Black As He’s Painted

Obviously, nothing in particular. It was not badly injured, presumably it lived in the neighbourhood and one had always understood its species to have a phenomenal homing instinct. It thrust its nut-like head under Mr Whipplestone’s jacket and into his waistcoat. It palpated his chest with its paws. He had quite a business detaching it.

He set it down on the pavement. ‘Go home,’ he said. It stared up at him and went through the motion of mewing, opening its mouth and showing its pink tongue but giving no sound. ‘No,’ he said, ‘go home!’ It was making little preparatory movements of its haunches as if it was about to spring again.

He turned his back on it and walked quickly down Capricorn Mews. He almost ran.

It is a quiet little street, cobbled and very secluded. It accommodates three garages, a packing agency, two dozen or so small mid-Victorian houses, a minute bistro and four shops. As he approached one of these, a flower shop, he could see reflected in its side windows Capricorn Mews with himself walking towards him. And behind him, trotting in a determined manner, the little cat. It was mewing.

He was extremely put out and had begun to entertain a confused notion of telephoning the RSPCA when a van erupted from a garage immediately behind him. It passed him and when it had gone the cat had disappeared: frightened, Mr Whipplestone supposed, by the noise.

Beyond the flower shop and on the opposite side of the Mews was the corner of Capricorn Place, leading off to the left. Mr Whipplestone, deeply ruffled, turned into it.

A pleasing street: narrow, orderly, sunny, with a view, to the left, of tree-tops and the dome of the Baronsgate Basilica. Iron railings and behind them small well-kept Georgian and Victorian houses. Spring flowers in window-boxes. From somewhere or another the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

Cleaning ladies attacked steps and door-knockers. Household ladies were abroad with shopping baskets. A man of Mr Whipplestone’s own age who reeked of the army and was of an empurpled complexion emerged from one of the houses. A perambulator with a self-important baby and an escort of a pedestrian six-year-old, a female propellant and a large dog, headed with a purposeful air towards the Park. The postman was going his rounds.

In London there are still, however precarious their state, many little streets of the character of the Capricorns. They are upper-middle-class streets and therefore, Mr Whipplestone had been given to understand, despicable. Being of that class himself, he did not take this view. He found the Capricorns uneventful, certainly, but neither tiresomely quaint nor picturesque nor smug: pleasing rather, and possessed of a quality which he could only think of as ‘sparkling’. Ahead of him was a pub, the Sun in Splendour. It had an honest untarted-look about it and stood at the point where the Place leads into Capricorn Square: the usual railed enclosure of plane trees, grass and a bench or two, well-kept. He turned to the right down one side of it, making for Capricorn Walk.

Moving towards him at a stately pace came a stout, superbly dressed coal-black gentleman leading a white Afghan hound with a scarlet collar and leash.

‘My dear Ambassador!’ Mr Whipplestone exclaimed. ‘How very pleasant!’

‘Mr Whipplestone!’ resonated the Ambassador for Ng’ombwana. ‘I am delighted to see you. You live in these parts?’

‘No, no: a morning stroll. I’m – I’m a free man now, your Excellency.’

‘Of course. I had heard. You will be greatly missed.’

‘I doubt it. Your Embassy – I had forgotten for the moment – is quite close by, isn’t it?’

‘In Palace Park Gardens. I too enjoy a morning stroll with Ahman. We are not, alas, unattended.’ He waved his gold-mounted stick in the direction of a large person looking anonymously at a plane tree.

‘Alas!’ Mr Whipplestone agreed. ‘The penalty of distinction,’ he added neatly, and patted the Afghan.

‘You are kind enough to say so.’

Mr Whipplestone’s highly specialized work in the Foreign Service had been advanced by a happy manner with Foreign, and particularly with African, plenipotentiaries. ‘I hope I may congratulate your Excellency,’ he said and broke into his professional style of verbless exclamation. ‘The increased rapprochement! The new Treaty! Masterly achievements!’

‘Achievements – entirely – of our great President, Mr Whipplestone.’

‘Indeed, yes. Everyone is delighted about the forthcoming visit. An auspicious occasion.’

‘As you say. Immensely significant.’ The Ambassador waited for a moment and then slightly reduced the volume of his superb voice. ‘Not,’ he said, ‘without its anxieties, however. As you know, our great President does not welcome –’ he again waved his stick at his bodyguard – ‘that sort of attention.’ A sigh escaped him. ‘He is to stay with us,’ he said.

‘Quite.’

‘The responsibility!’ sighed the Ambassador. He broke off and offered his hand. ‘You will be at the reception, of course,’ he said. ‘We must meet more often! I shall see that something is arranged. Au revoir, Mr Whipplestone.’

They parted. Mr Whipplestone walked on, passing and tactfully ignoring the escort.

Facing him at the point where the Walk becomes the north-east border of the Square was a small house between two large ones. It was painted white with a glossy black front door and consisted of an attic, two floors and a basement. The first-floor windows opened on a pair of miniature balconies, the ground-floor ones were bowed. He was struck by the arrangement of the window-boxes. Instead of the predictable daffodil one saw formal green swags that might have enriched a della Robbia relief. They were growing vines of some sort which swung between the pots where they rooted and were cunningly trimmed so that they swelled at the lowest point of the arc and symmetrically tapered to either end.

Some workmen with ladders were putting up a sign.

He had begun to feel less depressed. Persons who do not live there will talk about ‘the London feeling’. They will tell you that as they walk down a London street they can be abruptly made happy, uplifted in spirit, exhilarated. Mr Whipplestone had always taken a somewhat incredulous view of these transports but he had to admit that on this occasion he was undoubtedly visited by a liberated sensation. He had a singular notion that the little house had induced this reaction. No. 1, as he now saw, Capricorn Walk.

He approached the house. It was touched on its chimneys and the eastern slope of its roof by sunshine. ‘Facing the right way,’ thought Mr Whipplestone. ‘In the winter it’ll get all the sun there is, I dare say.’ His own flat faced north.

A postman came whistling down the Walk as Mr Whipplestone crossed it. He mounted the steps of No. 1, clapped something through the brass flap and came down so briskly that they nearly collided.

‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ said the postman. ‘Too eager, that’s my trouble. Lovely morning, though, innit?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Whipplestone, judiciously conceding the point. ‘It is. Are the present occupants –’ he hesitated.

‘Gawn. Out last week,’ said the postman. ‘But I’m not to know, am I? People ought to make arrangements, din’ they, sir?’ He went off, whistling.

The workmen came down their ladders and prepared to make off. They had erected a sign.

FOR SALE

All enquiries to

Able, Virtue & Sons

17 Capricorn Street, SW7

II

The Street is the most ‘important’ of the Capricorns. It is wider and busier than the rest. It runs parallel to the Walk and in fact Messrs Able and Virtue’s premises lie exactly back to back with the little house at No. 1.

‘Good morning,’ said the roundabout lady at the desk on the left-hand side. ‘Can I help you?’ she pleaded brightly.

Mr Whipplestone pulled out the most non-committal stop in his FO organ and tempered its chill with a touch of whimsy.

‘You may satisfy my idle curiosity if you will be so good,’ he said. ‘Ah – concerning No. 1, Capricorn Walk.’

‘No. 1, the Walk?’ repeated the lady. ‘Yes. Our notice, ackshally, has only just gone up. For Sale with stipulations regarding the basement. I’m not quite sure –’ she looked across at the young man with a pre-Raphaelite hair-do behind the right-hand desk. He was contemplating his fingernails and listening to his telephone. ‘What is it about the basement, of No. 1,’ he rattled into it, ‘is at present occupied as a pied –’

He clapped a languid hand over the receiver: ‘Ay’m coping,’ he said and unstopped the receiver. ‘The basement of No. 1,’ he rattled into it, ‘is at present occupied as a pied-à-terre by the owner. He wishes to retain occupancy. The Suggested Arrangement is that total ownership pass to the purchaser and that he, the vendor, become the tenant of the basement at an agreed rent for a specified period.’ He listened for a considerable interval. ‘No,’ he said, ‘ay’m afraid it’s a firm stipulation. Quate. Quate. Theng you, madam. Good morning.’

‘That,’ said the lady, offering it to Mr Whipplestone, ‘is the situation.’

Mr Whipplestone, conscious of a lightness in his head, said: ‘And the price?’ He used the voice in which he had been wont to say: ‘This should have been dealt with at a lower level.’

‘Was it thirty-nine?’ the lady asked her colleague. ‘Thirty-eight.’

‘Thirty-eight thousand,’ she relayed to Mr Whipplestone, who caught back his breath in a civilized little hiss.

‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘You amaze me,’