Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (34 page)

The evidences of the shop detective - a tired, pleasant-faced young woman - and the inspector from the police station were taken. It all seemed so small an affair - some artificial violets valued at two and sixpence and a packet of gift wrappers valued at sixpence, but Gerald thought of Mrs Salad's habitual bunch of Parmas. He noticed that she was not wearing them in court and then saw that the fat, red-faced little man called Rammage had them on his lap. He seemed to be a 'sort of universal help. Indeed, Frank sat there like a kindly but determined mental nurse ready to receive her charge after a routine examination by the doctors. Vin had replaced his usual languor by an attempt to sit in an erect, military position. The effect of the police court had brought him back to the efforts he had made to impress as an ordinary, straightforward young citizen during his own trials. All the reptilian, passive intelligence that usually showed in his hard face was replaced by a negative, dull stupidity. With his sallow skin and his adenoidal open-mouthed expression, he looked not the plain young chap he hoped, but constipated, almost cretinous.

To Gerald's irritation, what seemed a cruel length of time was taken up by the magistrate's inquiries about the nature of the gift wrappers. What purpose did they serve? Were they sold separately from the gifts they were intended to accompany? How had they acquired this name? He examined the small packet itself at length. Eventually it became apparent that the packets were placed in each stall so that customers might buy them with any articles they chose to send away as gifts. 'I see,' he said, 'then they are hardly a separate article,' and he refused to consider them separately in the charge.

At last Mrs Salad was asked if she had anything to say in exoneration of her action. It was difficult to make out the meaning of the trembling croak that came from her and she was asked to repeat her remark more loudly. This time, to Gerald at any rate, the words were perfectly clear. 'I never took up with the trash,' she said. To Gerald, too, the meaning was perfectly clear; it was simply an affirmation of her social code, necessary, no doubt, in her mind because of the socially humiliating position in which she found herself.

The magistrate interpreted her words differently. 'You will have to learn,' he said, 'that you cannot wilfully take things that do not belong to you, however little value you may attach to them. This is a very serious offence, for which I
could
send you to prison. I am counting it in your favour that you have not attempted to deny your actions. On the other hand, I see no particular sign that you are sorry for what you have done. However, as this is your first offence and you are an old woman, I propose to fine you the sum of ten pounds. But listen very carefully to what I have to say. If you appear here again before me on a charge of this kind, I shall have no hesitation whatever in sending you to prison.'

They all drove back to Earl's Court in Gerald's Daimler. They made a light-hearted party. Mrs Salad, it was true, was very shaky and still a little tearful. However, she pinned her Parma violets back on to her coat and dabbed a little lavender water behind her ears with a laçe-edged hanky. 'I didn't intend to make no statement,' she said, 'I told 'em. I don't intend to make no statement, I said. But I never took up with the trash in my life.' She mumbled these sentences to herself so often that Gerald began to wonder if her ordeal had disturbed her mind.

Vin lay back on the cushions of the car as though he had at last come into his own again. His customary drawl was quite restored when he spoke. 'Well, ten quid's not going to put us on Assistance. I don't know what sort of class 'e thought we were.' He seemed aggrieved at the smallness of the fine.

Gerald felt he must remonstrate at this interpretation. 'I don't think that's quite the point,' he said. 'These fines are fixed by law, you know. But you shouldn't think that because he only fined your grandmother ten pounds that he didn't mean every word he said about sending her to prison if it happens again.'

Frank Rammage clucked appreciatively, but he was too happy to have another unhappy charge coming under his roof to say anything. He kept looking at Mrs Salad as though he had purchased a peculiarly satisfactory antique - one absolutely guaranteed fake.

Vin listened respectfully to what Gerald said. 'I see what you mean,' he said. He was not only impressed by Gerald's wealth and position, but even more by his elegant, military-style good looks. It must also be said that he was genuinely grateful for Gerald's kindness to his grandmother, of whom he was very fond. 'That lawyer friend of yours is on to a nice, easy thing,' he said to Frank. 'He did bloody all for his money. Not that
we
should worry. It's not as if we were going to pay,' he added with a pleased smile.

'I've already paid Mr Levett,' snapped Frank.

'All right.' Vin lay back and closed his eyes. 'If you like to be the Muggins.' He did not feel the same admiration for Frank as for Gerald and he saw proportionately less need for gratitude.

Mrs Salad was enough recovered when they arrived to grumble at the large room Frank had provided for her. He had distempered it mustard in a fit of decorating enthusiasm. 'I shan't sleep in the yeller, dear,' she said. 'There's them that's made their bed of gold, and I'm not one of them.'

Gerald said embarrassedly, 'I think it's a lovely room, Mrs Salad. Look, you can see into the gardens of the Square.'

'Ah!' she said, peering dimly through the window, 'and nice goings on there'd be, no doubt.' She felt the mattress. 'I don't know 'ow I'll lay on that,' she said, 'I've always slept on the feathers. Mr Salad wouldn't have me sleep on nothing else. Light I was when 'e married me. 'Is little featherweight 'e called me and feathers it was I'd to sleep on. And 'ave done to this day.' She poked the bed with one of her gnarled, ringed old fingers. 'Is it one of them cork mattresses?'  she asked Frank.

'Horsehair,' he said, his little mouth pouting in his determination to endure her petulance.

'Ah!' she said, 'coarse 'air more like. That don't do for the sensitive skins like what I've got. Now Mr Salad's sister, she'd got more the rough skin, like emery paper it was, as 'er own
'usband
said, and 'e'd touched it often enough.'

Even Vin's affection for his grandmother had been tried long enough. He turned away from the wardrobe mirror before which he had been arranging his hair. 'Shut up,' he said in a hard voice; 'you're lucky to be in a decent bed at all. Personally,' he added in more delicate tones, 'I should advise you to put your feet up and sleep it off.' Vin's government of his grandmother, it was clear, was to be an autocratic one.

Mrs Salad, however, did not demur; her recent experience had, temporarily at any rate, fitted her for a more obedient role. Her hands trembled, so that she had the greatest difficulty in removing her toque and veil.

'Oh! Let me do it,' said Vin irritably. 'I'm sure I don't know,' he went on as he removed the little, battered object, 'when veils like this were last worn, short of the Chelsea Arts Ball. Well, say goodbye to the Professor and thank him for all the trouble he's taken.'

Once more Mrs Salad took refuge in a general coy glance at all three men. 'My gentlemen,' she said again. She seemed unable to address herself to Gerald directly in the new circumstances.

'Don't get into any more scrapes,' he said, 'and come and see me when you feel inclined. I think you're going to be very happy in this nice room.'

Mrs Salad gave him a look which was not encouraging.

As soon as they were outside on the landing, Vin took up his grandmother's complaints. 'You'll have to find another room for her, Frank. I said that mustard would be cruel to the old lady's looks. I can't say I liked what I saw in the mirror myself with that background, which shows you chose wrong. You can move that little bitch Mona from the pink room. Pink'd be more kind to the old lady.'

'I'll see,' said Frank.

Vin gave him a sharp, sidelong glance. 'Yeah, you'll see to it right away,' he said.

Frank did not answer. He opened the door to his room on the ground floor. 'Well, I think we can all do with a drink,' he said. 'I waited till now because I didn't think that would do the old lady any good in her present state.'

'I think I've got to go,' said Gerald, looking at his watch.

Frank's fat cheeks shook slightly, he had seemed shy of addressing Gerald from the first moment they had met, but now he gobbled at him. 'I believe you wrote Mrs Salad about Larrie Rourke. I'd like a word with you about that, if you please. Won't you sit down?'

Gerald was about to sit down on a little hard, scarlet-upholstered bentwood chair, but Vin motioned him to the large scarlet armchair. 'Sit there, Professor,' he said. 'You sit on that one,' he ordered Frank to the hard chair and then stretched himself out on the divan. 'Well, get the drinks,' he said.

'I've just sat down,' Frank replied.

'Yeah, we saw that.' Vin yawned, then he turned to Gerald. 'Have a drink,' he said. 'He's saved one on Gran already. Don't let him get away with another.'

'There's no occasion for waste,' Frank asserted.

'Well, that's all right then, 'cos there's no opportunity for it here.'

'I don't like to say anything personal against your son,' Frank began, but the door was half open and a blowzy, red-haired woman of forty-five put her head into the room. 'I'm busy now, Mona,' Frank said. 'Will it do later?'

'That's all right,' Mona said; 'I only wanted to say that I'm taking those six glasses off the bill that you charge me. They were cracked when I borrowed them.'

'All right, duckie,' Frank answered. 'By the way, I'm thinking of moving you into the big room on the first floor.'

'Well, think again,' Mona said.

Vin slithered to his feet. 'I'd like a word with you, Mona dear,' and he followed her out of the room. Their voices could be heard in the passage as Frank spoke.

'That'll be the best way,' he remarked, 'Vin knows what to do.' Then to Gerald's surprise he got up and stood over him, arms akimbo like a caricaturist's washerwoman dressing someone down. 'As I say, I don't ever speak personalities. That doesn't help in life to my belief. But your son's doing wrong, Professor Middleton. I've tried to see him to tell him so, but he won't stoop to hearing the plain truth from a common man like me. I'm casting no aspersions on his feelings for that young chap, there's a good deal too much of that talk these days to my mind.'

Gerald said sharply, 'No, I don't think I should do that if I were you.' He did not know where to place Frank and was anxious to tread carefully.

'What I do say is that it's wrong to take him out of his own sphere,' Frank went on. 'That's a grand house I daresay where your wife lives and he'll learn not to do without while he's there. And then when he has to, he won't know how. Add to which,' he went on. But Vin came into the room.

'She'll move tonight,' he said, and settling himself on the divan again, he lay motionless while Frank was talking.

'Further to which,' Frank continued, 'the boy's got a bad record and I've worked hard to help him. I'd got him a job in a pub around here. I don't say he'd have stuck it, but he might have done. I don't like to see good work ruined.' Frank, his cheeks almost purple with protest, resumed his seat.

'Well,' said Gerald, 'all that's really got nothing to do with me, though you may be right, Mr Rammage. I'm simply concerned to protect my wife from the possibility of being exploited. When I heard this fellow had a criminal record, I didn't like it, but if, as you say, he's trying to reform, I shouldn't like you to suggest that my wife's influence couldn't help him.'

'You've got to help people to help themselves,' said Frank, 'that's what. He needs hard work that boy and a kind word but no spoiling. If that's what he gets there's no reason why he shouldn't turn out as decent a citizen as you or I, he's got all the makings of it.'

Vin rustled very slightly on the divan, then, 'Get you!' he drawled. 'He's got all the makings of a bloody little twister, our little black-eyed "colleen" from Killarney. He'll never go straight, and if he wanted to, the lot he goes around with wouldn't let him. I know.'

Gerald said, 'You mean that he still keeps up with his criminal associates?'  He felt himself stuffier and more pompous every minute in this improbable setting. Vin began to manicure his nails.

'Yes,' he said, looking up for a minute, 'that's what I do mean. You don't want to let 'im stop down at your wife's place.' His accent seemed more cockney and glottal as he got more worked up. 'I should think your son must be a fool to pick that one up. But you get 'im out of your wife's place. That's what I mean.'

Frank grunted disapproval. 'You've no right to talk of the boy that way,' he said.

Vin disregarded him. He put down his nail-file and, folding his hands in his lap, he stared at Gerald with his great dark eyes. 'I tell you what. I know the places 'e goes and the crowd 'e goes with. If there looks like trouble, I'll let you know. 'E'll get into trouble all right sooner or later, but you want to get 'im out before it 'appens.'

Gerald said, 'I hardly like ...'

Vin interpreted Gerald's hesitation as a fear of bothering him rather than of any scruples about having Larrie spied on. 'That's quite all right,' he said, once more very refined, 'I'm only too glad to help someone who's been so marvellous to Gran.' He looked at his very expensive watch. 'I must go,' he cried, 'I told Giacometti I'd be late, but not this late.'

'Can I give you a lift?'  Gerald asked.

'That would be marvellous,' Vin replied, 'but I hardly care to arrive at work in a Daimler.' When he had gone, Frank seemed to relapse into his original shy silence.

'I must be off too,' said Gerald.

Frank made no reply, but he arose and opened the door. 'That was right,' he said, 'what Vin did. The old lady'll sleep better in the pink.'

Before he had reached home, Gerald felt a revulsion from the whole subject of John and Larrie; he cursed Elvira for pushing him into the sordid business; Inge for getting herself into such a situation; himself for having such a son. He reflected that it was unlikely that he would hear any more about the matter; if Vin telephoned he would choke him off.