The Ballad of Peckham Rye Read online

  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.

  ‘What funny ways? Come on, tell me,’ Dougal said. ‘There’s no good telling the half and then stopping.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right to discuss Mr Druce with you. He’s your boss and mine, after all.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Dougal said, ‘since the day he engaged me. He must have forgotten about me.

  ‘No, he talked a lot about you. And he sent for you the other day. You were out of the office.’

  ‘What day was that?’

  ‘Tuesday. I said you were out on research.’

  ‘So I was,’ said Dougal. ‘I was out on research.’

  ‘Nobody gets forgotten at Meadows Meade,’ she said. ‘He’ll want to know about your research in a few weeks’ time.’

  Dougal put his long cold hand down the back of her coat. She was short enough for his hand to reach quite a long way. He tickled her.

  She wriggled and said, ‘Not in broad daylight, Dougal.’

  ‘In dark midnight,’ Dougal said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to find my way.’

  She laughed from her chest.

  ‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘what is the choicest of Mr Druce’s little ways?’

  ‘He’s childish,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I stick to him. I could have left Meadows Meade many a time. I could have got into a big firm. You don’t think Meadows Meade’s a big firm, do you, by any chance? Because, if you do, let me tell you, Meadows Meade is by comparison very small. Very small’

  ‘It looks big to me,’ Dougal said. ‘But perhaps it’s the effect of all that glass.’

  ‘We used to have open-plan,’ she said. ‘So that you could see everyone in the office without the glass, even Mr Druce. But the bosses wanted their privacy back, so we had the glass partitions put up.’

  ‘I like those wee glass houses,’ Dougal said. ‘When I’m in the office I feel like a tomato getting ripe.’

  ‘When you’re in the office.’

  ‘Merle,’ he said, ‘Merle Coverdale, I’m a hard-working fellow. I’ve got to be out and about on my human research.’

  They were moving up to the Rye where the buses blazed in the sun. Their walk was nearly over.

  ‘Oh, we’re soon here,’ she said.

  Dougal pointed to a house on the right. ‘There’s a baby’s pram,’ he said, ‘stuck out on a balcony which hasn’t any railings.’

  She looked and sure enough there was a pram perched on an open ledge only big enough to hold it, outside a second-floor window. She said, ‘They ought to be prosecuted. There’s a baby in that pram, too.‘

  ‘No, it’s only a doll,’ Dougal said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve seen it before. The house is a baby-carriage works. The pram is only for show.’

  ‘Oh, it gave me a fright.’

  ‘How long have you lived in Peckham?’ he said.

  ‘Twelve and a half years.’

  ‘You’ve never noticed the pram before?’

  ‘No, can’t say I have. Must be new.’

  ‘From the style of the pram, it can’t be new. In fact the pram has been there for twenty-five years. You see, you simply haven’t noticed it.’

  ‘I don’t hardly ever come across the Rye. Let’s walk round a bit. Let’s go into the Old English garden.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ Dougal said, ‘about Mr Druce. Don’t you see him on Saturdays?’

  ‘Not during the day. I do in the evening.’

  ‘You’ll be seeing him tonight?’

  ‘Yes, he comes for supper.

  Dougal said, ‘I suppose he’s been doing his garden all day. Is that what he does on Saturdays?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, on Saturday mornings he goes up to the West End to the big shops. He goes up and down in the lifts. He rests in the afternoons
. Childish.’

  ‘He must get some sexual satisfaction out of it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.

  ‘A nice jerky lift,’ said Dougal. ‘Not one of the new smooth ones but the kind that go yee-oo at the bottom. ‘And Dougal sprang in the air and dipped with bent knees to illustrate his point, so that two or three people in the Old English garden turned to look at him. ‘It gives me, ‘Dougal said, ‘a sexual sensation just to think of it. I can quite see the attraction these old lifts have for Mr Druce. Yee-oo.’

  She said. ‘For God’s sake lower your voice.’ Then she laughed her laugh from the chest, and Dougal pulled that blonde front lock of her otherwise brown hair, while she gave him a hefty push such as she had not done to a man for twenty years.

  He walked down Nunhead Lane with her; their ways parted by the prefabs at Costa Road.

  ‘I’m to go to tea at Dixie’s house tonight,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what you want to do with that lot,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, I realize you’re head of the typing pool and Dixie’s only a wee typist,’ he said.

  ‘You’re taking me up wrong.’

  ‘Let’s go for another walk if it’s nice on Monday morning,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be at work on Monday morning. I’ll be down to work, not like you.’

  ‘Take Monday off, my girl,’ Dougal said. ‘Just take Monday off.’

  ‘Hallo. Come in. Pleased to see you. There’s your tea, Mavis said.

  The family had all had theirs, and Dougal’s tea was, set on the table. Cold ham and tongue and potato salad with bread and butter, followed by fruit cake and tea. Dougal sat down and tucked in while Mavis, Dixie, and Humphrey Place sat round the table. When he had finished eating, Mavis poured the tea and they all sat and drank it.

  ‘That Miss Coverdale in the pool,’ said Mavis, ‘is working Dixie to death. I think she’s trying to get Dixie out. Ever since Dixie got engaged she’s been horrible to Dixie, hasn’t she, Dixie?’

  ‘It was quarter to four,’ said Dixie, ‘and she came up with an estimate and said “priority” — just like that —priority. I said, “Excuse me, Miss Coverdale, but I’ve got two priorities already.” She said, “Well, it’s only quarter to four.” “Only,” I said, “only quarter to four. Do you realize how long these estimates take? I’m not going without my tea-break, if that’s what you’re thinking, Miss Coverdale.” She said, “Oh, Dixie, you’re impossible,” and turned away. I jumped up and I said, “Repeat that,” I said. I said—’

  ‘You should have reported her to Personnel,’ Humphrey said. ‘That was your correct procedure.’

  ‘A disappointed spinster,’ Mavis said, ‘that’s what she is.’

  ‘She’s immoral with Mr Druce, a married man, that I know for a fact,’ Dixie said. ‘So she’s covered. You can’t touch her, there’s no point in reporting her to Personnel. It gets you down.’

  ‘Take Monday off,’ said Dougal. ‘Take Tuesday off as well. Have a holiday.’

  ‘No, I don’t agree to that,’ Humphrey said. ‘Absenteeism is downright immoral. Give a fair week’s work for a fair week’s pay.’

  Dixie’s stepfather, who had been watching the television in the sitting-room and who suddenly felt lonely, put his head round the door.

  ‘Want a cup of tea, Arthur?’ said Mavis. ‘Meet Mr Douglas. Mr Douglas, Mr Crewe.’

  ‘Where’s Leslie?’ said Arthur Crewe.

  ‘Well, he ought to be in. I let him go out,’ Mavis said. ‘Because there’s something going on out the front,’ Arthur said.

  They all trooped through to the sitting-room and peered into the falling dusk, where a group of young people in their teens were being questioned by an almost equal number of policemen.

  ‘The youth club,’ Mavis said.

  Dougal immediately went out to investigate. As he opened the street door, young Leslie slid in as if from some concealment; he was breathless.

  Dougal returned presently to report that the tyres of a number of cars parked up at the Rye had been slashed. The police were rounding up the teenage suspects. Young Leslie was chewing bubble-gum. Every now and then he pulled a long strand out of his mouth and let it spring back into his mouth.

  ‘But it seems to me the culprits may have been children,’ Dougal said, ‘as much as these older kids.’

  Leslie stopped chewing for an instant and stared back at Dougal in such disgust that he seemed to be looking at Dougal through his nostrils rather than his eyes. Then he resumed his chewing.

  Dougal winked at him. The boy stared back.

  ‘Take that muck out of your mouth, son,’ said his father.

  ‘You can’t stop him,’ said his mother. ‘He won’t listen to you. Leslie, did you hear what your father said?’

  Leslie shifted the gum to the other side of his cheek and left the room.

  Dougal looked out of the window at the group who were still being questioned.

  ‘Two girls there come from Meadows Meade,’ he said. ‘Odette Hill, uptwister, and Lucille rotter, gummer.’

  ‘Oh, the factory lot are always mixed up in the youth club trouble,’ Mavis said. ‘You don’t want anything to do with that lot.’ As she spoke she moved her hand across her perm, nipping each brown wave in turn between her third and index fingers.

  Dougal winked at her and smiled with all his teeth.

  Mavis said to Dixie in a whisper, ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Dixie, meaning, yes, her stepfather had gone out for his evening drink.

  Mavis went to the sideboard and fetched out a large envelope.

  ‘Here we are again,’ Dixie said.

  ‘She always says that,’ Mavis said.

  ‘Well, Mum, you keep on pulling them out; every new person that comes to the house, out they come.’

  Mavis had extracted three large press cuttings from the envelope and handed them to Dougal.

  Dixie sighed, looking at Humphrey.

  ‘Why you two not go on out? Go on out to the pictures,’ Mavis said.

  ‘We went out last night.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to the pictures, I bet. Saving and pinching to get married, you’re losing the best time of your life.’

  ‘That’s what I tell her,’ said Humphrey. ‘That’s what I say.

  ‘Where’d you go last night?’ Mavis said.

  Dixie looked at Humphrey. ‘A walk,’ she said. ‘What you make of these?’ Mavis said to Dougal. The cuttings were dated June 1942. Two of them bore large photographs of Mavis boarding an ocean liner. All announced that she was the first of Peckham’s G.I. brides to depart these shores.

  ‘You don’t look a day older,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Dixie said.

  ‘Not a day,’ said Dougal. ‘Anyone can see your mother’s had a romantic life.’

  Dixie took her nail file out of her bag, snapped the bag shut, and started to grate at her nails.

  Humphrey bent forward in his chair, one hand on each knee, as if, by affecting intense interest in Mavis’s affair, to compensate for Dixie’s mockery.

  ‘Well, it was romantic,’ Mavis said, ‘and it wasn’t. It was both. Glub — that was my first husband — Glub was wonderful at first.’ Her voice became progressively American. ‘Made you feel like a queen. He sure was gallant. And romantic, as you say. But then… Dixie came along … everything sorta wenna pieces. We were living a lie,’ Mavis said, ‘and it was becoming sorta immoral to live together, not loving each other.’ She sighed for a space. Then pulling herself together she said, ‘So I come home.’

  ‘Came home,’ Dixie said.

  ‘And got a divorce. And then I met Arthur. Old Arthur’s a good sort.’

  ‘Mum’s had her moments,’ Dixie said. ‘She won’t let you forget that.’

  ‘More than what you’ll have, if you go on like you do, putting every penny in the bank. Why, at your age I was putting all my wages what I had left over after paying my keep on my back.’


  ‘My own American dad pays my keep,’ Dixie said.

  ‘He thinks he do, but it don’t go far.’

  ‘Does. Doesn’t,’ Dixie said.

  ‘I better put the kettle on,’ Mavis said.

  Dougal said then to Dixie, ‘I didn’t never have no money of my own at your age.’ He heaved his shoulder and glittered his eyes at her, and she did not dare to correct him. But when Humphrey laughed she turned to him and said, ‘What’s the joke?’

  ‘Dougal here,’ he said, ‘he’s your match.’

  Mavis came back and switched on the television to a cabaret. Her husband returned to find Dougal keeping the cabaret company with a dance of his own in the middle of their carpet. Mavis was shrieking with joy. Humphrey was smiling with dosed lips. Dixie sat also with dosed lips, not smiling.

  On Saturday mornings, as on Sundays, the gentlemen in Miss Frierne’s establishment were desired to make their own beds. On his return at eleven o’clock on Saturday night Dougal found a note in his room.

  Today’s bed was a landlady’s delight. Full marks

  in your end-of-term report!

  Dougal stuck it up on the mirror of his dressing-table and went downstairs to see if Miss Frierne was still up. He found her in the kitchen, sitting primly up to the table with half a bottle of stout.

  ‘Any letters for me?’

  ‘No, Dougal.’

  ‘There should have been a letter.’

  ‘Never mind. It might come on Monday.’

  ‘Tell me some of your stories.’

  ‘You’ve heard them all, I’m sure.’ He had heard about the footpads on the Rye in the old days; about the nigger minstrels in the street, or rather carriageway as Miss Frierne said it was called then. She sipped her stout and told him once more of her escapade with a girl called Flo, how they had hired a cab at Camberwell Green and gone up to the Elephant for a drink and treated the cabby to twopenn’orth of gin, and returned without anyone at home being the wiser.

  ‘You must have had some courting days,’ Dougal said. But her narrow old face turned away in disdain at the suggestion, for these were early days in their friendship, and it was a full month before Miss Frierne, one evening when she had finished her nourishing stout with a sigh and got out the gin bottle, told Dougal how the Gordon Highlanders were stationed at Peckham during the first war; how it was a question among the young ladies whether the soldiers wore anything underneath their kilts; how Miss Frierne at the ripe age of twenty-seven went walking with one of the Highlanders up to One Tree Hill; how he turned to her and said, ‘My girl, I know you’re all bloody curious as to what we have beneath the kilt, and I forthwith propose to satisfy your mind on the subject’; how he then took her hand and thrust it under his kilt; and how she then screamed so hard, she had a quinsy for a week.