The Walking Stick (33 page)

‘Did you know he was a fence then?’

‘Not on your life! He wasn’t such a fool as to confide in a youngster.’

‘Leave your jacket tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll mend it.’

‘What? Oh, I only did it yesterday. Look, I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘With Ted to lose that old Austin. The risk’s very slight but there’s just a slight one – you know, some copper took the number while it was parked outside
Whittington’s, that sort of thing. The idea is to ditch it. What’s the time now – just after half six? Oh . . . should be back well before ten. But don’t wait up if
I’m late.’

‘Leigh,’ I said as he moved to go.

‘Yes?’

We stared at each other but I said nothing. I was looking for some warmth, some reassurance, some companionable glance which told me we were still two against the world.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

He smiled cheerfully and was gone.

Prowling taxis don’t prowl in the East End. I got one at Tower Bridge. Albert Road is on the north side of Clapham Common, and No. 28 is a corner house with a view of the
common through the bare trees. There were three bells and I pressed the top one. After a while Mrs Hartley opened the door. She stared.

‘Oh, Miss – er . . . Oh, I didn’t expect. Is anything wrong?’

‘No, no, but I just wanted to see you again for a minute or so. Do you think I could?’

‘Why, yes.’ She hesitated. ‘Come in . . . I’m afraid it’s a long climb . . .’

I followed her up two flights of stairs.

‘You must think it strange – my coming so soon after you called.’

‘No, no. Pleased, I’m sure.’

‘It was just that I thought . . . Leigh was out and I thought . . .’

We went into what originally had been an attic but was now, for all its sloping ceiling, a well-furnished sitting room. Everything was neat and in good condition. Style modestly modern. A gas
fire licked its white gums and kissed at the television, which flickered back. Between them sat a short bald man with a moustache. He wore a shiny blue suit and was in his shirt sleeves.

‘Oh, Joe, this is – Miss Dainton. I’m sorry, Miss Dainton, we weren’t expecting visitors.’ She hurriedly switched off the television and put on another light.

Mr Hartley got up and shook my hand and looked awkward. I said I hoped I wasn’t spoiling his programme, and Mr Hartley’s chest rattled and he said no, it was a poor thing: sometimes
you just went on looking because it was too much trouble to get up and switch off.

Polite conversation. He was about five feet six and stout, with a thick neck. His voice was much more like Leigh’s, hadn’t the roundness of his wife’s, and you could see where
Leigh got his stockiness from. His moustache was trimmed to look fierce, but his eyes had a way of twinkling when the cough didn’t empurple them. A good lot older than his wife.

We talked about the railway and the weather and the troubles of housing. They had three rooms on the top floor: a kitchen, a bedroom and this sitting room. Three years ago the house had been
bought by a Pole who had tried to turn them out. The people below had been intimidated and had gone.

‘Not us,’ said Mr Hartley. ‘Not that it’s much to look at but we’ve nowhere else. Then they put coloured people in the flat below. Now I’m not anti-colour. If
you don’t believe in the brotherhood of man there isn’t nothing to believe in. But this became a whorehouse. Couldn’t get up and downstairs. Fighting. Shouting and screaming all
the night. Couldn’t sleep. I went to the County Council. Man there said he couldn’t do nothing. Wasn’t his business. If we didn’t like it, hadn’t we got somewhere else
to live? Relations? Well, I ask you.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Mrs Hartley.

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

Joe Hartley had a discussion deep in his chest. It was an earth tremor without being an earthquake. ‘We hung on, Miss Dainton. It was, well, I can’t properly describe it. I was
afraid for the wife, oftentimes with me on night shift. But she wouldn’t move either . . . In the end it was all right. The police done it – did it for us. Cleared them out. So
we’re still here.’

‘Was Leigh living here then?’

A shadow on the plump red face; eyes losing their fun. ‘No. He’d gone before then.’

I said: ‘You know, I expect, Mr Hartley, that Leigh and I are – in love with each other, that I’m living with him?’

His eyes seemed to go to my thin leg, then moved on. ‘The wife told me.’

‘I expect you don’t like that.’

‘There’s worse things.’

I said: ‘I know I’m putting things badly – too bluntly – but I felt I had to come and see you after meeting Mrs Hartley this afternoon. It was only this afternoon, but I
wanted to see you.’

‘I like people to be straight.’ His smile was half-interrupted by the earth tremor in his chest. ‘I like that. But why did you want to see me particular?’

‘. . . I felt I wanted to talk to you.’

‘About Leigh?’

‘All sorts of things. That chiefly.’

‘Has he been telling you lies?’

I ran a hand down my cheek; it seemed to hurt. ‘Does he do it so often?’

‘The wife told me she’d seen you. It’s hard to get a grasp of my son.
I’ve
never been able to Miss – er – what’s your Christian name?’

‘Deborah.’

‘Deborah. I never have, I tell you. He said he was an orphan, was that it?’

‘He said that he had no mother. I . . .’

‘It don’t make sense, do it?’ Mr Hartley bent down to clear his throat and his bald head shone in the light. ‘What’s it you want to know, Deborah?’

‘. . . It’s just with seeing Mrs Hartley . . .’

‘Ask what you like. I don’t mind.’

‘Well, I’ve been left feeling so confused, not knowing
what
to believe. This legacy, for instance? It really did exist?’

‘From his grannie? Yes. Three hundred and fifty pounds it come to. It wasn’t much but it gave him ideas. He was working for this man Foil, and he thought he’d branch out and
become a proper artist. Foil found him this flat, this studio in Bermondsey, and he went to live there with no proper work to do.’

‘Three hundred and fifty pounds? But that wouldn’t keep him!’

‘Nor did it for long. Mary tells me he’s working now. That’ll be good for him. Perhaps you’ve been good for him, Deborah.’

‘But how has he lived for two years?’

‘Ah, that’s for him to tell you. Perhaps he’s worked on and off. We don’t know.’

Mrs Hartley came in with a tray of tea. The crockery and the way it was laid showed she knew how it should be done. She put the tray on the oak gate-legged table and put up one leaf. The chairs
in the room had flowery chintz loose covers and the curtains were of yellow ribbed nylon.

We were helped to tea. ‘Lovely flower pictures,’ I said.

‘Ah, those are my husband’s, Miss Dainton. Aren’t they nice? Remind you of spring. My favourite is those wallflowers.’

‘That’s what Leigh should have done.’ Mr Hartley supped at his tea. ‘Paint for pleasure, work to live. Maybe he would have but for this man Foil. Though I don’t
know. He was always a queer lad.’

‘Is he seeing much of Mr Foil now?’ Mrs Hartley asked.

‘Yes . . . quite a lot.’

‘Possessive, that’s what they call it,’ said Mr Hartley. ‘Possessive. He got hold of Leigh, influenced him, like. More than I ever could. Likes people running after him,
doing little jobs, at his beck and call. Queer, men like that. Queer. Not queer in the other sense, mind. He’s got a wife. Sort of baby doll. Though I did think once, I did think once he
might be queer in the other way, the way he took it when Leigh married Lorne Riley.’

I put my cup down. It wasn’t Rockingham but it was a pretty good imitation. ‘Didn’t Mr Foil like Leigh’s wife?’

‘Well, part of the trouble, I reckon, was that he done it – did it without telling Foil. Leigh took up with this Lorne girl about three months after he’d moved into the studio,
and I reckon Leigh thought Lorne had a bit of money put by and between them they’d be able to manage without Foil. Well, he didn’t like that at all. By then he thought he owned the
boy.’ Mr Hartley stopped and rumbled. ‘Am I saying too much?’

‘No. Please go on. Don’t stop him, Mrs Hartley.’

Mrs Hartley said: ‘Joe, it wouldn’t have broken up if they’d been really in love. Mr Foil just helped it along.’

Mr Hartley said: ‘He just helped it along. But that’s why I wasn’t sorry to hear Leigh had taken up with someone else. It shows he’s still able to order his own life. Has
Foil tried to break it up between you and Leigh?’

‘No . . . He seems to approve. I don’t know why.’

Mrs Hartley offered me another cup of tea. I shook my head.

‘D’you know,’ said Mr Hartley, wiping the ends of his moustache, ‘I remember when I was a lad hearing a parson say: “Christ commands you to love your enemies. He
doesn’t say you’ve got to like ’em.” Well, d’you know, I sometimes feel that way about my son, God help me. I love him – of course I love him. But I can’t
truly say I really like him!’

‘Joe! What a thing to say! In front of someone who – who—’

‘Oh, I know, I know. But it’s not that I’m saying there’s nothing good in the lad. He’s full of good intentions. And agreeable enough, most of the time.
Couldn’t wish for a better lad to share a day off. And serious in some ways. Oh, it could have been worse, much worse.’

Mrs Hartley said: ‘All that’s true and much more. And never one to go after the girls much – rather shy.’

‘Shy,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that.’

‘He hides it by pretending not to be. You think he’s full of confidence and really he’s terribly short of it. I say to Joe he’s got much more confidence than Leigh has
but he doesn’t need to bluster and show it.’

Talking for a few more minutes. Somewhere in the conversation another poisoned arrow. Sometimes you get them shot into your soul, but you can’t exactly locate them. It was something
I’d said myself; that was curious.

Time to leave. I must go. Mr Hartley got up and had a conversation in his chest and then said goodbye. ‘Come again, please. I believe you’ll make a man of him.’

Mrs Hartley insisted on showing me out. We went down the first flight in silence, but as we began the second, she said: ‘You must think it awful, Joe saying what he does about
Leigh.’

‘No. He’s a very honest man.’

‘He is, Miss Dainton, he is. To him, telling untruths, cheating even in small ways, stealing even in the way they called “winning” things in the army – he can’t
stand any of them. It’s never done him much good in his job, all the same. He’s never got any promotion because of it . . . And it never helped him to get on with Leigh, who has this
artistic temperament, half dreamy, half practical, like. He couldn’t understand why he had a son he couldn’t understand.’ She laughed nervously. ‘If you see what I
mean.’

We got to the front door. She peered at me anxiously. ‘If you’re in love with each other I hope nothing we’ve said will spoil it.’

‘Of course not.’

‘There’s so much good in Leigh. We never had trouble with him as a boy. And as for leaving home . . . well, it wasn’t much here to have to sleep on a pull-down bed in the
sitting room, it wasn’t much privacy for a boy to have, or a place to keep his things. You can’t wonder that he jumped at the chance to leave.’

She was holding the door so that I couldn’t go through it. I wanted to go now.

‘You’re a lady, Miss Dainton, aren’t you. I can tell. Haven’t you always found Leigh gentlemanly?’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean it’s all the little things that count. Modesty for himself and for others. He has a sort of taste, a sort of delicacy. D’you know, from when he was eight he never let
me in the bathroom when he was in the bath – would always lock the bathroom door. And – and he always puts down the toilet seat after using it. And he never took liberties, never was
vulgar. He swears a bit, but I’ve never known him use a vulgar expression. Some people may laugh at these things, but it’s so easy to be slipshod, not to care. I think those things
count.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She let me go and I left.

Down Latchmere Road toward Battersea Bridge. On the bridge I stood and leaned over the coping looking up the river and at all the glittering lights. A pleasant evening, and
mild. All fog had gone; the wind had dropped; London hummed like a great pink-flushed beehive newly awake after three days of coma.

I knew now where the poison lay. But it could still be poison of my own imagining. How prove it one way or the other? Taxi. An address in the Old Brompton Road. Not far this time. Lights
flickering everywhere. As light as day almost, but different. A sort of twilight that impinged on the mind. Green and red, safety and danger, love and hate. Jerk and stop, swing and turn, stop and
jerk. Green and red, love and hate. Yellow like pain. An hour’s sleep last night. An hour today. But lack of sleep doesn’t always blur the perceptions; sometimes it refines them, gives
them a cutting edge. Lack of food too. What eaten in the last twenty-four hours? Tea and brandy and tea and brandy and tea. Sweetened hemlock. Great ghosts and phantoms moved in the taxi.

I got out, paid him, he drove off; I looked up at the shop. Closed of course. Eight o’clock. Never noticed the name before.
Sefton Antiques
. Even with the name of his own shop he
was in the background. In the window were two Hepplewhite chairs, a Georgian silver teapot on a mahogany three-legged table, wineglasses on a tray, bound copies of
Punch
for
1891–5.

Up the stairs to the glass door. A very faint light somewhere, but at first, after I had pressed the bell, nothing but the distant yapping of dogs. Wait. Footsteps after all. Doreen Foil. Hair
loose. Flowered housecoat. Mules. Cigarette.

‘Deborah! Why I . . .’

‘I came round for a minute. D’you mind?’

‘No . . . er – no. Lovely . . .’ She drew back and I went into the greenhouse-foliaged hall, followed her into the long living room. She flapped vaguely across and made light
here and there while we were talking.