The Walking Stick

  Much of the time I was happy. He often seemed younger than his age because of this boyish sense of adventure and fun. He still spent money freely, but had accepted that I should pay for the food and drink that came into the place. He hadn’t found work, but I knew he was seeing a lot of Jack Foil.

  A district utterly strange to me. And lonely. No neighbours – except the great warehouses – and ten minutes walk to the nearest shop. It seemed a curiously respectable neighbourhood. I didn’t know whether this was part of the welfare state; but everyone seemed to be moderately prosperous, decently dressed, well found. The shops were unlike those I normally knew. The multiple stores, the supermarkets were only just moving in. For the most part shops were still privately owned, one storey, personal, friendly. Jim’s Pie Shop . . . Betty’s Footstore . . . Martin’s for Meat. People soon recognized you, called you dear, took an interest. They were a bit suspicious of my accent, but it soon went. There seemed scarcely any coloured people, only a few Indians and Chinese. It was all very homely. I had somehow imagined Rotherhithe to be a slum area with wicked lascars and dark deeds by the docks. Anything but.

  We had only one near quarrel, Leigh and I, when I told him of my visit to Norfolk and discovering one piece of Meissen among all the fake. He was thoughtful, tapping a cigarette around but not lighting it. ‘Where was it, this piece?’

  ‘At the back of a cupboard, among some old candlesticks.’

  ‘Would the owners know they had it?’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. There was so much junk.’

  ‘What size was it – a foot square?’

  ‘The ornament? Oh, less.’

  ‘And how much d’you think it will fetch when it comes up for sale?’

  ‘Oh, not less than £2000.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He at last flicked his lighter. ‘Hadn’t you a bag? Anything like that?’

  ‘Of course. But what . . .’

  ‘The rest of the stuff was junk. No one knew of this piece. You could have just slipped it into your case. What a chance!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said angrily, ‘I obviously need an awful lot of educating!’

  ‘Maybe you do. Maybe you do,’ he said, and got up. Then he turned. ‘Sorry, Deborah. I didn’t mean any of it. Forget I spoke.’

  ‘Why should I? You won’t.’

  ‘I know. But I spoke without thinking. It was just that we could have got probably seven or eight hundred pounds from Jack Foil for the thing. It was on a plate. And nobody would ever have known.’

  ‘Except that I would have known. And you would. Doesn’t that count?’

  ‘D’you think being free of money problems for a while would have made us think any worse of ourselves?’

  I picked up a scattered newspaper and for no good reason began folding it. ‘I’ve worked for Whittington’s for over seven years. Don’t you think I owe them any honesty – even if I don’t owe it to myself?’

  ‘But you weren’t stealing from them – or at least only a bit of commission. It’s one of those cases, I think, where it would have done nobody any harm.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I threw the newspaper down. ‘It is obviously something we shall never agree on.’

  There was a long silence. I don’t know how long it takes to get through a cigarette, but we sat there unspeaking until he had stubbed the end in a stone ashtray. Then he got up and went out without a word.

  Jack Foil’s flat was over his antique shop in Old Brompton Road. You went up steps at the side and came to a door of reeded glass with a light over it, and as soon as you pressed the bell dogs yapped as if the electricity had been connected to their tails. He opened the door himself, and we went in between potted plants, with two very fat dachshunds monopolizing the conversation. Then his wife slid from between more potted plants and led us into a long darkish room lit with five lamps in black drum shades.

  Wife about thirty: bleached hair on shoulders, tired blue eyes, good figure but wearing a size ten frock where she needed a twelve. Plants everywhere.

  ‘It’s my hobby,’ said Jack Foil, taking my elbow. ‘This is an Umbrella Tree – know it? – it comes from Australia; very nice, don’t you think? D’you take whisky or gin? Sherry, then. Sherry, Doreen. This they call Mother-in-Law’s-Tongue – ha, ha! – very long, if you understand, and wagging. Down, Rufus! Down! They get excited, you know, we don’t have many visitors. Down, Paula! Leigh, you’ll take whisky, I suppose? . . . This plant’s called Scarlet Trails. Lovely red flowers in the spring, but they don’t last. Comes from one of those American islands. There, it’s dry sherry, is that all right for you? . . . Down, Rufus! Let me look at your shoes, Miss Dainton . . . Ah, you’re all right; no laces. Laces have a fatal fascination for Rufus. If he can, he’ll chew them right off. A friend came the other day and was quite annoyed. Sitting down, you know, he didn’t notice until it was too late . . . Ice, Leigh? Ah, of course, I remember, no ice. Is Dr Sarah Dainton your sister, Miss Dainton? She comes in the shop sometimes. Fancy, and I never connected! Very charming. Small silver pieces, as you know. She bought a Georgian silver tea canister. Only last week. Sit beside me and tell me what you think of this rug. You recognize it? Ha, ha! I was looking at it the day we met in Whittington’s. But I wanted it for my personal use, not for the shop. The wife fancied it. Perhaps you think it’s a pity, what with the dogs.’

  Dark hair on the back of his hands, like fur; unpleasant contrast with the gold of the two signet rings. Pebbled eyes, never quite normal in size, wobbled as the lenses moved. Smell of carnation. He looked sinister. Yet homely. A stout, heavy man of fifty talking, talking, with his two dachshunds snuffling at his feet, and green room plants giving a vegetable look, an underwater look to a room insufficiently lighted, and a blonde corseted young wife flirting with Leigh and pulling her short skirt down to her knees so often that she drew his looks. (Yet a softer woman this, much, than the moneyed blonde in Norfolk.) Sherry dry and fine, Corona smoke, central heating, settee too soft, enveloped one like a bed. I had read a book once about a fat man suffocating a girl with a pillow. Careful. No claustrophobia.

  ‘Yes, Mr Foil,’ I said, ‘and is that a Stanley Spencer?’ Are these all stolen pictures on the walls? Did that handsome diamond on your wife’s finger come from some Hatton Garden robbery? But surely not. Surely you’re too careful for that. ‘Well, I suppose he’s one of the easiest of all painters to recognize.’ ‘It’s what you were talking to me about that day – developing a style that isn’t a mannerism. When we were talking about Leigh.’

  What risk is Leigh running in your company? Of course he talks big, about breaking the law; but isn’t he basically too well balanced, too level-headed . . .

  ‘Leigh tells me you’re going to be married, Miss Dainton. Oh, of course, I know, there are obstacles but they can be removed, can’t they. Time and patience. That’s a Catherine Wheel Plant you’re staring at – very nice and easy to grow . . . Oh, yes, I knew her slightly. But she wasn’t his type. Type? Ha, ha, well of course there isn’t any, is there? But you know what I mean. Leigh’s rather an elite sort of chap, in spite of coming from a simple home. Deserves somebody like you, Miss Dainton, if I may say so.’

  Genuine benevolence in his voice? Never anything but courteous and kind to me. Another mistake of the conventional mind to suppose that a man who lived illegally was any less human or ordinary or, indeed, likable in his everyday life.

  Leigh, I thought, was not quite at ease in his company. Less pugnacious, less jolly, more concerned to please.

  He got temporary work in a clothing warehouse in Percy Street. Money good, but no prospects. One day he confessed to me he owed Jack Foil £500. I was appalled and wanted to help him to pay it back at once. He said no, what did it matter; but all that day and for many days afterward I worried about it. I had saved about £400, but he wouldn’t accept any of it, saying: ‘Look, sweetheart, can I take from you now the cash I spent courting you?
What sort of a lark would you call that? I know you want to help, and in some ways maybe you can help; but don’t you see you just can’t help that way!’

  Most of the time now I never used a stick. In fact, I’d left it in a cupboard at Whittington’s. I sometimes woke in the night with an unallayable ache in the small of the back, but this might have been caused by any one of the changes in my changed life. Leigh was encouraging me to dance: half of the studio was uncarpeted and he had a small record player and we tried there. He wanted me to go with him to a dance hall. ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘it isn’t so much that I’m afraid of people pointing me out and saying, “look at that freak”. I’m afraid of people pointing me out and saying “look at that brave girl”. D’you get what I mean?’

  ‘I get that you care a hell of a lot too much what other people think.’

  ‘Don’t we all? You care too much what those silly dealers think of your painting.’

  ‘They’re experts. And don’t change the subject.’

  ‘It’s all part of the same subject.’

  One or two weekends we went out of London, and he let me drive the car. I seemed to get into it pretty quickly, and actually, with the weak leg being the left one, I didn’t have much trouble. The only real difficulty was the headlight dipper, but of course this didn’t matter during the day. I applied for a test.

  At Whittington’s the big autumn sales were coming up, and I brought home a stack of catalogues. He thumbed through them.

  ‘What a packet of folding money there must be in all this stuff! It isn’t till you see it all listed that you realize. Hundreds of thousands of quid all humped together in those junk showrooms of yours!’

  It was swan-feeding time – we did this twice daily – and we went out on the balcony in the evening light. A white vessel was just passing flying a Trinity House flag. It seemed to move as easily as a swan, gliding with the stream, completely silent. The water had a slightly pink glow like fashionable champagne. A premature light winked here and there.

  ‘We ought to go into business together,’ he said, ‘as junk dealers. You with your strict honesty, me with my knavery. We’d be an unbeatable team – slap into the First Division.’

  ‘D’you know that’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘We might go into business together – in an antique shop. I mean – I know almost as much as anybody about china and porcelain, and I’ve a working knowledge of a few other things. You understand a lot about painting.’

  He stared at me. The swans were coming downriver; four fully grown and six cygnets; they steered and manoeuvred into a position where they could most easily grab the bread and meat we offered.

  ‘We could work together,’ I said, ‘instead of on separate things. And what we made would be our own.’

  ‘What do we use for money?’

  ‘To set up? Oh, I know . . .’ Neither Douglas nor Erica had any personal capital behind them. They always claimed to have educated their children on overdrafts. ‘But it’s worth thinking about. It’s the first real idea we’ve had.’

  No more then, but the following morning he said: ‘I wonder what we’d need to set up. We could rent a shop somewhere to begin. But even then it’d cost the earth. Three thousand pounds I’d think to get started properly, to buy in a bit of stock, and to wait for people to come in and buy. I could ask Jack Foil.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘OK, OK. But we’d have to have money from somewhere. Even a barrow boy’s got to buy his barrow!’

  ‘Let’s think of it for a while. Perhaps I can think of something.’

  I felt much happier just for having this to dwell on. Before there hadn’t been any future; one went on from day to day, happy but blinkered. But this was a possible solution only just out of reach.

  On 3 November I found our balcony piled with wooden cases, cardboard cartons stuffed with straw, three old chairs, coconut matting with holes in it, old clothes, a moth-eaten feather boa. You couldn’t see out of one window at all. Leigh came in a few minutes after me and laughed at my face.

  ‘This is the beginning of our antique shop, mate; I’m going to buy a horse and cart and collect junk.’

  ‘No, seriously! Tell me.’

  ‘Well, you said you wanted a bonfire.’

  ‘D’you mean it? Can we?’

  ‘I went and asked one of the dockmasters of the PLA. They don’t mind so long as we keep it reasonable.’

  ‘And fireworks?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve got a whole bunch here.’ He picked up the parcel. ‘The lot. Other people are bringing theirs as well.’

  I laughed. ‘What other people?’

  ‘Lay off. This is my joint still and I’m giving the party.’

  ‘But, darling, can we afford it?’

  ‘No, we can’t, but that adds an extra zing. Anyhow it’s your birthday party as well – a week early.’

  ‘I didn’t know I’d ever told you.’

  ‘You didn’t. It leaked out when I was talking to Sarah last week.’

  ‘Is she coming?’

  ‘You wait and see.’

  The fifth was a Saturday, so we could spend all day getting ready. I made a female guy out of the smelly old clothes. The tides were right. Leigh had made sure of that before anything else – but of course he couldn’t start building the bonfire until four when the river ebbed. Even then it meant building on wet stones.

  The night was a bit windy and overcast and dark but not cold. By six we could see other lights flickering here and there over the city and docks, and a few rockets and flashes. At six-thirty Arabella and a young man came. To my surprise it was not Bruce Spring, but I didn’t catch his name and had no chance of asking her about him. Then four other people, including two I’d met at Ted Sandymount’s. Then Ted himself, blinking and twitching; he’d been away on holiday, and his nose was peeling; whenever I looked at him all that evening he was picking at the loose skin on his nose. Then Sarah came with Philip Bartholomew and David Hambro. And then my father and mother.

  When I saw them I glanced at Leigh half in anger, half in panic; but he pinched my elbow and a minute later I was kissing them coolly and welcoming them as if I’d expected them all the time.

  Fortunately more guests came, so the shock was absorbed and embarrassment was breathed out in commonplaces. I was still half angry inside, but Douglas and Erica were never bad partygoers, and I wasn’t surprised at the way they entered into the thing. I’d never been allowed fireworks at home, but now they said they found them ‘tremendous fun’, and particularly in the setting of London River.

  This setting, you had to admit, made all the difference. It was probably rather absurd – and yet it was beautiful. We started off with twenty rockets fired from bottles; then I had to light the bonfire with a torch Leigh had made, and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in the dark flickering, spark-blowing night and drank my health in Rioja and bit into sausage rolls. The fire’s reflection was mirrored in metallic grey and green and orange in the quiet lapping river. The pyre was soon a mass of flame leaping up to the feather-boaed witch on the top. Faces laughed, talked, peered, drank, in flickering setting-sun colours; then, as if arc-lighted in a pantomime, turned green, crimson and yellow as flares were lit on the stones.

  A cruising river boat flickered its searchlight over us; a great rocket flowered and died, silhouetting Tower Bridge; Roman candles popped and spluttered; the witch sagged and tottered, flames licking, and then fell sideways upon the stones. Her hat struck the water and hissed and floated away. The red wine was too cold, the sausages too hot, but no one seemed to mind. About now I looked up and Mr and Mrs Jack Foil had come, were standing beside Douglas and Erica on the balcony looking down. Her ash-blonde hair fluttered like a flag.

  Another flurry of rockets; more crackers; then the men began to push together the remnants of the bonfire to encourage the blaze. The tide had turned and was creeping gently in, lapping at the stones at our feet. We had
had our fun, it told us; time to go.

  In the studio everyone crowded, talking at once. Wine had unlocked tongues; people too hot in coats now, dropping them in corners; clink of bottles; Leigh passing by me: ‘OK, love?’ ‘OK – devil.’ Smiles, loving smiles between us. ‘Well, I reckoned it a good idea, birthday and all that. Where’s your glass, David?’ Separated again. But together. I love him. God, it almost hurts. Don’t let this end. Not the party but the love. A blissful amity. Founded on sex but almost independent of it. I’d die for him. Schemer. Scheming all this up. Still treating me like a juvenile. I’ll show him.

  My father’s voice, lighter in timbre than some others but very clear. ‘It’s a question of reaction formation. Obsessional morality was the obvious example in Victorian and Edwardian days. Now we see others at work.’ ‘Pyorrhoea,’ said Mrs Foil, close by me. ‘But then she’s nearly twelve. Otherwise as healthy as could be.’ A hand on my arm. ‘Darling, a lovely party,’ Arabella said. ‘Fabulous idea and all.’ ‘Who’s the new man?’ ‘Benjy? Not really new. Sort of da capo.’ ‘Bruce?’ ‘Oh, lots to tell you about him. Suddenly things went sour – desperately, tragically. It shows how wrong we would have been to marry.’ Ted Sandymount’s sniff and snicker. ‘So I said to him I said, you can stuff that, what d’you think I am, an au pair girl?’ Wine was running out, anyway, it must be getting on for ten. Sarah had miraculously produced two big trays of chocolate biscuits. Those went. Everybody took one, even Douglas. Good sign. Good party. Leigh by the door, face smudged with bonfire ash; I took the last biscuit, munched deliciously; people going now. Met Leigh’s eyes; he wanted me. Go now; go everyone. ‘Thank you. Delighted you came.’ ‘Yes, wasn’t it fun? We’ll do it again next year!’ ‘Glad you came, Erica. I think it’s going to work out.’ ‘Goodbye, Douglas, thank you. For coming, I mean.’ ‘Mr Foil . . . Well, Jack, then. Thank you, thank you.’ ‘Sarah, did you bring the biscuits?’ ‘Next week? Yes we could, I expect. I’ll ask Leigh.’