Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye

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.’