A Crooked Sixpence Read online

  Ruth Flagg

  Houseboat Mistral

  Chelsea Reach

  Chelsea

  He found a bus going the right way. Chelsea, please. What part? Just Chelsea. Town Hall? That’ll do. Eight, please. Eight what? Eightpence. Oh, sorry. Thanks. The conductress had a little machine that poked out a long tongue of ticket.

  O’Toole walked down the Embankment, and by Chelsea Bridge found a flotilla of houseboats lying line abreast on a mudbank. They were festooned with electric cables and joined by a rickety gangplank. A couple of tobacco-stained swans were mooching through the empty bottles and rusty tins on the mud between the boats. Shanghai, S W, thought O’Toole.

  One of the boats, cream with a red funnel, was called Mistral. O’Toole picked his way along the gangplank to an open hatchway, looked down and wondered what to do. Knock? Shout? Blow a siren? A girl in velvet slacks, roll-neck sweater and long red hair solved the problem by appearing at the bottom of the wooden well.

  ‘Look who it is, James O’Toole! Come on down!’

  O’Toole descended, thinking that he ought to be going backwards as, strictly speaking, this was at sea.

  The boat turned out to be one long room, divided by curtains. At one end was a cooking-stove, at the other a doll’s house door which must be the john. The place had a faint smell of chemical toilet, masked by old face-powder.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the girl. ‘Get sick of the easy living back home?’

  ‘I just arrived in town a few days ago,’ said O’Toole. ‘You’ve got pretty exotic quarters here, Ruth.’

  ‘Not too bad except in the winter,’ said the girl. ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘I’ve got a suite of cellar over by Russell Square. It’s a bit cramped, although I managed to squeeze a priest and his family in the other night.’

  ‘A priest?’

  ‘I’ve been doing some work for the Sunday Sun. I think I’ve got a job there, as a matter of fact. They’re very interested in religion.’

  ‘How did the priest come into it?’

  ‘They bought him. I was minding him.’

  ‘Really, James. The Sunday Sun. Not much of a paper, is it? I mean, what’s wrong with The Times?’

  ‘Look, it’s very hard to break into Fleet Street at all,’ said O’Toole, ‘I needed the job badly. In fact, I haven’t even got it yet. Don’t point the bone at me before I start. Besides, there have to be some crummy papers to show the Press is free, what with the insistent demand from crummy people. Someone has to keep them happy while you top people read The Times’

  ‘All right, all right. Where’s Jenny?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Did she come over with you? She seems to be doing very well.’

  ‘I forget. How are you getting along?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve a job with an advertising agency in South Audley Street and I get a thousand a year which is a lot for a girl in London and I know hundreds of people.’

  ‘When do I meet them?’

  ‘Tonight, if you’re around you can meet quite a lot of them. I’m having a party. If you feel like getting a bottle or two you can come, if you like.’

  ‘I’d like to. What’s a cheap drunk? Emu Sherry?’

  ‘Good God, no. I suggest you go up to the Anglesey and get some cider. I’ve already got quite a bit laid in.’

  ‘Pretty tame stuff, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not on your life. Try some first and see.’

  ‘Before I start investing in this, could you give me some idea who I’m going to meet?’ asked O’Toole.

  ‘Well, you’ll meet Ralph. He’s my lover. He’s a big producer at the BBC. He’s ever so sweet really. I’m the first mistress he’s had since he got married.’

  Oh,’ said O’Toole. ‘First time?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Married.’

  ‘No, I think he’s been married a couple of times. He’s a bit older than you. He writes books and does talks and he’s really terribly bright.’

  ‘I can see you’re still a romantic old-fashioned girl,’ said O’Toole. ‘Where do I go to get this stuff, exactly?’

  O’Toole spent the first hour of the party sorting out who belonged to who. There seemed to be a couple of females to spare. One was a good four axe-handles round the seat, with red meat right down to the heel: the other no more than two axe-handles around, an overwhelming advantage in the narrow, crowded cabin of the boat. Two-handles had long black hair, eyes of an unobtrusive functional colour and not a bad face, by any means. O’Toole brought her a drink.

  ‘Here, try one of these,’ he said.

  ‘Do you happen to know what it is?’ she asked. She was English.

  ‘It’s some sort of local health drink,’ said O’Toole, ‘I’ve never tried it myself, but it looks harmless.’ It looked brown, oily and vicious.

  ‘It tastes vaguely like apples,’ said the girl, taking a sip.

  ‘Do you the world of good,’ said O’Toole. They both drank. ‘What do people talk about at parties in this country?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve only just arrived in London?’ asked the girl politely.

  ‘More or less,’ said O’Toole, ‘I suppose it’s obvious.’

  ‘It is, rather,’ said the girl. Oh, sex, politics, religion, what’s going to become of the world. All the usual things.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can help you much on your political problems here,’ said O’Toole, expansively, ‘I’m a classless society man myself.’ The air in the boat was thickening with cigarettes, talk and a noisy record-player.

  ‘Surely you’ve got classes wherever it is you come from...New Zealand, is it?’

  ‘Australia. Well, I must say I never noticed them. My mother used to tell me I must try to speak better than the common little boys down the street, and my old man used to say if I didn’t study hard I’d wind up cracking stones. Is that class?’

  ‘It sounds like the beginnings, anyway,’ said the girl laughing.

  ‘However, I’m getting that strong French Revolution feeling over here,’ said O’Toole. ‘I think that it happens to the mousiest Australians in a set-up like this, they start to see Lenin’s point of view.’

  ‘Oh, that’s silly,’ said the girl, but tolerantly. ‘I think it’s rather nice if people are different, don’t you? I mean, it’s a bit boring if everyone’s the same as everyone else.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said O’Toole. ‘I think I’d better explain the colonial reaction more clearly. The only class struggle I’ve ever had any real contact with is the international one, seen at a great distance: you know, we’re a hell of a lot better than anyone else, especially the elite-conscious English.’

  ‘But don’t you have people that everyone looks up to?’

  ‘Well, you know the sort of stuff you see in the social column of the Evening Standard. Derek Nochin, who is engaged to the younger sister of the Honourable Tony Sloping-shoulders, the heir of Lord Lacknuts. There is a sort of equivalent of that in the Australian newspapers, but they’re pictures of sheep-farmers sour around the socks dining with raddled wives in restaurants run by immigrant Greeks. And a couple of minutes of their conversation on intellectual topics would pack them in at the Palladium, I can tell you.’

  ‘Well, somebody has to be on top, don’t they?’

  ‘We go in for more democratic forms of snobbery. We even make a fuss over Americans, poor Americans, because the girls like their haircuts. We also like people who have good jobs, especially if they’re ignorant, and we love crooks of every description. Rich ones, of course.’

  ‘Sounds dreadful,’ said the girl. ‘At least we don’t have that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only been here a few weeks,’ said O’Toole. ‘But I must say I’ve noticed people aren’t exactly hail-fellow-well-met with one another.’

  ‘Oh, we’re friendly enough when you get to know us,’ said the girl.
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br />   ‘You don’t quite get what I mean,’ said O’Toole. ‘The picture that this country projects overseas is completely top-heavy. Take me as a typical example: before I’d arrived here I’d never heard of a football pool, although I knew that South Audley Street was okay as an address. There’s no point in me trying to learn about football pools, because the proles are just as damned exclusive as the others. Anyway, a stranger anywhere won’t recognise the local social ladder unless there’s a spot for him right at the top. Otherwise, he just wants to turn the whole thing over. So I’m an equality man.’

  ‘Where would you put me on our social ladder, for instance?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Search me,’ said O’Toole. ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Just outside Chelmsford.’

  ‘Don’t know where it is,’ said O’Toole. ‘Even if I did, I don’t know which side of the tracks it’s on. In fact, I can’t even locate the tracks. We could make a fortune with a really useful map of London, showing the tracks with arrows pointing to the right side and the wrong side. For foreigners only, of course. Start a revolution if the English saw it.’

  ‘Would it help you if you knew I went to Oxford?’ asked the girl.

  ‘I’ve really caught your interest, haven’t I?’ said O’Toole. ‘Where do you work? Or do you, or is that the wrong sort of question?’

  ‘No, that’s quite in order,’ the girl laughed. ‘At the War Office.’

  ‘What do you do—make war?’

  ‘Only in a very minor way. I read newspapers and magazines and things like that and make reports.’

  ‘Now, there’s a funny thing,’ said O’Toole, ‘I’m more or less of a travelling newsman myself. You know, with a bicycle, a green tennis eyeshade and a bag of plumber’s tools on my back.’

  ‘Really?’ asked the girl. ‘From the great outback?’

  The boat was by now jammed with people, the floor slowly getting stickier with spilt beer, wine, cider and crushed dog-ends. O’Toole was looking behind him to see he didn’t tread on anyone, when a man of thirty or so joined him and the girl. The newcomer had pink cheeks and heavy horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘This is Nigel Porter,’ said the girl. She evidently knew him, and didn’t particularly want to know him any better. ‘This is an Australian friend of Ruth’s.’

  ‘James O’Toole,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘I accidentally heard what you two were talking about,’ said Porter. ‘I don’t know why you wogs come over here if you don’t like the way we do things.’

  ‘My great-grandfather was transported,’ said O’Toole. ‘Possibly by yours, if a Porter ever got as high as the county bench. I’m the first member of the family who ever got the fare back again. I’m here to get even.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘By taking all the women, of course,’ said O’Toole. This seemed to touch Porter on a psychological boil.

  ‘Some chance,’ he said.

  ‘I hear it’s not a crowded line,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Porter, truculently.

  ‘Never mind,’ said O’Toole. ‘We’re having a serious discussion here. Why not get us all some drinks and join in?’

  As Porter fetched the drinks, O’Toole asked: ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘Not lately,’ said the girl.

  ‘Got it,’ said O’Toole. Then, to Porter returning with the drinks. ‘Nicely carried, old man.’

  ‘Now, what were you saying about our social system?’ asked Porter.

  O’Toole took a long swallow. ‘Here’s how I see it,’ he said. ‘All caste systems are based on foreign conquest. The untouchables are the aboriginal inhabitants, Welsh and Britons and cattle of that sort. The Saxons turn up, conquer them and set them to work, where they are to this day. Then the Normans, a sort of good German type, come over and kick the living be-Jesus out of the Saxons. Everyone kept racially pure, so you have the framework of the present three big social divisions. Collaborators of course got honorary membership in the next group up. Now, how do you like that?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Porter. ‘The last invasion was a thousand years ago, thanks to the Royal Navy.’

  ‘Of course things have got a bit blurred,’ said O’Toole. On this scheme the present middle-class got their mystique from the Saxons, who were bad Germans anyway, and being conquered conquerors would make anybody twisted. Everyone admits the middle-class are the biggest bastards of the lot. No personal offence, of course.’

  ‘You make it sound like a continuous civil war,’ said Porter. ‘It just shows how ignorant you are of the real spirit of Great Britain, chum. We’re a very united people. You should have been here during the war.’

  ‘So should half the actors in Hollywood,’ said O’Toole. ‘Just the same, something very queer is going on here. Look at the conspicuous absence of the British Dagwood.’

  ‘Dagwood?’ asked Porter.

  ‘You couldn’t draw a Dagwood strip for a British paper,’ said O’Toole. ‘An average, everyday family with a part for everyone to identify with.’

  ‘There are millions of average Englishmen,’ said Porter.

  ‘Maybe,’ said O’Toole. ‘But try to imagine what the English Dagwood does for a living. Does he go to the dogs, the races or the bookie in the tobacco kiosk? Blackpool, Frinton or the Riviera?’

  ‘He suits himself,’ said Porter. ‘He’s independent.’

  ‘No matter how you handled him, half the population would say “Thank Christ I’m not one of those”,’ said O’Toole, taking another long swallow. ‘That’s where the Royal Family come in.’

  Porter didn’t like this twist. O’Toole did. ‘They’re the Dagwood Bumsteads of England,’ he said. ‘A happy tale of family life, with a part for everyone, and they even get a big bang out of dogs.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve coming to this country and insulting the Queen,’ said Porter.

  ‘Easy, Jack,’ said O’Toole. ‘This isn’t the Forbidden City we’re talking about, you know. They abolished prostration some years back.’

  ‘You ignorant clot,’ said Porter, swinging a wild whistling blow. It missed by a yard, and so did O’Toole’s counter. Drinks spilt in a radius of two paces, and a rush of guests separated them. There was no sign of a race riot developing.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ said the girl. ‘He’s had too much to drink.’ Porter had moved some distance away and was explaining his side of the dispute to an appreciative circle, who turned from time to time to scowl at O’Toole.

  ‘Does this place have an annexe?’ asked O’Toole. ‘We need quiet for a serious discussion.’

  ‘Well...there’s an empty boat, three boats up,’ said the girl. ‘We could take a walk up there, if you like.’

  ‘Fine,’ said O’Toole, grabbing a bottle as they left the party. The tide had covered the mudflat, and there was dark water under the swaying gangplank linking the houseboats. Red and green lights, of the hard chemical colour of milkshake flavouring, winked over the river. O’Toole lowered himself into the third boat, a twin of the one they had left, and caught the girl as she followed. She dropped lightly into his arms, so he kissed her. She clung, warm and luxurious like a cashmere sweater. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you’re rather nice.’

  The boat seemed much like the other one inside, but empty. They sat on the bed. O’Toole shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’ whispered the girl.

  ‘No violence,’ said O’Toole. He had passed slightly beyond rational speech. ‘No prisons, no wars, no wounds, no rough stuff. Have pity on me.’

  ‘I haven’t a violent thought in my mind, silly,’ said the girl.

  ‘They all have,’ said O’Toole. ‘Poison you with tears.’

  ‘No one’s crying.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said O’Toole. Or maybe never.’

  Women, seemingly, wear much the same underneath, everywhere.

  ‘You be kind to me,’ whispered the girl.

  ‘Everyon
e’s kind to everyone, it’s a great world,’ said O’Toole. He was just past the point of talking. The bed was impossibly narrow. The floor had a long ridge down the middle, but it was better.

  Suddenly, the boat rocked in a long, shuddering heave, reverberating in O’Toole’s head.

  ‘She’s come off the mud,’ said the girl, softly.

  ‘Shipboard romance,’ said O’Toole thickly. Floating, the floor seemed gentler.

  ‘My sweet, my sweet,’ said O’Toole.

  The boat swayed softly on the incoming tide.

  IX

  O’TOOLE and the girl were having breakfast in a rundown restaurant in the King’s Road, the first they had found open. In the window a peeling gold-letter sign said TEAS backwards. On the counter was a glass case containing cigarettes, staling buns and fruit pies in boxes, and near it a gas-fired coffee-machine. The chrome on the machine had been polished off in places, showing copper underneath. A notice said ORDINARY COFFEE, 8d. CUP. Around them, honest working men were consuming sausages and mash and egg and chips.

  O’Toole and the girl were drinking ordinary coffee out of thick chipped mugs. He felt as if he had been extensively tenderised by the iron spine of the boat. The girl looked fresh. Tough people here, thought O’Toole.

  ‘You know, this country has some marvellous old traditions,’ he said. The girl’s mouth was full. ‘Look at that.’ He read a sign over business premises across the road. ‘Thomas Crapper and Sons, Sanitary Engineers, by Royal Appointment.’

  The girl twisted round to look. ‘Don’t start on the Royal Family again,’ she said.

  ‘It couldn’t be a coincidence,’ said O’Toole. ‘He must have started the whole thing himself.’

  ‘Who started what?’

  ‘Crapper. The original of the gentleman dapper probably stepped right out here into the King’s Road.’

  ‘Stepped out of what?’

  ‘The original crapper. Dunny. Jakes. Cabinet.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the loo.’

  ‘Is that the word? Loo.’

  ‘I thought Sir Walter Raleigh invented them.’