A Tangled Web Page 9
Hugo for his part, whatever uneasiness he may have felt at first on Daisy’s behalf, soon lost it. For Daisy was a great success. Her malleability and her zest for life carried her with flying colours through an experience which would have degraded or broken any other kind of woman. Young toughs boasted to her about their girls, consulted her about their flash clothes; older lags reminisced sentimentally about the mothers whose hearts they had broken, and gave her tips for the Dogs: and Daisy listened, offering admiration or sensible advice, a sort of White Goddess amongst the savage tribe. The women were at first more suspicious: then, seeing that she had eyes for none but Hugo, they too accepted her. No one would have tried anything on with a girl who had Hugo and Tacker at her back: but the quality of innocence, which her beauty still emanated, made itself positively felt, so that the foul-mouthed restrained themselves in her presence and the cynical were temporarily softened.
Above all, she brought luck. To the criminal, superstitious and of low intelligence as he usually is, luck seems a kind of divine grace: he admires the lucky operator as a soldier admires the lucky general. Although Hugo and Tacker did not at this time attempt any big coups, they were uniformly successful in a small way: and this was attributed to Daisy, giving her the status of a mascot. It became the practice, indeed, amongst those of the confraternity who knew her, to seek her out before going to play the dogs or crack a crib, and to touch her dress as if touching wood. The queer loyalty she thus inspired—the nearest thing to affection and disinterestedness, perhaps, which these warped, egotistical creatures would ever feel—produced its own reward: treacherous as small boys, selfish as gold-diggers, they nevertheless were protective towards Daisy: to have let slip a word which might get her and Hugo into trouble would have been like betraying the tribal totem.
Theirs was a perpetually shifting community. Members would vanish into hiding, or prison; new faces would appear, to be greeted familiarly or with reserve. The associations, so rapidly formed—for criminals can recognise one another as easily as compatriots in a foreign country—were as quickly broken: to maintain them long would attract the attention of informers and busies; or the partners in an enterprise might quarrel over methods, distribution of the spoil, suspicion that one partner was itching to double-cross the others. These men veered frantically between devotion to the accomplice of the moment and a permanent rankling mistrust. Even the criminal argot was changing constantly, like war-time codes.
During that winter they moved eight times to new lodgings—a precautionary measure on Hugo’s part. The association with Tacker was dropped, also for safety’s sake, after the pair had made a killing which enabled Hugo to take Daisy into the country for Christmas. Then, their money nearly exhausted, they returned to the round of cheap rooms, fried-fish suppers, pin-table arcades, the mooching from day to day, the furtive recognitions in pub or dance hall. This desultory, aimless life, varied only by hours of tension when Hugo was out on a job, had not yet begun to pall upon Daisy. She loved the crowds, the animation of the East End: Hugo was a perfect companion, who could make a jaunt out of a stroll down the street; and knowing she was in it up to the neck with him now gave Daisy a deep contentment. They were at war with society; and criminals, like fighting soldiers, live in the moment.
How long this might have gone on, nobody can say. But towards the end of April Daisy found herself pregnant. For some days she did not dare tell Hugo. Then one night, while he was reading aloud to her—a habit they had recently formed—the cosy domesticity of it encouraged her to speak. Hugo’s reaction was not at all what she had expected. His face lightened with surprise, and then a shadow came over it.
“Oh, Daisy,” he said at last. “My poor Daisy. Now what have I done to you?”
“Are you angry?” She could still be timid with him.
“Silly girl. It was bound to happen, wasn’t it?”
Sitting on the arm of her chair, he gently kissed her. His face was darkened with a sadness which seemed like remorse.
“It’s all right, darling,” he said, but more to himself than to her. “Don’t worry. I’ll stick by you.”
“I’m not worrying.”
His eyes glanced round the sordid, untidy little room, with a look of repudiation.
“You needn’t worry. Jacko will look after it.”
Daisy could not help stiffening, shrinking away from him. As if expecting a blow, she hunched her shoulders.
“Oh no, Hugo. I won’t—I want to have your baby.” It came out more loudly, defiantly than she meant. There was a brief silence. Daisy felt his gaze upon her averted head, felt he was making some mental adjustment. His voice did not ring quite true when at last he said:
“Why, of course, love. What did you think I meant? Of course we’ll have it.”
He went on to explain that Jacko could do the pre-natal treatment and wangle her a bed in some hospital. How lucky they’d got a tame medico on a string: it would obviate all the embarrassment of Daisy’s having to declare herself to the National Health Service as an unmarried woman.
It was an embarrassment Hugo could relieve her of, any day and more simply. But such was her gratitude to him for not opposing her about the baby that, at the moment, the idea of marriage hardly entered her head. Entirely confident of his love, accustomed so long to living with him as wife with husband, Daisy had no need of the formal reassurance of marriage-lines: they could never mean more, now, than a practical convenience. She did not even ask herself why Hugo failed to suggest it; and she had her reward for this when, later, he said:
“You’re a marvel, Daisy. Any other girl would have jumped at this chance for putting the screws on me.”
“But we are married, sweetheart,” she replied simply. “Marriages aren’t made in Registrars’ offices.”
“I would, if you really want it,” he blurted out.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time. What do we care?”
“Young Thomas will care.”
“Young—who?”
“The baby, love. Thomas Bland-Chesterman. Blue eyes and gold hair, just like his beautiful mum.”
“No, I want him to be like you.”
“Good God, that’s a crazy sort of wish,” he replied, half seriously. “Give the poor little brute a chance.”
“He’s going to be the image of you. You’re my ideal.”
“Now you look like Lady Hamilton at Prayer again.”
Hugo’s words were lightly teasing, but his voice was unsteady; and suddenly he knelt down, burying his head in her lap.
Two days later, having made an appointment, Daisy went to see Jacko. They had kept up with him during the last six months, going to dinner from time to time at Albert Grove, and occasionally, when they were at rock-bottom, borrowing money, which Daisy was always scrupulous to repay. Jacko—in her presence, at any rate—never showed curiosity about their new way of life. “Still slumming?” he would ask quizzically, then turn the conversation.
“And what can I do for you, my pretty maid?” he said now, leading her into the dusky, veiled little house. “You were very mysterious on the telephone.”
“I want to consult you, professionally,” Daisy had thought up this form of words on her way here, and brought it out with a stilted air which made the man smile. He opened the consulting-room door for her, however, motioned her to a chair, and sat down at his desk, regarding her gravely; it was all done with a sort of ironic exaggeration, as though he were an adult playing a doctor-and-patient game with a child.
“I’m—I think I’m going to have a baby.” She spoke at once, breathlessly. “Hugo said you would help.”
For a few moments Jacko was silent. His lips moved, as if he were savouring something, some new sensation, rather dubiously.
“Well, well. And you want me to—”
“I’m going to have the baby,” she put in, forestalling what she feared he would say.
“Good for you,” he smoothly replied. “The father is reconciled to the idea?”
“I’ll let you know the result in a couple of days,” he said, as she put on her clothes behind a screen. “No doubt we’ll get a positive reaction. You’re a strong, healthy girl, and I don’t anticipate any complications. Any physical complications, I mean. But come and see me again in a month’s time.”
“Will it—cost a great deal?” Daisy asked, as she prepared to go.
“Now don’t you start worrying about that. Leave it all to old Jacko.”
He had become human again—the man she knew. Gratefully, she leant forward, putting her cheek to his. His arms went round her: then his body was clinging to hers, softly, strangely, like a twining plant or a cobweb, with a kind of brittle, weak tenacity. And after a few moments he had released her, given her an unfathomable look and a brisk pat on the shoulder. She left the house, feeling obscurely sorry for him, so lonely there, so unloved.
10. Tragedy at Southbourne
Daisy said something of this to Hugo after she got back.
“Poor little Jacko? Don’t you believe it,” he replied, in the half admiring, half contemptuous tone he so often adopted when talking of his friend. “He likes living that way. Probably gets a kick out of terminating little embryos, too. He’s as hard as nails, really.”
“Oh, Hugo, but he can be so sympathetic!”
“Emotional frigging, that’s what it is. The female patients love it. Oh, you’ve got to hand it to him.”
“I think you’re absolutely beastly about him.”
“So you’ve fallen for that bedside manner too? Ah, what hopes it has raised in the girls! But it’s the nearest he ever gets to—”
“Don’t be so foul, Hugo. It’s not like you. And why do you keep on with him if you despise him so?”
“I don’t. I rather admire him. He’s damned good company, and he’s useful. He’d never let you down once you’re really in with him. Why grudge him his vicarious pleasures?”
Their talk blew up to a row. Daisy had often felt the relationship between the two men as a closed circle, from which she was excluded, a freemasonry into which Hugo escaped from her; and this made her aggressive. But it was the last quarrel they were to have. As that chilly spring merged into a wet and doleful summer, Daisy throve on her pregnancy, growing ever more placid and self-possessed. During this period, Hugo continually astonished her by his tenderness, solicitousness. He insisted on their moving away from the East End and the circle of tough customers where he had been so much in his element. He found them furnished rooms in a relatively respectable street near Russell Square, and his old restlessness hardly ever showed itself there: he seemed quite content to sit at home with Daisy, or take her walking in the parks when one of the rare bright days encouraged them to go out. They would talk endlessly about the baby, spinning plans for him as though the whole world would be at his feet. How strange, thought Daisy, for Jacko to have said that Hugo would be hopelessly irresponsible as a father: and Jacko’s misjudging of him made her feel indulgent towards Jacko himself, no less than she was touched by this new Hugo, so that when the three of them were together she felt completely at ease.
Where the money came from to support their present way of life, whether it was borrowed or stolen, Daisy did not know; for it was part of Hugo’s solicitude, that she should not be worried by his affairs, and if he had any criminal enterprises afoot, he did not talk to her about them. From time to time he went out alone, telling her that he was looking for digs or a small flat where the landlord did not object to children. After the lease of their Maida Vale rooms terminated, Hugo had given her £50, the proceeds from the sale of his furniture there, and this money she kept to provide the necessaries for the baby. Fatalistic as she was, her condition made Daisy still less anxious about the morrow. Her life was concentrated upon the life within her, so that everything else, except Hugo, seemed remote, unreal, un-urgent, a dream which demanded nothing of her: but this unreality was different from the oppression she had experienced during her first months with Hugo; it was comforting, enveloping her like a cocoon.
So the weeks drifted by. In the first days of September, London drew breath again after a stuffy, overcast August. Asters, like children’s windmills, spun their coloured rays in the gardens, and the clouds, as if some celestial traffic-jam had at last been broken up, bowled cheerfully across the sky. On one of these blowing days, about the middle of the month, Hugo returned in high excitement to the room where Daisy was knitting.
“We’re going for a holiday, love. A second honeymoon. How do you like that?”
“Wonderful! But we can’t afford it, can we?”
Hugo tugged a roll of notes from his trouser-pocket and scattered them over her head.
“Danae in a shower of gold! Where do you think these came from?”
The girl shook her head, laughing up at him.
“Old Jacko,” he said.
“Oh, darling, ought we to be borrowing money from him?”
“It’s not a loan. It’s a free gift. Or rather—”
Hugo gave her one of those merry, crafty glances which never failed to enchant her—“or rather, it’s conscience-money.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well now, hold tight and I’ll divulge all.” Hugo sat down on the floor and laid his head on her knee.
“Do I look different?” he asked, gazing up at her.
“You look jolly pleased with yourself.”
“The witness must confine herself to answering the question. Yes or No?”
“No.”
“Hell’s bells! I suggest to you that I look like a reformed character.”
“Sweetheart, what is all this about?”
“My poor great beautiful nit-witted cluck, I’m telling you. You may have noticed my occasional absences from our residence recently. I was not, curiously enough, about my unlawful occasions. I was looking for a job.”
“A job?” Daisy breathed incredulously.
“Yep. A humble post in the great army of mugs.”
“Hugo! But why?”
“Aren’t you pleased?”
“Ye-es. Yes, of course. But—”
“All that sort of thing”—he made a sweeping gesture, as if to include the East End pubs, the wide boys, the amusement arcades, the shifting, feckless, raffish life they had lived—“well, it suited me. And you were angelic about it. But it’s not good enough for young Thomas.”
The girl began to cry.
“Extraordinary, the effects of paternity,” Hugo went on. “Sort of throw-back to my lily-white origins. Never thought I’d have a relapse like this. Anyway, I got a nibble of a job the other day—selling advertising space. Nearly got it on the strength of my forceful and winning personality alone. Unfortunately the twirps came out from under the old spell just in time to ask for references. Which is where Jacko comes in.”
“Jacko?” Daisy had quite forgotten how the conversation had started.
“Yes, Dopey. I needed two references. My company-commander gave me quite a hot one, years ago of course. So, Jacko being the only other respectable ha-ha type I know well enough to ask, I applied to him. But the old bastard wouldn’t play.”
“Oh, darling! Surely he couldn’t be so mean?”
“He could, and he was. One sees his point, of course. He’s got to be damned careful about preserving his façade; if it came out that he’d recommended a b
loke who’d been over the wall, it’d do him positively no good at all. Actually, he was a bit abashed at refusing. Hence these smackers.” Hugo began to collect the notes off the floor. “And hence our holiday. Where shall we go?”
“But oughtn’t you to have another go at the job first, sweetheart?”
“Jacko said you were peakish—though I must say you look blooming to me—and you ought to have some sea air. And secondly, this job thing needs a bit more organising than I realised.”
Hugo explained how difficult it was for a man with a prison record to get honest work—about as hard as entering a foreign country without a passport. There was a society for helping discharged prisoners, but he had not availed himself of its services, and it was a bit late in the day to do so now. Any employers would ask him what work he had been doing, and almost every employer would demand proof of it. “Can’t get anywhere nowadays without bumf,” said Hugo disgustedly: this meant, in his case, forged references, and someone to answer for them should an employer decide to take them up. The whole thing was a bind.
If there was any wrong in Hugo’s working out a scheme of false pretences in order to go straight, the simple-minded girl did not see it. At the moment, her feelings were confused—indignation with a world which made it so difficult for a man to reform, gratitude to Hugo that he was aiming to do so for the sake of their child, and a certain bewilderment at the idea of being uprooted from a way of life she had come to accept. Her old phantasy of Hugo as the honest breadwinner, now it looked like being realised, seemed less unequivocally desirable. He was such a volatile chap: if he went through with it, her instinct warned her, might he not tire quickly of dull, respectable work, and unload his resentment upon herself and the child, as if they had trapped him into a situation intolerable to him?
Such doubts, however, did not trouble Daisy for long. Her will had always shaped itself to his, and in her present condition she was only the more acquiescent. Like water, she reflected his moods, sparkling or gloomy, rippling or sullenly congealed. Just now it was all light and movement; and if there was something feverish in Hugo’s gaiety, she had felt that too often before to be disquieted by it. As they went down to Brighton, huddled together arm-in-arm at the corner of the railway carriage, Daisy knew she was the luckiest girl in the world.