knitted women’s bedjackets and children’s garments.

Around him in his room, were all the memories of a lifetime. Every inch of shelf and almost all the wall space were covered by ornaments, knick-knacks, pictures, coloured calendars, photographs and other treasures. There was a large picture of the late Lord Kitchener, a large picture, too, of himself with some other soldiers—his war medals hung beneath it; pictures of himself and Mrs. Martin on their wedding day, of Phyllis as a baby and Phyllis as a little girl; a coloured picture, cut from some magazine, of King George V and Queen Mary; a weather barometer, a polished brass shellcase, and much else besides.

In winter a tiny coal fire smouldered in the room all day. In summer, through the window by his bed, he could just see a strip of blue sky above the house opposite, and a section of the star-jewelled night during his long, sleepless hours. Sometimes, for a short while, the moon would be visible, and he had invented a system of weather forecasting by watching the weather when the moon was on the turn. He swore it was “damned accurate,” and even if it wasn’t, he added, it “helped to pass away part of the blasted night.”

My Aunt Nell was right.

The life of a provincial reporter was a hard one. It turned me from an over-sensitive, introspective youth into something resembling a normal, objectively minded young man who could hold his own with anybody, except Prosset; and I still like to think that had he lived I might even have fought clear of that overpowering, blanketing personality. Only I wasn’t given time, in the end; and perhaps I never should have done so, anyway.

Perhaps I am not even free now. He has already reached out to me once from beyond the grave—or so it seemed.

We used to get into the office at about ten past nine, and would spend some minutes glancing through the morning papers while Grimshaw marked up the diary for the day. One reporter would be detailed to attend the Stipendiary Magistrate’s Court, another the less important Court presided over by JPs.

A third reporter would be responsible for what was known as Calls. He was the emergency stand-by man, too. He would ring the infirmary and the various police stations, and the fire station, and write any snippets of news which he obtained on the telephone as a result of his calls. There was always something: an accident or two—fatal, with any luck; a fire, a burglary, an occasional suicide. If the news merited it, he would go out and visit the scene of the occurrence himself and write a fuller story.

Somebody would be marked in the diary for Inquests; another man, called Fish-Dock Phillip, covered the fish-dock for news and gossip about trawlers. Hailey would be out getting his sports gossip-column material. If conditions required it, a man was detailed to do the Weather Story, gathering news of drought or floods, water shortage or storm damage, as the case might be.

The police courts often finished by 11:15 and several of us would try to forgather for coffee and dominoes in a café, the loser paying the bill.

In the afternoons there would be bazaars, municipal committee meetings, council meetings, charity parties, flower shows, and all the normal activities of a provincial town. Nor was this all. Three or four evenings a week we would get an evening job; a dance organized by some club or society which had to be reported, or a lecture, or a whist drive. Quite often we went to bed at one or two o’clock in the morning, because we had to have our copy ready written for handing in first thing next day.