The Ballad of Peckham Rye (10 page)

Mr Willis looked with his blue eyes at his rational compatriot sitting before him with a
shiny brief-case on his lap.

Mr Willis said at last, ‘That would seem to be the correct approach, Mr
Dougal.’

Dougal sat easily in his chair and continued his speech with half-closed, detached, and
scholarly eyes.

‘There are four types of morality observable in Peckham,’ he said.
‘One, emotional. Two, functional. Three, puritanical. Four, Christian.’

Mr Willis opened the lid of a silver cigarette-box and passed it over to Dougal.

‘No, thank you,’ Dougal said. ‘Take the first category, Emotional.
Here, for example, it is considered immoral for a man to live with a wife who no longer
appeals to him. Take the second, Functional, in which the principal factor is class
solidarity such as, in some periods and places, has also existed amongst the
aristocracy, and of which the main manifestation these days is the trade union movement.
Three, Puritanical, of which there are several modern variants, monetary advancement
being the most prevalent gauge of the moral life in this category. Four, Traditional,
which accounts for about one per cent of the Peckham population, and which in its
simplest form is Christian. All moral categories are of course intermingled. Sometimes
all are to be found in the beliefs and behaviour of one individual.’

‘Where does this get us?’

‘I can’t say,’ Dougal said. ‘It is only a preliminary
analysis.’

‘Please embody all this in a report for us, Mr Dougal.’

Dougal opened his brief-case and took out two sheets of paper. ‘I have elaborated
on the question here. I have included case histories.’

Mr Willis smiled with one side of his mouth and said, ‘Which of these four moral
codes would you say was most attractive, Mr Dougal?’

‘Attractive?’ Dougal said with a trace of disapproval.

‘Attractive to us. Useful, I mean, useful.’

Dougal pondered seriously until Mr Willis’s little smile was forced, for
dignity’s sake, to fade. Then, ‘I could not decide until I had further
studied the question.’

‘We’ll expect another report next week?’

‘No, I’ll need a month,’ Dougal stated. ‘A month to work on my
own. I can’t come in here again for a month if you wish me to continue research on
this line of industrial psychology.’

‘You must see round the factory,’ said Mr Willis. ‘Peckham is a big
place. We’re concerned with our own works first of all.’

‘I’ve arranged to be shown round this afternoon,’ Dougal said.
‘And at the end of a month I hope to spend some time with the workers in the
recreation halls and canteens.’

Mr Willis looked silently at Dougal who then permitted himself a slight display of
enthusiasm. He leaned forward.

‘Have you observed, Mr Willis, the frequency with which your employees use the word
“immoral”? Have you noticed how equally often they use the word
“ignorant”? These words are significant,’ Dougal said,
‘psychologically and sociologically.’

Mr Willis smiled, as far as he was able, into Dougal’s face. ‘Take a month
and see what you can do,’ he said. ‘But bring us a good plan of action at
the end of it. Drover, my partner, is anxious about absenteeism. We want some moral line
that will be both commendable by us and acceptable to our staff. You’ve got some
sound ideas, I can see that. And method. I like method.’

Dougal nodded and took his long serious face out of the room.

Miss Frierne said, ‘That boy Leslie Crewe has been here. He was looking for you.
Wants to go your errands and make a bob like a good kid. Perhaps his mother’s a
bit short.’

‘Anyone with him?’

‘No. He came to the back door this time.’

‘Oh,’ Dougal said, ‘did you get rid of him quickly.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t go for a long time. He kept saying when would Mr Douglas
be home, and could he do anything for you. He was very polite, I will say that. Then he
asked the time and then he said his Dad used to live up this road in number eight. So I
took him in the kitchen. I thought, well, he’s only a boy, and gave him a
doughnut. He said his sister was looking forward to marrying Humphrey in September. He
said she saves all her wages and the father in America dresses her. He said
—’

‘He must have kept you talking a long time,’ Dougal said.

‘Oh, I didn’t mind. It was a nice break in the afternoon. A nice lad, he is.
He goes out Sundays with the Rover Scouts. I’d just that minute come in and I was
feeling a bit upset because of something that happened in the street, so
—’

‘Did he ask if he could go up and wait in my room?’

‘No, not this time. I wouldn’t have let him in your room, especially after
you said nobody was to be let in there. Don’t you worry about your room. Nobody
wants to go into your room, I’m sure.’

Dougal said, ‘You are too innocent for this wicked world.’

‘Innocent I always was,’ Miss Frierne said, ‘and that was why I was so
taken aback that day by the Gordon Highlander up on One Tree Hill. Have a cup of
tea.’

‘Thanks,’ Dougal said. ‘I’ll just pop upstairs a minute
first.’

His room had, of course, been disturbed. He unlocked a drawer in his dressing-table and
found that two notebooks were missing. His portable typewriter had been opened and
clumsily shut. Ten five-pound notes were, however, untouched in another drawer by the
person who had climbed to his room while Leslie had engaged Miss Frierne in talk.

He came down to the kitchen where Miss Frierne sighed into her tea.

‘Next time that Leslie comes round to the back door have a look, will you, to see
who he’s left at the front door. His father’s worried about his companions
after school hours, I happen to know.’

‘He only wanted to know if you had any errands to run. I daresay to help his
mother, like a good kid. I told him I thought you’re short of bacon for your
breakfast. He’ll be back. There’s no harm in that boy, I know it by
instinct, and instinct always tells. Like what happened to me in the street
today.’ She sipped her tea, and was silent.

Dougal sipped his. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you’re dying to tell me
what happened.’

‘As true as God is my judge,’ she said, ‘I saw my brother up at
Camberwell Green that left home in nineteen-nineteen. We never heard a word from him all
those years. He was coming out of Lyons.’

‘Didn’t you go and speak to him?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. He was very shabby, he looked awful.
Something stopped me. It was an instinct. I couldn’t do it. He saw me,
too.’

She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and patted beneath her glasses.

‘You should have gone up to him,’ Dougal said. ‘You should have said,
“Are you …” — what was his name?’

‘Harold,’ she said.

‘You should have said, “Are you Harold?”, that’s what you ought
to have done. Instead of which you didn’t. You came back here and gave a doughnut
to that rotten little Leslie.’

‘Don’t you point your finger at me, Dougal. Nobody does that in my house. You
can find other accommodation
if
you like, any
time
you like and when
you like.’

Dougal got up and shuffled round the kitchen with a slouch and an old ill look. ‘Is
that what your old brother looked like?’ he said.

She laughed in high-pitched ripples.

Dougal thrust his hands into his pockets and looked miserably at his toes.

She started to cry all over her spectacles.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t your brother at all,’ Dougal said.

‘That’s what I’m wondering, son.’

‘Just feel my head,’ Dougal said, ‘these two small bumps
here.’

‘There are four types of morality in Peckham,’ Dougal said to Mr Druce.
‘The first category is —’

‘Dougal,’ he said, ‘are you doing anything tonight?’

‘Well, I usually prepare my notes. You realize, don’t you, that Oliver
Goldsmith taught in a school in Peckham? He used to commit absenteeism and spent a lot
of his time in a coffee-house at the Temple instead of in Peckham. I wonder
why?’

‘I need your advice,’ Mr Druce said. ‘There’s a place in Soho
—’

‘I don’t like crossing the river,’ Dougal said, ‘not without my
broomstick.’

Mr Druce made double chins and looked lovingly at Dougal.

‘There’s a place in Soho —’

‘I could spare a couple of hours,’ Dougal said. ‘I could see you up at
Dulwich at the Dragon at nine.’

‘Well, I was thinking of making an evening of it, Dougal; some dinner at this place
in Soho —’

‘Nine at the Dragon,’ Dougal said.

‘Mrs Druce knows a lot of people in Dulwich.’

‘All the better,’ Dougal said.

Dougal arrived at the Dragon at nine sharp. He drank gin and peppermint while he waited.
At half past nine two girls from Drover Willis’s came in. Dougal joined them. Mr
Druce did not come. At ten o’clock they went on a bus to the Rosemary Branch in
Southampton Way. Here, Dougal expounded the idea that everyone should take every second
Monday morning off their work. When they came out of the pub, at eleven, Nelly Mahone
crossed the street towards them.

‘Praise be to the Lord,’ she cried, ‘whose providence in all things
never fails.’

‘Hi, Nelly,’ said one of the girls as she passed.

Nelly raised up her voice and in the same tone proclaimed, ‘Praise be to God who by
sin is offended, Trevor Lomas, Collie Gould up the Elephant with young Leslie, and by
penance appeased, the exaltation of the humble and the strength of the
righteous.’

‘Ah, Nelly,’ Dougal said.

‘Y
ES
,
Cheese?’ Dougal said.

‘Look, Doug, I think I can’t have this story about the Dragon at Dulwich,
it’s indecent. Besides, it isn’t true. And I never went to Soho at that age.
I never went out with any managing director —’

‘It will help to sell the book,’ Dougal said. He breathed moistly on the oak
panel of Miss Frierne’s hall, and with his free hand drew a face on the misty
surface where he had breathed.

‘And Doug dear,’ said the voice from across the river, ‘how did you
know I started life in a shoe factory? I mean to say, I didn’t tell you that. How
did you know?’

‘I didn’t know, Cheese,’ Dougal said.

‘You must have known. You’ve got all the details right, except that it
wasn’t in Peckham, it was Streatham. It all came back to me as I read it.
It’s uncanny. You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you,
Doug?’

‘Aye,’ Dougal said. He breathed on the panel, wrote in a word, then rubbed it
off.

‘Doug, you mustn’t do that. It makes me creepy to think that people can find
out all about you,’ Miss Cheeseman said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to put
in about the shoe factory and all that. Besides, the period. It dates me.’

‘It only makes you sixty-eight, Cheese.’

‘Well, Doug, there must be a way of making me not even that. I want you to come
over, Doug. I’ve been feeling off colour.’

‘I’ve got a fatal flaw,’ Dougal said, ‘to the effect that I
can’t bear anyone off colour. Moreover, Saturday’s my day off and it’s
a beautiful summer day.’

‘Dear Doug, I promise to be well. Only come over. I’m
worried
about
my book. It’s rather … rather too …’

‘Rambling,’ Dougal said.

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘I’ll see you at four,’ Dougal said.

At the back of Hollis’s Hamburgers at Elephant and Castle was a room furnished with
a fitted grey carpet, a red upholstered modern suite comprising a sofa and two cubic
armchairs, a television receiver on a light wood stand, a low glass-topped coffee table,
a table on which stood an electric portable gramophone and a tape recorder, a light wood
bureau desk, a standard lamp, and several ash-trays on stands. Two of the walls were
papered with a wide grey stripe. The other two were covered with a pattern of gold stars
on red. Fixed to the walls were a number of white brackets containing pots of indoor
ivy. The curtains, which were striped red and white, were drawn. This cheerful interior
was lit by a couple of red-shaded wall-lamps. In one chair sat Leslie Crewe, with his
neck held rigidly and attentively. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit of normal cut, and
a peach-coloured tie, and looked older than thirteen. In another chair lolled Collie
Gould who was eighteen and had been found unfit for National Service; Collie suffered
from lung trouble for which he was constantly under treatment, and was at present on
probation for motor stealing. He wore a dark-grey draped jacket with narrow black
trousers. Trevor Lomas, dressed in blue-grey, lay between them on the sofa. All smoked
American cigarettes. All looked miserable, not as an expression of their feelings, but
as if by an instinctive prearrangement, to convey a decision on all affairs
whatsoever.

Trevor held in his hand one of the two thin exercise books he had stolen from
Dougal’s drawer. The other lay on the carpet beside him.

‘Listen to this,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s called “Phrases
suitable for Cheese”.’

‘Suitable for what?’ said Collie.

‘Cheese, it says. Code word, obvious. Listen to this what you make of it.
There’s a list.

‘I thrilled to his touch.

I was too young at the time to understand why my mother was crying.

As he entered the room a shudder went through my frame.

In that moment of silent communion we renewed our shattered faith.

She was to play a vital role in my life.

Memory had not played me false.

He was always an incurable romantic.

I became the proud owner of a bicycle.

He spoke to me in desiccated tones.

Autumn again. Autumn. The burning of leaves in the park.

He spelt disaster to me.

I revelled in my first tragic part.

I had no eyes for any other man.

We were living a lie.

She proved a mine of information.

Once more fate intervened.