by P. D. James
She turned away from the window and looked round the room again with mounting excitement. Something could be made of it. In her mind’s eye she saw it transformed, the grate cleaned and polished, the woodwork painted a gleaming white, the curtains washed. Nothing need be done about the walls, she liked the delicate washed-out pink and brown. The floor would be a problem, of course. She turned back a corner of the carpet. Underneath the solid oak boards were dirty but looked undamaged. The most exciting thing to do would be to sand the floor and then polish it so that the natural oak shone with the simplicity and beauty of wood against the darker walls, but she doubted whether that would be possible. Without the use of a car it would be difficult to hire a sanding machine, and there wasn’t very much time. She had never realized before just how important a car could be. But the carpet would have to go. She would rip it out, roll it and get rid of it somehow, and replace it with rugs. The room might in the end be bare, but it would have some grace, some individuality. It wouldn’t have what her mind’s eye pictured as the dreadful compromise between bleakness and claustrophobic cosiness of a prison cell.
She continued her exploration. At the rear were two rooms, a narrow bedroom and the kitchen. Both overlooked the walled yard and, beyond it, the narrow back gardens of the next street. One or two of them had been carefully tended but most were an untidy conglomeration of ramshackle sheds, dismembered motor bikes, broken and discarded children’s toys, washing lines and concrete fuel bunkers. But there was a plane tree at the bottom of the garden opposite the bedroom, providing a green light-filled shield for the worst of the clutter, and at least the view had some human interest.
She decided that the small room would have to be hers. It was too like a cell in its proportions to be suitable for her mother. She sat on the single divan bed and assessed the room’s possibilities. There was a fitted cupboard on each side of the iron Victorian grate and the walls had been stripped of paper ready for redecoration. She wouldn’t need to buy a wardrobe and it would be a simple matter to apply a coat of emulsion. She liked, too, the pine overmantel. Someone had painted it green but the paint was already peeling. It wouldn’t be too difficult to strip and polish it. The windowsill was wide enough to hold a plant. She could picture the sill gleaming with white paint, reflecting the green and red of a geranium.
Lastly she went into the kitchen. Here she was agreeably surprised. It was a good-sized room with the sink and teak draining board in front of the double window. The owner had started here with his redecoration and the walls had been painted white. There was a wooden-topped table, two wheel-backed chairs, a small refrigerator and what looked like a new gas stove. She turned on the gas tap and found to her relief that the supply hadn’t been disconnected. He must have left for America in a hurry.
After her inspection she relocked the front door and went finally to explore the back yard whose worst horrors had been obscured from the upstairs windows by an overhanging bough of the plane tree. The outside lavatory with its wooden seat and stone floor obviously hadn’t worked for years. But at least it didn’t smell. The yard was a mess. There was a bicycle against one wall and the other two were piled with rubbish: empty paint cans, a rotting roll of old carpet, and what looked like the dismembered parts of an ancient gas stove. Here, too, were two battered and malodorous dustbins. She supposed that they would have to be dragged into the street for the weekly collection. Something, she decided, would have to be done about the yard, but it would have to wait its turn.
She looked at her watch. It was time that she went back to the agency and confirmed that she would definitely take the flat. She had thirty pounds with her in cash. Perhaps they would take that as a deposit until she could get to her bank and draw out the rest of the cash. Whatever happened, she mustn’t lose it now. As soon as the agreement had been signed she would move in and start work. But first it might be prudent to make the acquaintance of her neighbour.
He had just finished serving a customer and was carefully repairing his pyramid of oranges. She watched him for a moment, knowing that he was aware of her but was waiting for her to make the first move. She said: “Good morning. Are you Monty?”
“Naw. Monty was me granddad. Dead twenty years.” He hesitated, then added: “I’m George.”
“I’m Philippa. Philippa Palfrey. My mother and I have just taken the upstairs flat.”
She held out her hand. After another hesitation he wiped his palm against his side and gripped her knuckles hard. She winced as the bones ground together. He said: “Marty gone to New York then?”
“He’s gone somewhere. I suppose he’ll be back. It’s only a short-term let for two or three months. I was wondering about the bathroom. They said at the agency that we share it. I thought we’d better settle about the cleaning.”
He looked, she thought, a little nonplussed.
“Marty’s birds always did the cleaning.”
“Well, I’m no one’s bird. But as there are two of us and only you, I don’t mind taking responsibility for the bathroom, if that’s all right by you.”
“Suits me.”
“We’ll do the passage and the stairs, too. Do you mind if I clear up the yard, I mean, just get rid of some of the mess? I thought we might have some pots—geraniums perhaps. I don’t suppose it gets much sun with that high wall, but something might grow.”
“I keep me bike in the yard.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean I’d move your bike. Of course not. I’d just get rid of those old paint cans and the bits of iron.”
“That’s OK by me. That outside WC doesn’t work.”
“So I found. It hardly seems worth mending it; after all, my mother and I won’t be monopolizing the bathroom. We can bath out of shop hours. We’ll try to keep it clear for you if you can let us know when you want to use it.”
“Look love, I pee in the bloody place. It’s me bog. I can’t tell you when I’m going to be took short, not with the amount of beer I drink.”
“I’m sorry. I saw your bath towel there and I thought you might want to bath after you close the shop.”
“That’s Marty’s towel. I bath at home. There’s only two things I want to do up there and I can’t tell you when I’ll want to do them. OK?”
“Well, that’s all right then.”
They looked at each other. He said: “Marty OK? Doing all right is he?”
“I haven’t the least idea. Considering the rent he’s asking, he should be doing fine.”
He smiled. Then with the élan of a conjuror his chubby hands picked out four oranges, tossed them into a bag and held it out to her.
“Sample the produce. Monty’s best. It’s on the house. House-warming present.”
“That’s very kind of you. Thank you. I’ve never had a house-warming present before.”
The action in its generosity and grace disconcerted and touched her. She smiled at him and turned quickly away, afraid that she might cry. She never cried, but it had been a long exhausting week and she was at the end of her search at last. Perhaps it was only tiredness and the relief of finding somewhere when she had almost given up hope that made her so ridiculously sensitive to a simple act of kindness. The bag was too fragile for the weight of the oranges and she had to support them on her hands. She looked down at their gleaming pock-marked skin and felt their solidarity resting on her palms. She bore them upstairs slowly and carefully as if they might crack, then rested the bag against the wall while she unlocked the flat door. She had found during her inspection a shallow Wedgwood patterned bowl in the kitchen cupboard among a miscellany of crockery and half-used tins of coffee and cocoa. She set the oranges in it. Then she placed the bowl precisely in the middle of the kitchen table. It seemed to her that with this action she took possession of the flat.
15
On the following day, Saturday 29th July, Scase took a cheap day return ticket from Victoria to Brighton. He was on his way to buy the knife. He had been born in Brighton, in a small pub near the station, but h
is return for the first time since his youth had nothing to do with nostalgia. The purchase of a knife seemed to him of immense significance; he had to make the right choice and to make it without risk that his purchase would afterwards be remembered. That meant that he needed to buy it in a large town, preferably some distance from London, and on the busiest shopping day of the week. He would feel at home in Brighton. There were advantages in not having to cope with so important a purchase and at the same time find his way around a strange town.
His first thought was to buy a hunting or sheath knife from a shop which dealt in camping equipment, but when, after anxiously scrutinizing the window, he ventured inside such a shop, there were no knives on display and the thought of having actually to ask for one, and perhaps of being asked by an assistant, anxious to be helpful, for what precise purpose he wanted it, reinforced his feeling that this wasn’t the right place. Wandering among the anoraks, the bedrolls and the camping gear, he did eventually find a selection of jackknives hanging from a display board, but he thought that the blades might be too short. He was worried, too, that if he had to act in a hurry his fingers might be too weak to get the blade prised open in time. What he wanted was a simpler weapon. But he did find, and buy, at the camping shop another necessary piece of equipment; a strong canvas rucksack in khaki, about fourteen inches by ten with two metal buckles and a shoulder strap.
In the end he found the knife in the kitchen department of a fashionable household store, new since his time. The goods were displayed in racks; stacks of pretty cups and saucers, earthenware casserole dishes, plain well-designed cutlery and every possible item of equipment for cooking. The store was very busy and he moved with his blood-stained preoccupation among young couples conferring happily over purchases for their homes, families with boisterous children, chattering foreign tourists and the occasional solitary shopper surveying with a discriminating eye the bottles of spices and coffee beans and the jars of preserves. The store seemed to be staffed by pretty girls in summer dresses, much occupied with their own conversations. No one approached him. Customers selected their own items and carried them in the store’s baskets to the check-out desk. He would be one of an endless, moving line of people, anonymous, quickly dealt with, not even required to speak.
He took his time at the knife rack, trying them in his hands for weight and balance and for a comfortable feel of the handle in his grasping palm. In the end he chose a strong carving knife with a triangular, eight-inch blade, very sharp at the point and riveted into a plain wooden handle. The blade, razor sharp, was protected with a tough cardboard sheath. The sharp point seemed to him important. It was that first deep thrust into her flesh which he imagined might take all his strength and purpose. That done, the final twist and withdrawal would be little more than a reflex action. He had the right money ready, and after standing in a short queue, was through the check-out within seconds.
He had brought with him to Brighton the binoculars which he had bought as his retiring present. He already had at home a street map of London, but there were two other necessities, and both he bought at Brighton. In a chainstore chemist he purchased the small size of the finest protective gloves which they had on display, and, in another large store, a white transparent mackintosh. Here, but without bothering to try it on, he selected the largest size. If he were to be adequately protected against what might be a gushing fountain of blood, he needed a protective coat which would reach almost to the ground. He put the gloves in the pocket of the mackintosh, then rolled it round the binoculars and the sheathed knife. The bundle fitted easily into the bottom of the rucksack and its wide strap fitted comfortably on his shoulder.
He couldn’t be sure why, in the end, he decided after all to visit the Goat and Compasses. Perhaps the reasons were a mixture of the simple and complex; he was, after all, in Brighton and was unlikely to visit here again in the near future, the pub was on his way to the station, he was moving into a new sphere of existence which would distance still further those early traumatic years, it would be interesting to see whether the place had changed. Nothing about it had. It still seemed to crouch under the shadow of the railway arches, a low, dark, claustrophobic pub, liked by its regulars but hardly inviting to the casual passer-by. The wooden-walled public bar was still furnished with the same long oak tables and benches, the walls were still hung with the same maple-framed old photographs of Brighton pier, and groups of sou’wester-clad fishermen before their boats. Opposite and seen through the windows the railway arches still gaped like black menacing mouths. In his childhood the arches had been a place of terror, the lair of the spitting monsters with no necks, whose spittle was death. Always he passed on the other side of the road, not running, in case his padding feet drew their attention, but walking in steady haste, his eyes averted. But then, when he was eleven, he made a pact with them. He used to secrete scraps of his meals, a crust from breakfast, the end of a sausage or a piece of potato from supper, and lay them, a propitiatory offering, at the entrance to the first arch. Returning at night, he would look to see if the offering had been accepted. With part of his mind he knew that the seagulls scavenged there, but when he found that the scraps had gone he went home comforted. But the trains never frightened him. He would lie at night mentally timing their visitation, hands clutching the blanket edge, his eyes fixed on the window, waiting for the preparatory whistle, the approaching rumble, which, almost as soon as he heard it, exploded into a climax of clashing metal and flashing lights while his bed shook under the momentary dazzle of the patterned ceiling.
Sitting there, alone, in the dim corner of the saloon bar with his hands clasped round his glass of lager, he recalled the day when he had first learned that he was ugly. He had been ten years and three months old. His Auntie Gladys and Uncle George were setting out the public bar for the first evening customers. His mother was out with Uncle Ted, the latest of the so-called uncles who came and went in his life, and he was playing alone in the dark little passage between the bar and the sitting room, sprawled on the floor and taxiing his model of a biplane carefully onto one of the grey squares of the chequered lino. The door to the bar was swinging open and he could hear footsteps, the clink of bottles, chairs being dragged across the floor, and then his uncle’s voice: “Where’s Norm? Marge said he wasn’t to go out.”
“In his room, I suppose. That kid gives me the willies, George. He’s right ugly. He’s a proper little Crippen.”
“Oh come off it! He’s not that bad, poor little sod. His dad was no oil painting. The kid’s no trouble.”
“I grant you that. More healthy if he was. I like a boy with a bit of spirit to him. He creeps around the place like some sodding animal. You got the key to this till, George?”
The voices sank to a murmur. He slid across the floor soundlessly and stole out of the door and up the twisting stairs to his bedroom. There was a rickety oak chest of drawers in front of the window and on top of it an old-fashioned swivel looking-glass, the mirror spotted with age. He hardly ever used it and had to drag the bedside chair across to the chest and stand on it before he saw the thin grubby fingers pressed white against the oak, the toy biplane between them, his face rising to confront him, framed in split mahogany. He gazed at himself stolidly, the protuberant eyes behind the cheap crooked spectacles with their steel rims, the straight fringe of dry brown hair, too thin to obscure the rash of spots across his forehead, the unhealthy pallor of his skin. Ugliness. So this was why his mother didn’t love him. The realization didn’t surprise him. He didn’t love himself. The knowledge that he was ugly and therefore beyond the possibilities of love was only the confirmation of something always known but never, until now, acknowledged, taken in with his milk when she thrust the bottle teat between his gums, mirrored in the anxious disappointed face which bent over his, perpetually present in adults’ eyes, heard in the whining nag of her voice. It was too inescapably a part of him to be resented or grieved over. It would have been better for him to have been born
with one leg or one eye. People might have been impressed by how well he managed, might have been sorry for him. But this deformity of the spirit was beyond pity as it was beyond healing.
When his mother came home, he followed her up to her room.
“Mummy, who was Crippen?”
“Crippen? What a question. Why d’you want to know?”
“I heard someone talking about him at school.”
“Pity they couldn’t find something better to talk about then. He was a murderer. He killed his wife and cut her up and buried her in the cellar. That was a long time ago. In your granddad’s time. Hilldrop Crescent. That’s where it happened!” Her voice brightened at the wonder of memory’s capricious cleverness, then resumed its normal hectoring tone. “Crippen indeed!”
“What happened to him?”
“He was hanged, of course, what do you think happened to him? Give over talking about him, will you.”