The Ballad of Peckham Rye (3 page)

For a few weeks he spent much of his time in the flat of the retired actress and singer,
Maria Cheeseman, in Chelsea, who had once shared a stage with an aunt of
Jinny’s.

He went to meet Jinny at last at King’s Cross. She had bright high cheek-bones and
brown straight hair. They could surely be married in six months’ time.
‘I’ve to go into hospital again,’ said Jinny. ‘I’ve to
have an operation this time. I’ve a letter to a surgeon in the Middlesex
Hospital.

‘You’ll come and visit me there?’ she said.

‘No, quite honestly, I won’t,’ Dougal said. ‘You know how I feel
about places of sickness. I’ll write to you every day.’

She got a room in Kensington, went into hospital two weeks later, was discharged on a
Saturday, and wrote to tell Dougal not to meet her at the hospital and she was glad he
had got the job in Peckham, and was writing Miss Cheeseman’s life, and she hoped
he would do well in life.

‘Jinny, I’ve found a room in Peckham. I can come over and see you if you
like.’

‘I’ve left some milk on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’

Dougal tried on one of his new white shirts and tilted the mirror on the dressing-table
to see himself better. Already it seemed that Peckham brought out something in him that
Earls Court had overlooked. He left the room and descended the stairs. Miss Frierne came
out of her front room.

‘Have you got everything you want, Mr Douglas?’

‘You and I,’ said Dougal, ‘are going to get on fine.’

‘You’ll do well at Meadows Meade, Mr Douglas. I’ve had fellows before
from Meadows Meade.’

‘Just call me Dougal,’ said Dougal.

‘Douglas,’ she said, pronouncing it ‘Dooglass’.

‘No,
Dougal
— Douglas is my surname.’

‘Oh, Dougal Douglas. Dougal’s the first name.’

‘That’s right, Miss Frierne. What buses do you take for
Kensington?’

‘It’s my one secret weakness,’ he said to Jinny.

‘I can’t help it,’ he said. ‘Sickness kills me.

‘Be big,’ he said, ‘be strong. Be a fine woman, Jinny.

‘Understand me,’ he said, ‘try to understand my fatal flaw. Everybody
has one.’

‘It’s time I had my lie-down,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring you
when I’m stronger.’

‘Ring me tomorrow.’

‘All right, tomorrow.’

‘What time?’

‘I don’t know. Some time.’

‘You would think we had never been lovers, you speak so coldly,’ he said.
‘Ring me at eleven in the morning. Will you be awake by then?’

‘All right, eleven.’ He leaned one elbow on the back of his chair. She was
unmoved. He smiled intimately. She closed her eyes.

‘You haven’t asked for my number,’ he said.

‘All right, leave your number.’

He wrote it on a bit of paper and returned south of the river to Peckham. There, as
Dougal entered the saloon bar of the Morning Star, Nelly Mahone crossed the road in her
rags crying, ‘Praise be to the Lord, almighty and eternal, wonderful in the
dispensation of all his works, the glory of the faithful and the life of the
just.’ As Dougal bought his drink, Humphrey Place came up and spoke to him. Dougal
recalled that Humphrey Place, refrigerator engineer of Freeze-eezy’s, was living
in the room below his and had been introduced to him by Miss Frierne that morning.
Afterwards Miss Frierne had told Dougal, ‘He is clean and go-ahead.’

‘W
HAT
d’you mean by different?’ Mavis said.

‘I don’t know. He’s just different. Says funny things. You have to
laugh,’ Dixie said.

‘He’s just an ordinary chap,’ Humphrey said. ‘Nice chap.
Ordinary.’

But Dixie could see that Humphrey did not mean it. Humphrey knew that Douglas was
different. Humphrey had been talking a good deal about Douglas during the past fortnight
and how they sat up talking late at Miss Frierne’s.

‘Better fetch him here to tea one night.’ said Dixie’s stepfather.
‘Let’s have a look at him.’

‘He’s too high up in the Office,’ Mavis said.

‘He’s on research.’ Dixie said. ‘He’s brainy, supposed to
be. But he’s friendly, I’ll say that.’

‘He’s no snob,’ said Humphrey.

‘He hasn’t got nothing to be a snob about,’ said Dixie.

‘
Anything
, not
nothing.
’

‘Anything,’ said Dixie, ‘to be a snob about. He’s no better than
us just because he’s twenty-three and got a good job.’

‘But he’s got to do his overtime for nothing,’ Mavis said.

‘He’s the same as what we are,’ Dixie said.

‘You said he was different.’

‘Well, but no better than us. I don’t know why you sit up talking at nights
with him.’

Humphrey sat up late in Dougal’s room.

‘My father’s in the same trade. He puts himself down as a fitter. Same
job.’

‘It is right and proper,’ Dougal said, ‘that you should be called a
refrigerator engineer. It brings lyricism to the concept.’

‘I don’t trouble myself about that,’ Humphrey said. ‘But what you
call a job makes a difference to the Unions. My dad doesn’t see that.’

‘Do you like brass bedsteads?’ Dougal said. ‘We had them at home. We
used to unscrew the knobs and hide the fag ends inside.’

‘By common law,’ Humphrey said, ‘a trade union has no power to take
disciplinary action against its members. By common law a trade union cannot fine,
suspend, or expel its members. It can only do so contractually. That is, by its
rules.’

‘Quite,’ said Dougal, who was lolling on his brass bed.

‘You can use your imagination,’ Humphrey said. ‘If a member is expelled
from a union that operates a closed shop …’

‘Ghastly,’ said Dougal, who was trying to unscrew one of the knobs.

‘But all that won’t concern you much,’ Humphrey said. ‘What you
want to know about for your human research is arbitration in trade disputes.
There’s the Conciliation Act 1896 and the Industrial Courts Act 1919, but you
wouldn’t need to go into those. You might study the Industrial Disputes Order
1951. But you aren’t likely to have a dispute at Meadows, Meade & Grindley.
You might have an issue, though.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Oh, a vast difference. Sometimes they take it to law to decide whether an issue or
a dispute has arisen. It’s been as far as the Court of Appeal. I’ll let you
have the books. Issue is whether certain employers should observe certain terms of
employment. Dispute is any dispute between employer and employee as to terms of
employment or conditions of labour.’

‘Terrific,’ Dougal said. ‘You must have given your mind to
it.’

‘I took a course. But you’ll soon get to know what’s what in Industrial
Relations.’

‘Fascinating,’ Dougal said. ‘Everything is fascinating, to me, so far.
Do you know what I came across the other day? An account of the fair up the road at
Camberwell Green.’

‘Fair?’

‘According to Colburn’s
Calendar of Amusements
1840,
’ Dougal said. He reached for his notebook, leaned on his elbow,
heaved his high shoulder and read:

There is here, and only here, to be seen what you can see nowhere else, the lately caught
and highly accomplished young mermaid, about whom the continental journals have written
so ably. She combs her hair in the manner practised in China, and admires herself in a
glass in the manner practised everywhere. She has had the best instructors in every
peculiarity of education, and can argue on any given subject, from the most popular way
of preserving plums, down to the necessity of a change of Ministers. She plays the harp
in the new effectual style prescribed by Mr Bocha, of whom we wished her to take
lessons, but, having some mermaiden scruples, she begged to be provided with a less
popular master. Being so clever and accomplished, she can’t bear to be
contradicted, and lately leaped out of her tub and floored a distinguished fellow of the
Royal Zoological Society, who was pleased to be more curious and cunning than she was
pleased to think agreeable. She has composed various poems for the periodicals, and airs
with variations for the harp and piano, all very popular and pleasing.

Dougal gracefully cast his book aside. ‘How I should like to meet a mermaid!’
he said.

‘Terrific,’ Humphrey said. ‘You make it up?’ he asked.

‘No, I copied it out of an old book in the library. My research. Mendelssohn wrote
his ‘Spring Song’ in Ruskin Park. Ruskin lived on Denmark Hill. Mrs
Fitzherbert lived in Camberwell Grove. Boadicea committed suicide on Peckham Rye
probably where the bowling green is now, I should imagine. But, look here, how would you
like to be engaged to marry a mermaid that writes poetry?’

‘Fascinating,’ Humphrey said.

Dougal gazed at him like a succubus whose mouth is its eyes.

Humphrey’s friend, Trevor Lomas, had said Dougal was probably pansy.

‘I don’t think so,’ Humphrey had replied. ‘He’s got a girl
somewhere.’

‘Might be versatile.’

‘Could be.’

Dougal said, ‘The boss advised me to mix with everybody in the district, high and
low. I should like to mix with that mermaid.’

Dougal put a record on the gramophone he had borrowed from Elaine Kent in the textile
factory. It was a Mozart Quartet. He slid the rugs aside with his foot and danced to the
music on the bare linoleum, with stricken movements of his hands. He stopped when the
record stopped, replaced the rugs, and said, ‘I must get to know some of the youth
clubs. Dixie will be a member of a youth club, I expect.’

‘She isn’t,’ Humphrey said rather rapidly.

Dougal opened a bottle of Algerian wine. He took his time, and with a pair of long
tweezers fished out a bit of cork that had dropped inside the bottle. He held up the
pair of tweezers.

‘I use these,’ he said, ‘to pluck out the hairs which grow inside my
nostrils, and which are unsightly. Eventually, I lose the tweezers, then I buy another
pair.’

He placed the tweezers on the bed. Humphrey lifted them, examined them, then placed them
on the dressing table.

‘Dixie will know,’ Dougal said, ‘about the youth clubs.’

‘No, she won’t. She doesn’t have anything to do with youth clubs. There
are classes within classes in Peckham.’

‘Dixie would be upper-working,’ said Dougal. He poured wine into two tumblers
and handed one to Humphrey.

‘Well, I’d say middle-class. It’s not a snob business, it’s a
question of your type.’

‘Or lower-middle,’ Dougal said.

Humphrey looked vaguely as if Dixie was being insulted. But then he looked pleased. His
eyes went narrow, his head lolled on the back of the chair, copying one of
Dougal’s habitual poses.

‘Dixie’s saving up,’ he said. It’s all she can think of, saving
up to get married. And now what does she say? We can’t go out more than one night
a week so that I can save up too.’

‘Avarice,’ Dougal said, ‘must be her fatal flaw. We all have a fatal
flaw. If she took sick, how would you feel, would she repel you?’

Dougal had taken Miss Merle Coverdale for a walk across the great sunny common of the Rye
on a Saturday afternoon. Merle Coverdale was head of the typing pool at Meadows, Meade
& Grindley. She was thirty-seven.

Dougal said, ‘My lonely heart is deluged by melancholy and it feels quite
nice.’

‘Someone might hear you talking like that.’

‘You are a terror and a treat,’ Dougal said. ‘You look to me like an
Okapi,’ he said.

‘A what?’

‘An Okapi is a rare beast from the Congo. It looks a little like a deer, but it
tries to be a giraffe. It has stripes and it stretches its neck as far as possible and
its ears are like a donkey’s. It is a little bit of everything. There are only a
few in captivity. It is very shy.’

‘Why do you say I’m like it?’

‘Because you’re so shy.’

‘Me shy?’

‘Yes. You haven’t told me about your love affair with Mr Druce. You’re
too shy.’

‘Oh, that’s only a friendship. You’ve got it all wrong. What makes you
think it’s a love affair? Who told you that?’

‘I’ve got second sight.’

He brought her to the gate of the park and was leading her through it, when she said,

‘This doesn’t lead anywhere. We’ll have to go back the same
way.’

‘Yes, it does,’ Dougal said, ‘it leads to One Tree Hill and two
cemeteries, the Old and the New. Which would you prefer?’

‘I’m not going into any cemetery,’ she said, standing with legs apart
in the gateway as if he might move her by force.

Dougal said, There’s a lovely walk through the New Cemetery. Lots of angels.
Beautiful. I’m surprised at you. Are you a free woman or are you a
slave?’

She let him take her through the cemetery, eventually, and even pointed out to him the
tower of the crematorium when it came into sight. Dougal posed like an angel on a grave
which had only an insignificant headstone. He posed like an angel-devil, with his hump
shoulder and gleaming smile, and his fingers of each hand widespread against the sky.
She looked startled. Then she laughed.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ she said.

On the way back along the pastoral streets of trees and across the Rye she told him about
her six years as mistress of Mr Druce, about Mr Druce’s wife who never came to the
annual dinners and who was a wife in name only.

‘How they bring themselves to go on living together I don’t know,’ she
said. ‘There’s no feeling between them. It’s immoral.’

She told Dougal how she had fallen out of love with Mr Druce yet could not discontinue
the relationship, she didn’t know why.

‘You’ve got used to him,’ Dougal said.

‘I suppose so.’

‘But you feel,’ Dougal said, ‘that you’re living a
lie.’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘You’ve put my very thoughts into words.

‘And then,’ she said, ‘he’s got some funny ways with
him.’

Dougal slid his eyes to regard her without moving his face. He caught her doing the same
thing to him.