Percy Boon had been depressed all day. And this was strange because there was no reason for it. He’d been paid the first five pounds commission on the little job he’d done on Christmas Day – balance on completion of sale – and he was looking round for another little job just like the last one.
‘Free‐lance,’ he said, because he rather liked the word. ‘Free‐lance, that’s me.’
There was a fun fair just opposite the garage and he wandered over to it for ten minutes. This was one of the nights when he didn’t get off till midnight and he felt he needed a little relaxation just to keep going. But somehow delight was absent. Everything was flat, and the fun fair didn’t seem funny. He went aimlessly from machine to machine in search of happiness, and couldn’t find it. Even the pin‐tables had lost their magic. The little steel balls careered madly about, striking first one kind of obstacle and then another, lighting things up on their zigzags, flashing up the score in thousands and tens of thousands – and he was just too bored to count. Then he tried the Electric Crane which looked as though it could scoop up watches and fountain pens and cigarette cases as often as you cared to put a penny into it. He’d wasted ninepence and gone back for more change before he decided that happiness didn’t lurk in the Electric Crane either. So, finally, still searching as hard as ever for something to make him forget himself – he sauntered over to the Peep‐Shows. He knew them all by heart of course. They were an old selection, and the Peep‐Show in England is an art form that hasn’t renewed itself with the times. But he put his pennies in dutifully and saw the old faded sets of postcards flicker past again – the Honeymoon, Milady’s Toilet, What the Butler Saw, The Artist’s Model and Greek Statues. They didn’t, however, rouse him to‐night. They simply left him depressed and dejected. He felt he needed something stronger.
To give himself a test of skill and to get some kick out of having come over to the place at all, he played a solitary round of Radio Billiards. But the machine wasn’t working properly. One of the magnets was stronger than the other and kept pulling the balls sideways. After the third miss he gave it up and walked over to the change desk to have another look at the girl inside.
She was new there. The previous girl had been rather a fat girl with red hair. This one was quite slim. And blonde. Not real blonde – Percy could tell that straight away – but blonde nevertheless. The bright, shining sort. She wasn’t good‐looking, judged by the top standards. But she was all right. And she looked as if she might be adaptable. He went over and leant against the desk.
‘Hallo beautiful,’ he said. ‘You new here?’
The girl looked at him for a moment before answering.
‘Fresh, aren’t you?’ she answered.
Percy didn’t mind this reply. It was all part of the pattern. And in any case he didn’t like girls who gave themselves away in the first five minutes.
‘I noticed you as soon as I came in,’ he said.
‘I dreamed about you last night,’ the girl told him.
He grinned politely.
‘Ever have any time off?’ he asked.
The girl shook her head.
‘No, I go straight on. All day and all night.’
‘What’s your name?’ Percy asked.
‘Oh, call me Mrs Simpson,’ she replied.
‘Like to come out some time?’
‘Yes, but not with you.’
‘Fond of dancing?’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Like to go somewhere on Saturday?’
The Blonde handed a shilling’s worth of change to another bored, lonely youth like Percy, and then went on staring vacantly into space.
‘What about the Palais?’
‘What about what?’
‘Pick you up about nine.’
‘Pick yourself up if you’re not careful.’
‘Take you there by car if you like.’
‘Thanks. I’d rather fly.’
Percy smiled and lit a cigarette. He offered the girl one. She took it. ‘That a date then?’ he asked.
‘Oh forget it,’ the girl answered. ‘You make me tired.’
She handed out two more piles of coppers and scratched her head absent‐mindedly with a knitting needle. In her lap lay a pink jumper that she was finishing.
Percy straightened himself up and began to move off. He certainly didn’t intend to stop there any longer and make himself cheap.
‘See you later,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘Don’t hurry,’ the girl called after him.
There were two customers waiting at the garage when Percy got back and he had to tell one of them where he got off. He was a Jew who seemed to expect service at an all‐night garage whenever he chose to drop in for it.
But it was quiet enough now. There was a mechanic working somewhere in the rear and there was a boy in front to look after the pumps. Percy himself was odd man out. There was nothing for him to do, and he stood in the steel and glass box that was the office, a cigarette between his lips, staring out along the tramway track. His head was sunk forward a little and there was a dreamy far‐away look in his eyes. He had moods like this sometimes.
‘If I had a thousand a year, on the level,’ he was thinking, ‘I’d be O.K. I’d know where I stood. I’d know what to do with it. I’d be O.K. I’d get a house out Purley way with a garage. I’d have a radiogram and a cocktail cabinet. I’d stop mucking about with blondes and marry some girl or other. I’d have a home cinema. I’d spend every week‐end at Brighton. I’d learn French the easy way by correspondence. I’d buy a ukelele. Then I’d be O.K. in the evenings. If I wasn’t working in a garage I’d have a manicure every week from a different girl. I’d wear one of the new low‐curved bowlers. I’d carry a gold cigarette case. I’d make my wife put on evening dress every evening. I’d have a Riley’s home billiard table and have friends in. I’d be O.K.’
As he was thinking, his hands were plunged deep into his trousers pockets and the fingers of his right hand were fiddling with something. It was a knuckleduster. And rather a good one, too. It was called the Hedgehog. Instead of the outer band’s being smooth, there was a kind of blunt spike in between the knuckle joints, so that anyone getting hit with it would have to take quite a lot of punishment. He’d never actually used the knuckleduster. He didn’t in fact even know anyone who had ever used a knuckleduster. But it was nice to have one all the same. Especially a good one like that, with a guard for the thumb and everything.
And he knew other people who carried knuckledusters; ordinary plain ones. Most of the boys who hung around Smokey’s Cafe in the evenings carried them; and he’d had one or two of the real gang‐fighters pointed out to him. But you couldn’t be sure. There was always a lot of loose talk and boasting at a place like Smokey’s. And nothing much ever seemed to happen there.
The smooth steel of the knuckleduster seemed to seep up into his brain as he fondled it. He began to think about other of his toys as well. The knuckleduster wasn’t the only thing he’d got. He’d got a cosh too. It wasn’t a real cosh. But it was good enough. It’d lay a man out all right. He’d say it would. And he grinned as he remembered how he’d got it. It was a present from the Underground. He’d pinched it off the Morden tube late one night when he was the only passenger in the compartment. And it had been difficult because, of course, he’d had to lay off at stations. It was just one of the solid rubber knobs on a long springy stalk for standing passengers to hold on to. All the fellows were carrying one.
There were other kinds of weapons of self‐defence, too, that some of the fellows carried. But he hadn’t got any of them. Not in his line, really. Too dangerous. There was an Italian from Clerkenwell who’d come south of the river on a job. Razoritti, people called him. He always carried a razor in his trouser pocket.
At the thought Percy idly went through slashing motions in the air.
‘If I had a thousand a year, I’d be O.K.,’ he said again dreamily. ‘I’d learn tap‐dancing.’
But what was the use? He hadn’t got a thousand. And remembering that he hadn’t, he became depressed again.
It must have been something in the air because Doris was depressed, too. Depressed and disappointed. She had allowed herself to get very excited about the cottage – not because she particularly wanted to live in a cottage – but because she had finally decided she didn’t want to go on living in Dulcimer Street. And then Mrs Josser had put her foot down. She had refused, obstinately and absolutely, to have anything to do with cottages. Dulcimer Street, she said, was where she had made her home and she didn’t see why she should be turned out of it…
Doris looked at her watch. It was eight‐thirty. To be really early it should have been eight‐twenty‐five or even eight‐twenty. It was going to be a rush. Not that it mattered. She felt in an angry, rushing sort of mood, and being late was just part of it. The other people in the tram looked sullen and rather sleepy: they might have been a race of liverish ghosts returning to their morning graveyards. It was Monday morning. No mistaking it.
She got off at the Temple and started up Norfolk Street. It wasn’t a bad sort of morning really. There was a sparkle of sunlight in the air that helped to clean things up a bit, and the cold wind had dropped. It no longer came driving through the cañons of brick and concrete like an invisible avalanche that had started somewhere near the Pole. Altogether, as Monday mornings in January went, it might have been worse.
But Dulcimer Street couldn’t have been worse. It was bad enough living in Kennington. Bad enough living anywhere south of the river. Nobody who was anybody lived there: she had long ago realised that. In the best of circles to say Dulcimer Street, S.E. 11, when you were asked for your address, was as bad as saying that you slept out on the Embankment. And, as she walked along, she began once again going over the whole complicated business of being born in the wrong place. And on the wrong side of the river. As she saw it, she’d missed her chance by a mere couple of miles or so.
She knew the solution, of course. Had known it for the last six months, in fact. And the only reason why she hadn’t done something about it was that she’d been afraid. Not afraid in one sense – it wasn’t a crime to go and share a flat with a girl friend – simply afraid of all the fuss and commotion that it was going to cause. She knew just what her mother was like when she drew in her lips because something had upset her. And to suggest leaving home would be just about the biggest upset that Mrs Josser had ever known. It would be every bit as bad as when Ted had married Cynthia.
But she’d decided now. Or rather it was Connie who’d decided her. The memory of that awful Christmas party with Connie sitting up at the table like a tarnished old idol, dipping the corner of her cake surreptitiously into her third cup of tea, still rankled. And she wasn’t going to risk another Christmas like the last one. Doris Josser, in fact, was walking out on Dulcimer Street.
As soon as she got to the office she phoned Doreen about it. And Doreen seemed quite excited. But she couldn’t stop then because one of the partners wanted her, and she was frightfully behind with his stuff already. In the end, it wasn’t until lunch‐time that they could talk about it properly. And even then Doreen really wanted to talk about the simply gorgeous week‐end she’d been having. It had been divine, perfectly divine, with lots of cocktails and music and young men. It was the kind of week‐end that might have been staged in Hollywood and put down all ready cast, in Belsize Park.
As a matter of fact, she was now showing the strain of it. She was a dark handsome girl like a well‐bred gipsy. But at this moment she was a slightly frayed and ravelled‐looking sort of gipsy. There were deep shadows under her eyes and she still seemed a little dazed by remembering how utterly marvellous everything had been. She would go on talking about it. First of all she’d gone to a simply heavenly film with a young doctor friend who was only twenty‐six but was doing absolutely marvellously, and then they’d gone on somewhere to dance and the doctor had danced divinely. On Sunday morning she’d had to go home, which was a frightful bore anyhow; but they were really awfully sweet and darlings really, even though they did make her want to scream sometimes. Then another friend – in the Navy this time – had suddenly turned up from nowhere and had rushed her down to the West End where everything had been simply too marvellous and divine; they had fed marvellously in an adorable little restaurant in Soho and then, most marvellous of all, this rugged seaman had turned out to be as divine a dancer as the doctor. They had finished up round about 1.30 in the morning, this morning it was, at a simply wonderful coffee stall near Baker Street Station where the most incredible people had gathered. Then, when they couldn’t get a taxi, the naval officer had offered to carry her.
Doris listened, enviously and a little stunned: it was obvious that her friend Doreen had just emerged from something terrific, – and was adjusting herself only slowly and with difficulty to ordinary, unmiraculous existence. And then she remembered that life for Doreen was always pretty much like that. That was why she wanted to join her, in fact.
She was interrupted in her thoughts by Doreen asking if she’d got an aspirin. After searching about in her bag for a moment Doris found the small Bakelite holder and tipped one of the tablets out into the palm of her hand. There was only one other tablet left in the case. And, as Doris dropped it back in again, she couldn’t help remembering that Doreen had had all the other eleven on previous occasions when life – her life – had proved too much for her. She didn’t mind, however: some kind of sedative was obviously needed if Doreen was to be kept going at all.
‘I do hope it isn’t my eyes,’ Doreen was saying. ‘I’m too scared to go and see an oculist in case he says I need glasses. I should look an absolute fright in glasses.’
They had finished their lunch by now. And because there were two other girls standing behind their table they got up and went out.
‘I don’t know why we come here,’ Doreen said as they went down the stairs. ‘It’s always so hideously crowded.’
Doris didn’t attempt to make any reply to this. She knew perfectly well why she went there and she intended to go on going. It was because she got a perfectly good meal for one‐and‐three, with coffee and roll and butter thrown in.
But Doreen’s quick mind was already working.
‘Of course, it wouldn’t be the least bit of good suggesting my present flat. There wouldn’t be room for two people to turn round in it.’ She paused. ‘But there’s a perfectly marvellous flat in Adelaide Road,’ she went on. ‘I saw it when I took mine. It’s right at the top and it used to be a studio. We could make a simply divine living‐room out of it.’ She paused again. ‘How much can you afford to pay?’ she asked.
‘I give them a pound a week at home now,’ Doris told her.
As she said it she felt uncomfortable. It seemed one of those family secrets that are better kept inside the family.
‘We might just manage it,’ Doreen said dreamily. ‘It’s a heavenly room.’
They went on up Fetter Lane together. And Doreen, who evidently was something more than just a dreamer, put another question.
‘How much furniture can you bring?’ she asked.
‘I… I haven’t got any furniture of my own,’ Doris answered.
Doreen gave a little laugh: it was a dry husky sort of laugh.
‘Oh my pet,’ she said. ‘Then how are we to manage? I haven’t got enough.’
‘There’s my bedroom furniture,’ Doris replied doubtfully. ‘They wouldn’t want that if I leave home. At least I don’t think they would.’
Doreen, however, didn’t seem to be at all impressed.
‘But we can’t have that sort of furniture,’ she said. ‘There wouldn’t be room for it. All the other rooms are frightfully small. They’re just boxes. I meant divans and rugs and easy chairs and that sort of thing.’
As she said it Doris was glad that she had never actually taken Doreen back home to Dulcimer Street. She’d debated it a lot of times. But always at the last moment she’d decided against it. If Doreen had ever been there she would have realised that divans and Dulcimer Street just didn’t go together. She felt re‐humiliated. And she wanted to do something to re‐establish herself in Doreen’s eyes.
‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘We could buy some.’
Doreen raised her eyebrows. She seemed interested again.
‘How much do you want to spend?’ she asked.
‘Oh, about twenty pounds,’ Doris said airily.
She had got precisely twenty‐two pounds, four and six in her Post Office Account. And she felt safe enough in saying about twenty. She only hoped that Doreen didn’t think she meant twenty‐five, or twenty‐four, or even twenty‐two pounds, five shillings.
‘That’d be marvellous,’ Doreen told her. ‘We could get a lot with that. Second‐hand, of course. But I adore old furniture. And we might have my big divan recovered. It’s all falling to pieces anyhow.’
They’d reached the office by now. It was a tall sooty building, sublet into business suites. But Doreen made no attempt to go up for the moment.
‘There’s only one other thing, my lamb,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to live together you’d better know the worst. I’ve got rather a lot of friends and some of them stop quite late. I hope you’re broadminded.’
‘Oh yes,’ Doris answered.
And, because it didn’t sound convincing, she added, ‘Very.’
The third person to feel depressed was Mr Josser. And that was very unusual in him.
It had all started very early – as Doris left the house in fact. Everything was still all right as he sat watching her gulp down her cup of tea. Then as the front door slammed after her – there was no time for proper good‐byes in this regular morning rush – he suddenly felt sorry for himself. As he sat there and realised that he need never go again unless he wanted to, he felt old. Very old. And useless. Except for the pension, he was just a dead‐weight in the family.
The feeling passed off, of course. He got over it during the day in a placid, odd‐jobbish sort of fashion. There were any number of things that he’d been meaning to do for years. And he had at last started – in a fiddling, desultory way – on several of them. Twice he’d had all the things out of the kitchen tool‐box and twice he’d had to put them all away again because Mrs Josser had a meal ready for him. As a result, he’d got nothing done and was already a bit late for his appointment.
It was quite a big do, this evening. It was on Wednesday that the South London Parliament and Debating Society had their meetings. And to these meetings the fanatical and persevering Uncle Henry had committed him. Not that he really minded any more. At first he had resented trailing to Camberwell to hear a discussion on ‘Evolution or Divine Creation?’ or ‘Bi‐Metallism the Way Out.’ But after a bit he had got used to it. Provided that he got a seat in the corner somewhere towards the back where he could smoke, it was not really so very different from spending an evening at home. Simply because he was adaptable and unresistant Mr Josser became one of the best‐informed men in London. For five seasons he had barely missed a debate. And in the result he acquired views – both for and against – the League of Nations, State Medicine, Sport for Girls, the Colonies, Compulsory Religious Education, Free Trade and Cremation. But as Mr Josser was the last person in the world to want to impose his views either one way or the other on anybody, that was the end of it. It was simply that, as views went, he had a great many of them.
And then, just when Mr Josser had got used to listening to all these subjects, there came the fateful change in Uncle Henry. He suddenly switched over from general knowledge to politics. He left the Camber‐well Debating Society to look after itself and went into the South London Parliament. The ragged moustache, the open sports collar, and the glittering and unfocused eye became familiar symbols of the Front Opposition Bench. And all the things that Mr Greenwood and Mr Attlee left unsaid at Westminster, came booming out just one postal district away.
Mr Josser, however, had got into the habit of debates. He couldn’t give them up. And everything would have been all right, except that Uncle Henry couldn’t give up Mr Josser either. One night just as he was setting out to hear ‘Flats or Houses? The Architect’s Viewpoint,’ Uncle Henry called at Dulcimer Street to intercept him. Flats or Houses, Uncle Henry explained, was just playing with life. It was Capitalism or Socialism that really mattered. And questions like that, real burning questions, were settled in Parliament, not in Debating Societies.
All that had been four years ago. And for the last three, Mr Josser had represented Bolton in the Conservative interest.
The actual business of election in the South London Parliament was comparatively simple. In the first place, the seat had to be vacant – that much was obvious. Secondly, if you were an arch‐Tory, you couldn’t represent a constituency that was notoriously Socialist. And thirdly, you had to take your job seriously. It was no good, as it was just across the river in the other House, getting yourself elected and then turning up only when you felt like it. The Honorary Secretary – a Mr Linnet – took a weekly census of all attendances. And as elections were annual there had been more than one frivolous young politician who had found himself round about the beginning of March without a seat simply because he had relapsed into going to the pictures when he should have been shadow‐governing his country. So far as Mr Josser was concerned, his own seat was almost uncomfortably secure – with Uncle Henry in the background prodding him it could scarcely be otherwise – though he consoled himself with reflecting that it was always possible that there might be a landslide up at Bolton.
The Ministers of the Crown were elected annually as well. Even the Prime Minister had to take his chance with the others. The reason for this was of course perfectly simple. You just couldn’t expect a self‐respecting man to turn up indefinitely as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or Minister without Portfolio, without the hope of anything better. And so it was that towards the end of February the seals of office were all handed in and a new Government was formed. The P.M.G. was given India, the Treasury swapped over with the Foreign Office, Health went across to the Dominions, the Colonies gave way to Education and Scotland did a deal with Transport. All anyhow. Just like the real thing, in fact.
To‐night, everything began smoothly enough. Mr Muspratt, the retiring P.M., sank his pride and expressed himself perfectly content with being First Lord. And Mr Plumcroft, a retired gentleman’s outfitter, who was almost the father of the House, got where he had always wanted to be. Mr Josser had known Mr Plumcroft for years, and he was delighted to see his old friend in Downing Street at last. Mr Plumcroft was a more genial manner of man than Mr Muspratt, as well as more substantial – Mr Muspratt was only a booking clerk on the Southern Railway – and under Mr Plumcroft’s captaincy it seemed certain that they were in for a good year of common sense, retrenchment and sound finance.
Mr Plumcroft’s essential conservatism – it wasn’t just a label with him, but something fundamental like his stiff cuffs and his butterfly collar – was evident in the men he picked for the key jobs. There weren’t any exactly young ones to choose from. But there were at least some who weren’t so old as the others, including one really brilliant orator, a Mr Whipple from Barclay’s Bank, who emphasized his points most effectively with a pair of gold pince‐nez whenever he spoke in public. Mr Plumcroft, however, passed him over without a thought. He chose discreetly, cautiously, unadventurously.
Mr Josser wasn’t exactly listening when Mr Plumcroft called his name. He was as a matter of fact thinking of something entirely different: he was thinking of a new and rather complicated clothes‐airer that he was going to fix up for Mrs Josser if the kitchen ceiling was strong enough. And then quite suddenly through the maze of pulleys and strings and lengths of rope with which his mind was full he heard himself addressed.
It was quite understood that anyone could refuse, if he wanted to do so: in any Parliament there are always some who prefer to remain back benchers. On the other hand when the entire Conservative Party is only fifty‐four strong and there are the usual number of offices to be filled, it isn’t very helpful if members don’t rise to their responsibilities.
Mr Josser rose and cleared his throat.
‘Would the right hon. member for Birmingham Central mind repeating what he just said?’ he asked.
Mr Plumcroft obliged.
‘I nominate the hon. member for Bolton for the post of Secretary for Foreign Affairs.’
Mr Josser felt an icy shudder run through him. The only views he had on Foreign Affairs were those he had absorbed from Uncle Henry. And though Uncle Henry made them sound so convincing that disagreement was unthinkable, he had rather gathered that they weren’t what the Conservative Party believed. Looked at either way there would be trouble. If he said what Uncle Henry told him to say the Party Whip would only discipline him for it afterwards. And if he took the orthodox Central Office line – that Hitler only wanted to restore German self‐respect and tidy up some of the weak points in the Versailles Treaty – he would get in trouble with his own brother‐in‐law.
So he tried to wriggle out of it.
‘The right hon. member is paying me a big compliment,’ he said gratefully, ‘but… but it isn’t quite in my line.’
The sentence had started off in the true Westminster manner, but had tailed off somewhat disappointingly towards the end.
Mr Plumcroft, however, had set his heart on Mr Josser and he meant to have him.
‘The hon. member is not doing himself justice,’ he said flatly and emphatically. ‘I’ve considered the matter in all its aspects and I still ask him.’
He spoke as though Mr Josser, though not perhaps quite persona grata in Moscow, was nevertheless a name to conjure with in the Wilhelm‐strasse – and still acceptable in the Quai d’Orsay.
Mr Josser shifted from one foot to the other.
‘I… I’m not much of a speaker,’ he said diffidently.
But Mr Plumcroft only smiled.
‘I think we can safely leave the oratory to the hon. member for Spen Valley,’ he said blandly.
Mr Plumcroft had spent nearly seventeen years on the Borough Council and he had an easy way with him in Committee or out of it. He had ingeniously turned an objection into a pretty compliment to his colleague, the Home Secretary, Mr Beeman – of Warbell and Beeman, Estate Agents and Auctioneers.
Mr Josser looked down at his feet. He disliked these occasions when everyone was staring at him. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Henry he would simply have chucked up the whole thing and gone back to the Debating Society – or even have stayed at home. But as he was there, he couldn’t let everyone down.
‘Oh, very well,’ he said rather sulkily, ‘if you insist, I accept,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure there are others here who could do it better.’
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs! It appalled him. It was enough to appal anyone. And at such a moment, too. Admittedly Munich had saved the peace. But there was still a pretty nasty undercurrent of talk about the State of Europe. It said in the morning’s papers that President Hacha had been summoned to Berlin. And when Hitler invited someone to come and stay with him, it didn’t usually end there. Before Mr Josser knew where he was he might find himself… No: it was no use imagining. He must keep his head, read through the reports of his Ambassadors and trust to Providence.
Mr Josser and Mr Chamberlain were in the same boat now.
Up in the Gallery, a fattish rather bald young man was writing rapidly. He had a black leather folder of squared paper, and he was diligently making notes of the proceedings. The folder was full of his clear angular handwriting. The young man was Dr Otto Hapfel6 of the University of Heidelberg. He was at present engaged in a postgraduate course at London, and he was writing a thesis on English political institutions. It was his Professor who had suggested that he might care to add a section on the local parliaments. Dr Hapfel, who liked being told by his superiors exactly what he should do, was delighted. He was also delighted by the South London Parliament itself. It provided an excellent footnote to a chapter already entitled The Leader‐Principle in Amateur Democracy: England as an Example.