Читать книгу Seven Men Came Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 21

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In the Essex Road Mr. Kettle had a neighbour, a ginger-haired man with a bottle-brush moustache. Kettle’s neighbour kept a fish-shop, a most unsalubrious fish-shop. It smelt, and it smelt considerably. Its haddocks were too haddocky for words, and Kettle asserted that they were so phosphorescent that if a string of them had been suspended along the Essex Road the Borough lighting costs could have been amended.

Moreover, Mr. Higgins’s manners were as haddocky as his haddocks. He was a scornful, slap-dash, cross-eyed merchant. He had a voice like a motor-horn with a cold in its head. He had blue hands with the nails worn to the quick. In cold weather he sniffed perpetually.

Kettle complained about his neighbour’s fish. He began by being jocular if caustic, but Mr. Higgins was not jocular. He told Mr. Kettle to go to hell and boil himself in oil.

There were words.

Kettle said that he had no intention of living next door to a ruddy refuse dump. Mr. Higgins’s haddocks made some of his lady customers feel quite faint.

Mr. Higgins sniffed at him, and was truculent.

“You mind your ruddy business.”

Kettle retorted by asserting that unless Mr. Higgins ameliorated the odour of his fish and his manners, he—Kettle—would see what the Borough sanitary authorities could do about it. Also, Mr. Higgins could keep a civil tongue in his head. And that was that.

Mr. Higgins said something about punching Mr. Kettle’s head.

Mr. Kettle took his coat off.

“Come on—then, try it.”

In the subsequent scrap Mr. Higgins lasted just fifteen seconds, and was knocked into one of his fish trays. A police constable appeared and insisted upon peace.

“Peace!” said Kettle scornfully—“you smell ‘is ‘addicks, orficer. ‘e’s a public noosance.”

Kettle’s blood was up, though he had tapped Mr. Higgins’s claret and blacked his eye. He put on his Sunday clothes and attended at the Borough buildings. As a respectable citizen and ratepayer he insisted upon a medical officer coming to smell Mr. Higgins’s fish.

His protest proved itself effective. A surprise visit was paid to Mr. Higgins’s premises. The authorities sided with the greengrocer.

Mr. Higgins was told to amend his methods.

Mr. Kettle allowed it to be known that he would make it his business to amend Mr. Higgins’s manners.

But the fishmonger was as financially unsound as his fish. He disappeared, and Mr. Kettle, who was prospering, took over the additional shop and filled it with fruit.