Alfie (15 page)

When Lily came back into the room it was hard to believe she was the same woman I’d been lying on the grass with aside of old Father Thames. I mean all the worries and troubles of a woman in her situation had settled round her face. They don’t improve a face. I began to wish I’d listened to the little man on my shoulder.

‘I’ve got the money,’ she said, dipping into her handbag. ‘Thirty pounds, all in ones, just like you said. Here you are – for when he comes.’

I looked down at the notes and the thought crossed my mind that it couldn’t have been easy for her to rustle that lot together. The idea even struck me that it would have been a nice little stroke if I pushed the money back into her handbag and said, ‘This is on me, gal.’ But as a matter of fact I couldn’t. I’d met one geezer the day before who had an old second-hand Riley for sale and he wanted a hundred and ten quid for it. I’d knocked him down to ninety-five, for although there isn’t a good 
sale for that kind of car, I knew if I got one of these student types interested I’d get a hundred and fifty for it. Anyway that had more or less cleaned me out of ready.

‘Don’t give it to me,’ I said. ‘Here, when I ask for it pretend you’ve only got twenty-five, if you see what I mean. He’ll not go back once he’s here. And he might have more mercy, if you’ve got the money.’

I was also a bit windy in case anything did go wrong, you can never be sure, so I said to her: ‘Remember, Lily, this has got nothing to do with me. I’m just helping you out as a friend. That’ll put me in the clear. Got me, gal?’

She nodded. You don’t like bringing up that side of it at a time like that, but what good will it do to have you doing porridge and she’s pushing up the daisy roots? After that we somehow ran out of chat, and I was glad when I heard a knock on the door. ‘I expect this’ll be him, now, Lily,’ I said, ‘the medical pranktitioner, as they call him.’ I went and opened the door.

I’d never seen the chap, although I’d had him described to me by the bloke who put me on to him. I’d even had to telephone him at a certain telephone box because he was that scared of his telephone being tapped, or being trapped by the police. Well, he was a big chap, about forty-five, with horn-rims, and he wore a long dark overcoat, a trilby hat, and to look at him he could have been a National Assistance supervisor, or an embalmer.

He came straight in when I opened the door, but he 
never said a word. The first thing he did after having a quick look at us both, was to look round the room. He went under the bed, behind doors, into a wardrobe. I was mystified for the minute until it struck me that he must have been making sure the law wasn’t in hiding.

‘Well, here we are,’ I said at last, when he’d finally stopped prying about.

‘What do you mean,’ he said, ‘here we are?’

I know you’ve got to be cautious in that line of business, but I did feel he was coming it a bit strong.

‘I mean you’re at the right place,’ I said to him. ‘This is Mrs Clamacraft,’ I said, ‘the young lady what I told you about.’

‘No names,’ he said, ‘no names.’

Lily put out her hand and said: ‘Pleased to meet you.’ I suppose under the circumstances it was true but it sounded a bit funny to my ear. He seemed in two minds about shaking her hand but then he must have decided there could be no harm in it, and he gave it a polite touch. We all three stood there. Lily didn’t know what to say and it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anything. He was letting us make all the moves. If there was a hidden microphone anywhere he wasn’t going to commit himself on it.

‘Have you got your gear with you?’ I said.

‘Gear?’ he said.

‘Well you know,’ I said, ‘your—’ I didn’t like coming out with the word
instruments
in front of Lily.

He didn’t answer.

‘Right,’ I said, trying a new tack, ‘I’ll go out whilst you 
examine the young lady, or I could go into the kitchen in case you need me.’

He seemed to take the huff at this. ‘Why should I examine this lady?’ he said.

‘You’ve got to, ain’t you,’ I said, ‘before you do it.’

‘Before I do what?’ he said. He was a real old slyboots.

Lily couldn’t make out what all the performance was in aid of. ‘Be quiet, Alfie,’ she said. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘Steady up, gal,’ I said. He was getting me a bit needled. ‘You are the bloke,’ I said, ‘the gentleman I spoke to on the telephone on Thursday night, aren’t you?’

He doesn’t say a single dickybird one way or another, and Lily turns to me: ‘Alfie, be careful – or we’ll get into trouble.’

This geezer takes a good look at Lily, and he doesn’t need telling that she’s not acting. He seems to relax a bit then and he speaks to Lily in a very nice way.

‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ he tells her. ‘Just sit down on the chair there and calm yourself.’ Then he turns to me: ‘Sit down,’ he says.

Once he’s got us both sitting down he puts his hands behind his back. ‘Now I must have a serious talk with you both,’ he says. ‘Are you two married?’

‘Us two married!’ I said. ‘No, definitely not. She’s a married woman but I’m a single man.’

He begins to pace about, stopping now and again to take a sharp look at us. 

‘Is there any chance of you two marrying in the future?’ he said.

‘I very much doubt it,’ I said. ‘What do you say, Lily?’

Lily didn’t speak. Some things are not even worth an answer.

‘But you are the putative father?’ he said to me. He seemed to have it in for me.

‘The what!’ I said. ‘Who – me, I’m nothing. I’m just obliging a friend. Isn’t that so, Lily?’

Lily nodded. For a minute it seemed that her mind was far away.

‘I find that very hard to imagine,’ he said, looking hard at me. His eyes had this way of boring into you. It was worse than being in the dock. I can see he’s as good as calling me a liar, but I don’t feel it’s worth arguing about.

Lily suddenly turned to him: ‘You are the man who is going to help me?’ she said.

‘Her old man is in a sanatorium,’ I said, ‘and she’s had a moral lapse if you see what I mean. Now she’s turned to me because she had no one else to turn to. I knew her husband, see. Isn’t that so, Lily? It won’t never happen again – I can promise you that.’ Why the hell I should be promising him anything I do not know – after all he’d come to do a job and earn himself thirty nicker. ‘Now the reason she needs helping out is because her marriage would look very dodgy if her husband was to come out at this stage of the game,’ I said. ‘Or to stay in for that matter. He’d know, see, And she’s got three other kids as 
well. Now you’ve got it all in a nutshell.’

‘Where do you come into it?’ he said.

‘I’m just obliging her as a friend,’ I said. ‘She’d no place to go.’

I could see there was nothing under the sun would ever make him believe me. And it made me mad to feel how unfair he was to me, because I
could
have been helping her out. He’s not to know of our swift session on the grass that Sunday afternoon. It might give you a lot of pleasure, but it certainly causes you some pain. This geezer was enjoying the cross-examination, I felt.

‘I hope you both realise the seriousness of this case,’ he began. He was talking to us both but he was eyeing me. ‘To terminate a pregnancy after more than twenty-eight days is a criminal offence – punishable in a court of law by seven years’ imprisonment. Do you both understand?’

This was the last thing I was expecting – to be talked at like this. I’d done my best. I felt like calling the whole thing off there and then.

‘I see what you mean,’ I said. I found I was moving over to his side. It felt to me like Lily was causing a lot of trouble. Not that she could help it.

He began pacing up and down again: ‘Not only that,’ he said, ‘but it’s a crime against the unborn child. It’s a sin against Nature. It’s a course never to be embarked upon lightly.’ He knew how to preach, I’ll say that for him. He left you with nothing to say.

‘Therefore,’ he went on, ‘I must ask you to consider all the circumstances thoroughly before you go through 
with it. Since afterwards it will be too late to change your minds.’

All I wanted at that moment was to get them both out of my place. I can see I’ve made a big mistake getting myself involved at all. I’ve always found that if you leave people alone in this life they’ll always work their own way out. It doesn’t do to interfere at all.

He looked at Lily after a great long pause: ‘Have you given the matter your fullest consideration?’ he said.

Lily looked at him: ‘I’ve no way out,’ she said. She hadn’t either.

‘And you wish to go through with it?’ he said.

I thought I noticed a touch of relief in his voice, as though he had been afraid for a moment that he might have overplayed his hand.

‘Yes, I must,’ said Lily, ‘I must find someone to do it – if you won’t.’

I think he enjoyed that little stroke. His face stayed solemn, but not as severe.

‘Then I might be able to help you,’ he said.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you very much,’ said Lily.

Take it easy, gal, I thought – after all, you are paying him.

He began to take his big coat off. As he do I spot a poacher’s pocket inside. Sticking out the top of it was a brown instrument-case. His entire manner changed, and he looked like a parson who has come down out of the pulpit, and is going to get on with the service without any further messing about. He turned to me. ‘Now have you got the money?’ he said. 

‘Eh! Oh the money?’ I said. ‘The young lady has it.’

‘It’ll be forty pounds,’ he said.

‘
Forty
!’ cried Lily.

‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Thirty pounds is what I understood. That’s what you always charge.’

He hesitated for a second and then said: ‘Very well, give me thirty. But it should really be forty.’

Lily opened her bag and made to hand me the money. I quickly slipped five pounds of it back into the bag and began to count the rest. I thought to myself: if he can go down ten, he can go down another five.

‘Lily,’ I said. ‘You’ve only twenty-five pounds here. Is that all you’ve got gal?’ I turned to him: ‘I could let you have the other five tomorrow.’

‘Out of the question,’ he said. And I can see he meant it.

He stands there and waits, and Lily tries to dip into her bag to salvage the other five notes, but I stop her. I take my last fiver out of my pocket and put it with the twenty-five and hand it over to him. He gets hold of the roll like a bank clerk and counts it quickly but very carefully. It’s not the first time he’s counted a bundle of notes. Then he puts it into his back pocket and carefully fastens the flap button down. Short of slicing the pocket right out with a razor blade, the whizz mob would have had a hard job getting it.

Once he’d got hold of that money his manner got very brisk, and all sign of the preaching parson vanished. ‘I’ll use the bed in that other room,’ he said. ‘Have you got the brown paper?’

‘Yes,’ I said ‘four sheets.’ 

‘I shall need some boiling water and a clean bowl,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll get it for you out of the kitchen. I won’t be long.’

Now that the time has come Lily turns a bit nervous, she goes silent and pale. This geezer seems to spot it and for a moment he looks quite human.

‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ he tells her. ‘Come along with me.’

Lily picks up this little canvas bag in which she has her things and lets him lead her across the room and into the other room. He gave one look at me and then closed the door.

I felt choked to see old Lily going into the room with that bloke. I didn’t even know his name. I’d been told to ask for Mr Smith, but that wasn’t his real name. It was only when he went out of the room and I was able to think in cold blood, that I tumbled him for the taker-on he was. His preachifying had struck clean home, whilst he was doing it, but once he’d turned his back I realised what it was all put there for. ‘It’s a crime against the unborn child – it’s a course never to be embarked upon lightly – examine your consciences—’ It was an act, but the sort of act he could salve his own conscience with, if you see what I mean. He’d begun to believe himself. Then at the same time he was preparing his defence in advance in case he made a slip. All that he’d said to us would sound very good in a court of law – all except the money bit. I could see him telling the judge: ‘Not my fault that she died, my Lord – I begged them not to do it. I appealed to their consciences. I only helped them in case the woman
attempted anything herself, and worse should happen. The woman said she would have to find someone.’

I’ll bet he gives them that spiel at every house he goes to – he was word perfect. It was all a load of cobblers. His true self came out when he said: ‘
Have you got the money
?
’ You should have seen the look that came into his eyes then. I wonder what it is about money that seems to get into people’s blood. We all like it, but it has got some people really in its clutches. ‘Twenty-five! out of the question – I must have thirty.’ And to think I never tumbled him at the start.

The kettle began to boil and I went to the door and whispered: ‘Your water’s boiling.’ He came in with his sleeves rolled up, carrying his instrument-case. ‘A saucepan,’ he said.

As luck would have it Annie had bought a new saucepan and I’d never used it since she went, so it was spotless clean. He rinsed it out and then took out a big syringe, put it in the saucepan, poured the boiling water over it and put it back on the gas-ring and let it boil away. Then he got my plastic bowl, rinsed it out with hot water, poured more hot water in, added some Dettol, and began to scrub, scour and wash it clean. Actually, it was quite clean when he started. But not clean enough for him. When he had finally got it to his satisfaction he put a new lot of hot water into it, some more Dettol, then got a piece of his own soap, his own nail brush, and began to scrub up his hands. And the way he went at them you wouldn’t think they were his own.

He was in no hurry, by the looks of things, and he 
went on scrubbing and scrubbing his nails and his hands until I felt he’d scrub the skin off. When at last he’d finished he got his own little towel out and he wiped his hands scrupulously clean. I mean he went round the nails and the finger-tips and one thing and another until I’ll bet there wasn’t a cleaner pair of hands in London. I don’t think he cared for me watching him. Then he finished off by waving them about in the air to dry them. Then he emptied the bowl, rinsed it out, poured some more hot water in, added some cold, and some Dettol in, and blow me down if he don’t start washing his maulers all over again.

Know what, he only repeated the operation three times. Talk about a nut case. I was that ashamed for him that after the second time I pretended I didn’t even notice. What the hell can he be washing away? I thought. On top of which you could hear this syringe bobbing up and down in the saucepan like he was boiling lobsters for lunch. And whilst this was going on I began to wonder why a bachelor man like myself ever has anything to do with a woman, because you’ve got to admit it’s a messy business from start to finish. I’d always thought what sorry sods queers are, how they’re missing out on the love stakes, never to know the lovely soft feel of a woman’s body, but as I watched this bloke scrubbing and wiping away, and I thought of little Lily lying on the bed, I could at least understand there were certain troubles they were saved.

When he’d finally finished he fishes the syringe out with a pair of tongs, and he asks me to put some more 
hot water in the handbowl in case he wants to wash his hands again, and some Dettol and the rest of it, and bring it into the other room. So I do all this and I go in. I was quite surprised to see how he’d got his stall decked out. On a chair was a paper with a white cloth over it, and his syringe and things. On the bed there’s a rubber sheet and a white cloth partly over it. Lily, wearing a little thin dressing-gown, is lying on the bed. I put the bowl of hot water and Dettol on a low chest of drawers. ‘You have locked the door?’ he said.

‘What door?’ I said.

‘The door,’ he said, ‘lock and bolt it so that nobody can come in.’

Then he went to the window and spied out making sure nobody could look in. There was a great big empty derelict bombed area never been rebuilt, so he was quite safe, but even that didn’t satisfy him. He went and half pulled the curtains across.

‘Lock the door at once,’ he said, ‘and bolt it. Don’t let anybody in.’ He wasn’t a bloke to argue with so I went out of the room, closed the door and then locked and bolted the other door.