The Ballad of Peckham Rye

Chapter 6

‘WHAT strikes me as remarkable,’ Dougal said, ‘is how he manages to get in so much outside his school hours.’

Nelly Mahone nodded, trod out her cigarette end, and looked at the packet of cigarettes which Dougal had placed on the table.

‘Help yourself,’ Dougal said, and he lit the cigarette for her.

‘Ta,’ said Nelly. She looked round her room. ‘It’s all clean dirt,’ she said.

‘You would think,’ Dougal said, ‘his parents would have some control over him.’

Nelly inhaled gratefully. ‘Up the Elephant, that’s where they all go. What was name?’

‘Leslie Crewe. Thirteen years of age. The father’s manager of Beverly Hills Outfitters at Brixton.’

‘Where they live?’

‘Twelve Rye Grove.’

Nelly nodded. ‘How much you paid him?’

‘A pound the first time, thirty bob the second time. But now he’s asking five quid a week flat.’

Nelly whispered, ‘Then there’s a gang behind him, surely. Can’t you give up one of the jobs for a month or two?’

‘I don’t see why I should,’ Dougal said, ‘just to please a thirteen-year-old blackmailer.’

Nelly made signs with her hands and moved her mouth soundlessly, and swung her eyes to the wall between her room and the next, to show that the walls had ears.

‘A thirteen-year-old blackmailer,’ Dougal. said, more softly. But Nelly did not like the word blackmailer at all; she placed her old fish-smelling hand over Dougal’s mouth, and whispered in his ear – her grey long hair falling against his nose – ‘A lousy fellow next door,’ she said. ‘A slob that wouldn’t do a day’s work if you paid him gold. So guard your mouth.’ She released Dougal and started to draw the curtains.

‘And here’s me,’ Dougal said, ‘willing to do three, four, five men’s jobs, and I get blackmailed on grounds of false pretences.’

She ran with her long low dipping strides to his side and gave him a hard poke in the back. She returned to her window, which was as opaque as sackcloth and not really distinguishable from the curtain she pulled across it. On the floorboards were a few strips of very worn-out matting of a similar colour. The bed in the corner was much of the same hue, lumpy and lopsided. ‘But I’m charmed to see you, all the same,’ Nelly said for the third time, ‘and will you have a cup of tea?’

Dougal said, no thanks, for the third time.

Nelly scratched her head, and raising her voice, declared, ‘Praise be to God, who rewards those who meditate the truths he has proposed for their intelligence.’

‘It seems to me,’ Dougal said, ‘that my course in life has much support from the Scriptures.’

‘Never,’ Nelly said, shaking her thin body out of its ecstasy and taking a cigarette out of Dougal’s packet.

‘Consider the story of Moses in the bulrushes. That was a crafty trick. The mother got her baby back and all expenses paid into the bargain. And consider the parable of the Unjust Steward. Do you know the parable of -‘

‘Stop,’ Nelly said, with her hand on her old blouse. ‘I get that excited by Holy Scripture I’m afraid to get my old lung trouble back.’

‘Were you born in Peckham?’ Dougal said.

‘No, Galway. I don’t remember it though. I was a girl in Peckham.’

‘Where did you work?’

‘Shoe factory I started life. Will you have a cup of tea?’

Dougal took out ten shillings.

‘It’s not enough,’ Nelly said.

Dougal made it a pound.

‘If I got to follow them fellows round between here and the Elephant you just think of the fares alone,’ Nelly said. ‘I’ll need more than that to go along with.’

‘Two quid, then,’ Dougal said. ‘And more next week.’

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Otherwise it’s going to be cheaper to pay Leslie.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘They go on and on wanting more and more. I hope you’ll remember me nice if I get some way to stop their gobs.’

‘Ten quid,’ said Dougal.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But suppose one of your bosses finds out in the meantime? After all, rival firms is like to get nasty.’

‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘how old are you?’

‘I should say I was sixty-four. Have a cup of tea.’ She looked round the room. ‘It’s all clean dirt.’

‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, ‘what it was like to work in the shoe factory.’

She told him all of her life in the shoe factory till it was time for her to go out on her rounds proclaiming. Dougal followed her down the sour dark winding stairs of Lightbody Buildings, and they parted company in the passage, he going out before her.

‘Good night, Nelly.’

‘Good night, Mr Doubtless.’

‘Where’s Mr Douglas?’ said Mr Weedin.

‘Haven’t seen him for a week,’ Merle Coverdale replied.

‘Would you like me to ring him up at home and see if he’s all right?’

‘Yes, do that,’ Mr Weedin said. ‘No, don’t. Yes, I don’t see why not. No, perhaps, though, we’d -‘

Merle Coverdale stood tapping her pencil on her notebook, watching Mr Weedin’s hands shuffling among the papers on his desk.

‘I’d better ask Mr Druce,’ Mr Weedin said. ‘He probably knows where Mr Douglas is.’

‘He doesn’t,’ Merle said…

‘Doesn’t he?’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

‘Wait till tomorrow. See if he comes in tomorrow.’

‘Are you feeling all right, Mr Weedin?’

‘Who? Me? I’m all right.’

Merle went in to Mr Druce. ‘Dougal hasn’t been near the place for a week.’

‘Leave him alone. The boy’s doing good work.’ She returned to Mr Weedin and stood in his open door with an exaggerated simper. ‘We are to leave him alone. The boy’s doing good work.’

‘Come in and shut the door,’ said Mr Weedin. She shut the door and approached his desk. ‘I’m not much of a believer,’ Mr Weedin said, quivering his hands across the papers before him. ‘But there’s something Mr Douglas told me that’s on my mind.’ He craned upward to look through the glass panels on all sides of his room.

‘They’re all out at tea-break,’ Merle said.

Mr Weedin dropped his head on his hands. ‘It may surprise you,’ he said, ‘coming from me. But it’s my belief that Dougal Douglas is a diabolical agent, if not in fact the Devil.’

‘Mr Weedin,’ said Miss Coverdale.

‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, yes, you’re thinking I’m going wrong up here.’ He pointed to his right temple and screwed it with his finger. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that Douglas himself showed me bumps on his head where he had horns removed by plastic surgery?’

‘Don’t get excited, Mr Weedin. Don’t shout. The girls are coming up from the canteen.’

‘I felt those bumps with these very hands. Have you looked, have you ever properly looked at his eyes? That shoulder -‘

‘Keep calm, Mr Weedin, you aren’t getting yourself anywhere, you know.’

Mr Weedin pointed with a shaking arm in the direction of the managing director’s office. ‘He’s bewitched,’ he said.

Merle took tiny steps backward and got herself out of the door. She went in to Mr Druce again.

‘Mr Weedin will be wanting a holiday,’ she said.

Mr Druce lifted his paper-knife, toyed with it in his hand, pointed it at Merle, and put it down. ‘What did you say?’ he said.

Drover Willis’s was humming with work when Dougal reported on Friday morning to the managing director.

‘During my first week,’ Dougal told Mr Willis, ‘I have been observing the morals of Peckham. It seemed to me that the moral element lay at the root of all industrial discontents which lead to absenteeism and the slackness at work which you described to me.’

Mr Willis looked with his blue eyes at his rational compatriot sitting before him with a shiny brief-case on his lap.

Mr Willis said at last, ‘That would seem to be the correct approach, Mr Dougal.’

Dougal sat easily in his chair and continued his speech with half-dosed, detached, and scholarly eyes.

‘There are four types of morality observable in Peckham,’ he said. ‘One, emotional. Two, functional. Three, puritanical. Four, Christian.’

Mr Willis opened the lid of a silver cigarette-box and passed it over to Dougal.

‘No, thank you,’ Dougal said. ‘Take the first category, Emotional. Here, for example, it is considered immoral for a man to live with a wife who no longer appeals to him. Take the second, Functional, in which the principal factor is class solidarity such as, in some periods and places, has also existed amongst the aristocracy, and of which the main manifestation these days is the trade union movement. Three, Puritanical, of which there are several modern variants, monetary advancement being the most prevalent gauge of the moral life in this category. Four, Traditional, which accounts for about one per cent of the Peckham population, and which in its simplest form is Christian. All moral categories are of course intermingled. Sometimes all are to be found in the beliefs and behaviour of one individual.’

‘Where does this get us?’

‘I can’t say,’ Dougal said. ‘It is only a preliminary analysis.’

‘Please embody all this in a report for us, Mr Dougal.’ Dougal opened his brief-case and took out two sheets of paper. ‘I have elaborated on the question here. I have included case histories.’

Mr Willis smiled with one side of his mouth and said, ‘Which of these four moral codes would you say was most attractive, Mr Dougal?’

‘Attractive?’ Dougal said with a trace of disapproval.

‘Attractive to us. Useful, I mean, useful.’

Dougal pondered seriously until Mr Willis’s little smile was forced, for dignity’s sake, to fade. Then, ‘I could not decide until I had further studied the question.’

‘Well expect another report next week?’

‘No, I’ll need a month,’ Dougal stated. ‘A month to work on my own. I can’t come in here again for a month if you wish me to continue research on this line of industrial psychology.’

‘You must see round the factory,’ said Mr Willis. ‘Peck-ham is a big place. We’re concerned with our own works first of all.’

‘I’ve arranged to be shown round this afternoon,’ Dougal said. ‘And at the end of a month I hope to spend some time with the workers in the recreation hails and canteens.’

Mr Willis looked silently at Dougal who then permitted himself a slight display of enthusiasm. He leaned forward.

‘Have you observed, Mr Willis, the frequency with which your employees use the word “immoral”? Have you noticed how equally often they use the word “ignorant”? These words are significant,’ Dougal said, ‘psychologically and sociologically.’

Mr Willis smiled, as far as he was able, into Dougal’s face. ‘Take a month and see what you can do,’ he said. ‘But bring us a good plan of action at the end of it. Drover, my partner, is anxious about absenteeism. We want some moral line that will be both commendable by us and acceptable to our staff. You’ve got some sound ideas, I can see that. And method. I like method.’

Dougal nodded and took his long serious face out of the room.

Miss Frierne said, ‘That boy Leslie Crewe has been here. He was looking for you. Wants to go your errands and make a bob like a good kid. Perhaps his mother’s a bit short,’

‘Anyone with him?’

‘No. He came to the back door this time.’

‘Oh,’ Dougal said, ‘did you get rid of him quickly.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t go for a long time. He kept saying when would Mr Douglas be home, and could he do anything for you. He was very polite, I will say that. Then he asked the time and then he said his Dad used to live up this road in number eight. So I took him in the kitchen. I thought, well, he’s only a boy, and gave him a doughnut. He said his sister was looking forward to marrying Humphrey in September. He said she saves all her wages and the father in America dresses her. He said -‘

‘He must have kept you talking a long time,’ Dougal said.

‘Oh, I didn’t mind. It was a nice break in the afternoon. A nice lad, he is. He goes out Sundays with the Rover Scouts. I’d just that minute come in and I was feeling a bit upset because of something that happened in the street, so -‘

‘Did he ask if he could go up and wait in my room?’

‘No, not this time. I wouldn’t have let him in your room, especially after you said nobody was to be let in there. Don’t you worry about your room. Nobody wants to go into your room, I’m sure.’

Dougal said, ‘You are too innocent for this wicked world.’

‘Innocent I always was,’ Miss Frierne said, ‘and that was why I was so taken aback that day by the Gordon Highlander up on One Tree Hill. Have a cup of tea.’

‘Thanks,’ Dougal said. ‘I’ll just pop upstairs a minute first.’

His room had, of course, been disturbed. He unlocked a drawer in his dressing-table and found that two notebooks were missing. His portable typewriter had been opened and clumsily shut. Ten five-pound notes were, however, untouched in another drawer by the person who had climbed to his room while Leslie had engaged Miss Frierne in talk.

He came down to the kitchen where Miss Frierne sighed into her tea.

‘Next time that Leslie comes round to the back door have a look, will you, to see who he’s left at the front door. His father’s worried about his companions after school hours, I happen to know.’

‘He only wanted to know if you had any errands to run. I daresay to help his mother, like a good kid. I told him I thought you’re short of bacon for your breakfast. He’ll be back. There’s no harm in that boy, I know it by instinct, and instinct always tells. Like what happened to me in the street today.’ She sipped her tea, and was silent.

Dougal sipped his. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you’re dying to tell me what happened.’

‘As true as God is my judge,’ she said, ‘I saw my brother up at Camberwell Green that left home in nineteen-nineteen. We never heard a word from him all those years. He was coming out of Lyons.’

‘Didn’t you go and speak to him?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. He was very shabby, he looked awful. Something stopped me. It was an instinct. I couldn’t do it. He saw me, too.’

She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and patted beneath her glasses.

‘You should have gone up to him,’ Dougal said. ‘You should have said, “Are you…” – what was his name?’

‘Harold,’ she said.

‘You should have said, “Are you Harold?”, that’s what you ought to have done. Instead of which you didn’t. You came back here and gave a doughnut to that rotten little Leslie.’

‘Don’t you point your finger at me, Dougal. Nobody does that in my house. You can find other accommodation if you like, any time you like and when you like.’

Dougal got up and shuffled round the kitchen with a slouch and an old ill look. ‘Is that what your old brother looked like?’ he said.

She laughed in high-pitched ripples.

Dougal thrust his hands into his pockets and looked miserably at his toes.

She started to cry all over her spectacles.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t your brother at all,’ Dougal said.

‘That’s what I’m wondering, son.

‘Just feel my head,’ Dougal said, ‘these two small bumps here.’

‘There are four types of morality in Peckham,’ Dougal said to Mr Druce. ‘The first category is -‘

‘Dougal,’ he said, ‘are you doing anything tonight?’

‘Well, I usually prepare my notes. You realize, don’t you, that Oliver Goldsmith taught in a school in Peck-ham? He used to commit absenteeism and spent a lot of his time in a coffee-house at the Temple instead of in Peckham. I wonder why?’

‘I need your advice,’ Mr Druce said. ‘There’s a place in Soho -‘

‘I don’t like crossing the river,’ Dougal said, ‘not without my broomstick.’

Mr Druce made double chins and looked lovingly at Dougal.

‘There’s a place in Soho -‘

‘I could spare a couple of hours,’ Dougal said. ‘I could see you up at Dulwich at the Dragon at nine.’

‘Well, I was thinking of making an evening of it, Dougal; some dinner at this place in Soho -‘

‘Nine at the Dragon,’ Dougal said.

‘Mrs Druce knows a lot of people in Dulwich.’

‘All the better,’ Dougal said.

Dougal arrived at the Dragon at nine sharp. He drank gin and peppermint while he waited. At half past nine two girls from Drover Willis’s came in. Dougal joined them. Mr Druce did not come. At ten o’clock they went on a bus to the Rosemary Branch in Southampton Way. Here, Dougal expounded the idea that everyone should take every second Monday morning off their work. When they came out of the pub, at eleven, Nelly Mahone crossed the street towards them.

‘Praise be to the Lord,’ she cried, ‘whose providence in all things never fails.’

‘Hi, Nelly,’ said one of the girls as she passed.

Nelly raised up her voice and in the same tone proclaimed, ‘Praise be to God who by sin is offended, Trevor Lomas, Collie Gould up the Elephant with young Leslie, and by penance appeased, the exaltation of the humble and the strength of the righteous.’

‘Ah, Nelly,’ Dougal said.