Come Here Till I Tell You

The Chocolate Civilian

• By PATRICK CAMPBELL WHEN a fellow is faced by armed men it's my honest opinion that he should have his mother around, if the situation is not to descend into flurry and confusion.

Three times I have looked down the muzzle of a gun. On the first two occasions my mother was present, and an orderly conclusion was achieved. In her absence, the third time, I handled the business so maladroitly that even the police got it back to front. The lesson is plain.

My mother and I first started gun-slinging, as it were, in 1922. The Irish Civil War was in pro- gress and one of its victims—or very likely to be if he didn't look slippy—was my father, then a member of the Cosgrave Government. He had returned once to our house outside Dublin with three perceptible bullet holes in the back door of his car, in no mood to share my mother's opinion, aimed at restoring his confidence, that the IRA had probably mistaken him for someone else. The shots had, apparently, been fired near Portobello Bridge. So sure was my father of their intended destination that he covered the three miles home in three minutes, and went straight to bed.

When, therefore, the thunderous banging came on the back door a few nights later it had the effect of freezing him to his armchair, in which he'd been reading the evening paper. It was my mother who went to the top of the kitchen stairs, to see what was afoot. I joined her almost immed- iately, a pale lad of nine, having been roused from my sleep by the noise. I'd been sleeping badly of recent weeks because it was nearly Christmas, and my whole soul was crying out to take possession of my first Hornby train.

'It's all right,' my mother said, taking her custo- marily steady view, 'it's only some men.'

We heard the bolts' being shot on the back door, and then the voice of the cook raised in indignant surprise. She was a loyal retainer, who'd been with the family for some years. 'It's youse lot, is it?' she said. 'Janey. I thought yez wasn't comin' till half-eleven.' It was, in fact, only 10.15.

A male voice said peevishly, 'Ah, don't be shoutin' . . and then the first of the raiders came running up the stairs. I had a brief glimpse of a gun, then a face masked with a cap and a handker- chief. My mother stopped him dead. 'If there's going to be any murder,' she said, 'you can get back out of that and-go home.'

More masked faces and caps appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Querulous voices arose. 'What's the matther,,Mick?"Get on with it. can't ya?' But Mick was explaining the matter to my mother.

'Nobody's gettin' shot, mum. You needn't take on. We've ordhers to burn down the house. that's all.' He sounded injured by the false impression. 'You're sure of that?' my mother asked him, wishing to have the matter absolutely clear for the benefit of my father, in the event that he was still able to receive messages, in the next room.

'There'll be nobody shot,' said another raider impatiently. 'Now will you stand back owa that an' let's get on with it. We haven't all night.'

My mother remained firm. With the first matter on the agenda settled to her satisfaction, she passed to others, now of equal importance. 'What about all my lovely books?' she said. 'First editions, signed by Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield and Middleton Murry. And the pictures —Orpens, Gertlers, the little drawings by John .

The raiders, jammed on the stairs, were getting hot and angry. An exposed youth, still stuck in the passage, was being berated by the cook. He appeared to be a cousin of hers, and was refusing to carry her trunk out into the garden.

'All right, all right . . .' said the first raider. The protracted conversation was causing the handkerchief to slip off his face 'Take out anny- thing you want, but for God's love hurry up about it.' He turned to the men behind. 'Who's got the pethrol an' the matches?' he wanted to know.

At this point my father appeared in the hall, unobtrusively, and still unsure of his welcome. The raiders appealed to him. 'Ask your missus to give us a chance, sir, will ya? Sure, we're only actin' under ordhers. . .

He took command, in a voice slightly higher than normal, advising me to wake my sister, still peacefully asleep, and to put on some warm clothes. He then suggested to my mother that they should both try to save a few personal mementoes before we all withdrew to safety in the garden.

'And leave,' my mother cried passionately, 'all the children's Christmas toys behind? Certainly not !'

The possible outcome of the night struck home to me for the first time. 'Me train!' I cried. 'Don't let them burn me train!'

'Of course they won't,' said my mother. She rounded on two of the men. 'You,' she said, 'go to the cupboard in the bedroom and bring out all the parcels you can find. And look out for the doll's house. It's fragile.'

They shuffled their feet, deeply embarrassed. Several other men were throwing petrol around the hall. 'Well, go on!' my mother shouted at them. 'And leave your silly guns on the table. Nobody'll touch them.'

By the time the first whoosh of petrol flame poured out of the windows she had five of the men working for her, running out with armfuls of books and pictures, ornaments, and our Christ- mas toys. They'd become so deeply concerned on her behalf that they frequently paused to ask what should be salvaged next. 'Is the bit of a picture in the passage anny good, mum?"Is there ere a chance of gettin' the legs offa the pianna, the way we could dhrag it out . . .?'

When they disappeared into the night they left my mother, bathed in the light of the flames, standing guard over a great heap of treasures in the middle of the lawn, with Orpen's picture under one arm and the little drawings by John under the other—a clear winner on points.

Next time it was the IRA again. My unfortunate father was now officially on the run—an appalling situation for a peaceful and dignified man—while the rest of us, being homeless, were staying with my mother's parents in Foxrock, a base that at first sight could not have been more neutral. But then, in the middle of the night, the caps and the handkerchiefs appeared again, and it turned out that we were sitting on a miniature arsenal, not, admittedly, of the first calibre, but undoubtedly containing weapons of war.

Once again it was probably the domestic staff who provided the link between the beleaguered fortress and its attackers, but—as is common in the uncertain art of espionage-they'd consider- ably exaggerated their report, in the interests of making it seem worth while, After twenty minutes in the house the IRA were dissatisfied to find themselves in possession of two assegais, a knobkerry, a Gurkha knife, a 1914 bayonet and a pith helmet from the Boer War, trophies brought home from foreign service by my mother's numerous brothers. All these war- riors, however, were now somewhere else, so that the depleted garrison put up no great struggle as the IRA ranged through the house, throwing open cupboards and peering under beds in search of the machine-guns and Mills bombs promised them by the cook.

While all this was going on I was standing on the rug beside my bed with a pillow between my knees, placed there by my mother. The burning of our house, followed by close proximity to my grandmother, who was a fast hand with a ruler, had brought my nerves to a low state. From the first crash on the back door my knees had been knocking together so rapidly that they were now severely bruised on the inside, making each new percussion an agony. The pillow, however, eased things considerably. I was holding it in position, fore and aft, when the raider burst into the room, waving a huge Service revolver, but 1 dropped it immediately when he shouted, 'Hands up!' The knees started rattling again, like castanets.

My mother went into immediate action. 'How can he put his hands up?' she shouted at the raider. 'Look at his little knees!' She slotted the pillow home again into position, and returned to the attack.

'How dare you frighten the life out of a little child!' she cried. At the age of nine I was nearly six feet tall, but the principle was right. 'Give him your gun ! Let him see it isn't loaded !' As usual, the speed and directness of her assault bouleversed the enemy. He was a lumpish youth in the regulation cap and trenchcoat, with a handkerchief over his face which looked as if it had recently been used for cleaning floors. He became placatory. 'I wouldn't frighten the little fella, mum. A'course it's not loaded. Amn't I only afther findin' i.: down below. . .

My mother pounced upon this new intelligence. 'That's Malcolm's revolver,' she cried. 'Put it back where you found it! Didn't he risk his life with it, defending you and all the other hooligans like you from the Germans'?'

'Put it back, mum'?' The proposition staggered him. '1 can't do that, mum. Sure, the comman- dant'll kill me.. .

At this point my mother snatched the gun out of his hand. 'Let him hold it, anyway,' she cried. 'I'm not going to have any child of mine having nightmares over a filthy, silly revolver.' She thrust it into my hand.

I didn't want it at all. I only wanted to hold on to my pillow. I dropped it on the floor, with the pillow on top of it, and tried to put my hands between my knees.

In the midst of this confusion there was a hoarse shout from downstairs : 'Christy, come on owa that, willya! There's nothin' more here. . .

Christy made a move towards the gun. My mother put her foot on it. They faced one another for a moment, with a thin, obbligato sobbing from myself. 'You'll be hearin' more of this,' said Christy unconvincingly. Then he turned and ran.

My mother put me back to bed, then she picked up the revolver by the muzzle and threw it into the bottom of the cupboard. 'I'll put it in the bank in the morning,' she said. 'Filthy, silly things. Don't you ever have anything to do with them.'

It was a piece of advice which I had no difficulty in following over the next thirty years, until I suddenly found myself staring down the barrel of a Mauser in a public house in Wapping, with no mother to guide me on a night of impenetrable fog.

I'd gone down to 'The Prospect of Whitby' to write a story about one of its familiars, a character known as Prospect Jock, who allowed customers to sign their names on his white suit. After an indeterminate interview with Jock, who could analyse his curious activities no more deeply than 'a bit o' sport,' I fell into such a lengthy conversa- tion with the landlord, Mr. Broadbent, that I was still there at midnight when the man in the black hat, with the red muffler over his face, came rush- ing up the stairs, waving the gun.

Mr. Broadbent had been talking for some time about the murky, early history of Wapping, and the glamour it certainly lent to the bright, present charms of his pub, so that when the figure in the red muffler appeared I immediately presumed that he'd been hired by Mr. Broadbent, in the interests of publicity, to present some sort of masquerade of the bad old days.

It seemed to me to be an unnecessary elabora- tion, seeing that I was going to write about Pros- pect Jock anyway, and I rose to my feet to say so, If, of course, my mother had been there she would have cut the proceedings short by telling the gunman to do the washing up, or get us another round of drinks, but I was on my own. It was my intention to say, 'Come off it, cock— who do you think you're . . .' but before a word of this stricture could be delivered the man in the muffler seized me by the front of the coat, hit me on the back of the head with his gun and threw me down a whole flight of stairs into the public bar. It was the swiftest transition from one state to another I'd ever known.

I should think I became unconscious, while passing down the stairs, though more from fear than the actual blow, because when I came to I found the floor of the bar littered wtih the bodies of a number of people whom l'd last seen upstairs in the restaurant They included Captain Cunning- ham, the Mayfair oyster bar proprietor, and his guests, who'd been dining at another table. They weren't dead; but acting under the orders of three men who were stamping about with coshes, telling them to keep their heads down.

I found an empty space, and another one for my wife, and then, with some regard for the family tradition, I asked one of the gangsters if we could sit, rather than lie. as we were wearing our best clothes, and the floor was rather dirty. He replied by holding his cosh directly beneath my nose. We assumed a semi-recumbent position.

They worked swiftly. The junior representatives smashed the glass-fronted cash registers with their coshes, and filled straw fish baskets with the loose change. At the other end of the bar the man in the red muffler threatened Mr. Broadbent with death if he didn't open the safe. Mr. Broadbent obliged. The guests on the floor were invited to unload whatever valuables might be on their per- sons. We obliged, too. Ten minutes later the men were gone, leaving a deeply stricken silence behind. Even at this late stage I wish it had been my mother who'd taken charge of the investigation, instead of Scotland Yard. With her steady record in matters of violence she would certainly have been able to prevent me identifying the wrong man, putting him in gaol for three weeks, and subsequently having to make a public apology from the witness box.

She might also have been able to prevent my wife from saying, in her evidence, that the bracelet of which she'd been robbed 'couldn't have cost more than £2 because my husband gave it to, me for Christmas.'

She could also have induced me to put my per- sonal loss higher than five shillings which, while it was true, stood up badly in a list beginning : 'Wm. Broadbent, £2,500; Captain Cunningham, £75,' etc.

She could also have been there to put another pillow between my knees when I discovered that the man in the red muffler, who'd hit me with his gun, was no less a villain than Scarface Nobby Saunders, on the run from Parkhurst Gaol, who, ten days after dealing with me, shot a policeman in the eye during a warehouse raid, and got a life sentence in Dartmoor from the Lord Chief Justice himself.

If I'd known, that night in 'The Prospect of Whitby,' that it was Scarface Saunders who was rushing up the stairs at me, I, would not have risen to my feet, to ask him to come off it. I'd have jumped straight backwards out of the window into the river.

But there, it's what I always say. When the old equalisers come out every boy needs his mother around, if the situation is not to descend into shame, flurry and confusion.