The Ballad of Peckham Rye Read online

  Beauty laughed up and down the scale as she wriggled. When Trevor passed again he said to Dougal, ‘Got your lace hanky on you?’

  Dougal put out his foot. Trevor stumbled. The band started playing the National Anthem. Trevor said, ‘You ought to get a surgical boot and lift your shoulder up to line.’

  ‘Have respect for the National Anthem,’ Beauty said. Her eyes were on the band-leader who, as he turned to face the floor, raised his eyebrows slightly in her direction.

  ‘See you up on the Rye,’ Dougal said.

  Elaine said, ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You’re seeing me home.’

  Trevor said, ‘You girls got to go home together. I’ve got a date with a rat on the Rye.’

  Several of the dancers, as they left the hall, called out to Dougal various words of gratitude, such as, ‘Thanks a lot for the show’ and ‘You was swell, boy.’

  Dougal bowed.

  Beauty, on her way to the girls’ cloakroom, loitered a little behind the queue. The band-leader passed by her and moved his solemn lips very slightly. Trevor, close by, heard him say, ‘Come and frolic, lamb.’

  Beauty moved her eyes to indicate the presence of Trevor, who observed the gesture.

  ‘She’s going straight home,’ Trevor said through his nose, putting his face dose to that of the band-leader. He gave Beauty a shove in the direction of the queue.

  Beauty immediately turned back to the band-leader.

  ‘No man,’ she said to Trevor, ‘lays hands on me.’

  The band-leader raised his eyebrows and dropped them sadly.

  ‘You’re coming home with me,’ Trevor told her.

  ‘Thought you got a date on the Rye.’

  ‘Hell keep,’ Trevor said.

  Beauty took a mirror from her bag and carefully applied her lipstick, turning her bronze head from side to side as she did so. Meanwhile her eyes traced the bandleader’s departure from the hall.

  ‘Elaine and I’s going home together,’ she said.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Trevor said. He peered out to the crowded entrance and there saw Elaine hanging on to Dougal. He caught her attention and beckoned to her by moving his forefinger twice very slowly. Elaine disengaged her arm from Dougal’s, opened her bag, took out a cigarette, lit it, puffed slowly, then ambled over to Trevor.

  ‘If you know what’s good for your friend you’ll take him home,’ Trevor said.

  Elaine blew a puff of smoke in his face and turned away.

  ‘The fight’s off,’ she said to Dougal when she rejoined him. ‘He wants to keep an eye on his girl, he don’t trust her. She got no morals.’

  As Trevor and Beauty emerged from the hall, Dougal, on the pavement, said to him, ‘Feeling frail, nightingale?’

  Trevor shook off Beauty’s arm and approached Dougal. ‘Now don’t start with him,’ Elaine shrieked at Dougal, ‘he’s ignorant.’

  Beauty walked off on her own, with her high determined heels and her model-girl sway, placing her feet confidently and as on a chalk line.

  Trevor looked round after her, then ran and caught her up.

  Dougal walked with Elaine to Camberwell Green where, standing under the orange lights, he searched his pockets. When he had found a folded sheet of paper he opened it and read, “‘I walked with her to Camberwell Green, and we said good-bye rather sorrowfully at the corner of New Road; and that possibility of meek happiness vanished for ever.” This is John Ruskin and his girl Charlotte Wilkes,’ Dougal said, ‘my human research. But you and I will not say good-bye here and now. No. I’m taking you the rest of the way home in a taxi, because you’re the nicest wee process-controller I’ve ever met.’

  ‘One thing about you I’ll admit,’ she said, ‘you’re different. If I didn’t know you were Scotch I’d swear you were Irish. My mother’s Irish.’

  She said they could not take a taxi up to her door because her mother didn’t like her coming home with men in taxis. They dropped off at the Canal Head at Brixton.

  ‘I’m leaving Meadows Meade,’ Elaine said, ‘Saturday week. Starting on the Monday at Drover Willis’s. It’s advancement.’

  ‘I saw they were advertising,’ Dougal said, ‘for staff at Drover Willis’s.’

  They walked along by the canal a little way, watching the quiet water.

  Chapter 5

  MR DRUCE said with embarrassment, ‘I feel I should just mention the fact that absenteeism has increased in the six weeks you’ve been with us. Eight per cent to be precise. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not complaining. Rome can’t be built in a day. I’m just mentioning a factor that Personnel keep stressing. Weedin’s a funny sort of fellow. How do you find Weedin?’

  ‘Totally,’ Dougal said, ‘lacking in vision. It is his fatal flaw. Otherwise quite sane.’ He bore on his uneven shoulders all the learning and experience of the world as he said it. Mr Druce looked away, looked again at Dougal, and looked away.

  ‘Vision,’ said Mr Druce.

  ‘Vision,’ Dougal said, and he was a confessor in his box, leaning forward with his insidious advice through the grille, ‘is the first requisite of sanity.’

  ‘Sanity,’ Mr Druce said.

  Dougal closed his eyes and slowly smiled with his wide mouth. Dougal nodded his head twice and slowly, as one who understands all. Mr Druce was moved to confess, ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’m sane myself, what with one thing and another.’ Then he laughed and said, ‘Fancy the Managing Director of Meadows, Meade & Grindley saying things like this.’

  Dougal opened his eyes. ‘Mr Druce, you are not as happy as you might be.’

  ‘No,’ Mr Druce said, ‘I am not. Mrs Druce, if I may speak in confidence…’

  ‘Certainly,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Mrs Druce is not a wife in any real sense of the word.’

  Dougal nodded.

  ‘Mrs Druce and I have nothing in common. When we were first married thirty-two years ago I was a travelling salesman in rayon. Times were hard, then. But I got on. ‘Mr Druce looked pleadingly at Dougal. ‘I was a success. I got on.’

  Dougal tightened his lips prudishly, and nodded, and he was a divorce judge suspending judgement till the whole story was heard out.

  ‘You can’t get on in business,’ Mr Druce pleaded, ‘unless you’ve got the fibre for it.

  ‘You can’t get on,’ Mr Druce said, ‘unless you’ve got the moral fibre. And you don’t have to be narrow-minded. That’s one thing you don’t have to be.’

  Dougal waited.

  ‘You have to be broad-minded,’ Mr Druce protested. ‘In this life.’ He laid his elbow on the desk and, for a moment, his forehead on his hand. Then he shifted his chin to his hand and continued, ‘Mrs Druce is not broad-minded. Mrs Druce is narrow-minded.’

  Dougal had an elbow on each arm-rest of his chair, and his hands were joined under his chin. ‘There is some question of incompatibility, I should say,’ Dougal said. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘you have a nature at once deep and sensitive, Mr Druce.’

  ‘Would you really?’ Druce inquired of the analyst.

  ‘And a sensitive nature,’ Dougal said, ‘requires psychological understanding.’

  ‘My wife,’ Druce said, ‘… it’s like living a lie. We don’t even speak to each other. Haven’t spoken for nearly five years. One day, it was a Sunday, we were having lunch. I was talking away quite normally; you know, just talking away, And suddenly she said, “Quack, quack.” She said, “Quack, quack.” She said, “Quack, quack,” and her hand was opening and shutting like this —‘ Mr Druce opened and shut his hand like a duck’s bill. Dougal likewise raised his hand and made it open and shut. “Quack, quack,’ Dougal said. ‘Like that?’

  Mr Druce dropped his arm. ‘Yes, and she said, “That’s how you go on — quack, quack.”’

  ‘Quack,’ Dougal said, still moving his hand, ‘quack.’

  ‘She said to me, my wife,’ said Mr Druce, ‘she said, “That’s how you go quacking on.” Well, from that day to this I’ve never opened my mouth to
her. I can’t, Dougal, it’s psychological, I just can’t — you don’t mind me calling you Dougal?’

  ‘Not at all, Vincent,’ Dougal said. ‘I feel I understand you. How do you communicate with Mrs Druce?’

  ‘Write notes,’ said Mr Druce. ‘Do you call that a marriage?’ Mr Druce bent to open a lower drawer of his desk and brought out a book with a bright yellow wrapper. Its title was Marital Relational Psychology. Druce flicked over the pages, then set the book aside. ‘It’s no use to me, he said. ‘Interesting case histories but it doesn’t cover my case. I’ve thought of seeing a psychiatrist, and then I think, why should I? Let her see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Take her a bunch of flowers,’ Dougal said, looking down at the back of his hand, the little finger of which was curling daintily. ‘Put your arms around her,’ he said, becoming a lady-columnist, ‘and start afresh. It frequently needs but one little gesture from one partner —‘

  ‘Dougal, I can’t. I don’t know why it is, but I can’t.’ Mr Druce placed a hand just above his stomach. ‘Something stops me.’

  ‘You two must separate,’ Dougal said, ‘if only for a while.’

  Mr Druce’s hand abruptly removed from his stomach. ‘No,’ he said, ‘oh, no, I can’t leave her.’ He shifted in his chair into his businesslike pose. ‘No, I can’t do that. I’ve got to stay with her for old times’ sake.’

  The telephone rang. ‘I’m engaged,’ he said sharply into it. He jerked down the receiver and looked up to find Dougal’s forefinger pointing into his face. Dougal looked grave, lean, and inquisitorial. ‘Mrs Druce,’ Dougal said, ‘has got money.’

  ‘There are interests in vital concerns which we both share,’ Mr Druce said with his gaze on Dougal’s finger, ‘Mrs Druce and I.’

  Dougal shook his outstretched finger a little. ‘She won’t let you leave her,’ he said, ‘because of the money.’

  Mr Druce looked frightened.

  ‘And there is also the information which she holds,’ Dougal said, ‘against you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m fey. I’ve got Highland blood.’ Dougal dropped his hand. ‘You have my every sympathy, Vincent,’ he said.

  Mr Druce laid his head on his desk and wept.

  Dougal sat back and lit a cigarette out of Mr Druce’s box. He heaved his high shoulder in a sigh. He sat back like an exhausted medium of the spiritualist persuasion. ‘Does you good,’ Dougal said, ‘a wee greet. A hundred years ago all chaps used to cry regardless.’

  Merle Coverdale came in with the letters to be signed. She clicked her heels together as she stopped at the sight.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Coverdale,’ Dougal said, putting out a hand for the letters.

  Meanwhile Mr Druce sat up and blew his nose.

  ‘Got a comb on you?’ Dougal said, squeezing Merle’s hand under the letters.

  She said, ‘This place is becoming chaos.’

  ‘What was that, Miss Coverdale?’ Mr Druce said with as little moisture as possible.

  ‘Mr Druce has a bad head,’ Dougal said as he left the room with her.

  ‘Come and tell me what happened,’ said Merle.

  Dougal looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, can’t stop. I’ve got an urgent appointment in connexion with my human research.’

  Dougal sat in the cheerful waiting-room looking at the tulips in their earthy bowls.

  ‘Mr Douglas Dougal?’

  Dougal did not correct her. On the contrary he said, ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Come this way, please.’

  He followed her into the office of Mr Willis, managing director of Drover Willis’s, textile manufacturers of Peckham.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Dougal,’ said the man behind the desk. ‘Take a seat.’

  On hearing Mr Willis’s voice Dougal changed his manner, for he perceived that Mr Willis was a Scot.

  Mr Willis was looking at Dougal’s letter of application.

  ‘Graduate of Edinburgh?’ said Mr Willis.

  ‘Yes, Mr Willis.’

  Mr Willis’s blue eyes stared out of his brick-coloured small-featured face. They stared and stared at Dougal.

  ‘Douglas Dougal,’ the man read out from Dougal’s letter, and asked with a one-sided smile, ‘Any relation to Fergie Dougal the golfer?’

  ‘No,’ Dougal said. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Mr Willis smiled by turning down the sides of his mouth.

  ‘Why do you want to come into Industry, Mr Dougal?’

  ‘I think there’s money in it,’ Dougal said.

  Mr Willis smiled again. ‘That’s the correct answer. The last candidate answered, “Industry and the Arts must walk hand in hand,” when I put that question to him. His answer was wrong. Tell me, Mr Dougal, why do you want to come to us?’

  ‘I saw your advertisement,’ Dougal said, ‘and I wanted a job. I saw your advertisements, too, for automatic weaver instructors and hands, and for twin-needle flat-bed machinists, and flat-lock machinists and instructors. I gathered you’re expanding.’

  ‘You know something about textiles?’

  ‘I’ve seen over a factory. Meadows, Meade & Grindley.’

  ‘Meadows Meade are away behind us.’

  ‘Yes. So I gathered.’

  ‘Now I’ll tell you what we’re looking for, what we want …

  Dougal sat upright and listened, only interrupting when Mr Willis said, ‘The hours are nine to five-thirty.’

  ‘I would need time off for research.’

  ‘Research?’

  ‘Industrial relations. The psychological factors behind the absenteeism, and so on, as you’ve been saying —‘

  ‘You could do an evening course in industrial psychology. And of course you’ll have access to the factory.’

  ‘The research I have in mind,’ Dougal said, ‘would need the best part of the day for at least two months. Two months should do it. I want to look into the external environment. The home conditions. Peckham must have a moral character of its own.’

  Mr Willis’s blue eyes photographed every word. Dougal sat out these eyes, he went on talking, reasonably, like a solid steady Edinburgh boy, all the steadier for the hump on his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll have to speak to Davis. He is Personnel. We have to talk over the candidates and we may ask to see you again, Mr Dougal. If we decide on you, don’t fear you’ll be hampered in your research.’

  The factory was opening its gates as Dougal came down the steps from the office into the leafy lanes of Nun Row. Some of the girls were being met by their husbands and boy friends in cars. Others rode off on motor-scooters. A number walked down to the station. ‘Hi, Dougal,’ called one of them, ‘what you doing here?’

  It was Elaine, who had now been over a week at Drover Willis’s.

  ‘What you doing here, Dougal?’

  ‘I’m after a job,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve got it.’

  ‘You leaving Meadows Meade too?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘oh, no, not on your life.’

  ‘What’s your game, Dougal?’

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, ‘and my Christian name is Douglas on this side of the Rye, mind that. Dougal Douglas at Meadows Meade and Douglas Dougal at Willis’s, mind. Only a formality for the insurance cards and such.’

  ‘I better call you Doug, and be done with it.’

  Dixie sat at her desk in the typing pool and, without lifting her eyes from her shorthand book or interrupting the dance of her fingers on the keyboard, spoke out her reply to her neighbour.

  ‘He’s all one-sided at the shoulders. I don’t know how any girl could go with him.’

  Connie Weedin, daughter of the Personnel Manager, typed on and said, ‘My Dad says he’s nuts. But I say he’s got something. Definitely.’

  ‘Got something, all right. Got a good cheek. My young brother doesn’t like him. My mum likes him. My dad likes him so-so. Humphrey likes him. I don’t agree to that. The factory girls like him — what can you expect? I don’t
like him, he’s got funny ideas.’ She stopped typing with her last word and took the papers out of her typewriter. She placed them neatly on a small stack of papers in a tray, put an envelope in her typewriter, typed an address, put more papers in her typewriter, turned over the page of her shorthand notes, and started typing again. ‘My dad doesn’t mind him, but Leslie can’t stand him. I tell you who else doesn’t like him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Trevor Lomas. Trevor doesn’t like him.’

  ‘I don’t like Trevor, never did,’ Connie said. ‘Defin-itely ignorant. He goes with that girl from Celia Modes that’s called Beauty. Some beauty!’

  ‘He’s a good dancer. He doesn’t like Dougal Douglas and, boy, I’ll say he’s got something there,’ Dixie said.

  ‘My dad says he’s nuts. Supposed to be helping my dad to keep the factory sweet. But my dad says he don’t do much with all his brains and his letters. But you can’t help but like him. He’s different.’

  ‘He goes out with the factory girls. He goes out with Elaine Kent that was process-controller. She’s gone to Drover Willis’s. He goes out with her ladyship toe.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘I do say. He better watch out for Mr Druce if it’s her ladyship he’s after.’

  ‘Watch out — her ladyship’s looking this way.

  Miss Merle Coverdale, at her supervisor’s seat at the top of the room, called out, ‘Is there anything you want, Dixie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If there’s anything you want, come and ask. Is there anything you want, Connie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If there’s anything you want, come up here and ask for it.’

  Dougal came in just then, and walked with his springy step all up the long open-plan office, bobbing as he walked as if the plastic inlay flooring was a certain green and paradisal turf.

  ‘Good morning, girls.’

  ‘You’d think he was somebody,’ Dixie said.

  Connie opened a drawer in her small desk in which she kept a mirror, and looking down into it, tidied her hair.

  Dougal sat down beside Merle Coverdale.

  ‘There was a personal call for you,’ she said, handing him a slip of paper, ‘from a lady. Will you ring this number?’