The Tumbled House

  They went into the greenhouse.

  “Odd,” said the Lord Chancellor, “I can’t recall the details of my own case that day. It was litigation over a commercial contract, that’s all I recollect.”

  “I hope you won it, sir.”

  “I hope you win yours,” said his Lordship.

  Chapter Eighteen

  At about the time Don was interviewing the Lord Chancellor Bennie was seeking less exalted company. As she turned in at the side door of Marlborough House, the Church Army Hostel in Paddington, an old woman in a tattered jumper and skirt, with reins of grey hair straggling out from under a tea-cosy hat, was standing on the doorstep talking to herself.

  “If it snows,” she said, “but then if it snows. I would hate to be caught out. Ah, Miss Marlowe, d’you think? … you know how frail I am, but if I don’t go this minute I shall be late for work. If the snow catches me … I should really be in bed.”

  “No, Miss Roberts, there’s no risk of snow. You’re standing in the wind, there. Cheer up, dear. You’ll be better for the walk, it’ll warm you.”

  She slipped past Miss Roberts into the grim tiled passage and heard Sister Frey’s voice from the foot of the stairs. “I’m very sorry, but we just haven’t room at the moment. If you come back in two or three days.…”

  “Well, I call it more than a disgrace; it’s a bloody insult! What are these dumps for if they can’t put a girl up?” A door slammed and the girl, an angry, tarted-up woman of fifty, shoved past Bennie and clattered down the stone steps. Another door slammed and there was silence. Bennie opened the door of Sister Frey’s room and put in her head.

  Sister Frey turned and blew out a breath, and then laughed. She was a slim-featured pale girl in her late twenties, bearing the sole responsibility of a home for a hundred women, many of them aged and many of them difficult, in one of the seediest and shabbiest areas of North London. Although she looked frail, the responsibility didn’t seem to bear her down; her face showed only kindness and a rare serenity in one so young.

  She said: “I wouldn’t have taken that one if we’d had room. I know her sort, roaring drunk every Saturday night and a gin fight in the dormitory. No, thanks.”

  Bennie said: “ Sorry about Tuesday. I had an emergency duty and couldn’t get out of it.”

  “I see you’ve brought some new books.”

  “Well, chiefly magazines. D’you think anybody does do anything here now in the evenings except watch the telly?”

  “Yes, gossip,” said Mary Frey. “After air, food and water, that’s the fourth primary need. Bennie, when you go upstairs you’ll find Mrs Holland in bed with flu. Talk to her for a minute or two, will you? Or listen to her. She needs company.”

  The home was on three floors, the dormitories big, light but tiled and institution-like in the Victorian fashion. Attempts had been made to soften them with gay curtains and bright prints. Most of the women were permanent residents, and nearly all went out to work: charwomen, washers-up, scrubbers-down, sweepers and scourers, they represented a small pool of semi-casual labour on which the city round them drew as it needed; they were a part of the forgotten and the unnoticed, the wizened woman washing the office stairs, the stout body clattering crockery m the university kitchen; the potato peeler in the cafeteria, the grey-haired brusher-out of yard and basement.

  A few of the women were still about. Bennie found Mrs Holland on the top floor and sat consoling her for a time; then she did odd jobs until lunch-time when she had a meal and a chat with Mary Frey before she left.

  She decided to walk home. The area round the hostel was one of tiny shops and warehouses and neglected shabby streets, but a little further south it degenerated into something else. In a few paces one walked suddenly out of a conventional semi-slum into a new London of the coloured people. The influx from the West Indies, like some foreign fluid injected into the body of the city, had settled in unassimilated hydatids wherever the resistance was lowest … Little Harlems like this sprang up, not full of law-breakers but full of people accepting lower standards than even their immediate neighbours——”

  She was surprised to hear her name called and saw Peter Waldo across the street beside his taxi talking to a big man in a black suit with a polka-dot scarf. She waved back and walked on, but after a minute the taxi caught up with her.

  Peter said: “ Well, this is a surprise! Doing a little fashionable slumming?”

  “No, I’m just walking home.” The other man had gone.

  “Then let me give you a lift. Do you wish to ride sumptuous, or will you sit with me? I’d warn you it’s one of those folding seats that always fold at the wrong time.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  When she was beside him he looked at her for a moment. A half-dozen Negro children stood and jeered as they drove off.

  “I know you’re a brave little girl but I really wouldn’t think this is the best way for a stroll after dark.”

  “I usually take a bus then. That was Boy Kenny you were talking to, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. But he’s quite harmless, bless him. He’s just a big crazy kid who wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head—unless you struggled.”

  “He’s older than you, Peter.”

  “Oh, in years, yes. But in development.… It’s interesting to notice the progression. First he was a Borstal Boy, then he was a Teddy Boy, now he’s just Boy, saddled for ever with a name that’ll become more ludicrous with every year that passes.”

  “Why do you make a friend of him?”

  He glanced at her. “I don’t know that I am making a friend of him. I studied biology once, and maybe I like to look at people as if they were under a glass.”

  “Do they wriggle?”

  “Sometimes. One has the illusion of omniscience while recognising it always as illusion.”

  “Not worth much, that, is it?”

  “It’s worth what anything is worth in this world, my dear. The fleeting pleasure that presses a bell. A drink, a pretty girl, a sense of power, a joke, doing something others can’t do—they’re all keys on a cash register. You press down the appropriate key and ‘ting!’. Nice. Pretty sound. Pleasant feeling. Just that. Then it’s gone. Nothing left. Move on to the next.”

  In no time at all they were in the recognisable London of the Edgware Road. From there it was only a few gear changes to the dignified opulence of Park Lane.

  Bennie said: “ I’ve just come from seeing a girl who spends all her time looking after difficult old women. There’s nothing wrong with her: she’s young, quite pretty, got a sense of humour, but she’s made that her job, poorly paid, long hours. I don’t feel she’s playing on quite the same register.”

  “But of course she is, darling. There are many different keys; it only depends which ones for her make the best ‘ting’. Probably she was crossed in love or is sexually timid or needs treatment by a psychiatrist to bring her into the normal zone. But why bother? She sees herself as St Theresa, rescuing, bending over sickbeds, advising and comforting. Don’t tell me she’s sacrificing her life. She’s doing what she likes doing. She’s seeking and finding power.”

  “In fact in your view,” said Bennie, “everything we do is selfish.”

  “What else? We are nothing but ourselves, and in ourselves we’re nothing but a few secretions and sensations. The empire builder, the nurse, the Teddy Boy, the burglar, the so-called saint, they’re all fundamentally the same person reacting differently to slightly different stimuli. Just like the blind worm or the sea anemone.”

  “I’m not quite keeping up with you,” she said. “ Is this an aquarium universe or a cash register one?”

  “Naughty.” They drove on in silence until they reached the traffic lights out of the Park. “Tell me, are you going to marry Michael?”

  She did not speak until the lights went green. “What does Michael think?”

  “He doesn’t confide his inmost thoughts in me. Only it is quite clear that he won’t be happy till he get
s you, one way or another.”

  “And you think I’m more likely to be got one way than the other?”

  “It’s the impression I’ve formed.”

  “You really needn’t go any further than this, Peter. I’m taking you out of your way.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m going on to see Michael now. Coming?”

  “I can’t. I wish I could.”

  He said: “I think if you were to go and live with him for a few months and got it out of your systems it would be much better than marriage, for both of you.”

  “It all depends, doesn’t it,” she said, “which key makes the loudest ‘ting’?”

  “How well you learn your homework. Actually, Bennie, Michael’s prepared to make a lot of sacrifices for you. You underrate him.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “ I wouldn’t want you to think that.”

  He looked at her to see if she was serious and saw that she was. She got down slowly and closed the door behind her. “Thank you, Peter, for bringing me home.”

  “I didn’t expect you until this afternoon,” Michael said. “I’ve only just got in.”

  Peter went to the side table and poured himself a drink. “ I’ve fixed our first assignment.”

  “What?” Michael looked up too quickly.

  “For next Friday. I’ve been working on it for more than a week.”

  “I wondered where you’d got to.” Michael lit another cigarette from the stub of the old one, feeling a sudden need to chain-smoke. The tips of his fingers were tingling.

  “There wasn’t the opportunity to tell you before. Ever hear of a village called Tordean?”

  “No.”

  “It’s in Berkshire. About fifty miles from London. Ever heard of Any Questions, Ignorant Child?”

  “The radio programme? Who hasn’t?”

  “Who hasn’t? The Any Questions programme is being broadcast next Friday from the Village Hall of Tordean. The hall holds two hundred. Admission is by ticket only, and the tickets have already been distributed. There aren’t many local bigwigs but what there are have received tickets. There are three good houses in the village. The audience have to occupy their seats by seven-thirty. The programme is over at nine-fifteen. During that time the village will be empty.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I have an aunt in Nebury; I stayed with her last week-end.”

  Michael frowned impatiently through the smoke. “What’s the proposition? D’you mean one would.…” He hesitated over the word. “… break in somewhere?”

  “Getting into any ordinary private house is like cutting the crust on a gooseberry pie. I’ve left that to our natural energy and enterprise.”

  “Is there anything worth—having? There might be nothing but dust and Victorian furniture.”

  “One house, I’m told by my innocent aunt, has a good collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sketches. The owner of the second house has two cars and a houseboat on the Thames; I shall be surprised if you don’t find a good fur coat or two and some decent silver.”

  “You say ‘you’ as if——”

  “I’ll take the first house, you the second. The third has an invalid and two servants living in, so it ought to be skipped. Boy is driving the car——”

  “Do we need him?”

  “Very much so. He’s disposing of the stuff. My dear Michael you may not love him but he’s indispensable in these early stages. Once we get on our feet we can drop him if need be.”

  “Always providing,” said Michael, “ that he’s willing to be dropped.”

  “You’re not losing heart already?”

  Michael hesitated. Since that conversation with Peter he had had lots of second thoughts. Several times he had half decided to pull out. Sometimes he hoped Peter had forgotten about it or had chosen to look on their talk as the improbable vapourings of two young men on a dark and rainy night. Yet the old urge, the old discontent remained.

  “I thought, if we did this sort of thing, we’d plan it together. We both risk the same. Yet here the whole exercise is apparently tied up and arrangements made even with Boy before I’m told the first thing about it.”

  Peter sipped his drink. “I see your point. I thought you’d be pleased to be saved the staff work.”

  “In a sense I am. But I want to feel I’m going into this with my eyes open.”

  “Well, aren’t you now? Do you want us to drop it?”

  Michael hesitated again, aware that Peter was watching him. This was the point of no return. This was where your bluff was called—the last moment to say, stop. Until this moment he was a law-abiding citizen and all society was his friend. After it, if he said go on, he was on the other side of the fence.

  Yet society was his friend only at a price—the price of conformity and nonentity and monotony and frustration. And Bennie? On the side of society, no doubt; but unreachable because of it.

  He put out his cigarette half-smoked. “No, of course we’ll not drop it. Tell me more.”

  On the following Saturday Joanna went to a cocktail party at the Savoy given by one of the executives of an ITV circuit, and almost the first person she saw there was Roger with a tall brown-haired girl who looked rather out of her element. Roger was solicitous. That spelt only one thing.

  It was nearly four weeks since her visit to Roger’s flat; and at this first, seeing, of him again Joanna’s alert brain dug for a second or two in search of the old feelings. In the past she had been capable of the worst enormities, of not really wanting for herself but not wanting others to have—unpardonable sensations outside her control. Now she dug and they were not there. She hastily took a cocktail and drank to that.

  Towards the end of the party she saw the girl slip out, and at once he came across and spoke to her.

  “Joanna. Where’s Don today?” It was as if the quarrel, even her last visit, had never been.

  “Covent Garden.… No, he’ll be finished by now.”

  “I was at my solicitor’s this morning.”

  Perhaps it was the clairvoyance of three gins, but for the first time ever she thought he looked less than tidy, less than handsome. His good looks seemed to derive not so much from distinction of feature as from fastidiousness of expression.

  She said: “Are you going to call Mrs Delaney?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because she must know so much about all the things you accuse John Marlowe of.”

  “Other people do besides.”

  “Don has been trying to find her. If she told you what you know, you’ll have to produce her as a witness, surely.”

  “She didn’t. And I’ve never met her.”

  As Joanna was about to speak again, a flash flickered near them. Roger narrowed his brows. “Sometimes I disapprove of my own breed. If it’s one of our papers I’ll try to stop that.”

  “Isn’t it all part of the same technique?”

  “What technique?”

  She didn’t use the word she was going to. “Interference, where it’s not wanted. If you stop that, why not the libel action?”

  “We become the prisoners of our own attitudes. Don much more than I.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say, Roger, why do you hate Don so? But she almost knew what his answer would be. He would raise his eyebrows and say, I? I don’t hate anyone—implying that it was far too uncivilised an emotion for him to feel. Yet everyone was civilised only to the Plimsoll line. It was a mistake he made in counterpoise—a mistake about himself. People like him had the advantage of detachment most of the time. But just once in a while reason wasn’t enough even for them—and then they were capable of the unreasoning shift of weight, the emotional misjudgement, that lesser people would never think of.

  The girl was coming back. Roger said: “Anyway, it will be months yet before the action comes on. Perhaps it will give him time to think again.… Oh, Marion.” There was an ironical gleam in his eye. “ I don’t think you know Mrs Marlowe,
do you? Joanna, may I introduce you to a friend of mine, Miss Laycock.”

  She had arranged to meet Don at Simpson’s afterwards. He greeted her with the slightly masked expression that he kept for her in public.

  “I wonder how many years of married life it will take,” he said, “before I can see you come into a room without feeling as if I was suddenly going down in a lift.”

  “It’s hunger, darling. I’m hours late. Terribly sorry.”

  “I’ve been spending my time breathlessly reading the account of some men who drove into a village in Berkshire last night and ransacked the place while all the population were listening in the Village Hall to Any Questions.”

  “Did I put the catch down when I left? I can’t remember.”

  “You look happy.”

  “I am. I am.… Yet really I loathe cocktail parties. I always come away blind with smoke, lit up like a church, and no appetite.”

  “We’ll fix those in reverse order. What will you eat?”

  The waiter came up and Don ordered. When the waiter had gone Don said: “Apart from gin, why so high-spirited?”

  “Don’t you want me to be?”

  “Yes, but it’s unusual for you to look quite like this. I want a hand-out. Fair shares for all.”

  “There’s nothing to share—exactly. D’you ever get a sensation of being suddenly—emancipated, set free?”