Mr Romance

by Mr Romance (retail) (epub)

  ‘But you’re so clever with words!’ Janet gasped.

  ‘Thank you,’ Franklin said, as if he were collecting taxes. ‘My tutors were known to remark on many different occasions that my humble brain was the size of Belgium…’ He stopped short and turned towards the door. Mother was squelching forth with a short, fat, middle-aged man on her arm.

  It was Marvel! Large as life and twice as lugubrious. Mother had worked a miracle and drawn him down from his room. He was wearing a boiled shirt, a pair of pockmarked corduroy trousers and his red felt slippers.

  ‘Janet, I’d like you to meet Mr Marvel,’ mother announced, leading him towards the sofa.

  ‘A pleasure!’ Marvel said solemnly. He gave a little nod of his head and took Janet’s hand, Janet smiled and looked seductively startled.

  Franklin, anxious to establish himself as the centre of attention, lurched forward to impress himself on the stranger. ‘Senior Franklin!’ he thundered, seizing Marvel’s hand and squeezing it like a lemon. ‘Harrow and Oxford. Baccalaureate. First Class. Honours. English. Grouchers and the Atlas Club.’

  And then something extraordinary happened.

  Marvel froze in his slippers and an expression of absolute disgust swept across his bilious face. It dragged at the corners of his mouth, pulled at his eyes and crackled up through the roots of his hair. He shivered, snatched back his hand and cradled it against his chest.

  ‘The man is an oaf!’ he shouted, falling into a chair and wiping his hand in a handkerchief.

  Senior Franklin looked stunned. It was the first time in his life that his immaculate credentials had been treated with such contempt and, for the first time in his life, he was lost for words. His mouth was working but nothing happened. Whatever acid retorts, hilarious rejoins or confounding obiter dicta might have flashed through his bulging brain, he failed to voice them. He floundered. He flared his nostrils. He flounced from the room and stormed upstairs to collect his scarf and overcoat. It was outrageous. Franklin felt the need to be master of all he surveyed and he couldn’t hope to master Marvel unless they played by the rules of the game. This impertinent stranger had behaved like a tourist who, presented with the pyramids or the wonders of the Taj Mahal, fails to find anything in them worth the trouble of travel. And without the blessing of pilgrims, the shrine is nothing but rubble and sand.

  The front parlour fell silent. Janet looked trapped, hunched in the sofa, not wanting to stay but too shocked for flight. Mr Romance kept his smirking face behind his magazine. Mother, on the other hand, was not so easily embarrassed and continued to behave as if nothing unusual had happened.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ she whispered, as we heard the front door bang shut — a signal that Franklin had taken himself away to sulk at Grouchers. ‘He’s rather temperamental.’ Mother held the view that Franklin’s unpleasant disposition was most likely the symptom of something like worms or chronic constipation. She continued to attend to our new guest, fetching him cushions and even presenting him with Franklin’s abandoned Sunday papers.

  ‘Will you take a little breakfast this morning?’ she asked him.

  Marvel beamed and thought for a moment. ‘I think,’ he said gently, ‘I might manage a lightly boiled egg and perhaps a few fingers of toast.’

  ‘You stay here and make yourself comfortable,’ mother said. ‘I’ll call you when it’s ready.’

  I watched him settle down with the papers and tried to make some sense of it. Franklin was an oaf. It was true. A long and impressive education had merely lent the oaf confidence. He felt some strange and primitive urge for tribal dominance and we had learned to humour him. We had no regard for his high opinions — it was easier to tug our forelocks and smile than challenge his need for authority. Confronted with Franklin’s humbuggery it was best to shrug and turn away. But Marvel would have none of it. Marvel had stood there and challenged him.

  He took breakfast in the kitchen, closely watched by mother, and returned to the front parlour where he stayed for most of the afternoon, dozing beneath The Sunday Shout. He seemed perfectly at peace with the world, unclasped his broad leather belt for the sake of his paunch and drifted into a shallow sleep with the green and yellow lights from the window softly staining his face. But as evening approached with its threat of supper, he quietly slipped away to his room.

  ‘That will be his stomach,’ mother explained, as we gathered at the table to tackle a chicken. There were carrots and parsnips, drenched with butter, and sage and onion stuffing and her secret recipe mashed potato that stuck to the spoon and glued itself to the roof of your mouth.

  ‘I believe he has trouble in that direction,’ she added confidentially.

  ‘He doesn’t know what he’s missing. There’s nothing like good home cooking!’ father declared, winking at mother and splashing his chin with gravy.

  ‘Perhaps he’s been unlucky in love,’ Janet whispered. Despite his attack on her matinée idol, she was still prepared to weave him into her world of romance. The haunted husband. The tragic stranger.

  4

  Franklin sulked by going forth on a grand tour of his favourite watering holes. We took advantage of his absence by cleaning and disinfecting the attic. It was a dismal prospect. The sagging bookshelves were loaded with crumbling leather-bound classics, bundles of letters and thousands of rotting paperbacks. We stripped the bed and wiped down the furniture but observed his strict instructions to avoid the great oak writing desk. The view on the desk remained constant. The pencils were never blunted. The notebooks had never been thumbed. The stack of fine feint paper remained undiminished. Nothing changed. The sad progress of Awake, the Jabberwocky! was a story that wrote itself in the dust. He made a small living scribbling savage book reviews and selling sarcastic comments to literary magazines but his greatest work refused to take shape. He had squandered so much of his energy on broadcasting his intentions to write the book, and spent so much time discussing its many merits, that he half-believed the book to be written.

  I dragged the vacuum cleaner over the carpet while mother flogged the walls with a duster and squirted Springtime into the air to mask the smell of mothballs that always leaked from his wardrobe.

  ‘I don’t know how he makes such a mess!’ I shouted above the noise. It puzzled me that Franklin’s inertia could create such a quantity of filth. The carpet was loaded with knots of hair, cotton threads, fingernail clippings, biscuit crumbs, sugar grains, metal staples, shirt buttons, collar studs, broken teeth from a plastic comb and desiccated woodlice.

  ‘He’s a thinker!’ mother shouted with a rapid burst from her aerosol. She made it sound like a clever form of self-abuse.

  I switched off the motor and pulled the plug from the wall. ‘Do you want me to help wash the windows?’ I asked, stamping on the recoil pedal and making the flex jump across the floor. I hated cleaning the attic windows because of the rusty iron bars that scratched the skin from my knuckles as I tried to work the rag between them. They lent these attic rooms the atmosphere of a well-furnished lunatic asylum.

  Mother shook her head. She didn’t seem very impressed with the standard of my work. ‘I’ll finish here,’ she said, stooping to scowl at a dust-ball that had rolled beneath the bed. ‘You can go down to Mexico.’

  I wasted no time but retreated thankfully downstairs to Janet’s sunlit kingdom with its cosy clutter of toys and magazines. Here the air was fresh and the furniture was brightly painted, there were stuffed toy animals on the bed and a TV set on the dressing table. It was warm and simple and friendly.

  I loved Janet’s room. She had the disgraceful habit of leaving a trail of shoes and underwear scattered about the place whenever I went to work with my dusters. She meant no mischief. Her lack of modesty was a mark of how little she thought of me. She was only twenty-six years old but she treated me like a child, a tongue-tied skivvy, a comical playmate. It must never have occurred to her that finding these intimate morsels of cotton, satin and lace could poison my bloo
d and drive me demented. Katie Pphart, I suppose, had never mentioned the dark allure of the fetish for the amorous animist. I’m not complaining. There were obvious advantages in playing the part of the simpleton, to be given liberty to rummage in my lady’s underwear. And how dainty, how innocent, these trifles appeared in my big, clumsy hands. The lace like spun sugar and the nylon of frank transparency, the shimmering ribbons and seed pearl buttons. And the colours! Soft, blushing pink and lavender, ivory and peppermint. And her perfume — an exotic draught of flowers and spices lifting from every garment that I raised towards my face.

  I was testing from my labours, sitting at her dressing table and filling a little silk bra with my fists, when I heard mother hissing at me from the landing.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’

  I dashed to the door and peered up to find her leaning dangerously over the top of the staircase.

  ‘What?’ I whispered. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Mr Marvel!’ she hissed back at me. ‘He’s just gone downstairs. Quick! Go and talk to him.’

  ‘Why? What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Find out what’s happening,’ she demanded. ‘If he’s going out for a couple of hours, we can use the time to clean up his room!’ She grinned, flushed with mischief, and waved me away with her apron.

  I ran downstairs, swept along by her excitement, and found my quarry still loitering in the hall. He was dressed for the street but seemed reluctant to venture abroad. He held open his overcoat and stared at himself in the long hall mirror. He frowned and shook his head, refusing to trust the reflection. When he sensed me standing beside him he turned and peered at me thoughtfully, as if I might prove to be another trick of the glass.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said at last, ‘what do you make of this waistcoat?’ He pulled his overcoat wide to reveal a dark green waistcoat with small black buttons.

  ‘It looks very elegant,’ I said, to please him.

  ‘You wouldn’t describe it as loud?’

  ‘No.’

  He pushed out his paunch and peered down his nose. ‘You don’t think it makes me look a little too conspicuous?’

  I was baffled. It seemed such a tame and ordinary article that he could safely wear it anywhere without danger of ridicule. ‘I suppose it would depend on the occasion,’ I said, having decided upon reflection that it might be a little too formal for spending a day on the beach. ‘Where are you going?’

  He cocked his head suspiciously and studied me for a moment. ‘I find myself called away,’ he said finally and sighed in a mournful manner that spoke of some untold tragedy.

  ‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’

  ‘A trifle,’ he said, carefully closing the coat and pushing his hands in the pockets. And still he lingered, as if he needed to summon more courage before he embarked on the errand.

  I stepped past him and pulled open the front door. It was a cold and sparkling day with a sky so high you could count the vapour trails in heaven.

  Marvel leaned forward and sniffed at the air. He looked doubtful. ‘I should return before dark,’ he said, turning to look at me for the last time, and with a final shrug of his shoulders he launched himself towards the street.

  I watched him disappear beyond the privet hedge before I scampered upstairs again. Mother was waiting impatiently, fully armed with her brushes and buckets.

  ‘Has he gone?’ she whispered.

  ‘He’s gone!’ I said.

  ‘Is there time?’ she asked, pulling the house keys from a cardigan pocket.

  ‘There’s time!’

  We unlocked his door and tiptoed forward like thieves. What did we want to find in that room? We hoped for scandal. We wanted to be thrilled by disgusting sights. But everything was in order. His shabby collection of clothes was neatly arranged in the wardrobe. A cheap alarm clock and a box of Potter’s creosote cough drops had been placed beside the bed. His shaving tackle stood to attention beside a small radio on the chest of drawers.

  It didn’t look promising. In the interests of hygiene we ransacked the room but found nothing. The wooden box beneath the bed contained no scorpions, no shrunken heads, but merely an ancient typewriter, the ink ribbon frayed and the keys turned yellow with age. We felt disappointed and foolish.

  ‘Poor old man,’ mother said, as if by way of apology for picking through his meagre possessions.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon when Marvel returned to the house. He crashed through the front door, staggered across the hall and sank to his knees at the foot of the stairs in an attitude of prayer. He looked seasick. His skin had a ghastly waxen sheen and his eyes were bulging and bloodshot.

  I ran from the kitchen to help him to his feet but he proved too heavy to lift and capsized against the wall. It was a difficult situation. I needed help but no one came to my assistance. Father was locked in the cellar. Mother was in the back parlour shouting abuse at the Beast who was trying to unscrew the head from the shoulders of Jumping Johnny Mango. It was bedlam. Mother was in a fury. I think the referee must have fainted.

  I knelt down beside Marvel and did my best to comfort him. ‘What happened?’ I said, trying to stop him from listing to starboard and rolling onto the floor.

  He raised a plump hand and let it fall against his chest, useless and dead, a glove filled with sand. ‘Filth!’ he moaned. ‘Filth!’

  At first I thought he was drunk but when I saw his distress I began to fear that he might have met with an accident or been attacked in the street.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  He opened his mouth to speak but merely moaned and closed his eyes. I tried to check him for cuts and bruises. There was no blood. He’d burst through the buttons of his waistcoat but he didn’t seem to be injured.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked him again.

  Marvel belched like a bummaree and weakly clutched at my sleeve. ‘The devils are trying to poison me!’ he whispered breathlessly. He wagged his head and stared vacantly at the floor. He looked distinctly queasy.

  ‘Do you need a doctor?’

  ‘No!’ he barked. The idea seemed to alarm him and he struggled vainly to escape. ‘No doctor!’

  ‘Why don’t we get you to bed?’ I suggested when I’d wrestled him into an upright position and propped him against the newel post. He grunted and groped for the banister, climbed the stairs on his hands and knees.

  When we gained the safety of his room, he prised off his shoes, belched majestically, turned around and toppled thankfully onto the bed. The mattress farted beneath his weight. He groaned and wiped his face in his hand. His stomach churned and splashed and made a peculiar hissing sound as if he were leaking steam.

  ‘Can I fetch you something?’

  ‘No doctor!’

  ‘No doctor,’ I said. ‘But perhaps there’s something to settle your stomach…’

  ‘Water!’ he gasped. ‘I need a bottle of mineral water…’

  ‘I’ll bring it,’ I said, picking up his shoes and placing them in the wardrobe. He was still wearing his overcoat but he looked so comfortable that I didn’t want to disturb him and by the time I’d returned with his bottle of water he had already fallen asleep.

  He didn’t leave his room for the rest of the night and later, when supper had been served and cleared away, I went to listen at his door and heard him snoring. Whatever demons had seized him, whatever dread phantoms had chased him back to the house, they would vanish in sleep and be forgotten.

  But towards midnight, when the house was quiet and I was coming to the end of my sentry duties, I passed his room again and heard the click clack of a typewriter. It broke the silence like the call of some giant insect hidden in the riddled skirting-boards. Marvel was awake and working at his machine. He poked at the keys with two fat fingers. Slow and deliberate. Click clack. A secret message to God.

  5

  The next morning it rained. It crackled against the windows and rattled the big iron drains, flooded the porch and caused dark flowers to bloom among
the pastel roses on the wall of the back parlour. The house was dark and filled with the damp, sour smell that seemed to haunt the floorboards and carpets. Mr Marvel crept through the shadows with his overcoat buttoned up to his throat and a stout manila envelope clutched in one hand. He drifted slowly down the stairs, gliding forward, hardly daring to breathe, and found me ready and waiting for him beneath the antlers of the coat stand.

  ‘It’s raining,’ I announced, strolling from the gloom of my hiding place.

  He shuddered and looked at me with a pinched expression on his battered face. ‘You’ve an eye for detail that’s quite remarkable,’ he said, attempting to push the envelope into an overcoat pocket.

  ‘Are you going to the post?’

  He stopped trying to stuff his pocket and stared at the envelope in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to find it about his person. He turned it around and tapped it with his fingernails.

  ‘Can I take it for you?’ I asked, reaching out to recover it before it disappeared from view. ‘You’ll catch your death in this weather.’

  ‘You’re hardly dressed for it,’ he argued, retaining control of the envelope by pulling it back from my snapping fingers. He sounded suspicious. I was still wearing my kitchen apron.

  ‘It will only take a moment,’ I said anxiously. I felt sure that his labours at the typewriter were concealed in that envelope and if I could only read the address I might have the key to his terrible secret. But he was cunning.

  ‘I’d prefer to attend to it myself,’ he said stubbornly. He glanced about him, impatient and nervous.

  ‘You can trust me — if it’s important.’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s nothing.’ He pushed the envelope into his pocket and gave it a gentle slap.