Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye

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.

‘YES, Cheese?’ Dougal said.

‘Look, Doug. I think I can’t have this story about the Dragon at Dulwich, it’s indecent. Besides, it isn’t true. And I never went to Soho at that age. I never went out with any managing director -‘

‘It will help to sell the book,’ Dougal said. He breathed moistly on the oak panel of Miss Frierne’s hall, and with his free hand drew a face on the misty surface where he had breathed.

‘And Doug dear,’ said the voice from across the river, ‘how did you know I started life in a shoe factory? I mean to say, I didn’t tell you that. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t know, Cheese,’ Dougal said.

‘You must have known. You’ve got all the details right, except that it wasn’t in Peckham, it was Streatham. It all came back to me as I read it. It’s uncanny. You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you, Doug?’

‘Aye,’ Dougal said. He breathed on the panel, wrote in a word, then rubbed it off.

‘Doug, you mustn’t do that. It makes me creepy to think that people can find out all about you,’ Miss Cheeseman said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to put in about the shoe factory and all that. Besides, the period. It dates me.

‘It only makes you sixty-eight, Cheese.’

‘Well, Doug, there must be a way of making me not even that. I want you to come over, Doug. I’ve been feeling off colour.’

‘I’ve got a fatal flaw,’ Dougal said, ‘to the effect that I can’t bear anyone off colour. Moreover, Saturday’s my clay off and it’s a beautiful summer day.’

‘Dear Doug, I promise to be well. Only come over. I’m worried about my book. It’s rather… rather too…’

‘Rambling,’ Dougal said.

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘I’ll see you at four,’ Dougal said.

At the back of Hollis’s Hamburgers at Elephant and Castle was a room furnished with a fitted grey carpet, a red upholstered modern suite comprising a sofa and two cubic armchairs, a television receiver on a light wood stand, a low glass-topped coffee table, a table on which stood an electric portable gramophone and a tape recorder, a light wood bureau desk, a standard lamp, and several ash-trays on stands. Two of the walls were papered with a wide grey stripe. The other two were covered with a pattern of gold stars on red. Fixed to the walls were a number of white brackets containing pots of indoor ivy. The curtains, which were striped red and white, were drawn. This cheerful interior was lit by a couple of red-shaded wall-lamps. In one chair sat Leslie Crewe, with his neck held rigidly and attentively. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit of normal cut, and a peach-coloured tie, and looked older than thirteen. In another chair lolled Collie Gould who was eighteen and had been found unfit for National Service; Collie suffered from lung trouble for which he was constantly under treatment, and was at present on probation for motor stealing. He wore a dark-grey draped jacket with narrow black trousers. Trevor Lomas, dressed in blue-grey, lay between them on the sofa. All smoked American cigarettes. All looked miserable, not as an expression of their feelings, but as if by an instinctive prearrangement, to convey a decision on all affairs whatsoever.

Trevor held in his hand one of the two thin exercise books he had stolen from Dougal’s drawer. The other lay on the carpet beside him.

‘Listen to this,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s called “Phrases suitable for Cheese”.’

‘Suitable for what?’ said Collie.

‘Cheese, it says. Code word, obvious. Listen to this what you make of it. There’s a list.

‘I thrilled to his touch.

I was too young at the time to understand why my mother was crying.

As he entered the room a shudder went through my frame. In that moment of silent communion we renewed our shattered faith.

She was to play a vital role in my life.

Memory had not played me false.

He was always an incurable romantic.

I became the proud owner of a bicycle.

He spoke to me in desiccated tones.

Autumn again. Autumn. The burning of leaves in the park.

He spelt disaster to me.

I revelled in my first tragic part.

I had no eyes for any other man.

We were living a lie.

She proved a mine of information.

Once more fate intervened-

Munificence was his middle name.

I felt a grim satisfaction.

They were poles apart.

I dropped into a fitful doze.’

‘Read us it again, Trev,’ Leslie said. ‘It sounds like English Dictation. Perhaps he’s a teacher as well.’ Trevor ignored him. He tapped the notebook and addressed Collie.

‘Code,’ he said. ‘It’s worth lolly.’

An intensified expression of misery on Collie’s face expressed his agreement.

‘In with a gang, he is. It’s bigger than I thought. Question now, to find out what his racket is.’

‘Sex,’ Leslie said.

‘You don’t say so?’ Trevor said. ‘Well, that’s helpful, son. But we happen to have guessed all that. Question is, what game of sex? Question is, national or international?’

Collie blew out his smoke as if it were slow poison. ‘Got to work back from a clue,’ he said in his sick voice. ‘Autumn’s a clue. Wasn’t there something about autumn?’

‘How dumb can you get?’ Trevor inquired through his nose. ‘It’s a code. Autumn means something else. Everything means something.’ He dropped the notebook and painfully picked up the other. He read: