ventriloquist with very close attention, with his feet on the seat in front, and a bottle of beer in his hand.
'You're not supposed to move your lips!' he shouted at the ventriloquist, after a while. The ventriloquist was telling the doll about 'the boys of the old militia', and Mack carried on drinking and watching. Then came the end of the turn, when the dummy asked us all to 'kindly rise and give a toast to his Majesty the King', at which Mack didn't stand but shouted, 'Kindly leave off, will you?'
I moved along the row of seats towards him. By the time I got to him they were changing the scenery on the stage, and he was having a fight with the chucker-out.
Five minutes later, Mack was telling me how he'd given the other fellow quite a pasting, but he was outside the music hall all the same, and so was I, with no hopes of seeing the bioscope. Mack's black suit had got pretty dusty in his set-to with the chucker-out, and his hat was no longer with him. Over the road was a butcher's shop. The outside gas mantels were all burning, but a line of white turkeys hanging above the window was gradually disappearing as men in aprons walked out of the shop and took them back in. It was almost ten; my dad's place would have been closed long before.
'What I'm looking out for just now,' said Mack as we watched the men work, 'is some nice fresh greens.'
Next to the butcher's was a pub – just a hot little room, really, that was more crowded than it should have been because of a piano and a big wobbling Christmas tree with tapers all lit. It was called the Kingdom of Italy. As Mack walked in ahead of me, the piano started playing on its own. He stood us both what he called 'brain dusters', and all I could say is that they came in very small glasses, which was just as well. There were some pretty women in there, which brought Mack back to talking of fresh greens, green gowns and so on, by which he meant the ladies of the night-houses and the kinds of business that could be conducted with them, and all this made me feel quite hot. After Mack had got us both a couple more brain dusters, I said I was drowning in mysteries. He said 'Give me one, mate.'
Mack was not like anybody I'd met before. He was a man of the world – a man of the London world, I mean – and I was always surprised that he would hear me out. Anyway, I told him that on my first day in London, the clock on King's Cross had been ahead of the one on St Pancras, that it had said five after three, and the clock on St Pancras had said five to, and Mack said, 'I spotted that myself when I was in that neck of the woods the other day.' I said, 'It's a bad business, ain't it?'
Mack didn't seem too vexed over it, but said, 'I expect the Midland had it right… Them's the jockeys for me.'
I couldn't tell whether he was talking here of the Midland Railway or the two pretty monkeys in the corner that he was giving the over-eye. They were a pair of spankers, I had to admit, and I helped myself to another look at them. 'Anyway' said Mack, 'how do you know the King's Cross clock was the one that was ahead?' 'What do you mean?' 'How do you know it wasn't behind?' 'Because it said five after.' 'I know that.' 'And the other said five to.'
'Yes, but how do you know that King's Cross wasn't so far ahead that it was catching the other up?' Mack saw off his brain duster, and called for two more. I said, 'Catching the other up from behind, sort of thing?'
'Course. You can't catch something up from in front, now, can you?'
'You might have put your finger on it' I said. 'Listen: how long do you think it would take a clock that was losing, let's suppose, a minute every hour to get so far behind another clock keeping good time that it would start getting ahead of it?'
'I don't know' said Mack, who began telling me of a little spot in Waterloo where there were 'some girls who take a real pride in their work. There's a low lot round about, mind you, and you must take care or you'll be ripped, but the place itself is fine.'
As he took out his pocket book to buy us two more brain dusters – Mack was certainly in funds this Christmas – he said I should give this place a go; that he would be along there himself, only he had his eye on the one in the corner who was kissing her cigarette as she smoked it and looking at Mack very slyly all the time. I have better looks than Mack, I thought, but he has more of something else. More of London.
I said I would be kept from going to a place like that by thoughts of my best girl, meaning my landlady, and Mack said, 'You have your meat and veg, and your greens are on the side.'
'Mack' I said, as he bought a third lot of drinks for us, 'do you ever wonder about what happened to Henry Taylor, Mike and Rowland Smith?'
Mack might have been out of his nut but he managed to give me a pretty straight look. 'Accidents,' he said. 'It's a dangerous business being on the railways.' 'But Smith was in his flat.'
'It's a dangerous business being at home in this modern world. Now off you go to your cunny house.' And he dragged himself off towards the doxy with the cigarette.
You have your meat and your veg and the greens are on the side. Saturday Night Mack had a way of making everything seem simple. Of course, standing against what he said was the Christmas card from my landlady. The place was bang up against a viaduct at the bottom right hand of a stubby, blank street in Waterloo called Signal Street. I was all of a jump as I looked at this spot for I knew it held trouble in some way. Might Mack have sent me into the arms of the half-link? I tried to tell myself to turn back, but those brain dusters and my exploits with my landlady had stoked a fire that would not be put out, so I walked towards the viaduct. Nearly the whole of the bottom of Signal Street was blocked off by it, as if someone had thought: I want to put an end to this now. Well, not quite, because the arch of the viaduct started on the left side of the street so there was a gap in that corner.
I walked past two brown doors with no name and no number. The third door looked no different, but when I knocked, a broken voice shouted, 'Come in.' Feeling half excited, half doomed, I opened the door.
It was a big room, almost destroyed, with a fire that was too small. An old lady sitting at a table said, 'Merry Christmas, sir'; she sounded like the ventriloquist's doll. 'Yes,' I said, fairly shaking from nerves. 'You want to see a young lady?' I nodded. 'You can be manualised at five shilling,' she said.
'Very well' I said, and then I thought again, and said, 'By whom?' because I did not want to be touched by this mutton dressed as ewe.
'Jacqueline is presently available – she is our top indoor girl.'
It was when I took out my pocket book that I became sober. I broke into my pound to give the woman five shillings but that wasn't the end of it – there were certain extras for the old lady that came out at another shilling. We went up the stairs, and a train came up so noisily I thought it would burst through the wall, but of course it was only heading for the viaduct. A door was opened for me, and this time the room was too small and the fire was too big. There was a girl inside in a blue skirt but nothing on top. She had short hair and shiny eyes of the sort I like, and was half sitting, half lying on her bed. She reminded me of a mermaid, except for the short hair and the plain fact that she was sweating with a bad cold. 'Have you paid your money?' she said, as I walked in.
'I gave it to the old woman downstairs' I said. 'She's the one who takes the money, isn't she?'
'You've got her in one' said Jacqueline. 'What have you paid for?' 'Manualising' I said.
'At what price?' She picked up a little towel from the stool by the bed.
'Five shillings.' There seemed to be something wrong with the system, for I could have said anything. 'How are you?' I said, to put things off.
'Oh, fairly blue' she replied, and she walked up and started undoing my trousers. 'Are you a railway man?' she asked.
'Yes' I said, and I thought guiltily of the driver Hughes of the Great Western Railway, at home with his wife and many children, at home in The Railway Magazine.
'Several of my gentlemen are on the railways' she said, 'and one is very high up on the South Western.'
'What is his name?' We were on the bed by now, and my trousers were over the stool. 'Now, I'm not going to tell you that, am I?'
I was always more comfortable asking questions though. 'Is it a fellow called White-Chester?'
There was a very, very long pause while she started with her manualising. 'No,' she said eventually.
As she carried on with her work, I thought of my father and felt bad. Then I thought of my landlady and felt much worse. My thoughts were anywhere but where they should have been and now, strange to say, they settled on White-Chester himself, and I wondered about his name. What did it mean? It brought to mind a man – very like a circus strongman -who was in the habit of showing off his chest, which would have been very muscular but also, and more to the point, very white. 'I can't bring anything about,' said Jacqueline after a while. 'Do you want to try a
