The Suburbs of Hell (2 page)

He was in order. He wore the uniform of an Old Tornwich Saturday night.

Level with his eye hung a photograph of his father, a very good one, taken by somebody famous in that line. It had appeared in a book, with the caption: ‘Suffolk Fisherman’. A face lined and spare as driftwood, prickly with a few days of white stubble, the bright eyes among the weather-lines cautious, guarded, yet kind.

‘You weren’t such a bad old boy,’ said Harry Ufford, out of the wisdom of his middle years. ‘Sorry.’

As Harry was coming down Red Lion Street he heard, from the mist, a sort of hoarse shout, muffled, neither male nor female. Then plimsolled feet were running towards him, and a short body hit him amidships.

‘Watch where you’re gooin, boy,’ Harry said, irritably. ‘Whass that you, Killer?’

Killer was a twelve-year-old boy, and looked very tough. But his face, in the mist-muted light of a streetlamp, was not self-confident.

‘Sorry, Harry,’ he muttered, in an unsteady treble. ‘Harry—’

‘Did you sing out just now?’ Harry asked. ‘I thought I hear someone yell.’

‘It was me,’ the boy admitted, reluctantly. ‘I seen something. I seen—I dunno. A thing.’

‘What you on about, boy?’ Harry demanded. ‘What kind of a thing? A hooman thing?’

‘Yeh,’ Killer said, ‘but—I dunno. I weren’t expectin it, it give me a turn, that did. I was comin down the street, from this way, and I was goin to go down that passage, on the left. Then this—this person come out of the other passage, on the right, and stop for a moment in the middle of the street and look at me, and then go away down the other passage where I was goin.’

‘Whass so special, then,’ Harry asked, ‘about this
person
?’

‘I’ll tell you this,’ said the child, more bravely, ‘that was something ugly. A loony, I reckon. With an anorak with the hood pulled up, and underneath this mask, the worst I ever seen. And hands with hair on, and claws.’

‘Why, I sin hands like that,’ Harry said. ‘You buy them in a joke-shop. George Butt buy one, about a thousand years ago, for makin hand-signals from his lorry.’

‘I int daft, Harry,’ said Killer, with returning spirit. ‘I knoo that. What I mean is, that person is mad. Out of his tree. Thass something I could feel, kind of.’

Harry stood reflecting, thumbs in his wide leather belt. ‘I’ll tell you what, boy,’ he said, ‘thass a joke that’ll make sense to someone. There’s four pubs he could have been headin for, gooin that way. In one of them all his mates are peein themselves just now. Or else he’s disappointed. In this life, dear boy, practical jokes are mostly let-downs.’

‘Are you goin by mine, Harry?’ the boy asked.

‘I weren’t, but I shall,’ said the broad protective man. ‘I kind of envy you your imagination, young Killer. There int all that much drama in Old Tornwich. Yeh, I shall see you hoom.’

‘There could be,’ the boy said, defensively. ‘Dramas, I mean—bad things. There’s that many little passages and empty houses and dark yards and places where the street-lamps don’t reach. What if there was someone mad among us here, in this fog?’

‘Fog, he call it. This int no fog, boy.’

‘All right, Harry,’ said Killer, restored to normal, ‘you know your way about. I always stick up for you when they call you a dozy prat.’

‘I think you’re lookin for a thick ear, doughnut.’

Companionably they turned into the passage, Harry’s boots ringing on its flags. The stillness of the little town was stiller there, among high narrow buildings. The only light was from lamplit mist in the streets at either end. As they passed, Harry looked carefully into two pitchdark doorways belonging to empty houses. ‘Now you got me started,’ he confessed.

In the next street they stopped outside a small Georgian house. ‘You carry a key, boy?’ Harry asked.

The child shook his head, and banged loudly with a shining brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin.

‘Well, I shan’t wait,’ said Harry. The reason bein, I have a dark suspicion your mam fancy me.’

‘No,’ said Killer, ‘no, thass me dad what fancy you.’

‘I hope you have nightmares,’ Harry said, ‘you percocious brat. See you.’

He walked on down the street. Through the mist the lights of the big ferry, the
St Felix
, shone bright and blurred. He stopped on the quayside to look at her.

‘Great days,’ he said to himself. ‘Great mates, great fights, great piss-ups.’

He turned and walked on, beside the mist-breathing water, towards the sign of the Speedwell, dimly shining at the far end of the quay.

Inside Old Tornwich Speedwell, wearers of the Saturday night uniform were out in strength. Somebody’s small dog was wandering, bewildered, through thickets of blue denim legs. Here and there the more formal uniform of a pilot added the touch of class which the Speedwell’s landlady was always pleased to see.

‘You don’t get in much lately,’ Frank De Vere said, drinking with Harry at the bar. The sound of his voice caught the ear of retired Commander Pryke, an irritable tippler, who turned to his neighbour and muttered in disgust: ‘De Vere. Bog Irish by origin, and he’s a De Vere.’

‘Bog Norman-Irish, perhaps,’ Paul Ramsey suggested peaceably, and puffed at his pipe. He and the Commander sat a little apart at a table by a window. Outside, the masts of a fishing-boat swayed unsettlingly in the mist.

‘It come to me on my birthday,’ Harry was saying, ‘that my wild days was over. I said to myself, I say: Once a week is enough, boy, just to keep up the social intercourse, like. Well, I mean, at my time of life what you’re fittest for is watchin the telly.’

‘And I suppose you never drink indoors,’ Frank De Vere insinuated. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be half-cut at the moment?’

When scenting an offence Harry’s face took on an odd expression, mild yet grim. Not moving his head, he said: ‘Psychologically speakin, young Frank, you’re a sort of a Peepin Tom. What the Frogs call a
voiture
.’

‘
Voyeur
, you tool,’ Frank murmured.

‘Is that it? Where did I get
voiture
from, then?’

‘Off the car-deck on the
Felix
, I should imagine.’

‘Oh my mind, my mind,’ Harry groaned, running a hand through his hair. ‘Forty-seven, and my mind’s in the state of an old Brillopad. Just you remember what I always tell you: this Abbot Ale causes brain damage.’

Frank emptied his pint nonetheless. ‘No Dave tonight,’ he said. ‘Courting, I think.’

‘Courtin?’ Harry’s glance was sceptical.

‘Why not?’

‘He never shew much interest before. Another thing about him: seem to me he have a surprisin amount of money for a young fella on the dole.’

‘All right, then,’ Frank said, ‘he’s out robbing a bank. You senile fucking
voiture
.’

Harry looked at him suddenly, really looking, with his jaw set. ‘I think you’re a bit of a nasty bugger,’ he said, without heat. ‘Sometimes I don’t enjoy listenin to you.’

‘Joke, mate,’ Frank explained, uncomfortably. ‘Here, drink that up, I’m waiting.’

While Frank hovered, trying to catch a barmaid’s eye, Harry studied his own thick fingers drumming on a drip-mat on the bar. L-O-V-E; H-A-T-E. Those fists had got him into trouble in earlier days; the optimism and easy affectionateness of his nature turning to violence when he felt affronted. Now he was weighing up the case of Frank De Vere.

He could think of many favours which he had done for Frank, and for his withdrawn, unhappy wife. Favours, he saw on reflection, which he had rather thrust upon them; but that was his way, and people were used to him. If he had ever given the matter a thought, he would have counted Frank among his closer friends. But there was a matter of thirteen years between their ages, and it had dawned on him, after that sudden flash of malice, that this long pub-companionship was like the companionship of fellow-commuters, quite empty. If Frank sought him out, as in a passive way he did, it was because Frank was not liked. So (reasoned Harry) he get Muggins for his mate; soft-touch Harry, Harry the swede, that read a lot of books but get mixed up over the long words. Senile fuckin Harry.

If Frank had a real friend, though that would be putting it strongly, it must be young Dave Stutton. Yet Harry had gathered from the air once or twice that they did not much like one another. So what thrust them into each other’s company so often must be business, after a fashion.

A pint-pot was placed between his hands, and he lifted it and said: ‘Cheers.’ He smiled his open country-boy’s smile, not in hypocrisy, but because that was his way of dealing with friction, for a while. He did sincerely think the best of people, till the moment when something demanded to be done.

Suddenly the mug’s rim clicked against his teeth as he started. Someone had goosed him.

He swung round. ‘Why, you naughty old lady, Ena.’

A bouncy little woman, bosomed like a bullfinch, stood beaming up at him. Old Tornwich knew her as Eddystone Ena: former ship’s stewardess, former barmaid, and for many years the solitary tenant of an urban lighthouse.

As she opened her mouth to speak the jukebox, now surrounded by a knot of teenagers just come in, broke its silence with a scream, and he bent down to her. ‘Hullo, stranger,’ she yelled in his ear. ‘Give us a kiss.’

He embraced her small plumpness, and kissed her on each cheek. ‘Oh, isn’t he a big strong fella,’ she cried to Frank De Vere, who was looking down on the scene with his usual sardonic expression, eyes glacier-blue in his pockmarked face.

‘Let me sit you on the bar,’ Harry offered, ‘where we can see you.’

‘You put me down, Harry Ufford!’ chortled Ena, enjoying herself. ‘No, I can’t stay, I was on my way round to speak to Doris when I saw you. It’s the first time for yonks. When a man cuts down on his beer he just seems to vanish. You look very well, Harry. Younger, thinner in the face.’

Harry’s guileless vanity responded; he grinned.

‘Anyway,’ Ena rattled on, ‘you must come and see me some day at the lighthouse. We’re neighbours, after all.’

‘Will do,’ Harry said. ‘Thass a promise. But anyway, Ena, see you again before closin time, I hope.’

She passed, and he turned back to Frank, his equivocal mate. ‘Thass a great little old gal,’ he said. ‘War widow, you know. She never had things easy, but always bright as a button.’

‘You’ve been into her lighthouse, have you?’ Frank asked.

‘Oh, yeh, two or three times. She keep that quite nice. All her gear is shabby, like, but thass homely.’

‘I and Dave have this fantasy,’ Frank said, ‘of going and knocking on her door. It would be a real Goon Show scene, we reckon. We’d hear her feet coming down a hundred and twelve stairs, then the door would creak open, horror-film stuff, and we’d say: “Is Fred in?” “Fred don’t live here,” she’d say, and the door would slam, and a hundred and twelve footsteps would go away again, into the sky.’

‘I can see how that would appeal to you and Dave,’ Harry said, ‘gettin a woman with sixty-one-year-old legs down all them stairs. But she don’t live in the light-room, as that happen. I doubt if she ever goo up there.’

‘I’d like to see inside that place,’ mused Frank.

‘Well, play your cards right, boy, and you might get an invitation to tea. But if I was you I should prepare myself for it by thinkin of her in a more friendly spirit. I expect you noticed that you
dint
get an invitation just now.’

‘Right,’ Frank said, gazing impassively into his beer.

Behind Harry’s back retired Commander Pryke, lurching a little in passing, bumped into him. He wandered on with a courtly mutter, and went out by the door on to the quayside. Turning at the interruption, Harry saw Paul Ramsey looking at him from his table, and brightened. ‘There’s young Paul,’ he told Frank; ‘I got something to say to him.’

He took his drink and went over to sit himself in the Commander’s vacated chair, considering the bearded face opposite with benevolence. ‘Well, young man?’

The beard on the young man’s face produced a not uncommon effect, the line of the moustache making Paul Ramsey seem melancholy and resigned.

‘Well what, Harry?’

‘Well, whass that you’re smokin in that pipe? That smell to me like King Henry the Eighth’s bedsocks.’

‘It’s what I can afford,’ Paul said. ‘Unlike you, I pay duty on what I smoke.’

‘Well, less not goo into that. There’s some old customs in this place that a boy of your class and education don’t want to know about.’

‘You’re fairly right,’ Paul said. ‘Bourgeois, we Ramseys are. If a policeman knocked on my door, I’d never feel easy with the neighbours again.’

Outside, the mist was thickening, and the bobbing, gyrating masts had become hard to see.

‘Have you had a right rave-up with Captain Bligh?’

‘He was okay,’ Paul said. ‘A touch of pepper when he noticed Frank De Vere. He objects to his surname—thinks it’s far too good for him.’

‘So that is. De Veres was great people in these parts once. The cream.’

‘I could tell the Commander,’ Paul said, ‘something funny about his own name. But he probably knows it.’

‘Pryke?’ Harry pondered. ‘Whass funny about Pryke?’

‘A few years ago,’ Paul said, ‘I was going through some parish registers for a paper I was writing. In one village I found two families that kept intermarrying. Their names were Prick and Balls.’

‘Oh, schoolmaster!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Goo and wash your mouth out, boy.’

‘It’s gospel truth. The village was Boxford. In mid-Victorian times one family of Pricks started spelling their name “Pryke”, and by the end of the century they’d all done the same. Now, if you look in the telephone book, you’ll find a lot of Prykes, but the Pricks don’t dare raise their heads.’

‘I don’t think,’ Harry said, ‘that your interests make you a very suitable person to have charge of the minds of our children.’

Paul looked surprised. ‘You haven’t any children—have you, Harry?’

‘That was just a way of speakin,’ Harry said. ‘But I think I have. I might have. One. From before I was married, thass why I int sure.’

‘You were married?’

‘Well—not for long. The divorce went on for years, the marriage dint. But before that there was a gal what had a son I think was mine. I like to think he’s mine. There’s his name,’ Harry said, pushing up his sleeve. Tattooed on his forearm was a red rose with a label across the stem saying PAUL. ‘Thass why I like that name,’ Harry confided.