The Suburbs of Hell Read Free

put me down, Harry Ufford!’ chortled Ena, enjoying herself. ‘No, I can’t stay, I was on my way round to speak to Doris when I saw you. It’s the first time for yonks. When a man cuts down on his beer he just seems to vanish. You look very well, Harry. Younger, thinner in the face.’
    Harry’s guileless vanity responded; he grinned.
    ‘Anyway,’ Ena rattled on, ‘you must come and see me some day at the lighthouse. We’re neighbours, after all.’
    ‘Will do,’ Harry said. ‘Thass a promise. But anyway, Ena, see you again before closin time, I hope.’
    She passed, and he turned back to Frank, his equivocal mate. ‘Thass a great little old gal,’ he said. ‘War widow, you know. She never had things easy, but always bright as a button.’
    ‘You’ve been into her lighthouse, have you?’ Frank asked.
    ‘Oh, yeh, two or three times. She keep that quite nice. All her gear is shabby, like, but thass homely.’
    ‘I and Dave have this fantasy,’ Frank said, ‘of going and knocking on her door. It would be a real Goon Show scene, we reckon. We’d hear her feet coming down a hundred and twelve stairs, then the door would creak open, horror-film stuff, and we’d say: “Is Fred in?” “Fred don’t live here,” she’d say, and the door would slam, and a hundred and twelve footsteps would go away again, into the sky.’
    ‘I can see how that would appeal to you and Dave,’ Harry said, ‘gettin a woman with sixty-one-year-old legs down all them stairs. But she don’t live in the light-room, as that happen. I doubt if she ever goo up there.’
    ‘I’d like to see inside that place,’ mused Frank.
    ‘Well, play your cards right, boy, and you might get an invitation to tea. But if I was you I should prepare myself for it by thinkin of her in a more friendly spirit. I expect you noticed that you
dint
get an invitation just now.’
    ‘Right,’ Frank said, gazing impassively into his beer.
    Behind Harry’s back retired Commander Pryke, lurching a little in passing, bumped into him. He wandered on with a courtly mutter, and went out by the door on to the quayside. Turning at the interruption, Harry saw Paul Ramsey looking at him from his table, and brightened. ‘There’s young Paul,’ he told Frank; ‘I got something to say to him.’
    He took his drink and went over to sit himself in the Commander’s vacated chair, considering the bearded face opposite with benevolence. ‘Well, young man?’
    The beard on the young man’s face produced a not uncommon effect, the line of the moustache making Paul Ramsey seem melancholy and resigned.
    ‘Well what, Harry?’
    ‘Well, whass that you’re smokin in that pipe? That smell to me like King Henry the Eighth’s bedsocks.’
    ‘It’s what I can afford,’ Paul said. ‘Unlike you, I pay duty on what I smoke.’
    ‘Well, less not goo into that. There’s some old customs in this place that a boy of your class and education don’t want to know about.’
    ‘You’re fairly right,’ Paul said. ‘Bourgeois, we Ramseys are. If a policeman knocked on my door, I’d never feel easy with the neighbours again.’
    Outside, the mist was thickening, and the bobbing, gyrating masts had become hard to see.
    ‘Have you had a right rave-up with Captain Bligh?’
    ‘He was okay,’ Paul said. ‘A touch of pepper when he noticed Frank De Vere. He objects to his surname—thinks it’s far too good for him.’
    ‘So that is. De Veres was great people in these parts once. The cream.’
    ‘I could tell the Commander,’ Paul said, ‘something funny about his own name. But he probably knows it.’
    ‘Pryke?’ Harry pondered. ‘Whass funny about Pryke?’
    ‘A few years ago,’ Paul said, ‘I was going through some parish registers for a paper I was writing. In one village I found two families that kept intermarrying. Their names were Prick and Balls.’
    ‘Oh, schoolmaster!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Goo and wash your mouth out, boy.’
    ‘It’s gospel truth.