6

EDWARD SLEPT IN THE STORE CUPBOARD for a week but it was obvious that things could not go on as they were. The restaurant could not afford to pay him a salary and so he drew 15s. 3d. from the taxpayer instead. This required a weekly trip to the Pentonville Labour Exchange, a vast one-storey barn that was permanently surrounded by a four-deep queue of bad-tempered, foul-smelling men. It often took several hours for him to reach the counter where applicants were required to sign the book and make themselves available for the array of menial jobs that required filling. He did not disclose that he was working at the restaurant, for that would have disqualified him from receiving aid. The Exchange put him forward for several unsuitable posts. In order that he might perpetuate the lie that he was actively looking for employment he endured several embarrassing interviews during which he made no effort whatsoever to evince the enthusiasm that might make him attractive to potential employers. He was rejected for positions as a hotel doorman, a cleaner, and then, most embarrassingly of all, as the pot boy in a restaurant around the corner from the Shangri-La. The clerks at the Exchange must surely have realised that he was abusing their best efforts but he wasn’t alone in that and, thankfully, his pitiful income was never interrupted.

He took a room for 6s. a week in a boarding house on Brewer Street. It was a terrible, dingy place, a sorting-office and clearing house for the jails, the casual wards, the lunatic asylums and the mortuary slabs. The place belonged to an ancient theatrical agent, a superannuated old queen who, Edward suspected, rented rooms to young ex-soldiers in the hope that a romantic entanglement might ensue, or, more achieveably, so that he might bump into them after they had bathed in one of his two filthy bathrooms.

Edward was allotted the attic. It was reached by way of a bleak staircase with linoleum steps smelling of wax, the grey-striped wallpaper stained with damp and peeling. It smelt of stale frying, with a dirty old gas cooker in what little space there was and a couple of penny-in-the-slot meters. It was long enough to lie down in but would not have been wide enough for that purpose and it was too low for him to stand. There was a narrow single bed, a washstand with a jug and basin on it and a little trunk in which he stored his meagre possessions. The ceiling was painted in a checkerboard of pink and yellow, the colours weighing down on the small space. There was a window through which he could scrabble out onto the roof and he would sit on the foot-wide parapet that ran around it and gaze out across the snaggle-toothed Soho rooftops, smoking a cigarette and miserably contemplating his lot.

If he was careful Edward was able to spread his tiny income to just about cover his vital needs. He would buy a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a hunk of black chocolate so hard that the confectioner could only break it with a small axe he kept solely for this purpose. He would consume his feast lying down on his tiny bed, sucking each bitter square of chocolate to make it last longer.

* * *

THE SUMMER PASSED SLOWLY. Edward spent his days in the restaurant, arriving at six to begin the day’s preparation and often staying until midnight. The work was difficult, tiring and unremunerative. They would tally up the takings after they had closed the doors for the night. A good day would be enough to keep their heads above the water. A bad day would see them sink deeper into the financial mire, relying on the continued goodwill of their bank manager for the restaurant’s existence as a going concern and the payment of Dickie Stern’s hospital bills. Unfortunately, the bad days came more often than the good ones, and the letters from the bank grew ever more concerned.

Edward settled into this dispiriting routine. The longer it went on, the more difficult it was to escape. He was essentially providing the restaurant with free labour. It allowed Jimmy to save money by trimming the hours of the other staff, something he was loathe to do (for none of the others were earning enough to live comfortably) but it was unavoidable if they were to keep going. As the accounts grew graver and graver, Edward’s labour became more valuable. He knew that if he left, the business would fail.

Even with Edward’s budget cut back to the bare minimum, his expenses still outweighed his income. The state of his finances worsened until he was left with no recourse but to attempt desperate measures. One afternoon towards the end of June he found himself hauling his only suitcase outside MacCulloch’s, an establishment halfway down the Tottenham Court Road. It shared the same characteristics as all pawnshops: austere, with a pitiful collection of goods arranged in the window and a sense of bitterness in the air so thick as to be almost cloying. He paused and regarded the shop front. This one had the usual array: second-hand fountain pens, engagement rings, musical instruments, silver candlesticks and cutlery. There was a doorway for buyers and a doorway for sellers, one grand and the other plain. He opened the shabby door and went inside.

He hauled the suitcase onto the counter. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind lending me as much as you can on this until Friday?” The clerk opened the suitcase and rummaged through the contents. It was, by and large, the sum total of his worldly goods: a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes, a collection of books, a magnifying glass in a real morocco case and a couple of old copper saucepans from the restaurant that they rarely used.

The clerk opened the trousers out and examined them. Edward had prepared them carefully, rubbing out the spots with an old handkerchief and a pennyworth of petrol. But when the clerk brushed his fingers over the cloth the old stains came back. At the touch of a finger the buttonhole disintegrated and then the clerk opened out the cuffs at the ankles and discovered the split lining Edward hoped he might miss. He turned up his nose and shook his head, no doubt disappointed that Edward thought he might be gulled by such elementary deceptions.

The clerk examined the shoes––which were holed––and put them aside, then the magnifying glass, then the books. None of them detained his attention. “I can’t give you anything for any of this.”

“Nothing?”

He shrugged expressively. “Ten bob, that’s the best I can do.”

“Ten bob? Those trousers cost four guineas.”

“So you say. Ten bob.”

“I was hoping for a couple of pounds.”

The man laughed harshly. “Out of the question. I can’t let you have more than that, and I don’t want the saucepans.”

“Damn it all, man––just until the end of the week.”

“You might drop dead on Thursday and then what would I do?”

“I won’t––”

He folded his arms. “Ten bob. That’s the best I can do.”

Edward paused, his mind flailing around helplessly, and then hitched up his shoulders in what he hoped might be taken for a nonchalant shrug. “Fine,” he said. “Take it.”

“Do you have tuppence for the ticket?”

“Take it out of what you owe me,” he said, exasperated.

Edward took the money and the ticket and made his way back out into the street. He had nine shillings and eleven pence. It was hardly better than nothing: it wouldn’t even pay two weeks’ rent. He put the silver into his fob pocket and took the fivepence into a Welsh Dai’s shop. The dairyman carried sidelines of wrapped bread, canned food, tea and cakes. The publicans, butchers, milkmen and grocers of Soho did not give credit and even the newsagent waited to see the colour of a penny before parting with a daily paper. The serving woman, scoured and starched from hairline to hem, fussed from shelf to shelf as Edward ordered half a pint of milk, a two-ounce packet of tea at two-and-eight a pound, a soft white two-pound loaf of bread in a wax envelope and half a pound of cheddar at eight pence a pound. Impatient at the groaning of his stomach, he ignored his better judgment and added two rounds of toast with dripping and a mug of tea to his bill. He took them, and his shopping, to an empty table and sat down.