The Ballad of Peckham Rye

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?’

He looked at it, put the paper in his pocket and said, ‘One of my employers.’

Merle gave one of her laughs from the chest, ‘Employers – that’s a good name for them. How many you got?’

‘Two,’ Dougal said, ‘and a possible third. Is Mr Weedin in?’

‘Yes, he’s been asking for you.’

Dougal jumped up and went in to Mr Weedin where he sat in one of the glass offices which extended from the typing pool.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Mr Weedin, ‘I want to ask you a personal question. What do you mean exactly by vision?’

‘Vision?’ Dougal said.

‘Yes, vision, that’s what I said.’

‘Do you speak literally as concerning optics, or figuratively, as it might be with regard to an enlargement of the total perceptive capacity?’

‘Druce is complaining we haven’t got vision in this department. I thought perhaps maybe you had been having one of your long chats with him.’

‘Mr Weedin,’ Dougal said, ‘don’t tremble like that. Just relax.’ He took from his pocket a small square silver vinaigrette which had two separate compartments. Dougal opened both lids. In one compartment lay some small white tablets. In the other were a number of yellow ones.

Dougal offered the case to Mr Weedin. ‘For calming down you take two of the white ones and for revving up you take one of the yellow ones.’

‘I don’t want your drugs. I just want to know -‘

‘The yellow ones make you feel sexy. The white ones, being of a relaxing nature, ensure the more successful expression of such feelings. But these, of course, are mere by-effects.’

‘Do you want my job? Is that what you’re wanting?’

‘No,’ Dougal said.

‘Because if you want it you can have it. I’m tired of working for a firm where the boss listens to the advice of any young showpiece that takes his fancy. I’ve had this before. I had it with Merle Coverdale. She told Druce I was inefficient at relationship-maintenance. She told Druce that everything in the pool goes back to me through my girl Connie. She -‘

‘Miss Coverdale is a sensitive girl. Like an Okapi, you know. You spell it OKAPI. A bit of all sorts of beast. Very rare, very nervy. You have to make allowances.’

‘And now you come along and you tell Druce we lack vision. And Druce calls me in and I see from the look on his face he’s got a new idea. Vision, it is, this time. Try to take a tip or two, he says, from the Arts man. I said, he never hardly puts a foot inside the door does your Arts man. Nonsense, Weedin, he says, Mr Douglas and I have many a long session. He says, watch his manner, he has a lovely manner with the workers. I said, yes, up on the Rye Saturday nights. That is unworthy of you, Weedin, he says. Is it coincidence, says I, that absenteeism has risen eight per cent since Mr Douglas came here and is still rising? Things are bound to get worse, he says, before they get better. If you had the vision, Weedin, he says, you would comprehend my meaning. Study Douglas, he says, watch his methods.’

‘Funny thing I’ve just found out,’ Dougal said, ‘we have five cemeteries up here round the Rye within the space of a square mile. We have Camberwell New, Camberwell Old – that’s full up. We have Nunhead, Dept. ford, and Lewisham Green. Did you know that Nunhead reservoir holds twenty million gallons of water? The original title that Mendelssohn gave his “Spring Song” was “Camberwell Green”. It’s a small world.’

Mr Weedin laid his head in his hand and burst into tears.

Dougal said, ‘You’re a sick man, Mr Weedin. I can’t bear sickness. It’s my fatal flaw. But I’ve brought a comb with me. Would you like me to comb your hair?’

‘You’re unnatural,’ said Mr Weedin.

‘All human beings who breathe are a bit unnatural,’ Dougal said. ‘If you try to be too natural, see where it gets you.’

Mr Weedin blew his nose, and shouted at Dougal: ‘It isn’t possible to get another good position in another firm at my age. Personnel is a much coveted position. If I had to leave here, Mr Douglas, I would have to take a subordinate post elsewhere. I have my wife and family to think of. Druce is impossible to work for. It’s impossible to leave this firm. Sometimes I think I’m going to have a breakdown.’

‘It would not be severe in your case,’ Dougal said. ‘It is at its worst when a man is a skyscraper. But you’re only a nice wee bungalow.’

‘We live in a flat,’ Mr Weedin managed to say.

‘Do you know,’ Dougal said, ‘up at the police station they are excavating an underground tunnel which starts in the station yard and runs all the way to Nunhead. You should ponder sometimes about underground tunnels. Did you know Boadicea was broken and defeated on the Rye? She was a great beefy soldier. I think you should take Mr Druce’s advice and study my manner, Mr Weedin. I could give you lessons at ten and six an hour,’

Mr Weedin rose to hit him, but since the walls of his office were made mostly of glass, he was prevented in the act by an overwhelming sense of being looked at from all sides.

Dougal sat in Miss Frierne’s panelled hall on Saturday morning and telephoned to the Flaxman number on the little slip of paper which Merle Coverdale had handed to him the previous day.

‘Miss Cheeseman, please,’ said Dougal.

‘She isn’t in,’ said the voice from across the water. ‘Who shall I say it was?’

‘Mr Dougal-Douglas,’ Dougal said, ‘spelt with a hyphen. Tell Miss Cheeseman I’ll be at home all morning.’

He next rang Jinny.

‘Hallo, are you better?’ he said.

‘I’ve got soup on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’

Miss Frierne was ironing in the kitchen. She said to Dougal, ‘Humphrey is going to see to the roof this afternoon. It’s creaking. It isn’t a loose slate, it must be one of the beams loose in his cupboard.’

‘Funny thing,’ Dougal said, ‘it only creaks at night. It goes Creak-oop!‘ The dishes rattled in their rack as he leapt.

‘It’s the cold makes it creak, I daresay,’ she said. The telephone rang. Dougal rushed out to the hall. It was not Jinny, however.

‘Doug dear,’ said Miss Maria Cheeseman from across the river.

‘Oh, it’s you, Cheese.’

‘We really must get down to things,’ Miss Cheeseman said. ‘All this about my childhood in Peckham, it’s all wrong, it was Streatham.’

‘There’s the law of libel to be considered,’ Dougal said. ‘A lot of your early associates in Streatham are still alive. If you want to write the true story of your life you can’t place it in Streatham.’

‘But Doug dear,’ she said, ‘that bit where you make me say I played with Harold Lloyd and Ford Sterling at the Golden Domes in Camberwell, it isn’t true, dear. I was in a show with Fatty Arbuckle but it was South Shields.’

‘I thought it was a work of art you wanted to write,’ Dougal said, ‘now was that not so? If you only want to write a straight autobiography you should have got a straight ghost. I’m crooked.’

‘Well, Doug dear, I don’t think this story about me and the Gordon Highlander is quite nice, do you? I mean to say, it isn’t true. Of course it’s funny about the kilt, but it’s a little embarrassing -‘

‘Well, write your own autobiography,’ Dougal said.

‘Oh, Doug dear, do come over to tea.’

‘No, you’ve hurt my feelings.’

‘Doug dear, I’m thrilled with my book. I’m sure it’s going to be marvellous. I can’t say I’m quite happy about all of chapter three but-’

‘What’s wrong with chapter three?’

‘Well, it’s only that last bit you wrote, it isn’t me.’

‘I’ll see you at four o’clock,’ he said, ‘but understand, Cheese, I don’t like crossing the water when I’m in the middle of a work of art. I’m giving all my time to it.’

Dougal said to Humphrey, ‘I was over the other side of the river on business this afternoon, and while I was over that way I called in to see my girl.’

‘Oh, you got a girl over there?’

‘Used to have. She’s got engaged to somebody else.’

‘Women have no moral sense,’ Humphrey said. ‘You see it in the Unions. They vote one way then go and act another way.’

‘She was nice, Jinny,’ Dougal said, ‘but she was too delicate in health. Do you believe in the Devil?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know anyone that believes in the Devil?’

‘I think some of those Irish -‘

‘Feel my head,’ Dougal said.

‘What?’

‘Feel these little bumps up here.’ Dougal guided Humphrey’s hand among his curls at each side. ‘I had it done by a plastic surgeon,’ Dougal said.

‘What?’

‘He did an operation and took away the two horns. They had to shave my head in the nursing home before the operation. It took a long time for my hair to grow again.’

Humphrey smiled and felt again among Dougal’s curls. ‘A couple of cysts,’ he said. ‘I’ve got one myself at the back of my head. Feel it.’

Dougal touched the bump like a connoisseur. ‘You supposed to be the Devil, then?’ Humphrey asked.

‘No, oh, no, I’m only supposed to be one of the wicked spirits that wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Have you mended those beams in the roof yet, that go Creak-oop?’

‘I have,’ Humphrey said, ‘Dixie refuses to come any more.’