Read the book: «Ben on the Job»

1
Misbehaviour of Two Thumbs

When Ben had got up that morning—getting up with Ben was mainly the process of changing from a prone to an erect position and peering into a mirror, if there happened to be one, to work out whether he’d washed last week or the week before—he had been quite sure that something would happen to him before the time came to lie down again. He knew it by the infallible sign of itching thumbs.

Whenever his thumbs itched, something ’orrible always happened. His thumbs had itched on that never-to-be-forgotten foggy afternoon when he had stumbled into a house numbered ‘Seventeen’, to die a hundred deaths before he stumbled out again. They had itched before he had advised a bloke leaning over a low stone parapet not to jump into the Thames—‘I wouldn’t, mate, if I was you,’ he’d said, ‘it looks narsty!’—to discover that the bloke was already dead. They had itched before a peculiarly unpleasant meeting with an Indian. Ben ’ated Injuns. They had itched before a shipwreck that had hurled him into a situation so completely and fantastically impossible that he still didn’t believe it.

And now, here they were, itching again! Lummy, what was it going to be this time?

Well, there was nothing to do but to wait and see. What was was, what is is, and what will be will be, for once. Fate puts the spotlight on you there’s no slipping out of it. And so, resigned but alert, Ben paused at a morning coffee stall to fortify himself for whatever lay ahead.

‘Mornin’, guv’nor,’ he said, ‘wot’s the noos terday? ’Ave they started the Fif’ World War yet?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ grinned the stall-keeper.

‘Nor me neither,’ answered Ben, ‘but let’s ’ope they stop at ’arf a dozen. Cup o’ corfee.’

‘Did you pay for the last?’ inquired the stall-keeper good-naturedly.

‘On’y by mistike.’

The stall-keeper laughed as he pushed a thick cup across. Ben took a cautious sip.

‘What’s the matter? Think it’s poisoned?’

‘Well, there’s no ’arm in bein’ careful,’ returned Ben. ‘See, this ain’t goin’ ter be my lucky day. Coo, call this corfee? Am I s’posed ter fork aht threepence fer this?’

‘Not if you can give me a tip for the two-thirty?’

‘Saucy Sossidge.’

‘That’s a new one on me.’

‘Go on, wot higgerence! I’m ridin’ it meself!’

Warmed by the coffee—warmed but not ruined, for the stall-keeper said he had had three penn’orth of fun and allowed his comic customer to depart with his last shilling intact—Ben shuffled off to face the day, and the morning passed, most surprisingly, without any shocks. It was indeed a remarkably successful morning, for it produced seven fag-ends, one almost half its original length, and twopence for helping a nervous old lady across the road.

At one o’clock he partially filled a neglected void with two substantial sandwiches. They were so substantial that you couldn’t taste what was inside them. Thinking it might be a good idea to find out, Ben opened one to see, but as he found nothing he supposed he had opened it in the wrong place. Nevertheless, they did their job, and half an hour on an Embankment seat put him right again.

He might have stayed longer on the seat, for Ben liked sitting down, it was comfortable, if an old man with fuzzy white hair had not suddenly darted towards him and sat down by his side. The old man was breathing heavily, and his tongue kept shooting out to moisten his lips. ‘If this is It,’ thought Ben, ‘I ain’t stoppin’!’ And he got up and departed.

To his considerable relief, and even more considerable surprise, the old man did not get up and follow him. False alarm! This was not It!

‘I wunner if me thumbs was wrong this time?’ reflected Ben, as he resumed his way to nowhere. The day was passing too smoothly to believe. ‘Arter orl, I expeck yer can get a nitch wot’s jest a nitch, even in yer thumbs?’

There was yet another theory that might explain his strange immunity. Perhaps Fate could be dodged if you were nippy enough? Suppose, for instance, that nasty old man, and he was nasty, the way his tongue was working overtime—suppose Fate had sent him along, but Ben had beaten Fate on the post? With sudden hope Ben grinned. ‘That’s wot it is!’ he decided. ‘I’ve given Faite the KO!’

Before long, however, he found his self-faith weakening. Here came the mist! That was a second sign of trouble. In rather surprising obedience to a weather forecast, a thin, depressing mist began to weave through the streets; and half Ben’s woes took place in fog. He had even been born in one, birth being the initial woe that preceded all the rest. A fog in the street and an itch on the thumb formed a combination to kill all hope.

A minor drawback of foggy weather was that it made fag-ends harder to find. In order not to miss them you had to keep your nose well down, which often made you bump into people …

And then Ben did bump into someone. Or someone bumped into him. He couldn’t say which. All he knew was that he suddenly found himself sitting on the pavement.

‘Oi!’ he bleated.

The man with whom he had collided was also on the pavement, but he was up again before Ben had begun to think about it. ‘Tork abart bounce!’ thought Ben. ‘’E must be mide o’rubber!’

There was no time to find out whether he was indeed made of rubber, because the next instant the man was gone.

‘Corse, don’t say “Beg pardon,” or “Are yer ’urt?” or anythink like that! Jest buzz orf, like I didn’t matter!’

Still sitting on the ground, Ben gazed indignantly after the vanished man. Then all at once his emotion changed from indignation to anxiety, as the unmistakable form of a policeman materialised out of the fog.

Was this going to be It?

‘Hallo, hallo!’ said the policeman.

‘Sime ter you,’ replied Ben.

‘Had a tumble?’

‘No, I jest thort I’d sit dahn in the sunshine.’

‘Oh! Well, how about finding a seat somewhere else where you won’t be in people’s way?’

‘’Ow abart you givin’ me a ’and hup first, and then findin’ me one?’

The constable stooped and helped Ben to rise, and then stood watching while Ben groped about himself for bruises. You did it by pressing various parts of your anatomy to see whether any of them hurt.

‘Feeling all right?’ inquired the constable.

He seemed friendly enough. Perhaps, after all, this was not going to be It? That might or might not be an advantage, because after you’d screwed yourself up to it like, there was something in getting it over.

‘Dunno,’ answered Ben.

‘Well, no one else can tell you.’

‘I feels a bit groggy. Things is goin’ rahnd like.’

‘Then hold on to me until they stop going round like. You’ll be all right if you just take it easy, sonny.’ Funny how policemen seemed to like calling him sonny when he was often old enough to be their great-grandfather! This ’un didn’t look more’n twenty. P’r’aps it was because they was generally big and he was only a little ’un? ‘You haven’t told me yet how it happened?’

‘Eh?’

‘Did you slip?’

‘No. Bloke bumps inter me.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yus, and never stops, like them motor-cars they arsks for on the wireless. Fer orl ’e knoo, I might ’ave broke me blinkin’—wozzer matter?’

‘Nothing,’ replied the constable, ‘only you’ve dropped something.’

‘Eh?’

‘On the ground there.’

‘Not me—I ain’t got nothin’ ter drop!’

‘Well, if you’ll let go my arm for a moment I’ll pick it up.’

Ben relaxed his grip as the constable stooped. Dropped something? He had spoken truly when he had said he had nothing to drop. His shilling had gone for his sandwiches, and the change had gone through a hole in his pocket. (One does need a wife for holes.) And that was all he had, apart from himself. So he couldn’t have dropped anything, could he?

But the policeman had found something, and as he came up from his stoop and slowly straightened himself, Ben saw what he held in his hand. It was a jemmy.

‘Yours?’ inquired the constable.

Perhaps if Ben’s thumbs had behaved themselves that morning he would have acted differently, and the course of events for himself and for several other people during the period ahead would have followed a very different pattern. For himself, undoubtedly. He would never have met the other people. But those thumbs had become far more of a superstition to Ben than spilling salt or walking under ladders, and the sense of impending trouble was increased by a sudden movement of the constable’s hand towards Ben’s shoulder. And so, instead of denying ownership—to be believed or not as the case might be—he decided that This Was It, wriggled away, and ran.

Nothing could have been sillier. Of course the constable ran after him. To a constable Ben, running, was as irresistible as an electric hare to a greyhound, but when it came to making the pace the electric hare wasn’t in it, and although policemen are experienced in pursuing, Ben was far more experienced in being pursued. From all of which it may be deduced that our present policeman, with the added handicap of fog, had no chance.

There was, however, one serious flaw in Ben’s defensive process. He could run fast, but he could not run for long, and although he always got away the first time he did not always get away the second. No legs could last indefinitely at the pace Ben’s were driven, so when his legs and his breath gave out he was forced to seek the nearest sanctuary in the hope that heaven would be kind and send him a good one. If heaven had given Ben his desserts it would always have been kind to him, because strange though this may seem in a difficult world where poverty can be so sorely tempted, Ben had never performed an illegal act for which God might not have forgiven him, and never a mean one. But the luck varied.

This time the luck seemed good. Appearances, unfortunately, can be deceptive. Having evaded the pursuing bobby and vanished temporarily out of his life, Ben’s knees went back on him, or down under him, outside the kind of building that he loved above all others. An empty building, useless to all save human derelicts. There were other empty buildings on either side, but at the moment Ben did not know this, for when you are running away all you see is where you stop, and on a misty afternoon you don’t see even that very clearly. But what Ben saw was enough to satisfy him, and after crawling through two tall gate-posts that had lost their gate, he slumped behind one of them as hurried footsteps grew into his drumming ears.

The footsteps came closer. Lummy, ’ow many was makin’ ’em? More’n one? Voices soon proved this point. Policemen don’t talk to themselves.

‘Are you sure he turned down this street, sir?’

‘Well, you can’t be sure of anything in a fog.’

‘That’s a fact, but I had an idea he took the other turning.’

‘He may have done, but I don’t think so. It was because I thought I saw somebody bunk round the corner that I spoke when I saw you running.’

The speakers were now just on the other side of Ben’s post. Thank Gawd it was a thick ’un! One of the speakers was the constable; the other, assumedly, a passer-by. Unsporting blokes, passers-by, turning even odds into two to one. There ought to be a law agin’ ’em!

Crumbs! They’d stopped!

‘Wonder if I was wrong?’

(‘Keep on wunnerin’!’ thought Ben.)

‘No sign of him, sir.’

‘Think we ought to go back?’

‘I think that’s the best idea.’

(‘Don’t lose the idea,’ thought Ben.)

‘What was he like?’

‘Oh—smallish chap. Put him on a stick and he’d make a good scarecrow.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘That’s what I’m after finding out, sir.’

‘Then what are you chasing him for?’

There was a tiny pause after that, and then a low whistle.

‘Where did you find that?’

‘On the ground, where I picked him up. He dropped it. He spun some yarn about somebody bumping into him.’

‘Then perhaps—’

‘No, sir, he bunked the moment I showed him this jemmy. There’s been a gang working the district—’

‘Hey! Isn’t that someone?’

‘Where?’

‘End of the road! Now he’s gone! But I swear—’

The next moment they were gone, too.

For a few seconds Ben remained motionless behind his post, enjoying the blessed silence, and grateful to the red herring that had started them off again on a wrong scent. But he couldn’t remain motionless for long, in case they came back. And, lummy, wasn’t that somebody coming back? Or was it just a tree dripping? Trees often played tricks on you like that! Yes, it was a tree dripping? No, it wasn’t! A tree goes on dripping in the same place, and this wasn’t sticking to the same place, and he couldn’t be quite certain where the place was, anyhow. Of course, it mightn’t be the copper …

The new approaching sound ceased, then came on again. Ben hesitated no longer. He twisted round and shot up a side path to the back of the building.